Why Mystic Bears is Scum
:1:
Mechanical Speculation
(with a side of POE)
Mandelbrot's proven by role; they're not the scum strongman OR the scum roleblocker. With a third non-RB/Strongman scum role flip, this means they're flatout conftown. No "could be the scum role, in
theory
". They're just outright conftown. Even if you happen to doubt my role-logic (you shouldn't, because it's literally occam's razor), there's plenty of play-based evidence. Titus lived in spite of having essentially claimed in the PT is one proof of Mandelbrot not being scum; the other is the scum's lack of good fakeclaims also gives credence to the slot being town.
And when you add together the role AND the play, there's fairly compelling reasons to be town both by play and by role.
Toogeloo is, by play, very damn strongly town. The scum wouldn't have botched their flavor claims with Toogeloo as scum almost assuredly, but even had they, Toogeloo's been instrumental in the death of scum in a way that makes Toogeloo just town here.
Bell is, by meta, essentially hard-cleared as town as this isn't Bell as scum.
Qrow and Raven are just as cleared as town for the same reason: Nancy can fake several parts of her towngame but I just don't think she's capable of doing what she's done this game as scum. Plus, Gamma Emerald looks rather town, playing more like I'd expect Gamma-town to in contrast to Gamma-scum.
Which leaves us with:
RealCheeks (RCEnigma + CheekyTeeky)
Save The Dragons
dwlee99
tictac
Mystic Bears (Noraa + Flea the Magician)
Tomorrow Corporation
6 players, to contain the strongman and the roleblocker. The scum roleblocker basically cannot be among these names, because if the scum roleblocker were among these names, there was no need to make the raid fail in the first place, and in fact, making it fail would be incredibly detrimental. Which means that the roleblocker cannot* be Dwlee99, tictac, or Tomorrow Corporation.
(*Granted, this is where the 25% on STD not being scum comes from; if Elsa made the raid fail in spite of how detrimental doing so was to the scum, Dwlee, tictac, and Tomorrow Corporation would all theoretically be possible to be scum.)
So the possibilities for the scum roleblocker are:
{Save the Dragons, RealCheeks, Mystic Bears}.
Per the town players being town by play, and the raid poe theory, that means one of those three MUST* be the scum roleblocker.
(*see above)
Then we get to Sakura's theory,
One of the players in this raid should be the strongman, as Sakura Hana's theory was that scum used a strongman shot on Mirio N1 and Titus N3 (the latter proven because Titus was bulletproof at the time and could not have died to anything BUT a strongman).GuyInFreezer wrote:
Given the names we know the alignment of in the above, that leaves the
theoretical
possibilities as:{Mandelbrot, Mystic Bears, RealCheeks, Toogeloo, Bell}.
It's not Mandelbrot per the reasons I gave above, of Mandelbrot being conftown by both role AND play.
It's not Toogeloo per the reasons I gave above, of Toogeloo being instrumental in the town's victories thusfar.
It's not Bell per this being Bell's town meta.
Which means the strongman, if Sakura Hana's theory is correct, is precisely within {Mystic Bears, RealCheeks}; yes, this means that the strongman pool is identical to the scum roleblocker pool, just missing from it StD.
Initially, I thought that meant there was a decent chance that per the implications given, {Mystic Bears, RealCheeks} would be our precise scumteam.
However, then I did some extra digging. I'll cover that below, though, after I lay out more of the reasons why Mystic Bears is scum here.
2:
As Scum as Scum Interactions Get
Mystic Bears never voted ANY of {STD, RealCheeks, WhemeStar} yesterday. They defended both WhemeStar AND Elsa Jay. And it gets worse.
Mystic Bears has literally defended
all three
flipped scum.On D1, I point you to this defense of SirCakez by Mystic Bears, followed by THIS defense of SirCakez made by Mystic Bears, followed by a THIRD defense of SirCakez made by Mystic Bears, with this fourth glorious borderline-TMI of a defense of Cakez by Mystic Bears.
Mystic Bears defended WhemeStar as early back as here, and while in the interim was always posting that Wheme was in the poe (see below for why that in of itself is a damning read progression), never voted Wheme, until eventually, for no reason, doubled down on WhemeStar being town when WhemeStar began to be threatened.
It's not as visible with a control-F of 'wheme', but the slot defended WhemeStar all of D5, too, which y'all should remember.
It gets juicier.
Here we get to Mystic Bears defending Elsa Jay. Mystic Bear's defense of Elsa Jay continues here. Mystic Bears continues to defend Elsa Jay here. And Mystic Bears actually backs that Elsa Jay defense up even. But you don't get stronger defense of scum than this in Mystic Bear's defense of Elsa Jay. But there's more; here's another Mystic Bears defense of Elsa Jay...
