[[Ntairow's tail and eyes alike swept over the congregation, wondering how the tide had turned against her so swiftly. Was she being too passive? She certainly felt like she was. Did it seem like she was covering for fellow wrongdoers?
Or were they all just afraid of her?
Her hands twitched in anger... but only briefly. In a way, she supposed, she couldn't blame them, especially not for the latter possibility.
"I have only tried to protect you," she said quietly. "I know you have no real reason to trust me, and plenty of reason to fear me. If you'll have me... I would like to continue trying to keep you safe. But if it would put you at ease, I am willing to be jailed, if that's the way the votes pan out."]]
Yeah, ultimately Ntairow has no real means of defending herself. Not even rage and psybeams, lol. (Incidentally, no, that wasn't a self-vote.) As for me... honestly, the only way I can think of for my actions on Chibi to not register to our apparent watcher is if I got roleblocked. Which, of course, I have no means of proving, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Incidentally, I'm really sorry I didn't answer the calls to post sooner. I have a shitty sleep schedule--it's rare I get up before like 1:30 EST these days (I'm not EST, for the record; I'm EST-1), and once I did I had several pages to read through. Granted, what I'm saying now is based on my out-of-thread life, so feel free to take it with as many grains of salt as feels prudent.
I'm wondering, meanwhile, why it seems so odd that the mafia could be taking random shots this early in the game? Cause like, I feel like we're all basically gambling at the start. Unless they can have some sort of coppish role themselves, they don't know our roles any more than most of us* know each others'. All they can do is guess. All they can do is decide whether or not they believe the claims and the potential evidence offered up.
This is pure conjecture, though; I've been scum only once, and that was technically in a different game (for real, maybe this is subjective but I think ONUW and mafia are very different games despite having some mechanics in common).
On a side note: I kind of don't feel great about judging people in this game based on information from outside it? I feel like those sorts of things really shouldn't be admissible as evidence and the only things that should really be factoring into judgments here are 1.) things that happen in the thread and 2.) things night actions reveal. Granted, this game pre-dates the hell out of me playing it, so maybe citing evidence outside those avenues is considered perfectly valid. I don't know. Ultimately all I know is I have personal misgivings against it. (For that reason, I can't comfortably put any stock in testimony that someone seems innocent because the person giving it knows them, knows how they are outside the game. It just seems super hearsayish, even by the standards of this game.) I'm not gonna hold using outside evidence against anyone else.
So anyway, about voting. I'm still going to abstain from doing so this time around. I'll admit, part of me initially wanted to vote Espurr, solely because I sympathized at the time. I get it. I get feeling overburdened and needing to maybe bail. I've felt the same thing at times, honestly; at this point, I could take or leave surviving in this game. The only reason I'm defending myself at all is because I'd feel selfish for bailing**, given my role. (Though I guess if I am lynched and shown to be innocent as a result, that's potentially useful information. I don't know. All I'm sure of is, I don't feel comfortable actually asking to be lynched.)
But in wake of SparklingEspeon making it clear that it's honestly not that much of a burden after all, I don't want to vote Espurr out. If that's a legit inforole, that's too valuable to remove. We need information, even if it all still just boils down to "to trust or not to trust".
That said, though, in the interest of honesty... I'm not entirely convinced she's town. If there really are two doctors, then the fact that I guarded her on night 0 and there was no nightkill doesn't guarantee her innocence, at least not from my perspective. The mafia could've targeted someone else, whom the other doctor could've protected, which would've yielded the same result: no nightkill.
Hopefully Espurr really is innocent. Hopefully we're not setting ourselves up for mafia misdirection.
(Even remotely suggesting that Espurr might not be innocent is probably making me look guilty as hell, but. Damned if I do, damned if I don't, at this point. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
*That's "most of us" because there's still the possibility that there's still a town cop
**What I'm feeling only applies to me. I don't think it's selfish for anyone else to bow out.
