@Lexie
Of course I would have rather played a different way and made some bolder moves. I've known for quite a while now that I would probably be an "easy beat," so I had to hope that the jury would be open-minded about listening to my case. I feel if I made bolder moves, I would definitely be credited more by the jury.
A smaller thing I wish I had done differently was show up to more challenges. I think, even if I'm perceived as being a follower, if I had shown up to more challenge, it would have given off the appearance of me at least doing something, whereas now, many people feel I didn't do anything during the game.
I also wish I had made bigger strategic moves. Like I said to Silver, I feel crazy for aligning with the same people who had wanted me out of the game. In an ideal world, I would have liked to have made a move around final 10 or so to take control of the game for myself, such as voting out Josh, who had voted for me multiple times in the pre-merge. I knew that I had to trust him fully, and it ended up working to my benefit, but if I was given the option, I wouldn't have wanted to take the risk of trusting someone who so adamantly targeted me. I know that's not the biggest move either, but I think by doing that, it would have set off a chain of bolder moves that I could claim as my own.
You asked how this would affect my endgame as well, and the weird thing about all of it is, I think I have a better shot to win the game now than in my scenario above, because in complete honesty, I don't think I would be here. While I think my chances of winning are very low, making a move would have made my chances 0. My whole shtick was that I was the loyal ally and that I'm not threatening in challenges, and once I break that, I become untrustworthy to the people I've put my trust in, and I don't think I would have had the relationships with everyone else to keep me in the game. I feel like I maybe make it to your position at best, if I'm lucky. Otherwise, I get taken out for being a threat, just like James, Nick, Patrick, Silver, you and Absolita.
Maybe if I had been playing differently from say, the swap, I would have been able to make a move and still make it to the end, but that wasn't the reality of the situation. I knew that realistically, I played how I needed to so that I could make it to the end to give myself a chance. Albeit, not a great one, but at the end of the day, I'm a finalist and if I had played differently, I don't feel like I would be, so I at least think my play was justifiable. I made decisions to maximize my chance of winning at risk of losing respect from the jury, despite them not being what I necessarily wanted.