Hi guys! Thanks so much for a fun season! I've never played a game with the edge of extinction twist, and even though I never visited it, I hope I can touch on why I think I deserve to win the game by using the twist to my advantage, winning crucial immunities, and making moves of my own.

First, the edge of extinction twist was difficult to navigate around, but I think it payed off for me in the end. Right off the bat, I was tempted with an advantage on day 2. The night after Eli was voted out first, I was offered a steal-a-vote advantage for 1 fire token. I was reluctant at first, but I realized that it could mean life or death in this game. I’ll explain how I used it effectively later, but it was less impactful than anticipated. A couple people bequeathed their fire tokens to me, which allowed me to help form a half idol for Wes’ full idol at the Harry vote, as well as buying the spyglass, which had a pretty big impact that I’ll discuss later.

Second, winning immunities (both tribal and individual) at key points in the game gave me the space I needed to work on my social game. Not going to a single premerge tribal council is unfamiliar territory for me in Survivor, so it felt weird at first. I had to adapt my strategy a little different because I wasn't able to test any loyalties at tribal council. With the original Jounetsu tribe, those three rounds of tribe positivity gave me time to create bonds with people like Nick, Noah, TJ, and Vlad. I admit that I got lucky with the swap, as the Daitan'na tribe--which I still think was jokingly named after me???—had 3 other original Jounetsu, two of which I had an alliance with in Noah and Vlad, and Wes, who has been a friend both in and out of the game. The premerge gave me necessary time to see the dynamics unfold with everyone else at tribal councils, so I knew what direction to take when the merge came. For individual immunities, winning at the final 9, 7, and all 3 in the finale payed off. I loved the competition, though, and I am glad that there were times at this game that I was vulnerable. There's no beauty in winning every single individual immunity, or dominating every single edge of extinction challenge, but I won enough to prove that I cared about my physical game.

Lastly, the moves that I made in this game got me to this point. Not losing any premerge challenges gave me the time to build my relationships, but one of my most crucial social moments was at the final 9, as I needed to do some serious damage control after voting Sagar and needing to convince people that I voted out Noah. It worked and I got Gonzalo and Sagar to argue for basically the rest of the season, causing distrust in the other alliance at that time. It got Sagar to flip back to my side with Vlad and Wes, so that we could pull off a blindside at 8 by combining fire tokens for two halves of an idol to give Wes. At the final 7, I could sense Vlad was going to flip, so the next tribal council was an opportunity for me to expose his game without even having to use the spyglass. With Wes promising to idol me, and Vlad thinking the 3 of us were voting Gonzalo, I went to Wes about voting out TJ instead because he was a bigger threat to win and had been pretty close to Vlad. The plan worked, as Vlad wrote down Gonzalo and so it increased the possibility of them not teaming up in the finale. I had to use the steal-a-vote at a final 6, and I didn't even need to use it at the first final 6. At the second final 6, stealing Vincent's vote was solely to push Vincent’s hand to play the legacy advantage on himself because I didn’t want him playing it on Vlad. At the final 5, I used my spyglass advantage in order to make it public that I made the move on Vincent. Gonzalo and Vincent were a tight duo in this game and I wanted Wes and I to be the last one. I was too afraid of them making the final four together. Wes playing the idol made him think Eli was going home with two votes. Although Eli was the biggest threat remaining to me winning final immunity, I wanted that challenge. I was willing to take the risk in keeping Eli was in order to use my spyglass advantage and expose where everyone stood (Eli vs. Wes relationship, Gonzalo vs. Wes relationship).

I hope I was able to talk about as much as possible. These speeches and explanations get pretty redundant and it’s almost 3am and I’m zzzzzz, so I am excited to answer all of your questions and clear anything up tomorrow!

And thanks again to Ethan and Ian for having me! Y’all were great hosts!

@Aiden

Dana: You were on the immune tribe for most of the pre-merge and even for possibly half of the merge. Why should I vote for someone who hasn't faced any real danger for most of the season?

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Winning all premerge challenges shouldn't make me any less deserving because it was luck that put the original Jounetsu and Daitan'na tribes together. Still, the danger to my game was present all those times I didn't have individual immunity. Gonzalo even said it himself that he would have preferred it been me over Noah at the final 10, but it wasn't because of the relationships that I built with people. At times that I was vulnerable, I was able to escape having votes against me, and at times I felt like they were coming my way, I won immunity the next day. Had I not won immunity at the final 9, final 7, and all three in the finale, I do believe that I would have been voted out. Besides that, people had opportunities to write my name down and it didn't happen until the first final 6. Even then, my relationship with Wes was so developed by that point that he was willing to play his idol on me knowing I was a threat in the game.

