Opening Statement
Helloo, I just wanna say I’m really happy to be at FTC and this game has been fun and intense to play, so thank you to the hosts and the whole cast. For this first bit, I’m gonna try to keep it as brief and digestible as possible, but then in response to your jury speeches I’ll go into more detail and essay format for them.
I think I played a good game, throughout pre-merge I was never in danger of going, I was socially connected to a lot of people, and made strong connections with the Uvaha tribe and then strong connections with Zack/Wendy on the swapped tribe which helped me a lot when it came time for merge.
I don’t believe I’ve played a perfect game, I made mistakes through merge with the arguing and people feeling betrayed by me, but still I don’t think that detracts from anything I’ve done in this game. Early merge, despite winning immunities I don’t believe my game has ever relied on them and I don’t think I ever needed them. The majority side was focused on Louise/AJ/Andrea/Keaton and I had a connection with Louise that helped me not be targeted by either side, and helped me not get advantaged/idoled out. During early merge, I managed to stay out of trouble, be social with everyone and also put effort into challenges and the game in general.
I think my main downfall this game was that I had to betray people I was supposed to be allied with earlier than other people may have had to, but also I see this as a testament to my social game in that I managed to form allies with a lot of people and create many bonds. I can also confidently say that with every boot this merge, there were none that surprised me, even if I didn’t vote the correct way, I knew what was happening and was in the know of what was going to happen at the tribal, every surprising tribal, Drew/Zack/Linus/Jim, I knew what was happening where other finalists might not have. Also, something that came in very handy was knowing who had the idols, it allowed me to know what was going to happen with the Drew blindside, and then more recently, it allowed me to plan around being blindsided at F5 by Alex.
To go into more detail about the last few votes, with the Linus blindside that I was in on, I voted Linus because at that point it was obvious to me that Linus didn’t want me to make FTC and was waiting to vote me out. Then, the reason I voted Louise was because there was already a consensus that Louise making it to the end would have been impressive and against the odds, it felt like a safe vote and a smart one. Then at F5, it wasn’t the ideal situation to vote out Jim, Andrea, Wendy and I had planned to vote out Alex and the only reason it didn’t happen was because of the fact he had an idol which he told me about. The three of us worked together to blindside Jim and make sure Alex used his idol on himself to negate 0 votes again.
This is probs already too long so I'm just gonna finish by saying I feel that instead of winning immunities to make it to the end I used my social game and connections to keep myself safe even after being called out in the tribe chat, it being repeatedly said that I am a threat and need to be taken out, and even after people feeling betrayed by me.
I’ll be happy to answer any questions about why I voted any way and really anything at all because there’s huge parts of game that I have just skimmed over briefly.