Jake's Thoughts and Questions

[jake]

Scenario #1: Michael and Ryan

To Both Of You: Way to set racism back 20 years guys. First question I want to know from both of you, was this alliance based solely upon your race, and the only reason I am posing this question is because of a comment Michael made about Ryan saying he would be a race traitor if he went against him. . Were you guys an alliance from the onset, did this just randomly happen. Please explain your strategic relationship to me. Who wore the pants in this alliance?

Now on to more serious questions!

Lets begin with Michael.

Michael I told everyone that trusting you was a mistake and fortunately for you, no one was competent enough to see that hmmm maybe Michael has a final 2 alliance with eight other houseguests. I don't know who has more final 2 alliances falling out of there ass, you or Ryan, it's really a toss up.

Question 1: Please list every alliance you were involved in and what deals you had with each member of the jury.

Question 2: Please prioritize all of your alliances from PRIORITY meaning the alliance that was most important to you and the one you would have been loyal to no matter what [If you need any help defining that word I'm sure Ryan would be more then happy to define it since he actually uses the word Acumen in his every day vernacular] to the alliance that meant DIRT SHIT nothing to you.

Question 3: What strategic moves do you give yourself credit as being the mastermind behind and why do you feel you were the mastermind behind the decision. Be careful what you say because I will ask other questions and get jury input to if you did in fact puppet master/ influence there actions. What moves were you solely responsible for?

Question 4: Who was your biggest threat and why? How did you play a role in there eviction.

Question 5: What was the best strategic move you made and What is the worst strategic move you made in this game? [And don't give me OMG I DIDN'T MAKE ANY BAD MOVES BECAUSE I AM HEAR IN THE FINAL 2 because you have not won this game yet =p. Plenty of room for failure left in the game ;}]


That is all I have for you senor.


Now on to Ryan.

All of the jurors have no one to blame but themselves for letting you get to the finals but... you still suck Lol. I'm sorry you made a bunch of alliances, congratulations! Everyone saw right through it - you were kept around because you were a weak player and the perfect final 2 goat. I will give you snaps for winning that final four HoH, that Aladdin trivia HOH was a fucking joke... other then that what did you do? You were dragged around by players who were way stronger then you socially, competitively, basically on every level. You threw your only shot at winning this game out at final four by nominating Eric. Eric was THEE only shot you had at winning this game. I doubt you will get more then 2 votes.

I can sit here and say that if Michael wins I will feel like I was beaten by the best... if you win, I'll feel like someone who sucked at every facet of this game has won. You may have beaten me in the game, congrats, but I can still prevent you from winning this game with my vote.


Question 1: What strategic moves do you credit yourself with and explain how each of these moves impacted the game? I gotta tell you, you left no mark on this game what so ever, or at least not to me. [When you won HoH the first time you let Michael basically get Jordan evicted and the second time you were HOH if ERIC really was your target to leave... LMFAO. I cant even think of a reason to vote for you if that was really your plan. Michael basically was HoH every time that you were, imo. None of your Head of Household's benefited your game, they more so benefited his.]


Question 2: In what way were you superior to Michael?

Question 3: Why did you find it necessary to make a billion alliances that you couldn't really keep? IE: Eric, Robbie, Myself, Michael... any other alliances I'm not aware of please feel free to share. Defend your decision to over align yourself.

Question 4: Who was your biggest threat and what role did you play in there eviction from the house?

Question 5: Why should I personally give you my vote to win? [This is it Ryan, so you better come up with some epic Mark Twain fucking shit because right now you have a 10/100 chance of me voting for you to win. I know you think 'JAKE IS NEVER GONNA VOTE FOR ME WAA WAA WAA' based on that completely transparent goodbye message you left me. I want solid reasons.]

All cockblockery aside- Congratulations your both good guys and I have no ill feelings toward either of you as people.

