YMMV / Marios Survivor Archives

• Base-Breaking Character: Mario Lanza himself is this both in Tonga and The Survivor Historians. Those who don't like him tend to label him a somewhat sanctimonious meandering know-it-all (at least until later seasons of Historians). This is worse in Tonga, where he spends the game being a jerk to everyone. Even worse is the finale where he's unable to comprehend the possibility that Isabella outplayed him because "she reminds him of Amber" and attempts to manipulate the jury into voting against her. His move where he wants to be the deciding vote against her (as he just KNOWS he'll be the star of the story) is painful to watch even to the cast. Others though like his confidence and devotion to good storytelling, and don't really mind being informed on older seasons.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Several of his Funny115 entries have jokes that fill this quota.

  "That's right, Randy Baily was the first person on Survivor to burn his tribe buff. Well, unless you count Mike Skupin."

• Designated Hero: Mario himself has noted how hard it is to nail the correct blend of charisma to achieve this.
  • The Keko tribe in Hawaii (both versions) are pretty much heroes by way of being all Kumbiya about everything and making one or two moral decisions. Meanwhile they consistently consider themselves the better tribe, alienate the world's nicest man Ethan (later saying they never considered him part of the group), and treat Richard as an evil cancer upon the group ruining their innocence by existing. Granted Ahi is an excellent Villain tribe starting from episode 5 onwards, but Keko's nastiness started much earlier than that.
    • Gretchen in the original in particular has an utterly random vendetta against Mike Skupin and was never really called out for it. Though this is pretty Hilarious in Hindsight considering Mike later turned out to be a Pedophile in real life. She's better in the rewrite.
    • Mike Skupin, in addition to being Mike Skupin^note Granted, something revealed long after his Survivor career, is an unintentionally nasty piece of work. From manipulating his tribe with his burned hands, to butchering animals brutally for food, it's hard to see why Mario and Keko like him so much. Especially jarring is that Mike's butchering of a deer (complete with Skull Trophy) is seen as nicer than Richard's fishing, since Richard gets food for strategic reasons and Mike doesn't.
  • Invoked with the Sato tribe, as Mario realized he had to fudge the going ons of their tribe a little to make anyone in Okinawa rootable in the slightest.
    • Hogan in particular has a nasty case of It's All About Me, tanking his tribe's game by backstabbing a tribemate for having different political/religious views (a la Brandon Quinton), then calling the Kamiyan alliance backstabbing jerks once everyone outside his (massive) alliance becomes immune and his name comes up. Giving a David Murphy speech didn't really help matters, nor did switching his jury vote to the least popular finalist at the last second.
  • Also from Okinawa we have Mike Ruff, who's supposed to be the good guy underdog winner... but participates in being nastier than several of the villains, participates in being a dick and bullying people who have no chance of avoiding being voted out, and just kinda floats along getting lucky not to be booted. Despite this, he's really well liked by Mario, who even calls him "the right person to win" so... YMMV.
  • Infamously Elizabeth from Alaska for essentially claiming the moral high ground at every turn, especially against Helen, who she and Tutku were actually responsible for turning against Tuktu.
• Designated Villain: (Luckily Mario likes his villains, Designated or no)
  • Vecepia Towery. She's actually a decent person to everyone, and is pretty much just doing whatever it takes to win the game against people that would never ever allow her to win in normal circumstances. Despite this, she's rather unwarrantedly treated as a despicable villain by Frank, Tina, Colleen, and the narrator that keeps calling her an Eel. It seems Mario agrees however, as she makes several good points about her perceived reputation and undergoes a welcome Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • Isabella Smith in Okinawa actively tries to work with the underdogs while still trying to win, but is pretty much treated as the scum of the earth, despite doing absolutely nothing more villainous than anyone else in the game (sans Lance), even before it's revealed that she was using an alias.
  • In general, several people fall under the old-school survivor theme of "being ready to do anything [voting out the good guys/Lying when necessary/Breaking alliances deals that would end in loss] to win is BAD", which existed early on in the Survivor lifespan. (People gloating about it are generally straight villains though). Examples include Sue, Richard, Alicia, and John from Hawaii, Jerri and Greg from Alaska, Ryan, Jessie, and Tanya from Greece, and Isabella/Emma + Joni from Okinawa.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Greg Buis. So what happens when you take a comedian Cloud Cuckoolander who refuses to let things stay serious from season 1, and throw him into an All-Stars season? Almost everyone agrees he's the best part of the story.

    Greg: "The concept of good and evil is like a light, shining into the water," he finished, pointing off to a nearby lake. "I say it's pointing towards the shore. You say it's pointing towards the middle. I mean, it's all just relative to our perspective. Both of us could be right, for all we know."
    Greg smiled, knowing this was going to piss the producers off to no end. But he wasn't about to be pigeonholed into a narrow category. That was so boring. Sure, he wanted to be the bad guy. The bad guy was always the star of the show. But he wanted to be his own type of villain, on his own terms.

