Board Thread:Season 55 - Nakuru/@comment-24277959-20191024224926

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NdLv4ycpFY

Hey (hey hey) everyone, it’s honestly been an indescribable feeling knowing that I’m in this spot addressing each and every one of you but before I get into my speech it’s only right I start with the formalities.

Thank you to the hosts for running this season, especially Rhi for recruiting and believing in me, and thank you to everyone that played this season which probably took a few years out of each our lifespans. The last two all star wiki orgs I’ve played turned rather dark at times but it’s safe to say that was avoided for the most part. Thank you to the viewers as well who stayed invested in this and keep this place going 55 seasons later, and even a smaller shoutout and thank you to Alissa for choosing to be my loved one and for giving me a reprieve and fresh perspective as the game really started to get difficult.

As we all know I have a tendency to talk for days but I don’t really want to clog this speech up by covering every single round and thought process, instead I’ll try to condense my game while highlighting as much as I feel needs to be covered. So while it’s probably still going to be a shit ton, I hope you can all bare with me on this and consider everything I say.

A quote I commonly used in my pregame interviews, in confessionals this season, and even in a VL, is the following. “We are all but a collection of experiences”. It sounds rather simple on surface level, but this was a blueprint to keep me grounded for the entire season. In the game of Survivor, reality is not always reality, but the majority sum of the entire cast’s perceptions will always be the ‘reality’. My plan before this game started was wanting to consider everything that worked well for me in the past, keep that in my arsenal, while also taking into account every one of my deficiencies/weaknesses and to mask those for as long as I could.

So carrying from that quote, the purpose and meaning behind that is my belief that every game we play defines us, how we play, and how we’re perceived by others - and it’s up to us in every new game we play, every fresh slate we get, to either confirm those preconceived notions of you, be it good or bad, or to flip that on its head and make the cast see you in a different light. For me, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had to change up my gameplay and this cast’s perceptions on me, otherwise I’m convinced I would’ve been shown the door early at the merge or even sooner.

In a way, I feel like coming in as the only 4-time winner and playing the way I did before was both a blessing and a curse. A curse in that, as I’m sure Chris and Will can attest to, it felt as if any winner this season was put under a microscope and had their actions magnified and taken to such a high degree. On top of that, for me having won in such a non-traditional fashion in finding a million idols and winning all these immunities, I knew I had to be very delicate with how I came off to others, because I got picked off so easily the last time I played for being seen as this one-dimensional freight train that was leading my alliance. That takes me to the other side of the coin, the blessing in having played 4 times is being able pick up on all the little intricacies and nuances on how to play, along with coming to the understanding that your reality in Survivor is only a small piece of the grand puzzle, and that in order to succeed, you have to shape other people’s lenses to present yourself in a favorable light - otherwise you end up being left in the dirt the second you let others believe you’re up to your same old tricks.

That brings me to the main approach in how I wanted to play this entire season. Ever since winning Retribution and being shot out of the stars in HVV2, being blindsided by my own alliance both seasons, I knew I could no longer be seen as this runaway mack-truck that stuck close to his core group and plowed through with idols and immunity wins. I wanted and HAD to combat this perception of me for as long as I possibly could, and give my fellow castaways reason to want to keep me for a certain phase into the game, up until what I felt was win-out territory. That’s why I didn’t want to disregard and throw away my old game entirely, but instead save it for when I needed it the most, aka the endgame.

The two main aspects of Survivor that I wanted to really lock in on and work at relentlessly this season were twofold – adaptability and agency. In terms of agency, I wanted to leave no player behind and focused on building up as many individual relationships as I possibly could have given my availability. I feel as if social games are often subjective because there’s two layers to it – one you have to actually reach a mutual and consistent point of contact with everyone, but two you have to hope they like you for you. I don’t know what the result of the latter is but the one thing I can say unwaveringly is that I did reach out and have genuine and normal conversations with everyone here. This plays into the theme of agency because I felt had I at least reached a baseline level of comfort and contact with everyone, I could at the very least get my foot in the door and have options to work with down the line, to which I would wait as long as I possibly could to reveal my true cards. And in a way, I used the past perception of me as a player, being this loyal, alpha dog player, to really enforce a mutual sense of trust when I strategized with you all this season. Going again off of my past games, I was criticized for never wanting to reach outside of my alliance, but I knew that if I did so this season, and always kept all door open with everyone regardless of how past rounds went, that I would be one step closer to my end goal of Day 39. And to expand upon that, I’m sitting here in the Final 2 with someone that I flipped on and lied to at the Final 9 vote, but ended up making it work by maintaining my willingness to stay flexible, as did Nicole.

