Early Show Transcript
March 19, 2004
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RYAN: Hello, fellow Lanzafans… and welcome to the distorted version of reality which I call home. Two quick
things:
Firstly, I had some 20+ questions to answer. I pared it down a little and tried to be brief, so you can ask me
to answer some of the questions in greater detail in my forum, rather than in this particular thread. I will be
more than willing to expand on my thoughts.
However, although I have attempted to be brief, it is difficult to summarize my thoughts in many cases. Please
be patient with me when I do run on.
Secondly, give yourselves a pat on the back. The constant attention from fans of this story, whether it be negative
or positive, has made each of the 16 of us feel like minor celebrities, to say nothing of how Mario must beam with
pride to see his project receive so much attention. Trust me, it’s a great place to be.
Ok, on to the interview…
QUESTION: On day one, who would you say you thought could take it home on Kamiya, and who did you think
would be the first booted?
RYAN: Before “Danigate” I thought it was going to be Murtz to take the first train out of Kamiya, simply
because I had it in my mind to approach Chris about removing him from the 5 in favour of Emma. I wanted to keep
a closer eye on her, as well as to resolve the gender imbalance of the original arrangement, which I was already
uncomfortable with.
As it turns out, that precognition of mine was dead on, as the perceived sexism has since been pointed out many
times as a strike against the “3 Amigos” sub-alliance. Mike was the other option for removal from the “5” alliance,
but not one to my liking.
And Danielle was my original choice to take the title. Surprising, isn’t it? She may have come across as a bit
odd both in the game and the story, but she also had a great spirit about her, an understated charisma I thought
others would warm up to in time. I certainly had. As it turns out, I was among very few who did while still in-game.
QUESTION: Going all the way back to Danigate, what was your perspective on the whole scenario? Why did you
ultimately find Chris and Michelle more trustworthy in determining how that vote would go?
RYAN: Voting with Chris and Michelle was not a matter of trust. It was a matter of cowardice. In fact, the
entire Danigate situation can be singled out as one of Kamiya’s most cowardly moments. And while that statement
is bound to ruffle some feathers, let me justify it:
First, we had Chris, Michelle, and Joni, who wanted to take out Murtz. They didn’t.
Bock, bock, bock…
You had Danielle, Mike and Murtz who, at one point along with me, wanted to take out Chris. Did we? Nope.
Bock, bock, bock…
Then there was me, who was vacillating between wanting Emma gone and wanting to tell her I knew she was full of
it with her “Tee hee, I’m just a silly little girl” routine and offering her a final 2 deal if she would only open
up to me. Did I do any of that? Nuh-uh.
Bock, bock, Ba-cawwwwk!
Ultimately, Danigate was simply a stalling tactic so that the rest of us didn’t have to face off against one another…
yet. The pent-up frustration at being able to accomplish none of the above was also a root source of the ugliness
that ensued. Danielle was an undeserving victim of the Hamlet-esque inability to act on our impulses that the rest
of us all possessed to a point.
And Danielle, since I know you’re reading… I’m truly sorry for my part in that dark chapter of Okinawan history.
You really did deserve better.
QUESTION: What were your opinions about the two big twists in this game?
RYAN: Mario will tell you, I loved his twists. Had it not been for Kamiya’s excessive premeditations, the
first one would have thrown us for a big loop. The second… although it expedited my demise, I thought it to be
brilliant. Never would have seen it coming.
As a side note, Joni was originally selected to be “least honorable,” in the first twist. She had no use for the
3 Amigos, and may have made that known to Henry if she had been in that particular position.
With Henry being as susceptible to the feminine wiles as he is, he would have taken her suggestion to bring Mike,
Murtz and I to Sato, I’m sure. I believe that one, often overlooked moment, was one of the many defining moments
of the game, which leads us to…
QUESTION: Do you feel you would have done just as well if you had been sent to Sato?
RYAN: Absolutely. In fact, I may have done better.