[jake]

Alex said we could only ask 3 questions- so I guess only answer three of your five questions. Or go the extra mile and answer all 5 anyways. Its not like these questions require 90 page responses, if you cant sum up answers within a paragraph you've got issues. =p

[michael]

WTF have I done to make me so racist to all of yous lol. BTW the term "race traitor" comes from Ryan not me. Weeks 1-7: I couldn't care less if Ryan was evicted…it was actually my goal at one point (over Travis) and I nominated him that week when Jay was HoH. Then the people started to leave and Eric was adamant about keeping Ryan, despite my wishes, so I was forced to make nice with Ryan even though our conversations were quite pathetic. In the end, I fell victim to a Ryan alliance because HE OFFERED ONE. Am I supposed to say no? I didn't even know about making F2 alliances until you told me about them right before you got evicted, so they weren't falling out of my ass

MY ALLIANCE LIST (RANKED WITH LOYALTIES):
1 Me/Mike - our deal was unspoken, but to both of us, it was F2. Surprisingly, I think I offered it straight up to him after you left. This is the difference between everyone else's F2 deal. I was giving it here.
2 Me/Eric/Ryan - Eric offered me a F2 early, but I was careful to never fully reciprocate it until the end when I was more sure I wanted him at the end. Ryan offered me a F2 early also and I just agreed it would be nice but also never fully reciprocated. In F4 I realized everyone had F2 everywhere and it was a mess.
3 Me/Jake/Robbie - No F2 deals here just a potential Jake/Robbie/Me F3 vision and a "we'll get to the details when we get there" kind of thing.

No deals with Jay/Stacey/Jordan. Other offers of alliances that didn’t work out so well: My block buddy Travis…..it was TOO LATE and I couldn’t do anything to help him. I didn't hand out my alliances like candy on Halloween, rather I was APPROACHED for all of my alliances week 5 or so, with the exception of Mike (why it's on top).


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BIGGEST THREAT (TO MY GAME):
Stacey. You guys may all think I am crazy about this, but I am 100% sure on this pick. Stacey is a great competitor and I picked her out as a threat pretty early on. Kudos for staying as long as she did, since I was gunning for her a lot of the game. I am not sure Jordan knows this so I will say it now. THIS IS WHY IT WAS HARD FOR ME TO PICK on your eviction. I was unsure because I had to deal with an unfortunate replacement nominee (the mess that came along with sticking my neck out for Mike) , and then finally evicting Stacey--my biggest threat. It turned out I was too loyal to Mike and couldn't bring myself to go against him that round. I told you I needed to talk to him before making my decision to possibly align with you. This was true and I was completely up for it. I knew Mike was extremely close to Stacey/Jay but Stacey more-so. She was also my real target the one week I nominated you Jake, and you were the only one to know because I didn't know how other people felt about it since I never told anyone how dangerous she was to my game. That was epic fail when Mike saved her. Then the next week, Eric wanted Stacey gone and I didn't want anything to backfire on Mike, so I double voted to ensure her eviction (finally). It took me many rounds, but eventually it happened.

STRATEGIC MOVES:
I will start with BAD because it is killing me. Not winning the F4 HoH, but I was totally unprepared for a "circle of life" challenge. I had no idea it was important to keep track of everything that had happened, despite other people warning me. If I had won that HoH, the F4 mess would never have happened and the F2 might be completely different.

GOOD STRATEGY. I think my BEST strategic move was pulling off Mike in the veto. It was the move that brought me into the game and where I started to actually play the game. From then on, that move forced me to try and win as many competitions as possible. I wasn't throwing competitions at the beginning, but in the end I just had much more incentive to win them so I tried my best and I think it worked out for me.

