FTC speech <3

Hello pals! I'm so honored to be here! It’s nice to speak to you one last time to walk you through everything I thought about while playing this game. I feel that the traits that led me to this point were my openness to work with anyone, extreme loyalty, a cheerful energy, and kindness towards others. I played an entirely social game because I knew I was hopeless at these immunity challenges, which showed because I won a total of 0 challenges. I knew that my skills were best suited to building strong social connections that would help me navigate the perils and twists of the game. I'd like to also thank my best friend T4 Bacteriophage for all the support and love you gave from behind the scenes!! 

Aquatica:
From the beginning I wasn’t sure why I was placed in Aquatica. A cat in water is well, like a fish out of water, but it’s to these humble beginnings that I owe much of my success. I can’t even say how stressful it was to be in a tribe that lost every single immunity challenge due to circumstances that were outside my control and I can go further into this if people are curious.

I built up an insanely strong connection with Capybara and Leopard Seal, a great relationship with Axolotl (despite voting them out) and Flapjack Octopus, and a mutual respect with Frog. Despite going to every TC, there wasn’t too much drama in the tribe because Aquatica thought a lot about tribal unity and how we needed a strong trust and connection between each other in order to survive amongst tribes with larger numbers, namely Terra. I felt at risk of going home one of two times and one was early on in Aquatica, when Anglerfish was pushing me and I learned that Axolotl actually had a close relationship with them. Needless to say I was relieved to leave such a small tribe when we merged into Carnivora.

Carnivora:
In Carnivora, I was reunited with Axolotl and was happy to have Leopard Seal by my side, someone I trusted completely. When Axolotl had joined Aeria, they created a relationship with Eagle and Kestrel. The most active people in Carnivora created a four person alliance called R.E.C.K., between me, Eagle, Kestrel, and Rat. I got along with Kestrel from very early on because we were both quite chatty! I also enjoyed Eagle’s company and so this alliance felt like a natural extension of people I enjoyed talking to. Even though I could have relied on Leopard Seal, it was important to establish other connections that could help me. Because of real life circumstances, Genet and Axolotl volunteered to be booted the two out of three times we went to TC, so these relationships didn’t need to be tested but I was confident in the alliances I built.

Arthropoda:
I was lucky to be swapped into Arthropoda again with Leopard Seal. I wasn’t sure how Frog felt about me or Leopard Seal in our time apart and this was my first time meeting Snowy Owl and Sloth. Despite being initially trolled by Snowy Owl, we were able to work out the weirdness of our first meeting. When Mongoose was voted out, Sloth approached me to work together with him and Owl. Although I wasn’t that interested in this alliance, I remained open to all opportunities that came my way.

Animalia Part 1:
Leopard Seal was my closest pal and the first person booted out. It made me extremely sad and although I tried my best to save him, nothing I did was enough. Even though Owl and Sloth said that they were open to voting Butterfly and saving Leopard Seal, they decided not to do this and I didn’t learn of this until after Leopard Seal went home. While I tried to keep the appearance that this was fine and I wasn’t that mad, I knew that I couldn’t fully trust either of them. This vote felt like the first that drew lines in the sand. It was at this point that I knew I wanted to go to F3 with Kestrel and Capybara.

Preya:
The tribe that Bunny drafted actually wasn’t too bad. Bunny had drafted this tribe to boot out Snowy Owl or Sloth and I was okay with this as well. Despite Sloth pledging his loyalty to me after the Leopard Seal vote, as stated before, I couldn’t trust him or Snowy Owl and decided to lean into my R.E.C.K. alliance instead.

Animalia Part 2:
With Sloth and Hedgehog gone (thanks to Capybara!!), things seemed way more open. I would have been in a sub-optimal spot if Butterfly’s plan to draft tribes to get rid of Frog was successful.

I wanted to continue what Leopard Seal had started in his mission to vote out Butterfly and I had a solid game plan with wanting to sit next to Kestrel and Capybara. I didn’t want Snowy Owl to go the round he left, but when he started pushing me instead, there was nothing I could do. This was the second time I was worried I could be voted out. It affirmed to me that it was right not to have trusted Owl completely as I was one of the only people who were rallying to help him. I had built up a good enough relationship with Bunny that when Owl approached Bunny, Bunny wasn’t interested.

For the next vote, I pretended to be on the same page with Bunny and Lion to vote Frog out while I was sure the numbers remained for the next vote so that I could not be voted out. Voting Frog was one of the hardest things I did in the game but I knew it had to happen because Frog thought so deeply about everything and was a social player who was quite good at these challenges and there was no way I could sit next to him at the end.

Utilizing Capybara’s second double vote, Capybara, Eagle, Kestrel and I were able to vote Bunny and had the numbers the whole time. Even though Lion’s lie about having an idol switched the order that people were voted out, I didn’t mind voting Bunny out. Eagle took charge of that vote and as a result, I didn’t take any heat because I wasn’t seen as responsible for this by Lion or Rat.

I’d like to take a moment to say Final 5 before Owl came back was R.E.C.K. and Capybara.

Even when Snowy Owl returned, there was nothing that could be said that would make the people I trusted ditch me. While it doesn’t seem like I was at the forefront of these major votes, my desire aligned so closely with the group and the exact outcome I wanted often occurred. I’ve only been on the wrong side of the vote twice, once to vote Butterfly in honor of Leopard Seal and the other to vote Dog instead of Axolotl for sympathetic reasons.

Conclusion:
All in all, I placed my utmost trust in Capybara and Kestrel and am very pleased that we could sit next to each other here. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I just briefly want to address all this talk of being a goat in my final conclusion. It hurt my feelings a lot to hear accusations that Capybara, me, and Kestrel were goats at one point or another. Some of the more hostile interactions were not pointed at me but it hurt the spirit of my game all the same. The three of us did not start in a dominant position, like being in Terra early on, and I was one of the people who met the least amount of players pre-merge. I believe that we three worked very hard to get here in different ways and it hurts for that effort to be callously reduced as someone else wanting to take me to the end because I didn’t play a good game. I was part of enough strategic alignments that I was never in much danger of being voted out. In one of my last conversations with Bunny, Bunny described the merits of all the remaining players. They saw Eagle as a strategic player and respected Rat, who they heaped praise on about being under the radar. I remember they said my best merit was that my old friends in Aquatica would probably vote for me. Bunny had already grouped Capybara in with Frog and Leopard Seal despite Capybara not having been voted out (or ever). This stuck with me for this entire time because it was clear how Bunny (and probably other players) saw me, while I saw Bunny as a brilliant manipulator, Rat as excelling at puzzles and challenges while being social, and Lion as a really nice guy everyone liked (well until the end there, when some unsavory behavior emerged), etc. I had so much respect for the other players here and it really hurt that they did not see me like that. Even in the end, I wasn’t rude to anyone and I didn’t feel the need to call someone a goat for making a decision I didn’t agree with. This type of conversation affirmed that I wanted to sit next to Kestrel and Capybara, two other supposed goats, who I know played their hardest to be here at the end.

Thank you all for a really exciting and memorable game. I would be happy to address things further and answer questions!