Survivor Survivor Season 6: Fans vs Favorites vs Fumblers (And the winner is...ajhockeystar!)

[Drookez]

Cleo Energy

I think I will just say a bit here. I do think Laurel is overstating his position at some points in the game, I talk with AJ often and he never showed hesitancy towards voting you. If he wanted you alive, it was probably because you weren't a threat. Also, the OM vote was discussed for quite a while before you wanted him gone.

As for what plays I take credit for, it's not gonna be as stunning as an idol. But for the majority of votes, I was the one that said we should lynch x then y then z etc. I basically established the game plan. Also, when votes were not going the way i like, i nudged them back to my plan. So that would be my contribution!

 

[Drookez]

PSA:

Have you been lied to, blindsided, taken advantage of this game? I know your pain! I have been truthful about my actions, and I never intend to hurt anyone. I am not sure whether I can say the same for ajhockeystar and Laurel.

DO NOT LET LIARS ABUSE YOU LONGER!!! DO NOT GIVE THEM POWER OVER YOU!
#BREAKUPTHELIARS,IMBORED #VOTE DROOKEZ

Season 6 of SmORGon (or Circus Survivor for all the boomers) was my second season. I have never watched survivor before, so my first few seasons were a bit of a mess on my end. I had no real strategy and I mainly joined because others I knew were playing. I just wanted to have fun. So back to Season 6, I basically just cruised through the game without much strategizing and socializing at all - I mainly sheeped ajhockeystar till the end. Obviously, that meant I wasn't a FTC threat as I was branded as a sheep so I made it to the final 3 despite not winning any individual immunities. Knowing I wasn't going to win anyways, I decided to have some fun with my FTC speech and didn't take it too seriously - instead going for emotional pleas and friendly shading of the other finalists. The sheep is rising up!!!!!!! /s But yeah, apparently the post sparked a lot of discussion and back and forth about me even though I didn't have any chance of winning. I tried to explain how my gameplay worked, defended myself as not a sheep, and wrote parody songs in the meanwhile. Just all around having a good time. Some of my favorite moments were "Jeffrey from Curacao" where I compared myself to a made-up survivor contestant because 1) i think Laurel earlier tried to compare his playstyle to someone from real Survivor and 2) aj said he didn't want survivor spoilers. Fun Fact: Jeffrey (aj) was the host for smORGon S8 and it was themed after curacao! Another of my favorite moment was "can't see any shade cause I'm always in the shadow". The story behind this was that I was defending that I actually made decisions in the game. However, aj came to say that I didn't contribute much - which a jury member agreed right away despite aj not providing any evidence. I called the jury member out that this was basically sheeping by rewording his message he wrote as the reply to ajhockeystar - which he sensed (correctly) that it was a shade. I then proceed to say "can't see any shade cause I'm always in the shadow" because I was branded as being within under aj's shadow. Although I only got 1 vote and came in third, this FTC will always be memorable to me - it was very active overall! My reputation as a sheep and #SheepRiseUp also started with this game so it'll always be special to me. #VoteDrookez #Iwinweallwin

For your next idol clue, go to F23 tribal council of Season 13 in the discord server

 

[Cleo]

PSA:

Have you been lied to, blindsided, taken advantage of this game? I know your pain! I have been truthful about my actions, and I never intend to hurt anyone. I am not sure whether I can say the same for ajhockeystar and Laurel.

DO NOT LET LIARS ABUSE YOU LONGER!!! DO NOT GIVE THEM POWER OVER YOU!
#BREAKUPTHELIARS,IMBORED #VOTE DROOKEZ

~~If you don’t make merch out of this, I’ll be disappointed~~

 

[bluedoom]

its ok drookez i definitely won't be voting you although your lines are p funny

 

[shubaka17]

Interesting. Shub told me that they voted for you because they didn't think I was going to vote for RODAN and they wanted to "tell you off", if you will, by throwing their vote at you. shubaka17 can you clarify the situation?

yah no it was just a throwaway, nothin of any power. i didn't wanna come off as anyone's goat, and i knew aj wasn't gonna b getting votes at all that round

 

[shubaka17]

Laurel, it seems like most of the argument against u is just receipts of ur mean comments all game. Every time someone brings them up, you try to apologize instead of doubling down, which seems to show that you have doubts about your actions. If being a mean sunuvabitch and insulting and clawing your competition brought you here to final3, while my positivity got me removed in the Kellyn spot, are you saying that the ends didn't justify the means?

