Allocate/Execute IV: FINISHED

[CaptainMeme]

tl;dr

I coasted and hid behind CM1 from the Flum voteout until the CM1 voteout - through that time I mainly fed CM1 info and worked with him on planning things that he'd carry out.

After the CM1 voteout, I upped my game to a ridiculous extent to the point where every voteout except the Piggy one were voteouts I had a huge hand in the result in despite never spending more than 1 vote in the jury stage until the final 2 rounds.

The most important thing was shielding Ceph's votes to make Vash distrust Aura and take her out. I should say here though - I was always pretty certain that Ceph's votes wouldn't be used against me, this was a pretty huge reason I felt comfortable with that play.

[CaptainMeme]

Okay so my vote is open and I'm happy to listen to each of you on how you feel you deserve to win, I think each of you had strong and weak parts of the game

I'd like to hear from each of you a brief timeline of the game in your eyes and show me where you did things that made moves to make it where you are right now

I've covered most of the latestage, I need to go back and refresh on my votecounts and what I did to give the rest of the overview. I'll answer this one in a bit

[Cephrir]

Okay so my vote is open and I'm happy to listen to each of you on how you feel you deserve to win, I think each of you had strong and weak parts of the game

I'd like to hear from each of you a brief timeline of the game in your eyes and show me where you did things that made moves to make it where you are right now

Since you said "a brief timeline" I will attempt to stick to that.

At the start I was invited to a group chat with Meme and Flum. I have since learned this was not an uncommon experience, but for the beginning of the game it was my alliance. However, as time went on and votes took place without me being included, it became very obvious to me that they didn't care about me and I needed to find other options.

I bonded with CC fairly early on and he is certainly the person I was the most involved with and truthful with throughout the game. We could see that the game was being steered by a powerful group and set out to do something about it. My best guess was that Meme and Flum were ringleaders of said group. I decided to reach out to Aura as someone I felt was likely to not be included in the big alliance, and I trusted her with my gameplan for a while. I would later discover this was a terrible mistake, but as I was quite disconnected at this point, deciding who to trust was a crapshoot at best. Our plans would repeatedly be betrayed for reasons that still mostly escape me. CC (I think?) brought in Malkon to form a four-person alliance, but as I already distrusted Malkon, I was leery of this group. Still, this was my primary alliance for a little while. Malkon's consistent pushbacks against the group's targets in favor of targets who I thought were unlikely to be dangerous cemented my belief that he was an enemy. Unfortunately after allying with CM later, I did not distrust the CM-CC-Aura alliance we made, and I should have.

Around the same time, a larger group was formed to try to target Meme & co. I thought this was a bad move, but it happened anyway. Someone (probably Aronis?) leaked this group's plan and it fell apart quickly. This contributed to my decision to make a big move by vote-bombing Flum (because Meme was immune). I told only CC about this at first, then included CM because of a conversation we had where CM came to me saying I was being targeted in a manner I felt was coming from someone who generally wanted to work with me. CM became a trusted confidant of mine from this point until his elimination. Since the plans I was involved in kept not working, I thought if I really wanted to make sure I succeeded, telling as few people as possible was the best way to execute any move. I claimed to be using 50+ votes when in reality 25 of those would be coming from CC, just to obfuscate our vote counts. I claimed not to have been the source of this for a little while in the hopes of spreading confusion and mistrust among the majority.

Eventually, those of us who were marginalized figured out who each other were and that we were very short on votes, making an alliance that was doomed to die because, you know, we didn't have any votes. At this point most of my gameplay became about hiding the fact that I still had votes. I hooked up with Meme, who helped me hide my votes as I disguised them as his votes and he kept the power players' target off of me as much as possible so that we would have a chance to make a move in endgame. This had the added benefit of causing the players with higher vote totals to distrust each other because the vote total didn't add up with my votes hidden, and we managed to prevail against overwhelming odds. I freely admit Meme deserves much of the credit for this phase of the game, but going along with his defection was the only play I had available after being burned repeatedly.

[Cephrir]

Since you said "a brief timeline" I will attempt to stick to that.

(I wrote this before your wall, it was not intended as a dig)

[Cephrir]

meme has included a number of details about my game that i didn't bother to mention and i'll just say i have no issue with any of it.

i did at least ponder taking meme out, but really, the other side had done such a poor job of building any sort of goodwill with me at all that i just didn't want to.

[CaptainMeme]

So I promised to be a bitter jury member. Sadly, I think I will disappoint a lot of people in a number of ways for not living up to those expectations, though I did have some wine tonight, so at the very least I have alcohol in my veins.

Okay so...really I'll be blunt, Ceph I do not plan to vote for you and it has to do with one of our private conversations. If you know the one, I think my reasoning for not voting for you is justified, if not we can talk post game. I'd rather not say anything further on the matter as I know what it's like to be at a FTC and I think this statement will speak for itself and I don't like speaking ill of people who make FTC.

Therefore, one of Meme or CC will be getting my vote, and in order for me to determine who gets my vote, I have a question for Meme. Sorry CC, I don't really have anything for you and commend you for playing a relatively decent game, and whether or not I vote for you depends on how the following question is responded to by Meme. I'm hoping I won't need a follow up to this.

