DISCLAIMER: THIS IS LONG SO I BOLDED THE MAIN IDEAS FOR THE SKIMMERS LIKE ME. DON'T FEEL PRESSURED TO READ EVERYTHING
Hello jury and specs! I I have so much to talk about regarding my game that I almost feel like skipping right to it; however, how I settled into bigvivor is very important to me.
(I also had like a paragraph written about all of you I had to cut due to length, I’ll send my full [somehow fkin longer] FTC post season or if you want to see what I wrote about you/your cycle ask!!)
It is unbelievable for me to have made it to the end, I don’t think anyone expected me to make it far, let alone play big while making FTC. As many of you know Bigvivor is my 2nd org ever and I had a very notorious reputation in my 1st one. Back then on s16 I was the merge boot, I was called socially inept, cognitively dissonant, and such a wide variety of albeit funny insults that post-game I was immediately warned not to filter my name in the spec-chat. One of the reasons I joined bigvivor was because when I received the invite(alongside a joke about me winning it) someone replied quickly and said it would be impossible for me to win. Even if I don't win, I overcame all of the doubts, I played one hell of a game from day 1, I proved that I am able to win an org, and above all else I did it my way.
For those of you like me who don’t like reading FTCs, I will post 3 powerful statements that display my continued dominance over the game.
- I was never at risk on any of my tribes, I would have made it much farther on all of them
- The only votes on me the entire game were 2 stray votes from Clouds
- The person I submitted a vote for always went home at EVERY single tribal council except for Psy at F10
Postal-
I was in multiple majority alliance chats and in the multiple “inner core” chats of those alliances.
Localizer-
I was the flip vote between the two main alliances, and would’ve dominated the tribe regardless of what I chose
Cyber-
I continued to play dominant and visible, illustrated by me being an Influencer.
In the actual Influencer show, being an influencer immediately puts a huge target on your back, but despite 6 out of the 7 surviving Cyber members making merge, I still made FTC without my pace of gameplay slowing down.
Seperatist-
I utilized my social ties to save Tommy from the bottom of the tribe and blindside Dyo off of the top of it.
I had thus far played my entire bigvivor game grappling on top of every tribe with minimal connections, and now that I had connections I immediately thought ahead and didn’t coast to merge with my existing allies as a lot of players would have.
Pre-Merge Summary-
Even though I certainly continued my streak of dominance in merge; I felt invincible during the pre-merge portion of Bigvivor. I was always the center of the tribe, no matter what the dynamic of the tribe was upon entrance. I never received a single vote during pre-merge and every person I submitted for was eliminated. My plan going into merge was to keep seperatist majority for at least one cycle to give myself time to branch out, this worked out even better than expected.
F15 Floptina-
I got my ideal target of a loyalist that wasn’t TBZ or Vooper
I was very focused on ensuring the first boot was a loyalist member, Early merge I immediately bonded with TBZ and we told each other we wouldn’t let the other get voted out, this meant despite pushes on TBZ from my close allies that I always shifted the vote away from him.
F14 Janzen-
I took out my ideal target
Janzen’s boot is one that I give myself a lot of credit for. Going into Merge I could tell Janzen was going to try and play a powerful middle game due to his links with Brandon and Torin as well as his status as a loyalist meaning he was very close to Clouds and Vooper(massive threats). Furthermore, overcoming Janzen really engrained myself into the merge and made me a hard target to hit.
F14 Brandon-
The vote wasn’t on me despite my early merge and threat level being very similar to Brandon
While I went for Janzen, it was in Loyalist’s best interest to target a threat at the center of seperatist, while TBZ and Vooper likely helped me out behind the scenes, Zach seemed to turn a blind eye towards Brandon.
The most I could do was push separatist to vote 5-3 on Janzen-Matieu which did infact happen. Seeing Brandon sent off invigorated me to play even harder, I wanted to play a game Brandon would be proud of.
F12 Matieu-
I utilized my social awareness to shift the vote on a target where I wouldn’t be idoled out
The fear of me being at risk on a revote was enough for me to attempt to shift the vote from Clouds onto Matieu late, and as Matieu went home I noticed the stray vote on me from Clouds. Had I let clouds be the target, there would’ve likely been a double idol play and I would’ve gone home with a single vote. I believe this shift is a good example of my game awareness.
F11 Vooper-
I learned from a player I respected and used what I learned to better my own game
Vooper was part of the reason I was aware of every target the vote was between every single cycle up to F11(and onwards despite him not being in the game at that point.)
Despite my limited time in the game with Vooper, I was extremely impressed with his social game and found myself even wanting Vooper to get far. His instincts were great and Vooper’s method of injecting trust in people he felt he could trust and it always paying off was something I tried to polish not only in my game(illustrated by my friendship with Tommy and TBZ), but as a person.
F10 Zoa-
I stayed true to my ally despite knowing the likely outcome of the vote
F10 was the low point in my hero’s journey, Zoa was an extremely loyal ally and one of the smartest people i’ve ever met. F10 is when tribal lines crumbled due to the multiple back-to-back Loyalist votes.
My biggest misplay this cycle and in turn probably the game was that I thought idols and advantages were playable on revotes, (once again this is my 2nd org and I had only watched 1 survivor season prior). We had already contemplated playing the idol but if I knew they weren’t playable on revotes I would have heavily pushed for Zoa to play it.
Despite knowing that Zoa was likely the vote at this point, I still chose to sacrifice my insane flawless “everyone I submitted for got voted out” statistic in exchange for returning Zoa’s loyalty by staying with him and hoping for a flip which never came to fruition.