As for other strategic moves I will credit myself with: 1) Working together with Jordan and you was interesting to get Jay evicted WHILE making Stacey waste her double vote (she was a huge threat to me, needless to say). This was my first move of the game and I was so surprised that it worked out. 2) Evicting Jordan in the end was also my decision. I was the one who secured 3 votes (out of 5) when I used the veto on Mike: Me/Mike/Eric. 3) The hinky votes were me (Eric totally got off scot free, but I think he might have been some of them too). I never planned on using it to my benefit, but in the end I got lucky and so I used the votes to put the target squarely on Jay/Stacey since I was mad that they were lying to me. I think that covers the MAJOR game-changing moves. Tell me if you think I did more.

[ryan]

Hi Jake,

As I mentioned in my Opening Statements, Michael and I rarely spoke at the onset of the game. It wasn’t until after the Survey Says veto – where Michael received the most votes for categories such as “Nicest” and “Who will win?” – that I began to see the merit in aligning with Michael. It was in that round where I began to aggressively befriend him to get him over to my side. And I have to say that I wore the metaphorical “pants in this alliance”, because I benefitted the most from it. When I was put on the block against Robbie, Michael voted to keep me. When I was put on the block against Jake, Michael again voted to keep me. And finally, even when Michael had to choose between his “best friend” Mike and myself, he again voted to keep me. Michael has admitted in his answers that prior to my offer of an alliance, he would have put me up for eviction – it was only due to my own initiative that I was able to reel him in “hook, line and sinker”.

Now, I want to comment on some of the statements you have made. I agree with your statement that I was kept around for being perceived as a weak player. However, I believe the operating word here is “perceived”. I actively worked to create this perception of being a weak challenge threat – this was part of my strategy. I crafted a perception and reputation of being someone that no one had to worry about. Do not misinterpret this as me claiming that I could have won any challenge had I wanted to – I still give props and recognition to the competition winners, because some took considerable skill to win. However, I do believe the perception that I created as being weaker than I ACTUALLY am only helped me get further in the game.

I will use an example from Big Brother USA to help illustrate my point. I consider Kaysar of BB6 to be an absolutely horrendous player. Sure, he won HOH for one week and made a flashy “power move”, but in doing so, he only put a huge target on his own back and was just as quickly evicted ... twice! Some people consider this flashy Kaysar-esque strategy of striving to win every HOH in an effort to control the house as the ideal, but I consider it to be poor strategy. This is especially true in Big Brother, where the power can shift so quickly week after week. I noticed this from the get-go, and so the strategy that I employed is one of adaptability, flexibility, and getting in everyone’s good graces while being perceived as non-threatening. It’s a strategy that worked for Dan in BB10, and it’s a strategy that has worked so far in Big Brother: Agrabah.

Now, to address some of your questions.

QUESTION 1: What strategic moves do you credit yourself with and explain how each of these moves impacted the game?

As I have described earlier, my objective was not to specifically “MAKE AN IMPACT”. You may recall some of our conversations in Week 1 of this game. I consciously put on a facade of “teehee, I have no idea what I’m doing” in order to avoid having a target on my back in this game. I suppose you can say there are two ways of this game: 1) Destroy and conquer; or 2) Self-preservation. I chose the latter simply because the former is much riskier, and even in real life, I generally have a risk averse personality. I much prefer tinkering and toying with alliances in the background under the facade of being a weak-player, analogous to Dr. Will of BB7 or Dan of BB10.

With that preamble out of the way, I consider one of my greatest moves to being taking the initiative in aligning with Michael and Eric. I converted Michael from being a threat to my game (we’ve both admitted that prior to Week 7, we hardly ever spoke) to a trusted vote in my favour. With Eric, I always made it in his best interests to keep me around as a fellow “Final 2 Goat”. With Robbie on my side as well as a trusted ally and best friend, I was very well protected in this game. The only time that I was ever in any serious danger was at Final 4, which leads me to my next point.

