Board Thread:Season 6 - Nepal/@comment-5021832-20130724084948

''Editor’s Note: This Jury speech is of considerable length and is currently being considered by Penguin for publication as a three-volume novel. Readers may wish to obtain food or beverage in order to sustain themselves throughout the process.''

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to make it clear that outside of the context of this game I like both of you. But I play board games with friends all the time, and if someone kicks me out of a six-hour game of Risk, I’m going to curse them with all hell’s wrath. Yet at the end of the day, I’ll give him a lift home and we’ll repeat the process the following week. So keep in mind that everything I’m about to say is not a personal attack, merely my opinion of how you played this game.

So now that we’ve got the niceties out of the way...

INTRODUCTION
You jerks both played terrible games. You both lurked in the shadows of others, and then started hiding behind each others’ skirts. You both played an unnecessarily bloody game by betraying your allies. You both were rude, arrogant, condescending and delusional. And you both are the cause of several – literal – sleepless nights.

You deserve to be at the end because you made it there, and Survivor is a results-based competition. Whoever wins tonight deserved to win. You managed to get to Day 39 with someone you could beat. But that does not mean you played a great game. It doesn’t even mean you played a good game. Or even an average game. All it means is that you played a marginally better game than the guy sitting next to you.

METHODS
My mind is not made up, so my vote depends solely on the answers you give me, and the answers what else you’ve said tonight. So let’s set a few ground rules.

I don’t want to hear either of you repeat anything you’ve said in your opening speech, or in response to someone else’s question. We’ve all heard those excuses, and those explanations. I want to hear some originality, some invention and some ingenuity. Plagiarism is grounds for instantaneous failure. If you played the better subpar game, then that shouldn’t be a problem.

I want you to take my questions seriously. I know this will be a long, overblown read that is almost pathologically egotistical on my part, and it will be easy to be derisive, flippant and dismissive. But we played this game together for 38 days, and for the first time, I want you to take me seriously.

I will give each of you four specific questions, but I also want to hear your rebuttal to my assessment of your gameplay. Since I’m practically writing an academic dissertation already, I want to know how accurate my findings are. I’m asking for peer review: Am I making the correct assertions? Am I way off the mark? Are my studies of your gameplay flawed and laughable?

But most of all, I want your honesty. I don’t want an apology. I don’t want flattery. I want the truth.

DISCUSSION: CHARLIE
Charlie. I’m going to start with you. To be honest, I had once strongly considered giving you my vote should you make the end. This was back before Ash went home. I thought, hey, here’s this guy who surpassed all expectations and rose from being Wesley-Man’s sidekick to push his way to power. Unfortunately, you completely obliterated my rising opinion of you through a series of inconsiderate decisions. You went from being my secret hope for an upset winner to someone I wanted to drop-kick off the top of our dear Sagarmatha.

You were, allegedly, in an alliance with me. Yet you never, EVER, took my opinions seriously. You never treated me like a member of your alliance. You only ever treated me as a number, and yet half the time, I was doing the ground work. Let’s start at the Ash vote, because that’s where you pulled the pin in the grenade. I had developed a strategy to counter idols and nullified votes to ensure that either Ash or Jhet would go home. Three votes on Ash, two on Jhet. We might have to go to a revote, but we would send someone home, and preferably that would be the bigger threat in Jhet. But you completely disregarded my plan and voted for Ash when you were supposed to vote for Jhet. Of course, it didn’t change any outcome, but you directly ignored me.

This continued with the Charley vote. This was when you – and Dallas, and in all honesty, Charley – stabbed me in the back by setting off a nuclear bomb in the Khaptad alliance for [ships] and giggles. I pulled off an immunity win to make sure Jhet, the largest threat to win the game, could be booted four to one. But you directly disregarded my logic, and in the middle of my arguments, cast your double vote for Charley. It was a selfish decision, and it clearly worked out for you in theory because you’re sitting up there right now. But in one swift move, you throat-punched a person who was supposed to be a part of your alliance, and I don’t understand how that made any strategic sense, and you basically told me that I was an auxiliary component in your plan, rather than a valued teammate.