...Which also is a post that shows why the defense of WhemeStar is so scum-indicative--look at the treatment of WhemeStar when Elsa Jay was threatened and WhemeStar was under no threat, compared to the treatment of WhemeStar when WhemeStar was under threat (shown above) because we already eliminated Elsa Jay by that point. Here is another hard-defense of Elsa Jay from Mystic Bears that ALSO shows the treatment of WhemeStar before WhemeStar was under pressure (willingness to eliminate him), in contrast to how they treated him AFTER he was at risk of being eliminated (suddenly, inexplicably for no apparent reason, he's suddenly town, in a reversal of the prior read).
And more than that? Mystic Bears has also been voting for the
counterwagons
to the flipped scum. On D5, Mystic Bears didn't vote, but on D4, Mystic Bears voted AA9 instead of WhemeStar. They also voted Mandelbrot instead of either STD or RealCheeks.
They voted Tomorrow Corporation instead of Elsa Jay.
This post basically feels like a confession, of being scum with both Elsa and Wheme. You might think "Noraa wouldn't do that", but actually, Noraa as scum can and has done precisely this before, admitting to being scum with scum in a way that frames it as being pseudo-sarcastic-eyerolley.
Which is a good segue into my next point:
3:
Noraa is in her scum meta.
This isn't one that I really have evidence to show as it's just the kind of thing that if you know, you know. If you are familiar with Noraa's scum meta, you should know that this is it.
4:
Bonus: SirCakez
I want you to take a good, long look at this post. Go ahead and TRY to tell me it's not SirCakez TMI-distancing/bussing the slot. (I'll cover more on SirCakez below.)
Given all of this.
Even if it weren't for the role POE. Even if you discarded all reads, all reasons for those roles.
I'd vote Mystic Bears just on merit of them being scum.
So whoever is their scum partner, I think they're just scum right now.
Why Save the Dragons is the Most Likely Scum Partner
:1:
Why I think RealCheeks is town
RealCheeks is the opposite of Mystic Bears--whereas Mystic Bears defended all three scum, throughout RealCheeks's iso, RealCheeks has consistently pushed all three scum. Not just distancing, either--voting scum, even on days when scum wasn't eliminated, even when there were other viable town options to vote.
I will admit; RealCheeks did hard-locked Mystic Bears as town early and often. I'm a bit too lazy to get all the links there.
However, critically, unlike STD who had that read remain the same (see below for that)...by here, RealCheeks has started to sus out Mystic Bears. Which continued here.
While the read then goes back and forth with it being townish, they slide Mystic Bears back to maybe scum here. And have shown continuous willingness to vote there, even stating "go ahead and eliminate us, but after you do, immediately flip Mystic Bears".
If they're scum they basically for the entire game bussed their entire team. While it's not IMPOSSIBLE, bussing literally ALL FOUR partners seems incredibly improbable, and that's why I think RealCheeks is just town here, in spite of the strongman/rb poe being what it is.
2:
The 'secret' scum breadcrumb strat?
STD and Mystic Bears have breadcrumbed being a mystical town PR in basically the same exact way. I was too lazy to do the links to this, but both of them claimed PRs vaguely in a mystical fashion suggesting that they are some sort of town power role that absolutely shouldn't be forced to claim early.
Given how badly SirCakez and Elsa Jay botched their claims, this seems like a deliberate strategy to avoid claiming for as long as possible to make their claims be as good as they possibly can be.
3:
Defense of Scum
STD did defend Wheme back here. Admittedly STD voted Wheme yesterday, but STD had no mention of Cakez pre-guilty and defended Elsa the entire game. (I was too lazy to grab all the Elsa Jay defense links but y'all should remember this as Elsa Jay as town was one of STD's most insistent reads.)
If we take for a given that Mystic Bears is going to flip scum though (I realize this is speculative but seems pretty damn certain),
STD did defend Mystic Bears here.
STD was also defending Mystic Bears here.
This is an explanation of STD's defense of Mystic Bears.
STD called Flea (half of Mystic Bears) town early too.
And STD explained the townread on Mystic Bears here.
There's a mention of Mystic Bears being town here from STD too.
And there was another Mystic Bears-town here from STD.
So STD defended both Elsa hard and Mystic Bears hard. (Admittedly, this loses validity if MB doesn't flip scum but given how sure I am on MB being scum...)
All in all, STD has defended 1 of the flipped scum hardcore, 1 of the flipped scum softly, has zero mentions of the third flipped scum, and has hard-defended a suspected fourth scum.
In contrast, RealCheeks has attacked all three of the flipped scum, not just distancing but actively voting and strongly advocating for their deaths, while also having what appears to be a real actual organic read progression on the suspected fourth scum going from town to scum to town to scum in a way that isn't buddy-indicative to me.
4:
Bonus SirCakez
We've got the good ol' SirCakez bussing/distancing strat for evidence of this. STD was a last-minute addition to his scumreads. I called it out at the time as thinking STD-SirCakez there was scum-scum theater and I agree with past-me's reasons.
Notably, while Mystic Bears was absent from that later scum pool (thus was not SirCakez'd), I would like to again point out this earlier post I feel is damning.
So, uhhh...yeah. I legit think it might just be Mystic Bears + STD.