Continuing off of agency, this time around, I wanted to operate from the shadows instead of being in the limelight/war zone, and I believe this worked effectively because between the very first round and all the way up to Final 5, I only received one vote against me, which was an auto vote from Nicole and only cast because we had never been on a tribe up to that point. I was able to avoid a target for the most part and improve my leeway through not only reaching out to everyone but also by disarming my threat level and giving off a willingness to vote out anyone at any time whenever a name was suggested to me. I had no hesitancy in doing this because I came into this season telling myself I would write down anyone’s name to survive, close ally or not, and I always gave others a green light if they suggested a vote to me whether my intentions were true or not. I feel that because of this I had success in being able to ebb and flow between groups and avoid being a majority target up until Final 5.

That brings me to my next point in that I knew by operating with this approach, that I was eventually going to get blood on my hands and end up breaking my word to other players. In a way, an ability I’ve acquired that I’m not exactly proud of, but know I have to use in survivor, is being able to compartmentalize and separate game from emotions, which is why I want to take a step aside to address this. I understand that in these ORGs, the line between game and personal can become blurred so very often, and everyone’s perception is unique and more than likely shaped from previous experiences. I want to say with confidence that every vote I cast this season was strictly from a strategic point of view and nothing more. I always say that while the results and outcomes of these games is temporary, the bonds we create are forever. It’s an unfortunate truth that survivor is inherently a selfish game that requires us to look out for ourselves in order to succeed, and it’s a reason why I lost so badly the last time, because I looked out for my friends and allies when I should’ve been looking out for myself.

So even though the bonds I formed this season were genuine, I had to come to terms with the fact I had to vote out anyone to survive, because I truly and inherently believe I would be sitting here if I didn’t, and this belief I have is magnified because of the reputation I had coming in. That’s why I want to own up to the moves that I made and the betrayals I had to commit, as I’m not here to claim that I played this entirely heroic game. However, I also don’t want to say I played with the sole intent of building bonds just for the sake of breaking them. Every personal relationship I formed was genuine, but I had to execute every round as my best bet to reach the end. I don’t believe I played as a hero nor villain, but rather as an anti-hero type in a way.

While the last few paragraphs covered how I was able to play with agency and room to operate, that brings me to my next theme of adaptability, because I know I’m speaking to a group of great players and that there would eventually come a point in time where you all would catch on to my methods and try to prevent it. A major turning point of my game came at the Final 9 vote, where I had to flip on the Kikuyu 3.0 group and vote out Will. This is a move I want to own in executing (but not entirely claim, as Chris obviously laid the foundation for that to happen). For me, this move was all about timing and being able to hit before being hit, as I knew Will would gain major footing if he had survived any longer. Additionally, since he had an idol and never expressed any interest to want to go to the end with me, it was alarming and made me know I wasn’t in his long term plans. I was able to coordinate a 3-3-3 split with Natalia while also giving off the vibe to most of the people I was flipping to that I wasn’t entirely aware of a split in the first place. I knew this move would come at a cost as I had an insanely tight bond with Nora at that point and a blossoming one with Nicole, so I wanted to be able to do proper damage control after that and explain that as a vote not against them but as a one round thing.

Obviously, as pretty much any juror knows at that point, that didn’t exactly go over well, while I’m here in the Final 2 with Nicole after reconstructing and cultivating our bond, that move would be the beginning of the end of my game relationship with Nora as it just splintered there. The round after, at Final 8, my immunity was swapped out and I was in a vulnerable position, as it was not too long into the vote that Nora began campaigning for me to go. That does bring me to my next point, I do believe a testament of how my social game was this season was being told by literally everyone that vote that Nora was coming after me, this was insane to me because I really felt that was a vote in which I’d be cut off because the timing just felt too perfect, but didn’t because of the relationships I formed.