I feel like I should not be penalized for winning the last 3 immunities because Eli won his way back into the game. He had to win all those edge of extinction tasks to sell people advantages in the game, as well as earn challenge advantages and an idol of his own. Eli wasted his idol at the final 6, he was not voted out at the final 5 because of my move against Vincent, and he didn't get votes at the final 4 because Wes wanted to vote for Gonzalo and I was letting it tie regardless. Both Eli and I are strong at the physical game, so I would rather embrace the times I won immunity to make sure I wasn't voted out and to get a shot at pleading my case tonight.

@Nick

Dana – I have to hand it to you, you played an incredibly superb game. In that episode where you flipped on me, I have to know – why?

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Thank you for saying that!

For the merge tribal council vote, the information that sold me on blindsiding you was when I heard about what happened at the joint tribal council. Although I applaud you on using the safety without power advantage to save yourself, I had heard from someone that you had leaked screenshots about some sort of split plan that was going on at that tribal council. Lexey and Vlad had voted in the minority on that blown up split plan, who at the time I had more of a connection with than I did with you. It was nothing personal, but when I heard you leaked screenshots of a chat from multiple people, it made me a little weary. Maybe I was told the story wrong or none of this is true, but that was the biggest motivator: I didn't want an ally who would possibly leak everything I say over someone who I knew to honor our privacy in Lexey.

@Nick

All three of you – make tributes for each of the jurors.

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Aiden: I never got the chance to talk to you this game! We were never on the same tribe. What I do admire from you is that you are the only player voted out premerge who endured (besides Eli + Sagar) to stay on the jury. That takes a lot of dedication and it seemed like you never wanted to give up from the outside looking in

Nick: What a wack ass merge boot. Original Jounetsu lines became blurry and I wound up sticking with another group. From meeting you in this game and me flopping over in Rome, I will say that I am very happy to have played with you and ended on good terms. I enjoy our conversations: nothing heavy, always positive. Hit me up sometime if we play one of these again or if you're just bored

Sag: I owe you an apology just as much as the 9 other people who sent you home in honestly the most brutal way. You got blamed for being the 1 person who voted Lexey over Nick. I still have no idea to this day if that was true, but it spread like wildfire and everyone jumped on it. We were on the same tribe all game, so it was fun to get to talk to you and fuck around a little bit

Noah: I never expected our games/relationship to turn out the way it did. From the cast reveal, I remember in some of my earliest confessionals that I was like "OH MY GOD Noah is powerhouse and I know he will be a force to reckon with". The way that the original Jounetsu and swapped tribes panned out, I started realizing that storyline wasn't panning out. Thanks for being allies. I am glad we were closer than my expectations (even if you were gonna cut me if you returned I was rooting for you xd)

Lexey: I love you so much and I think you know that, so I'm gonna move on before I fall asleep typing these. It's almost 4am JESUS

Harry: Probably the dirtiest I felt this game was voting you out. I really loved talking with you about the game and anything in general. I felt like our relationship was real and we weren't going to let the game get in the way of that. Thank you for the love in some other VL's as well

Sagar: https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=quoridor

TJ: I know we started talking less and less as the game went on, but I am very happy we talked when we talked. Like Harry, nothing but positive energy from you. We kept the game clean and fair with no nastiness or arguing. Rockstar wins Big Brother Second Chances

Vlad: Besides that shitty M&N season we had with Noah, this was our first real time playing together and what an experience it was! From all those tribes together to advantages to voting differently to scheming to idol guessing, it was a lot of fun being on your side. I'm sorry things caught up in the finale and you went home like that, but you were starting to take it all the way man. I hope we can keep in touch on snap

Vincent: Out of everyone in this game--prejurors included--I have never been more fascinated by someone. I still know nothing about you. You were funny at times in the main chat. You were nice. You would come out of nowhere and slay the fuck out of everyone in that flash game immunity. You had a legacy advantage that everyone thought was fake. You are the ultimate mystery in this game and I love that about you. Keep that energy going in these games and you will get a win soon

Wes: I love you! Thanks for being my partner in crime <3

Hey guys, 2 simple questions

Gonzalo: When you were playing both sides and you leaked lots of info, did you have some sense of loyality when you were doing all of that from begginning until f6? did you plan to benefit only yourself and always know whats going on and you planned to go with the majority or you were leaking those informations for some kind of alliance you had or people you wanted to go far with?

