Final Private Confessional (extremely long)

Wow. It's the end. :) It's truly amazing that I was actually able to make it here. Over the course of the last two days, I've sort of been looking back to the start of the game, and I remember that during the first week, I felt really frustrated with the AIM problems and also with the fact that it looked like the game was chock-full of people who were not only active, but who also seemed pretty good at bluffing and double-bluffing, and I totally expected to be unable to beat them as a result of that. What I said in my "thoughts on execution #8 public post" was completely true – I really didn't think I'd be able to beat out so many people, especially these people. Yes, there were some who rolled over and died, like Player 15, Ellery, Kyle and Beth, but the majority of the other players WERE people that I thought would be hard to beat. What's most amazing is that, despite how far they got, it really does look like Ginger, Paul and Breaux all got executed and had NO clue who The Mole was (Breaux especially made it to the Final 6, but according to what he had told me, he didn't think it was Elise AT ALL). I figured that if I was able to make it far, I'd probably make it with a bunch of other players who also knew who it was, and my chances of winning would be slim. It makes me feel even more proud of myself that I made it to the end being one of the few people who discovered who the real Mole is.

That leads me to Brian. I'm still not sure who he thought was The Mole, but nothing was said about a tie… if he went for Elise, he would've presumably tied both Blaise and I, so my GUESS is that he did not go for Elise, since Travis didn't say there was a tie. I can't imagine he was dumb enough to split his vote on the Final 4 quiz, so I'm assuming he went completely for someone else, and based on the things he was telling me, it LOOKED like he may have thought it was me. After In The Dark, Brian and I were talking about how it sucked that we couldn't get organized, and Brian was like "well its ur job rite?" so that did lead me to assume he thought it was me, and you have NO idea how happy I'm gonna be if at the finale it is actually revealed that he did go for me. Based on things Brian had said to me earlier, it was clear that Elise was ONE of his suspects, so if he was actually leaning towards Elise, but then went for me at the last minute, I would be so giddy, lol. I really had been trying like hell during the last few rounds to double-bluff him into thinking it was me by trying as hard as I could to seem like I was trying SOOO hard to convince him I was innocent (if that makes sense). I feel like all the posts in the "Make the case" thread were helpful, portraying me as this person who's effectively formed friendships with most of the players, perhaps as a way to manipulate all of them. My only worry actually came while we were playing the In The Dark challenge, because there were a couple of instances in which Blaise and I did certain things and Travis would say "interesting" or "that makes no sense" (whereas there was one time that Elise made a move and Travis said "that makes sense") so I was worried that Brian would realize, based on that, that Elise was The Mole, since the host would never say "that makes no sense" to the real Mole, as that would be helping in pointing out the fact that he/she is doing something suspicious. I also got worried that Brian would catch on to the fact that Mini Mole never seemed too interested in attacking Elise, and actually only attacked her when she was in a square with other people. Thankfully, it seems that Brian didn't notice any of these things. Seriously, the annoyance had already gotten to an extreme point prior to In The Dark, but I could've never expected that it could actually get even worse: "GIMME UR MONEY RITE NOW!! DO IT!!! RITE NOW!!!" I really hope he gets a chance to re-read that transcript and understand why he wasn't getting through to us. Yes, my hesitation to give him anything WAS mostly based on fear of an exemption and fear that I wouldn't look suspicious if I gave him the money, but when he started saying those things, it just made it even worse, and there was NO way I was going to cooperate with him.

Brian, when you read my private confessionals, you might be surprised, considering how nice I was to you during the game, but the thing is that it's very important to be in people's good graces in this game, because of several reasons: 1. If you exhibit a likable, pleasant personality, chances are people will think you are suspicious (which, in turn, is exactly why Elise's fits of anger have been brilliant on her part as The Mole, since being combative makes you look NOT suspicious), 2. This game is about gathering information, and you never know when you may need to get information from someone, so being friends with you would mean it'd be more likely you'd give me information I needed from you at some point, if I ever did, and 3. If we had had any challenges in which someone who was well-liked would have been well-positioned to get an exemption, I would've obviously wanted to take advantage of that. So, I definitely had to be nice to you, even though I have to admit you truly were severely annoying, and I'm obviously not alone in thinking that. All I'm wondering now is just how much of how you behaved was strategy and how much was genuine. That's pretty much the factor that'll determine how interested I will or won't be in keeping in touch with you after the game. I seriously hope most of it was strategy.