Ever since the Final 8, my worst nightmare came true and I knew I was thrust into a public spotlight, as everyone knew Nora would always be after me. This was a trying point in the game too, but it also made me constantly think to myself, how could I improvise in this situation and shape it for the better --- and the solution I arrived to wasn’t one I was happy with personally, but I knew I had to do. As I said before, my game was about having all my options open with everyone, but I knew for a fact that given my situation at the time, if I attempted to do damage control with Nora and worked things out with her, that people would ultimately catch onto the fact that I had my hands everywhere and all my bases covered. To prevent this, I had to constantly enforce to everyone an agenda that I was against Nora and wanted her out, as I knew she was doing the same to me. In a way, while this took away some of my flexibility, it preserved my safety and made people not worry about me. If everyone knew I was constantly after Nora and vice versa, they wouldn’t really worry about me or how many other connections I was forming elsewhere, even though that was exactly what I was doing. Of course, the personal part of it sucked in that I never wanted to be at a personal feud with anyone for any extended amount of time, much less someone I was close to, but I had to exaggerate it and play up to the theatrics in order to save myself.

To Nora, when I told you 5 minutes before your vote-out that this game makes us do shitty things we don’t want to do but have to, that’s what I meant. The more I enforced to others that I was so very badly against you, the less I felt they worried about me, and in a way you too. Of course the personal side of it sucked, but this was the game side of why I had to distance myself from you and play up to everything. I’m sorry it had to come up at the expense of the tight bond we made this season, it’s just that I knew you were too perceptive and that if I really made up with you gamewise, I would be caught red handed, so I had to keep my distance while working on my relationships elsewhere.

Again, that goes into how I displayed adaptability this season. Once my behind the curtains approach fell through, I had to change up my approach and put on a mask to diffuse my target. So while I constantly told the rest of the F7 that I wanted Nora out, I did so with an expectation that that wasn’t going to happen, as I knew you guys wanted to keep the feud in, but I was content with that as long as it ensured my safety. The potential worry I knew that came with this approach, however, was that ultimately people were going to have to pick a side in this Evan and Nora rivalry, and I figured as the deeper the game approached, the more people would want to side with Nora over a known competition threat. As I covered earlier though, I always said that I just needed to reach a certain point in the endgame, aka what I called win-out territory. While I would have loved to play the entire season without needing immunity or an idol to survive, I had to prepare and simply hold out for as long as I could for a time in which I could switch back into ‘Retribution’ mode, and yes I actually called it that just now LOL. It brings me back to the point of knowing the strengths you have as a player, saving them for the last second, while masking all your weaknesses. While I milked every last second of this new behind the scenes and under the radar approach I implemented, it ultimately would have to come to an end, but I just needed to position myself so that by the time it did, I had the opportunity to win out to the very end. Safe to say, if that was going to occur all the way up to finale night, I liked my odds.

That brings me to the last few days I played, the (Dr. Strange voice) endgame. Final 6 was a blow to my game in that I lost Chris, who was one of, if not my closest ally this season. Partnering with Chris was one of my best decisions and a mutually beneficial relationship for the both of us, as we were able to protect each other for extended durations throughout the season. I had every intention of wanting Chris and I on Day 39 together, and had a Final 3 alliance with Nicole as our only hope at that point, but that came to an end when Nicole wanted Chris gone. This is another one of the rounds where I was shocked to survive, as I do believe I had every reason to go on the basis of my immunity track record, but didn’t due to having enough people wanting to keep me around at the time.

