Dustin Simon Erikstrup

[Dustin Erikstrup]

Congratulations on the Final Two. I'm not going to make long, unnecessary paragraphs about how I played the game. I'm also not going to flood it with unnecessary pictures of strippers. (He wasn't even that hot, no offense Jun.) I will get straight to the point. I promise you that I will voting purely strategically based off of the responses you give other players, what you have said in your opening statements (and closing if there are any), and what I have seen throughout the game strategic wise. I will not at all be voting personally. If I was, I would not be here. Also, if I catch any of you sucking up to any of the jury members, you will be less likely to earn my vote. We lost, we're over it, don't butter us up for votes.

Requests: Be completely honest. If there's something that might help your case, say it-it couldn't hurt. If there's something that you think may hurt your chance-say it, I appreciate the honesty, and modesty is the best policy, you will see why in my final request below.

Question One: Porsche, in your opening statement, you said you wanted to break up the Final Two of Renny and Nicole. Why did you choose to evict Renny instead of Nicole?

Question Two: Nicole, you had the choice to evict either Porsche or myself, and you evicted me. I have absolutely nothing against your decision, but do you think that this decision was smart now that you are against the person you saved in the finale, and that she evicted your long-term, friend Renny. Please elaborate on why or why not you do or do not regret this decision.

Final Request: I would like for the both of you to tell me why I SHOULD NOT vote for YOU. Was there a tacky decision you made that was cheap or tacky? Did you not preform to the best of your ability in certain parts of the game? Don't be afraid to tell the truth.

Good luck to both of you girls.

[Nicole Schaffrich]

Hi Dustin,

Thank you for following Chenbot's guidelines and keeping it brief. To answer your first question for me, that was something I thought about a lot as I headed into the Veto competition. I had already made up my mind that, if I were to win, I would vote to evict you and keep Porsche. Now, obviously, I went over the possibility of evicting Porsche in my head but I knew that, in more ways than one, it wouldn't be the right decision. Even though Porsche won the final HoH and evicted Renny, I think I did the right thing in evicting you. Had I turned on Porsche in the final four, I would have had no chance at her jury vote if I made it to the final two. More importantly, I felt it was necessary to reassert my loyalty to the Zombie Slayers after Sarah's eviction. If I evicted Porsche, I knew that I would be causing tension within my most important relationship, which was with Renny. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I stand by my decision because it was the best tactical choice I could have made. I had faith in Renny and myself to pull through and win the final HoH competition, and even though that didn't happen, I don't regret my decision.

To answer your second question, you shouldn't vote for me because I don't read instructions properly (ask Chenbot) and I lost the first endurance competition of the season because I modified my very first post. Another reason you may not want to vote for me is because, like I mentioned in my response to Jun's questions, I declined to re-do Part 1 of the final HoH competition. The reason for this is because I stayed up until 4 AM doing it the first time and I believed that I had a very competitive score; moreover, I really didn't have the time to sit down for another three or four consecutive hours to do it again. But, in any case, a harsher critic could argue that, if I were more dedicated, I would have made the time to do it.

I guess that's it. Thanks for your questions, Dustin.

[Dustin Erikstrup]

Nicole I would just like to clarify two things with you, and ask you one more question, if that would be alright.

1) You evicted me over Porsche because you feel being too disloyal would have costed you the jury votes of Sarah, Porsche, and possibly hindered Renny taking you to the Final Two?

2) You feel you don't deserve a win because you messed up on one challenge, and got tired on another? Is that truly it?

3) Why do you feel you deserve this more than Porsche? Is there anything the Jury doesn't know about Porsche that should keep us from voting for her to win?

[Porsche Briggs]

Hi Dustin

It is no secret that I felt extremly close to Renny in this game. As we talked more and got to know each other better I really felt that I could trust her with anything and everything. There came a time when Renny said that she would like her and I to be in the final 2. When an official deal was made with Renny I fully intended to honor it. When Jun had decided to try and jump ship I became aware of that before any of the Slayers and talked to Renny and Sarah about it but it was a few days before I voiced anything to Nicole. Out of all the slayers it was Nicole that I had talked to the least and I hadn't really felt a close bond like I did with Sarah, Renny, and Jun prior to her plotting to turn on the alliance.

