Okay, so here are my thoughts on VP's interactions with others.
VP interactions with players in the Keep:
There's quite a bit here.
In
post 212 and
post 256 VP argues Tanner and Ari aren't T/T or S/S. We now know Tanner is town. VP's expressed suspicion of Ari a few other times too, e.g. in
post 217saying she's trying to pocket Tanner.
Do we think VP is more likely to distance or to defend a buddy? implosion for example has argued bussing/distancing doesn't cost scum in this set-up. I disagree, but even if we consider it's possible Ari and VP are scumbuddies and Ari is bussing VP, to me that's outweighed by how hard Ari has gone after VP today. She's making (imo) excellent points and I don't think Ari needs to do that if she's scum. She could just stay quieter and let VP get me mislimmed. So largely based on today's play, I townread Ari. The only scenario I see Ari bussing VP is if she figures she's losing Keep and also figures Keep is resolving first and also figures bussing VP will sway Tanner's vote in the Gate after she flips scum. Which, eh, seems unlikely.
With Luke and DArby/Pav, I notice VP's question of DArby in
post 151 is designed to encourage more suspicion of Luke whichever way DArby answers. That seems to me to point to town!Luke because scum don't distance in that particular manner, I think.
I notice in
post 248 Luke defended Ari against VP's suspicion of her. That seems like +town points for Luke given they're at the same location.
At the start of D2, Luke's reads had him leaning scum on VP, though not for any super-strong reasons that can't be reversed.
And since then, he shifted to a more neutral stance, and then there was the 'slip' post:
In post 558, Lukewarm wrote: In post 499, VP Baltar wrote:Tanner, I am only skimming. Are we certain to have a scum at the gate? If yes, resolving that first makes sense. We can yeet imaginality into the sun.
um.
Does this make Baltar town?
Also, Baltar, you do realize that imaginality is only confirmed
town
from your POV, and not from tanner's, right?
Luke's pushed VP a bit more since then, though, and also given me townpoints in
post 833.
Since Pav replaced in, Pav's also leaned me-town, VP-scum, but not with any great depth of reasoning, e.g.
post 640. VP's expressed suspicion of Pav in
post 873, based off VP's sense my read of DArby isn't genuine.
VP's interactions with people at the Wall:
There's quite a bit less here:
VP engaged in some mech debate with implosion early, that ended up with VP's 'it feels like it all means nothing' in
post 138. Then he gave implosion townpoints in #160 for sharing the optimal strategy (at least, what implosion sees as the optimal strategy) from the scumchat in the earlier game. And strengthens it to his 'strongest townread' as of the post where he suggests the allocations.
VP's town-read of implosion is of interest because the leading explanation for the implosion swap, in my view, is that scum thought implosion was too town-read for them to win Keep with him there. So it's worth noting that it is indeed plausible any scum-team with VP on it would have held that view.
implosion townreads VP today because of the dumb 'dumbtell' tell, but then later fence-sits when Tanner asks for more:
In post 824, implosion wrote:I've been pretty clear with my reads, I think, Tanner. And I've given reasoning for the ones at Wall. I'm happy to justify why I think Luke is so town if you want, and am happy to wax about VP and imaginality but I honestly doubt I can really reasonably read the two of them better than 50/50.
And then more recently he says he townreads VP, but then ums and ahs about it, e.g.
post 905. By a couple of pages later, he's more strongly against me, e.g. post 949 and
post 953. I obviously don't agree with some of his takes here (for example, saying it's +town for VP to assign implosion to the Keep; as someone else (Luke?) said, scum could easily have planned to swap out implosion for DArby regardless of how the other locations ended up, in an S/T swap and some T/T scenarios too), but my gut feel is that implosion seems to be honestly trying to figure things out.
VP has been more neutral and minimal in his interactions with numberQ, e.g.:
NumberQ also steers clear of saying much about VP, e.g. in
post 281 and as recently as
post 584.
This seems very plausibly like buddies not wanting any connections between them. Note also that VP's proposed setup always had numberQ in a different game to him.
With VP-Toogeloo, there's a bit of mech discussion in
post 111/120. Not much else to speak of after that until recently. Toogeloo basically fence-sat on the me v VP question in
post 495.
In
post 524, VP uses my early reads list as a reason to suspect Toogeloo.
More recently in
post 859he has said Toogeloo's first post today seems too composed and is leaning scum on him.
How to read this depends on how we think VP thinks the minigames will resolve, since he knows I'll flip town. If he thinks Gate flips before Wall, this could be an attempt to protect a scum-buddy by distancing himself from Toogeloo; if he thinks Wall will resolve before Keep it could equally be an attempt to add suspicion on a town player based off the suspicion he's trying to stir up about me.
Summary:
I think just from interactions with VP it seems pretty clear to me Aristeia is town, since I know VP is scum and they really don't seem buddied.
Pav has also being anti-VP today, but in a way which fits better with the scenario where they're scum together and Pav knows he's going down in Keep so wants to get some distancing in. Whereas Ari seems to genuinely believe her case and want to get VP limmed.
Luke's pushes on VP today seem somewhere between the two; they read to me as earnest, though less intent than Aristeia's.
So from interactions with VP alone, I'd say I suspect Ari least and Pav most.
At the Wall, it's harder to read much into VP's interactions. I do think VP genuinely saw implosion as townread, so if implosion were scum I think as a scumteam they'd be more likely to leave implosion at Keep. Even in a Pav-implosion-VP scenario, the S/S swap seems to make Keep harder to win and not gain much at Wall. So the interactions strengthen my townread of implosion.
numberQ and Toogeloo both look very plausible as buddies. VP had both numberQ and Toogeloo at a separate location to himself so I don't think we can distinguish between them that way, and there's not a lot of difference in how he's treated them and vice versa. Complicating matters, VP's interactions with the Wall are muddied by the question of whether Gate or Wall will get flipped first. If VP (and his scumbuddies) expect Gate to flip first, there's more reason to distance from his buddy at Wall so his scum-flip won't point us to them. If they expect Wall to flip first, VP might be less inclined to distance, to give his buddy at Wall a better chance of winning, and/or VP might be more inclined to try to paint a towny as scummy. So if the interactions point us anywhere, I'd say they point to Toogeloo as VP's buddy if scum expect Gate to flip first, and numberQ if scum expect Wall to flip first.
"holy shit this entire time i thought imaginalitys profile was a purple seahorse" - camelCasedSnivy
