Board Thread:Season 50 - Kingdoms Collide/@comment-26919105-20181223030217/@comment-25624731-20181223233556



I touch on this in my answer to Szymon a bit more, but I do think that Jamie needed immunity from F6 - F4. F7 is debatable, I think if Jamie had not won immunity it would have opened up a lot more potential for everyone to do something wild and it’s almost too hard to say what would have happened. I would have been afraid of yet another idol at that point, but due to Jared’s idol blocker I think I would have likely asked him to make a move against Jamie and block her so we could vote her out. This totally could have backfired if Jared didn’t really want Jamie out, and if he wasn’t sincere about working against her then he may not have even told me about it at all if she’d lost immunity. We could have tried to split votes, we could have voted Jared for fear of an idol, it’s really too hard to say because there was no concrete plan in place before immunity results came out.

Pre-merge my main strategy was to get to know people and establish myself as a potential option for them as much as possible. I didn’t know a single person on my tribe so my main focus was just getting to be friends on a personal level and allowing them to drive any sort of strategic discussion. I had no desire to be a leader or someone calling the shots because in my opinion, that makes entering the merge a lot harder. I would rather enter with alliances that saw me as an equal, as someone who they could bounce ideas off of, rather than someone who was going to be telling people what to do. I think a position like that makes coming out of the woodwork at merge a lot easier because it causes people to underestimate your ability to call the shots and take control. I think I was successful with this because from what I heard, I was never targeted for being a strategic leader and asides from the Plague tribal and the first round of the merge, I don’t think I was ever seriously targeted at all. I think that my theory proves correct as Jamie, someone who played a very strong leadership position pre-merge, entered the F13 with a reputation as someone who usually got her way, and it definitely worked against her in this game.

Activity wise, I feel like in the pre-swap portion of the game my activity level reflected that of my tribe. I wasn’t really sure how fast paced this game would be because my previous two seasons were pretty slow, though the last time I played a game here was about 3 years ago. I really needed to find my footing before I would be able to really take any form of strategic role. I also can get extremely devoted to and sucked into these games and I did not want to be thinking about this game 24/7 and having it stress me out too much. I wanted it to be fun (spoiler alert: I got super stressed out and EXTREMELY into it at the end anyways, so mission failed, but it was fun the whole time). For the first swapped tribe, I could have definitely been more active and was nowhere near as social as I was at the merge, but I had already spoken to Elias, Szymon, and Dani about wanting to work together and I figured that in the event our tribe lost immunity, my relationships with them would allow me to be protected. I had also gotten along great with Cali and Jake, so I thought I was set up fairly well if we lost. I was shocked to see the Plague twist, but I was talking to TJ, Cali, and Jake quite a bit to get something going. I yet again didn’t want to be too forceful, especially since Jenna and Sydney weren’t really too open with me, so I went to TJ and told him I’d do whatever he wanted. I told him I’d prefer to vote out someone from his tribe but that I’d be open to talking about voting Jake or Cali if it was something he wanted to do. I was his free vote! I was truly shocked when he told Cali that he wanted me out for being inactive, in my opinion I was not inactive at all and I was certainly not the most inactive at that tribal. I also was surprised that I was left out of this vote because I didn’t think it was a good move for TJ to do that when I was willing to do whatever he wanted. Once the Plague tribal was over, I significantly stepped up my game in all dimensions, and the second swap led me to form my alliance with Chelsea/Audrey and it allowed me to connect with Jared, someone who I ended up being fairly close to over the course of the merge. The Stacks tribal was one where I was totally open to letting other people, namely Chelsea, drive the vote. There was a lot of idol paranoia that round and I just kind of let Chelsea call the shots on who she wanted out (originally it was Dani, then it was Stacks) because I wanted her to think she owned my vote. Funny enough, I feel like our roles totally swapped by the end of the game and rather than her telling me what to do, I was the one making the calls/building the alliances that played a huge role in both of us getting to the end.

