There's little I can add, I already feared I was repeating myself a bit too much during the jury questions.

About the only thing I can really do is give you a tl;dr: The main focus in this Survivor game is to win, but the secondary goal is to make it an enjoyable experience. In this regard I can't say that Palen was wrong for taking the strongest player to the finale, and if anything I have a higher amount of respect for him because of it.

I know the goal of this is to butter yourself up so the jury will vote for you, but in regard to gamer, dominating the challenges isn't always the only deciding factor and then rest of what he did in survivor isn't totally THAT much better than what me and Palen did. It's stretching things a bit, as far as I can tell.

Personally, were I on the jury, I'd vote for the person who played the most respectably instead of the one who did the best in the challenges, but that's just me.

Well, I have little else to say after what gamer has called me, but one thing I'll say is that this competition was never about winning or losing. We didn't have any prize, and thus we only came in to have fun. Good luck comparing this to a real life show, specially one that I particularly would have never entered.

I followed my code of honor simply for the sake of the game. If I attempted to win using any means no matter how low, then it would have been egotistical. I never act just for my own sake in competitions where the prize is spiritual rather than physical, I really see no point in spoiling the fun if I have literally nothing to gain but something to lose.

Either I'm being too laidback or others are taking this far too seriously. Could also be both. I entered as a newcomer to have fun and test my skills, so I've done far more than I initially thought. One never thinks on winning when they try something new, they simply play and amass experience for future competitions. My experience has told me that I'm better than I thought at videogames, has confirmed how I suck at puzzles and has demonstrated I may not be that anti-social as I thought. With this premise, now I know where can I be best and where can I be bested, something essential if you want to take competitions fully seriously.

Why should I be voted? Well, I've made no strategic move, I only "reeled in" Patrick in the second council to vote for Blub (the latter was to vote the former, so my initial move decided it) and then I simply followed gamer because he and I had the same suspects in our list. However, even when playing by myself, I've been able to be so close to winning a challenge and survived this far, so my skills aren't in the low end.

Voting me for winner would mean voting for someone who did the best he could with what he had. Considering I didn't have much ever since the start, I'd say I've done a lot if I managed to end in the top 3.

Alright.

It is now, time.

Time to vote.

pacman1755 :
Furret :
deggle :
Blubcreator :
Patrick Star :

Each of you five will send me a PM, with your vote for the winner of the game, and your reason for voting them the winner of this game.

In the case of a tie, a re-vote will take place to break it.

This is your last action as members of our jury.

gamerforlifeforever :
yoshirulez! :
EX Palen :

And with that, your role in this game is at a close. Once the jury sends in their votes, I will respond to this thread, summoning everyone who played this game to see the final post.

When next we speak, the winner will have been decided.

I have all the votes, and I also have time.

-----

"OK, I'll go tally the votes."

I go to get the votes, and bring them to the usual spot.

"We'll be tallying the votes... in America!"

Leggy attaches the votes to his back, and then he sprints out of the Final Tribal Council area, leaving everybody confused. After waiting an hour or two for his return, to tell them how they are getting home, like most reality shows would, they realize he isn't coming back. They'll just have to find their own way home.

-----

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

"Hello, everybody, we're live from Los Angeles, California, with the live vote reading to determine the Sole Survivor of Vizzed Survivor 2: Trolls, Dolls, and Bullet Trains! It's been a great season, and we've got a great show for you tonight. We'll be showing you some live look ins on the audience, panning back to last season's champion more than we should, and we'll answer some burning questions, like 'how did the jury and finalists get home?' We'll also, obviously read the votes, and on top of that, show you where we're going next time!"

The audience cheers as they go to a commercial break.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

We come back from commercial, just to say there will be more after the commercial break.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

We come back again, this time with balloons. Also, it's deathly quiet on stage.

"Now, remember, you want your name to be read this time. It is vital that you receive the plurality of votes for the first time in this game. Because if you get the most votes, you aren't voted out, rather, you win the game, and all the nothing that comes with it. Let's do this."

"First vote... EX Palen."

Cheers everywhere.

"Second vote... yoshirulez!"

Cheers for the underdog.

"Third vote... 'gamer :/'"

Cheers again. It's looking to be a super close vote.

"Fourth vote... gamerforlifeforever."