Let me make something clear: the personality I've exhibited in this game hasn't been fake. I'll sound really full of myself in what I'm about to say, but I really am a very friendly person, and in my group of friends, I tend to be the "go-to" friend that people recur to for heart-to-heart conversations and to make them feel better, and that's not something I purposely do to make people like me. I'm just like that, and you can ask anyone who knows me in real life if you don't believe me. It hasn't been something I've been faking for this game. Have I EXPLOITED my real personality to my advantage in this game? Sure. But I see nothing wrong with that. I also don't think I've done anything unethical in this game, EXCEPT for one thing that I've been planning to apologize for, and I was originally planning to say it in my final public confessional so that it was out there before the reunion, but I think I'll just wait till the reunion. I want to apologize to Brian and Paul for the Exemption Auction, and really to Elise as well, because even though she wasn't affected by it in the sense of the exemption, I'm sure that as The Mole she may have concocted a plan on how to go about sabotaging the challenge, and Blaise and I didn't even give her a chance to do that. But the apology is aimed mainly at Brian and Paul, because I AM fully aware of the fact that we were utter rogues in not letting them even get within arm's reach of the exemption. No, Blaise and I didn't BREAK any rules, but we still did something that was extremely dirty, because we didn't even ALLOW them to have a chance. I am really, really, really, REALLY sorry, and I will repeat this to them at the reunion. I may have had problems with things both of them did, but I do think both of them are good people, and I do feel bad on a personal level. I don't feel bad on a strategic level, because it had to be done, and even though I'm apologizing for it now, I wouldn't take it back – it was the correct strategic decision. I had no idea whether either of them (or both of them) knew that Elise was The Mole, and giving one of them an exemption would have made that person feel safe enough to go 100% for one person in their exemption quiz, and if they went for Elise, they'd be getting tons of cumulative points on her, and that would have been something that could have screwed me. In addition, let's say that Brian knew Elise was The Mole, but Paul didn't - if Paul won the exemption, that would also have made me extremely vulnerable. In this game, when you're not the host or The Mole, you have to play with hypotheticals a lot, and you really have NO idea how anyone else is thinking, so you HAVE to be as paranoid as possible and do everything in your power to prevent others from having an advantage. Blaise and I saw an opportunity in being online and we took it, and not that I'm trying to justify myself, but if people like Ginger and Mitch had still been in the game, and they had had the power to do it, they would've also done it in a heartbeat and without looking back. But I really am sorry about it, and I do hope Brian and Paul will be able to forgive me for it.

I was very surprised that Elise decided to be helpful at the challenge! :) I was assuming that she'd actually just sabotage blatantly seeing as she had nothing to lose, but now that I think about it, she basically did the same thing as Bill in the second season of The Mole. Bill had the choice of either adding $100,000 to the final pot or not adding it, and he chose to add it, even though, as The Mole, he obviously wasn't going to be eligible to win that money. Later on in interviews after he was revealed as The Mole, he said he did it because he wanted to increase the amount of money that either Dorothy or Heather (the two players remaining) would win. Obviously, I'm not in Elise's head so I can't know what she's thinking, but maybe she did it because she likes me and Blaise (I'd love to assume that if she had been at the Final 3 with Brian and Paul she would've done absolutely everything possible to make them lose, just so both of them would have had mental breakdowns, lol). We could've easily not gotten that final puzzle if she hadn't helped us at the last minute, so even though it was Blaise who kept the $18 at the end, I do think we owe that money being added to the pot largely to her. I was probably the one out of the group of three who helped the least, as I have been this whole game, lol. I just suck. :( Just like Bill, Elise probably felt that she has already done a great job sabotaging the challenges in this game (which she has) and felt it was okay for us to make a decent amount of money in the final challenge. The thing that made me happiest, though, was that my prediction was correct: I felt so calm during that challenge and actually had fun during it, instead of the stress/annoyance I felt in most of the other ones. I can't even begin to explain how much more at peace I was during this challenge than I was last week when I had to deal with stupid Mini Mole and stupid fucking Brian. We honestly worked together very well, I thought, and there weren't any messes or nuisances anywhere. I think that Blaise, Elise and I were the most calm and collected of the original group of 15, and we were also the most rational, and I think that helped us work together so well, and the only reason why we hadn't been able to do so in the past was because we had so many other people getting in our way.

