Hey friends,
If you were to ask me in your jury question about big moves or defining moments I would probably scream internally because, to be completely candid, my game had very few of those flashy game-defining highlights. Rather, my game was almost exclusively focused on the social game and that is entirely what I relied on to get to the F2. It was a game of making and breaking alliances, jumping off sinking ships and onto lifeboats, and ultimately weaseling my way to the end purely based on my ability to connect with people on a personal level enough to gain their trust while simultaneously minimizing the target on my back enough to not face the same untimely end that so many big threats and former winners met in this game.
To give you a sense of the progression of alliances that I've been a part of as the game went on:
1. Suitman's Big Nana (Jasper, Dakota, Patrick) - Prejury alliance of flops based on an old T-alliance that we are all part of. Pretty much had no effect on the game but helped me connect with Patrick very early on who was pretty much my rock for the entire pre-jury.
2. Winners' Alliance (Stuart, Patrick, LeQuisha, Andy) - Actually probably the alliance that I was most loyal to but also the one I realized early on was probably dead on arrival, which meant that I absolutely had to have a Plan B.
3. Beebo's Bitches (Chloe, James, Max) - Okay to be fair this lasted a day because I literally evicted James the very next day but I made it and it will forever have my heart.
4. Real Housewives of Shawn's Basement (Nick, Max) - Endgame alliance that formed out of necessity at F7 and also ensured my safety when Max won HOH at F6.
5. Straight Pride (Nick, Sam) - The eventual late-game F3 alliance that also gave me the 2 votes that I needed to stay when I was up on the block at F5.
And this list doesn't take into account my strong 1-on-1 social bonds with people like Will who become one of my biggest allies in the game once Patrick left, which I don't think many people were aware of.
The one really big alliance in this game that was basically the bane of my existence for pretty much the entire pre-jury was dkfjdsks/Letters (Sam, Nick, Eric, Will, James). Of course I wasn't aware of the exact composition of it but based on how things were going in the early rounds, I certainly knew there were some shenanigans going on that I was criminally excluded from. If I did have to pinpoint my biggest move in the game, it would be the strong social connection I formed with Sam at around F10, which eventually turned into a super-secret F2 deal which also allowed me to find out exactly who was in the alliance. Once I was able to put a name to the alliance and understand exactly who was in it, I knew the bulk of my post-jury game would focus not necessarily on trying to dismantle the alliance through HOH and POV wins, which would be a fool's errand, but instead to make enough social connections with individual people (including those in the alliance) so that I could slide under the radar without being targeted while the alliance inevitably consumes itself. I did this by making what I believe to be strong 1-on-1 connections with literally every single juror with the possible exception of LeQuisha and Andy who I mostly communicated with in our winners' alliance chat and who knew they had my loyalty anyway (even though I was an absolutely useless ally to them and am basically the equivalent of that one person in a group project who does nothing but gets all the credit).
In my original season I won 4 HOHs and 1 POV. Those of you who have played with me in other group games know that I'm not as big of a challenge flop as you might think I am if you were to only know me from this season. But I knew that my approach would have to be wildly different in an all-stars season where there were already established threats and former winners, especially after seeing Stuart get the axe on Week 1. I know my game was extremely frustrating, especially to my allies who got mid-jury boots partly because I just genuinely couldn't win shit to keep us safe. I can't claim to have been particularly good at challenges, but I will admit that I was extremely strategic in deciding what exactly I needed to win and what...wouldn't be the end of the world if I happened to lose. And ultimately, I won the ones that count the most: F4 and F3 HOH.
I'm going to stop talking now because this is already ridiculously long. I think I played a good game that is worthy of a win. I certainly made my fair share of errors, like with James and Chloe, whom I do not regret evicting but do regret the messy way in which I did it. I do feel that in spite of this, I played an overall clean and understated game the entire way through. Thanks for a fun game and good luck Sam.