Meme, the question that you need to respond for, which could be a deciding vote in your favor is this:

The round I went home, you chose to let me go. Whether you were an instigator of me going home, or whether you were just going along with it because you didn't "have enough votes to make a move", you had a part in me going. Given that I shielded you from a vote or two that CC/Ceph had asked me on multiple occasions to consider, I can't help but feel like I need a damn good reason as to why I left. In addition, you voted ent with me and aro to pull the wool over our eyes so you could blindside me the next round. I clearly demonstrated on multiple occasions that I wasn't coming after you with my votes.

So without further ado: Why, instead of helping me use my votes to survive another round or two and maybe get someone you wanted out, did you choose to let me walk onto this jury spot with 40+ votes in my pocket like a duped chess piece? To further clarify, I'm not bitter, I just want to know what purpose my elimination served to your game.

If I feel your answer is adequate and satisfactory, I will award you my vote, if not, I will give it to CC.

Fire away.

I don't know whether this answer is going to be what you're looking for or not, but it is my honest perspective on the whole thing.

After Flum was voted out, I went into gamebot mode. Prior to that, I was fully intending to meme the hell out of this game, and I feel like I absolutely did that. Flum and I set up a bazillion 3/4 person chats at the start of the game, we coordinated setting up the two major alliances in promeme and antimeme, we then set up inner circles of only people who'd been in one chat or the other but not both (+you and Tom) and united them into another alliance, we had an alliance with Ceph (or tried to, that one didn't last very long) to find out what was going on in Schrodingersmeme - overall, we overplayed the hell out of the early game and both knew it. I spent 20 votes saving Piggygal in a round I didn't even talk to her. We both knew we were never getting to the end with those massive targets on our back, so we played to have fun and to set up a good position for the people we wanted to make it to the end.

In my case, there were three people I wanted to see get to the end outside of me/Flum (which I thought was impossible). Those three were The Worst, you, and CreativeMod. I was vvvvvvvv sad when Ducky stabbed me in the back :'( Up until Flum went home, I was playing to try to make sure you two had a good shot at making it even if I went down.

After Flum went home, I had the reality check that comes with losing your #1 ally and being completely blindsided. Something like that changes the way you view the game, especially for me, because it rarely happens for me - I always go home before my #1 ally (DK went before Jigs, Noob went before Birdperson, Meltan went before Regi, Rainbow went before Rarity - the only exceptions are Makoto (with Leon medevacing) and Seth going before Ivan). After that, I made the decision to stop messing around and start playing for the win.

In terms of why you went, the 40 votes was the exact reason. I know you made moves to save me in the earlygame and I really appreciated that, but if I stripped out that appreciation, you had wayyyyy too much power over the game for me to be comfortable (specifically, you had very strong connections to Vash/Aro, which was extremely dangerous given their high vote counts, and you'd been in that alliance with Ceph/CC which I figured gave you some connections on that side too). I knew there was the possibility of working closely with you to the end and hoping you'd take me to FTC, but that's exactly what it would have been - having to rely entirely on you wanting to take me. I wasn't sure whether that was a smart play, because I did have this huge target on me from earlygame so I might not be the easiest beat out there.

Once you start playing as a gamebot, it's hard not to see everyone else as a gamebot, too. I know that there's a significant chance you would have taken me anyway just based on our friendship, but I couldn't bring myself to rely on that. You were by far the player in the strongest position in the game at that point, and from the perspective, I think taking you out was the right move.

[Malkon05]

Thanks for the answer. I have what I need in order to award a vote. Best of luck to all three and sorry I'm not here with more of an open mind to consider you Ceph.

[CaptainMeme]

@Malkon again

I realise you probably want specifics on how it aided my game. It probably didn't help me as much in the way I wanted it to, which was cutting down on the amount of votes/powerplayers in the game, because it instead just gave a huge majority to three players in Aro/Aura/Vash that in 99/100 cases would have meant the game ended in Aro/Aura/Vash FTC. I didn't realise quite how unbalanced the votes were at that point.

However, I do think that what I did in the stages of the game after CM1's elimination would have been impossible if you were there, because all of my agency there was only possible due to a lack of information flowing from person to person. You had enough connections on both sides of that line that I would have had to include you in everything, which would probably have meant playing second fiddle to you in the same way I played second fiddle to CM1. This is all not even mentioning the huge number of votes you had compared to everyone else.

So in a way, it did turn out for the better, because it a) made sure I got here regardless of whether you were going to take me or not and b) gave me the opportunity to play a strong enough game to build a resume for myself.

[CaptainMeme]

I should sleep, I'll answer CM1's question in the morning

[VashtaNeurotic]

Meme I was not mad at you for having “the audacity of getting cut at F4” that’s a completely valid concern, that’s understandable, if you think someone will cut you at f4, create a situation that’s better for you. What I’m mad about is the way you made that happen. You could have said that you were too unsure of that F4 and that I needed to give you a yes or no right then or you could have argued that aura and aronis might need to cut me at F4 because I’m “too big of a threat” so I’d need to strike first. Hell if you did actually snipe one of aro/aura the round you say there would be “so many better choices than you” I’m pretty sure I would have stuck with you out of habit anyway. Like yeah, I didn’t give you a straight answer, because I didn’t fucking know the answer because I put off choices that make my skin crawl until the last minute. But instead of any of those options you chose to trick me. You chose to let the fact that I trusted you, the fact that I let you in on votes that, I probably didn’t need to let you in on (after all you made it very clear you only wanted to spend a vote a round) against me. Though admittedly, that wording probably sounds like I had a lot more control than I did, but you get the idea.