There have definitely been a lot of obstacles in this game. I didn't reveal anything about my suspects in my first three private confessionals, because I wanted to wait, but during the first round, as I was taking notes on who I suspected and getting ready for the very first quiz, I wrote that my main suspects were "Brian, Elise, Paul and Richard… with Cheri and Ginger as secondary suspects." I put Breaux as The Mole on that first quiz simply for mathematical reasons (even though Breaux did enter my list later). Of course, Cheri and Richard left quickly, and I was soon able to eliminate Ginger because she was too obvious, and that left me with Brian, Elise, Paul and then right around round 3, Breaux entered the mix, and those were my 4 suspects. I say that I faced obstacles because when you think about it, I made it to the final 6 with my coalition partner Blaise AND with all 4 of my suspects, lol, which made it especially tough to figure out who it could be. I mean, it WAS a good thing when Ginger was executed at the Final 7, because I considered her to be such a threat, but at the same time, it was like "jeez, please let one of my suspects get executed already." Thankfully, in that Final 7 round, the Mafia challenge made things a little clearer, and I'm relieved that that happened because at that point, I was actually pretty close to deciding Breaux was The Mole. I really thought the guy was pulling an amazing role and that he was fooling everyone and that I would be the sole person to nail him. So, the Mafia challenge was coming up, and part of me thought that maybe I'd get picked as Mafia. For some reason, I thought The Mole would pick people who were well-liked and thus wouldn't be voted against. I actually kind of thought maybe the Mafia would be me and Ginger. Not sure why. As soon as the challenge got underway, I could tell that Elise was Mafia because of things she was saying (like "suspicions, guys? lol"), and once I got killed quickly, it sort of gave me time to just sit there and watch and think about things. Paul was a Mole suspect for me, but he definitely was too hardcore about ensuring the Mafia were found out and killed. As I said, Breaux was becoming a huge suspect for me… until, as the investigator, he literally copy/pasted his chat with Travis to prove he was the investigator. That was too un-Mole-like. Actually, in the Mole games I played before, we never had the Mafia challenge, but I think that if that challenge had been done in the game in which I was The Mole, I would've picked myself as the investigator. That way, no real player would be gathering any information on who's innocent and who isn't. And of course, Brian voting against Blaise instead of Breaux in that final round was just ridiculous. He had a prime opportunity to sabotage that and didn't. I still cannot WAIT to hear all about how pissed off Elise was at Brian for that, lol. I said this before, but as much as it was probably an effort to make the top Mole suspect more suspicious and get him an exemption, I think she should've considered that Brian is too volatile and unstable ("IT'S JILL! KILL HER! DO IT!"). If she had picked me as Mafia, we would've killed all those heathens and gotten ourselves exemptions. :) I do understand, though, that she didn't pick me as Mafia because she probably figured I'd be a vote in her favor. I think it was probably smart to pick herself as Mafia because most people would think maybe The Mole wouldn't do that. The only thing is that, as The Mole, if you make yourself Mafia you decrease your chances of being able to successfully sabotage the challenge because it's you and the other Mafia versus everyone else, whereas if you're not Mafia, it's you plus the two Mafia against everyone else, so that's THREE people working to ensure the challenge isn't won. I think that, ultimately, the reason why the Mafia challenge bumped Elise to the top of my suspect list was the simple fact that I didn't think that if any of the other people were The Mole, they would pick her as a Mafia. I didn't see a reason why Blaise, Breaux, Brian, Ginger or Paul would pick her as Mafia if they were The Mole. I would've figured that if The Mole was not selecting themselves as Mafia, they would pick two people who would be able to get along, so that they'd work well to sabotage the challenge, and everyone was clearly aware that Brian and Elise weren't the best of friends. So, I just knew something was off about those Mafia selections, and it's what prompted me to target Elise. You know how people will often say "Ah, I'll sleep on it," and then they go to sleep and they don't REALLY think about whatever problem they're trying to work out? Well, I really did sleep on it that night after the Mafia challenge. I woke up feeling pretty certain that Elise was The Mole, even figuring that the whole thing she did with refusing to provide her bio in the beginning was probably staged, and that even led me to send an addendum to my private confessional that morning in which I stated that.
Even in light of the Mafia challenge, I still had obstacles because I wasn't yet 100% positive that it was Elise, and as I stated in an earlier confessional, Elise has been hard to score points on ever since quiz #2. As much as it would look like this would've hurt me, I think it helped me in the fact that it probably contributed to executing other people, because other players would obviously be having a hard time scoring on her as well. I'm now convinced that Brandon and Richard were executed so early because, starting with that quiz, she was made hard to score on, so those two guys probably tried to hit the majority answers on each question, without keeping track of how many points they were actually getting on each person, and that's what executed them. In my case, since Elise was a main suspect from the start, I obviously wasn't going to allow myself to get only 1 or 2 points on her on my quizzes – in fact, I never got anything below a 4 on her. On the first quiz, it was easy to get a 5 on her, which I think was fair to the players, because at the start of a game with so many people, it's completely impossible for anyone to have a solid idea of who The Mole is. Then it started getting harder on quiz #2, and I now am really happy with the risk I took on picking her as The Mole to get 4 points on her, and keep only 2 points on Mitch (I was SOO scared Mitch would turn out to be The Mole and I'd be screwed, lol). Then on quiz #3, she was still hard to score points on, and I also had started to suspect her less due to the refusing to give her bio thing, so I still got only a 4 on her (it should be noted that on all these quizzes I was getting like 5s or above on mostly everyone, except like Ginger and Kyle). Then on quiz #4 I suppose I lucked out with the font color question being thrown out and all, and I got a 6 on her. Then came quiz #5 which featured questions #2-7 all of which had answer choices lumping Breaux/Brian/Paul together and not Elise, so even though at that point she had become my top suspect, I still only managed a 5 on her on that quiz (since I didn't want to risk the chance that one of the guys was The Mole), by aiming for her on the "individual" questions (in which one answer choice applied to each person). Then on quiz #6, I was still wary that Paul might be The Mole or that I was missing something obvious that either Breaux or Brian had done, so I still played it safe, scoring a 6 on her, a 4 on those three guys, and even a 5 on Blaise lol, even though he wasn't a suspect anymore. But then with quiz #7, it was the final 5, and I knew that it was time to become decisive, so I finally took the gamble, and it paid off. I did the same on quiz #8, and now here I am, one quiz away from the end of the game. So, I'm actually GLAD that The Mole was made hard to score on, because if it had been made easy, it could have made someone who wasn't onto The Mole unwittingly get a lot of answers right, and that would've sucked.

