Celever
i am town
I'll say that my playstyle is working with allies and coming up with plans and ideas together. It's hard to quantify that in a FTC scenario where the decisions are made in private, I guess unless the people involved also go to bat for me in the jury chat.
On a side note I have no trouble with being a good ally and helping my allies with their games in lieu of helping my own. At this point I felt that I had a route to at least the lategame and so when we were working out who should deepen their bond with Ali by passing the immunity to him, I stepped aside and let Species do it. Doesn't necessarily show agency but it's how I usually stay on the top of alliances rather than the bottom, which is beneficial in its own way.
The social game here relied on talking to people to pick the target that on balance my allies wanted out the most, and the unanimous votes show that I chose correctly (I don't think it would have been unanimous had I nominated Ali based on the conversations I had and may have put me in danger).
Furthermore, in this instance it was a 4-3 vote and I technically could have voted Whydon here, which would have been valid because then PHST easily sweeps the rest of the game. I chose the more chaotic and risky route for my game of taking out Texas, which stripped me of guaranteed F4 but I think paid off overall by taking out a challenge and jury threat.
It's worth noting that I also had the same deal with Laurel that he would take me to the end as I did with Joe. In my mind, a challenge beast with my self-pres in mind was a good presence in the game for me in a F5 with a lot of crossover allegiances. I fully admit to underestimating Laurel's jury credibility, though. My metrics for judging jury cred seem to be far away from the standard.
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When I say I had social influence it's more so about who got into the influential positions rather than the votes and targets themselves. I was always in voting blocks that directed the game, and I still think there's something to be said for voting in majority every single time except for intentional ties and idol plays. I definitely aimed to keep my target level low and was probably intimidated by the fair amount of votes I received in the early stages of the game at several different roosters, leading me to take a more self-pres approach during merge. But at the end of the day, I'm at the end so the self-pres worked. And I still believe I played a part in talking with people and planning out our routes through the game together, and that this guided the more openly influential players' decisions and moves, which IMO is socially influential.
I was legitimately under the impression that it was us. IIRC I brought it up to you in conversation and then we were the first to put Inferno on the table to others at which point it became clear that it was salient with Whydon/TBZ/Species. Perhaps Inferno was gone regardless due to the rumours and things, but I thought we at least directed discussion there. Sorry if I was wrong aha.I feel like your influence post merge is over stated.
F11- What happened was definitely not because of you and me, whydon/tbz were key votes no matter how you cut it, and species was involved in having rumors spread about him too.
Species and I talked throughout the whole live tribal about our vote together. I don't remember who gave the final say, though. I think it was me but I wouldn't want to say for certain.F10-Probably the only point where you had most agency? And even then it is hard to see who takes more credit for f10 here, you or species.
The impression at the time was that Texas might give the immunity to you + Jal instead of Joe. I don't know whether that's true or not, but Whydon, Species and I discussed this challenge a lot in our chat and then reached out to others to confirm that the immunity would travel as we had planned, ensuring it was passed to Joe first so that both would definitely be safe.F9- I don't understand how you think that this is an example of you controlling things from the shadows. Tbz/whydon have to choose between giving jal/I the Idol or you/species the Idol, and we didn't get it because we betrayed them in f10. That is not an example of you controlling from the shadows, that is an example of you reaping the benefits of fallout in the other social dynamics in the game. It isn't hard to recognize that the immunity will be passed between joe/texas/alimdia in some manner, I don't see where the mastermind strategy is over here?
On a side note I have no trouble with being a good ally and helping my allies with their games in lieu of helping my own. At this point I felt that I had a route to at least the lategame and so when we were working out who should deepen their bond with Ali by passing the immunity to him, I stepped aside and let Species do it. Doesn't necessarily show agency but it's how I usually stay on the top of alliances rather than the bottom, which is beneficial in its own way.
I said in my post that TBZ was unanimous and skipped past it. I'm not claiming to have done anything here lol but it was good for my game because he was the last person I didn't really have a connection with.F8- Tbz was an unanimous vote, please tell me where you had any influence over here?
Oh yeah I absolutely sucked at challenges this season. I usually win party games like Parroting and sometimes grinding-based challenges if I need the win and that's about it, and neither really came up unless practising Machiavelli counts. If y'all decide to vote me it's not for my challenge performances aha.F8 again- Considering species was your closest ally, there isn't any real strategy in choosing between alimdia and I when you've admitted that we didn't have you in our endgame plans, if anything it is a stroke against you that you had worse challenge performance here given the nature of how elimination worked this round.
The social game here relied on talking to people to pick the target that on balance my allies wanted out the most, and the unanimous votes show that I chose correctly (I don't think it would have been unanimous had I nominated Ali based on the conversations I had and may have put me in danger).
Again I don't really take credit for voting Texas out. It was Joe's plan and it was Whydon who messaged and called me right before deadline to tell me to change my vote. However, related to the first paragraph of this post is that I set the groundwork for it to turn out this way. Once Joe revealed he was interested in blindsiding Texas, I think I was a key player in getting Joe and Whydon involved in each other's endgame plans, which led to the plan to blindside Texas if he and Whydon were the two on the chopping block.F7-Good job voting Texas out, however, most of the game wanted to vote Texas anyway. How does that make you more influential than the rest of the game?
Furthermore, in this instance it was a 4-3 vote and I technically could have voted Whydon here, which would have been valid because then PHST easily sweeps the rest of the game. I chose the more chaotic and risky route for my game of taking out Texas, which stripped me of guaranteed F4 but I think paid off overall by taking out a challenge and jury threat.
I was fairly bad in the F6 challenge yeah, doing everything in public was weird and I think I equivocated a fair bit. With that said, I essentially had a vote weight of 3 here because Whydon and Species sheeped me (in this challenge) which shows influence to a degree.F6-You wanted ali out over laurel,despite laurel having the strongest narrative of being a challenge beast who convinced people to flip votes constantly and came back from elimination...only because you thought that he was easy to beat because texas and I wouldn't vote him? I don't think this is a point in your favor at all...
It's worth noting that I also had the same deal with Laurel that he would take me to the end as I did with Joe. In my mind, a challenge beast with my self-pres in mind was a good presence in the game for me in a F5 with a lot of crossover allegiances. I fully admit to underestimating Laurel's jury credibility, though. My metrics for judging jury cred seem to be far away from the standard.
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When I say I had social influence it's more so about who got into the influential positions rather than the votes and targets themselves. I was always in voting blocks that directed the game, and I still think there's something to be said for voting in majority every single time except for intentional ties and idol plays. I definitely aimed to keep my target level low and was probably intimidated by the fair amount of votes I received in the early stages of the game at several different roosters, leading me to take a more self-pres approach during merge. But at the end of the day, I'm at the end so the self-pres worked. And I still believe I played a part in talking with people and planning out our routes through the game together, and that this guided the more openly influential players' decisions and moves, which IMO is socially influential.