AJ, you seemed the heir apparent as soon as OM was voted from the game, as someone that nobody dislikes and consistently made plays all game. If your game was this boring, why should we give it to you? you say ur storyline is one of someone who consistently ran the game, but there was no excitement, and all around you make for bad TV. if you've only garnered 2 votes this entire game, and spent all game avoiding votes, why should you get any more here in final council?

Drookez, your label as AJ's goat follows you even from across PS realtime to here on smogon's forums. Not once have you outshone anybody, and there were several challenges where not only did you not win, but didn't even fake a try. With that sort of relaxed attitude, with almost an assumed presence in the late game, and i think even fewer votes gathered than AJ all game, why are you even here? a prop to distract from AJ, almost a Nader to his Gore, with similar platforms, but hoping 538 of us voters swing away from AJ that everyone's least favorite candidate Laurel can pick it up?

Do any of you think you really deserve a majority, or are you all hoping that the other candidates split votes enough that your few supporters can give you a win?

also stan loona

 

[ajhockeystar]

ajhockeystar i meant did you think me attempting to blindside your faction was misguided?

I don't think so. You needed to make a play against me at some point, and if it worked out it definitely would've hurt my position.

 

[ajhockeystar]

ajhockeystar, what's your plan if Cleo decides to side with us at the F9 vote and OM is up for elimination?

Depends - would Cleo have told the vote to Drookez? If so, then OM would definitely be idoling himself instead of Cleo. If I would've been8 completely out of the loop and OM goes home, I'd have to make a decision between the Cleo/Mari side and the Laurel/Whydon/Shub side. I feel like I probably would've leaned towards the latter, given adding Drookez and I would give us majority.

 

[ajhockeystar]

Yes, and I agree, but personally I don't think it's fair to compare them on the same scale when they were forced to play very different games. Laurel had to deal with a very early blindside that some could argue wasn't even in his control. I don't think Laurel could have "saved face" even if he wanted to, and for AJ it was easier to do because he was never in a position where he had to truly be aggressive or abrasive to get ahead in the game. I feel like this type of positioning just comes down to circumstances in the early game, ie. who ends up on your initial tribe, what type of personalities are you forced to deal with, etc. You can argue that this isn't the case, and that players are 100% in control of the outcome of their game, but personally I argue against that. There are some things you just can't control, but ultimately I think someone should be rewarded for how they had to play the game that was given to them, and how well they managed to take advantage of the situations they were put in. That's how I'm deciding my vote, but of course it's different for everyone. Just my two cents, if you will.

This is definitely untrue. Playing the middle is a much harder position to keep people happy in - someone is going to end up hating you. Still, I managed to keep people at least relatively happy, whereas Laurel stepped out of his bounds when he didn't need to. Heck, I thought Drookez was going to garner votes at one point, but I didn't do any kind of lashing out.

 

[ajhockeystar]

In a sense, I maintained control by winning immunity again and again. For three of the votes down the stretch I was safer than AJ was. I want to add how important it was for me to tell AJ that he beat me in the final challenge. I didn't think I could count to 6,000, and making it so that he only counted twice helped me greatly.

Honestly, I did not care once Cleo was dqed from the counting. Both of our F3s included each other, and so once I failed that one count to almost 4k, I stopped.

 

[ajhockeystar]

Cleo I want to point out too that down the stretch, AJ's mentality was "as long as it aint me" I don't necessarily know if thats someone in full control. If we're talking full control, he would have voted you out over Mari. However, as you mentioned, you're close with Drookez. He would've vote you > Mari, because that still kept in OM as a safety net.

Yes, OM is a big threat, but so was I. My relationship with AJ helped saved me in that vote. At the end of the day, we're going to try and discredit each other in this tribal but we're friends, thats why AJ was going to make me and you do fire if he won immunity. He wanted me here at the end, and even though I had serious thoughts back and fourth, I wanted him here too.

Once again, that was part of my strategy, saying "as long as it ain't me". I didn't want to be perceived as a controller or leader of any kind, where in reality I was very okay with the people being voted out. When I needed to jump ship from the "as long as it ain't me", I did so.