"If this last vote is for anyone but gamer, we've got a tie. But if it's for gamer, it's all over."

The crowd keeps cheering, so loud that Leggy can't be heard, so they go to a commercial break.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Still too loud.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

"Final vote... and the winner of Vizzed Survivor 2: Trolls, Dolls, and Bullet Trains, gamerforlifeforever."

There's some applause, and some boos, because much like with any real Survivor season, it doesn't matter who wins, someone will find a way to hate the winner, 100% of the time. It doesn't matter if they played a perfect game, like JT, or if they played a terrible game, like Amber. The winner is the winner, and they win, but fans are impossible to please.

"Now, gamer, how does it feel to win this game?"

"It feels great, I would say I can't believe it, but I can, since I knew from day 1 I was winning this game."

"Excellent. Now, during the Rites of Passage, you showed a handful of players some respect. Pacman1755, and Furret. I'm curious. Jury, had the final 3 been Gamer, Furret, and Pacman, who would you have voted for to win? Yoshi, and Palen, pretend you are jurors for this."

Not one person has an answer, because that situation is bloody impossible to think about on the spot, live.

"Alrighty, so what will you be doing with your nothing, gamer?"

"Well... nothing!"

"Perfect! Let's cut to commercial, so we can come back to some irrelevant sorta-celebrity!"

COMMERCIAL BREAK

When we come back, Rob Mariano is on stage.

"Now, Rob, you once won a Survivor competition. Not Vizzed Survivor. But Survivor. You have to imagine one day, possibly competing on Vizzed Survivor, right?"

"Nahhh man. I'm rah-ty-ahd. I can't possibly imagine coming back to any form of Survivor."

"Well, that sucks. Let's cut to a last season's winner for no reason."

The screen cuts to sonicmcmuffin sleeping in the back row of the stage.

"This is great, and you fans make this the best show on earth. That's why we can afford to take risks, because we know you'll always warmly receive them. Like with this season, we brought in Redemption Island, and a couple of terrible twists that made it much harder to compete. Blubcreator, you, for a time, benefited from Redemption Island, but eventually got voted out again anyway. What was it like, living on Redemption Island?"

"Terrible."

"Well, that's all the time we have for this segment. We would have more time but we spent so long admiring sonicmcmuffin that we need to cut to commercial again."

COMMERCIAL BREAK

"Alright, so the night is wearing thin. We have a couple things left on our plate. First off, great news, I've made it with a woman. Second news, Vizzed Survivor's been renewed by ITSBS (Innocent Town's Shining Broadcasting Station, pronounced "It's Bee-Ess"). So where are we going next season? Is it an active volcano? On top of a train? In outer space? Or in this very room? Find out AFTER the commercial break!"

COMMERCIAL BREAK

"OK, we've yanked your chain around enough. Next season, we're going to be in Fake-Australia. Now, I know what you were thinking, Leggy, we just did a season in what was basically Fake-Australia. But you would be wrong. See, that was more like our version of Fake-Germany, which is only harmful in times of war. And Fake-Germany wasn't at war. It was like a toddler compared to what we've got in store for you next season, on Vizzed Survivor 3: Get Rek't Son. Thank you for tuning in. Good night!"

mlb789 :
pacman1755 :
megamanmaniac :
yoshirulez! :
Surgiac :
deggle :
Furret :
gamerforlifeforever :
Blubcreator :
EX Palen :
Maguc :
Patrick Star :
Sonicmcmuffin :

This summon goes out to all the players that played this game, no matter how brief.

I'll probably take a couple week break to recharge, and then start writing the fanfiction with the stuff you gave me.

It's been fun.

EDIT - And before anyone asks, I never intended to tell you how everyone got home. That's for viewer interpretation.

I'm actually quite intrigued by the commercial breaks, because ITSBS is highly secretive about the companies/services it gives its valuable time to. For once, I'm not happy that I was on the live studio.

It's actually quite surprising I got a vote. Thank you, anonymous juror, for thinking I actually deserved to win. Looks like the jury had differing points of view if all three finalists got mentioned, because I doubt we had many things in common.

We weren't at Fake-Australia? Are you implying I spent millions of seconds of my time living a (bloodily funny) lie? There goes the second bummer after the commercial break mystery.

