Golden wrote:Hey opt.
You talked at the end about the jury respecting loyalty but you didn't show any, or lorab and I wouldn't be sitting on the jury right now. My question for you is about loyalty and comes in two parts - first, of loyalty is what the jury respects why did you vote out someone who had to betray a lot of people to get to the end? And why should I vote for you if you believe the jury should be respecting loyalty?
To be honest, you're the least likely of the final three to get my vote right now, so I need to hear a really good answer from you to be persuaded that I should vote for you
Golden.
I'm slightly confused by the wording of your first question but I will do my best. I think you're asking why I voted you out?
First of all, I'm truly sorry to hear that's how you felt about your vote. I know you're a big fan of the show and I hoped you would see that from my perspective, I wouldn't have stood a chance at the end against a player like you. I asked myself at the time- if our roles were reversed, would I respect you making the blindside on me? And I decided that I would. You asked sorsha about a move in the game that was uniquely hers. I trust that to mean you value big moves... and you were mine. I'm sure it feels personal, but it wasn't. If you were watching this game on tv, if you saw this situation play out from your couch at home, would you feel any differently about it? (Also, all of these rhetorical questions I'm about to ask are honest and NOT meant to be sassy even if they seem that way!)
I thought Spencer should have won when he played his second time a couple seasons ago. He made a lot of big moves and from my perspective as an outsider, he played a super great game. But he didn't get a single jury vote. Maybe that's the situation I put myself in. Maybe I'm much more naive than I thought I was.
But I think it's harsh to say that I didn't show any loyalty. I don't think I did much worse than you did. You would have had to betray as many loyalties as I did to get to the end with all the alliances you made, which I think you implied in your question. Does that mean you don't agree with your own game? The alliance I made with you and DH I intended to take to the end no exceptions and it turned into one with lorab, which I was equally happy to honor. Then things got complicated. But when you first proposed the alliance with sorsha you said something along the lines of "this is the part of survivor where making multiple deals has to come into play." I think that means you agree that we did what we had to do.
If you were here alongside me... and quin and sorsha were in the jury- they would have the same glares and questions about loyalty for you. Would you have a better answer than I do? They would feel just as betrayed by you as you feel by me. But wouldn't you hope that they would see past that and agree that it was the best move for you to make? Yes, I do think there are many people on the jury who would have been pissed off at you for betraying them, but if we were here together I would have all the same people pissed off at me. And then it would have come down to who played a better game- which in my opinion would have been you. That's why I voted you out. And at the end of the day, with Sorsha and Quin here next to me, I did honor loyalty- it just wasn't the loyalty I had to you. I had to make a choice- I couldn't honor them all.
I made the best moves I could with what I had. And maybe they were the wrong moves. But all I knew when I signed up for this game was that I did not want to look back at the end of it and realize that my journey was boring. I wanted to take all the risks I ache for people to take on the show. I wanted it to be a wild ride. I wanted to play a game that, objectively, I would be impressed by.
I don't know the best formula to succeed in this game. I can see now that I didn't find it. I think it's insanely complicated- the jury wants to feel that you were loyal, but if you're loyal how can you say you made big moves? People love a good survivor blindside- but then they don't want to vote for the person who orchestrated the blindside? How can you be a strategist and say you outwitted and outplayed without pissing off the people who were outwitted and outplayed? I don't have the answers, I wish I did.
Yes, I think loyalty is something the jury should respect. But it's just one aspect of a many layered game. I think pure loyalty is a choice and if that is your personal code and what you value above all else, I can see why that would earn your jury vote. I didn't say the jury *should* vote for loyalty, I said I think they often *do*. But it's not what I would vote for over a strategic game. Maybe I'm an idealist. But the first word in the motto of this game is outwit. Pure loyalty can get you outwitted. With all the alliances we made together, how could I know that you hadn't made three more that didn't include me? I didn't want to be outwitted.