Board Thread:Season 57 - Laguna Colorada/@comment-2211541-20200216115832/@comment-31555005-20200216171329

Hi Toby. Luca here. I usually respond to jury speeches chronologically but I've decided to answer to yours now as the video is still fresh in my mind and I feel very strongly about some of the things you've said.

I'd like to kick this off by saying that I'm not a particularly arrogant person or player - I very much recognise the fact that I've had a few key shortcomings this game. For starters, I have been aware of the fact that I've somewhat lacked socially at points, though admittedly I didn't realise the full extent of it until I watched your video and read the other jurors' speeches. This definitely contrasts with some of the previous games I've played, where really social game was one of the crucial reasons as to why jurors considered voting me to win. I perhaps focussed too little on the social side of things at times, and quite frankly I have been very gamebottish throughout the season, with my conversation topics mostly amounting to votes and long-term plans. I admit to coming up somewhat short in the social side of things - and why wouldn't I? It's absolutely fair criticism.

I'd also like to say that I appreciate the subjectivity of this game, and honestly it's one reason why I keep playing ORGs. Your perception and how you (and the rest of the jury) feel about me as a winner matters the most at final tribal council, and I fully understand this element of the game. It's entirely fair to critique me on perceived social inaction or on the fact that maybe I didn't have amazing damage control, and obviously I've also lacked in jury management. I'm never gonna claim I played a perfect game - I did not, by any means. However, some of the other points in your jury speech are either flat-out wrong or just completely discredit me and the game I've played. I don't shy away from being bluntly honest with something I disagree with, and I find your speech not just somewhat insulting considering the effort I've put into this game (which itself is something you seemingly don't think occurred, but I'll get to that later), but also ridiculously unfair - if you feel strongly about voting Timi, that's fine, it's entirely fine, and I appreciate the fact that my game has had shortcomings and negative bits to it, but I'm not just gonna sit here and let myself get criticised on points that are factually untrue. I'm not gonna suck up to you, and these are my honest, unfiltered thoughts.

The first thing I find huge offence with is that you tried to say I was inactive and used challenges as a reason to justify this claim. For you (and anyone else reading), if challenges are a big impetus of your vote as a juror, you can stop reading here and go ahead and cast your vote for Timi. You used abstains as a reason to justify that - cool, but factually speaking, abstains don't equal inactivity. There is one big reason as to why I kept abstaining in challenges, and this is gonna sound cocky: I didn't really need to win those immunities, and on the off chance that I did amazingly well in one of them, I didn't want to be seen as someone that CAN win them. In fact, I often used challenges as justification for why it'd be smart for people to keep me around instead of someone else. In F8, even, abstaining was objectively speaking the best course of action because of the Black Pearl vote. There are maybe two exceptions where real life actively prevented me from playing the challenge - namely, F6, and one premerge challenge which I sat out of. That's it. You used my performance (where you're saying I got "demolished") in the final immunity challenge to justify my perceived inactivity - really, Toby? Really? This was absolutely insane to hear, and I really expected more from you. In case you forgot, the final immunity challenge had four parts - endurance (where I got 2nd place, having just 3 posts behind TC who got 1st), the flash game (where I got 2nd place after Timi), castaway statements (which is honestly extremely luck-based so I don't know how you could possibly justify poor challenge performance on that), and the music mania bit (my music tastes are completely different from your average ORGer, I absolutely do not listen to pop or hip hop or really any genre that is lyric-centred, so I was at a natural disadvantage to begin with, and even so, I got 3 songs, TC got 4, and Timi got 7, so I was in no way "demolished" like you say I was). Furthermore, in every challenge that I needed to win or do well in, I tried my best - I participated in almost all of the premerge challenges and I put real effort into some of them, and I also really tried to win them in the late merge. If challenges are what you're looking for though, then I agree I'm not the person you should vote.

