~*~*OPENING STATEMENTS*~*~
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Hello people of the Jury! ~

I will start off by saying: This whole alt account experience has been very interesting to me, and I think it allowed me to do things I would not normally do if I wasn't anonymous. Regardless of that, I came to PLAY this season, amd I believe I did a fine job accomplishing that. With no votes cast against me at any Tribal Council, three immunity wins in a row, voting correctly for every Tribal Council except Luna's, going against four previous winners and coming out on top... I'm overall VERY proud of the game I played.

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~*~*OSCURU / PRE-MERGE*~*~
My very first strategy coming into the game was to make people on my tribe think I was Cory, in hopes that would make people want to form alliances with me. I tried to be as active as possible and do my best when we had challenges, making myself intentionally stand out. As well, I was intentionally sabotaging my guesses as to who Cory was because I wanted him in the game to use as a shield. This plan was foiled at the merge when 0.0% guessed correctly, but overall it made me a valuable asset to Oscuru and kept me from getting voted out. The votes for Theo and Andres were based on trying to keep the tribe as strong as possible.

There isn't much more to say about the pre-merge. I had a good relationship with Gulpin; Lewis and I worked fairly well together up until the merge; The Chickadees alliance with Noel/Gulpin was established. I made it out of Oscuru unscathed and in a good position overall.

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~*~*MERGE*~*~
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I pretty much instantly flipped against Oscuru come the merge; I had really wanted to work with Luna after we met during the 6vs6/flag challenge. Luna, Braxten, Gulpin, and I became a tight alliance right off the bat once Luna became a target. I had originally wanted Lewis out here before Archduke - I wanted to prove my loyalty by cutting out an OG Oscuru, in turn prevent a total Pagonging (I don't think I would have survived once it came down to F6, I hadn't built much strong personal connections with N, Lewis, and Layton) and I did not trust Lewis due to how adamantly he wanted Luna out after previously throwing Archduke's name out. To me, it indicated that he had flipped, and I wanted to prevent him taking control of the game. Ultimately, getting Archduke out was the right move regardless. This was instantly brought up in the #og-oscuru chat that there were rats (since the plan was to vote for Luna, and OG Oscuru had the numbers), but I never faced any consequences for flipping. Although, I think my silence made it pretty clear that I had turned on them.

This was also around the first time I had heard of anyone having advantages. I discovered the Tribal Image idol (empty) and had heard that Layton had an advantage, so it was easy to put 2 and 2 together. After Archduke, I wanted to get N out. The reasoning I proposed to the alliance was that because Kachow/Lewis were a duo, Layton/Lewis were a duo and Layton had an advantage, and N seemed adamantly against giving Luna control of the game but was without solid allies, no one else but N could go. Though, as we saw, the vote was flipped to Layton last minute despite Braxten and I getting the numbers for N in an attempt to surprise Layton, which caused Luna to get idoled out.

I talked to Layton afterwards, mainly about the idol play and also proposing we work together in the future. In that conversation, Layton asked how I knew that he had found the Tribal Image idol "specifically", which is what tipped me off that he had two advantages. I then found the ``!orbs`` idol (empty) soon after, and used that as proof to get votes off of Layton and onto N. This plan was successful, although I had no idea that N was Cory at the time.

Gulpin and Braxten, my main two allies, eventually started to not like each other. Gulpin found Braxten manipulative/controlling (I agreed, but I needed Braxten), and Braxten did not think Gulpin was loyal to our alliance/was targeting him. This ended up working out in my favor, as it put me in a position of power directly in the middle. Because Kachow/Lewis were a duo and Kachow was aligned with Gulpin, and because Wolf/Noel were aligned with Braxten, and I was aligned with Braxten/Gulpin, I got all of the tea.

My reason for voting for Lewis was because Braxten had told me that Noel thought Gulpin/Kachow/Lewis were running the show, so I knew I could get the numbers to finally get Lewis out. Kachow had actually randomly invited me into an alliance made up of everyone except Wolf to try and target him, so Kachow had to be left out of the blindside. Braxten and I (separately) used that to our advantage to tell Wolf that a mega-alliance existed without him, in an attempt to further gain his loyalty.