When (merge) Tyler left, I definitely didn’t want that to be the case. I explain this in my answer to Szymon as well, but I really wanted Jenna out that round as she was the person on “your side” that was telling you the least amount of information and it seemed like she was quite close with Szymon and Sydney. Unsurprisingly, the majority alliance wasn’t very interested in doing this, and I didn’t want to be too pushy for fear that they would stop giving me information or end up piling votes on you (this was before I knew about the vote steal). That left Cali, Dani, or Tyler as the potential options on the table for me to try and push the votes on. I was closest with Cali, and we both did not want her going home, and the vote kind of wavered between you and Tyler throughout the day (I think most people considered Dani an “easy option” and said she could be voted out at any time… we all know how that worked out). Szymon pressed for Tyler to go, and at that point I figured I would rather it be him than you. Right around the time this vote got locked, you let me know about the vote steal. I was prepared to throw my vote on you, but I didn’t end up doing it as my phone was nearly dead so I had to vote early. I wasn’t super thrilled that you guys chose to target Szymon because in my opinion his conflicts with Dani and Jenna were working against him, whereas basically everyone else in the majority was in a great position. I felt I had a good chance to work with him down the line, especially because I knew I’d be able to expose Sydney and Jamie for also knowing about the vote steal. But it didn’t even matter! I ended up coming back after all votes had been cast and it was too late for anything to change. Had I known Jenna was taking Szymon’s vote, I would have let you know so you could have chosen to play your idol on Tyler if you wanted, but it really came down to bad timing and a shitty iPhone battery.

Before we get into the Disney characters, obviously I have to comment on Jamie’s response as I once again disagree with parts of it and want to offer my perspective. First of all, she told me her original plan was to give Sydney 5th place and myself 4th, going to a final 3 with Jared and Chelsea. Obviously this contradicts what she’s saying here, so maybe she was just saying that to me in the game for fun, who knows. But the point is she never intended to go to the end with me because she did see me as a threat and both her and Sydney told me a couple times throughout the game they thought I had a good shot to win. They both told me this a couple of times around the F8/F7. It seemed like the general perception at F6 was that Dani and Cali had smaller chances of winning, due to Szymon self voting and saving Cali and Dani’s mishaps in the early merge. I wanted to keep the “Jessica will win” narrative to a minimum, so I was pretty adamant to Jamie that if I left I’d be voting for either one of them and I thought that they jury would too. Whether or not they actually would have had jury support is irrelevant, I made sure to push the narrative to everyone that they would absolutely win hands down, even though in reality I think Jamie’s best chance to win was with Chelsea and Dani in the F3. When Jamie said “ I basically forced my will onto Jess and Chelsea who both wanted Dani gone over Cali”, I’m not sure if she didn’t read my opening statement? But if you look there and at my answer to Sydney, you can see this clearly isn’t the case. I think that this is still showing how even at FTC, my fellow finalists don’t know everything about my game. I was not Jamie’s mindless pawn like she seems to believe, like everyone else in the game I had my own agenda and it didn’t rely on her to help me pull it off. I’m honestly a little insulted she thinks she forced her will onto me at any point in the merge because it totally undermines all the work that I did. My plan to get votes onto Chelsea happened before Jamie had spoken to me about her ideas that round and while she may have convinced Chelsea to switch the vote from Dani to Cali, she had almost no influence on my decision to not vote Chelsea out. That decision came from my desire to have a F4 where Chelsea had someone I KNEW she’d vote out, whereas a F4 with Cali/Dani made me nervous I would get 4th place if Jamie won immunity. I also want to make it clear that Jamie playing idols wasn’t something that surprised me, that was the entire reason I avoided voting for her at F11 as you know. She says she knew she couldn’t trust me and that this FTC proves it, but I feel like this is reactionary to what I’m saying here as she had no clue I was trying to vote her out at F10 and F8, otherwise why would she have been targeting Cali and Jenna, people who she knew/suspected had idols? Everyone knew I couldn’t have the Fyvie idol and Jamie had the merge idol at F8, if she supposedly didn’t trust me and knew I was against her then I’m not sure why she voted Jenna at this time when she was so fearful of Jenna dolling her out. The F10 plan was something only Cali and I discussed, we didn’t pitch it to Szymon and Jared, and the F8 plan wasn’t discussed with anyone as Chelsea never showed up to make it possible. For her to say she knew something was up doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because she was not a mind reader! She says Cali staying and being beneficial for me was luck, and I totally agree that this worked in my favour, but Szymon leaving ended up being beneficial for Jamie as it took out a major player with connections and no enemies, someone who would have had an easy time working against her at the F8. She got an ally/enemy out of the game with no blood on her hands whereas had Szymon stayed, it’s likely she would have had to take him head on. I feel like the scenarios that were lucky for me were lucky for both of us, whereas my misfortune in the game in immunity challenge slip ups (F6 and F4 especially!), Chelsea not showing up at F8, and my lack of pre-merge castle attendance were all things I had almost no control over that benefitted Jamie. She seems so convinced Jared and Sydney would have taken her to the end and not made a move against her, but given how she is still underestimating me, I feel like this statement assumes a lot of ease and control in the game that wasn’t exactly there. None of us were her pawns and she would not have had an easy walk to the end had her last minute F7 scrambling paid off.

