Board Thread:Survivor 26: Chaos/@comment-32145519-20170826122633/@comment-27904923-20170826153512

You hire a clown for entertainment, not for war-time strategy, and once I’d established that persona (accidentally or purposefully—I did really want to play like the love child of Tyson and Fabio), I pretty much knew I could never get taken seriously or convince people of what moves to make. I’m no genius, but here are the things I thought about, wrestled with, and decided to do to enhance my position. If I listed it here, I did it with forethought. If I didn't, I probably just did it for fun.

1. Tell you and Gubbles about the alliance. I saw myself aligned with 5 people that would, in my mind, consider proactive strategy and challenge prowess in high regard. I foresaw this kind of end game scenario—me sitting next to two majority alliance members better at comps than me—and tried to get an early jump on that by creating a counter alliance and convincing you to take Elias out. Strategy: check. Execution: fail.

2. Tying the vote against David to prove I wasn’t in his pocket as others probably rightly seemed to lob at me.

3. Voting Aras twice to label him as a bigger threat—didn’t work, he stayed in til 6.

4. Spilling the beans of my alliance in the tribe chat hoping that the info would put who I saw as the heads of both alliances, Eve and Aras in the crosshairs. Ended up me getting a majority of votes before them.

5. Causing a fight with you at final 9, 7 and 5 to try and remind everyone that you had what I saw as the best swing position almost the entire post merge. They took out Nic before you and Eve, although both times I said shit like “I just want his ass out of here I can’t stand him” it wasn’t like that. I was threatened by you. I only started shit when I legitimately saw that person as my biggest competition and wanted that persons head on the chopping block, even if mine was right there next to theirs.

6. I knew I could coast to the end and lose. I didn’t have those great connections mostly because of how awkward I am. But what I did have in a season called “Chaos” is a propensity to make waves. And every single time I did that, despite saying to basically everyone in pm’s “watch what I’m gonna do just for fun” I wanted my target to be bigger. Here’s why. When you’re not great at challenges, you don’t have tons of bonds and people really never take you seriously (not complaining I walk into that with my talk about threesomes and stuff)—you’re a shoo-in for a lackluster finish to two other people that did more. I did the most, smart or not, to put my mark all over this game. I ensured that my name was never forgotten. I was never silent. I was never vanilla as I could have easily been. And because of that, I earned eyerolls instead of votes for the most part. I earned trust when I shouldn’t have been given it. I was in alliances that I had no part of seeing through to the finals. I was everyone’s goat, and in the end decided to sit next to 2 people who have ZERO argument that they dragged me, because we didn’t even really work together. I was dealt a lucky royal flush, played like I had a pair of 2’s, and watched everyone go all in against each other.