Board Thread:Survivor: Tokelau (Season 14)/@comment-24553600-20160114184929

Hey guys! I want to start off by saying thanks to the hosts for inviting me back and letting me play this season and proving that, given the chance, I wouldn’t be a pre-merge boot again. So, thank you heart emoticon <3.

Coming into the game, I wanted to correct every mistake that I’d made in Canada, and also use knowledge from previous ORGs to really enhance my gameplay and play like I wanted to the first time around. I feel like I definitely succeeded in this initial aim, whether it was being better in tribal challenges, being more approachable and social or having a stronger strategic mindset, and in my opinion the most important aspect on my game: being able to adapt and shape people’s perception of me. A lot of what I did heavily relied on that, and without being able to do that I really don’t think me or Jake would be here, since my skills in that area really helped us both move deeper in the game.

I also took a lot of big risks in the game — voting Julian out when he had an idol, which could’ve backfired. Taking Hunter and Jake to the end too, who a lot of people saw as a pair. I analysed the risks here though, and decided that even though they might have back-fired, they were needed to be done or else I could’ve been screwed. Another example of this is the Tommy vote, voting off the leader of the alliance and getting rid of the glue that held that alliance as strongly together as it was.

To me, each vote-off signalled a whole new game. People this season wanted to make moves, and so whenever a situation came to me, I tried to use it to the best of my advantage. And while I was never really in a lot of positions to make the moves myself in the beginning of the merge, I definitely made myself seem extremely approachable to people so that people would want to move forward with me in the future and make moves with me, instead of making a move AGAINST me and voting me out. That can be seen when Jake flipped to me, instead of wanting to vote me off and make a move against me, he wanted to work with me.

Another example is how I changed my game style to fit how I wanted to be perceived. Pre-merge, I played a huge role in the vote offs that I was apart of and then at the merge, I changed that to a more social and almost naïve and overtly paranoid game style, all the while being calm and collected, so that people wouldn’t see the need to vote me off. But my calmness can be seen in how I handled certain situations, such as the Tommy vote. It was one of the most paranoid and dramatic moments in the game but inside I was controlled, calm and content in how the move had played out.

A huge reason that I deserve to win is the fact that I played hard from the start, from finding an idol on Day 4 to having an alliance with literally every person and still remaining undiscovered. I also kept up a strong social game, having good bonds with everyone Lunata and NuToloa. Alongside the social aspect, I kept up my strategic game and controlled the votes of Nick, Danny and Isaac. I didn’t want to be seen like the kingpin though, so I made sure that when the merge came around I was more under-the-radar. Unfortunately for me, I underestimated Kim though, and after trying to play both sides, I ended up in an 8-4 minority.

This 8-4 minority was a really bad situation, but once again I managed to climb out of it and even made Final 6 with one of the people I was in the minority with, Yannick. As for Danielle and Chris, Danielle’s vote off, I had no part in but I do believe I was saved because of how I made my myself be perceived, and with Chris: I wanted to keep him, but he was too much of a target to have on my side. If he remained, people would continue to take shots at him and since we were aligned, they’d be shooting at me too. I couldn’t risk being caught in the crossfire so I voted him out, showing I was willing to get blood on my hands in order to benefit my game. Chris, I know you’re angry and you obviously have the right to be, but if I played it any differently then I would not be in the FTC right now.

After that, I managed to get a lot of successes and make successful moves — flipping Jake and Hunter, and then blindsiding Tommy, and then after that, blindsiding TSN and flushing Blaine’s idol. After that, the Julian blindside too. Kim had already announced she was going to use her idol but I had suspected she’d had an idol since the Danielle vote, and although voting Julian was a huge risk, it paid off. That move successfully flushed two more idols out of the game, but I couldn’t have done it without Yannick who made Julian feel as safe as possible, so thank you Yannick!

Even at Final 6 when I played my idol and received votes, I only got votes incase Yannick had an idol and was told that I had nothing to worry about, even if it meant going to rocks. Regardless, I was always going to play my idol then, but the reason I told no one about my idol was because I didn’t want it to be spread since my whole merge game-plan was to appear naïve and unsuspecting. After that vote, Kim was too much of a threat and would’ve won the game 9-0-0, so I couldn’t take the risk of her winning Final Immunity.

This last round was absolutely insane but I feel as though it’s a metaphor for my whole game almost. Blaine won immunity and saved himself, and I felt as though I stood a good chance of being voted off. I had worked with Blaine on using Jake as a shield, and it worked because Jake’s name was the one that came up, and once again I found myself in the power position of either tying it up, or making Jake the final juror. Although I feel like there’s this idea that the reason I saved Jake was because Jake controlled me, this was really NOT the case. Voting Jake out crossed my mind a lot, but I felt as though people who were mad at me and didn’t want to vote Blaine would’ve voted Hunter, but at the same time people who were mad at me were also mad at Jake. Jake also hurt more people with his outbursts, opposed to Hunter who never pissed anyone off (apart from Chris). I wasn’t even talking to Jake that much during this vote though, showing he had no part in saving himself. It was solely me who allowed him to get here, not the other way round.

To conclude, the thing that always saved me was my ability to adapt and use whatever presented itself to aid me, alongside being able to shape people’s perception. I was always ready to make a move and never afraid to take risks, constantly playing the best game I could in the situations that I was in. I was in the minority at the merge, but broke the majority alliance and put MYSELF on top, I had an idol that never needed to be used until the last possible round, and even then it didn’t need to be used. I never once had immunity or needed to be saved and like I just said, even when I did use my idol and theoretically had ‘immunity’, I wasn’t going to be voted off anyway. I fought the whole way through this game by being social and manipulating people’s perception, and I believe that would be a more deserving and more fitting end to this fantastic season’s story, and hence why I deserve to win.

Thank you jury for playing with me, and good luck making your decision smile emoticon :).  