Fine, here we go.
I didn’t read Gorta as town- or scumlean at the start of the game. He was kind of a nullread for me and stayed in the middle of my readlist until the very end of D1 when he, Worse and I all jumped off of Cloned and onto Silviu. Gorta said he was going to trust Cloned over his own read on Silviu, and Worse jumped because he was unsure of what to believe. I also jumped because I was unsure of what to believe, but I also genuinely thought that Silviu was scum (which I learned I was completely wrong about; he just gets very defensive when pressured, so I’ll keep that in mind).
Cloned scumread all three of us for jumping so fast, and I scumread Worse more than Gorta for it because Worse hadn’t said very much and seemed very uncertain of his own reads. Gorta pushed Appel on D2, and Appel retaliated, so I took a step back to watch their interactions. Both of them got very flustered by pushing each other, but up until that point, I hadn’t seen Appel say anything that didn’t seem neutral/objective. She had been a nullread for me with a slight townread, but when Gorta pointed out that she could be a sneaky wolf, I began to doubt her. Gorta displayed a frustrated reaction before Appel did (the one in caps lock) and to me, he looked like a deer caught in headlights. But he continued to push Appel more, and insisted she was shadier than he was (he didn’t outright say “Appel is scum” but said “Appel is within her wolfrange” iirc), and then Appel caved under pressure and snapped at him, voted, then withdrew her vote, which looked even more like a wolf move to me. I was willing to believe Gorta at that point, although neither of them were really looking like a townread to me just based on that interaction. However, I wasn’t entirely convinced they’d be town/wolf, either, even if the lynch flipped town. Gorta made a convincing enough case against Appel saying that she was capable of controlling the thread, and if we didn’t vote her out early it would be even harder to catch the scumteam later. What I should have considered is how capable Gorta is of controlling the thread, too, once Appel flipped town.
Cloned mentioned that he was pretty sure that one of Appel/Gorta had to be a wolf. I still wasn’t totally sure, so I hesitated in my analysis during the night and went through every possible remaining combination of scumteams still in the game (including with Cloned) for 3 hours and essentially did a megaread on everyone. By the start of D3, Cloned had been killed, so I deleted his parts in my analysis, which got rid of at least one of my top scumteam possibilities (the Cloned/Worse team). From what I’d inferenced so far, Worse was most likely only scum if Cloned was scum, but Gorta was most likely scum if Kiro was scum. I wrote out all possible teams regardless because I wanted to get rid of any confirmation bias and consider that anything was possible.
I reached the conclusion that Worse was likely just an unconfident newbie who sheeped through most of the game but had, in fact, formed his own reads and opinions that he simply kept to himself until someone else wrote similar views (in roughly the same way that I didn’t say I scumread Silviu until Appel BS’ed her read on him). Because I made that mistake on Silviu, I can understand how Worse could also make that mistake. By the end of D2, when Worse was pressured by the rest of us to make his own decision without waiting for someone else to confirm his suspicions, he gave a read and mislynched Appel with us. But on D3, Worse gave an updated read on the remaining possible scum, showing he’d really had the time to develop his reads to openly weigh in. From this behavior, combined with what I thought was just a very unlikely scumteam due to setup reasons, I cleared Worse from my long-term scumread.
Gorta was still roughly in the middle of my readlist, and the concerning thing was that moving Worse up on my list meant moving Gorta down. I had Arctic at the top of the town list, with Worse next, and Kiro at the very bottom as confirmed scum. That put Gorta directly above Kiro. The reason I haven’t been able to clear Gorta from my scumlist is because he did pretty much what I thought a decent wolf could do - maintain a position in the middle of my readlist without moving drastically up or down throughout the course of this game. The Appel flip really hit Gorta hard, if the Silviu flip hadn’t already, and yet I was still willing to keep Gorta in the null range until Cloned flipped. With Gorta, a lot of his behaviors could be dismissed as “bad town” because of his previous game history, so it’s the “easy way out” for him. He didn’t try to hide his mislynches or pushes; he simply made what could be seen as fairly reasonable excuses for them - all while distancing from Kiro by simply not saying much about him and not voting with him at all. He didn’t comment much on Kiro’s pushes but instead let Kiro continue pretending to be a pushy newbie townie while he pushed a different agenda to distract from what both of them were actually doing. I didn’t see this right away because they actually distanced very well.
If I try to see that as a non-wolf behavior, I would have to assume they’re both town who just haven’t coordinated their viewpoints at all and haven’t really interacted with each other, either, while most of us had at least several interactions with Kiro where we asked him what he was doing, what he was thinking, what his readlist looked like, or why he was pushing Cloned so hard. If I assume Kiro is wolf and Gorta is town, I still see Gorta not commenting much on Kiro, which is actually kind of weird at this point in the game. The rest of us had at the very least commented on Kiro’s innocent act and whether or not we thought he was faking it. Arctic and Worse thought it seemed genuine; I hard townread Kiro all the way up to the point where he outed as protective, and only then did he move down the list (but still not into my scum range). Gorta didn’t say much about Kiro’s act, and he also hasn’t gone back to analyze Kiro’s actions to further confirm Kiro as a wolf. I’m not saying that Gorta should have ISO’d Kiro necessarily, but he seemed to be perfectly fine with agreeing Kiro was a wolf without commenting at all on Kiro’s behaviors thus far - while Arctic, Worse and I all mentioned Kiro’s innocent act that he kept up until he suddenly let Cloned die.
There’s just so much distancing between Gorta and Kiro right now that it’s ridiculous, if you understand what I’m saying. Gorta has focused the entirety of D3 on figuring out who the scum is between Arctic/Worse (after being lazy) instead of writing anything at all on Kiro besides this:
That was the only quote I found from Gorta’s ISO on D3 about Kiro. He accepted Kiro was a wolf and didn’t have any further comment; and this quote was specifically in response to Worse’s scumread on him and Kiro.
And if I go back to Gorta’s ISO on D2, I only find - again - a single mention of thinking Kiro is scum:
And this was because Gorta was, interestingly enough, more focused on Cloned and me than on Kiro. There was absolutely no point in time where Gorta said “Kiro is likely a wolf as the second protective claim with Cloned and Wind confirming each other as PRs”. He hard pushed Appel and was like “oh yeah, Kiro is a wolf too but we’ll ignore him for now”.
If anyone feels like checking Gorta’s ISO to see that I really did pull the only two quotes regarding Kiro, go ahead - it’s just way too suspicious that Gorta mentioned Kiro being a wolf once on D2 and once on D3. That’s both indicative of TMI and distancing because he gave no analysis of Kiro. No ISO, no mention of his behavior, nothing. And really, his lack of interaction or analysis-based read on Kiro tells me he has to be Kiro’s scum partner.
