I think there was discussion about really long speeches? I think that's the fault of Fenrir's 5300 word mammoth. I mean, his opponent apologized for the length of her 1300 word speech. And he of course won that game and the speech was very good and very readable. And then next game both finalists said in their confessional "oh this speech is gonna be about as long as Fenrir's". I mean, his speech was great.
Boom. Tonks votes herself, just enough to send her home.
What the hell was going on? I never thought in a million years Tonks was going to vote herself. I yelled at Neville, I questioned Figg. Who flipped? Who flipped? Who betrayed me? Who lied to my face, who broke my heart, who sent my friend away?
Neville presented the results of a foe glass: Tonks voted herself. Bullshit, I thought. Neville must have forged the result of the foe glass in that PM to me. I bought my own damn foe glass and found out the people who voted Tonks were: Hagrid, Peeves, Luna…and Tonks.
I don’t know if I knew it before, but I realized then that I had entirely built my game around her. I wanted us in the final two. To me, we were a partnership. We discussed our vote, we made our plans, we trusted each other, and we communicated with the players that we ourselves had poor connections with. Throughout this game I have had many close friends and a good allies, but I just could not trust them as much as I could trust Tonks.
I mean, that flows really well right? While a speech like Montreal's...
This next round, as I have teased earlier, was my big push to get rid of Salt Lake. I was hoping Portland would be the one who lived so that this would be an easier sell. Unfortunately, New York was not someone who was willing to pull that trigger. From early in the game, I identified New York as someone I could hide behind. They were a player who was extremely emotional, and wasn’t afraid to get their hands dirty. They were overplaying. It was easy enough to talk through a plan with them “secretly”, and find out that suddenly other people were thinking the same thing! New York spread information like crazy, and had complex relationships with everyone in the entire game. This was obvious to me, and whenever possible I used this to my advantage. I always knew that if down the line someone was going to come for me and New York, they were more likely to go for the “big player” in New York. Along the way, I genuinely began to like New York. I wanted to bundle as close to them as possible to use them as a shield. New York is lovely, and I genuinely enjoyed their company, but they are also a deeply emotional player who was never once afraid to overplay. This showed itself time after time in the premerge (where play like that can’t backfire because of an inability to REMOVE people from the game). I knew I had to use New York to my advantage in the post merge. Portland showed themselves to be able to separate their emotions from their game more than New York could do. That is why I wanted to keep Portland over New York. This was evidenced by the fact that New York spent the final 5 pushing my name, while “promising me” that wasn’t the case. I really, really wanted to take out Salt Lake here, and I have a feeling if New York hadn’t been given that idol, Salt lake would have left here. Unfortunately, it was impossible. Seattle/Salt lake were too close, and New York wasn’t budging. New York was more willing to die than vote out Salt Lake. I refused to settle and kept my vote on Salt Lake. I wanted to demonstrate I wasn’t afraid to make a stand against Salt Lake, so I kept my vote there. In addition, I had promised New York I wouldn’t vote for them, so I didn’t.. I genuinely tried to keep them safe, but theres only so much I was able to do. Either way, it didn’t particularly matter who went. I intended to cut one of Salty/NewYork here, and the other before finale. I think cutting salt lake was safer, but it ended up working out anyway. My plan was now to try my hardest to cut Salt Lake before finale night. It worked out, but this round had the highest chance of going wrong. Thankfully it didn’t and I was able to get to FTC without Salt Lake.
hmmmmm. and that speech is 2000 words shorter than fenrir's, too. No offense to Montreal, it's not a particularly egregious example. But I feel like speeches could improve a bit, you know what I'm sayin?