So starting off this speech, I will not deny that I played a great game. In fact, you could argue that I didn't even play a good one. That doesn't change the fact that I had positives that I feel make me deserve to win. I apologize if there're any inconsistencies or anything important I left out, it's just that going through the mails would take a long time and it'd be difficult to spot all the mails since I play in too many group games at a time. -_-
There are only two things I can think of that are noteworthy about my pre-merge game. One, the fact that I had an alliance with Riley. Two, Noah gave me an idol at the last tribal before merge, which he told me to play to save myself. Turned out it was fake and I didn't even need it (not too surprising). Luke told me to save him, but I wanted to stay strong to Fuji (something I would attempt to do later but it wouldn't pan out) so I was one of his votes to leave.
Then merge arrived and Erik approached me (or maybe I approached him) to mention the fact that Owen, NJ, and Adam were in the same frat. I don't know how much this affected the game, but it's better to be safe than sorry, so I went along with the plan to vote out NJ (considering we didn't know if Adam would play an idol). I guess Erik didn't trust Riley or something like that, because he was the only person the alliance wasn'NJ ended up going home because of Noah playing an idol on Erik (I forgot Adam got 1 vote each, and I'll admit Riley probably didn't vote because I forgot to talk to him).
After that tribal, Adam made an alliance with him, Owen, Jake, Riley, and I. Jake and I were on both sides, so we were pretty much the swing votes. At the auction, I won both the extra vote and the vote stealer (coincidentally). At tribal, I decided to target Erik, and I felt he might've been the biggest obstacle getting in the way of a Fuji alliance. The other alliance wanted to target Jake, but he was my ally so that made even less likely to vote with them, and Erik left that tribal.
The next tribal was... Not very simple. The vote was between FireDragon and Adam, and I felt Adam was the bigger threat, so I wanted him out, but Riley wanted to vote Owen, so at the revote, I had to swallow my pride and vote FireDragon out and be patient. With only 3 members of Fuji left, the alliance wasn't panning out and it Riley leaving the next tribal wouldn't help. I'm not too proud of my self-vote, but I think the best way to describe what happened was feeling a little overwhelmed and stalling the time to read the mails.
At the next tribal, I wanted Adam out, and I was in a good position due to winning immunity. The vote ended up being between Luis, Noah and him. The votes were split because of Noah's idol which was played. During the revote, I managed to convince Jake that Adam was our best choice.
The next tribal arrives and the time has come to use my extra vote and vote stealer, where I might've stolen the only vote against me the whole season (that wasn't from me -_-) and voted Luis out in a "5-1" vote. I decided to vote Luis because I felt it'd be be best to weaken Noah's power in the game, and I didn't know how loyal Luis was to Noah. It was between the two players I had alliances with anyways, so I just had to pick which of the two would be better for my game if they stayed.
Then I decide to vote out who I just saved. XD I wasn't expecting I would do this once the final 4 tribal council arrived, but Noah approached me with the promise you can see in the forum of the previous tribal council. I knew there was a possibility he wouldn't go through with it, so I made him promise he would stick by it. I ended up telling him to vote Jake since even if he was my ally, he was a bigger threat than Owen, and possibly even Noah (depending on how many enemies he made on the jury), and once the revote arrived, I felt it was too late to go back now that I vote Jake. Noah ended up winning the fire-making challenge, which