Post by katiecollins on Jul 29, 2014 6:22:55 GMT
Well shit making an opening statement is really not easy. I have so much to say and I'm honestly just super excited to have actually made a Final Tribal Council for the first time ever. (Even though I now have to face down the major number of haters I seem to have in the jury house 
) My journey through this game was never as smooth a ride as other players have experienced, but it was definitely an incredible and entertaining journey for me.
As much as a certain (bitter) person will claim that I CHEATED, my pre-merge was entirely rocky and it wasn't smooth sailing for me at all. I was pretty much always in danger from early on in the game. On the original Athena tribe, I wasn't in a good position. I only with 3 other people on a 9 person tribe: LJ, Teresa, and Brian. Teresa and I were honestly very tight from way early on, but I still knew that I wasn't in a power position on the tribe. However, I proved to be strong enough in challenges that I wasn't an early target at all despite having minimal allies on the tribe.
And... then the tribe swap happened which was honestly the biggest disaster for my game. I ended up on that new Hades tribe with 3 former Ares members and 1 former Athena member I had never even met before. Sabrina was both useless and silent after all. My game hung on by a fucking thread during this entire post-swap segment of the game. I was the perpetual underdog because I knew that if Hades ever lost a challenge, my ass was grass. It was so bad that a grand total of 1 person on the tribe would even bother to talk to me at all. (Shoutout to Austin for being nice enough to exchange small-talk with me!) But I clung on in this game and somehow got to the merge. I attribute my survival of this DARK AGE for me to 3 things: 1) Hard fucking work in the challenges because I knew I was screwed. 2) A really strong tribe who all worked their asses off as well. 3) PRAISE JESUS FOR AN EARLY 12 PERSON MERGE
So then I get to the merge and I expect my game to clear up because I finally have some room to work and I'm not a perpetual bottom dweller. Sabrina left and nobody was shocked because alol duh. And then most of the cast grouped together to vote out Julie. But apparently during this time, a giant ass group of 7 became an alliance and I was so rudely not included. In fact, the only people not included from the top 11 were: myself, Julie, Jay, and Todd. I didn't even know about the giant alliance until Teresa told me about it at final 10 (thanks for that btw)... AND THEN SHE WAS BLINDSIDED AT THAT TRIBAL COUNCIL AND I HAD NO CLUE. So here Miss Katie is again stranded at the bottom of the game. Somehow I always ended up at the bottom but I was never defeated. But at that point I was in with Kass so she protected me through that F9 vote where Todd went home.
Basically here at F8 is where my game started to pick up and become more than just the person hanging on for dear life. Using my in with Kass, I convinced Kass to use her double vote and get Candice/Brian to vote with us to blindside Austin. The way I went about it was to approach Austin and basically start yelling at him because I "knew I was next to go". This made him annoyed and he started saying stuff about how he was well-positioned in the game, which along with his HII threatened Kass and Brian enough for them to come with me. Then at F7 I flipped over to the LJ/Yul/Jay side of the proceedings to vote out Brian, my next biggest threat. It was meant to be a cleaner vote but yaknow Jay disappeared whatever. Then I flipped BACK to vote out my next biggest threat: Yul.
So that left me in the F4 after controlling the votes for pretty much the entire endgame. My next goal was to take out LJ since he didn't even vote for half the people on the jury and he was beloved. Andddd then he won immunity and I was faced with voting out either Kass or Candice. Again, I was in the position of being the swing vote and ultimately I voted out a close friend who I thought would be a bigger threat at the jury portion of the game.