  • CGI Brett from the funny 115 was a throwaway entry, but quickly became insanely popular. If you even know who Brett is, it's probably because of this.

    Mario: "After Brett's third immunity win, this game that was once a joke has now suddenly become interesting. Because all of a sudden this CGI level boss that the editors created to make the storyline better actually has a shot to win the game."

  • Heidi like, knew her personality would make her insanely popular despite her cuteness. In fact she masterminded her being listed here. She even organized things to ensure you'd read this.
• Epileptic Trees: From his Amazon columns...

  Mario: "A reader named June pointed out to me that Heidi kind of looks like a female Brian Heidik. She almost has the exact same face. Remember that after he won, Brian said he would find a way to double his money? You don't think he... paid for some reconstructive surgery... and came back to win again, do you...? And to further the conspiracy, remember that Heidi with a K on the end equals... nah, that can't be true. Can it??"

• Growing the Beard: Alaska. Not that Hawaii was bad, but the writing style is improved, Mario relies less on other columnists, and Greg Buis steals the show. It should be mentioned that Alaska had over a million readers at the time.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Knowing now that Mario Lanza hates All-Stars and loves the season after it (Vanuatu), his comments on All-Stars before the season began are... interesting to reread.
  "This season will be something else. Every boot will be huge. And most every bootee will get some sort of a fan reaction. It will be nuts. It will be bigger and grander in scope than anything we have ever seen before on Survivor and... frankly... I am a bit worried it is going to ruin the next couple of seasons after this. It might be hard to watch a "normal" season of Survivor with nobodies after watching a kickass season with All-Stars. In other words, whatever Survivor 9 is going to be, it is going to have its work cut out for it."
  • In Alaska Varner's final words have him being cheesed at not making the jury again. He wonders if the third time would be the charm for him. No, no it wouldn't. Similarly all Mario's talk about him being the most popular male castaway at the time becomes this after that incident.
    • On a similar note, Mario notes in a prediction Column for Marquesas that Rob was booted in the #7 spot like Jeff Varner and Gretchen Cordy were, and that "there's no shame in being compared to those two players". Jeff Varner is a far less favorable character to be compared to nowadays after outing a fellow castaway.
  • In Hawaii, Lex says anyone who trusts Boston Rob would have to be an idiot. His real life counterpart did, and was burned for it. This line was humorously kept in the remake.
  • Jeez, every single thing pertaining to Michael Skupin (Who did some very despicable things that came to light in 2016). From Mario being absolutely horrified that the producers would dare to not cast him in All-Stars, to the way he writes him in Hawaii, it's honestly a little hard to read some of Mario's material pertaining to him nowadays.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Alaska, Big Tom notes that you need to boil the water to guard from what he calls "Beaver Fever".
  • During his predictions for Thailand, Mario takes note of Brian's athletic ability, describing him as Colby Donaldson in 10 years. Colby Donaldson returned to play in the 20th season of Survivor 10 years after his first showing, and proved to have almost none of his former athletic ability to the point of Memetic Mutation.
  • In Mario's prediction columns for Amazon, every single comment he makes about Jenna turns out to be wrong, including the endless ones claiming she'll be out next. The kicker is the preseason ranking, where he claims she has the least chance of winning out of anyone because an all female team won't have the luxury of keeping weak people around. Try to find a single thing right about that sentence.
  • In the same prediction comments, he predicts that future Survivor seasons will be marked by how many seasons apart they were from Rob C's existence (since they were incredibly strategic that season). As an example, he gives "That was great when Josh won Survivor: Mexico. Remember him? That was four seasons after Rob". Many years down the line, a hispanic man named Josh won Big Brother 19, much to the delight of many fans.
  • In Alaska, Mark Burnett (and by extension, Mario) takes great pride in having a final immunity challenge that even the smartest player is unable to manipulate. Mario apparently believed in this so much that he used it as the final immunity challenge in Okinawa... where the smartest player instantly figures out how to manipulate the challenge to her advantage.
  Alaska: Greg had gone over this in his head and decided that, yes, Helen winning wouldn't be so bad. The only key was to make sure that Paschal -didn't- win. But there was a catch. This challenge was nearly impossible to manipulate. Burnett had outsmarted the nature boy.
  Isabella, on forcing Mike to win the challenge: "You thought this IC was un-throwable and un-riggable and were proud of it. So when I claimed to throw it you didn't like it because it'd mean I once again got you without even trying."
• Narm: Lex's reaction to being voted out, which even the most extreme version of the real Lex might find to be a little overdramatic.