And you used that to have me vote out someone who had done me no wrong, who didn’t intend to betray me and who I liked. And you lied about it to my face, as everyone can see I suggested that very thing to you, but the tone is very different from the one I have now, because well… I didn’t think that you were actually lying to me. “Meme wouldn’t do that to me” I thought, “he’s my friend”. In hindsight that is definitely not a phrase I should have ever thought in game.

Then, after I had realized that I had made a huge mistake, you revealed what happened. But you didn’t do it because you felt guilty or thought it was harsh ...you did it because you were caught. Like you even asked me what I thought had happened beforehand, just in case I mentioned a convenient lie you'd think I’d believe instead of the truth. So, you, my friend, lied to my face and tricked me into voting out another friend of mine, who didn’t have any ill will, and then you told me you were lying to me all along. Now, when someone betrays you like that and tells you only because they were caught doing it, why should anyone give them the time of day? And then you decided to tell me I should still work with you and take you to the end as it was “best for my game” because that’s definitely my top priority in that moment. So I’m there, realizing what a fool I’ve been and you’re still trying to convince me to work with you. Ofc I don’t want to hear more of those arguments even after it’s been a while.

And now you say I was arrogant that round? Do you really think I didn’t consider the possibility that you and ceph could use relatively few votes and ensure that I’m gone in the final round? Do you really think I couldn’t have just told Aronis that you knew he had extra votes and to do something with them? The answer is no, I just didn’t fucking care what you did because between the regret of what I’d just done and your handling of me afterward I was just fucking done with this game, because a game shouldn’t bring me intense feelings of anger and regret that make me just want to nope out. Like literally the moment I saw the votes left I realized that you had decided to kill me but that I guess I should try to argue about why it’s better to have me at the end, and you even acted like you might have been a bit swayed by them and would think it over, and then I learned that you had probably already locked in your votes a lot earlier than that.

And I think the thing that I’m most angry about is...I should’ve seen it coming. Like, I should’ve known that even if Aro was lying it wouldn’t make up the discrepancy, I should have known that aura wouldn’t lie to me about her vote count and I should have known that if something fucking wonky was going on that you had done it, but I was blinded. I for some reason thought that after playing with you all game, after spending votes to protect you, and just liking you as a person that you wouldn’t do what you always do. And hell, it’s not even like that was the only lie you told me. Like when you told me what happened in the Ezio vote, you made it sound like Aro and CC had just cross referenced, not that YOU HAD FUCKING TOLD THEM IN ORDER TO GET YOUR ALLY KILLED.

And hopefully this doesn’t come off as overly harsh, but I had to say it. I get how none of this should be as big as deal to me as it is and I shouldn’t be surprised that you treated the game like a game, and hey, maybe the jury agrees with you, but meme, what did you expect to happen? Cause if you didn’t expect this to be an option then, seriously, do you know me at all?

[Aurathebirb]

Can u write a poem about birds for me

[CaptainMeme]

Okay so my vote is open and I'm happy to listen to each of you on how you feel you deserve to win, I think each of you had strong and weak parts of the game

I'd like to hear from each of you a brief timeline of the game in your eyes and show me where you did things that made moves to make it where you are right now

Going to do a play by play since it's easier that way - I'll try to keep it short:

Round 1 (1 on D3f) - Flum and I did way too much to talk about here. Briefly - set up promeme, set up antimeme, saw D3f's plan, tried to set up a countervote, found out that wasn't going to work, searched for info, made an F3 with you, found out D3f's target from you in the last 5 minutes and decided that wasn't worth changing up so let NM go.

Round 2 (1 on Vij) - Early plan was to take out everyone not in promeme or antimeme first, and Vij was the only person not in either aside from D3f (who had immunity). Not a hard choice of vote especially since Flum was really worried Vij was going to nuke him.
Outside of this, we kept working on the F3s, especially the one with you, the one with Malkon, the one with Tom, the one with Aro, and the F4 with Vash/Entreri. We also set up one with Ceph but that didn't end up going very far. Ircher was being active in chat and while we didn't have an F3 with him, I was also trying to keep him alive because he reminded me a hell of a lot of me when I started out, and I didn't want him to be booted because he was the only person actively saying who he wanted gone (if you're reading Ircher - please keep playing, you were fantastic this game).

Round 3 (1 on D3f) - Continuation of eliminating people outside the alliances. I think it was around this point we set up promeme/antimeme secret chats that only included the people who had only joined one of the two, because we knew the biggest problem would be eliminating people who were in both alliances since they'd obviously hear any plan. I also added Tom and Malkon to Promeme Secret even though they were in both chats because I figured I could trust them and I wanted to work with them going forward.

Round 4 (1 on Cheery) - This round was painful. Piggygal had been the Promeme Public target, and obviously she heard about it. Antimeme Secret had been discussing how to save her and had settled on voting out Jumble. I didn't want Jumble gone (he was in Promeme Secret) so Flum and I united Promeme/Antimeme Secret into one megaalliance called NO, and tried to swing the vote onto Cheery. Unfortunately, we did it too late, and Piggy did not see the chat before phase went through, so she ended up votedumping Jumble anyway and eliminating him. After this, NO consisted of Flum, me, Vash, Entreri, Piggygal, Felissan, Chickadee, Chemist, and IPS.

