they're both town.
that's what I think generally, not just on that interaction.
I'm not really feeling why you think xastrn is scum to be honest. I can see how they might be frustrating, but that's different.
I'll try to explain where I'm coming from.
Xastrn's reads, last I checked, were something like this:
Xastrn - because it's himself
Sokr - because he liked his first post so much Sokr overcame the inactive pile. Reasoning being that Sokr was questioning inactives
FML - for being active and asking questions
Kary - for being active and asking questions
Me - for inactivity
BRB Not posting - for adhering to their name
Raziek - for... I dunno, I think he just doesn't have a read on him yet? Only one who has been posting who he hasn't stated his opinion of
pawn - for inactivity, buddying, lurking
dabuz - for inactivity
Zen - for... withholding dissent or something? When it came to Xastrn's plan he didn't like that Zen apparently didn't give a hard stance (even though he totally did)
Red Ryu - for having a lot of fluff in his posts and little content
soup - for changing his mind from liking the pairing system to disliking it
His townreads really are that shallow, and his scumreads are super reachy. I've disliked his
reasoning for every stance he's presented (not necessarily the stance itself), and I've hated how he's been focusing on inactivity and very arbitrary stuff without ever going into intentions, etc. It's all very surface level. Then there's his game analysis, which was generally disagreed on by everybody. That he suggested a plan I have no problem with. That it was so mechanical I dislike. He developed a reachy scumread on Zen because Zen apparently kept his options open wrt agreeing/disagreeing with the rules. This isn't true from what I read, as I saw Zen clearly saying rules like that never work in BiM and giving an example game to read.
Then there's the inactivity pile debacle where he lumped me and dabuz together as inactives who needed to post content, ignoring BRB Not Posting, pawn, Sokr, and all the people who had posts but were saying a whole bunch of nothing. His excuse that he was purposely biasing it to get reactions doesn't fly with me whatsoever, and his attitude after I called him out where he said stuff like "you may be scumreading me now, but this is actually good! I am getting exactly what I wanted from this and now you're posting!" left a bad taste in my mouth.
I'll briefly mention the fact that all the hydra's posts read as very formal and forced, but I'm not putting much weight on this.
Lastly, there's the difference between his interaction with soup and Kary's interaction with soup. When Kary and soup had their argument at the bottom of the first page, Kary called soup out for contradicting himself. In this case, soup did contradict himself and the mistake was real. I feel like it was just a mistake from him in which he tried to explain things in multiple ways and it didn't really work out, and that that interaction was TvT. More recently, Xastrn and soup have been arguing. Xastrn is calling soup out on another contradiction. This time, soup is saying he doesn't like how people are jumping to pair up, whereas before he was advocating the idea. Xastrn is calling this a contradiction, while soup is arguing he merely changed his mind. Reading over the thread, you'll see that soup
did change his mind, meaning this is not a contradiction at all, as soup showed his change in ideology that brought on his new opinion! This callout from Xastrn is, therefore, completely unwarranted. I see it having malicious intent as he's moved soup to his biggest scumpick and is trying to show him in a negative light on a very big reach.
All this adds together to make Xastrn look mighty dirty, if you ask me.