  "Good riddance, asshole," thought Lex, "Enjoy the company you chose to hang out with, you backstabbing creep."
  Narrator: Then he turned his back on John for the rest of his life.

• Never Live It Down: The "Lex/Sue Machete Fight" from the original Hawaii story, a.k.a. the #1 thing Mario vowed to fix in the rewrite.
  Commentary: "Take a big, steaming gawk at this pile of crap"
  "And I'll be waiting right here if and when you decide to come back."
• Shocking Elimination: Has its own page.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: While this is generally averted due to Mario fleshing out most all the characters fairly well in his stories, there are two notable instances of this, that very much vary based on how much you like reading about gameplay. Justified in that these are based off of survivor roleplaying games, which are harder to control.
  • Tonga is more difficult to like than most stories, as the characters are not fleshed out much, and the ones that are booted early on (Tenzil is one of the most memorable characters and he goes out 6th). Combine that with an astonishingly bleak ending and an unrootable winner and you have quite the enigma as far as Mario's stories go.
  • Okinawa is pretty hard to get into from episode 9 onwards, as the rootable characters don't have a chance in hell to avoid being Pagonged, and all the people in power are not very easy to sympathize with, to say the least (the one exception essentially being the jury goat). This is compounded by the winner being a rather hard to like floater, whose win doesn't really please strategists or fans of character development. This isn't quite as bad as Tonga though, as the characters are at the very least fleshed out and memorable.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: From Okinawa, Mike Ruff is polarizing at best despite winning 5-2 over the best strategist in the game. It's not hard to see why, as Mike has some extremely low moments, and isn't a particularly good strategist despite being one of the cockiest people in Kamiya. Of particular note is a scene where he utterly snaps at Matt (An 18 year old while Mike is in his 40s), and drives him into sleeping in the woods after going into a rage. Why? Michelle threw some throwing stars into his Gnome (That he didn't even like) and he assumed Matt was to blame. He then proceeds to monologue about how Matt is toast for daring to damage the Gnome (that he thinks his tribe loves).

  Mike (Directly after the above incident): "Right now Matt is just playing into the little guy's hands. He's turned Mario into the victim, not the culprit. And that's even better. So from this point on... the gnome strategy will take on a whole new dimension Mario has suddenly become our martyr."

• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Lance from Okinawa is liked by Amy and Hogan in-game. Oh, and by the readers for being one of the few people in Okinawa not to be an emotionless Gamebot, Jerkass, Smug Snake, or make a foolish mistake that ends up costing them the game. Everyone in the season however, looks down on him for not being a major strategist and disliking Kamaya's ethics. (Which even Mario Lanza stated were really pushing the envelope)
  • Emma (Isabella in an alias) is hated by absolutely everyone in Okinawa for turning on Kamiya for one vote (Causing them to hate her for the rest of the game), telling Matt she'll flip to them if Amy (The biggest jury threat) isn't in the final 3, and... really no other reason until she realizes her shaky alliance will turn on her the second they get a chance, and she gets Joni out. Meanwhile the readers like her for her Even Evil Has Standards demeanor, making her a bit of an Antihero, as well as her astounding competence.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Mario lampshades this occurring with Vecepia's treatment by the fanbase sometimes:
    • The Hawaii rewrite has a few scenes where Vecepia notes that Tina and Vecepia are essentially the same person, but Vecepia is much more hated and also happens to be the black one... Even Colleen Haskell notices this (using it to mock her in her jury speech), but likes Tina and dislikes Vecepia anyways (Voting for the person who backstabbed her painfully to win over her).
    • In #101 he lampshades this again, along with a few other instances of Values Dissonance.
      Mario: Remember Vecepia, the first black winner of an American reality show?
      Mario: These morons immediately put her into the Reality TV Hall of Shame
• Vindicated by History: You'd be surprised...
  • In Alaska he characterizes Jerri as someone hoping to improve her reputation, and probably failing. He's absolutely right come All-Stars, though luckily she succeeds on her third go-around.
  • Before All-Stars he says Rob won't change the way he plays, and he doubts he ever could. Rob's played a whopping 5 times and they've not changed an iota.
  • He nails how Richard Hatch'd play a second time around. He does nothing, hoping to not make waves, puts effort into staying around on his boot episode, and is taken down by Colby. Yup, that's exactly what happens in Hawaii and All-Stars.
  • In both Hawaii and Alaska, the person least qualified for the title of "All-Star" (Frank Garrison, Silas Gaither) intentionally becomes a Breakout Character from that season. Shii-Ann anyone?
  • He correctly predicts Amber and Jenna as the possible winners (By the final 3, they're the only possibilities)

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