I want to take a moment to address both of you about this vote, so Dallas, wake up for a moment. I want to make it abundantly clear that I NEVER betrayed either of you. The two of you cut your allegiance with me when you pushed me aside to get rid of Charley. Both of you had stated prior to the challenge that Jhet needed to go, but suddenly, it becomes your best interest to take out the person you perceive to be the SECOND biggest threat, not the FIRST. But you don’t make that decision with me. You decide amongst yourselves, cast your vote, and THEN let me in on the “ingenious plan” like I was an idiot sheep. It was clear as daylight that I was not truly a part of your alliance, and that I was now on my own, so I had to drop my Khaptad flag that I had been waving proudly since Day 1 to simply keep hope alive. Your outrage at my alleged “betrayal” at this vote and the next was not only hurtful, insulting, abusive and publically humiliating, but it was entirely hypocritical.

But now back to Charlie, and to what had to be the most unpleasant experience I had in this game. I asked you before the Jhet vote if you would take me to the end. You told me you weren’t certain. Rookie mistake, buddy. With only a couple words, you told me that I could not rely on you should I stand with you and Dallas at the Final Three. Your inability to even LIE was what convinced me to take the gamble to tie the vote with Dallas, in the hope that I could force you to take me, or let a Chitwan win. Obviously, that backfired. I knew it, we all knew it. But you proceeded to rub it in my face over and over again. I continually came to you throughout the Final Immunity Challenge, attempting to plead my case. I tried to be light-hearted about it, joking that Russell didn't beat Natalie, but he sure beat Mick! We both knew it was a lost cause, but you couldn’t help yourself. You had to kick me while I was down. You insulted my intelligence. You insulted my efforts to stay in the game. You were dismissive and rude, and for no good reason. We both knew I was going home, so why did you feel the need to barrage me with condescension? Why not just say it straight and change the subject, or just stop talking to me all together? What was so hard about enjoying our last moments in the game together? Dallas managed to do that, in the exact same circumstance, and you’re clearly capable of it now that I’m on the Jury and you need my vote. But you couldn’t help yourself: you had to play the Russell game.

So, here are my questions for you:

1. Did you ever truly consider me a part of your alliance? If so, when did that change?

2. You were the biggest critic of my gameplay in the last stages of this game, despite the fact that I never voted against you personally. So tell me: what would you have done in my shoes at the Charley vote, and what would have followed?

3. You’ve marathoned the Survivor series over the last couple months, and I’m glad to see that you’ve become a fan! So which first boot of the real game do you think your game most resembles?

DISCUSSION: DALLAS
Now, onto Dallas. Mate, this hurts. I trusted you implicitly. My alliance with you, and with Charley, back on Day 2 or 3 – it was so long ago, now – was the ONLY alliance that I wanted to be a part of. Throughout the entire game, I wanted the three of us at the end. The Three Fates. We were supposed to be the ones who decided the fate of the game. Early on, we had said that getting the three of us to the end was the only was to prove that we had all played excellent, strategic games. Clearly, we were right, because you betrayed Charley and, through that vote (and, may I add, it was the first vote at which the Three Fates held the majority ON THEIR OWN) and your unyielding support of Charlie, you betrayed me, and now here you are at the end being accused of playing a game that lacked any strategy or action on your part.

I’m not sure where this all went wrong. I honestly don’t understand your desire, so close to the end of the game, to turn on the faucet and bathe in the blood of your allies. But that was the choice you made, and I hope all that red is good for your skin. But as much as I want to cast my vote for you on the grounds of friendship, I can’t, because I do not see anything outstanding in the way you played this game. You were down the middle of the line. Bland. Ordinary. As Cochran might put it, Vanilla. And your extremes were evened out: you were one of the friendliest people out here, but then you publicly attack me for making a game move, insulting my intelligence and making unfounded accusations of personal vitriol. You deride both Charley for making multiple finals deals, but you yourself straddled the Three Fates and the Oh Canadians, and later the Charlie Train to Hell. You hide in the background for most of the game – a legitimate strategy – but then deny it fervently. Let me just say that I believe “coattail-riding” is a legitimate strategy. If one of your allies is dumb enough to shield you from all the gore, then that’s great for you. But you have to own that strategy – and you haven’t. Even your admission to it in response to the Jury speeches of others’ has seemed more for the sake of sucking up and giving them what they want, rather than ownership of that strategy.

