If I give you my vote, I want it to be because I feel like you deserve to win, not just that you’re just the best option. Prove that you were playing and weren’t just dragged or lucky.I do have respect for the game you played, I just need to be sure that you played the way that you claim.
My main goal in the game ever since the start was to ensure that I always had control of my own fate in the game. I never wanted to lock myself to a certain group or rely on the mercy of others to get dragged to the end and I tried my hardest to make this happen. While admittedly not everything went to plan, i.e. being stuck in the minority alliance and the final 6 revote where I had no control over my own fate, I still tried to position myself well enough to have control over majority of my game. I acknowledge that in real life, I am the person you saw in the game. I'm not the type to draw unnecessary attention to myself, quite an indecisive person, and a bit anxious of others thinking badly of me so I just am nice to everyone (As long as they're not an ass to me). Everyone's perceptions of me were primarily a byproduct of how I just act as a person in real life. However, that being said, I did crank up a few of these qualities a bit, specifically my indecisiveness. Typically I was fairly certain who I wanted to vote almost every tribal but I put on an act of not knowing who I wanted to vote. Telling people I voted like 10 minutes before the deadline almost every vote, telling targets I'm still uncertain if I was going to vote with them when they asked. It's an abnormal way of lying, but I thought it was way more believable and humane to do that instead of saying I was going to vote with them and then backstab them. I believed that with people viewing me as more of a swaying vote along with my connection with Nick, I would never be the primary target of the other side. Although I don't know if you can really call this "gameplay", but typically just being a decent person does you a lot of favor in the game and I made sure I never caused unneeded drama with anyone so I could continue to decrease the vote on my back. I let Silver and Ikah dig their own graves on how they treated others in the game while I tried to at least keep a neutral relationship with everyone even if I had no intention of working with them. I also used my votes to my advantage. Ikah said "If Max didn’t have majority he would keep to himself and vote with majority." as a way to degrade my game but this benefitted me a lot more than just voting who I actually wanted to leave each time. By voting with the majority when the vote was hopeless, people saw me less connected to the minority "battalion". This allowed me to be perceived as someone who the majority could work with. This was my plan B in case working with the minority didn't work out for me. If the double tribal didn't happen I could easily feign loyalty, albeit quite questionably, and keep myself safe to reach the stage where everyone was planning to backstab each other anyway after Ikah and Silver were voted off. It's the little things that I did to keep myself safe no matter how the game actually progressed. However after it became evident that the numbers were in my favor I started to have a more definite plan of how I wanted to progress in the future. Starting at the final 8, this was the order I wanted to take people out. Demi, Lilly, Hufus, Silver, Nick. Which would have left me in the end with Zach, who literally was voted most likely to be dragged to the end, and Ikah, who has pissed off so many people that I knew the jury wouldn't respect him despite his amazing story on paper. Of course things changed and went off course, specifically during the final 6 when I had like 10 minutes to strategize with people. I rarely outright said a name during this time to avoid people suspecting ulterior motives (Like me protecting Nick) but I always made sure to push for the people I wanted while using my typical indecisive persona. This is why Lilly left before Nick, despite Silver and Hufus pushing for Nick to go. This was to ensure Nick would be a loyal meatshield essentially. This proved especially useful at the final 6 and 4 when Nick backstabbed Zach to save me in the revote and at the final 4 where he was the definite target over me. I recognize my game lacks the big moves that juries typically look for, but I played this game intelligently preparing myself for many different scenarios moving forward in the game. Plus I think the fact that I found an idol by myself also proves I had a lot of dedication in this game. I wasn't just floating, I was playing the game behind the scenes which allowed me to get my targets out, while never becoming a target myself.