Richard: You were immune until f12, then you got immunity somewhere between f12 and f9 and after that no one could give a shot at you because you were either immune from winning individual challenges or wes was playing an idol for you so you were immune again. i didnt see that you could prove that you played better strategic or social game than gonzalo because you barely spoke with me. i agree you played strong in individual challenges but do you think you played better social or strategic game than other 2 people sitting next to you when i didnt see that?

Eli: I told you that if you will take me out you will definetly loose the final immunity challenge and wont stand a damn chance again Richard to win over him at this final tribal council. Do you regret making a move on me instead of Gonzalo or Wes at f5 who lost final challenge and let Richard reach end?

At the moment i feel like Eli would be more deserving to win if he wouldnt scare everyone that he has 2 idols and no one can think about voting against him for 2 rounds cause this seemed really over powered and i wouldnt say that on main chat if i would be back from eoe like you at f6. Did you take any risks which could let you win this season? NONE, i expected you to be siding with one of the jury threats and trying to give a shot against some of us but you felt afraid of me richard and vlad and when richard made the finals against you i feel that he should beat you in the end.

Richard unless you prove me wrong i feel like you wouldnt be here if wes wouldnt be your friend and give for your benefits 3 idols which took out your whole opposition in this game, tj harry me got idoled out. At the moment i expect from you to tell me what strategical moves you made which was better than gonzalos moves or you wont earn my vote

Gonzalo i felt like you were sole dictator of ikari tribe at the beggining and jury should know that. When you reached swap you made bad move and lost your ally Aiden. Do you think you had any chance to save him? When you reached merge i know you were playing both sides but it was impressive to me and talking about strategic game you might have more arguments than Richard that you played better strategic gameplay, i hope you earn as much votes as possible but first i wanted to ask you those 2 questions. first above and do you think you could save aiden?

but honestly you all earned your spots here guys and i respect that but im not talking about you, more about your gameplay so dont be mad at me lol

Eli: I told you that if you will take me out you will definetly loose the final immunity challenge and wont stand a damn chance again Richard to win over him at this final tribal council. Do you regret making a move on me instead of Gonzalo or Wes at f5 who lost final challenge and let Richard reach end?

Like i said before if Richard lost any of those immunities i was voting him 100%. Go back and look at the tribal if i had voted for Gonza or Wes i would not be here right now because Wes voted for me..... me voting for you actually saved me so no i do not regret it. I do not think you wouldve beat richard in the f4 immunity

and how is coming back from edge and scaring you guys with idols a bad thing?? im not understanding that part @Vincent

@Noah

Dana: What are the things that you did, that I likely don't know about, and ways you lied to ME?  Basically I want to know why I can say "Dana outplayed me" rather than "Dana just got lucky that Sagar wanted me out and not him".

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One big moment was actually what Gonzalo explained it himself at the bottom of page 10. I outplayed you at the tribal council you left because I maintained a better relationship with Sagar so that he would go to the other side and change the vote from me to you. That's not just luck. If someone is willing to stick their neck on the line and convince an alliance of 4 to change the vote off of me, then I did something right that you didn't. There wasn't much of an opportunity for me to lie to you in this game if that's what you're considering "outplaying" you. We went to three tribal councils together and I was able to maintain being loyal to you, as much as I didn't want to. You'll see in the confessionals after the season how much I actually wanted to turn on you, but I never really got the chance. We were immune up until the merge. You weren't a target at the first two merge votes and at the tribal you left I did not know you were the one getting votes. All I knew was that it was not me because Sagar told me.

Things that I did that you likely didn't know about was throwing you and Vlad under the bus after you were voted out. I had to convince the other side that I had voted you out and not Sagar, but that it was Gonzalo who voted for Sagar. I was able to convince them enough that Sagar made an alliance chat with him, me, Harry, TJ, Vincent, and I was able to get some information for the time being. It put me in a better position because Sagar was able to influence the people wanting to write my name not to at the times that I was vulnerable. Disregarding the immunities I needed to save myself, the only time I got votes was at the final 6, likely because Sagar was not there to influence them and they saw how big of a threat I was to win.