But do you know the one word I can use to describe your gameplay?

Cowardice.

You never had to make a move in this game. You say you decided to turn your coat, you say you switched your allegiances. I call bull[ship] on that. You were a part of the Khaptad Six alliance from the start. You had several options in that alliance to get to the end. All you did in this game was take one of those options when it fell into your lap. You didn’t have to find the ‘’cojones‘’ to pioneer your own path to the end. You made your own decisions, yes. All of us did. But you didn’t have to ‘’invent’’ your decisions.

You also made every effort to avoid blood on your hands. Others have addressed this, so I won’t wax lyrical on this point. I don’t know if it was your strategy, or just your inability to grow a pair and slit someone’s throat, but I cannot recall a single moment where you were the one holding the knife. Even at your “big betrayal” of Charley, it was Charlie who wielded the knife. You just sat there. At the next vote, you just sat there again until I apparently made “the dumbest move in history” (admittedly, it backfired horribly, so I’ll give you that). And then at the Final Immunity, you just sat there again. You didn’t even compete in the challenge. Was that simply because you knew you were going to the end no matter what, and wanted to avoid having to cast the final vote? Were you truly that arrogant to think that for the last half of this game, you could sit back in the knowledge that people wanted to go to the end with you, and all the while, rely on their hard work to get you there? That’s what I would call a leech.

And to top it all off, you always played the apologist. You wanted to tell Charlie that he would go home should he ever be cut off by the Three Fates after the merge. You apologised to Jhet for lying to him. You apologised to me for attacking me in public, and then apologised for backing out of a Final Two deal. You not only tried to keep the fresh blood off your hands, but you tried to wipe away the stains as well. That’s just pathetic. Survival isn’t pretty. Don’t try to make it so.

And this leads me to my last piece of evidence for your cowardice: the aforementioned Final Two deal. Even at the formation of the Three Fates, I always liked the idea of going to the end with you and that persisted until I went home. I always thought that our games would be comparable – both of us stayed out of the way, both of us rode the coattails of bigger egos, both of us were playing strategic but quiet games. I thought it would be a close fight. I had other deals, as anyone in this game should have, but I took our deal seriously. So we reach the Final Five – I vote for you, both to make a point about the way you and Charlie had ignored me, and to stand by Charley, another of my allies. That’s okay – our Finals deal is still on the table. Final Four – I vote for you again, only because Charlie had immunity and because my only hope, given the ties between you two, was to gamble on gaining a situation where I would be the better choice at Final Three regardless of who won. You win the challenge, my game is ruined, and I fail. But now the Final Two deal is off. You tell me it’s because I am a Jury threat. Well, wasn’t that the case before the Jhet vote? Nothing has changed there. I was apparently more likable than you before the Jury vote, and yet you still wanted to go with me. So either you were lying to me beforehand and never wanted to see me at the end, or you’re lying to me now and the only reason you want me gone is unadulterated spite. If that’s the case, I completely understand. But your inability to be straight with me is insulting. I’m a big boy. I thought we both were.

So, Dallas the Coward, here are your questions:

1. I want to know about this Final Two deal that we had. Was it a sham from the start? Or if you did want to honour it, then why? Why do you think you would have won against me?

2. If you were to get another chance to play ‘’Survivor’’, what would you change in your approach?

3. I assume that you won’t agree that you played a coward’s game. Then what single word best describes your gameplay, and why?

CONCLUSION
And now, before you all sue me for eye-strain, I have one final question for both of you. I don’t want you to tell me who I should vote for, or how I should make my decision. I want to know what you think will be the outcome tonight:

4. Who ‘’will’’ I vote for? 