Board Thread:Season 12 - All-Stars/@comment-3966394-20140216170807/@comment-11497002-20140218054707

Hi Jhet,

I appreciate you really taking your vote into consideration. Sorry that the three of us finalists have gotten carried away with the back-and-forth. Obviously, all three of us think differently so we’re not going to come to an agreement, and in that case it’s probably best to just let it go. I’d like to take the opportunity to apologise to the jury as a whole. I’ve answered your questions with honesty and careful thought but that’s where it should have ended. Lloyd, Gerda and I should have taken our discussion elsewhere because it’s probably not helping any of you make a decision. So Jhet, I’ll give you one honest response to your question and leave it in your hands.

Firstly, thank you for considering me. Even if you don’t end up voting for me it does mean a lot that you think I would be deserving. I feel there were a couple of people in this season that – as you say – didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the cast. I know that personally at the start of the game, people on this wiki considered me not worthy of being an All-Star. From the start I felt like I was already bottom of the ladder. No one expected or really wanted me to do well. So I had something to prove, to those that doubted me but more importantly to myself. I couldn’t hold anything back in this game, I had to do whatever it took. And yes, that meant deceiving people at times. I did deceive you at Mpilo but that’s where it ended. After Hunter’s elimination I decided it wasn’t the way to treat people I respected with and was working with. We were tribe mates and I treated you as one. We all pulled together as a tribe to eliminate Alejandro because he tried to create divisions. But then I kept information back from you for Henry’s and Hunter’s elimination. That wasn’t the way I should have treated you but at the same time I was still working with you. I made sure you were still safe during those two vote-outs because I never had the intention of eliminating you.

At the merge I really fought hard for you as a way of apologising for the way I had treated you. I pushed for Uli’s elimination because no one was really giving you a chance. I asked why they wanted to vote you out and it was because you were an outsider. That didn’t seem like a respectable reason to vote someone off when it didn’t seem like they’d tried to work with you, so I continued to fight for you. In the end I stuck by you just in case we did have enough people to get rid of Uli. That’s because I was genuine about working with you. If I’d wanted to just save my own skin I would have voted for you with the rest. But I stuck with you because I’d made a promise to you I would be honest to you. So if you had stayed I would have continued to work with you. I wasn’t the most loyal person in this game but I never just used people for numbers or treated them like just another vote. I worked with people for as long as I could. At final 9 I tried to bring together Zac, Gerard, Uli, Lloyd and I. We were the outsiders and I wanted to show the others that we were just as deserving of being there as anyone else, regardless of what people thought of us. So had Uli gone I would have included you in that plan. It might not have worked but I would still have tried it. You were important to me, not just as someone I could ally with but someone who I could make a difference to the game with. If I could have had a Final 4 of people like you, me, Zac and Sole that would have made a big statement not to underestimate people and not to just disregard someone. Just because we may have been outsiders doesn’t mean we were any less deserving of our achievements.

I apologise that I wasn’t able to make it up to you by keeping you around but I truly did fight for you and even when you were gone I still fought for those treated as outsiders. I would like to win to show that this game doesn’t just belong to the popular people. I want to show that working hard, giving it your all and succeeding despite the odds are just as deserving qualities. Jhet, I respect you as a person and a player regardless of your decision. It would mean a lot to me if I did receive your vote and maybe even mean something to the people in this game and on the wiki that have been in a similar position as me where people judged them without knowing them, and decided they just weren’t good enough. I think I am good enough. I think I proved myself. Thank you for letting me play the game with you, most of all thank you for being able to forgive me for lying to you and still be willing to work with me after that.