Here are the Disney characters, enjoy everyone!

Bryce - Hopefully he doesn’t think this one is shade, but I think Bryce is like Hades (the voice actor, James Woods, is a horrible person, so I am just referencing the character here). In Hercules, for some reason none of the gods seem to realize that Hades has his own evil plan and intentions. I mean… the guy lives in the underworld, alone, and is this dark cloud while everyone else is super colourful. He should have stood out as being a threat to Zeus, but Zeus was totally oblivious, which is how I viewed Bryce in this game. The wrong people were paranoid about him, and the people who should have realized he was really smart were totally underestimating his ability to make and act on his own plans. I think had Bryce stayed longer in the merge, he’d have had the potential to really work the strategy I was using and would have flown under the radar for so long, allowing him to pull a Hades and attack the gods to bring everything under his control.

Tyler - Tyler reminds me of Genie. It’s not really for a game related reason, Genie is just generally a really beloved Disney character and I think Tyler is super loved in this community. Plus I’ve seen some of his statuses that he’s posted and they’re fucking hilarious, just like Genie, so it’s a good match!

You - Another Hercules one, but you’re Meg. Meg is so sarcastic and funny and obviously I think you’re hilarious and I love complaining about things to you. She’s super independent and will always tell you what she thinks but she’s also able to lie to your face if it benefits her. I also know you have a strong loyalty to you, something Meg really shows late in the film when she refuses to keep working with Hades to hurt Hercules.

Audrey - Audrey reminds me of Jack Sparrow (again, gross actor in real life so we’re just talking about the character). Jack always had really good one liners and was fucking hilarious but also really smart and resourceful. All of that describes Audrey perfectly in my opinion!

Szymon - Szymon is Baloo the bear in Jungle Book. Baloo just wants to have a good time, sing some songs, and hang out with his friends. I think that Szymon is a great example of a person who really understands that at its heart, these games are for fun. After I lied to him at F11, he was rightfully upset, but he also admitted that it was just a game and that he knew there would be no hard feelings at the end of the road.

Jenna - Jenna reminded me of Violet from The Incredibles (I’m going to count Pixar as Disney). Violet had a bit of a mellow personality and I feel like Jenna kept her emotions in check really well throughout the game and never let anger or frustration get to her. Violet’s forcefield and invisibility powers also relate quite well to Jenna I feel — she did a great job at slipping undetected under everyone’s radars (invisibility) and her alliances/idol provided her with an excellent shield in the game because there were so many people looking out for her and wanting to keep her around.

Sydney - Sydney is Barbie from Toy Story 2/3. Barbie as a character on her own is a total badass because she has like 30 different careers and does all these crazy things like going to the moon and being president. If there’s anyone in this game who is becoming president, it’s Sydney. Barbie is also someone who’s played as this sweet, nice character, but in Toy Story 3 she shows how smart she is (“Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat offorce!”). Plus Barbie is a total feminist, I haven’t seen Toy Story 3 in a while but I remember she tells Ken he sucks and basically uses her relationship with him to help free everyone/escape from Lotso, mirroring how Sydney had these awesome relationships in the game that she’d use to her advantage + it’s a nice call to her feminist side.

Cali - I think Cali is like Mulan. Mulan has all the odds stacked against her and she almost gets kicked out of the war early on for being perceived as too weak. But she doesn’t give up! She fights and she proves that she’s worthy of being there with everyone else and that they shouldn’t underestimate someone’s cleverness and intelligence. I think this mirrors Cali’s merge game pretty strongly as she went from someone who most considered an easy first merge vote to being one of the main forces throughout the merge.

Dani - Dani reminds me of Jasmine in Aladdin. Jasmine was fierce and she wasn’t afraid to call you out on your bullshit (“I am NOT a prize to be won!”). I really admired Dani’s ability to call shit like wit was, especially in the early merge of the game. When I wanted to flip, she didn’t question any of my motives, she basically told me “Yeah, you’re right, these people ARE going to win and we need to do something about it” and I feel like that determined, go-getter attitude was really present in Jasmine throughout the film.