I was exceptionally well prepared for the Final 4 HOH challenge, whereas the other competitors were not. The challenge tested our knowledge of the various statistics related to the game. I had the foresight to create a spreadsheet with all of the important game-related statistics, such as who won HOH each week, who was nominated, who won veto, who were veto replacements, who was evicted and by what vote margin, when various powers were bought and used, etc. I always knew that such information would be useful one day, and thankfully, it was at the time when I most needed to win. Winning the Final 4 HOH challenge was also fantastic in that I would not be forced to do any of the dirty work involved in eviction, and it also exposed all of the hidden Final 2 deals that Mike, Eric, and Michael had with each other. I was always going to put Mike up on the block as there would be absolutely no chance of beating him in the Final 2, but I felt like the odds against the other two were closer. In the end, Eric volunteered himself to be put on the block, and so I placed him on the block to salvage at least one jury vote. I also knew that it would place Michael in the very uncomfortable position of having to backstab one of his allies, and I came very close in pushing him over the edge to evict Mike; alas, I would accomplish that task a week later.

QUESTION 2: In what way were you superior to Michael?

One primary difference between the two of us was that I was forced to play the game from Day 1. Since the beginning when I was put on the block in the first week, I was forced to fight for my life to stay in the game. Conversely, Michael admits that he only started playing the game on Week 7 – seven evictions later than me.

I was placed on the block four different times against worthy adversaries, and had to fight to stay in the house each time. I consider Travis, Robbie and you to all be smart, strategic players, but I was able to convince the house to keep me every time. Again, in the Final 3, I again had to fight to escape eviction over Mike, and I was again successful.

Even in the final jury questioning, I have been told numerous times by different jurors that I had better come up with some really convincing, brilliant answers. So I’m still fighting to this hour.

On the contrary, Michael dropped into this game in Week 6 – which is right around the time that I initiated an alliance with him, and right around the time when I won HOH. I’ll let you be the judge of whether this is a coincidence or not.

QUESTION 3: Why did you find it necessary to make a billion alliances that you couldn’t keep? Defend your decision to over align yourself.

It should be clear now that after being in danger so many times, the alliances that I made were wholly necessary for my preservation in the game. Without these alliances, I would be evicted Week 1, and a distant memory for all of you.

Especially in the latter weeks where there were less people voting at each eviction, my alliances with Robbie, Michael and Eric were pivotal votes that I needed in order to keep myself alive.

QUESTION 4: Who was your biggest threat and what role did you play in their eviction from the house?

My biggest threat in the house was Stacey. I both deeply admired and was terrified of her ability to escape eviction despite being put on the block. I have tried for many weeks to get her evicted to no avail – she’d somehow conjure up the votes to stay, or have a veto used on her. I respect her game play so much because I can empathize with the skill, strategy, and general gameplay ability that is required to escape eviction so many times.

Stacey’s eviction was finally secured after I began discussions with Eric and Michael of removing the jury threats. For me, Stacey was also a threat to my game because I knew she was also gunning for me. When Eric won HOH, I pressured him to put Stacey on the block once again, and I was successful with this. It was by my vote that Stacey was finally evicted from the game.

However, it is worth noting that Stacey also became busy with her life outside of the game. Had she not “given up” with the game, it is not certain whether I would have been successful in securing her ouster.

QUESTION 5: Why should I personally give you my vote to win?

I hope my response to your questions – I did answer them all – shows my dedication to this game. I was ALWAYS thinking about how I could get one step further. I had a plan from the get-go and I executed it with success. My strategy, which was even detailed on my application to this game, was the conscious decision to appear weak while still getting into everyone’s good graces, all for the purpose of self-preservation. I accomplished my goal of achieving the final 2, but it wasn’t easy. I fought like hell to get here, but I feel like I’ve done a great job. I know my game wasn’t particularly exposed or flashy DURING the game, but I’m using the final jury questioning as my medium to elucidate everything. Now it’s your turn to decide if I was ultimately successful or not.