There certainly are a lot of things that I'm only noticing now in retrospect, since I've been sort of looking back on the game, now that we're this close to the finish line. I bet one of the funniest things that'll be said at the reunion is how Elise posted only 3 URLs for One-Hit Bloggers while everyone else posted 8 or more, and people hardly seemed to notice. I attributed it to inactivity, to be honest. In fact, in my confessional after Brandon and Richard were executed, I literally said "How the heck did they get executed over Beth, Elise and Kyle?" And of course, Beth and Kyle were promptly executed next, lol. Another thing I'm noticing now is that during round 2, Travis made a thread in the waiting room titled "What is identity?" in which we were meant to talk about how we felt about walking the fine line between our aliases and our real personalities, and I assumed one of the questions on the quiz would be "Did The Mole post in the 'What is identity?' thread?" and indeed it was, and what I'm noticing NOW is that Elise made a post on that thread basically at the last minute, and all she said was "Interesting, and confusing!", which kind of makes it sound like Travis contacted her and said "Psst… I'm gonna ask this question on the quiz, so just post whatever on the thread so that the correct answer will be yes." It just seems that Elise's post in which she simply says "Interesting, and confusing!"was something that was just done for the sake of posting. There's also something that happened in round 4 that I really should've picked up on, but didn't, and that's the fact that when Elise entered the chatroom for the Hangman challenge, Travis said "wow, look who showed up." If I had looked at that more closely, I would've definitely considered it suspicious that he seemed to be pretending to be surprised that she appeared all of a sudden. The "could I be The Mole?" blog post that she made towards the beginning of the game was simply brilliant. She noticed that players were trying really hard to look suspicious, and she wanted to look like she was one of those people, a player wanting to look like The Mole, and I have no doubt that it worked on a lot of people. Same goes for her comments saying "I'm not surprised I survived because I AM THE MOLE!" It takes guts to do that, but she did it, and I've no doubt that it paid off. I've been looking back at the conversations I had with Elise at the start of the game (just because it's obviously interesting to read them now knowing for sure that it's her and observing how she was trying to play things), and it's amazing just how player-like she looked. There's other things I've remembered just from reading earlier stuff now, like when we had the MB challenge in which we had to form words (F, FA, FAX, FAUX, etc), and I was in a chatroom with Elise, Ginger and Paul. The latter two wanted to finish off the challenge, but Elise messaged me privately and said "call me spiteful, but I don't really want Ginger getting more Mole bucks," and that was an incredibly player-like thing to say, because The Mole obviously doesn't care, but a player is obviously concerned if another player has a lot of Mole bucks, since that may give that person too much of an advantage. So, that was very intelligent of her to say to me.
I'll also admit there are dozens upon dozens of hilarious quotes from Elise in several of the conversations we had, and I couldn't help laughing so hard when re-reading some of them. This here is actually our very first conversation, which was on AIM, and it's pretty short. The move to start things off with the "alliance?" joke was brilliant and something that made me think less that it was her since the beginning. I wonder if she did it with other people, too.