You see, one of the major thorns in my side came when Chris was sent to Sato and had the opportunity to spin-control
the Sato tribe’s perceptions of us. It wasn’t as heavily featured in the story, but he managed to trash me pretty
good during his brief stay on their beach, which was a brilliant tactic for him to have employed.
It was also the same tactic I would have used in his stead.
As immodest as it may sound, Chris, Amy, David and I were among the most overtly charismatic players in the game.
Hence the wary respect and fear between David and Amy, and Chris and I in the early going.
Had I been the first to “get to” Amy et al., I think that I would have stood a fair chance of creating the cross-tribal
alliance that Mario’s twist was designed to bring about, and that Chris almost succeeded in forging. Using that,
it would have been relatively easy to fake allegiance to Chris and the rest of Old Kamiya post-merge and then blindside
them at TC.
That having been said, hypothetical situations such as these are always perfect, aren’t they? So take that retro-optimism
with a grain of salt.
QUESTION: Why did you feel it necessary to torture Sato when you had the clear majority from Ep 3 on? If
you were put back in the situation knowing what you know now, would you do it again?
RYAN: Ah, another good question. Okay, there’s two parts to this as well.
1) A clear majority only exists if everyone on the numerically advantaged tribe is united. At this point, I had
been privy to information about Chris & Michelle’s backroom counter-alliance. So I knew we were not united
at all.
By setting Michelle and David up for a firefight, I ensured that she wouldn’t ally herself with them. Ergo the
whole “secretaries” insult. That one simple phrase, when I passed it to her through David’s mouth, sealed the Kamiya
majority you mentioned.
From that point forward, she would not ally with a Sato if her life depended on it. I overestimated Isabella’s
connection to her, but in the end, Bella didn’t make her solitary venture over to Sato just yet.
2) Mike is pretty easy to get along with by nature, and was becoming fairly well-respected at this point. I wanted
to dirty his hands a little in case I needed to distance myself from him down the road. So, from that fertile soil
came the idea of having him play the swing vote. While he was happy to do it initially, in the long run, it set
him up to be the bad guy when he ultimately “flipped back” to us.
Dealing with someone you know is out to get you isn’t appealing… but it’s far more appealing than dealing with
someone you didn’t know was out to get you, and who backstabs you out of left field. It was a valid theory, and
I would do the same thing over if I had to… albeit perhaps not as confrontationally.
QUESTION: Who were you trying to set up more? Mike or Emma? Which one did you think was a bigger threat?
RYAN: Mike and Emma are both huge threats in their own right. Unlike the players I singled out above as
overtly charismatic, the two of them possessed a more subtle charisma that you only noticed if you got in real
close. Matt was a good example of this power of theirs… at this point in the game, he had been drawn in by both
of them at one time or another, with varying degrees of success.
I believe I was among the first to single out Isabella as a threat, and I still believe her to be the greater threat
of the two, due in no small part to my swift and unexpected ejection from the island.
However, I believe that I spent more time trying to set up Mike. I saw no future in our original pact, and even
after Murtz was voted out, I still believed that the further dissolution of the original Boys Club was necessary
to regain my standing with the other original Kamiyans, especially Michelle.
Speaking of whom…
QUESTION: It seemed like you'd love to play mind games with Michelle since she did play the game with her
emotions. Do you think if the Satos were to target Michelle you would have sided with them?
RYAN: I have to say, because she takes so much flak, that Michelle’s reactions were among the more genuine
in the game, admirably so. There was nothing rehearsed about her, and she wasn’t pretending to be someone else.
She was just Michelle. However, Michelle is a loosely-bound bundle of pure, unfiltered emotions, which makes her
a manipulator’s wet dream.
Would I have voted her out at that point? Absolutely not. I had the option to try to sway someone at the tie vote,
and I did not. She was too useful for the preceding reasons, and I would have wanted at least a 2-person majority
over Sato before making a move against another Kamiyan.
…and we’ll revisit that thought a bit later when we get to my thoughts on Isabella’s big move.
