Chelsea's Opening Statement

[Chelsea Meissner]

[Sorry in advance for this being longer than expected.]

This game has been nothing short of incredible.

I’ve never been in a game where it’s been this crazy. There have been a few games that have come very close, but Sausage Island: Third Helping was probably one of the more insane games that I’ve been apart of. All the events that took place, all the types of players in this game, the challenges, the dedicated staff .. everything .. it’s been phenomenal. But now, we’ve reached the finale. This is where I have to lay out my game for all of you on the Jury and hope that you find me more deserving to win. I feel that I do deserve to win. I’ve been through a lot in this game, whether it be personal or game-related; but no matter what the situation, I overcame it all and I got to the finale. Here I am, and now it’s time to dive in head first for the last time in hopes that I’ll emerge the victor.

Coming into this game, I knew that I was going to be in for a high-quality production. The graphics were great, there was an in-depth casting process, and I just knew that I would probably be facing off against people from all over ORGs, with either short history or long history, rookies or veterans. When the game started out, I assumed that it would be your average-sized cast. The past two seasons have had a somewhat standard amount of people play the game, but of ‘course that wasn’t the same this season. When the check in’s list kept getting longer, I kept thinking, “what on earth did I get myself into.” Big games terrify me. They really do. It makes the goal to get to the Jury greater, but also a lot harder. Regardless of the scenario I was being forced into at the start of the game with a bigger cast than I expected .. I was ready. I was ready to play the game and do the best I could no matter how big or small the cast was.

It should be noted that I joined this game with one other person. I joined this game with Matt. My reasoning for that? Matt and I are friends outside the game, new friends at that. We wanted to play a game together, a Survivor game, one of high caliber. This was our ticket. I know how pre-games are perceived throughout, and they aren’t perceived well. However, I feel that the majority of games these days have atleast one person join with another, or have one person join knowing that some of their friends are wanting to play and have applied. I don’t want my intentional joining with Matt to lose me a chance at winning the game, so I’m saying it straight up. I definitely hid this fact at the start of the game. I didn’t want anyone to know how close we were. However, we were all thrown into a Captain Challenge. I wanted Matt to win this so he could pick the tribe, and to make sure that I ended up on that tribe with him. However, I wasn’t going to be the only one benefitting from this.

When you join a game with someone else knowingly and intentionally, with the want to go to the end with that person .. I consider that a pre-game. When you join a game and find out people’s alias’ or notice screennames of people you’ve played with before .. I consider that a pre-existing relationship. This game was ALL pre-existing relationships. I’m guilty of it, Sydney is guilty of it, and Tom is guilty of it. Each of us had pre-existing relationships in this game, however, some of us had stronger pre-existing relationships, such as unbreakable bonds, and those were the ones nobody would have a chance in hell of breaking into or apart.

However, a lot of those pre-existing relationships weren’t really good ones either. I would know first hand. I ended up playing this game to find out that Bobby Jon was playing, and I don’t know if any of you aren’t aware of this by now, but he and I are exes. The first half of the game was a struggle. It was fucking awful. Excuse me language, but it was. I was miserable and angry and I wanted to punch people in the face. I wanted to punch Bobby Jon in the face. The reason Bobby Jon left, was because OF me. He was going the round he quit and he knew he was. The first half of the game was some sickly battle between him and I. However, we did have the unspoken word of never going after eachother for the sake of our past, and that was of ‘course until I had enough and was going to axe him right before the merge. He was a liability to my game at that point.

Building onto that, I can honestly say that the people I spoke to were all people I had a pre-existing relationship with too [out of everyone on the Jury]. I mean, the only person I really felt I met out of this game was Chase, and we didn’t really speak all that much, but we still spoke occasionally. I found out who Semhar was the round it was rumored she wanted me out, and I will admit that I thought it was a personal move because she and I tend to be against eachother in games. But after figuring out her logic of all Salchicha still being in and me being perceived as the “leader”, it made sense as to why she did it. I’m lucky that a swap happened after that round or I would probably not even be sitting here right now. My game consisted of a lot of focused strategy, calculated moves, and luck, and believe me .. in a game like this, you needed all the luck you could get with the types of twists that Lex and Brett threw at us.