omc6player09 (6:48:35 PM): alliance?
omc6player09 (6:48:52 PM): lol just kidding, hi i'm elise
omc6player03 (6:48:54 PM): Hi! How are you? :)
omc6player03 (6:49:19 PM): Haha, I was about to say "Oh, great, are people going to be that straightforward and blunt here?"
omc6player03 (6:49:29 PM): I'm Jill. :) Nice to meet you.
omc6player09 (6:49:42 PM): nice to meet you too :)
omc6player09 (6:50:00 PM): idk i don't think anyone has been THAT blunt lol
omc6player09 (6:50:07 PM): yet, to me, at least
omc6player03 (6:50:20 PM): Me neither, in fact you're the first one to contact me!
omc6player03 (6:50:36 PM): Even though it appears several of them are online, which is interesting, I guess.
omc6player09 (6:50:45 PM): it's so weird, it's like there are people online, but everyone just stays to themselves
omc6player09 (6:51:02 PM): it's a real shrink experiment, i guess the host was serious about all that psych stuff lol
omc6player03 (6:51:32 PM): I mean, I understand it's been less than 24 hours, but we need to get the ball rolling somehow!
omc6player03 (6:51:56 PM): He certainly seems it, he looks like he has some interesting things planned out
omc6player03 (6:52:04 PM): just from the website, I mean
omc6player09 (6:52:21 PM): i hope so, it looked like a really fun game
omc6player09 (6:52:34 PM): there isn't much as designed and stuff as this is
omc6player03 (6:53:19 PM): Oh yeah, I definitely hope it's a fun one, even if I'm sure it'll be horribly nerve-wracking at times.
omc6player09 (6:53:43 PM): haha at least we'll all be nerve wracking together! i hope i will at least lol
omc6player03 (6:54:02 PM): I know!
omc6player03 (6:54:36 PM): It certainly is a bit overwhelming to have 15 people. I'm nervous just thinking about having to compete with so many, you know?
omc6player09 (6:56:13 PM): i'm worried too, like i'm not that experienced or anything when it comes to these things, but this group just seems sort of... odd, you know?
omc6player03 (6:57:55 PM): You think so? I haven't exactly gotten to know them yet, but I'm assuming you may have gotten more insight than I have thus far...
omc6player09 (6:58:32 PM): i haven't gotten much insight at all actually lol
omc6player03 (6:59:12 PM): oh, haha! I just figured since you thought they seemed odd, I wasn't sure what had given you the idea. But i can definitely see how it's probably true.
omc6player09 (6:59:15 PM): i want to talk to you more, but i have to run
omc6player03 (6:59:28 PM): No problem! I'd love to talk to you more, too. :)
omc6player09 (6:59:29 PM): so, hopefully i can catch up with you later :) you seem nice
omc6player03 (6:59:41 PM): You too! Thank you. :) Later, Elise.

