I don’t have that many thoughts. I’m just sitting in the thread, waiting for other people to post. It might seem strange, considering my worldview has just been shattered by Blizer’s V flip, but yeah.
The way I see this game is that I have four people in front of me that need resolving. I’ve been tunneling Arete for a big part of the game - ever since they replaced in, really - and I’m once again uncertain of their alignment. Making reads is difficult. This is why being mafia is cooler than being town.
Atlas has done absolutely nothing of value for the past two days. I can’t really say they’ve been negative utility, they just haven’t been contributing and it’s difficult for me to read them. There isn’t anything in the ISOs of the dead wolves that would tell me whether Atlas is mafia.
It’s not the same for Eli. Eli has been contributing a little more, although the last few days have been really bad from him. It feels like he’s trying to go under the radar. The reason I’ve been clearing him, aside from me assuming Blizer was mafia and saying Eli was town based on the Blizer read, is that… well… If he’s mafia, and if Arete is also mafia, then it would mean Marl exclusively pushed his partners on day 1 - if you exclude the Chloe slot, from which he backed off anyway. So, yeah, I just don’t think it’s likely.
I know Marl is a busser, but also I don’t think he busses so hard from day 1 that he just scumreads partners and doesn’t even try to push villagers. To be fair, we were pushing villagers just fine by ourselves, but still. Marl also didn’t really try to do anything when Eli was a viable wagon close to the end of the day 1, and I feel like he would care more if Eli was mafia. He would at least push someone, do something. The one push I remember from him was the one on Derps, which we now know was for the sake of distancing, as I pointed out earlier. So, Marl not really scumreading villagers in that world just doesn’t sit right with me. I would assume Eli isn’t partnered with Marl based on that.
This assumes that Arete is mafia, but even if Arete isn’t mafia, it doesn’t really change that much, because Marl didn’t really try to push the lol slot at any point during the game. And if Arete/lol were the villager slot in Marl’s PoE, then I assume he would at least attempt to push them… He did push them on day 2, but that was cut short by min’s tracker claim. Honestly, I wish it wasn’t now, because then I could read into it better, but hey.
This is my headspace regarding the Eli slot and why I think it’s town. However, I do recognize that Eli hasn’t been contributing much. It’s in the same boat as Atlas, except Atlas is even less invested than Eli at this point.