Molten, Alisha, and to a lesser extent, Brian, are pinging my radar so far
I don't have very well-refined reasons, these are just sort of vague first impressions, so apologies if they're difficult to follow
Molten because:
1) His entrance felt stiff/rigid/awkward to me and he basically just repeated what others had said already without adding anything else. It felt like he posted for the sake of posting to blend in and I think mafia are a bit more likely to feel that kind of pressure than town, since I think town often have the comfort of the truth of their alignment on their side so they're less likely to go into the game trying to blend in since they feel as though they should naturally blend in because they're on the majority team.
And 2) because all of his posts since then have followed the same pattern of repeating what somebody else has said.
All of these are examples of content in his post that repeated what somebody else had just said before (actually a lot of it is repeating things from Alisha which may be of note). He did add a couple of things himself, like correcting hockey's statistics, but the amount of recycling points from others feels weird and unnatural. It gives me two impressions: 1) he's in a 'must blend in' mindset as a result of his mafia win condition, and as a result, he's ending up repeating what everyone else is saying. Or 2) that he's not confident in contributing posts because he knows he's hiding a dirty secret so the pressure makes him too scared to say much that comes from himself. There are other explanations for his behaviour of course but those are the two impressions I get when I read his posts.
Alisha I find suspicious because her posts so far feel unusually grounded and like she's making quite a solid stance and feels confident/certain about what she's saying without having any town paranoia. She feels unusually assertive to me. Last game when she was town her posts felt quite floaty and unsure to me, contributing useful ideas but always having a nervous backbone to her posts if that makes sense. Like when someone says something that they believe, but you can tell they're having tiny doubts about what they're saying. It felt like that a lot to me last game. This game it feels weirdly confident, and I'm attributing that to lack of town paranoia because she's not town. It's early but that's my initial impression.
Quotes where I got this impression:
And then B
rian. My suspicion on Brian is pretty tiny and my gut says he's actually town and that the little things that pinged my radar here are just fluff to be ignored, but for the purposes of discussion I'm going to say my small doubts on him anyway.
First, I don't fully buy his suspicion on me. It feels kinda like he felt the need to be suspicious of someone to look town and so chose me, and that's why his suspicion has no reason behind it and why it seemed so out of the blue to me (since I'd barely posted anything and it felt very random for him to suddenly ask if anyone else is suspicious of me with so little content to go by and with such little reason). I'm finding it difficult to understand where his read on me came from; it has no reason behind it and seemed very random and out of the blue since I've barely said anything. Because of that, it gives me the small impression that his read is faked. Brian doesn't seem like the type of person to fake reads as a townie, which leads me to think he faked it as mafia to seem like he was scumhunting and he didn't predict it'd come off as random/suspicious.
Second, his very first post rubbed me the wrong way slightly, I think just because it felt a bit waffley/unnecessarily detailed. Telling the vigilante they did a bad thing and saying why he thought so, despite that not going to change anything about what happened, then unpacking the 'should the kidnapped person claim' thought process in what seemed like quite an unnecessarily wordy way to me because it all seemed like common sense that didn't need to be said, and repeating the fact he was unsure about his opinion twice.
I can think of reasons for why he'd do these things as town too (e.g. wanting to tell the vigilante why it was bad so that they didn't do it in future; being new to forum mafia so thinking his thought process about the kidnap thing wasn't common sense since he's not used to thinking in this way, or saying his thought process to let us get a read on him or something). And I know Brian is quite a verbose person so this could easily be nothing and my gut says it is nothing, but when I read his first post I get a tiny scummy impression from it. I've tried to figure out why his waffley-ness seemed a little bit scummy to me here but I'm struggling to understand it. So it's just a vague impression that I'm not sure what to do with yet, but maybe you guys have some thoughts on it too.
That's it for my scum impressions. Now onto my town impressions!
I liked UNU's entrance to the game. The joke he made on his first post felt townie to me. I guess because it didn't feel forced or nervous to try to fit in or something, it felt like it came from a place of confidence, knowing he was town and not worrying about coming off as a bit weird. Also I have it in my mind that he's more likely to make a joke like that when he's town than when he's scum but I'm not sure how accurate that actually is.
Stranger I have a gut feeling is town. I have nothing concrete with this read at all, it's purely a gut/intuition thing. Also hi, I'm Inffy, nice to meet you
Hockey I also got a small gut town feeling from him, again nothing concrete.
Everyone else is a neutral read for me.
And here's my reads list in colour code to express where they are in my mind right now:
Molten (top suspect)
Alisha
TehBrian (couple things suspicious but gut says townie?)
Hockey
Stranger
UNU (top town)