Poipole's Questions

Hi All,

Sorry, I've been reading a lot!

I guess the speeches left me a little...deflated. I wanted to know that tapu had a -plan-, that regi was aware of his weaknesses and that deo...well, I wanted a lot of different things that I'm not sure I've got yet.


In terms of opening questions.

@regi: there's been talk elsewhere about you 'being a dick' and like...make no mistakes, you spent the last two rounds of me being in the game making me miserable, to the point where I spent f6 chatting through to deo about getting rid of you just because I didn't want to deal with you. And then in the last hour of that round you send me the interesting, chatty pm that made me want that initial connection with you to start with.

Three questions: from your pov, was I a viable end-game candidate for you? why/not?
separate from that, you've said I was your social blindspot. This suggests that you weren't socially aware. How did you end up in the situation where you not only consistently misread me, but also the rest of the responses from the tribe? (for context, I was telling people from f8 that you and celebi were way closer than anyone believed, something I've been totally proved right on, entirely through my reading between the lines/awareness)
You've spoken a lot about the conflicts you caused to always make someone else more of a target/deflect from you. However, this meant whenever there was a conflict anywhere, it was easy to just shrug it off as a 'regi thing'. where could the pitfalls have come here?


Tapu!
Who would you vote for here, and why?
I've heard from a few of your allies that you were non-committal and coy/vague, even when your commitment was needed (the whole confusion over the regi thing, for example). What did you do to be a good ally?
I think I'd like a little bit more information about your actual thought process each round (deo's basically narrated his word by word). If you've ended up in the best f3 from our...f8, for you, can you explain how each round hung together for you?
Why not commit to taking celi to the end? What were the pros/cons of taking celi?

Deo
Mate. Firstly, for someone coming across this cocky, I find it interesting that your entire gameplan in merge involved taking two of the 'weakest' players to the end. Where have you made difficult or brave choices?
Did you know about hoops' idol? I refer you to our last two pms.
What would it have taken to remove regi? How much did I factor into your endgame plans?

POI!

I would vote for Tapu Lele and I think I've detailed the reasons why I deserve to win. (I assume this was the right answer, if I was meant to be omitted I'd like probably pit Reggie/Deo against each other for my amusement and for further perusal of their delicious delicious perspectives and then decide)

Timezones played a massive part in the miscommunication you're talking about there - I said I didn't want to vote Reggie and then said later that I didn't want to vote Cobalion. (I'm like 90% sure this is correct; if I didn't blatantly state I didn't want to vote Reggie it's because I was already absolutely loyal to him but I think I insinuated something along those lines anyway) I then was asleep and when I woke up people were losing their minds.

I was coy with you, and Deo, when I wasn't sure who's vote was swinging against us. As an ally I was pretty damn steadfast. I stuck by Reggie until F4. When Meltan's time came I was the one who explained it to his face. Your vote did catch me off side a little; I didn't move against Uxie; ultimately I couldn't enter ftc with you but you were not someone I wanted out that round and I voted accordingly.

The round by round I will need more time for.

I was the vote that spun the 2-2 the first time around in f4. I very seriously considered bringing Celebi into FTC for a long moment: Deo was immune and either of she and Reggie would be strong opponents.

I think Celi played a pretty strong social game, and there's no questioning that those who were loyal to her were loyal. I don't think she played a particularly strong strategic game, and there were votes to be lost on this front.

In the end of the day I was looking at someone who'd played ~similarly to me, and likely had some fairly stalwart supporters on the jury. My options were to eliminate Reggie who would enter F3 selling himself to be a 3d chess grandmaster, or to eliminate Celi who had played similarly to me and from my perspective likely had support on the jury that could be redistributed to the rest of us if she didn't make it.

Deo was also very, very firm in voting Celebi. I said I'd follow him but like, basically I didn't which is fairly self evident.

Basically I think jurors who are looking for a strong manipulative social game would always go for a Deo or a Reggie over a Celebi or a Tapu Lele (I figure jurors will kinda have their own criteria and metric for what makes a voteworthy game and stuff if that makes sense, and I don't think Celebi played an ambitious two faced manipulative game + I think she'd agree with me here. She more or less did publicly during the f4 drama).

Re. 3d chess: totally understand that. Sorry if I made it sound that way; more so being in an f3 with two others who had a very strong strategic and manipulative game means I'm thinking about 3d chess more than I usually would!

If it were an F2, coming into it, I would be inclined to vote Reggie straight up. That being said the more elaboration on games I'm seeing the more I'm realizing that Deo played an even more complex game than I realised and he's catching up fast.

