Board Thread:Season 50 - Kingdoms Collide/@comment-10584014-20181222232018/@comment-25624731-20181223184604

Hey Sydney! Thanks for the kind words, I love it and you’re so sweet. Sorry in advance this is so long, but I want to make sure I get all the details.

For the round I voted you at F11, I’m not able to go back and check chat logs but I don’t think I ever said you leaking the vote steal was the reason I wanted you out, if that is what I said to Jenna then I misspoke. That reasoning wouldn’t make any sense because if you had told me about the vote steal I would have thought you trusted me more and wanted me to have information, you not telling me about it was what made me realize you were better set up to play the game with everyone. The majority trusted you and the minority wanted you to work with them, that’s the ideal spot! No one in the minority pitched anything to me that round. The next round when I flipped against you I had to go to them to flip, no one was coming to me because no one saw me as a serious option. I went to Dani and I pitched that you or Jamie should be the ones to go due to the fact I knew you had extra information and hadn’t shared it, and we ended up settling on you as everyone thought Jamie was more likely to have an idol. Was it hypocritical? Absolutely, all the reasons I wanted you out were reasons that could have applied to me as well, but that’s exactly why I had to target you. You were playing my game better than I was and I knew that I’d either need to go against you or come up with a new strategy if I wanted to have any shot at winning this game.

For the false hope thing, I’d say there’s a difference between false hope and having to go back on your word. False hope means you were lying the whole time whereas going back on your word means you’re forced into a situation where you aren’t able to keep your promise. I’d say most of what I did fell into the second category. I didn’t let Jared campaign for hours without making my position clear, I told him multiple times I could no longer trust him and had to vote him out. I was never on the fence and I told him and Jamie as much the entire time that was happening, the only reason I didn’t vote immediately was because I wanted to explain my choice and hear why he had voted Dani instead of you. For F6, I would have voted out Jamie had she not won immunity, but obviously I was going to campaign against the two of you that entire round as you were the two people I felt had the strongest chance of winning the game. Every vote you survived made your game stronger and my game weaker because it was another round I’d try to vote for you where you didn’t go home. I was shocked that you weren’t doing the same to me seeing as I had voted you three times at that point and you had identified me as someone who could win, my hope in giving you the vague promise that I wanted to work with you was that you’d be more likely to target someone other than myself. I was so close to the end and I didn’t want to risk you targeting me, something I think would have happened if I’d been straight up and said “I don’t want to work with you if Jamie is immune”. Once Jamie won immunity, my hand was forced, because I needed Jamie to have as few allies as possible at F5 to decrease the likelihood she’d make a move against me. Jamie/Chelsea and Cali/Dani were two separate pairs with me in the middle and that was the type of F5 spot I needed to be in, I didn’t want to be on the bottom of you/me/Jamie/Chelsea. At that point, I had to go back on my word that I’d work with you because otherwise I would be making a move that didn’t benefit my game just so I could say I was honest. When I told you that Chelsea had already voted at F6, I thought she had already voted or was about to vote. I did want you gone on that revote because I wanted Jamie to have as few options at F5 as possible but I was going to do what Chelsea wanted. There was no way I was going to rocks when me, her, and Cali were the ones drawing them. The decision was ultimately up to her. She told me she wanted you out, I confirmed she was okay with that choice and we were good to vote, and I told her I needed to vote right then because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to for a while. She confirmed the plan was good. I told you as much because I expected if she hadn’t voted by the time I was talking to you, she’d be voting very shortly after. Then I came back about 30 minutes later to see she still hadn’t voted, I’m not sure if she was explaining things to you or getting cold feet or what, but I let her know I would be incredibly upset if she forced rocks after she told me she was going to vote for you. She agreed, and shortly after voted for you and sent you home. If I was dismissive of you during the revote, I’m incredibly sorry as I did intend to listen to your pitch (I was a bit preoccupied with real life stuff at the time that was going down), but I’m also sorry if what I said implied I was going to seriously consider being on your side at the revote. I was willing to listen to you, yes, but the odds I was going to keep you were very low because I thought it would make me look terrible if I voted you for the second time in a row only to have you survive.

