Hi Penner! Nice to finally meet you! lol

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Now, since I got out a while ago, I missed out on really everything that went down in the merge and any information I got was only second-hand. So I want you guys to tell me what roles you played in the merge that would warrant my voting for you.

Alright, well that's a pretty tough question but I'll answer it as well as I can.

Coming into the merge I was aligned with Katie, Sierra, Erinn, Shane, David, and Aras. We six had helped steer the vote away from Red team and onto Blue because we knew that Jenn and Dave were working together and wanted to get control. At our first TC we were worried that Dave might have had an idol, because Sierra had told me that she had given him alot of her clues, and we knew he would think he was a target since he had been fighting with Sierra before. We had known for a while that Angie was giving our info to Jenn but I still fed her some bits of info to try and keep her thinking that she had us fooled. Then when we were planning the vote, I suggested to a few people we pick Angie as the target, because nobody would think to play an idol on her. At around this same time Sierra had been telling me that Aras was tight with Dave. I didnt know if it was true, but I made a side deal with Aras to keep him with us, and was considering branching out with the two of them if it turned out that Shane and David were playing us.

The next round, Sierra beat me at the challenge. We had a really tough decision about who to vote, because there were good reasons why Dave or Charlie could get an idol played on them and Dave straight up asked us if we were voting Becky, so we were wondering if maybe they were idoling her. Since there weren't any good options, Erinn and I pitched the idea of voting Aras, because Dave had said that Aras told him he wasn't going to be target the round that Angelia left. I wasnt happy about it because I knew we had bigger fish to fry, and I didnt want to lose my backup alliance, but it was pretty clear that there wasn't a safer choice, and we needed to get enough numbers to be able to split votes.

I had a major disagreement with the group here because they all wanted to leave Sierra out of the vote because they didn't like her and didn't trust her after some stuff she pulled in the premerge, but I thought it was stupid. We still had her loyalty and she wasnt turning on us so why would we purposely make her our enemy? Looking back I should of spoken up about it more, but instead I let them do it and made some plans of my own.

After Aras left Sierra was PISSED to say the least. I still talked to her and tried to keep her from giving up especially because everybody was making fun of her and treating her like crap. I purposely didnt tell the rest of the alliance that I was doing that because I didnt want them to think I was doing it to be a jury suckup or anything like that. It wasnt strategy, I just really felt sorry for Sierra in an out of game way, it was like she was the kid at school none of the cool kids wanted to hang around with and I wanted her to feel better. Having Sierra's trust is a HUGE reason why I never got votes after Dave was out, because she and I were watching out for each other.

I think my role was also to do a lot of planning and strategy for the group. I wasnt always the one who came up with the vote idea or the one who pushed hardest for what we actually wound up doing, but there were a lot of times where I was coming up with ways to dodge the idols that we thought the other side had, and working out how to keep the numbers when rewards started coming into it, and stuff like that. I also helped us to make the posting strategy that got us the triple vote in the auction - if Dave or Sierra had gotten it we would have been TOAST. Like for example the final seven, I already told Charlie a lot of what went down, and how I made some deals and stuff to keep myself from being targeted or idoled, but after all of that, Katie out of the blue told me she had two idols, and I tried to get her to idol herself and David that round when Shane was immune, then split the vote 2-2, that way if they played the idol on either Charlie or Sierra it wouldn't matter, we'd send the other one home, or if Charlie tried to hang onto it for another round, it would be a tie and we could send him home in the revote. It would of been a foolproof guarantee to make sure Charlie's idol was out of the game at seven and guaranteed us numbers for six, but the group didnt go with it, and we nearly lost David. So sometimes my plans didnt get used, but a lot of times they did come in handy.

I also was someone who stepped it up in challenges. I dont think I was a dominator or anything like that but it was important to me to work hard to try and keep immunity away from people we needed to get out, so that we didnt have to scramble around and make new plans.

So I guess my role would of been that I was a main part of the alliance, but I didn't just stick to that or let them run things for me. I was an active part of the planning and strategizing, but I also wasn't afraid to take action for myself when I disagreed with what the alliance was doing.

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To kind of add onto that: Kim, you and I never talked once. Not that I really fault you for that. There were a lot of players in this game and I don't expect you to have made amazing relationships with all of them, but still, I know nothing about you at all. Tell me who you are and why I should vote for you. (You don't have to give your life story or any personal information really, I just mean tell me who you are in this game.)

Haha fair enough!

I think the reason why we never really chatted is because we were never on a tribe together. Im kind of a purist with these things, I dont like to talk across tribes or mess around with another team's business. It just kinda ruins the whole "Survivor"y atmosphere to me.

I kind of dont know what to say for why you should vote for me, because I dont know what you think of when you think of a winner. If you want someone who was bold and unafraid of making moves, then you'd vote Katie. If you want someone who won a lot of challenges, you'd vote me. So its hard to tell you why you should vote me becasue I dunno what you value.

For me, though, I think a winner is someone who will go out and make things happen and that's definitely something I was. I wanted to prove myself in this game and show that I could do what it took to get to the end, by doing well in the challenges and by being a good ally. Sometimes I lied and had to spin things around to get my way, but I always did those things myself, I never laid around and let anybody else make moves for me. If I wanted to be safe, I went out and talked to the people I needed to talk to to make sure I wouldnt get votes. If I wanted to make sure that someone else went home, I sat down and figured out the best way to make it happen. And yeah that's a hard thing to do and a risky game to play, and sometimes it meant I had to lie to people or betray them, but I think that its better to take ownership of your game. So if you think so too, then Id say that's a pretty good reason to vote for me!


