Alright, apologies for my absence, will try to up my participation tonight.
I'll start with my basic softclaim: I'm a critter. I get that there's a lot of them and if more than just Mikal wants to narrow it down, I'm willing to do that. I don't think my role is terribly obvious from my character anyway, so I'll volunteer to go next if that's the softclaim route we want to go down.
Regardless, I do think Mikal is focusing pretty hard on an element of his PM that likely has no bearing in this game. Mine just says "You are the ________!" and doesn't pluralize. It's not very broad, either, so I buy that people can have pretty specific characters, especially given that NPCs have been claimed.
Looks like irontoaster has a... diverse JOAT role. Based on the conversation that has gone on over it, I can at least understand where some of those elements are coming from, but it's surprising to have someone who is a Cop and a Poisoner. Just a weird fusion of roles. The Bomb makes some sense as a passive role that could deter a scum NK, and I could see how each of these could work (the Cop if I squint) with the Pressure Plate claim. Anyway, while I'm not sure what to make of it, fake claiming a Cop up front would be ballsy, so he'd have to know there is no Cop in the game to do this. Can't see much chance that he's scum.