ok so i was mostly trying to be as objective as possible so that this is like a matter of public record and can be analyzed from anyone's perspective to find the scum
but i will add a little bit of a so that it isn't entirely iioa
which is that fmpov i think when looking at skitter's iso given this context it does make a little more sense to me that she would be okay with being left out at the start and recognizing that she is a consensus scumread if her partner is hellbooks rather than bulge. it would be pretty bold to be like "yeah sure ari throw me in the fun car with bulge". that is and has been and continues to be a point of contention for me this whole game as ive considered whether bulge slot is scum, and the explanation for me is that if it is then she just knew we weren't actually going to coalesce any time soon
i do think it would be pretty dangerous for her to try to pull that off though, because mindsets can form quickly and be hard to shift -- me, isis, ari all got a few early scumreads and then never really fully shook them. skitter going for the "well im fine with this" approach and just hoping people townread it is i guess hard to picture but also like again what else is she gonna do. if people don't townread her and her partner is afk then all she can really do is sit back and wait and then maybe later if she still hasn't gotten townreads she forces her way in
i dunno
it doesn't seem like the skitter approach though to just from the very beginning be against her partner being in. it's a lot easier to start with a townread and then gradually downgrade it if needed than it is to scumread them and then have to awkwardly prop them up if you need to later
and like the timing does make sense i think. she's noticing the trend of things and is gathering more townreads while hellbooks is starting to lose the initial ones she had. the hades and persephone metaphor is maybe more apt for the way in which hellbooks was down in the trenches of getting viberead which is a pretty quick burst of towniness that eventually fades, while skitter stuck to the other side of the game in the more analytical stuff, not forcing anything too hard, which will probably get her more and more townread over time
and then at a certain point somewhere in the middle hellbooks is happy to tag out and let skitter take her place in the coalition as they high five when they meet at the intersecting point of their oppositely sloped trajectories in thread consensus view
In post 1820, hellbooks wrote:
i think im doomed to always be a little suspicious of skitter because she so often fits the model of what i think is the archetypal scum: someone who has a firm grasp of the game but isnt its top contributor and is also generally making measured posts and cultivating trust. you could even say that its an rvs read that has nevertheless persisted into the current day. i kind of dont know how to go about finding things to townread about her and i felt this way in the magical first datisi game too
this post also made me go back to compare and i think the way she handled skitter in referenced game is like wildly different and a lot more hands on:
In post 91, hellbooks wrote:
when i saw the skitter vote i was like oh yea baby. that like makes a beautiful and wonderous amount of sense for you to do right now and i like it. on the other hand, the baltar spoiler is kind of word for word some shit i would say as scum to put forth the image of having a forward thinking and productively minded thought process
In post 307, skitter30 wrote:
Idk why she forces herself to have a sky scumread as town ...
thats like what im doing
also i think you should be allowed to townread people who arent solving
In post 317, hellbooks wrote:
if you were scum skitter and seeing that the ausuka campaign was being met with a ton of resistance and also were finding your own personal standing in jeopardy from pushing it, what would you do? im genuinely curious. my first thought would be "well wouldnt scum want to try and wind this down and look for an easier miselim?" but maybe people dont actually think like that. maybe people die on hills more often than i think, instead of intentionally executing scum actions that benefit their own, maybe they do their best to just fully adopt a town mindset, with all its associated baggage, and counterproductive results. what narrative makes more sense here to you all?
In post 319, hellbooks wrote:
sorry sorry. i just got embarrassed. like i know skitter is one of those Great Players and maybe shes like reading that and being like wtf are you saying lol do you even play this game more than once a year
In post 640, hellbooks wrote:
osuka wagon response is the tiniest bit town to me but maybe im too easily swayed by things as that
definitely down for a expeditious meuh pivot
honestly is tris not literally coasting scum
also do the skitter antis still feel that way and just moved on to bigger priorities
In post 807, hellbooks wrote:
skitz i think youre misinterpreting my posts somehow?
In post 810, skitter30 wrote:
@hellbooks can you pick three (3) of your spiciest reads and elaborate a little more?
Not super in depth like a couple of sentences each?
so i already kind of explained why i put osuka and ausuka up there (flawed as my trust may be). i also mentioned that i was genuinely convinced by the excitement and conviction that meuh had
skygazer i think has been posting shallowly and taking paths of least resistance and not really feeling concerned or paranoid or second guessing but then theres also like a vibe i get that shes coasting on tone which makes me think theres a vested interest in maintaining a good position
tris im actually thinking about putting back at null or even town but at the time it felt like she was very passively sitting with her confusion, saying she didnt want to read or wasnt motivated to do anything, and then was suddenly spurred into action by the prospect of a wagon. but now that i put that impression together i think its kind of towny
i dont think fire has done anything that made me think "oh that was so towny" and i think that theyve been very careful while also kind of trying to maintain control over the direction of the game and i think the sort of consistent action of trying to understand everything and little details seems like it could be like scum whos just doing busy work
maybe id update my reads to be
[empty]
ausuka, osuka, meuh
tris (lol SORRY AUSUKA ABOUT YOUR ANTIVOTE)
skitter
fire
skygazer
[empty]
i think i sort of committed to the bit so hard that i dont actually know where to place baltar in this list anymore but i originally had him in the fire tier and maybe id want to put him below even. and i have legit no idea about skitter tbh. as i mentioned before there is no one here that i am even fifty per cent sure is scum.
In post 868, hellbooks wrote:
i dont think skitter is towny just for trying to solve the game i dont think people are towny just for trying to solve the game
In post 909, hellbooks wrote:
Final answer reads adjusted for inflation just me changing my mind on some stuff
ausuka, meuh
tris
skygazer
osuka
baltar
skitter, fire
Did i get every one this time
In post 936, hellbooks wrote:
what is scummy about having disjointed reads progression?
In post 1009, hellbooks wrote:
as promise heres my hot girl success wall, provided FREE of charge to all of you, NO ADS, NO SUBSCRIPTION FEE, and NO BULLSHIT. feel free to read only the sections you want its no skin off my back. they should have a special achievement award for someone if they make both the worst and best post in a game cuz this ones gonna be a banger
finally on to the fun stuff... !
note to all skimmers below this point is where the post ACTUALLY starts getting good!
In post 1080, hellbooks wrote:
Ill self vote to avoid a no elim, thats not against wincon right
Also finding my self thinking skitters deadline scramble is town
like yea she's clearly struggling to come up with a confident read but the struggle is also like very evident in thread. you can see her trying to find that read
caveats that it's a different setup where you actually are blasting right away and hellbooks was actually under some lim pressure there which may have pushed out some additional opinions (although she's said a couple times that she doesn't think pressure really brings anything more out of here)
but like it is still a micro and all of those posts were on day 1
there's just so much more sorting of people in that game but directly comparing how she treats skitter i think makes the difference especially noticeable
sorry they were all accusing me of lurking at work so i had to go annoyedly manufacture a bunch of insincere wall posts in various google docs, id link them to prove it but datisi would modkill me on the spot 500 times
the year is 2033 hellbooks has long since retired and faded away, the newest generation of scummers asks datisi why do you have a rule that says "for fucks sake stop talking about wuthering heights nobody is allowed to talk about wuthering heights anymore" datisi looks far in the distance, memories flickering behind its eyes "guess i forgot to take that one out"
idk if this is actually relevant to the situation at hand but when people were like "oh helbooks only started posting content when she started getting pressured" i was like ok what are they pressuring me for then? Funnier jokes? Maybe no one said that actually and im just boxing with a hallucination enemy