Board Thread:Survivor 29: Hallasan/@comment-5277627-20180109074830/@comment-31430415-20180109163330

 Hi Blake, thank you for your speech. I appreciate the complete honesty no matter how much it hurt to read, and I hope that my answers are able to do it justice. I’m going to go through and respond to what you said to me before I get to the conclusion itself, because I think you brought up a lot of points that are worth explaining and apologizing for.

Regarding the vote on me when Max left:  I didn’t believe that your vote on me had a strategic motive. I knew it was completely emotion-driven and that’s why it made me wary. As you can tell by the cold way I played this game, I try to keep an unbiased mind when making decisions and not let emotion impact my game performance, and when I feel like my allies’ games are over-emotional and likely going to hurt my own game, it tends to concern me. And that’s why I had the reaction I did to your vote on me. I promise you I never thought that you had an ulterior motive for it, or were out to get me because of it, and I apologize for my poor wording of my reaction to the event in my speech. I used the term forgave because you apologized to me multiple times for the voting me afterwards. I was just referencing the interaction that took place between us, and I’m sorry if it came off as me acting like you did a horrible thing requiring forgiveness.

Regarding the Daniel vote:  You were right that I acted like a dictator towards you, and I’m sorry. I didn’t talk to you in a way that I would like to be talked to, and that’s something I regret heavily because you didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. I was upset because it felt like two rounds in a row had gone by with you making emotion-driven decisions, and the way that I reacted towards it was absolutely poor.

Regarding my fakeness:  I was absolutely sincere in saying that I was sorry you had a poor experience. You are the person I have the most regrets with because I feel you were the only person I genuinely lost my temper towards, and that’s not a side of myself that I like. I apologize that you had to see that. To touch on me telling other people that I thought you were annoying; this wasn’t done 100% for personal reasons. When I vented to Cam and Jake, yes. I was frustrated, and upset that it didn’t feel like you valued my opinions during the Dan vote when from my perspective I thought that Donnaeko was voting you the entire time (I’m not sure if this is true now--I’ll mention it in my next paragraph about my rudeness). When I spoke to Zach about it, I was mostly trying to make myself appear like I wasn’t Jinan-strong and that I was willing to work with anyone.

Regarding my rudeness:  Like I said about the Daniel vote, I apologize completely for my dictator-like behavior. I have no excuses or explanations. I was rude, and I’m sorry. Regarding one point specifically:  “You insisted over and over again Daniel was voting for me, but Daniel was only voting for me because you fed him my name (and even if you didn’t, you were involved in it). You guilt-tripped me and made me feel even worse than I already did, by insisting that I was going to get idol’d out and it was my fault, because Daniel knew to idol himself. You knew Cammy had the idol and you just tried to make me feel shit.” I never fed Daniel your name, or talked about the vote with Daniel at all for that matter. I was involved in it because Cammy had told me that that was who Donnaeko wanted to vote, so when I spoke to Zach I knew what to say. As far as I know, your name didn’t generate from me, and I apologize if that’s not true and I unintentionally put you in the line of fire. Also: I did not know Cammy had the idol. Cammy told me she had the idol during the Jake vote when she asked me if she should be playing it. She did such a good job at the merge tribal of acting like she was worried Sam/Dan had an idol that I was essentially completely convinced that she didn’t have it, and when the vote was successful I assumed Felipe had it. I promise you that I did not freak out for no reason, I was legitimately worried that you were idoling yourself out by talking to Daniel and I didn’t want that to happen. If you ask Cammy or Jake, I’m pretty sure I freaked out in both their PMs over an idol as well because Daniel had found out Cammy was voting him and I was literally like “WELL WE’RE FUCKED HIM OR SAM ARE IDOLING HIM”. That was absolutely not fake, and was never, ever meant to just be used to try and make you feel like shit.

Through reading you and Jake’s speeches, I definitely feel like I went too far for game, and that was mostly done towards you. You took the brunt of my frustration because I’m not good at handling emotion in games. I have a tendency to be insensitive at times, and this was definitely one of those times. I sincerely apologize for the way that I made you feel, and how difficult I made this experience for you. I consider you one of the people that I felt the closest bond with in this game, and I really, really hope that our friendship is not hurt by this experience. I’m sorry, Blake. I hope my speech cleared some stuff up and I’m looking forward to talking to you once this ends. 