Round 5 (20 on Bebs) - NO alliance agreed to target Bebs, the promeme chat went Piggygal again. I got paranoid towards the end of the round, because barely anybody was talking in the NO chat and I figured that meant most people were going to underbid - I did not want someone in NO going home two rounds in a row, so I made a last minute decision to overbid, and it turned out to be the right move; if I hadn't, Piggygal would have gone home here instead. (I also forgot to mention, you knew about the NO alliance too but we agreed to keep you sequestered from it in case so that we had people on both sides there - if there was a defection, they'd come to you).

Round 6 (10 on Rando) - I heard (through you I think?) that CC was pushing an Ircher vote hard. I still really didn't want Ircher to go home; I wanted him to make Jury at the very least because I hated the fact that he was going to be punished for playing hard out of the gate instead of hiding like everyone else did. CC was initially putting 10 votes on this, so I went to him and explained my PoV on this straight up, because I felt like CC was someone who'd get my point there - CC wasn't too happy about it, but agreed to switch to putting 1 on Chemist instead. NO targeted Rando, and I put 10 there because I knew people would underbid again and didn't want Ircher to go home.

Round 7 (10 on The Worst) - Interesting round here! And one that made me very sad. NO was initially targeting Cheery Dog but partway through the round Flum and I got messages from you, Aronis, and Malkon all saying there was a secret plot to take me out (first two were in a chat with CC/Ceph/Aura/Tom, Malkon was in his own one with CC/Ceph iirc). I obviously started panicking and went around to beg votes off'ff all the people I felt I was close enough to do so with without going through NO, because NO was obviously compromised due to the inclusion of Tom. Together with Vash, Entreri, you, Aronis, Malkon, and Flum, I voted for Tom, and that ended up saving me. I could not have gotten here if you guys decided not to help me, so thank you for that - I know the way I gamebotted the endgame was incredibly unappreciative of all this.

Round 8 (1 on Ceph) - And this one made me even sadder, and what's more, it was my fault. Flum and I actually set up an F3 with Aura here to try to make sure we heard about anything more that that alliance tried to do, but it ended up being useless there and then - I'd been telling you more than Flum had wanted me to tell you about how close he was to Aronis and the fact that Aronis had leaked the information to us too, and I think you saw that as meaning Flum wasn't particularly close to you and that he had to go. CC/Ceph set up their own thing just between them and invited you into it, and I was completely left in the dark about this. Flum was sniped off and I was left without my #1 ally.

Round 9 (1 on Chickadee) - I figured the result of the previous round must have something to do with you so I approached you about it and told you that I wouldn't hold it against you if you were behind the Flum snipe. You came clean and we started an extremely close partnership - the closest one I had in the entire game. At this point, I was aware that the NO alliance had waaaaaay too many votes between them given that people outside had been votedumping, especially since most of them weren't talking to me, so I went for Chickadee. Vash was not happy about this at all because Chickadee/Fel/Piggy were in Antimeme Private with him and he figured they would vote with him, so he outvoted me to hit Ceph - but it didn't end up mattering, because I was completely blindsided by the hit on Ircher anyway. At this point I'd just seen two people I really didn't want to go be eliminated back to back, I was angry and I told myself I was just going to start gamebotting it up and do whatever I could to make end, regardless of who I had to stab on the way there.

Round 10 (1 on Cheery) - This one was an easy vote, we took out Cheery as the compromise candidate between everyone. I got NO on board, CM1 got everyone outside of NO.

Round 11 (1 on Felissan) - I knew I needed to eliminate one of Vash's close allies here, because the Fel/Chick/Piggy/Vash group had way too many votes between them. I can't remember why I ended up voting for Fel when the majority hit Chickadee here - I think the target was changed partway through the phase and I forgot to change mine. In any case, it was a result I was happy with (and one I think CM1 did the majority of the engineering around again).

Round 12 (10 on IPS) - God. This round was so ridiculously dumb =/
I wanted to target Fel to take out another person who hadn't been talking to me and who I viewed as being in Vash's pocket (I don't know whether that was true or not - I would like to hear your view on that situation if you're around, Fel), and who I thought had a huge number of votes left. Unfortunately, Vash was not on board with this idea. He went behind my back to tip Fel off to the vote and told me late in the round, saying that it would be fine because Fel would votedump and it would reduce Fel's threat anyway.
And maybe it would have been fine, but Vash told Fel to target 'CM1'. Putting aside the point that I didn't want CM1 gone anyway, I immediately saw the danger here - I knew Fel hadn't been talking to many people, so there was a very strong chance she would see the initials CM and just assume Vash was talking about me, since I'd been the most visible player up to that point. I tried to get Vash to clarify with Fel, but by this point Fel had gone to sleep, so it was panick stations.
My solution to this was to go to you and tell you you were being votedumped. It wasn't entirely a lie, because that had been Vash's intention, but I did know I was receiving the votes at this point - I figured you would be more likely to gather more countervotes if you thought it was you in danger than if it was me. This was gamebotmeme kicking in again - I think I *could* have gotten away with telling you it was me on the block and you'd still have rallied the votes, but I couldn't be sure, so I went with the route I thought was more likely to work.