QUESTION: After the tie at Tribal Council [where Beth left], what was everyone's response?
RYAN: Mike was the first to react, and he let me have it. However, I was patient with him, deflecting the
blame to Emma as much as I could. He may never have fallen for it, but he did begin to theorize that the tie may
have been our “secret punishment,” among other things. Yay me. That fragment of a doubt was all I needed to get
back in with him.
Michelle I didn’t worry about. While she was deservedly angry, she also knew she needed me for the time being.
Isabella’s reaction didn’t concern me, since it was “too soon” for her to make her move. (Whoops!)
To Matt, on the other hand, I was playing Prodigal Son. I came one step shy of doing to him exactly what Isabella
did, and offering him a pact. I have been told, after the fact, that I underestimated my influence on him at the
time. Had I offered him a deal at that point, it may very well have been Isabella writing this missive at the moment.
QUESTION: At what point did you stop seeing Isabella a threat and more of an annoyance? Can you pinpoint
it to one specific moment?
RYAN: I wish I could pinpoint it to an exact moment, but it was too gradual and subtle a change to nail down
precisely. If you had seen all of my “Emma Dilemma” confessionals, you can almost chart the progress, though.
Although Isabella was at the centre of my radar screen at all times throughout the game, the terror alert on her
somehow dropped from red to orange to yellow to green without any obvious reasons for so doing.
QUESTION: What's your take on Isabella and Murtz's strategies of playing the game under false names?
RYAN: I had figured out that Dave Roth wasn’t a real name before the game began. Any anonymity boost Murtz
gained from that decision was nullified by his overzealous strategizing and rampant paranoia. However, it never
affected my opinion of him afterwards. He’s a great guy, a memorable character, but perhaps a little bit too afraid
of the perceptions of others.
I was a bit dismayed to see Isabella had returned when I first learned of her identity. However, moreso than Murtz,
she required the anonymity of a nom de plume. She wouldn’t have made it beyond the first vote otherwise. I’ve since
warmed to the idea of her involvement in the game. In fact, you could call me a fan.
QUESTION: After being duped by Isabella, and after reading the episodes and seeing how she played, do you
feel differently about her than you did while you were playing?
RYAN: In the game, I was convinced that she was a stealthy strategist just waiting for the ideal time to
make her move. However, I eventually came to the wrong conclusion, assuming that she was just too timid to make
that move, and let my guard down. Then the axe came. Whoops.
However, post-game, I can see that she was a stealthy strategist just waiti… er, no. No, my opinion hasn’t changed.
Although I do show her more respect these days.
QUESTION: At the time, did you think it was a good move by Isabella to vote with the Satos, or did you think
that she should have at least waited for later to get rid of you?
RYAN: I give her credit for making what was definitely THE power move of the game to this point. While you
can criticize the timing, you have to understand that at this point, despite the general wariness that followed
me around like a shadow, I was in a prime position.
Remember: my main ally, Mike, had inroads with Matt, I had inroads with Amy, and Michelle, with whom came Joni,
was constantly reassuring me that I was the only person she would be able to face in the final 2 and have a hope
of beating. Whether her intentions were legitimate or not were of no concern to me at the time. It was a temporary
salvation from her wrath, which was invaluable at the time.
So, for her, it was a good move, although I agree when I see others question the timing of the move. That having
been said, she may not have had time to wait… but that’s another question. See below.
QUESTION: If Emma had been the target of Sato at that TC instead of you (as Matt was hoping for)... would
you have voted for her? And if not, when and how did you plan to take her out?
RYAN: I would not have made a move at that point… but I would have made a move at the very next vote, when
the original Kamiya tribe would have had a 2-person majority.
The similarities between Isabella and I are a bit eerie at times, and this was one of those times. We both wanted
to eliminate Amy. We each had a vendetta to remove the other. Finally, we were each planning to do it in that exact
order. Once Amy was gone, we were each going to eliminate the remainders of what was once Kamiya one by one.