With F5, I honestly didn’t know how I was voting until I voted because no one acted the way I expected. Dani had originally told me she’d want to vote Cali in the event Jamie won F5 immunity which I was fine with. It meant the F4 had two people that were unlikely to vote me (Dani/Chelsea) and were extremely likely to vote each other. After Jamie won the challenge, her and Chelsea kind of disappeared until the next day and it freaked me out. I got the sense Chelsea was upset with the way your vote had gone down, which confused me because she was the one who made the call, and I was worried that your comments to her about her being my goat were going to lead her and Jamie to move against me. Jamie had told me to my face multiple times that her ideal plan in the game did not see me at the end of it, and I knew she had to at least be considering voting me out. I think it would have made the most sense for both of them to vote me out at F5, and I went into action before they had the chance. I told Cali and Dani that if the 3 of us just voted together, the other two couldn’t do anything to us, so we all agreed Chelsea was the best bet if we all wanted to stay safe. Then Chelsea showed up for the tribal and we were able to properly discuss what the best move was. I realized that she was not targeting me (thanks to Jamie asking her to vote me and Chelsea refusing) and I realized my ideal F4 of Dani/me/Chels/Jamie was going to be possible. I went to Dani to ask if she’d switch her vote, but at that point she’d already voted, and I was put in the least ideal position possible: choose which of my two F2s was going home. It was kind of the worst case scenario for me, because I’d hoped that if Cali were going it would be unanimous or if Chelsea were leaving, she’d have been working against me, so at this point I had two people campaigning for me to keep them when they’d both done nothing wrong to me. I had a hard time with this vote because both Cali and Chelsea had been my partners in crime. I didn’t vote Cali with a clear conscience, but ultimately I made the choice to cut her because I needed people that were guaranteed to work against each other in the F4 and I just didn’t have that guarantee with her and Dani. I also thought Cali had played amazingly and had a great shot to win, I know I’d have voted for her, and I figured the fewer major threats at FTC, the better.

When it came to voting Dani at F4, I was fully intending to tie the vote initially. All I wanted was to make sure my vote was going towards someone who was getting at least 1 other vote so that the likelihood of myself being voted out was slim. I still was shocked Chelsea and Jamie weren’t going after me, and my fear was that they were going to tell Dani and I to vote each other, splitting our votes and making it be 2-1-1 for myself. But then the day of the vote, I knew Dani was going to Jamie and pitching that the two of them vote for me! I realized if I voted for Chelsea, it would then give all the power that round to Jamie and Dani: they could either vote for me, sending me home 2-1-1, or I could hope they’d send Chelsea home. I don’t really like to hope other people will do what I want, I like to know for certain that I’ll be safe. Since I knew Chelsea had already voted for Dani, I decided I would do that as well to minimize the chance I’d be sent home. I also thought Dani played a great game up until that point and would have an easier time arguing against me at FTC. I know a lot about Chelsea’s game as we worked quite closely and I knew I’d have an easier time arguing why people shouldn’t vote her than I would against Dani, someone whose game was relatively unknown to me. Dani also told me straight up she’d vote me to win even if I voted her out, and I chose to go with the path that I felt gave me the best shot at not only making FTC but making it there with the people I had a good chance of beating. Jamie ended up voting for Dani before I did, while I was in the middle of explaining to her why I couldn’t keep her, and then I had to make the unfortunate call to once again go back on my word and not tie the vote. I of course felt guilty about it and I hated that it looked like I’d been lying to Dani the whole time, but what it honestly came down to was I once again needed to make the move that I felt gave me the best shot to win, not the one that made me the most honest person.

So there you have it! Those are my individual explanations for why I told people what I did, but the bigger picture just comes down to the fact that I wanted to have my bases covered. Chelsea relied on me to not vote her out quite a bit in this game in my opinion and I felt like it put her in a weaker position because if I decided to flip, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it due to her lack of connections. Jamie was in the same boat, and I feel like her immunities allowed her to be more honest with who she was voting for because she knew they couldn’t do anything to retaliate. I never wanted someone to have so much power over me that I absolutely needed them to get to the end and I didn’t have the luxury of guaranteed safety to be able to be totally honest with people (though we both know Jamie’s strategy was not 100% honesty, as lying by omission is still lying and she promised us both F4 so one of us was clearly being lied to!). Obviously Chelsea and Jamie’s strategies worked for them because they are here, but I think it left them extremely vulnerable and it explains why Chelsea was targeted more than myself or why Jamie would have likely gone home had she lost a challenge: because they weren’t playing the field like I was.