Round 13 (1 on Aro) - This was the first round I was properly brutal in. Entreri had been my close confidant for a long time, and I knew he'd probably stick with me long term, but prior to Flum being voted out I'd told him waaaaaay too much about my connections - specifically, I'd given him the full details on CM1 working with me behind his back. This was something I immediately regretted, because I knew CM1 was someone I wanted to work with longterm, and there was no way Entreri wasn't going to work to take CM1 out at some point since he knew that CM1's connection with him was fake - and he had the perfect ammunition to do it, because I'd given that to him. What's more, that ammunition could very well collapse my whole game in the process, because revealing how I'd been working with CM1 would put me on the outs with a whole lot of people.

So I made the call to push the vote towards Entreri here. I saw an opportunity (he'd been the main one fuelling the fire for Aro vs CC), and I saw that the person going home otherwise (CC) was someone with basically no votes, so it felt like the right time to do it. I ended up forgetting to switch my vote again, but it did work out, and Entreri went home along with the information that I felt could bring down my game.

Round 14 (1 on Ceph) - This round was mainly CM1's doing, but it was something I was happy with. Something I actually forgot to mention this earlier, but when I was scrolling through my chat with CM1 I found it again - Malkon had set up a chat with Aro/CM1 that he told me nothing about, I heard this through CM1 and CM1 alone. This was the thing that really got me worried, because I knew Malkon/Aro between them had the votes to control the game if they got much further together, and that could very easily be the F3 Malkon wanted given that he'd told me about most other things he had going in the game, but absolutely zilch about that one.
CM1 arranged the snipe on Malkon, I put my vote on Ceph to make sure that my number was where people thought it would be, and Malkon ended up going home with a huge portion of the votes.

Round 15 (1 on CC) - This was one hell of a chaotic round. I have no clue what was happening through most of it but the targets changed 2 or 3 times on both sides of the line - it ended up settling on CM1, which I wasn't happy about, but at the same time I decided that I'd already started to gamebot this thing and I had to continue. I put my vote on CC instead of Ceph to make sure he had a slightly higher chance of surviving (not much, but slightly), but obviously that made no difference and he went home. I did tip him off that he was the target, so he, knowing that there was a good chance he was going, tipped off Ceph/CC that I was the inside man and opened the route to my working with them.

Round 16 (1 on Piggygal) - from here on out, I've given the overview in the response to Aro's post.
Round 17 (1 on Felissan)
Round 18 (1 on Aura)
Round 19 (3 on Aro)
Round 20 (5 on Vash)

That uh, wasn't brief at all. I'll make a tl;dr.

[CaptainMeme]

tl;dr

Earlygame was very much about doing ridiculous things with Flum, making the game interesting (we even had Shadoweh acting as a spy for us at one point, it was great), and sticking with allies. I never intended to make it far so I made dumb decisions to help the people I was working with or wanted to work with, like the 20 on bebs and the 10 on Rando.

After Flum/Ircher got back to back eliminated, I said screw it and started playing for just me. I was utterly brutal through most of the postmerge as a result. I had no problem cutting allies, I stabbed almost everyone in the back at least once, but I did so to make it here and I accomplished that.

Was it good gameplay? Probably not. I can understand if the way I played lost the jury votes of the people I blindsided. On the flipside, it did get me here, which was my intention - and I feel like if I'd continued to play the loyal game I would have at most gotten to 5th or 4th. I've already been cut that close to the end in the last A/E, I didn't come back to experience that again.

I know this is answering a question nobody is asking, but I've talked with Xof a lot about how you should handle FTCs if I would ever get there. The piece of advice she's told me again and again and again is that you need to make people feel like they weren't pawns to you, and that they mattered as people, even if that involves lying to them about why you turned on them or whatever. I'm not the kind of person who feels comfortable doing that, so I'm not doing that at all. The truth is that after the Ircher/Flum elimination, I didn't view anyone as a person anymore - a lot of you (the people I know well) matter to me a hell of a lot outside of the game, and that's not changed at all, but I put down a wall between that and A/E to disconnect myself enough that I could do the kind of brutal moves I had to do. I don't think I could have brought myself to do everything I did if I was looking at the game as a collection of people instead of as a diplomacy board.

It's entirely up to you as Jurors how you want to respond to that. If you're looking to award your vote based on how the finalists treated you in the game, I am probably not the person you're going to give your vote to, and that is 100% reasonable - but I hope that you do at least take into account that I am being entirely honest with you all here and I'm not trying to butter you up. My pitch to win is entirely around how hard of a game I played to get here; I genuinely believe it's the most intensive and best (from a getting to the end PoV, not from a jury management PoV) gameplay I've done since The Challenge The Void.

[CaptainMeme]

And if you're skimming my messages because they're too long (understandable ) - that right there is the important post ^

[CaptainMeme]

Can u write a poem about birds for me

There was once a bird called Elise
Who got a cold and started to sneeze
"I'm quite irate
'cause I need to migrate"
And with that, off she flew to Belize

[CuddlyCaucasian]

I’m at work right now and I’m bad at typing so just wanna let everyone know I’m writing a song that will answer all your questions AND MORE

[Cephrir]

I’m at work right now and I’m bad at typing so just wanna let everyone know I’m writing a song that will answer all your questions AND MORE

can i medevac from ftc i can't beat this

[Cephrir]

Can u write a poem about birds for me

Colorful in flight
Some majestic, some funny
All terrible pets

[CaptainMeme]

I’m at work right now and I’m bad at typing so just wanna let everyone know I’m writing a song that will answer all your questions AND MORE

this is why you don't take cc to FTC

[CaptainMeme]

