Coming into this game with experience in only one other group game that resulted in me being the third boot, I did not have much expectations for this. As I won my first competition and saw that I was able to gain control quickly, the inner competitor in me had only one goal in mind, to get to one of these two chairs no matter what the circumstances.
My main achievements were: going unnomminated until 4th, voting in majority for every eviction, getting my target out on all my HOHs, never being a post veto nom, only being nominated once, and winning 3 HOHs and 2 POVs.
My three main tactics in achieving these accomplishments were: keeping Josh as a shield, deflection, and relying on my final 2 relationships for intel and ensuring critical votes went in my favor. These will all be elaborated below.
I did not join this game with anyone, however, I did have prior game relationships with Josh, Will, and Zach R. When the cast was revealed, not knowing either of us applied, Josh and I immediately removed each other from our friend lists where we have occupied each other’s 5th spot for many years now. We made a pact to be on opposite sides of the house and say whatever we needed to so that people were not privy to, nor threatened by, our friendship. This way, we could always know where everyone’s head was at and do our best to influence our side from preventing either of us from being evicted. Ensuring that Josh was safe the several times he was nominated was crucial as I needed him as a cushion in case he got power or I did get nominated, I knew I’d be safe and have at least one vote in my favor. When I got to the point where it became obvious that Josh had stronger relationships and I felt confident in my relationships with the remaining houseguests, his demise became inevitable. The one person who was aware of my relationship with Josh early on was Zach R.
As a way to ensure my targets were evicted, I used deflection to project things that I was saying or doing onto others to make them seem more threatening. For example, continuously bringing up the fact that Dylan had a lot of pre-game friendships while I had 3 myself so that Vanessa would view Dylan’s eviction as a way for her to gain closer relationships with Austin & Nicky. Sealing the deal by projecting that Dylan had outed the alliance chat we were in, when in reality, Josh told me it was Austin that did so. Deflection was also evident in ensuring that I was able to get Nicky and Vanessa evicted in tie votes as I noticed similarities in their games to mine where they had strong relationships with both sides of the house and I did not want that to bite me in the ass later in the game. I wanted to be in full control at all times so I revealed our conversations when necessary like when I showed Vanessa that Nicky threw her under the bus during his eviction making him untrustworthy (while I am throwing him under the bus making me untrustworthy).
I lucked out in developing strong enough relationships with people that I was able to secure 6 final 2 deals with all HGs in the top 7. Some of which were looser deals than others, and almost all were not proposed by me. I was able to get all 6 of these people to the final 7 so I could sit back and not have to win competitions until necessary so I would not reveal my cards and stay off the block as long as possible with each person believing they were my main final 2. This became advantageous where almost everyone in the final 7 helped me in at least one competition. Some to the point where Will gave me the answer to the final 4 veto and threw round 1 of the HOH to me as he felt he was my main final 2. Honestly, I did not know who my main final 2 was the entire game as it was dependent on who would be the least threatening in the end and I felt would not succeed in backstabbing me. As time went on, I chose to go with people like Will, Kim, & Zach R who I felt were more likely to win competitions and would eventually have to go after each other while I remained the vote that they needed to stay. I gained critical intel from Nicky that Vanessa had revealed information I said about Dylan and that Dylan, Nicky, Austin, and Josh had an alliance chat, as well as A LOT of information from Zach R that Vanessa & Yung were dating irl, that Vanessa, Yung, Kim, and Zach R had a final 4 chat from my first HOH, and pretty much any time anybody said anything about me. With so much of my game centered around information you gave me Zach, I knew I would have no argument sitting next to you here. Having these sources of information allowed me to keep control in my hands. My final point on this is that having all of my final 2s trusting me so much allowed me to convince Zach R to vote out Nicky over Warren when he did not want to so the vote would tie and I could evict him as well as convincing Kim to vote Vanessa over Josh so I could keep my shield and weaken Kim by him voting out one of his closest allies.
All in all, I played a very cutthroat game and realize I did hurt peoples’ feelings. I too would describe most of my time here as being synonymous to a snake/rat/Nicole Franzel. I do hope that all animosity towards me is from a game standpoint as I had no intentions of taking things to a personal level and I do sincerely apologize if I hurt anyone in that regard. The moves I made could easily make me be perceived as emotionless and I want to make it known that that was far from the case. Each of you had such a strong impact on me and I thoroughly enjoyed being able to meet or reconnect with all of you in this game. I hope we are able to move on from this and still be friends. I received help from many of you, especially from Will, Zach R, and Kim, and I would not be here without you so I want to thank you and apologize again for doing you dirty. I will be completely honest in all of my answering and thank you if you made it this far for reading this unnecessarily long unpublished novel.
