Quote Originally Posted by [M] Jade View Post
And Elize, I don't consider that evidence that Velvet is innocent. Throwing allies under the bus is a common enough mafia tactic, and Velvet was one of the earliest and strongest pushers of Mikleo being a traitor, an initially reasonable idea, but one that led to us lynching our Enabler and leaving our Cop vulnerable. I'm not sure whether he actually is or isn't on our side, but I cannot even slightly lower him on my suspects list.

Rowen, Elize, and Rita at least seem like safe townies. Not certain about Pascal or Anise, but I do not suspect them of illicit activities as much as I do Raven or Velvet.
Throwing Velvet under the bus makes no sense though. Velvet was in no danger of being lynched at that stage. You'd usually throw someone under a bus if they were going to be lynched anyway so you would look super helpful and nice by lynching a traitor.

But at that stage, it would be far more preferable for a traitor to throw Lloyd under the bus. His fate was effectively sealed with Colette's last damning verdict. Traitors only through other traitors under the bus when the writing is on the wall and they might as well salvage something from it by making themselves look non-traitor.

By my reasoning then, that would implicate Pascal as 'busser' in chief, but I find that unlikely, mainly because no traitor would actually put that much effort in bussing. It is enough to look agreeable and say "oh yeah, that person is super shady" and vote Lloyd. Why bother writing paragraphs of information? There's simply no need, and traitors tend to take the path of least resistance. Kinda like Occam's razor. Simplest solution is often the most likely. A very blunt tool, but I like to keep it in mind.

Which is why I think Velvet is leaning non-traitor in my view. To be sure, she could a traitor and Lloyd was including her in the visit list as part of some gambit whereby I think Velvet isn't a traitor because that's exactly what I would expect a traitor to not do and... see where I'm going with this? That's a lot of effort. If Lloyd left Velvet off the list, we wouldn't even be talking about Velvet's placement on the list and what it all means. At worst, the traitor team would be left with Velvet's actions up to that point, which were kinda nullish-town in my view. Why rock that boat?

I understand your point. I agree; Velvet is not confirmed innocent. Not by a long shot. But I do think Lloyd would not have put Velvet on that list were they partners: I just don't see the point, or the benefit.

Put another way: if I was a traitor with Velvet (as I was in a previous game), I wouldn't put Velvet on that list.