Love me or hate me, I have played a hard fought game to get here. Despite being shoved into the underdog role countless times, I've managed to get back up and keep fighting. I'm such a fighter that I turned it around and pretty much became the single driving force of pretty much every vote for the entire endgame. In my opinion, I had the greatest turnaround in this game and I've been on such a roller-coaster of a journey so win or lose I have a lot to be proud of. (Shoutout to anyone who's read my entire speech because my god I am a wordy little bastard)
Good luck to LJ and Candice my fellow F3ers. I am now ready to be torn apart by the jury alol
) My journey through this game was never as smooth a ride as other players have experienced, but it was definitely an incredible and entertaining journey for me.As much as a certain (bitter) person will claim that I CHEATED, my pre-merge was entirely rocky and it wasn't smooth sailing for me at all. I was pretty much always in danger from early on in the game. On the original Athena tribe, I wasn't in a good position. I only with 3 other people on a 9 person tribe: LJ, Teresa, and Brian. Teresa and I were honestly very tight from way early on, but I still knew that I wasn't in a power position on the tribe. However, I proved to be strong enough in challenges that I wasn't an early target at all despite having minimal allies on the tribe.
And... then the tribe swap happened which was honestly the biggest disaster for my game. I ended up on that new Hades tribe with 3 former Ares members and 1 former Athena member I had never even met before. Sabrina was both useless and silent after all. My game hung on by a fucking thread during this entire post-swap segment of the game. I was the perpetual underdog because I knew that if Hades ever lost a challenge, my ass was grass. It was so bad that a grand total of 1 person on the tribe would even bother to talk to me at all. (Shoutout to Austin for being nice enough to exchange small-talk with me!) But I clung on in this game and somehow got to the merge. I attribute my survival of this DARK AGE for me to 3 things: 1) Hard fucking work in the challenges because I knew I was screwed. 2) A really strong tribe who all worked their asses off as well. 3) PRAISE JESUS FOR AN EARLY 12 PERSON MERGE
So then I get to the merge and I expect my game to clear up because I finally have some room to work and I'm not a perpetual bottom dweller. Sabrina left and nobody was shocked because alol duh. And then most of the cast grouped together to vote out Julie. But apparently during this time, a giant ass group of 7 became an alliance and I was so rudely not included. In fact, the only people not included from the top 11 were: myself, Julie, Jay, and Todd. I didn't even know about the giant alliance until Teresa told me about it at final 10 (thanks for that btw)... AND THEN SHE WAS BLINDSIDED AT THAT TRIBAL COUNCIL AND I HAD NO CLUE. So here Miss Katie is again stranded at the bottom of the game. Somehow I always ended up at the bottom but I was never defeated. But at that point I was in with Kass so she protected me through that F9 vote where Todd went home.
Basically here at F8 is where my game started to pick up and become more than just the person hanging on for dear life. Using my in with Kass, I convinced Kass to use her double vote and get Candice/Brian to vote with us to blindside Austin. The way I went about it was to approach Austin and basically start yelling at him because I "knew I was next to go". This made him annoyed and he started saying stuff about how he was well-positioned in the game, which along with his HII threatened Kass and Brian enough for them to come with me. Then at F7 I flipped over to the LJ/Yul/Jay side of the proceedings to vote out Brian, my next biggest threat. It was meant to be a cleaner vote but yaknow Jay disappeared whatever. Then I flipped BACK to vote out my next biggest threat: Yul.
So that left me in the F4 after controlling the votes for pretty much the entire endgame. My next goal was to take out LJ since he didn't even vote for half the people on the jury and he was beloved. Andddd then he won immunity and I was faced with voting out either Kass or Candice. Again, I was in the position of being the swing vote and ultimately I voted out a close friend who I thought would be a bigger threat at the jury portion of the game.
Love me or hate me, I have played a hard fought game to get here. Despite being shoved into the underdog role countless times, I've managed to get back up and keep fighting. I'm such a fighter that I turned it around and pretty much became the single driving force of pretty much every vote for the entire endgame. In my opinion, I had the greatest turnaround in this game and I've been on such a roller-coaster of a journey so win or lose I have a lot to be proud of. (Shoutout to anyone who's read my entire speech because my god I am a wordy little bastard)
Good luck to LJ and Candice my fellow F3ers. I am now ready to be torn apart by the jury alol