Meme I was not mad at you for having “the audacity of getting cut at F4” that’s a completely valid concern, that’s understandable, if you think someone will cut you at f4, create a situation that’s better for you. What I’m mad about is the way you made that happen. You could have said that you were too unsure of that F4 and that I needed to give you a yes or no right then or you could have argued that aura and aronis might need to cut me at F4 because I’m “too big of a threat” so I’d need to strike first. Hell if you did actually snipe one of aro/aura the round you say there would be “so many better choices than you” I’m pretty sure I would have stuck with you out of habit anyway. Like yeah, I didn’t give you a straight answer, because I didn’t fucking know the answer because I put off choices that make my skin crawl until the last minute. But instead of any of those options you chose to trick me. You chose to let the fact that I trusted you, the fact that I let you in on votes that, I probably didn’t need to let you in on (after all you made it very clear you only wanted to spend a vote a round) against me. Though admittedly, that wording probably sounds like I had a lot more control than I did, but you get the idea.

And you used that to have me vote out someone who had done me no wrong, who didn’t intend to betray me and who I liked. And you lied about it to my face, as everyone can see I suggested that very thing to you, but the tone is very different from the one I have now, because well… I didn’t think that you were actually lying to me. “Meme wouldn’t do that to me” I thought, “he’s my friend”. In hindsight that is definitely not a phrase I should have ever thought in game.

Then, after I had realized that I had made a huge mistake, you revealed what happened. But you didn’t do it because you felt guilty or thought it was harsh ...you did it because you were caught. Like you even asked me what I thought had happened beforehand, just in case I mentioned a convenient lie you'd think I’d believe instead of the truth. So, you, my friend, lied to my face and tricked me into voting out another friend of mine, who didn’t have any ill will, and then you told me you were lying to me all along. Now, when someone betrays you like that and tells you only because they were caught doing it, why should anyone give them the time of day? And then you decided to tell me I should still work with you and take you to the end as it was “best for my game” because that’s definitely my top priority in that moment. So I’m there, realizing what a fool I’ve been and you’re still trying to convince me to work with you. Ofc I don’t want to hear more of those arguments even after it’s been a while.

And now you say I was arrogant that round? Do you really think I didn’t consider the possibility that you and ceph could use relatively few votes and ensure that I’m gone in the final round? Do you really think I couldn’t have just told Aronis that you knew he had extra votes and to do something with them? The answer is no, I just didn’t fucking care what you did because between the regret of what I’d just done and your handling of me afterward I was just fucking done with this game, because a game shouldn’t bring me intense feelings of anger and regret that make me just want to nope out. Like literally the moment I saw the votes left I realized that you had decided to kill me but that I guess I should try to argue about why it’s better to have me at the end, and you even acted like you might have been a bit swayed by them and would think it over, and then I learned that you had probably already locked in your votes a lot earlier than that.

And I think the thing that I’m most angry about is...I should’ve seen it coming. Like, I should’ve known that even if Aro was lying it wouldn’t make up the discrepancy, I should have known that aura wouldn’t lie to me about her vote count and I should have known that if something fucking wonky was going on that you had done it, but I was blinded. I for some reason thought that after playing with you all game, after spending votes to protect you, and just liking you as a person that you wouldn’t do what you always do. And hell, it’s not even like that was the only lie you told me. Like when you told me what happened in the Ezio vote, you made it sound like Aro and CC had just cross referenced, not that YOU HAD FUCKING TOLD THEM IN ORDER TO GET YOUR ALLY KILLED.

And hopefully this doesn’t come off as overly harsh, but I had to say it. I get how none of this should be as big as deal to me as it is and I shouldn’t be surprised that you treated the game like a game, and hey, maybe the jury agrees with you, but meme, what did you expect to happen? Cause if you didn’t expect this to be an option then, seriously, do you know me at all?

Alright, the one I've been putting off...

Don't worry about sounding overly harsh, that's part of the game and part of FTC. As long as nothing carries over after the game I don't particularly mind what's said in it.

Yes, there were other options available than tricking you. Those other options seemed likely to lose me the game. If I demand a yes or no right then, do I ever get told no even if the answer is no? If I try to blindside you at F4 by convincing Aro/Aura that you're a threat, how is that any different to me betraying you at the point I did? The only difference in my mind is that it wouldn't work - obviously Aura/Aro would know more than I would on this, but I don't think there's any world in which you/Aro/Aura were at F4 together where you don't all make F3 together.

I think at the end of the day, we were playing very different games. I lied, I manipulated, I took every advantage I could get to get here - I genuinely think I would not be here if I hadn't. I didn't have the luxury of having a ton of votes, or having anyone in the game who would get targeted over me at F4, so to me it felt like a choice between playing with integrity and being rewarded for my efforts by being cut, or abandoning that and giving myself a shot at competing for the win.

I understand that this is nonanon, and those moves hurt a lot if you don't disconnect the game from real life. I did disconnect the game from real life, and I assumed other people would too. Back when I first started playing Diplomacy, the #1 rule my maths teacher (the person who introduced me to it) had was that you never let things from the game spill out over the edge - she'd leave 30 minutes free at the end of each game just to let everyone discuss everything, get it all out there, and transition back to not being in game-mode. I've already treated every game like that, anon or nonanon. The whole "I won't stab because they're my friend outside of this" just feels horrible to me, you're not giving anyone who hasn't properly integrated with the community a fair chance, and you're not playing the game as a game.