At this point in time, Reggie is the most welcome to be 2nd place to Tapu Lele, as things stand. That being said the next 24 hours have the potential to change a lot. /o\

Oops I did completely miss that. I think you actually ironically picked it up very well with your comment about coyness. I wasn't as open and honest with you as I was with others, and in hindsight that was a flaw in my game.

I was never really sure that I knew where your vote was going to fall (until like towards just before your elimination :/) so I tried to keep my motives fairly ambiguous to your face. I thought you were playing both sides, and wanted to appear to you as though I was an equally confusing swing vote and you'd need to commit to something to get more from me.

In retrospect you were not playing both sides as hard as I thought you were and this resulted in just being a Very Bad Play on my part.

Oh poipole, it feels like everything we tried to do together was doomed to fail

It took us two tries to even get the PM thread right!!

I was super eager to meet you, and I feel like we clicked right off the bat. You were friends with uxie, I was friends with uxie. Bingo, we were already in business. You like foreign reality shows? I like foreign reality shows. Already we're off to a great start.

I just wish we could have communicated better when it came to the actual game. I don't know if it was me or you or both, but I actually cannot name a single vote in this game where I knew exactly what you were going to do well in advance - and I think the same thing might have been true for you with me, I'm not sure. I didn't know what side you were on in early merge, I didn't know what you were thinking even after you suggested we be really open with each other.

I noticed this and I hated it, so at final 6, I tried to be as blunt as I possibly could - since at the time I saw you as a viable option to take to AT LEAST final 5, and told you exactly how I expected the next vote to go down, with no room for misinterpretation or error, and in fact, it was the way that vote went down to a T.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I came across as threatening, which is not something I saw coming at all, and I'm sorry about that. I for sure could have spoken to you in a more gentle way, or at least a way that wasn't literally 'YOU ARE GOING TO DO THIS'. I mistakenly thought that we trusted each other - since earlier we agreed to be open with each other and what we wanted moving forwards, but it seemed like my efforts to help had the opposite effect. I'm really sorry that I made you miserable even in FINAL SEVEN, a point in the game where I was not even thinking to vote for you or anything. But our communication there was REALLY BAD, so I knew i had to fix that in final 6 - which lead to me accidentally threatening you.

Also I never even found the time to watch any more wie is der mole, I probably can't even spell it anymore. What a disaster!

That was kinda rambly, so tl;dr,

1. You looked like a viable endgame candidate until hoopa and celebi told me that you were a massive jury threat in F6,

2. I misread you because the communication between us was comparable to a bowl of expired cottage cheese, mostly my fault for being so over the top and not considering your feelings, also congrats on finding out my celebi connection, I thought no one had figured that out,

3. I think your detached and chill UTR fun guy position in the game made it really easy for you to shrug off conflicts, and you were in fact, a player that I literally could not get into a conflict with anyone else, so I didn't bother even trying. You have a perfect ROCK to my SCISSORS play style - I cut people up, but you're tough enough that you can't get cut
However, most people are not as good at playing the UTR chilltown style as you are, and most people play a game that writes down everything on PAPER... big alliances, dueling sides, long boot orders... that is the kind of player that is easy for me to influence with conflicts, and it's a lot harder to shrug off a conflict when you're in the heat of it.

Now that I've said all this, you really were the player in the game who was best equipped to deal with my antics. Somewhere in an alternate universe, you take me out and get to the end and become the hero of the story that you ought to have been. It wasn't even me who brought you down in the end.

Those are really good, just two things i want you to think BROADER about

You've spoken a lot about the conflicts you caused to always make someone else more of a target/deflect from you. However, this meant whenever there was a conflict anywhere, it was easy to just shrug it off as a 'regi thing'. I'm trying to ask about a lot of the drama being led back to your door, whether you were actually at fault or not: where could the pitfalls have come here? - how could of, or did this impact the rest of your game?

1. You looked like a viable endgame candidate until hoopa and celebi told me that you were a massive jury threat in F6,
I'm asking why weren't you more socially aware with others to know this, I guess. You dismissing me is partly on me, but partly on you.


(two things I said at like f8 to like...only 1-2 people that i should've said to everyone: hoops probably has an idol (I FORGOT!) AND celi is in deep with regi. Not shouting about these is 100% my regrets)

Deo
Mate. Firstly, for someone coming across this cocky, I find it interesting that your entire gameplan in merge involved taking two of the 'weakest' players to the end. Where have you made difficult or brave choices?
Did you know about hoops' idol? I refer you to our last two pms.
What would it have taken to remove regi? How much did I factor into your endgame plans?