When Nicole, Renny, and I made final 3 I asked Nicole who she was planning to take if she were to win the final HOH and her response showed a very obvious final 2 deal between her and Renny. When I saw Renny next I asked her if her thoughts had changed on who she wanted in the final 2 and she said no, at first leaving out that her thought were that she wanted to take Nicole and not myself. As the conversation progressed Renny did reveal to me that her and Nicole had a final 2 deal prior to the deal that she offered me. She said that she made the offer to me around the time that the Slayers thought that Nicole was closest with Jun and we doubted that we could trust her and she never told me that she was not planning to honor our deal to better her chances of making final 2 if one of us won the final HOH.

When I discovered that Renny had lied to me I was quite frankly mad as hell. She was someone that I had trusted without hesitation and I felt betrayed. I could probably go on for hours and hours but I will spare you and cut to the chase. I made a final 2 deal with Renny because I thought that she was 100% loyal to me and out of everyone in the game I trusted her the most. When I learned that she had another deal with Nicole that changed my whole perception of her as a player who claimed to be as loyal as they come. Where the deal was a lie by her own admission I considered it to be entirely null and void on my part as well. I had built Renny up in my head to be the most loyal and straight up player that I had ever known and I found out that she wasn't and felt that I really didn't know her like I thought I did and because of that I could not find any way to justify her deserving me choosing her to sit beside me in the end.

I will make a seperate post with my response to your second question tomorrow morning

[Nicole Schaffrich]

Hey Dustin, no problem.

1) That's basically it. By evicting Porsche in the final four, I think I would have lost all credibility in the eyes of the jurors and the Slayers. Like I said, the reason I evicted Sarah in the final five was because I feared Porsche had a stronger influence/relationship with her; if Sarah won HoH or PoV in the final four, I wouldn't have felt safe at all, especially because I had already sensed how close Porsche and Renny had become. Of the four remaining Slayers, I gauged my spot at the bottom of the totem pole and I needed to make sure I was never in a position of vulnerability. Ultimately, I trusted (or, at least, hoped) that Sarah would understand the strategic basis for my decision; she was a much bigger competitive threat than both you and Porsche. Once we were in the final four, I knew that voting to evict Porsche would have been a bad move because, like you said, it would've given Renny reason to doubt my loyalty, and it would've undoubtedly cost me Porsche's jury vote. If you, Renny, and I were in the final three and Renny was the final HoH, I believe she would have still taken me, but I would have had a significantly harder time campaigning for myself to win the game.

2) Now I see what you mean. I misinterpreted your question the first time around; I thought you were asking what are some of the things I did that make me undeserving of the win. But now I realize I should have also included some of the things I didn't do, or some of my shortcomings that would make me less deserving of being the winner. If I were a juror, I would probably be critical of my social game, especially in comparison to Porsche's. While I had/have very close friendships with some houseguests, I can acknowledge that I didn't put enough effort into some other relationships. Whether it's shyness or awkwardness on my part, I noticed that my social game was, in many ways, dependent on the reciprocation of who I was talking to. As an example, Parker and I spoke a lot at the beginning of the game. After Jordan was evicted and Parker became somewhat disenchanted with me, I sensed his frustration and scaled back my communication with him. What I should have done was try even harder to keep up our friendship but I did the exact opposite. Another criticism of my gameplay would be that I really tired out the expression, "I'll think about it." If I were April, Parker, Jun, or you, Dustin, I would be pretty frustrated by that phrase. Instead of saying, "I'll think about it," and then making a contradictory decision, maybe my gameplay would have been more respectable if I was straight up about what I was planning to do. Obviously, there are strategic reasons for keeping my cards close, but considering how much emphasis I placed on respect in this game, I would criticize the times I didn't warn someone before not using the Veto, voting to evict them, declining a deal, etc.