I hope that goes a way to explaining why I played the way I did, and I'm sorry if I hurt you IRL with what I did - if you want to talk it over and cool off together after the game I'm more than happy to. But I guess my point is, we've played Diplomacy together, we played Void, A/E III, and a ton more if you count anons, and every single game I disconnect real life friendships from ingame things. I hope you know it's the same here and nothing I did against you ingame was intended as anything against you as a person.


About the F5 round... the answer is yes, I did think you hadn't considered that I would turn on you. I hope you can see why from that perspective it looks arrogant, and I'm sorry I misinterpreted this so badly - but I am giving my account of the way I saw the game and that was the lens I saw it through. I never thought that you would give up on the game at F5 because you just stabbed someone who you were saying you maybe would have stabbed at F4 anyway - that's something I would never do, and I projected myself onto you in this. Going to you and saying 'okay, we need to do this because otherwise we lose' was probably a terrible idea, but I did it because it would have absolutely been the right move if I was talking to me, if that makes any sense.

[CaptainMeme]

FTR also, I don't expect the Jury to agree with me. I know my Jury management sucked, but I don't think I'd be here without playing the kind of game that annoys a Jury.

I didn't come into FTC expecting a win, which is why I'm trying to put as much effort as I can into making my case here.

[Aronis]

What did you do in the jury phase of this game, meme? (Besides coasting)

Why do you deserve my vote more than Meme, CC?

Spoiler:

Early jury I pretty much hid. I had alliances here and there - namely, one with you, one with Vash and Entreri, one with Malkon, and a very tight alliance with CM1. CM1 was ridiculously good at getting information and making things happen - he basically had half the game working with him, and it included everyone I didn't have an alliance with, so he seemed amazing as a #1 ally (plus, he's just amazing generally <3 <3 ).

I did a couple of things directly while CM1 was around, but they were generally minor - for example, I told you and CC that Entreri was talking to you both about voting for the other in the first Jury round, because I didn't want CC to go (low vote count) and Entreri seemed like the only vote I could make happen without putting a target on my back for it. For the most part, I stuck to making sure I got all the information CM1 wasn't getting so that between us we could have the complete picture and we could make a plan around it (plans which were pretty much always actually carried out by CM1). I wouldn't call it coasting, because through CM1 I still had some control on the game, but it absolutely could be considered that because if he decided to ditch me I would not be able to impact much of anything. I trusted that he wouldn't ditch me and I think I was right on that.

At CM1's elimination, I knew he was going and I could have put in the votes to save him. If it had been an earlier round, I probably would have done, because I was never expecting to make it anywhere near end until I was somehow there - my earlygame objective was just to make the game interesting and keep my friends alive, hence why I used nearly all my votes in that stage, but just before the start of the Jury phase I decided to start playing to win instead, and I knew if I saved CM1 I was a) saving someone who would beat me at FTC and b) using up my ability to make any kind of move later on, where it might save me personally. I had to let him go there.

Thankfully, he put me through to Ceph and CC by telling them I was his guy on the inside of Vash/Aro/Aura, and by doing so he essentially put me in the position he'd been in, getting information from both sides. This was where I kicked my ass into gear and stopped relying on other people. Ceph/CC were annoyed enough with Vash/Aro/Aura hoarding votes (and claimed that Fel/Piggy were also, although I don't know this for sure - I kept a level of separation from Fel/Piggy to try to minimize the risk that me working against Vash/Aro/Aura would get leaked back to them, so all communications with those two went through Ceph) that they had a plan to use every vote from everyone else to snipe off one of the three, with the agreement that whoever got that third FTC spot would get the jury votes of all of the rest of Ceph/CC/Fel/Piggy/Me. After hearing this, my objective became to get to the end with 2 of Vash/Aro/Aura for obvious reasons, but I knew I couldn't do it the way they were planning, because if we used all our votes to snipe someone that early, the other two of Vash/Aro/Aura get to choose who goes to FTC with them and there would be so many better choices to take than me.

So I made a different plan with Ceph. I'd try to swing Vash/Aro/Aura (I'll call you guys VAA from here to save typing that over and over) to targeting someone with zero votes, either Fel (we thought she had zero, she turned out not to and was just hiding her votes really well) or CC. I can't remember if I went to all of you about this, but I did try very, very hard to swing Vash at the very least onto voting for Fel because I thought he would then swing the two of you, but he wasn't having any of it and we ended up losing Piggygal - a huge blow because Piggy had 13 votes, a huge portion of what we had at the time.

Move forward a round, I realise there are way more votes in play than there should be and the only way it made sense was if Fel was hiding them. She'd been hiding these votes from everyone I was talking to which meant she was incredibly dangerous to me - so I tried to get her to nuke one of VAA by asking Ceph to tip her off that she was getting targeted. My primary objective there was to take out a huge chunk of votes in the game without having to spend any of mine or ceph's, by eliminating one of VAA through Fel votedumping.

This plan failed, because Fel wouldn't respond to Ceph. Ceph tipped her off about the vote, but she stayed completely silent except for posting '1 vote Vash' in the alliance chat, which we assumed was meant to be direct to Monty. I had to reevaluate what I wanted to do, so I decided to try to flip it on its head - get rid of the unpredictable votes Fel had by trying to get you to votedump. I tipped you off that the other side was votedumping you (which wasn't true) to try to get you to ditch votes and to take Fel out of the game, which ended up working - you spent all the way down to (if I have my numbers right) 9, I think.

