Hey guys! Sorry about this being up a little late, midterms are coming up and my building just started doing construction so the internet connection (and myself for that matter) have been a bit of a mess. With that being said I’m so happy to have a chance to plead my case to you guys. This season had a whole bunch of twists and turns and I’m so happy to have experienced it with you all.

Coming into this season I knew I had to change things up from when I played in Caracol. Throughout the course of that season I played extremely loyal only for one of my closest allies to stab me in the back so entering this season I knew if I wanted to get far, I’d need to make myself more of a priority for my own game for once rather than just trying to get my allies further along, and I believe that’s exactly what I did to ultimately get here.

Things definitely were a little slow at the start for me as Vaitape won challenges however once the swap hit things started to pick up as I found myself as the only original Vaitape member to swap until Ally mutinied and I was honestly terrified. At this stage in the game I was a little more on the quiet side as I was still trying to get to know everyone and figure out where I stood and when I began to become targeted I found myself being approached by Jared, Torsa and Joey who all wanted to keep me which I was extremely grateful for as at this point I was still seen as a more trustworthy person to keep around rather than Mikey or Rhys.

With that being said once merge hit I knew I needed to step up my game as I was being told Toby was out to get me, so I chose to adapt the “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” aspect to my game as I needed my name to stop floating around so I decided to better my relationships with those who previously wanted me gone. The first merge vote was definitely an eye-opener for me as well as I had a firm stance on keeping Tate around as he was one of my closest allies, however when I expressed this to Joey he never cared to fill me in that the plan wasn’t Tate but was instead Jon. This made me realize that I was pretty much just a number for the group and that I necessarily didn’t have much of a say in anything so going into the next round I knew I needed to make a big move so as I was discussing the possibilities with Toby as to who was more likely to be a threat. We established that there was a powerful group in play which allowed me to start tossing Jared’s name around, as he was definitely a power player willing to make moves as I saw from a first hand experience with him willingly going out of his way to save me. I also knew by getting Jared out I could form a better bond with Joey and Torsa as I knew they were all pretty close but Jared appeared to be the more vocal and influential of the group. This was a lot easier with Torsa using her advantage for the round as I didn’t have to worry too much at the time and once she returned I reassured my loyalty would always be with her as I willingly gave her the idol clue I got the round she was gone.

As I mentioned earlier, this was the part in the game where I knew I couldn’t be as loyal as the Christine in Caracol was as I saw taking Jared out as a huge advantage for my own game as I would gain more trust between Toby and the others with a more open door of connections with Joey and Torsa as they couldn’t rely on Jared anymore. This shows that I had the strategic ability to know when to cut my ties with people, and although Jared mentioned I flipped to people who had no interest in working with me, I believed this was a risk that I needed to take to better position myself, which worked in my favor as I was left in the know with Ally’s reset idol. From that point on I became more focused on taking out the bigger threats and began working alongside Torsa as we formed alliances with Jake and Joey. Despite me trusting and adoring her to death though, I knew Torsa had the best shot at winning this game because whenever you talked to someone, they would always say they wanted to work with Torsa and never did her name ever really come up. I even tried proposing it to Tate at final 5 however he expressed wanting to go after Joey more so when final 4 came around I knew I couldn’t play loyal, the biggest threat needed to go so when she came to me saying she was voting Joey I went to Asa saying that getting her out was the best move for essentially all of us and thankfully we were on the same page as it went into a tiebreaker, which it highkey shouldn’t have if I’m being honest because Torsa said it herself, she ran this game. But with that being said with my life in this game being on the line I put all my effort into the tiebreaker challenge spending a consecutive 5 hours torturing that poor armadillo and it ultimately worked out for me as I’m sitting here now. I was seconds behind winning the jury advantage but despite that I’m confident I played a well enough game without that.

Ultimately, I put a lot of effort into getting myself into this position, I never gave up even if the odds were against me, I made the risks I needed to to ensure a better position, won challenges when I needed to and even had advantages that I didn’t even necessarily need with the legacy advantage. All in all I think I played a strong game and I can’t wait to answer any of the questions you guys might have for me!