The second thing I'm particularly taken aback by is the fact that you claim I didn't do anything and that I had 0 agency or intention.................................................. I'll take most criticism thrown at me, but this is nothing short of insulting. I might have been a gamebot, I might have had social shortcomings, but if there's one thing I'm darn proud of this game, it's how I strategically played my way through it.

If there's one thing that's absolutely, factually, undoubtedly true about my game, it's the fact that I talked a LOT about votes, I talked a LOT about targets, I talked a LOT about long-term plans, I talked a LOT about short-term plans. I did that since the game started. I continuously tried to connect (game-wise) with as many people as I could. I was at the centre of a lot of information and potential alliance groups, I was trusted by many people (yourself included, even though you give me absolutely no credit and say it was completely unintentional, lol). I admit I've had social shortcomings and maybe didn't fully realise personal connections to the level that I had hoped to, but is that not the whole point of a social game, to earn trust and to receive information which you can later use to strategically accomplish your goals? It's not my job to butter you up or to talk about ponies and unicorns, if my gamebottish talks with you were enough to make you (and so many others in the game) trust me, then maybe they're not that bad after all? Of course, it wasn't ideal, but it worked. You claim it working is unintentional or done by mistake, and maybe my intention wasn't to be a massive gamebot, but I ALWAYS made sure that everything I said about the game, I said it towards the purpose of getting you (and others) to trust me (short-term or long-term). I continuously painted myself as being worried about something or someone else - to you, about TC, maybe (remember F8, when we had that talk about not trusting him?), or about Micah (F7, when I 'leaked' to you that Micah presented you as a threat, all while knowing the exact extent of your conversation from the night before), or about anything really. My goal was never to make you trust me long term, I never wanted to make it deep with you, my goal was to make you believe that I wouldn't be coming for you or voting you out when I did. I always presented myself as paranoid about SOMETHING, I tried to get you think that I'd have other priorities before eventually making a move for you. All of this, factually speaking, worked.

For the record, I was for the most part aware of when you trusted me and when you didn't - in fact, at F7, I initiated a conversation with either Timi or TC (or both of them, I don't remember) where we just talked about how easy it is to spot when you're not being truthful about something. I kept probing you continuously about stuff because whether or not you believe this happened, any response you had, truthful or not, was helpful in discovering a little bit more about your game. 90% of the game stuff I talked with you about this season was quite frankly a calculated decision. It's easy to dismiss this as me just retrospectively saying this, and you're entitled to whatever opinion you have and it's well within your choice to just dismiss all of this and vote Timi, but I can't let you tarnish me and my game like this. If there's something I actually put insane effort towards doing, it's the huge number of game-related conversations I've had this season.

You claim I had no agency or intention, but I'm the only person in the game to have been in the loop about every single vote I have taken part in. I'm not being arrogant by saying that I constantly had eyes everywhere. You're simply writing off as a coincidence the FACT that every single merge voted worked out well for me. By cutting Phoenix, I took out a potential endgame danger, and one of TC and Timi's closest allies - I anticipated this would have the effect of pushing them towards more closely working for me. In fact, I had already been worried at the start of the second swap that he would grow closer to them on La Paz 3.0, whereas on La Paz 2.0 Phoenix was kept out of the loop about some things - if you, Abi and Micah would recall, I had already started painting him and the potential Timi/TC/Phoenix trio as a potential danger for us at the merge. Quite frankly, I don't care that you had your own independent thought process made up about needing to take him out, what can I say, good for you lol, my point here is proving my OWN agency and my OWN intention and my OWN volition and my OWN reasons for making these moves happen, which it turns out were more than valid. You keep going on about how I lacked agency and intention and agency and intention and then say that "oh, I had already made my mind up"! Cool, you go girl! But that doesn't change the fact that I came up to YOU to tell you I wanted Phoenix out at F8, you didn't suggest it to me (in fact, you kept going on about wanting Nicolai out), regardless of whether you had already decided on it yourself! You didn't put words into my mouth or thoughts into my brain about anything. I came to my own conclusions about needing to make that move. I had brought his name up since Sangre 3.0, before you had started saying anything about game to me, and you fully know this. As an added plus, I was the one who flipped Nicolai (who wanted to vote you out), and without his vote things could have went completely differently.