Another thing happened this round that had a huge impact - Vash out of the blue asked me to put 2 votes on Fel instead of one. I wasn't planning this beforehand, but a plan formed after he said this - I realised I could hide Ceph's votes by putting in only 1 vote and asking Ceph to do so too. The previous round, Vash had asked me for a screenshot proving I'd voted for CC (something Monty later verified was okay), which I'd provided, but that screenshot had also picked up the mod votecount for me so that was 100% confirmed with Vash. If there were missing votes, he would suspect his allies.

And that's exactly what happened. Cut to next round, Vash starts telling me that one of Aro/Aura is lying to him, and comes to the idea that we need to blindside whichever one is more likely to be hoarding votes and not telling him about them. Fantastic! I could eliminate one of VAA right here, and I'd still have my votes and Ceph's votes in my pocket for a later move if we needed to make one. Vash came to the conclusion that Aura was lying (I pushed this a fair bit because I figured Aura had more than Aro after the results of the previous round, but I think Vash would have gone there even without me pushing) and sniped him - again asking for 2 of my votes, so I once again hid Ceph's votes with mine.

Here's where things went a bit wonky. Vash immediately comes up to me asking if I did anything that previous round - and I know at this point that he has a screenshot from Aro, so I either have to claim that Aro forged the screenshot or come clean about what I did. I decided to go with the latter, because I figured that I could convince Vash that CC and Ceph were too dangerous to take to the end based on the pledge that group all had to vote for each other if anyone - and I figured that if Vash decided I was the one lying I'd be in far more danger than if I just came clean. He'd actually joked about me making the exact play I made when he was talking about targeting Aura:



So I thought he was pretty much guaranteed to put two and two together and figure out what I'd done, especially if we sent Ceph home.
Amusingly, Aro actually had edited his screenshot to show less votes than he had - I noticed this immediately when Vash sent me that screenshot, because it was titled 'proof.png' which strongly suggests someone re-saved the image *after* taking the screenshot, but I was only sent the screenshot after I'd already come clean. I was kicking myself when I saw it but what had been done was already done and I couldn't take it back.

Vash... did not take it well. It turns out he'd been playing the game on the basis that he would never stab anyone who wasn't intending to stab him, and he hated the fact that I'd tricked him into stabbing someone who wasn't actually lying to him - which is reasonable, but I don't think the rest of his reaction was. He got angry at me for it, and we had an argument - my PoV was that there were 3 people in the game he viewed as close allies, so he had to cut one at F4, and I knew that would probably be me if I didn't make something happen before it. He even outright told me this in the argument - he said that I'd 'have a shot' at convincing him to take me at F4 based on the loyalty card, which obviously meant there was a very strong chance he wouldn't take me, but he was phrasing this all as if I was some monster for having the audacity to not go to F4 with him (and most likely no further).

I'll admit, this got me annoyed. I was fully intending to go to the end with Vash/Aro before this point - I thought it was probably my best win chance, and it was the easy, easy option for me because of the amount of votes they had. At that point, I started thinking that maybe I should go to the end with Ceph/CC just to show that I could. Vash was talking as though his spot at FTC was guaranteed, and in any reasonable scenario, it was - but I'm the king of unreasonable scenarios.

When I tried to reach out to Vash one more time in the morning to see if anything could be done, he told me he was putting one vote on Ceph and essentially told me to fuck off. Not quite in that way, but it boiled down to 'I still hate you so stop talking to me before I decide to vote you instead'. That was the moment I locked in my endgame plan to do the impossible and take Ceph/CC.

I figured that CC would vote with us in the event of a tie, because CC really didn't like Vash/Aro's vote hoarding and was more invested in stopping them getting to the end than anything else in the game at that point. I took a huge risk on Ceph voting with me, but honestly, we'd built up enough trust at that point that I was willing to take the gamble. So I went to Aro and pretended I was buying his story about not having any votes to try to make sure he thought he wouldn't be a target, and claimed that I'd be putting in a whole bunch on Ceph to try to get him to lowball. I went to Ceph and pointed out that there was a way we (C/C/C) could all make it if we were able to survive this vote by just using four votes, because Vash was holding back to try to ensure he had majority on the final round.

And we did that. And it worked.

I immediately talked to Ceph and then locked in my votes on Vash. It maybe wasn't the best play from a gameplay perspective - I think I would have an easier FTC against Vash, because Vash told me he would throw everything he possibly could into making sure Ceph won if I took him out - but it was the play I wanted to make, because I like Ceph, I like CC, I've worked well with them both, and frankly I found the way Vash had treated me to be arrogant (acting as though his spot was guaranteed and not considering that it might not be) and incredibly annoying (in the whole not talking to me part) and I didn't want to reward that with an FTC spot. But most of all, managing to get myself/Ceph/CC to the end after the huge vote disparity in the earlier rounds was something incredible, and I'm someone who is obsessed with doing incredible things. If you had looked at the votecount between VAA and CCC at F6 (16-33) all three of us making it was damn near impossible - and we pulled it off.

This was longer than I intended, sorry about that. I'll do a tl;dr in a sec.

This answered a lot. Thank you!!

[CaptainMeme]

I realise my messages are all way too long so from now on all memeposts are going to be max 5 sentences

[CuddlyCaucasian]

[the worst]

pagetop that pls