Board Thread:Season 40 - Argentina/@comment-27281906-20170520211035/@comment-30516037-20170521202009

Hey Brandon, Ty heaps for the kind words<3

-Your ability to trust me after I voted against you is something that I truly appreciated. I worked with you partly because of our friendship and partly strategic, were your reasons for working with me similar and if not what were they?

Definitely the same. When we first swapped I was like yay I now have the benefit of this prior relationship, but after you voted for me at the first tribal ngl at first I felt kinda betrayed. But after that I kinda realised you're someone who really is able to separate the game from friendship well, & I don't mean this in a bad way at all, but yeah I realised that you were just doing what you thought would save yourself. I remember in the San Marcos jury you said you would've gone to the end with me whether you won or lost, so I thought once we'd got over that first bump (kind of similar to the swap in SM) then I felt I could trust & then after that you proved a few times that I could trust you as well ~the game aspect of wanting to work with you. After getting to know you it can sometimes be easy to spot when you're lying because you just give vague answers, like when you told me to vote for Mackie at the merge, but after that when you said to me that you'd go to the end with me I really felt like you were being honest! So yeah working with you was also partially because of friendship, I know you did heaps for me keeping the target off me a couple of times, and when I convinced Mackie to switch his vote to Marie, looking back it was kinda unnecessary strategically but as a friend I really just wanted to make sure you would be safe!

- When making social bonds with other players, what type of subtle or complicated strategies do you employ to make sure that your bonds are strong enough to get through the game?

One thing I try to do socially is to seem really understanding- eg. The times you & Syd voted for me, I had a similar talk with each of you after about how I understood why you had to do it & how I really hope we can still work together etc etc which worked pretty well in gaining allies out of both of you, rather than if I'd gotten mad about it. Another thing is when I had to lie I tried to be really honest at the same time. eg. At final 8 I had to try and convince a majority of the tribe that I was on board with their plan to split votes, so I really went into detail with a couple of them about how I was so nervous to do it - if I'd just said yeah I'll do it then it would've been much less believable. This also kinda made people less mad about the lie. I was also not too proud to apologise even when I didn't mean it. Eg. When we first merged I had nominated tymeka in another game so I did my best to work that out and put us on good terms in this one.

- You said in your speech that Chris told you that being the 3rd biggest threat in the final 5 is the optimal position (which I 100% agree), what active strategies did you employ to make sure that your position was safe going into that point.

Basically just always making sure that everyone felt like I was a potential number they could use, if not this vote then maybe the next one or the next one. The guys thought I could eventually be a number to get Sydney out, the girls thought I would be a number to get the guys out. When people pick someone from a group to target they'll usually look for 'who's the biggest threat' & 'who am I least likely to work with' so I always tried to be neither of those things to everyone. Also going into final 6/5 with people who obviously wanted eachother out really helped me to avoid ever being targeted too.

- Is this your dream final 3? If not explain who would've been sitting next to you in your dream final 3.

I didn't really have a 'dream' f3 but this was kinda the final 3 that I had worked towards having, & I explained why much better in my answer to Sydney. If I'm picking someone else - I also would've gone to the end with Justin had that opportunity happened bc we had talked about it. He would've had a great underdog story had he made f3 though.

-List which six people you believe belong on the DVD cover and why?

This season literally needs to be an exception & allow more people on the DVD cover, but if I had to pick I would probably go with the final 6, basically bc usually the f3 make the cover and then of the jury it's literally too hard to choose, so I'd just go with the three that made it farthest, and those 3 are definitely deserving of making the cover anyway. Of that group there's representatives from both original tribes & both new/returning players. But yeah there are more choices from the jury that would be equally as fitting, and there are definitely going to be players that are robbed af from making that cover.

Thank you!