Why did Carth get NKed? I've been mulling over this question, and I'm only finding one answer that makes real sense to me. Join me on a quick journey of speculation first, though. I've thought a lot about this, and I keep coming back to this being the solution that makes the most sense to me.
Right now, there are about two options to me as to how last night could possibly have played out. Either everyone screwed up, or scum was actively trying to get a no lynch.
No lynch, generally, doesn't do a lot. It, essentially, cuts the kill count down by one. This, however, doesn't seem to be too useful unless it is actually being used to protect someone who the voters are reasonably sure shouldn't be killed. Which leaves us in a very interesting situation. Presuming that we have the more complex situation (the no lynch was the result of scum manipulating a close vote count), this leaves one real, logical reason for a no lynch to me: to protect a scum buddy who has a train on them.
Which brings us to the endgame. We had OK and Excal up for lynch, and between (presumably) Keeshi, Otter and Carth, we managed to avoid a lynch on either of them.
There were about two ways the day could end. Keeshi swings to Excal and someone else jumps in, or both Carth and Otter jump to OK. As it ended up playing out...
Otter has a window in which to hammer OK, but chooses not to. he then proceeds to disappear.
Keeshi switches to OK, expresses a preference towards lynching Excal, says she'll change her vote if someone else does and holds onto the OK vote despite Carth and Otter apparently not switching.
Carth swaps to Excal, missing Keeshi's switch, and proceeds to debate with Keeshi about the lynch.
While, on the surface, Keeshi's logic looks good, the main problem I have is still the numbers game. Keeshi was counting on two people to switch and hung onto that, despite it being apparent that this wasn't happening. Her advantage was that she WAS there, and had the ability to switch her vote repeatedly as long as there was time. Which does leave the question. Why did she not switch to Excal (allowing someone who showed up to hammer real quick) while trying to convince Carth and Otter to move? This would have left her room to control the situation. In essence, to me at least, she seemed largely in control of the situation.
Indeed, it is worth noting that she did, at the least, put up the facade of trying to do everything she could to stop a no lynch from happening... except put Excal at -1 to hammer and allow anyone to drop a quick vote on Excal and carry out the hammer. In fact, what I have a problem with in her defense is that it left enough room for her to fail to get her vote in on time; by waiting for the 6th vote and reserving the hammer for herself, she had the room to "accidentally" miss deadline. Of course, her defense is pretty solid. Like Carth, she was holding out to try and get a vote.
Which ultimately, brings me back to my original problem with today's flip. Why would scum kill Carth? I realize this crosses into WIFOM territory, but... well. He was a logical choice to, you know, leave alive, given that he was ALSO obviously there and ALSO not switching his vote to put someone at -1 to hammer. If he was alive, there was practically no doubt he'd be under the same scrutiny as Keeshi today. Scum had almost everything to gain by leaving him alive.
In fact, the only benefit I can see to killing him is that it simply shows that part of the whole mess at the end of the day was townie silliness. And who benefits from this sort of knowledge hanging around? Keeshi, whose position was definitively parallel to his.
So, right now, based on speculation, my major scum candidate is Keeshi, as her being scum... well... makes the rest of the day and the flip work in my head. She stuck on OK because (presumably) he was town, effectively protecting Excal. Even if she couldn't get the lynch, she COULD interfere with the lynch actually happening (which happened). Her stance today shifted completely away from Excal or OK (getting kind of a cursory handwave), instead calling Tom out. Her position yesterday was to lynch me because I had some posting restrictions.
##Vote: Keeshi
My secondary candidate, similarly, is Excal. Keeshi's actions, at least under this speculation, bear a strong resemblance to protecting him ("preventing" his lynch). Furthermore, his recent responses have been very protective. While this could well be someone protecting someone they feel is innocent, it feels off under my current theory.
My next post will focus more on textual analysis and such, but I can't get this theory out of my head and I needed to put it down for others to see. Please keep in mind that this is speculation, and that this is just me trying to reconcile what happened at the end of Day 1 and Night 1. It really does make sense to me, the more I think about it, but I don't have much to go on at this point.