And, as you may have inferred from my final words, we had each planned to use Matt at the key to our success.
If it had not been for the multiple immunity twist, the next episode would have been epic. The all-out crusade
we each would have launched would have turned the game into an all-out battlefield. Unfortunately for me, she beat
me to the punch.
QUESTION: It seemed a lot of your schemes were just as much for your own amusement as they were any strategic
purpose. When you entered the game, were you willing to lessen your chances of winning if in return the other players
considered you dangerous? In short, were you more interested in your game play being admired or actually winning?
RYAN: Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur!
(The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived!)
I was acutely aware at all times that this was a story, a show, whose purpose was to entertain. So yes, not unlike
a few other Okinawans, I played to the cameras a fair bit. My confessionals were thought out in advance, and written
in a way that I knew would fit the player and character I was to become.
That having been said, if my game play was admired, so much the better, but my driving purpose in Okinawa wasn’t
to achieve that admiration. It was to win.
I had a fair strategy that I think would have taken me much further had it not been for Isabella’s bold stride
forward. Otherwise, my style of play may not have lessened my chances of winning at all. I was seen as a wild card
in the deck, much by my own design. As other players began to count my uses to them, so too did they forget my
uses OF them.
QUESTION: Looking back, what would your ideal tribe of 8 be? Would you keep it naughty, or nice, or a mix
between?
RYAN: Strategically, my ideal tribe would consist of three people who could be considered expendable, two
dyads which each contain one person with whom I have a fairly good bond, and myself.
With that in mind, in the game I would have chosen Hogan, Henry, and Chris as the expendable three, for the sole
reason that they wouldn’t be likely to form any sort of bond amongst themselves.
As the two dyads, I would have chosen Mike and Murtz, and Amy and Beth. I feel I could have swayed any of the four
of them away from their partner if need be, once it got down to the endgame.
However, from a non-strategic perspective, my ideal tribe would have been Chris, Michelle, Amy, Matt, Beth, Mike
and Murtz. That tribe would have been a blast to be a part of… no offense intended to the other 8 Okinawans!
QUESTION: There's a rumor going around that some of the other players thought you were playing a false identity.
Who did they think you really were, and why?
RYAN: Heh.
Isabella had convinced herself by day 4 or 5 that I was Rob Cesternino playing under alias. She had a list of similarities
ranging from personality traits to strategic parallels. It has been mentioned to me on several occasions that she
was so deceived by her own imaginings that she was convinced the All-Stars cast list had to be a fake.
It’s a heady compliment, and it may have contributed in some small way to her obsession with eliminating me, although
I certainly gave her other reasons, I’m sure.
Feel free to ask her about it in her upcoming Early Show interview… I’d be curious to know more of the details
myself.
QUESTION: There is no question that you played over-the-radar. What do you think about that style of play
and is under-the-radar the only way to win the game?
RYAN: Despite the alarming trend set in the past few seasons of Survivor, I don’t believe it is impossible
for a bolder player to win this game. Eventually, the backlash against the less strategic, or less overtly strategic
players will come.
Mario will be the first to tell you that the post-Cesternino game of Survivor results in the stronger players being
picked off before they can reach the endgame. However, it was brought up a few times in Okinawa that the stronger
players ought to bond together so that the UTR or follower-type players wouldn’t sneak through.
I feel that it is a way of thinking that will manifest itself in the very near future on the show itself. Just
wait for it.
QUESTION: What one moment are you most proud of in your game?
RYAN: I think I would have to say that winning the Codebreaker reward challenge for Kamiya in the early
going was my proudest moment. I kept waiting for another mental challenge, and another one never came… at least
not during my tenure.
I excel at puzzles and mindbusters like that. While I only beat Henry by 7 seconds in the challenge, here’s something
to consider: Because I tend to second-guess myself, I did it twice to double-check my results before I submitted
it.
QUESTION: What are your thoughts on the other players that made it to the merge with you?
