Duncan's Speech (All-Stars)

When I came back for All-Stars, I never expected I’d find my way back to the finale. And now that I’m here, I just have to start by thanking everyone for playing such an incredible game. Even if some of us were never on the right foot, playing with you all throughout these last four seasons has been a pleasure and created some of the best moments and friends in my life . I could go on for hours singing the praises of each and every one of you, but Chris said something stupid about having to fit within the runtime or whatever, so…let’s get on to why we are sitting here.

You are here to award one of us three the million dollar prize and crown of the Total Drama Superstar. To all of you, I’m sure this means different things. Some may say it’s just a million dollars. Others may say it’s who played the strongest game this season. And very few might be bold enough to say the winner of this season is the best person to ever play this game. I’m here to mainly appeal to those latter two camps.

Let’s start by talking about my status coming into this season. As I’m sure you are all aware, I took home the million dollars in the very first season. In WT, I was one spiteful GF away from potentially winning another season. And even in my “worst” season, I made the merge, despite for all intents and purposes getting royally screwed the tribe swap, made worse by a never ending losing streak that I’m sure anyone else here would probably fail in finding a way to survive. **My statistics were so good coming into the season, that I tied Heather for the highest average ranking…without needing to return twice.** I mean no offence, but look at the averages, and it’s not really that close of a race. If this comes off as rubbing salt into the wound, I apologize. But it’s the context for the most important question is: **the fudge did I not get a single vote cast against me all season, let alone convince any of you that I should be allowed to sit in this chair?**!

Coming into this season, I knew **I needed some shields to protect me**. To keep the target off myself. As soon as Beth and I finished signing the paperwork, I went around talking to Brick and Noah.**I expressed interest in forming a winner’s alliance**, learning from my mistakes that thinking going to the end with strong non-winners was a recipe for a two-time winner. I was already with Beth anyway, so this move only made sense. Yet I only expressed the idea. Truly, I didn’t care if there was an actual Winner’s Alliance. I just needed to establish individual bonds with each of them. Noah making it something more official for me only expedited the process of information gathering.

But it’s not like us winners were placed on the same team, to begin with. I was only with Brick, someone I barely even knew coming into the season. You have no idea how many hours I spent cultivating not only our alliance, but our friendship. I’ve always played this game in a duo, to bounce ideas off of. In Island it was Geoff, Action it was Beth, WT it was Justin. **And once Brick showed me (as Duncan) they had the idol, I knew Brick was the person I would be closest to in this game.**

However, I didn’t leave my old bonds by the wayside. Zoey, Sam, and Dawn were a known trio back on their debut season, so I played into that fear. **I brought the guys alliance from WT (Justin, Geoff, and myself) back together.**With Katie and Brick, I reinforced the idea of the Maggot trio being most loyal to themselves, and them being dangerous to keep together, and it would not be smart to allow their minority alliance to make it far in the game. After establishing that though, **I tried talking to both Dawn and Sam**. I knew I had the biggest target in the game, so I went to Dawn, another big target, to form another alliance. I intended for that alliance to be my back-up plan in the “if everything goes to hockey in a handbasket due to idols*scenario. '**If you take a closer look,**I had relationships with every single member of my team sans Zoey, who was my first target anyway.**As you see, it wasn’t fool-proof, but I was already starting to gather the pieces I needed to run this game in any possible outcome.'***

I won’t deny that going on **an early winning streak** alongside the other Hamsters did nothing but help my game, and if you are here for an underdog story, I’m not going to provide it. However, just because I wasn’t voting or UFE myself, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t involved in every vote. Remember, **I had allies in Noah and Beth**. **They were informants for me.** Beth even told me that she formed a final three with Molly and Dakota, information that was, quite frankly, determinantal to her game to tell me of.

