OK, so looking through Heartache's ISO, there are plenty of interactions with McMenno, many of which clearly seem quite artificial. Heartache's been soft-pushing McMenno repeatedly (i.e. claiming a scumread on McMenno but not voting for him) repeatedly: #
221, #
399, #
403, #
504/#
507, #
514. In most games, that's the result of a scumbuddy relationship. In this game, though, I don't think it's as strong; there were obvious alternative "mis"lynches (itlepip/BYF day 2, no lynch day 3) which would be preferable for scum to push, and so keeping a level of suspicion on McMenno would have been useful if he were town, in an attempt to give the necessary lynch to push the game through. Then of course there's the weird claim-interaction thing where Heartache claims that McMenno's claiming soft-power but no-acted N2, and McMenno subsequently claims VT. I can most easily interpret that as a method of allowing the players to attack each other, then subsequently claim a townread if it becomes necessary.
There's also a second layer which is revealed upon reading McMenno. McMenno has hardly contributed through most of the game (day 1 he never left RVS, unsurprising given that it was so short; day 2 the only substantive post is #
148 which is a reads list that's noncommital on many players). In general, when McMenno does contribute content, it's unexplained reads. Day 3, McMenno started scumreading Heartache as the second-strongest scumread (while advocating for no lynch) apparently purely based on the basis of Heartache's softclaim (#
436). By #
525/#
526 McMenno apparently strongly thinks Heartache is scum (again without explanation; possibly OMGUS?), votes and then unvotes no lynch, and tries to force Heartache to claim. Day 4 is where things get interesting: #
595 sets out the night actions, and tries to encourage people to assume that everyone's trueclaiming their role. That would make McMenno look town (because
someone
had to block Leonshade N2, and McMenno claimed no action that night with Heartache confirming it). OTOH, now we know that Heartache is scum, it's quite possible that that confirmation was fabricated in an attempt to drive suspicion onto other players. In general, I consider McMenno's apparent trust of scum not to fakeclaim (and attempt to drive that narrative via assuming that it can't possibly fail to be the case) to be a very suspicious turn of events. (Also, McMenno's reads continue to be either unexplained or entirely theory-based D4. McMenno doesn't seem to have actually scumhunted all game.)
Meanwhile, Heartache hardly has any interactions with Tere (=1SVT throughout most of the game). Pretty much all of them are driven from Tere's side; Heartache seems to have been ignoring Tere's presence in the game whenever possible. One thing I found interesting is that Tere scumread reso (= Heartache) for a bogus reason upon replacing in (#
140 scumreads reso for dropping out of the game in #
107 but not officially replacing out; but reso actually did drop out, and
did the same thing in the now-completed Newbie 1740; "reso has stopped posting in all its games" is something that could easily have been checked at the time without violating ongoing-game rules). Tere seems to have scumread reso consistently all day 2, but didn't vote for ages (the vote counts are wrong but light_ganski never voted for reso) and only seems to have voted Heartache much later in #
272 when prompted (and at a point when Heartache was very unlikely to be lynched; players were looking to consolidate at the time and somebody's vote would have had to change). Then soon after (#
287) Tere made a large case on BYF anyway (despite BYF being at L-1 and having voted for Heartache). The next day, Tere was back to pushing Heartache (#
337) but without voting (which makes some degree of sense as it was mylo at the time), and never voted again. (Incidentally, #
398 is just weird.)
Once 1SVT replaced in, there was an abrupt reversal of opinion on the Heartache slot in #
488 (claimed to have been a gambit in #
640; I can see the merits of trying to draw the kill onto the player you're watching, but Heartache wasn't exactly a likely kill target even with the endorsement…) Also, 1SVT seems to have hardly contributed late day 3 / early day 4. Incidentally, I didn't get a chance to reply to #
655 because the thread had been locked by the time I got online, but #
654 was meant to be a reply to #
641, rather than a question.
Overall, I'm pretty torn on this. I think McMenno is more likely to be the scum based on my reread, but I can see either as a possibility, so holding off on voting for now.
@Mod: Can you correct the votecount in #
131?
It was a pain to figure out who was voting where at the time from it, as it's clearly wrong.