I should congratulate gamer for the win, but let's be honest and say that it was expected. We publicly labelled him "the man destined to win", so little more to add. Thanks for everyone who made this possible, and stay tuned for the whole story!

EX Palen :

I personally thought it was hilarious that you all labeled him most likely to win, then kept him safe for like two tribals, after that.

Like come on, you all deserved to lose for that alone. haha.

^ 

Meh.

Good game to most of you

I'm not salty

legacyme3 :
Furret :

You two are right. The votes gamer had should have gone to someone else who didn't make enough effort to earn it. How couldn't I see it before.

Seriously, Tribal Council isn't something that we should tackle lightly. Gamer was a threat, true, but at least deserved the win contrary to the rest. Just because I can vote gamer out doesn't mean I should, even more if I have my own reasons to vote for other players even if nobody reeled me in.

But well, we've already discussed all of this when answering the jury, so the only thing I can add is the following: haters gonna hate.

Well, I'm not surprised at all that I won Vizzed Survivor. I played by far the best game out of the 3 finalists, and I joined the right alliances, which is why I'm the champion of Vizzed Survivor. I'm honored to join sonicmcmuffin as a winner of this great event. Thanks to the 3 people who voted for me, and for the two who didn't, stay salty.

Patrick Star : As promised, here's the PM I mentioned during final tribal proving I did NOT vote you out.

EX Palen :

I don't think anyone is discrediting gamer by saying he didn't deserve to win. He had clearly the best game of any of the finalists (at least from my eyes), and he was also likely to be the best player of the Final 6.

My main point was that in Survivor, generally, if a player wants to win, they have to take out the threats. gamer did this, he took out his main threats, Furret and pacman1755, since those two players (I can testify to this since I got all the confessionals) were most likely to beat him. Pacman was a major challenge threat, that would have been seen as just as deserving as gamer, and Furret was a heavily strategic player (if you watch Survivor, think David from this past season) that was thinking further ahead than I think anyone but gamer realized.

For both you and yoshirulez!, your biggest threats at the end were gamer and Patrick Star (Patrick more so for Palen than yoshi). Patrick had built strong relationships with most everyone throughout the game, apparently, and in a F3 situation where it's Palen/yoshi/Patrick, Patrick may have had a surprising amount of support. In the case of gamer, it was very clear from the outset that if either of you two wanted to win the game, you would have had to take him out, since his argument basically overrides Palen's, and just blows yoshi's out of the water (which I think even yoshi would admit, since his entire case was "I don't care if I win or lose, I had fun" which I think is the right attitude to have with this game, honestly).

tl;dr - I'm not blasting your play style, I think it's great to believe that the best player should win. It's great, because I wish that was the case in real survivor sometimes, I'd love to see the player who deserved to win most win more often. Sometimes you get a Tony, and sometimes you get a Michele as opposed to an Aubry. All I'm saying is, it was clear to me the moment you guys didn't vote out gamer at F5, despite having a perfect opportunity to (idol bluff or not, the play itself is easy to break. Consider that he had to play the idol regardless, this means if his idol is real the guy he wants to get out -the person who got voted out by everyone- is out, and and if his idol is fake, you get rid of the biggest threat in the game. It may sound confusing, but it can easily be defused), that gamer was winning the game. To me, that's the moment where the game turned.

Up until there, I would argue that EX Palen had a super strong case to win the game, had he voted out gamer. In a scenario where that happens, the F4 is Blub, Palen, deggle, and yoshi. Of these four, as long as Palen didn't get voted out, he was likely winning this game (if the jury wants to correct me, by all means. I just get the impression, based on confessionals and what players valued this season, that Palen was the one they'd deem most deserving of the win). Had Palen been eliminated, it would have been a train wreck, because some players deemed Blub undeserving for coming back a second time, deggle for being a goat most of the game, and yoshi got very little respect himself, possibly because of FTC (I don't know exactly). Of the three, I'd theorize it's a tossup between yoshi and Blub, with either EX Palen or Furret being the swing vote to determine the winner.

tl;dr of the tl;dr, which was admittedly long - This game is very complex, and there's more than one way to interpret how things are done or said.

-----

I don't want this to take away from gamer's win. I just thought I'd put my own thoughts out there, to see if it leads to intelligent discussion.