Thanks for your questions, Penner! If there's anything you want more info on, lemme know! <3

Hey Penner! Okay, it's like REALLY early so if something doesn't make sense please let me know and I'll be happy to explain it further.

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Now, since I got out a while ago, I missed out on really everything that went down in the merge and any information I got was only second-hand. So I want you guys to tell me what roles you played in the merge that would warrant my voting for you.

~ Alright, let's get cracking. When the merge hit I was aligned with Erinn/Aras/Kim/Sierra and sort of David/Shane but I was kind of iffy about them because of the pre-game rumors and because Shane was barely around. I actually had this little chart when we hit the merge saying who was where and I had both of them along with Angie and Becky listed as floaters. However, I marked David as being more with us and Becky as being more with Dave/Jenn.

Anyways, during the Angie vote everyone was concerned that Dave had an idol. I think it was Aras who approached me with possibly voting a wildcard out and then pretend we were doing Dave. He kinda just mumbled it, so I went full force and suggested it to people. ERINN was the one who decided the vote would be Angie though, I am putting a spoiler right here to put the conversation:

convo

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Katie Hanson 10:50 pm i think we need to flush dave's idol so whwtaever we do we need to pretend dave is the target so he plays it Erinn Lobdell 10:51 pm Okay. So how many numbers do we have: 7? Erinn Lobdell 10:51 pm Me/You/Kim/Shane/Aras/David/Sierra? Katie Hanson 10:51 pm i think so Erinn Lobdell 10:52 pm Becky? Angie? What about them? Katie Hanson 10:52 pm i say we vote out one of beckty and angie cause they are wildcards Erinn Lobdell 10:52 pm I think Becky has a better personality then Angie So I say let's vote Angie Katie Hanson 10:52 pm idk where david/sierra stand 100% im fine with that Erinn Lobdell 10:52 pm I know that David is with us 100% Katie Hanson 10:52 pm you sure? Erinn Lobdell 10:52 pm Positive. Katie Hanson 10:52 pm should we tell sierra to just do dave? Erinn Lobdell 10:53 pm But then she might be hesitant about the next TC. I say we tell her Dave anyways? Katie Hanson 10:53 pm i just dont want her to spill the beans and then dave doesnt play his idol Erinn Lobdell 10:53 pm Exactly. She needs to be kept in the dark. Katie Hanson 10:54 pm so we tell aras, kim, myself, you, david and shane to do angie thats enough everyone else we tell dave including becky/angie Erinn Lobdell 10:54 pm Awesome. Katie Hanson 10:54 pm so someone spills the beans

So, Angie went home and we were all surprised to see Dave didn't play the idol. Someone [maybe David? I have real bad memory] said that Aras had told Dave he was not really the target and that is why the idol had not been played. That made our whole alliance be like WTF. And seeing how we were nervous about the idol being played again we decided that we would vote out Aras, up until that point I had been Aras' biggest cheerleader, I always tried to make sure everyone knew we got him because I trusted him. But after hearing he might have helped my nemesis Dave Cruser I decided to stop giving any fucks about him and vote him out. It was a dirty move, but it's a key move about why we are here, I think.

Afterwards we FINALLY voted out David, and the round after was the awful Erinn blindside which was the second time in the whole game where I felt blindsided. After that there wasn't much strategizing going on, we only had to get rid of the people not in our alliance. I remember at some point there was A LOT of paranoia about the idols and people were starting to make crazy plans to avoid being idoled out [I hadn't told anyone I had the idols by then, also I think Erinn was still around]. So, I told Erinn I had the idols and told her not to tell Kim or anyone. She didn't, though I let her hint that I did to Kim because she was getting crazy with idol paranoia. Eventually when people were getting too insane about the idol I told them all I had them. I remember being annoyed when Kim tried to tell me how to use my idols, and I shut that down immediately because I wanted to play them my way. I earned them and I wanted to use them when I wanted to use them.

I considered using them in multiple occasions on other people, but I never did because it was never needed. I was always confident that the plans we made would come through and things would work out so I didn't want to waste my idols until it was needed. A decision that clearly paid off.

I think that a lot of people saw me as a goat, or a character and they failed to see that I was strategic as well. I played a good rounded game, perhaps weaker in the challenges but I suck at challenges in general, and B it was part of the character I wanted to portray [which I would be happy to explain if anyone wants me to]. I spearheaded a lot of decisions, I was a key strategic player in the game and I was always aware of what was going on around me [besides the Sarah/Erinn votes].

I also want to point out that after we lied to Sierra, I went to her and tried to calm her down. Previous to that round she had said to me that if she was me she wouldn't have trusted herself if she was me. I used this line back on Sierra as to why we hadn't told her about the vote. I remember everyone was TERRIFIED of the back-lash we would get from Sierra, and I told them not to worry and that I would handle it. It seemed to do the trick once she realized that she had indeed said that and by saying that she had basically given me permission to lie to her and keep her in the dark. Then again, apparently Kim was talking to her too so only Sierra knows why she didn't explode that round after our conversation.

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And finally, I want you both to tell me who you think should be sitting next to you in the finals right now besides the person who actually is (Kim, who should be here other than Katie? Katie, same question but about Kim.)

~ Erinn 100%. She played the best game by a mile and if anyone should win that is not me [or Kim] it should be her.