@Eli

Like i said before if Richard lost any of those immunities i was voting him 100%. Go back and look at the tribal if i had voted for Gonza or Wes i would not be here right now because Wes voted for me..... me voting for you actually saved me so no i do not regret it. I do not think you wouldve beat richard in the f4 immunity

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The difference here is that I needed to convince you at the final 5 that voting for Vincent made the most sense instead of Wes in order to avoid a 3-1-1 scenario, with a tie between you and Vincent ending up with you leaving. Up until that point, Vincent had not pissed any jurors off and had been playing a decent game. Although I think I had a better shot at beating him over you for final immunity, I was worried about the final 4 rocks scenario in favor of Vincent sitting here, even if Wes and I had voted for him at 4. I was willing to take the risk of losing final immunity to increase my odds of winning. Vincent was becoming a jury threat and I think you are acknowledging that in your answers, so you voted out somebody who you knew had a shot to beat me over someone who did not have a shot to beat me.

richard, i like your speech at final tribal so im interested to ask after all of those 3 idol play outs do you think that you controled wes to use those idols correctly, he controled you and he made these moves by himself, you both deserve equal credit for those moves or situation looked different at every tribal?

i want to just listen to your strategy coming through this game from start to end

@Vincent

Richard: i didnt see that you could prove that you played better strategic or social game than gonzalo because you barely spoke with me. i agree you played strong in individual challenges but do you think you played better social or strategic game than other 2 people sitting next to you when i didnt see that?

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I hope some of my other answers have touched on my strategic and social game and how it was better than Gonzalo's. I am sorry we did not talk as much, but the times that we did it just felt like you made empty promises. You said time and time again that you would vote out people like TJ and Gonzalo, but that never came into fruition. I was able to make moves against people I saw being threats to win, whereas Gonzalo's votes seemed more driven by other people's decisions or his dislike for people. For example, my relationship with Wes led him to tell me about his idol and that he was going to use it on me, leading me to bring up the idea of blindsiding TJ instead of voting Gonzalo like Vlad wanted. We were taking a big risk at that tribal council because you guys could have been voting Wes instead of me, or even splitting the vote, but I took a gamble and it payed off as a shifting point for me in the game.

My social game was to stay in everyone's good graces, so that I could escape getting votes for as long as possible. I was more under-the-radar with my relationship building. I was not involved with a lot of leaking or fighting like Gonzalo was, and I was told by some people on the edge that Eli was not receptive in building relationships with anyone voted out after him and that he was more or less just dominating all of the tasks. Because I was not at tribal councils premerge does not mean I was not playing the game. I was working on my relationships with a few Jounetsu and Ikari so that I could receive a couple of fire tokens and have an idea of a majority alliance at the merge. I did not receive votes until the final 6 despite being vulnerable 5 times throughout the merge and my developed relationships with people and positive outlook on the game made that possible.

@Vincent

Richard: i like your speech at final tribal so im interested to ask after all of those 3 idol play outs do you think that you controled wes to use those idols correctly, he controled you and he made these moves by himself, you both deserve equal credit for those moves or situation looked different at every tribal?

__________

Wes and I have joint credit with the idol plays. I recognize that Harry, TJ, and you would not be voted out at the time you were unless those idols were played, but that's the beauty of the game. At the final 8, that's when Sagar, Vlad, Wes, and I combined all of our fire tokens to get the two halves of the idol we needed to send Harry to the edge, so that credit is among all 4 of us. I will say the one part of that round that I kept a secret from them was that I had an extra fire token. I said that I only had 2 left when I actually had 3. This payed off because I was able to buy the spyglass and expose people's votes at the final 5, causing a lot of drama between the other 3.

At the first final 6, my relationship with Wes was so developed that he was even willing to play one on me at the final 6 knowing damn well that he could still be voted out. In that regard, the tribal TJ left was a little different because I was able to convince Wes to play it on me and we voted for one of the biggest jury threats.

I also think it's important for me to note that I was never controlled by Wes. For example, at the final 5 vote, Wes was pushing hard to me that Eli needed to leave over Vincent. Wes wanted to idol out Eli himself. However, I did not want Wes to have that move, so I knew that using the spyglass to my advantage and voting for you was a strategic move that he could not claim. He admitted to me afterwards that he wanted to idol out Eli because he didn't like him. Wes was dominated a lot by emotions in this game, but that's still a king, so I can't blame him for that. What I can say is that I navigated the idol plays to place myself in a better position in the tribe and to vote people out that I believed would beat me in the end.

richard, at the final 5 wes tried to split the vote on me and eli in case i would play idol so it would be (2)wes-(2)me-1 eli but wes originally wanted to vote me out at f5 or as you said he asked you to vote for eli and blindside him with 2 votes making it 2 votes on eli and 1 on me? cause this is a bit confusing, both of you told me different point of view at this tribal and wes intensions

@vincent

Wes didnt try to make a move at that tribal lol he voted me for personal reasons and me/richard wanted to take you out over Gonza