Gulpin had wanted to originally target Braxten instead of Kachow next, but since they were the only one left out of the blindside, I felt it was obvious that Kachow had to go next. Of course, I also had a vested interest in keeping Braxten around. I worked overtime in trying to convince people that Kachow had lied about Noel and was only trying to save themselves by causing a divide in the alliance, and that Noel would be great to take to the end. I told Braxten that keeping Noel would be a good idea because she would be on the bottom without Kachow (who was apparently the only one she trusted with that information about Braxten) and might vote for Gulpin to save themselves. I then told Gulpin that keeping Noel would be good because we could use her as a number against Braxten due to him targeting her that round. This is where the Braxten/Gulpin 'feud' really paid off for me.

Because I had lied to Braxten about wanting Gulpin out, I needed to find a way to get the target off of Gulpin. That is where the fake idol idea came from, and I used that to get Braxten to turn against Wolf. In the #announcements channel, I found an already taken idol to use as proof. Also, I had asked Gulpin to throw Braxten's name to Wolf; and then I asked Wolf if he had heard any names (to which he told me Braxten), I knew he was willing to go against Braxten. Gulpin and I then took this chance to get Braxten out, and got him out 3-1-1. In the wake of this, it showed us Wolf was with us and Noel was willing to vote against the Chickadees, which helped make our Final 3 decision.

Losing the last immunity challenge really worried me, especially coming off of a 3x immunity run, but I'm grateful that I made it here. I don't feel that I needed to win those immunities to stay safe because winning is what made me a target in the first place, but they gave me a great deal of influence as we got closer to the end. I sincerely gave every challenge my all. I spammed over 2,000 messages in my confessional for the Pokecord challenge, created a gigantic study-guide on everything that happened during the season for the quiz about it, spent hours on creating my Kalosian Zoroark story; winning these challenges was very important to me.

There is a great deal of strategy-talk I left out (most of it is in Gulpin's, and I don't want to plagiarize), so read her speech to really get the full picture.

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~*~*CLOSING STATEMENTS*~*~
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I did a lot of lying this season. I had a hand in voting out (almost) every person (ih8u layton), but I hope that everyone understands my game and why I chose to make the decisions that I did. If I mentioned I wanted to be friends outside of this, THAT part was true and I hope we can all have a bomb ass reunion. Looking back, I don't think there was anything about my game that I would change. I was very motivated to win this season, and I hope that much is apparent to you all. I'm proud of what I accomplished this time around.

This was all my honest perception, feel free to call me out if I'm being delusional.

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~*~*FOR Y'ALL*~*~
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GULPIN - You truly blessed this season for me. Never has there ever been a more iconic duo than us. The #gulpin-melanie channel is a more accurate representation of myself than my confessional could ever aspire to be. You truly are a queen! <3

BRAXTEN - I was pretty rough on you in my speech, although I did enjoy your friendship and hope we can talk more after this is over. You and I worked well together, and I'm sorry how heavily I lied to you; I felt I did too much of that the days before your vote off. I respect how hard you played the game.

LUNA - You were the most robbed, I feel. I enjoyed talking to you as a friend and not even for the game; we could have done a lot together had you made it farther.

NOEL - Again, sorry for giving you false hope during the finale. The Chickadees were iconic even if we weren't that unified. Also you did an amazing job concealing your identity, I was shook when it was revealed.

LAYTON - I know who Halsey and Amy Duncan are, but not the other two.

LEWIS - Sorry for the blindside. We did a lot of great work together on Oscuru, sorry I didn't make much of an effort to work together after the merge.

KACHOW - Your character brought a lot of fun to the season, even though I'm not a big fan of Cars. (Not at all, actually.) But you were very friendly and thank you for indulging me in my gif spamming<3

ARCHDUKE - Your vote-out probably had the most overall impact on my game, even if it was indirectly. So, thank you for that. (Also, I can't say much, but... Melanie got her revenge.)

N. - LOL imagine not being a juror. Anyways stan chimecho

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Anyways, thank you for coming to my TED Talk ~ I hope to see you all around after the season!