Board Thread:Survivor 22: San Marcos/@comment-1728794-20170209210646/@comment-26864283-20170211013123

Hey Malik! Let me start this out by saying that I have been waiting for this speech to be posted, so that way we can finally speak. It seems like you were probably one of the only people I had beef with this season, so I really wanted to clear everything up between us. If you don’t think that’s possible, I hope you at least hear me out with all of this because I think this is all a big misunderstanding.

1. My biggest move was hands down getting Jenna out. Getting Jenna out, was not solely on me, but it was easily more beneficial for myself than for Sim. Sim was the one who also wanted Jenna out, but I don’t think he realized at the time that he was cutting someone he was close with for no reason. I wanted Jenna out because I knew the round after that, I become the middle-man and am able to maneuver myself to final three. I think that once Jenna left, it solidified that I was going to final 3. People saw Jenna as someone who was going to final three, and would of been easy to beat. I saw Jenna as a strong social threat and I needed to get rid of that in order to become the new “final three lock”. With Jenna gone, I now have strong ties with both Chris and Claudia on one side, as well as strong ties with Nathaniel and Shea on the other side. I knew that Sim would want to go whichever way I wanted to, so setting myself up in this position is what allowed me to navigate my way through the end-game. So, it was a plan that Sim and I came up with together, but at the end of the day, it definitely proved to be more beneficial to me.

My second biggest move was probably getting Chris out. Once I got to final four with Nathaniel and Chris both sitting next to me, I realized the best possible option was to win final immunity. Winning final immunity, allowed me to have the last say in this game and just who I wanted to go to the end with. If I did not win final immunity, I don’t think I would of went home, but rather not having control over my own fate. Getting Chris out was obviously not my own doing, since I needed Sim’s vote, but I do believe I was the one to sway Sim into voting Chris out. Sim had even expressed to me how he was “60% on keeping Chris and 40% on keeping Nathaniel”. I was able to switch that by opening Sim’s eyes to all the people who were actually rooting for Chris. By the looks of it, a majority of the jury was rooting for Chris. So, by getting Chris out it gave me a fighting shot at winning this game, whereas if I brought him to final tribal, he would of beat me.

2. I don’t think I was anyone’s pawn in this game. If anything, we all had an equal relationship, but I would say I had a bit more pull than Sim. Austin might of had the biggest pull, which is why he was targeted first, but I don’t think I was his “pawn”. The definition of a pawn is “a person used by others for their own purposes”. So, looking at that, I don’t think that fits me at all. I never stuck my neck out for either Sim or Austin, let alone let them use me. I feel like if anything, it was always me pushing for my way and succeeding throughout the game. As I stated previously, voting for Chris was originally my idea and I had to sway Sim into voting my way. Austin also wanted to go for Nathaniel the round he left, but we ended up voting for Chris instead because Sim really wanted to. So, those are just a few examples of how neither of us were pawns. We all played as a partnership, where none of us had more control than the other. Yes, some of us had more pull over others than some, but that does not make any of us “pawns”.

3. Okay, so let me finally explain all of this because I feel like this is what the main issue was. I never reached out to you because of the plan to boot Ryan. I remember right after the swap, I did not really know how the tribe was going to work out. So, what happened was the plan was originally to make you believe you were the target, when in actuality, the target was Ryan. We believed, and were correct, that Ryan had an idol. So, in order to stop one of us from being blindsided, we had to make you as well as Ryan and Claudia believe that you were the target and not Ryan. We had known that Ryan and Claudia were close because she had expressed to Austin that Ryan was one of the few people who voted with her during the rock tribal and that you did not. This is also what made us decide to vote Ryan, because we thought having you and Claudia on the same tribe, would make it so you guys would not work together. I distanced myself from you because I did not want you to suspect that you were not the real target. I knew that if I did not talk to you, you’d get paranoid and believe that you were actually the target. This is what helped me not get idol’d out because you took this a different way and decided to target me instead. So, in other words not reaching out to you is what made the plan work. However, what you could of also done was instead of running around targeting me, you could of addressed it to me. I probably would not of told you the truth, but after tribal I definitely would of. Instead, you never questioned me about it so I figured everything was fine. Then come the following two rounds and you’re STILL hardcore targeting me even after we hashed things out in PMs. I came to you and apologized for everything and you “forgot to reply” for a day, which made me think you were still after me, which was true. I wanted to work with you, but we ended up on opposite sides, had we of had better communication with each other I think we would of been able to work it out, but I believe we are both at fault for this.

4. If we had spoke beforehand and worked out some sort of an alliance I would of loved to work with you. I’m not sure how loyal I would have been, because that is pretty hard to predict, especially since I stuck with the people I was with since day 1 throughout the game. I needed to build trust with you, and I just could not trust you, especially after that vote. I think had you of came to me and asked me if I was really voting for you, I would of at least had some kind of trust in you. I feel like we had a lot of miscommunication between the two of us, so working long-term with someone like that could be deadly.

5. I do not regret anything I’ve done in this game. Every move I made was calculated to get me to final tribal council and that’s where I am right now.

Also, in regards to your comment that you added to your speech. You can not blame me for the assumptions YOU made people have. When you got idol’d out the first thing you did was curse out Austin, block him and then write a status about the game and how upset you were. Call me crazy, but that is literally what someone who is bitter about the game does. Now, when I read your speech I’m not gonna lie, I was expecting it to be a bit more harsh and I was going to commend you on that. So, if what I said hurt your feelings in any way, I do apologize. However, you made people believe you were bitter Malik, literally everyone said it once you left. It was very clear from your actions that you were upset, and everyone just assumed that you would be bitter. I would not fault anyone for this, because all these assumptions are based off of your own actions.