RYAN: Matt is a great kid, who reminds me very much of myself at his age. He has a bizarre, deadpan sense
of humour which is bang-on with my own.
Amy is as personable as she is intelligent, and there are two damn good reasons that both David and I, observant
as we are, felt threatened by her.
Hogan is nothing at all like his character once you get to know him. Outside of the game, he and I have had incredibly
interesting (and too few) conversations ranging from the differences between Canadian and American politics to
our perceptions of the game. He’s another one to watch out for in the real world. I can’t wait to say that I knew
him when…
Lance takes a beating for his straight-up style of play, and that’s too bad. He deserves better. While I have only
had one in-depth conversation with him, he was a great listener, knowledgeable and honest. There are too few people
like that out there.
Michelle, as I said above, is the personification of Polonius’ admonition: “To thine own self be true." Bless
her, she’s great.
Mike is almost fatherly, and yet not unlike a best friend at the same time. He is one of the players I most respect
on a personal level from having played alongside him.
Joni and I had a very deep conversation soon after the merge on our faith and religion in general, and I understand
fully her need to prove herself to the world. However, the omnipresent chip on her shoulder became tiresome very
quickly, she was rarely if ever online, and of all of the Okinawans, she was the one I connected with the least.
Still, I hold no grudges… and wish her well.
And I’ve said enough about Isabella already… you must know by now how I feel about her, so let’s move on!
QUESTION: Do you ever regret any of your actions in the game?
RYAN: Yes. There were moments in which I crossed a line which I was partially oblivious to while still playing,
and the real-life emotions of others were affected.
It’s a mostly anonymous text-based game we played, after all. I have no doubts that I would be unable to do a lot
of the things I did in the game to the faces of the people I played with. With that in mind, Beth, Danielle, David,
while they have heard it before, have my apologies if any of my machinations affected them in their real lives.
In the end, though, it WAS a game; one which I played in a manner I believed would succeed. Had it not been for
one split-second decision by a cunning adversary, I believe I would have been putting to good use the jury arguments
I had been preparing.
Even so, there was no need for some of the excesses that came to be.
QUESTION: How come you didn't mark your ballot at the last TC?
RYAN: Well, this is goint to be another of my famed two-part answers:
1) I had never agreed with the whole marked ballots thing. I humoured Murtz because, well... because he's Murtz.
Those are the sort of concessions you have to make for a guy like that.
However, at this point, it was unneccessary. Either you saw the logic in playting by the numbers or you didn't.
If someone was going to turn, as Isabella so bravely did, they were going to do so whether we marked our ballots,
wore matching t-shirts, or held hands to the voting booth.
So I didn't bother marking my vote. They would have known I had voted with them by process of elimination anyway.
2) I really, really, didn't want to vote Matt. That was a bit of a subtle protest. However, by that point, Amy
and I had come to a player's agreement and had informed one another that we would be voting for each other, along
with our alliances. I knew that voting for Matt was the only option I had to avoid a tie or worse.
QUESTION: What, if anything, has surprised you about seeing your character in print?
RYAN: Nothing at all, although I was surprised to hear myself described as the “greatest athlete on Kamiya”
at one point. While I am extremely competitive, I am not in my high school shape, when I could still run track.
Otherwise, every other detail of my character was, in fact, the way I played the game. Does it reflect who I am
in real life? To a certain extent, yes. In other respects, not at all. However, it is definitely who I was for
a month or two in the fall of 2003… Mario captured it perfectly, as is his wont.
In the end, this was an experience that I will freely admit is one of the most incredibly entertaining things I
have done in my life. That could be a great compliment to Mario, especially, as well as his predecessors, Rafe
chief among them, who have put so much time into constructing these online game simulations.
It could also be a depressing assessment of my lack of interesting experiences. *laughs* I prefer the former, but
as always, I leave the final judgment to all of you, with my thanks for being a part of the experience that is
Survivor: Okinawa!
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