{Young Writer}

[Wes Anderson]

Jury questions from Young Writer will go here.

[Young Writer]

Gustave, the largest mention in your speech I get is that " Peter and Young Writer deserved far better from me than to be ignored, and I'm embarrassed at how I treated them."

While I do appreciate the acknowledgement, you did far worse than ignore me. The round I went out I approached you in good faith, trying to search for a way that maybe we need not clash. I stayed up very late to talk to you and thought we had a good conversation, and then we started talking about potential other votes. And then you immediately leaked said conversations to try and kill me, but even worse, acting like I was the one who wanted Herman as opposed to that being your suggestion that I said would be a hard sell.

Then in the revote, rather than being honest with me, like Duke (who I'd say I ended up with a similar relationship to me as did you), you told multiple people that you were going to flip, and held that up. I personally think there's little reason for such duplicity in a revote (when you could just as easily say you are on the fence and not commit yourself to such an insane deception), so why did you do those things and why should I consider voting for you?

[M. Gustave]

So, when I told you that I would likely flip, my state of mind was that my previous alliance had broken from me due to them voting separately from me. After touching base with them again, however, it became clear that we were still good. This does not change that I could have told you I'd changed my mind, but instead I ducked from confrontation and am paying it back with interest now.

Why should you, specifically, vote for me? I'll just get to the point and say that, since I clearly treated you very poorly in your exit, perhaps I don't deserve your vote. I stand by voting you out strategically, but the way I did it isn't anything I'm at all proud of.

[Young Writer]

That is fair, I will say that while I am remiss to vote you, I appreciate the candidness and am...impressed? (not sure if that's the word, but probably the best choice) with your responses in other threads.

I have two aspects to this next question. When we talked the night before I came to you trying to have a peace offering, to not just work against each other but work together. Was there any chance of that actually working? If yes what would I have had to do for it to work? If not, why was it a non-starter?

In a more general sense did you ever consider or have an "enemies to allies" situation with someone else? If so, what was it? If not, can you think of a reason why?

[M. Gustave]

If I had been convinced that my previous group had turned on me, as much as I like them I would have jumped over to your side without question. It was only after quite a bit of discussion and piecing together of evidence that I was able to figure out that the whole rift was based on a lie by Richie. Since I knew that they had found Richie sketchy even before this, I knew that it wouldn't be an issue beyond that round. Thus I stuck with people I knew and trusted, extending an olive branch for their mini-betrayals, rather than going for the more drastic move of completely switching the direction I was trying to go.

For "enemies to allies," I was always talking with Madame about potential ways we could work together, even though we'd both gone after each other multiple times. There was also Richie and I voting together to oust Suzy, though that was perhaps more of a "say yes or you die" proposition than a real alliance. Margot I was just too threatened by to really want to keep her around, but I never ruled out working with anyone else if circumstances made it a good idea. Ultimately due to RL stuff we had several medevacs and a near-medevac; Buckley and Royal are people that, if they had stayed, could have been options. But while I tried to keep doors open, I didn't see too many times where walking through them would have been a good move.

[Young Writer]

I have a question for all 3 of you. You see, I am a lover of survivor theory. So rather than debating moves and relationships, I ask you all, what is your guiding philosophy in survivor? How do you like to play the game? Based on your interactions, how would you summarize the gameplay of your fellow finalists? And lastly, why is yours the best approach?

Feel free to play with that last part if you want to.

[M. Gustave]

My way of playing is to stay true to myself as much as possible. I tried to treat everyone with respect and as people, while recognizing that I failed to do this in some cases, because that's what makes me feel best and it's how I would prefer to be treated.

Funnily enough for two players who were archenemies for a long time, Richie and Oracle had pretty similar styles in my book. Both of them were more on the side of 'using' people, rather than 'working with' them; Richie was a bit more audacious and flexible, while Oracle was more loyal. They were both willing to try to get people to act clearly against their own self-interest using lies or bad-faith arguments. Overall they were more cold and sharp.

While their way of playing is very different than how I like to play, I'm not going to argue that my way is objectively better. I don't think there actually is a best way to go through the game, and any of our styles can get to the end as evidenced here. Some jurors will find their style to be off-putting and leave them feeling used, and others will look at me and find me naive and less-deserving; it comes down to who's on the jury to decide whether a style worked or not.

[Young Writer]

Okay last post of mine, also going to all three of you. Just go through the jurors AND your fellow finalists, and give a compliment to each. Also please try to not be too generic or use something you've already said about that person at this FTC.

[M. Gustave]

I will answer this in my closing speech - my bad for not checking in on this with more time left. Promise I won't forget it.