I would agree that the one vanilla claim who hasn't been under great suspicion is Palmer .Palmer was away (legit) which tempered some of it. There was some press and some votes, but even Swamped - who he's now voting - said multiple times that she wanted to keep Palmer from getting killed. That plus playing more defense rather than scumhunting would be real versions to lynch Swamped for me.
I am disinclined to fully go in on Palmer for several reasons. First, he's super active and I do think we should clear some suspicious inactives. Second, he will crush me, no doubt, and people will listen because he's Palmer and he's very good at getting people to listen to him even when he's yelling. I'm not super about self-preservation because I don't think individual townies matter overmuch, but I'm not vanilla and would rather not die just because of the wrath of Palmer.
But the biggest thing for me is that I'm not sure Palmer is scum hunting as much as hunting people who have questioned Palmer. He started the game being so helpful and explanatory and providing everything, even down to how to play, so his vanilla claim seemed like, well, okay. There was some questioning of it, but not a ton, thanks to how it was presented. Even the gf slant was helpful. Scum wouldn't be so open, would they?
He confessed later he'd also missed something about the role madness, something that had to do with his role pm, but when I asked him about it he was the cagiest I've ever seen him. Even invoked Sophia. Out of politeness, when asked to let that go, I did. But it's stuck in my head. Can't unstick it. It was the least Palmer move I've ever seen Palmer make. I don't know if that means it's legit there was some issue or if that was just him counting on everyone listening and leaving it alone. Why would it be out of bounds?
I don't know if I'm being shitty bringing it back up again. Dunno how the community is about such things. But I'm trying to be transparent.
So instead I'll turn back to Palmer's insistence that we focus on inactives. But now he's on Swamped. And his reasoning sounds so... reasonable, like this:
If we're not really in a role madness game, how many vanilla should we expect? 4-5 scum leaves 15ish town. Take out another 1 for neutral, and that leaves us with like 14 town. In a normal game, maybe 1/3 of them are PRs but let's double it since this was called role madness. Now we have 9ish power roles and 5ish vanilla.
Is it possible? Yes. But I don't find it very plausible that we've hit nothing but Vanillas townies with out votes. Seriously, what are the odds of 4 of 5 lynch candidates being vanilla? And did I see acohrs claim vanilla too or was he joking?
But while he acknowledges now that maybe he shouldn't have d1 claimed and he wonders if all the vanillas are there, he's still on Swamped.
I have doubts. I'm not convinced, but I have suspicions. I've said over and over that I find Palmer a very difficult read. I did misread him as scum in anime - and vice versa. But he's different here. Palmer puts the work in. But sometimes I read his analysis and I think... not really? No? But he's such a high volume poster that it's hard to go through all of them (pot, kettle, black right here).
But what the hell. I'm gonna put it out there, though I expect it will not go far, just as Verelios's didn't. And as of today, maybe it shouldn't. But if he is scum or neutral, he dominates the conversation. And it's something we should watch out for.