This is going to be a recurring series in Innocent Town, I hope, likely to replace Mafia (since I can't see myself hosting that game again). The first couple Mafias were rough, since not everyone knew how to win/play. The only way to make Survivor as a game more approachable and easier for people to understand, is for people to discuss the ins and outs of the game and for a meta to emerge, with ideas of what works and what doesn't work.

Survivor in real life is a social experiment, and in a way, so is our version of a social experiment. For me, this experiment tells me that we prefer to reward those who work hard, which I can accept. I prefer when people try to win themselves. But it also tells me that we're willing to sacrifice winning if it means a "better" result for the game, which while ok with me, isn't all that healthy in some respects. I think more than a few jurors would agree with me on that.

Open to comments.

legacyme3 : "I don't care if I win or lose, I had fun"

That sentence clearly resumes my mindset, as well as yoshi's. There would be no fun if you aren't pushed to your limits, and that's why you cannot really get rid of all threats. I prefer to be a honorable finalist rather than an egotistical winner. Of course, not everybody shares this mindset, but it wouldn't be fun if we all had the same thoughts, right?

About the discussion, I can understand that my play style isn't all that healthy, but at least it's fair. My style could be compared to "The Weakest Link", in which we as a team get rid of the "dead weight" players to ensure a big performance and so the winner had to work hard for it. Or you could also see it as "Survival of the Fittest", the best shall prevail and the not-so-good shall perish, no personal feelings involved.

Let's take the Donkey Kong challenge, for example. I managed to best both gamer and yoshi there, but Furret, considered a main threat for his strategic play, got just a 10% of my score. If that challenge happened in a Final 3 without yoshi, gamer or pacman, no other threat would have pushed me to a big score, and the overall results would have been quite poor. Oh, and I don't buy the excuses "we would have tried harder if it was the final" or "we didn't have enough time back then"; the first one shows you didn't have much commitment in the starter stages and the second one is directly false because the Final 3 was played during Christmas.

It was clear that, for a final showdown to promise to be awesome, we needed the best players around. I honestly admit that I wouldn't mind if Patrick was there instead of yoshi, but the rest were simply undeserving. The real question is: what if I was wrong and there wasn't such showdown at the end? Then all my game would have been destroyed, but it also wouldn't have been a proper finish for this competition, so like a teacher of mine used to say, it never rains to everyone's desires.

First of all i've not caught up on anything that has happened since i bowed out this competition.  So i'll do that at some point. I wanted to give myself something to enjoy after it was over essentially and to see if things went they way i thought.. 

First of all it was obvious to me that Gamer was the biggest threat to anyone actively wanting to win... and i never really paid that much attention or got the chance to talk to others either so yeah....  I'm not surprised he won... but it also for me makes it less appealing to read whats actually happened as well. 

Also i can make excuses about not having a proper functioning RGR etc.... or i wanted someone else to win.... but in reality i was far more concerned with the people still left in the competition for me to ever really "try" that hard to win... It was a stupid assumption on my part but i felt that if i did "try" i'd be voted out almost immediately simply because i felt there was a strong majority of people that were close friends outside this game and well i numerically didn't stand a chance (i'm not implying this would actually happen i just assumed it would) 

For me this game works the best when you just cast aside your on site friendships. And just focus on enjoying/playing the game. I'm not sure if this has happened in the actual TV show Survivor as it was cancelled pretty quickly in the UK, but the show wouldn't be that interesting if 5 people knew each other and were good friends and just banded together so one of them won right? Granted it'd be more exciting when those 5 people have to face off against each other... but for any other contestants it becomes a case of get immunity or lose. 

So in hindsight i actually want to apologise to 
legacyme3 :  for not actively trying to take part as much as i could, for such a petty reason.  and because i have a horrible habit to over analyse everything. 

tl:dr This game is far more fun for me personally, if you toss on site friendships aside and form new alliances in game... Also i think it's a case of how much do you want to win... if you want to win... your obviously going to be more tactical about things... instead of just going along for the ride.  There is obviously no right or wrong way to play Vizzed Survivor... but for me its the most fun when you know that no matter what you do in the game.. you won't upset your friends outside it .... Like all decent multiplayer games really.