That brings me to what my actual objective in the pre-merge was: **undermining Beth at every possible opportunity**. You see, Beth was my girl, and I loved her. But once I learned of that alliance, I realized that Beth was trying to play the same game as the previous season: girls to the end**.** That was **a** **bad thing for the guys on this island, as we** **entered the game down 7-9**. So my goal was to eliminate as many possible allies of Beth as possible come merge. And guess what? In the tribe swap, **I convinced everyone that Dakota was going to take Dawn’s place in the trio and voted her out.** **I supported the Hamsters throwing the challenge** **in “Nobody Eggspects Any Opposition so we could vote out Katie** before she could reunite with Beth in the merge. And while Zoey made the vote so much easier by suggesting it herself, **Brick and I’s intention was to target Molly** anyway.

And that brings all of you to the big question: why did Beth and I break up? Was it a game move like it was to Beth during WT? I bet both of us will give different answers. I told Beth going into the season that I wasn’t happy with her after last season. We mended things as best we could, but I just couldn’t forget the way she treated me like a tool the whole time. And yet, it felt like for most of this one she did the same thing. It’s the exact reason why I went after Katie, Molly, and Dakota. I know the three of you are probably very annoyed at me for my involvement in your eliminations, but please understand that it was entirely to make sure I wasn’t burnt again like I was in WT.

Beth, realizing she had a major target on herself as the Vultures started to dwindle down, broke up with me. I know on her end it was entirely game. On mine...no. **My hostile reaction to the break-up was, while exaggerated, exactly how I felt.** But because of the winner’s alliance, I couldn’t turn on Beth when I wanted to. **I knew for my game that Beth was the best possible shield I’d have, so I needed to maintain my game relationship with her**, even if I wanted to back-stab her first chance I got.

**Going into the merge, I was protected on all sides.** My guys alliance with Justin and Geoff would keep me safe within the Hamsters majority while the Winner’s Alliance would keep me safe from being the Vultures target coming into the merge. It was supposed to be a simple ride to the endgame, and it became a lot more complicated. I went to talk to Zoey about the target, trying to throw her off the scent that she was who I actually was voting. Yet she surprisingly confronted me, already knowing my vote. Turns out Sam ended up leaking the information to Zoey, breaking my trust. It was publicly known that Zoey wanted to take a shot at me for merging three times, so I needed to do something in case she could miraculously get the numbers to take a legitimate shot at either me or someone from the Winner’s Alliance. And that’s when I told Zoey about Sam playing both sides. **I convinced Zoey that the heart of all her problems in this game weasSam’s fault.** It’s a good thing too,because Sam was planning on a coup against Beth, who, as I explained, was someone I couldn’t afford to head home at that point in the game. So **I encouraged Zoey to call Sam out to others to paint a target on his back moving forward**. Quite simply ,Zoey, I wanted to send Sam home, but I wasn’t willing to risk rocks over you.

And going into the final eight, the number of winners equaled the number of non-winners. We would’ve had the ability to deadlock a vote. Added in Noah and Beth’s alliance with Bridgette and my alliances with the guys, and I thought things were still generally going according to plan. But as Brick and I were having a conversation about how to move forward and the dynamics of the game, we realized that Noah also had every single base covered. You see, back during “Suckers Punched”, Noah told Brick and Imeto take out Beth. Of course ,we didn’t listen, but we had assumed that he was just worried about being the easy target. Together though, we quickly deduced that Noah’s plan was to use his alliances with Geoff, Justin, Sam, and Bridgette to force a tie, flipping against Beth in the re-vote to limit the amount of blood on his hands. We also deduced how the breadcrumbs of the three Beth votes last time also seemed to lead back to him.

Was it an explanation full of holes and largely conjecture? Yes. However, at this point I was losing trust with Justin. He felt like he was on the outs of a majority alliance, and I couldn’t afford to lose that bond. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. **Beth may have come out with the accusations against Noah, but it’s Brick and Imewho told Beth about all this and encouraged her to do so**. While it did expose the winner’s alliance, it got out one of the few people able to rise against me.