 

[ajhockeystar]

ajhockeystar last question but tell me the events and thoughts that you had while you were in the favorites and fox tribes. Was there a commotion in the favorites tribe, were you actually in control pre merge (it didn't seem so since shubaka definitely got pissed off when you told him that you were voting rag so there was a real chance of you getting blindsided in the fox tribe)

I'm gonna let the others talk, just wanted to know the experiences of all the finalists. I'd like to point out to the people angry at laurel's game that even if he was harsh with people(no doubt),he only stabbed or retaliated against people who had done him dirty previously(or when he had no choice) ,so he didn't go out of his way to piss people off or stab them outright from my perspective. I definitely think he's a loyal person, maybe loyal to a fault, so he has definitely had a less stabby game compared to some of the others. While that no doubt impacted his game(and he definitely lost a bit of control because people were hesitant to work with him) I do think that we should appreciate his great challenge performances and general enthusiasm for playing the game compared to a lot of the other players(including aj, laurel definitely had the fiery fighting spirit that i can see). Regardless of who we vote i hope we don't have any bad blood between us over a game.

I've explained the whole fox tribe thing earlier, so I'll repost it (it was in response to Whydon):

"From my POV, there were two sides. Laurel/blue/you, or Shub/ragmatho/MK. RODAN and I had the option of siding with either, and opted for the Laurel/blue/you side since half of our tribe was Fumbler. rag was the perfect vote since he was the only one I didn't have a relationship with from the other side at that point. The only reason why RODAN had a "chance" of going was because I tipped the vote off to Shub and MK. MK then scrambled to try and get votes against RODAN, to no avail. Meanwhile, Shub agreed to use a throwaway vote against me in case you did decide to flip and vote with MK - that way there wouldn't be a tie. I definitely did have control here, all my bases were covered."

As for the Favourites tribe, I was in control there too. There were 3 pairs - vooper and MathTurtle, myself and Drookez, and Jalmont and RODAN. I approached both sides, and I was part of two alliance chats of 4. Come voting time, MathTurtle had done absolutely nothing, and was the one I wanted gone. Jalmont and RODAN were of course very good with it. I convinced vooper to vote MathTurtle since myself, Drookez, and him would still have majority on the tribe if another vote were to occur, and because he was the weakest challenge performer (and had a history of so from the last game). It ended in a 5-1 vote, and it was the only vote we had pre-swap.

 

[OM]

I've explained the whole fox tribe thing earlier, so I'll repost it (it was in response to Whydon):

"From my POV, there were two sides. Laurel/blue/you, or Shub/ragmatho/MK. RODAN and I had the option of siding with either, and opted for the Laurel/blue/you side since half of our tribe was Fumbler. rag was the perfect vote since he was the only one I didn't have a relationship with from the other side at that point. The only reason why RODAN had a "chance" of going was because I tipped the vote off to Shub and MK. MK then scrambled to try and get votes against RODAN, to no avail. Meanwhile, Shub agreed to use a throwaway vote against me in case you did decide to flip and vote with MK - that way there wouldn't be a tie. I definitely did have control here, all my bases were covered."

As for the Favourites tribe, I was in control there too. There were 3 pairs - vooper and MathTurtle, myself and Drookez, and Jalmont and RODAN. I approached both sides, and I was part of two alliance chats of 4. Come voting time, MathTurtle had done absolutely nothing, and was the one I wanted gone. Jalmont and RODAN were of course very good with it. I convinced vooper to vote MathTurtle since myself, Drookez, and him would still have majority on the tribe if another vote were to occur, and because he was the weakest challenge performer (and had a history of so from the last game). It ended in a 5-1 vote, and it was the only vote we had pre-swap.

how did u find your idol

Edit: I have absolutely no idea how that works and I wanna know teach me aj

 

[ajhockeystar]

It depends how you define control, sure every single vote I would have wanted OM eliminated because he was such a big threat. However, I did have control over myself because I won immunity. Yes, my closest allies were picked off one by one, but I still managed to make it to the end because I put everything I had into winning the immunity challenges. The one vote I didn't win immunity down the stretch, I had a relationship with AJ, and he had a relationship with Drookez, and OM got voted out instead of me.

