Well this is still a tough vote to cast no matter how much I procrastinate with it
My speech/question does a pretty good job of summing up my thoughts on the finalists in the middle of FTC. All of them have holes in their games, holes which the strategy nerd in me finds pretty inexcusable for how inexplicable they are (which basically means I like to think they're errors I wouldn't have made myself, even though obviously I have made plenty of (possibly equivalent) errors of my own). I definitely could/would have done an extra paragraph on each were I not being cute cuddly Sqirtle, too. And there have been a bunch of contradictions through FTC - most notably from Wario, not just in his evolving tracker of which votes he expects to get, but also in the various moving targets he's trying to take credit for. He can't even decide whether he's able to get credit for outlasting me and recognising me as a threat, when he never voted against me.
In fact let's start with Wario, because he's the easiest one for me to rule out of contention for my vote. His behaviour when he left and returned to yellow (and even the way he talks about it now in FTC) crossed lines into personal nastiness, and it could well have doomed him strategically too were it not for Marth's absence and lack of prevote knowledge, and Yoshi's random night offline. Or if I hadn't been willing/able to faux-reconcile and play ball. Hearing more about his perspective on Green has been enlightening, sure, and he's certainly been the most comprehensive in detailing his every action during FTC... but having lots of things to list in hindsight (which both happened and didn't happen) doesn't make a coherent gameplan, and doesn't make up for the numerous things he's blundered into and through all game long trying so many plans and failing to learn his lessons along the way, being transparent and clumsy even when being successful and in control - making alliances without telling people they're in them, hyping up smashball fears against others when he was about to play the thing himself, etc.
Sure we stayed with him, but it was because there were bigger fish to fry, because he was also an easily beatable finalist, and because we were shocked every time he ended up sticking by Yellow. If I truly was a threat to win over Pink jury votes, it was because the greatest part of my bonding with them was mutual contempt for Wario and his shenanigans. I'm still flummoxed that he managed to get sent to the ring at F4 when there were two clearly bigger threats to win, and bemused that he only survived because Falco completely botched two of the three challenges. More than the others, my jury question was throwing a lifeline to him, and he flubbed that too. If I can't feel good about a strategic or a personal vote, I want a fun narrative and a fitting ending for the season, but instead he just dumped a recap of game bulled points on me, hilariously managing to spend more time explaining his mistakes than his growth.
Because I can't sense much growth there, other than picking up on his lowered threat level and still barely getting out of his own way enough to benefit from it - a narrative which he could have explored in my thread, where I'd specifically asked for a story arc and ending, but didn't, instead only mentioning it at the end, claiming that he lowered his perceived threat level going into the endgame simply by willing it so, rather than having actively tanked it earlier in the game. And so the longer FTC has gone on for the less impressed I've been by Wario, and the more reluctant I am to endorse him as a winner. I look forward to reading his confessionals post-game and cringe at the though of his reading mine, but I've just never been able to understand him here and after a month of doubting and second guessing the guy constantly, I guess I'm stuck in the pattern by now and simply can't see how it makes sense for Squirtle's story to willingly end with Wario's coronation. It could be a fun arc I guess from the outside, bitter enemies turned begrudging friends - but that's not a true reflection of how I feel our paths have developed here.
The other two are far more difficult to decide between. Neither of them invites me to vote for them on the basis of the bonds we've built (and in the Captain's case, broken) throughout the game, though Yoshi certainly comes closest. Personally, I'd feel good inside about giving my vote to Yoshi as a friend - just not so good that it outweighs my reservations about his messy social and strategic games, knowing that nobody else in the game has any true respect for the way he's approached this, and knowing that even for me it was a friendship I was highly motivated to make happen in the hope that Yoshi would be a loyal pocket vote for me and easily beatable in the finals. And when 'listening' to Yoshi I was mostly just going along with him when it suited the Captain and I to do so; I never explored options with him in a deep sense, for all that I valued his input in developing the current Yellow plans each round.
So as much as I can try to talk up Yoshi's agency to the jury (certainly I found him to have far more than any of the others care to admit, and likely would have pared back the strategy rants substantially if I hadn't wanted to signal to Yoshi the direction he needs to take in his closing statements) I too have always conceded that his longevity was in great part because even I have presumed to strip him of agency. And if I'm going to nitpick at the Captain's strategic game, I can't overlook the fact that Yoshi's had a far more glaring hole all along, in that it was never going to be a winning one. Which means that on personal/strategic grounds, I do consider the two of them to be even. (I won't rehash my gripes with the Captain's betrayal again, except to say that they still do truly sting, even now that I understand more of why/how it came about, and that for all the wonder of the Captain avoiding a F4 duel I do think he was inviting a game-ending disaster at F5, especially if he always considered his challenge game to be as weak as he's claiming in other parts of his FTC case. One he only avoided because Kazuya happened to be worse, and Wario happened to (in error, IMHO) send Kazuya in instead of Falco, and Kazuya was only even still an option because Yoshi happened to assign the F6 vote split the way that he did, else I might have beaten him in the F6 duel and returned far more willing to send the Captain out than I ever could have been before the betrayal, which in anyn case he only avoided by one closed tab and one point and squirtlehoooooops I said I wasn't going to get worked up again about this didn't I?) Anyhow, I'm a lot more comfortable staying uncomfortable with that and simply conceding that when combined with my personal feelings of who I'd like more to see win, the strategic flaws from Yoshi and the Captain just about even out.
