Hey Cass, I don't think your questions are anywhere near goading or hostile. They're respectfully suspicious and pretty valid.
I'll preface by saying I'm not intending to be hostile either with my response. I think I need to defend myself with some pretty assured language. I have the utmost respect for you as a player, but I'd like for you to open your mind to re-evaluating who I am as a person because your perception of me doesn't actually align with who I am.
In your opening statement, you credit yourself with splitting Kim’s and my votes in the Loveita boot. In my experience, Kim and I had both disregarded you by that round and expected you to vote with Joaquin. We were banking on a 4-2-2 with Love and Yve by telling them that Joaquin and Cat were throwing their names out.
I think you should read my response to Loveita's question because I think it covers this a good bit but it bears repeating. This is a game where everyone had options, secret intentions, and multiple paths. I think it's disingenuous to discredit someone for anything they were proactive with in this game as ineffective just because they weren't pulling puppet-master level strings. If that's the kind of finalist you're looking for, I don't think you're going to find it here, not because Yve, Steph, and I are undeserving, but because that wasn't the reality of this game. I wouldn't discredit your move to get Val out because some people random-voted and I wouldn't discredit Loveita's move to get out Joaq just because he played an idol. And, honestly, those were the two most impressive moves of the game to me by individuals. We didn't play a game where people had control. This game was about matching up with the people at the right time to had similar intentions as you, even as they had other options.
And, I want to reiterate that me getting out Loveita was about saving Yve first and voting out Loveita second. From my perspective, if Yve left, I had no shot to win the game. I had no desire to try and discover what you and Kim were secretly plotting, because anyone in this game who made any attempt to micromanage was swiftly eliminated. That's a very archaic way of looking at the game.
I'd like to go a step further because I didn't expect you or Kim to vote for Cat either. I was absolutely sure me and Kim were both playing each other and I was banking on the vote tying. Cat had already thrown her vote at times based on what was best for her, so that was a calculated risk as well. There is no way that any move in this game was going to happen by exerting control.
And if you and Kim unilaterally made the wrong decision to vote for Catalie, even if you thought I was lying, Survivor moves are
always a result of people making the wrong decision and those wrong decisions benefitting other people. Your decision and my decision were both gambles and I have never tried to take credit for
controlling you, but that doesn't mean I don't deserve credit for doing what was right for my game, even if the odds were stacked against me. I secured Yve's survival in this game and that is my primary move and that's what my game was about. Sticking out my neck to 1) ensure my own survival and 2) protecting the only people who I had any semblance of shot at.
While this round did supposedly go “your” way in the end..
It
did go my way. It didn't go your way, or Kim's way, or Cat's way, or Joaq's way, or Steph's way. It went
my way.
This to me seems to have been a consistent problem in your game--inability to work with others because you had betrayed their trust multiple times in the past.
This is going to get real but I think this is a very unfair perception of me. I was definitely less trustworthy than Stephenie and Yve, but anyone proactive in this game was destined to lose trust in others.
I’d like to walk through some of the people who I deceived. Let’s start with Kim, because at the merge I had every intention of working closely with her and she ratted me out immediately. My intention was like, really working closely with her. I told her Melinda was coming after her and it was
true and she tattled in literal seconds. I think it’s really unfair to me to imply that I’m the one who betrayed her trust continually when she broke that trust first.
Moving onto you- me having to break your trust was an unfortunate necessity for me because I did actually mean everything I was saying at first. At some point, whatever you were telling other people had gotten back to Catalie and it was absolutely necessary for me to ensure my own survival that I threw you under the bus. I don’t blame you for this, but I don’t think I really had many options. I made the gamble to try to join forces with you and I was forced to save myself instead of salvaging my relationship with you. Further, I think you’re being a little unfair here with this characterization Cass. I threw out Cristina’s name to you (and only you) and it immediately leaked to Cristina, which is a clear sign that I shouldn’t have trusted you at all, because she found out immediately. Are you arguing that I should’ve fallen on my sword who wasn’t putting my best interest first just for the sake of seeming like a loyal soldier?
In terms of others, I’m all ears to hear who I continually betrayed or lied to because I feel the exact opposite. I tried to make connections with Jeff, Penner, Cristina, whomever and
every time I was dismissed. With Cristina, it was very clear to me from the first couple of rounds that she wrote me off. I wrote in my confessional that she was my favorite person in the game for the first few days. She wrote me off because she got in a majority alliance and didn’t feel the need to put the effort in with me. I think it’s also unfair to pretend like I betrayed Cristina’s trust in any way because she had severed the connection.
The common thread I’m seeing here is that people wrote me off and didn’t expect me to actually do much of anything, so when I did, they felt ‘betrayed’ even as they were using me or ignoring me. This is an All-Winners game and if you wrote a winner off, that’s your mistake- not mine.
The only people in this game I betrayed, under any circumstance, were Loveita, Cat, and Joaq and those were only because of necessity.
You also say in your opening statement that the decision to vote Cat out instead of me was a move that most showcased your strategic prowess in this game. Yet your logic for doing so doesn’t explain why voting me out over Cat wouldn’t also have improved your chances of getting to the end. In addition, Kim changed her vote live because Jeff announced at tribal that it was the last round to play idols. If she hadn’t, I would’ve left 3-2-1. Did you do anything to ensure a third vote would be placed on Cat?
Again, my decision to save Stephenie is what showcased my strategic prowess in this game by choosing to make the votes for Cat is what showed my strategic prowess in this game. I had every intention for you leaving that round and voting Cat was a contingency plan in case you played an idol. You continue to underestimate how much of a strategic, social, and competitive threat you are, but you needed to go.
My game was about saving myself and saving the people who I needed to sit with. I think choosing a target and voting them out is an archaic way of thinking of strategy. I’ve got no intention to sit here and say I masterminded Lovetia and Catalie’s demises, but the decisions that I did make in those times were essential to saving Yve and Steph, respectively. Those were the things that I did and if you’re looking for something more substantive than that, you’re not going to find it in this Final 3.
Russ, you once told me that the mark of a good player isn’t necessarily voting the “correct” way each time, but setting yourself up to survive each future round. From a social perspective, how did you do that throughout the game?
I do feel as though this is where my game shines, ensuring my own survival. You can’t be the person who outwitted and outplayed if you didn’t outlast, and I had more agency and utility with my own survival in this game than the other two here.
First, I realized that you had been leaking what our conversations about and I successfully backtracked and retained the trust of Catalie and Joaq, two master players who protected me and even fought for me to eliminate people who were specifically coming after me. Every time the game turned against me, Yve, or Steph from that point on is where I stepped in. Not to get someone out specifically, but to make sure we survived. Steph had no intention of this being the Final 3 and she had to be dragged her against her will.
I do believe that I put in the work to distance myself strategically from Tammy and Joaquin. It’s possible that you could make the argument that people didn’t want to vote me because they saw me as a goat, but I think that’s disingenuous. People had been targeting goats every round, before and after, so how would that track? I think people saw the two of them as a closer duo because I made sure people saw me as more of a free agent.
The decisions I made for the next few rounds, including my four immunity wins in a row, ensured not only my own survival but Yve and Steph’s. There were so many situations where you and Kim wanted to split votes on me and I disallowed you that opportunity, and with me out of the picture, it allowed me to throw the hinky votes to foil your plans. Every attempt that you made in the game to gain control was foiled by me. If game respects game, then I think I deserve your vote.