{Buckley}

[Wes Anderson]

Jury questions from Buckley will go here.

[Buckley]

Hiya Gustave - congrats on getting to the end! I appreciated you reaching out to me and just seeing if I was alright after I ghosted you for ages that first merge round. That, and your approach to this FTC so far (as well as what I've heard about you from the other jurors), give me the impression that you're pretty genuine - an impression that I'm missing a bit from the other two finalists so far. You've got a good shot at my vote!

What I have gotten from the other two finalists, however, is a demonstration that they played this game rather hard, strategically and socially. I don't have as much of that from you. When people came into the jury forum, they never had all that much to say about you and how you'd played. And although you claim at the beginning of your opening speech that your decisions were your own, the rest of your speech doesn't really convince me of that.

What I need you to do is show me to what extent you had some agency in this game. A bunch of people were making plans around you, it seems, to ensure they made it to the end of this game. You did get here, but what steps did you take to ensure this would happen?

Also, your speech talks a lot about the mistakes you made, things you could have done better. I do appreciate that perspective, and it's a nice contrast to what I'm getting from the other two. But now that you've established that you're not a used car salesperson, I want you to show me why I should vote you.


If that's too nebulous of a prompt to respond to, here are some specific questions I'd live to hear your answers to:
- What exactly did you do to ensure that you would get here?
- I've heard the things that you would change about your game, but what are you most proud of? Why would you vote for yourself to win here?

[M. Gustave]

Hi Buckley, good questions.

For what I was doing to be sure I'd make it here, I made sure that the first couple votes during merge were for people who were against me (Peter and Writer), rather than people who were generically threats to win. After that it admittedly gets choppy, what with you and Duke having to leave and Royal basically offering himself up. But even then, what was originally 5enhoe before dwindling to 4 and 3venhoe I kept very close - keeping people on your side is as important as removing enemies. I had absolute trust with Oracle, and while we consulted each other on most or all votes, I don't remember any times where he was the one changing my mind.

As to what I'm most proud of, it would be that I was able to achieve some success while being myself and not an asshole (except to Writer, whom I deserve all the flak from). And further, that I think this game helped me grow as a person, hopefully getting me to move on from bad coping mechanisms to avoid conflict and instead teaching me to just face them head-on. But most of all, it's that I was able to be real, with no false front, and have people legitimately like me, having hopefully made some true lasting friendships. These might not be things that fit into the traditional metric of who played the best game, but they're what I'll be happiest about long after the game's over.

[Buckley]

That answer sits really well with me, thank you Gustave.

Along a different line - if you had to choose between Oracle and Richie to win this game, who would you choose and why?

[M. Gustave]

That's actually a tough one. Oracle is my boy and he's awesome, I would love if he won; but I have to give Richie a lot of respect for handling adversity and finding opportunities out of almost nothing. If it were a final 2 between them, I think I'd give my vote to Oracle but that's our friendship having a really high weight in my mind; both would be worthy.