eh mayyybe i walk that back a bit. the more i try to wrap my head around waterlily's partner equity the more confusing it gets
it's an interesting situation because the two eod wagons were largely initiated by the two dead mafia (and btw, lolus for that), despite PS's late-day switch. what do the partners do in that situation? where are their votes more likely to go?
it's especially interesting in waterlily's case because they were the one to really turn dusk into a viable wagon. i kiiiinda wanna say that in light of them probably being v/v wagons, he(?) fits better as a PS partner than an OM partner - it seems more likely that this would be an attempt at creating false competition and making multiple villagers viable lynch choices, rather than just buddying your partner's wagon as hard as possible.
but then i was isoing him and the thing that stuck out big to me today was how much more effort waterlily was putting into finding PS's partner than OM's. this could just be due to postcount differences, but i'd expect the remaining mafia to have a much easier time searching for their opposites than making up shit about their own faction. which would imply that there's greater ice equity for water. which, of course, is completely at odds with the thing i just said.
there's perhaps a world where ice!waterlily is legitimately scumreading heury and decides he's willing to hard buddy OM in order to try to protect them - and in the event that dusk DOES get lynched [assuming he's town] heury probably goes down eventually anyways, given his d1 contributions - and then just fires off a potshot at his top townread overnight (i don't really think there was anything resembling a consensus top town after d1, so i don't necessarily think docdodging or avoiding doubling up was really a huge concern here)
from OM's side, water exists in that sweetspot of buddying that is the NAI-slightly scummy reads tier (i understand, of course, that i also reside here in the same post, but we engage in shameless historical revisionism around these parts). to my knowledge this is his only comment on water.
from water's side, he just kinda calls OM his second highest town without reasons - but he calls everyone everything without reasons, so that's not super helpful. it certainly doesn't do him any favors, i'll say that.
also, point of personal reads-ness: i don't like water's first post of d2, tonally. bad vibes. hopefully not confbiasing
this is far from the most confident case i've ever written, if you can even call it a case
but it's honestly the most in-depth i've thought about this game so far, so that's something
vote: waterlily
if nothing else, help me pursue this tangled web of thoughts to the spider lurking within