So now we are in the final seven, there is a known winner’s alliance of three, and you’d expect us to be the minority. While Brick and Beth both received votes as they were targets (the prior due to suspicions they had the idol and Beth due to her already massive target), we somehow forced a tie between Geoff and Bridgette. What happened? Brick had played the idol due to everyone distancing themselves from him during the challenge, giving us some breathing room. **We decided to use the opportunity to lower suspicion we were still working together by having me campaign against Brick.** I started with Geoff, and it didn’t really work. After that, I decided to take a bit of a risk: telling Bridgette that Geoff voted Brick.**I convinced Bridgette and then Sam to maybe flush Brick’s idol, but in reality, we were gathering the tropes to take a shot at the power couple**. Originally, we realized that with Beth’s girl-power duo with Bridgette, the only realistic option was voting Geoff. Once the idol came into play though, that target shifted to Bridgette, to cut off Geoff and Beth from their most powerful ally. And the split vote worked. Bridgette, one of the most dangerous and well-protected people in the game at that point, went home because of my plan with Brick.

Another quick thing to note at this point was that **Justin, Brick, and I had formed an official final three pact,** a way to gain Justin’s trust back, but also something I was the most loyal to. This was proven when Beth went to Geoff about saving themselves and Sam by voting Justin out. Beth also tried to bring me in on this plan, but the idea of leaving Geoff and Sam together in this game made me uncomfortable, especially since both parties stopped talking game with me after Bridgette’s departure. That’s when Brick and I publicly came out about voting Geoff. After this, Geoff came to me to apologize about neglecting our relationship. He’ll be able to tell you if it was legitimate or just an effort to stay safe, but **I convinced Geoff to vote out Sam**. And once again, like was common in this season, **I told Beth to publicly call out Sam**, focusing the target on her but securing the votes due to the winner’s alliance. And so, Sam, the one person in the game who was the biggest wildcard and therefore threat to my game, went home.

Going into the final five, **I hadn’t had a single vote cast against me and voted in the majority every single time.** Justin can only claim the prior. Combined with the three previous games, nobody should’ve wanted me in the finale. And yet it was unanimous. **Every single person (Beth, Brick, Geoff, and Justin) all voted to send me into the seat I’m sitting in.** Even if I hadn’t gotten all those votes, I’m positive that in almost any scenario I survived the auto-elimination, I’d be sitting in one of these chairs because **my social game was that strong.**

But...that doesn’t mean I didn’t make another important power-play at the final four. You see, before Geoff went to cast his vote for who to join us in the finale, I pulled him aside for a small chat. Beth was a clear threat. Plain and simple. She survived till the endgame, and many players had expressed how impressed they were with Beth’s ability to survive thus far. Some had even gone as far to say that I was just a minion of Beth. I couldn’t sit here in the finale with her and expect to have a serious chance at winning, especially with my other opponent being Geoff.

Yet...Geoff intended on initially taking Beth with him out a sign of thanks and loyalty for protecting each other at final six. Let’s be honest people, if Geoff did that, he’d have handed Beth the million dollars because all it would’ve done is prove that perception. **So in a last ditch effort, I explained why taking Justin, despite their relationship falling apart mid-season, was Geoff’s optimal move.**

Is Geoff’s openly horrible read on the game and intention to make a bad move that costs him the game the sign of the best player to ever play the game? Is Justin’s game, that of largely being a pawn for my own game, deserving of the title of best player to ever play the game? I don’t think it’s up for debate that, out of anyone sitting in these chairs, I am the most deserving of that title.

**In conclusion, I deserve to win Total Drama All Stars because I came into the season with by far the biggest target on my back and still played a perfect game.** If that rubs some of you the wrong way, or you think I don’t deserve a second million, then you got two other solid options who definitely earned their spots here. But if you want your winner to be someone you can be proud to represent this season, to be someone you can be proud to say best represents this game, I think there’s no other option than myself. Thank you for everything regardless of how your votes fall. It’s been a great ride.

**Winning Speech? Yes (1st)**