---

Coming across as cocky is not my intention as I certainly don't feel cocky. I think I played well and deserve to win, but at no point in this game did I ever feel cocky or that I had the game locked up, and certainly this jury phase has humbled me in a lot of ways as that seems to be a common theme.

I wouldn't characterize anything I did in the game as being a particularly brave or difficult choice; certainly a lot of my game ended up being about threat management and trying to get myself into a position where people wanted to work with me or else felt like they needed to work with me. I do think that deciding to ride the middle hard between the two sides at the merge is something that was not easy to do and had a big risk associated with it, as to everyone but you specifically I was pretending to be completely loyal and in line while telling people on the other side the exact opposite. It was a tenuous position at first but I think I was helped both by the order people went out - as discussed in other threads, through a combination of factors the three people that went out first were the three people I had the least interaction and working relationship with through never having met them until the merge - which did mean that as we got to around 8 people on both sides did view me as solidly on their side and so the risk both sides would turn on me was less than it would have been earlier at the merge. I also think I took a risk by working much more openly with you than anyone else, as you were absolutely in a position where you could almost-certainly have sold me out to either side and had a ton of credibility. I valued my relationship with you a lot both personally and in the game, and so put my faith in you as I think you did in me, and neither of us (to my knowledge) betrayed the other or worked against the other.

I absolutely did not know about Hoops' idol, and I was gutted when you went out. You were my rock in this game, both as an alliance partner and mostly as a friend and someone I care about. When you sent me the last message you did, I didn't read anything into it or think it was going to be the last time we talked, and my response to you was 100% real and honest in terms of how I feel. Never in a million years would I have pushed so hard on Hoopa if I thought she had an idol, and seeing you go out like that sucked. You were the one person I was open with strategically, someone I opened up to more than anyone else emotionally, and a wonderful companion in this game that helped keep me sane and grounded, cheered me up so many times when I needed it, and truly made this game what it was for me. And I hope to continue that relationship through Wednesday and on, as you do mean a lot to me.

It would have taken my heart to win over my brain to remove Regi. He was someone that I did not enjoy playing with in this game, that I felt was often harsh towards me, that often told me I couldn't beat him or couldn't win the game at all. From an emotional perspective, I'd have liked nothing better than to get rid of him. Strategically though, he was someone who I knew where he stood, who I definitely knew thought he could beat me, and who I didn't see as someone that could win the game. He was someone who benefitted me to keep in the game on a game level, which is why against my heart I fought to keep him at 7, 6, and 4.

You...you were a big part of my endgame plans, and someone I absolutely wanted to go to 4 with. I valued you so much more than I probably showed you or let you know both as an ally and as a friend/confidant/however else you want to call it. You were someone I trusted implictly in this game, someone I thought had a similar level of trust in me, and someone I needed in the game again both strategically and personally. What would have happened at four? I promise you I don't know. Rationally I know that if I went to three with you I'd be signing up for a sure loss, as you were playing just as strong of a strategic game as I was while being so much more charming, likable, amazing, and flirty (based on the burnbook, anyways ). But despite all of that, I don't know if I would have been able to write your name down even then. I do care about you, and you do matter a ton to me; it's amazing how close I feel with you after just thirty-odd days, but I do. And I don't think I can give you an answer of what I'd have done since I really don't know myself. So...yeah. You were a huge part of my thoughts and plans, both gamewise and personally.

I have learned an absolutely hilarious amount this game. Like my brain has expanded about 7cm sideways it's wild. Survivor is so so much more intricate and detailed and fun and spooky than I'd initially realised and I like the format.

Ironically even though we're all here and think each of us deserves the win the most, I'm really proud of the three of us for getting here together. Like we all got to start working together in Mystic2.0 and each set of two of us have been through some pretty interesting and challenging stuff but in the end of the day it's been an alliance and an f3 deal that's actually worked out. I enjoyed working with Deo and Regi consistently (when we were actually working together ofc) and it's like a final 3 I'm really proud to be a part of.

I've really enjoyed the challenge of having my mind probed by jurors, as well. Connecting with each of you about aspects of the game that you all consider important which aren't things I'd originally considered back on day one, has been brilliant.

This is a super super vague/broad answer but I've honestly learned an absolute tonne through this game and leading up to the FTC.

Oh - reading Tapu's answer now and I'm sorry if I misinterpreted the question as one thing about each person!

Hehe no, that was what I wanted. Tapu, if you have time, can you try again?

Regi...okay. it doesnt All have to be scissors.

^ yeah see i knew it