Yeah, you had control over yourself. That's about it. I had control over the whole game, once again as evidenced by the lack of votes against me, and voting out of targets I wanted.

 

[ajhockeystar]

Very hypothetical. If I chose your name, Drookez and OM would’ve agreed. So really why don’t we ask ajhockeystar

OM was the one that preferred Whydon as the vote. As Drookez said, I honestly wouldn't have hesitated if we had decided on Laurel instead.

 

[ajhockeystar]

how did u find your idol

Edit: I have absolutely no idea how that works and I wanna know teach me aj

Lmao. There was a clue at the top of tribal council when we were on our original tribes. It had a bunch of emojis (or whatever they're called on discord). Heal's second clue was something like "What you're looking for is not at the beginning or the end, but in the middle". So basically if you took the second letter of each, you get "hosts take me to the puzzle". So in my confessional, I typed @hosts take me to the puzzle, and a 300 piece Kellyn puzzle and over 3 hours later, I had my idol.

 

[ajhockeystar]

ajhockeystar last question but tell me the events and thoughts that you had while you were in the favorites and fox tribes. Was there a commotion in the favorites tribe, were you actually in control pre merge (it didn't seem so since shubaka definitely got pissed off when you told him that you were voting rag so there was a real chance of you getting blindsided in the fox tribe)

I'm gonna let the others talk, just wanted to know the experiences of all the finalists. I'd like to point out to the people angry at laurel's game that even if he was harsh with people(no doubt),he only stabbed or retaliated against people who had done him dirty previously(or when he had no choice) ,so he didn't go out of his way to piss people off or stab them outright from my perspective. I definitely think he's a loyal person, maybe loyal to a fault, so he has definitely had a less stabby game compared to some of the others. While that no doubt impacted his game(and he definitely lost a bit of control because people were hesitant to work with him) I do think that we should appreciate his great challenge performances and general enthusiasm for playing the game compared to a lot of the other players(including aj, laurel definitely had the fiery fighting spirit that i can see). Regardless of who we vote i hope we don't have any bad blood between us over a game.

Oh yeah I remembered one other part of this I wanted to respond to. Just because I didn't show as much negative emotion didn't mean I didn't have as much enthusiasm as Laurel about the game. Since S5 of smogon survivor, I started watching the show in order from S1. (I just finished Micronesia!) I have been super excited to play this game the entire time - Drookez can probably confirm how many times I've been excited talking about this game in call lol. My confessional is probably the most filled of anyone's. I was constantly putting my thoughts in there about what was going on and what I wanted to do. And honestly, I've mentioned this at multiple points during the game to Drookez too - I'm really excited to read everyone's confessionals, the hosts/spec chat, and the jury chat, as weird as that sounds. I'm almost more excited for that then the final vote, lmao. I want to know what everyone was truly thinking at a given point in time, and what they found worthy to talk about in confessionals. Part of me feels like I'm going to be disappointed because people didn't use it as much as me, but oh well xD

 

[ajhockeystar]

AJ, you seemed the heir apparent as soon as OM was voted from the game, as someone that nobody dislikes and consistently made plays all game. If your game was this boring, why should we give it to you? you say ur storyline is one of someone who consistently ran the game, but there was no excitement, and all around you make for bad TV. if you've only garnered 2 votes this entire game, and spent all game avoiding votes, why should you get any more here in final council?

I don't think I make for "bad TV", per se. Without me, there wouldn't be a lot of exciting events that happened. One of which was MK's scrambling before rag's vote out on the Fox tribe, since I told you two the vote. Speaking of MK, remember when he started calling Laurel and Whydon snakes in tribal council? That was after I told him I was sticking with the Laurel/blue/Whydon side instead of the Inferno/Cleo/Mari side. Without me, we miss out on that drama! Not to mention, I'd say my idol play was pretty exciting - it was as a result of me being in on both sides.

Moreover, not voting for me because I made "bad TV" would set a poor precedent for the future. Would a winner be more "deserving" if they put themselves in a worse position throughout the game? Should I have weakened my position at some point purposely? The purpose of Survivor is to avoid getting voted out, so "avoiding votes" is kind of an important thing. I would understand if it was about me avoiding votes as a sheep. I was far from one though, and so me doing so is more impressive than boring in my opinion.