[michael]

Because Alex said I could, some things need to be MAJORLY clarified:

Ryan states that befriending me was best for his game, and it was since it landed him in a F2 position. Congratulations for that, Ryan. However, it's hard to miss when you just make allies with just about everyone. I think it might be a stretch to claim how deliberately allying with me clearly benefitted your game over allying with anybody else when you were simply covering all the bases. So don't take credit for that. That's insulting to everyone else. And also get the facts right. Me and Eric were aligned and we brought YOU in. You were never the leader of the crew, simply a vote for the two of us. WE brought you in, not the other away around.

But would Ryan really be in F2 without my help? I basically forced him to realize that playing nice with me was important in determining his fate, almost every week. Starting week 6, he had no choice but to get on my good side or risk getting evicted. I am the reason why Ryan was dragged along to F2. I carried him here because I wanted to. He never convinced me to do anything. All he did was ride my coattails. I was the one making the decisions with my votes every week. What moves did Ryan actually orchestrate? From what I can tell, he was a follower and had to accept what I did since he rarely had a say in anything. My position was always clear cut to the house because my vote was always known. Ryan didn't ever control my vote. Ironically, I pretty much made decisions FOR HIM. Did he really want Eric--his F2 goat--evicted just shy of his goal? Was his target actually Jordan when he explicitly said that Stacey was clearly his biggest threat and target? Did he really evict Stacey as he claims, even though his vote was as good as negligible that week? If he was really so convincing to everyone, how come he landed on the block over me almost every time, whereas I completely avoided it in my endgame? I dunno, but I don’t think Ryan asked Jake nicely to be put on the block for his "strategy". In all, I did everything for him, even the most strategical aspects of his game. So I don't understand how he can credit himself for making all these great moves in surviving the block when in reality I was the one giving him a life preserver week after week.

As for my "phased" game. I am by no means saying that I didn't play the game in the earlier rounds. My early game was just not as directed and goal-oriented as the end. I used this term to help explain why my game might seem so….. bipolar. Lol. I found myself on the block just as many times as Ryan did in the early rounds and I won when it was necessary. So no, I didn't just skate through the early rounds. I had to work for it too. Would I have taken the time to play some chess on paint and save myself against Steven if I wasn't playing the game? And if your most superior move was located at the beginning, when i was a complete n00b, then congratulations!

Last but no least, Don't diss on Kaysar, he was awesome imo! And Dan may have laid low and got on everyone's good side, but he won stuff at the end. My game was more parallel to Dan's than anyone else's. Laying low and then winning competitions

[jake]

Lol well I disagree with Michael on the Kaysar front because I hate Kaysar... but.

Ryan your answers are piles of crap. You were not kept around because you fell into this strategy of being weak or because you made 20,000 alliances, you were taken here because you were a weak player. You didn't convince people to keep you as much as it was ANY SANE RATIONAL PLAYER would evict any of the players you were nominated against over yourself.

I do not think in anyway that you ever had any power over Michael other then him evicting Mike which in my mind was a no brainer


The other people you were nominated against- Lets just go over them shall we.

A) Allan was always the houseguest going to be evicted first in my opinion. You were not in any danger at all.

B) Travis, a houseguest that was hated by the majority of the house.. You really had to work hard this round to stay -_-

C) Robbie a strong social player and ally to me- who was eliminated because he was a threat and was close to me.

D) You were nominated against me... Another no brainer decision...

So ... yeah you didn't CONVINCE anyone to keep you as much as it was other houseguests minds were already set on getting out bigger targets.

You should have just said your strategy was to suck ass and appear weak, I would have been more inclined to believe you played a strong game.


You can write a 20 page essay all you want but the fact still stands that I might have respected you and voted for you to win if everything you said wasn't complete garbage. Maybe you really have no self awareness of what anyone really thought about you in this game. Michael bested you in every aspect of this game and I question a lot of moves you made in the game because they did not benefit you at all... they benefited Michael.

I am satisfied and my mind is made up.

Thanks for the effort and dedication you are both giving in these answers, I have really appreciated it and I know the jury does too.