3) I'm not sure that there's anything the jury doesn't know about Porsche and I'm not going to turn this into a pecking party. If you lay my and Porsche's games side my side, I think we're fairly evenly-matched. Porsche played a better social game, but I was a better competitor. Depending on what you value more in an overall game - social game or performance in competitions - so far, Porsche and I are even. What makes my game more deserving of the win than Porsche's is my consistent emphasis on strategy. As much as I liked or disliked people in this game, I never let my personal feelings get in the way of making the best tactical decisions possible. I don't think the same can be said of Porsche. For example, the reason Porsche broke her final two deal with Renny was because she felt betrayed by her. Granted, I'm sure there are strategic benefits in both cases - whether she took me or Renny to the finals with her - but her change of heart was, ultimately, based on personal feelings. I've never once made a decision based on personal feelings, either positive or negative. I don't mean to beat a dead horse but I'll bring up Sarah's eviction again as an example. I was the one who first suggested to Porsche that we vote to evict Sarah. It turned out she had also been thinking the same thing, but didn't want to say anything in case I felt differently. I can't be certain what would have happened otherwise, but there's a possibility that, had I kept quiet, Porsche would have foregone evicting Sarah (the strategic decision) in favour of keeping her (the personal decision). Another example is my love-hate relationship with Jun. While I generally enjoy talking to Jun and we've had our fair share of fun conversations, I came to really resent her because I felt that she was consistently insulting my intelligence and treating me like an imbecile. As shown by the dates of my DR excerpts (posted in Jun's thread), I started feeling this resentment very early. But I never acted on it. In fact, I never uttered a single negative word about Jun until all the shady behaviour started with the private HoH room and "making a big move." At that point, my most important strategic priority was to get Jun evicted from the house. I spilled my guts first to Sarah, then Porsche (Renny was on vacation at the time), then Steven. I systematically ensured that Jun became public enemy number one, not because I had negative personal feelings, but because I knew she had reached her boiling point in the game and that she was liable to share a lot of crucial information about me and my gameplay. More than Steven, more than Dustin, more than any of the Slayers, Jun was the one person who would have been most detrimental to my survival in the game - even though she was offering me a final three (and eventually, a final two) deal that I couldn't reasonably take - so I did everything in my power to get her out of the house. Never did I let my personal feelings impede my strategic decisions in this game, and I was able to do the vast majority of my handiwork without telling any bold-faced lies. (Of course, I lied by omission at times.) Ultimately, I think that's what really distinguishes my game from Porsche's. I played the game at all times. Every decision I made was with the game in mind. I never sought vengeance, I never played for a short-lived moment of satisfaction when a rival was evicted, I never let positive personal feelings overrule the best tactical move; as emotional a person as I am, the game I ultimately played was one in which emotions never interfered with sound strategy. That's the difference.

[Porsche Briggs]

Hi Again Dustin

For your second question why should you not vote for me I have been really putting in a lot of thought. I am sure you know it's hard to answer a question on why I think that I should not win when I strongly feel that I should.

After much thought I think that you should not vote for me because I was not as dependant on myself and my own abilities as I should have been. What I mean by this is, while of course my goal was to win every competition that I took part in there were times in the game where I said the phrase "as long as you or I win." I believe that I said that to you during the course of the game as well.

An example of this was the elimination HOH when I said this to Renny, and thinking back on that now by having that mentality going into the game I did not focus as I should have on ensuring it was me that won. In a sense I sabataged myself. When you were eliminated from the competition Renny wanted to eliminate Sarah next as she felt that she may not be safe if Sarah were to win in the end. I was focused on making sure that if I didn't win Renny would so I started taking the x's from Sarah leaving myself, Nicole, and Renny in the game.

If I had been focused more on I need to win and not myself or Renny I probably would have started using my turns to weaken Renny to better my chances of winning myself.

In any game there are small mistakes made along the way and in recognizing this I have learned that I need to go into any competition for myself and no one else. If I focus on "you or I have to win" then I think that in turn puts my focus on not only winning myself but on increasing the odds of another player winning as well.

[Dustin Erikstrup]

To Renny if you see this since I am not allowed to talk in your post:

By "long-term friend" I just meant within the game. I just knew you two were really close, I never meant to imply you knew each other out of the game.

And ladies, I will inform you I have cast my vote to win. My vote was majorly based on your responses, however, I did also look on how you both played the game. I put a lot of thought on what a winner means to me, and what I interpreted to be a more-deserving game, and what game I'd like to see win. I promise I did not vote personally. I'm sorry to who I did not vote for, good luck either way. To the person i did vote for, good luck, I hope to see you win, and even if you lose I'm proud of how you played. Same goes to the other. I love you both, I am proud of you both. May the best uterus win.

[Porsche Briggs]

No matter how you voted I hope that you know that I really did enjoy working with you in the game. It's funny I got so used to chatting with you and your excitement about this and other games you were in now that I don't get that chance every day I miss it.

[Nicole Schaffrich]

Ditto. Thanks for hearing us out, Dustin.