 

[Laurel]

how did u find your idol

Edit: I have absolutely no idea how that works and I wanna know teach me aj

I also told AJ about the idol which was a big part of my relationship building. During the pre merge I needed to gain his trust.

 

[Laurel]

Laurel, it seems like most of the argument against u is just receipts of ur mean comments all game. Every time someone brings them up, you try to apologize instead of doubling down, which seems to show that you have doubts about your actions. If being a mean sunuvabitch and insulting and clawing your competition brought you here to final3, while my positivity got me removed in the Kellyn spot, are you saying that the ends didn't justify the means?

I’m really happy you brought up the first part, yes a lot of the comments against me are just receipts of mean comments.

I’ve explained how I used these mean comments to better my position (leveraging them in my relationship with AJ so he wouldnt see me as a threat), and made the most out of them. I kept telling AJ I wouldn’t win because “I’m abrasive and the jury won’t like me” so I kept playing the same story. It worked to get me here.

While I apologized, in a sense I did double down because I believe my emotions were justified, and Ive said that a few times to Cleo. My words might have been too strong, but my emotions were my feelings and they came from me being blindsided. Its not like they came out of nowhere. To double down and say that everything I said or did was right, would show that I didn’t actually grow from the game. Being aggressive certainly helped get me here, but the better approach probably would have been never getting aggressive that all. Though you’re right.. if that was the case maybe I never make it to the very end!

Your positivity didn’t get you removed, AJ blindsided us and leaked the vote. He then gave his idol to Drookez to play on OM.

I don’t think that being mean to people is ever the answer. It did work and it helped me, but I wish I took another route, by the time I had to play the “mean” card, I dug myself a hole. It worked to get me out and I’m proud of that as heck for my adjustment, but I wish I did it didferently.

 

[Laurel]

Yeah, you had control over yourself. That's about it. I had control over the whole game, once again as evidenced by the lack of votes against me, and voting out of targets I wanted.

Maybe at the end you had control, but you leaned on me heavily at the beginning and I don’t want to understate that because we know its true.

If we talk total control Cleo I had more vote control at the beginning where AJ had mote vote control at the end.

 

[ajhockeystar]

I was curious about how many times Laurel told me he was "abrasive" since he keeps bringing it up, so I searched our conversation for the word "abrasive" and I got... 0 results. Not sure where you're getting that from. *shrugs*

I also want to mention - Laurel keeps saying how I was able to learn from my past mistakes, and he had to learn on the fly. Just like in real survivor when there are new and old contestants, there's advantages and disadvantages to each. You were able to use the fact that people didn't know much about you to not try as hard on the challenges to help make yourself seem like less of a challenge threat. I, on the other hand, had that label from previous games, and had to work around it. Moreover, everyone knew I was with Drookez, since last time (and in other games, generally) we are inseparable. Despite this, I was still able to separate myself enough from him so that people thought he was closer to Cleo, and so that people didn't assume my vote was worth 2.

 

[ajhockeystar]

Maybe at the end you had control, but you leaned on me heavily at the beginning and I don’t want to understate that because we know its true.

If we talk total control Cleo I had more vote control at the beginning where AJ had mote vote control at the end.

I definitely had more control. I was more of a swing vote, and could have gone to Inferno's side if I had really wanted. You were on the opposite side of them.

 

[bluedoom]

its kinda funny that viper stabbed the person you claim he paired up with at game start and I'd love to know more about that but i guess i should keep that to the dms.


honestly I'm excited to see confessionals and host spec myself so you're not alone there lol.

 

[Laurel]

This is definitely untrue. Playing the middle is a much harder position to keep people happy in - someone is going to end up hating you. Still, I managed to keep people at least relatively happy, whereas Laurel stepped out of his bounds when he didn't need to. Heck, I thought Drookez was going to garner votes at one point, but I didn't do any kind of lashing out.

I played a more aggressive game. I was willing to take risks the whole game and thats part of the reason people were unhappy with me. It was collateral damage. There could have been less of it, but it helped me stick around in the late game. Where it really would have made a difference is that you would’ve picked me over Cleo to come here had you won the last immunity.

I was able to learn from my mistakes this game where tou had to learn from past games.

But to use that as a reason against me seems silly, it has no regard for what I needed to go through to make it here. I won 3 of the last 4 immunities to secure my spot in the finals.