From the Final 5, and my options exhausted, I wanted to win out, but that came to a slight detour when Miss Cali fucking Smithe turned out to be a better gazelle and elephant counter than me. I actually ended up writing a soliloquy confessional expressing the end of my game, but obviously, a certain idol play happened to save myself. So while I do want to say the idol play was Nicole’s doing, as it was her idol and her decision to play it, I also want to lay claim to this move, as this wasn’t some situation where I laid dead that entire round and ended up being saved at the last minute. From my perspective, the idol play was a combination of two factors, one being an incredibly tight relationship I had formed with Nicole, which is insane considering we had just met at merge, and two being a novel-length pitch I ended up relaying to her. The root factors I pitched to Nicole included the belief of a final 2 this season (lo and behold), the fear that she may be voted out at Final 4 if she didn’t won immunity, and an unwavering promise of loyalty if she did end up idoling me. After a multiple hour conversation we had the day of the vote, Nicole locked in and we were ready to fight back the power. From there, the rest is kind of self-explanatory. That round honestly felt like the cherry on top of the 4 times and 106 days I played here in being able to be idoled the very last round they could be used. It had felt like I all but blew my chances of winning in the final 5 immunity, but through the countless days I put in socially building my relationship with Nicole, along with one last final pitch, I was saved, at which point from there on out I was going to relentlessly gun for the final two immunities. So whether it required me staying up and pulling an all-nighter for final 4 endurance, or turning into Picasso for a design challenge (which has always been my weak point comp-wise) and learning photoshop overnight during the FIC, the home stretch of my game ended with the same method that got me to Day 39 the first time – through pure adrenaline and determination, as I always knew that portion of my game was never going to go away.

In summary, I believe that I am deserving of the title Sole Survivor because I played the most versatile and well-rounded game I possibly could have while carrying the bullseye on my back that I had to walk in with this season. As we all know, Survivor at its core comes down to 3 main aspects. Though there’s nuance between them, the parts of my game encompassing them are as follows. Strategically, I had to perform a 180 on my previous approaches and orchestrate moves from behind closed doors for a large part of the season. I knew when to put my foot on the gas pedal and make a big splash (The Will and Nora votes), and I also knew when I had to reign back visibility and take a backseat (The Natalia and Chris votes, which weren’t my ideal first choices). I’m not here to claim every move of the season and total control, but instead say I operated through timed and calculated strikes, while always ensuring I was out of the crosshairs for as long as possible. Socially, I reached out to every juror at one point or the other and cultivated numerous relationships across the board. There were so many times where I was vulnerable and ready to be knocked out for good, the Amir vote, the Jino vote where I had my score swapped, and even the endgame rounds with the Chris and Nora votes. I had every reason to go in all those rounds but didn’t because of the work I put in socially and giving enough players in the game a reason to keep me. Physically, I was able to win 4 individual immunities and came through in the clutch when the lights shined brightest. Finally, while I understand perceptions in how much someone actively influenced and performed in the game can fluctuate, a couple facts that I didn’t want to go unconsidered and that I wanted to finish with are as follows – I have participated in more tribal councils than anyone else this season, and was also the only player to have voted correctly in every single one of those tribal councils.

So that’s my case for now, sorry for any typos because I genuinely didn’t have any time to proofread. Having entered this season as both a 4-timer and a previous winner, I came into this season with a genuine fear and concern of flat out ruining my track record and being an early boot fodder. Slowly but surely, that fear turned into a confidence and decisiveness that gave me the ability to play the game to the best of my ability, and no matter the result of this, I’m really proud.

I don’t think I played a perfect game, I’m more than aware that I played a vulnerable and flawed game at times, but to end this with the theme of the season, in a way you could say that I was the ultimate predator that knew when to put on the mask of a prey in order survive, but who also back to his inherent tendencies when he needed it the most.

To wrap this up I also want to say a huge thank you to Nicole, even if you’re a fucking froot loop dingus who auto voted me, it’s an honor to be in this final 2 with you and I’m more than glad to have met you this season. To the jurors, I hope you’ve been able to read this (and if not don’t worry I probably deserve that for making it this long). Please let me know if you have any questions or anything of the sort as I’d be more than willing to answer them because I want this game and win so very badly.

Thank you all again for everything and thank you to the hosts for this great season, this main org run has been a complicated journey to say the least but it’s one I’ve been proud to have been a part of and I’m ready to see this through to the end. 