My relationship with Shawna was .. none. I’m sorry for that and I can’t change that we didn’t talk. It was as though lines were drawn and there was really no chance of a cross-alliance deal going on, because everything seemed pretty cemented. It was never anything personal, just the way the game played out and continued to play out. Mike and Savage were two people that had a hand in my games at one point. I’ve actually seen Mike play before so I kind of already knew him. I worked with him when he and I flipped to NuBayonaca but that was short-lived. Savage was someone I met on NuBayonaca, but wasn’t a real talker! I just knew that he had a tie with Stephanie from being on Bayonaca. Stephanie was someone that I came to find out I knew not only my own, but other people running around and outing her alias. I’ve taken Stephanie out of games before and we’ve gone head to head, but she was an asset to my game as she tied me to players like Savage, which resulted in more numbers for me.

My alliance at the start of the game, consisted of myself, Matt, Sandra, Sydney and Jay. That was my five. However, two of those people ended up being people that would later want me out or would try to subtly imply that I needed to go. As you can see, pre-existing relationships can be a blessing in some cases, but also a curse in others. Both Sandra and Jay knew what I was capable of in games, and have both played with me before. They wanted me out. It was smart to want me out. I would have wanted me out, too. The round I found out about Sandra subtly mentioning to people that this game had a huge chance of turning into another game which I won .. I knew that I had to watch out for her. I couldn’t have someone walking around and saying those things! Those are the kinds of things that trigger moves to take place and plans of action to take course. However, it was nearly impossible to take Sandra out at that point in time because of pre-existing relationships. If I haven’t made my point yet, lmao, that’s what this game was: you were safe if you knew a lot of people/knew core people in the game and were screwed if you didn’t.

One of my biggest moves came in the form of Jay. I knew throughout a lot of the game that Jay had me low on his list of allies because he’d go to people and tell them certain things, such as alias discoveries, his prizes he’d got at the auction, etc, way before he’d come to me. The people he told would come to me and tell me what he’d got or what he’d found out .. and then he’d come to me hours later or the next day with the information he shared. The round that he left, the votes changed an hour before the vote. Jay was subtly dropping hints that a move had to be made soon to take someone out, a “big player”, and that person was me. I knew something had to be done about this. We had the numbers to take him out, and we followed through with it. Him being axed helped my game and got a target off my back. Would his plan have even worked? Probably not, because of pre-existing relationships. There was no way Tom was going to go through with his plan, not when he was with Sydney, who was with me. It was all a chain and if you were linked, you were .safe. Why would anyone want to mess that up for themselves in a game like this?

My strongest relationships in this game were with Matt and Sydney. Both were people I would never take out. I would never cast a vote against them. They both would have never done that to me either. It was consensual. Both were key people in my game, for numerous upon numerous reasons. Matt was one of the main people who would report things back to me in terms of who was contemplating making a big move, who was subtly dropping hints about me, who was trying to make an alliance that didn’t include me in it, etc. He helped my game tremendously and was a huge asset to my game. The same goes for Sydney.

Sydney had unbreakable bonds in this game. There were a few. She had Tom and she had Mick. Having Sydney on my side and being aligned to her, that gave me leeway to getting to the end without worrying about Tom or Mick. Both of them were going to do what she wanted, if Sydney didn’t want me to go, which she didn’t, then they wouldn’t come after me .. so I ended up getting to the end; that was a nice little bonus in being aligned to her. I’m sure after the Matt blindside, everyone assumed that I was the next to go, but that wasn’t the case. However, I wish Matt hadn’t of gone, because my F3, which I had screamed from the rooftops over and over in my confessional around Round #8 was Matt, Sydney, and myself. The better of the later part of the merge, and the people I thought deserved to be sitting here in the end. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Instead players like Mick and Tom were kept around because they had stronger ties to more people left. But yeah, what can you expect?

I’ve kept my opening as general as I possibly could. I just wanted to throw pieces of things here and there to let you guys ask me some questions either on what I’ve mentioned or what’s just on your mind in general. Again, sorry that this is so long, I know I’d be annoyed if I had to read this mountain of text, but I tried to make it as informative as I could without it being too much. Thanks, Jury! Best of luck, Sydney and Tom!