Board Thread:Big Brother 7: All-Stars/@comment-24553600-20180828005443/@comment-24114312-20180828042450

Thank you for this speech firstly and thank you for being open minded. I was worried it was going to be really negative towards me but I really appreciate that it wasn't

Yeah I totally understand why you were frustrated with me. Apart from something with Mackie, my biggest regret in this game is not expanding on our relationship. I remember in the early stages of the game, I said to a lot of people that you were one of my favourite people to speak to and we bonded over not really fitting in on the org, but I think this is a perfect case of when strategic gameplay pushes away people that could get on well on a personal level.

I can justify it for 2 reasons. The first is just logistical and time management. I mentioned this in my 'vote for Jamie' speech, but I was budgeting time for the second portion of the game and I thought that our relationship was irretrievable - I knew you'd been going after me at one point and I openly nominated you with a very public HoH speech naming you as my target. I still don't think there's little that could've been done and I don't think I was ever going to be at the top of your priority list, unlike the people I made sure I went far in the game with, like Nick or Conor or even Brian and Ali. While I definitely was on a different level, I know you mentioned when you were HoH that you just wanted to chill with your girlfriend and I guess I relate to that with my holiday. I wanted to get drunk and enjoy myself and then during my hangovers, when I wasn't sleeping, I had to work on this game and I never thought there would be a long-term alliance on the cards for us.

On top of that, when we did start conversations, as soon as we did, I'd hear something about you targeting me or being close to someone I was against, and it would halt the conversation in its tracks. To me it became a self-fulfilling prophecy - you'd be against me because I didn't talk to you, and I wouldn't then talk to you because I heard you were against me. I knew that the way to solve it would've been to lay everything out on the table and begin from scratch but without a Mackie-Ali sort of blowup, there was no way for that to happen without there being no way for me to know you wouldn't just use my scheming against me, which would probably have been in my opinion the correct move and the move you would've therefore done. I did just think that anything we spoke about had the potential to have been used against me, I didn't see a long-term strategic plan for us together because I viewed this game almost like a square. There were the initial 'sides' of yourself, Ali, Alex, Dom, Eva, etc vs. BAMMN and myself and Conor. But then Conor and I had connections to Dom and Ali, and Nick and Mackie had connections to Alex and you (although you did end up evicting Hannah against their wishes), creating a sort of square. I visualised my targets being people opposite me on the square, because there was no line connecting me to them. Admittedly this was taken a bit far in the way I handled our social interactions, but it was a combination of this and events happening in my real life (such as going on holiday for a month) that created it.

As for the campaigning, I think I misinterpreted but I thought you were asking me if I was going to be campaigning against you, which my answer was no and was truthfully no. At that point, I had already campaigned against you a little bit but when you asked me, I was not intending on campaigning any more than the bit I had already done, which I actually didn't do - I didn't campaign at all after our conversation and I said I wasn't going to. I genuinely think that was just miscommunication but I apologise regardless.

Yeah the distrust itself began when Mackie told me you were going after me early in the game, although I was put on edge about you quite early on when you nominated BAM week 3. It scared me because early HoHs usually target people who weren't big targets, and I had even suggested to do that, which didn't persuade you at all. At that point I was targeting Felix because I knew he was aligned with Nick and Mackie, and as I mentioned, I viewed Nick and Mackie as big targets who didn't need any more people joining their side, so I was hoping to persuade you or hint to you about nominating Felix. You were literally unphased by it and from that point I think I knew that I'd have little sway over your decisions and, it wasn't that I didn't trust you at this point, but it was more so that I didn't think I could manipulate you. Well blatantly I couldn't because I didn't want a BAM member gone that week. And then after that, when you voted out Hannah, this reinforced it to me. Also no one seemed to be targeting you despite you targeting the strongest alliance in the game in your HoH week which I found really weird, so all of that combined made me want to target you. But the initial distrust began with Mackie telling me you were going after me early in the game.

Whether you vote me or don't, your speech is a breath of fresh air and I'm being completely sincere when I say that I do appreciate it a lot so thank you.