F9 Totter-
I saw through the vote amidst all of the confusion
I firstly would like to state that I'm happy totter and I were able to get to single digits together. Throughout the game ever since Cyber people would ask me if Totter was my “goat” Totter very much played his own game, branched out to loyalist, voted against me, and had strong connections to people I wasn’t even aligned with such as Matieu. I do not deserve any credit for “goating someone past f10” since that just straight up didn’t happen, that being said Totter’s presence always made me feel comfortable, I looked out for Totter prior to his elimination as much as I could, and I would have been happy if totter made it to FTC with me, not because id beat him-but because I simply like Totter a lot.
Near the end of the cycle the only things clear to me were that Totter and Torin were the targets, when news broke that Clouds was going to play his idol on Torin, apparently people switched off of totter onto torin for jury management which I found a little scummy because if that actually happened then Totter is smarter than they think. I opted to submit for Totter over Torin due to Torin being in a more similar position to me and being strong allies with clouds, making it more beneficial for me to not vote Torin out.
F8 Psy-
I took out my ideal target and regained control over the game
F8 is a very controversial vote in regards to my reasoning and how it occurred. The way the cycle was set up was so that the vote was between Eli and Psy with me as the deciding factor between the two. I either went with the flow and voted out Eli or I pushed a Psy vote. I ultimately decided to push for a Psy vote which ended up being successful and I did so for a myriad of reasons.
The first reason is that by flipping the vote onto Psy, I opened up a clear path for me to make FTC. In any scenario I thought of where someone makes a push on me, Psy was a required vote in order to do so- and Clouds even admitted during the next cycle that Psy being in the game was likely required for a push on me to gain any traction.
Personally, Psy was the only player I had taken a shot at and missed(F10), I felt that taking out a strong player I was unable to take out earlier would redeem myself, and lastly taking Psy out of the game myself means I established myself on top of the game again and could dictate/decide how the rest of the game played out.
F7 Clouds-
I took out my ideal target
Out of every player in the merge, Clouds is the one I'm inspired by the most. Whether it be !Speedwing, or him exposing that he knew about the seperatist strawpoll publicly, Clouds not only played hard but constantly played with a ton of swagger and badassery. If not for his foundation collapsing early via me gunning for Janzen at f14 and Vooper walking at f11, there is no doubt in my mind that Clouds could’ve made FTC.
The Clouds boot is pretty straightforward, apparently Clouds and Torin campaigned to vote for me but with Psy out of the game campaigning against me at F7 was a fantasy and even Torin’s dedication to that idea is questionable at best and Torin at the end of the day voted with me. Clouds was in a position where as a player he was the biggest threat and the window to take him out was wide open. Clouds getting eliminated made me sad because I think he’s really cool and I personally wanted the fated Clouds vs Ryo to be closer than a unanimous vote, but it had to happen for my game to remain the most dominant.
F6 Torin-
I (very painfully) took out my ideal target
This vote was certainly the hardest for me, not only because it was one of my previously close allies and my friend getting voted out; but because the decision between Torin and Eli going out at f6 was entirely my choice.
Zach and Torin pushed Eli while Eli and Tommy pushed Torin, TBZ pledged himself to vote on whatever I decided on. I spent the full time from the challenge to deadline thinking about this vote, because it was at the start of f6 when it hit me. Torin was in with a lot of people, loved by the merge cast and had two idols played on him whilst surviving being targeted multiple times.
From my POV Torin was simply surviving because I controlled the votes, yet from any other POV Torin was playing an absolutely monstrous game. Not only that, but on top of being allies I came to the full realization that part of my strategical reasoning for keeping Torin around a lot of the time was because we were typically in a similar position with him getting the votes. It fully clicked in that Torin was not only playing an amazing game but that there was a legitimate argument for him being my shield. It is for those reasons that despite Torin potentially not respecting it, that I felt it was my responsibility to make the hard decision, cut off the head of the dragon and take out the person who I believed was the biggest threat.
F5 Zach-
I survived being Eli + Zach’s ideal target, and am now in FTC
F5 was set up to be Ryo vs Eli more than anything else. Eli and I had a handshake on FIC, fully expecting the other to go home if they weren’t immune. My initial plan was to bank on Eli not winning immunity and then vote him out once he wasn't immune, Eli at this point saw me as the biggest threat to his game and Eli’s plan was to win FIC and then make me final juror instead. Which is something Torin foresaw happening and warned me would happen if I voted Torin out.
The major difference between me and Eli is also outlined at F5, had Eli not won FIC he would have been eliminated and been the final juror, yet despite Eli winning immunity he was still unable to take me out due to TBZ and Tommy standing strong by me.
Merge Conclusion
Overall, this was such an amazing merge cast. Bigvivor as a whole was incredible, I even baked a cake for it! Every player as an individual on this merge cast is so distinct and talented that despite the awareness I pride myself on, there's probably still so much I didn’t even think about. I felt humbled meeting the lot of you and I am extremely proud to come into this game without even a right to be in it, and come out of the experience playing a winning game whether I get the votes or not. I overcame the obstacles in my path all the way to the end, I not only played a great pre-merge but I controlled and decided the majority of merge votes, I did all I possibly could in terms of gameplay, I played visibly, I played with moxie, and most importantly I played with heart.
Despite being the absolute underdog…
Please let me be your winner!!
Thanks for reading-or skimming-or not reading at all (I would do the latter)