Which leaves me with the story. Not the squirtlestory, but the smashgamestory. What ending can I be proud to have played a role in? I know that my perspective is severely limited and look forward to reading through the actual objective story arcs the smashhosts have been seeing all smashgame long. But from my perspective, I do still want to see Squirtle's journey end in the raising up of another's journey, one that Squirtle can look back upon and squirtlesmile despite all that's happened, and despite the fact that the winning story is not ultimately Squirtle's own.
Yoshi came into this as an extreme outsider, by his own doing. Boldly experimenting with the egg strategy instantly turned half the cast away from him, and beginning in the Ring didn't help things a great deal. He was sent into the ring because he was expendable for red, and because it was more convenient to let him loose when Wario held too many cards on yellow. But he knew his strengths, too. I relate to his use of a shtick as a test of engagement, having done the same thing with my own squirtleshyness at the start. He knew his dueling abilities were perfect in a few specific areas and thanks to the positive side of his egg strategy, and his generally friendly presence (to those of us with eggs, at least), he secured allies willing to bid on the attack sandbag for him - favours he was eventually placed to return as well. And when Squirtle's gloriously dreamy cakewalk through the final few rounds was cruelly sabotaged, Yoshi took the safety sandbag instead.
And I can't not mention that - love it or loathe it - his egg strategy did become a substantial part of the game. Through the first round gossip-spreading, the final red vote, the yellow dynamics, the side war and keeping Wario with yellow, the endgame votes, and even a large chunk of the FTC discussion, even from his opponents (and his opponents on the jury as well). Yoshi is correct in saying that his survival to this point is the most unlik-ely of all the endgamers, and his presence in the game has impacted its course at every stage, if not quite at every turn. He has much to be proud of here no matter how this vote pans out, and all the more so if their ID is as I suspect and this is indeed their greatest ORG success by a long way.
But is it the winning story? Certainly not for a majority of the jury, and I can't overlook that fact that even if I endorse him with my jury vote, he almost certainly won't be receiving enough of the other votes to win. And while I'd still be willing to throw him a vote if I conclude that he deserves it most, I don't feel so great about leaving open the possibility that Wario defeats the Captain because my vote wasn't applied to the balance between the two. I have a sneaking suspicion that Yoshi might feel similarly on that point too. Still, his story is a significant one indeed which I'll always consider a core part of this smashgame when I look back upon it, and even those who aren't quite as happy about that reality will still need to give similar consideration to its weight.
Captain Falcon... I hate to admit it but the guy does have an excellent story too. He's also done a stellar job of noticing it and telling it in answer to my question and frankly blown the others out of the water on that front... as I suspected he might. Unlike Wario, he's done a good job of owning up to his mistakes and incorporating them into his own story. I can personally attest that his relationship-building on blue was rough to begin with, but on yellow he outshone me when it came to Kazuya (plus avoided Wario's temper better too), and when the time came for Robin to take a swing at us, she chose to face Squirtle rather than the Captain. He was spared by the most absurd of miscommunications and misunderstandings on the tietierocks night, in a game where he considered any duel to be a fatal one, then turned it into a strength as he rebuilt with Pyramythra/Falco in a way I never could without (honestly but disingenuously) laying all the blame on Richterrip. By the merge he was a steady strategic presence, able to lean on Kazuya in a way that I though I could, but clearly couldn't, with Falco. And before long he was indeed the last player to avoid the ring, another true strategic force from the blueteam, one I never could have anticipated in the horrifying instant when Richter was eliminated instead of him.
Yet even then he wasn't perfect. I still believe the move against me was too large a risk (and will probably continue to feel this way until/unless I hear that I was definitely the jury favourite even when I'd dueled and he hadn't, and that he had reason to suspect it) but his willingness to admit it might have been a miscalculation he miraculously blundered out of into this ideal F3 configuration, and his inexplicable success in avoiding the ring at F4 - well the more I consider the Sqirtle blindside to be a mistake, the more I dock the personal and social and strategic points I've stewed on for a week now... the more strength I have to assign his story of overcoming that mistake as well, his endgame survival against the odds in the third-to-last round mirroring his absurd early-game survival against the odds in the third round, in the most peculiar of ways.
If the Captain wins this Smashgame, it isn't the story of a perfect mastermind arising as a threat with the ideal timing to strike out for the end, or an underdog fighting back against the greater powers (the narratives most players would like to sit at an FTC and lay claim to). It's the story of a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs, strengths and weaknesses, wonderful plays and idiotic errors both make from the top and also from the bottom. And as much as we all might try to deny it, that's also the story of the smashgame for most of the rest of us - certainly for this Squirtle. Nobody played a perfect game here, and one of the things that irks me most about the cases from the other finalists is their continued attempts to justify all their actions in hindsight, even the ones they claim to regret. Instead of owning up to being messy, causing mess, doubting whether their messes deserve credit or merit forgiveness. And that's the point from the Captain's response to my question that did resonate with me in the end.
The Captain is not the perfect winner for this game, but he is a perfectly fitting one. It's not a vote I can cast with pride, or with a great deal of joy or satisfaction. I certainly wish he'd stumbled less along the way, or done some more learning and thinking so that I could have been sitting beside him, proud to have seen him win even over Squirtle because we'd made it that far together. It's bittersweet to feel that I'm casting this vote over and above all my own internal protestations, rather than out of real loyalty or real admiration. But I do think that when I look back on my time in the smashgame, the story of Captain Falcon will be the one that best caps (squirtlesnort) off all the smashgame stories, including my own - and perhaps all the more so for that uncomfortable ambivalence, even to the bittersweet end.
Rest assured that your legacy in the game is defined more by the work that went into almost winning than the low moments that followed.