Again, you claim that me voting you out was a mere coincidence and not my own agency/intention. The implication I'm guessing you're making is that I sheeped TC or something - incorrect. I voted you out because I wanted you nowhere near the endgame because of your challenge prowess, and I had seen F7 as the ideal time to make it happen because you making it with the idol at F6 was extremely dangerous. You said it yourself, Survivor is a simple game, and these are simply objective reasons. You were indeed a better shield than TC, but I never pegged TC as someone who could go an immunity rampage like you could, so I was more comfortable with the idea of sticking with him deeper in. TC was also significantly less tight with Abi and Micah than you were, so I felt I would have had more control by working with him. I came to my own independent thought process about needing to vote you out - TC didn't puppet my thoughts, and neither did Timi. Oh, and without me, this vote either looks massively different or never happens at all - TC was not talking to Nicolai at all, I was the one who proposed using Nicolai as our fourth vote, and I was the one who pitched the idea to Nicolai first (in fact, I had already discussed with Nicolai at F8 about the necessity of taking you out at F7). Then TC had the brilliant idea of gifting Nicolai the Guardian Angel to secure the trust between them, and we all know what happened after that. I knew in advance that sticking with Timi and TC was safe in the lategame because neither of them would have had any strategic incentive to break that trio until maybe F4.

Finally, I find it insane that you're trying to compare my game to what I did in Chaos. You're making a comment which is absolutely false and possibly uninformed given that you haven't played or hosted the season, but I'll go off on a tangent. In Chaos I won by playing a social under the radar game - I ONLY talked about non-game stuff until like F7, I frequently had way stronger personal connections than strategic connections, I dedicated my time to talking about non-game stuff and largely played a safe, non-risky game, I only made the obvious endgame moves and never pulled wild stunts. My game in Chaos could not be anymore different to what I did in Laguna Colorada - here I made risky, ballsy stunts like flipping on my original tribe at the first swap, I frequently set up or at least was an important part of ALL of the big moves that happened this season (except for the La Paz 3.0 stuff, for obvious reasons), I had WAY more game-related conversations than non-game ones. The only similarities are threefold: both here and in Chaos I constantly had eyes in all factions, both here and in Chaos I used people as shields, and both here and in Chaos there was a juror who made a 20-minute 'why you suck' presentation (you, here, and David Hoban in Chaos - at least you didn't make a Powerpoint presentation too). Hopefully the fourth similarity is that I will win this game.

You're making an example of this supposed under the radar game of mine not working because I was targeted at F6 - cool, but my intention was never to escape being targeted at all, my intention was to make it to the end with someone who I thought played a worse game than I did while making crucial moves and setting up key votes along the way. I literally don't know what you're criticising me for here? You're attaching this weird "under the radar" label and judging me based on what you perceive as a good under the radar game, when in fact you're ignoring the holistic image. I didn't set out to play a certain way from the start - what I had planned from the get-go was to make it here with someone who I saw as a weaker player with less control over the game while correctly identifying and setting up the RIGHT votes for me along the way, all of which I accomplished. "I don't think you're a good representative of this season" - okay. If you don't think someone that was continuously in the loop about everything, someone that always had a TON of information available at their disposal, someone who made literally every single vote go the way they wanted it to, if you don't think this someone would be a good representative of Laguna Colorada, then I don't know what to say.

Answering your last two questions - it was an incredibly easy decision for me to vote you out because I never wanted you at the end with me to begin with, you were immense in challenges and you had an idol. And if I could change any event to make this season more enjoyable, it would be Nicolai not striking out - strike outs close to the end of the game are always ugly.