The other thing I find amazing is how awesome it is that Blaise, Elise and I actually DID make it to this point. Ages ago it seemed like one of those totally idealistic things ("ahh, how nice would it be if all these annoying people left, and we were all together in the end?") and now it's actually happened. I always thought that Blaise and Elise were the only people who seemed rational on a similar level as me, and I just never felt like I could keep up with the boisterousness of all the other people. This is hilarious, particularly the joe schmoe bit, rofl:

Elise: we're discussing how we're the only normal people left, so i sent this to him...
we're going to show up to the next live challenge
and i swear to god, the host better reveal that this is the online version of joe schmoe
me: ROFL!!!!
oh my God, I love you
if we don't make it past these incredibly immature people in this game, life just isn't fair
Elise: the reason they're never online is because they're all the same person
and they all suck
it's a ploy
me: if it weren't for you and Blaise I would be so done with all this
Elise: they're all 13 year old robots, we win!
me: D&D players :) hee
Elise: seriously, if you survive past me and blaise, i will feel sooo happy for you and sad at the same time lol
i might contact you across executed lines just to see if you've lost your sanity lol
And then, in another chat, we were talking about Ginger, and Elise bluntly said:
Elise: she's a creeper
ugh, i hate everyone left except you and blaise
Finally, here's an extremely funny Brian one (which I think we have a large collection of those, lol), and the final comment Elise makes here had me laughing for like a minute, lol:
Elise: have you ever heard of a mcguffin? brian just used this word with me...
me: McGuffin? Definitely not. Let me look it up...
Elise: "Brian: lol im getting all metaphorical on ur ass"
he just explained it to me
i'm kind of insulted... but i don't know why

That's sort of what it was always like with Brian – I was kind of insulted and annoyed by him, but I never knew exactly why. I don't believe the problem REALLY were his typing skills, because there's other people online I talk to who use shorthand. I think it was like some expressions he used (like "make us proud babygurl" WTF???). As I've mentioned so many times, Blaise and Elise were so helpful in helping me keep my sanity, especially when it came to Brian-related things. In a way, it was perfect that Brian made it to the final 4 with us (mosquitoes are, after all, annoying and never go away – thank God that last quiz worked as insecticide) and now the three of us are here at the end. It couldn't have worked out better. :)

In the spirit of this sort of retrospective I've been doing of the game, I'm actually going to address everyone who was involved in it one last time, and the only people I'll leave out are Beth and Ellery because I never once had a conversation with either of those two. So, here it goes:

Cheri – Many were surprised to see you go early, and I guess I was, too, but now that I think about it, during the one round that you WERE in the game, you only contacted me twice. One time it was to ask me what I thought of your inkblot, and you then signed off. The second time it was to ask me, like, how old I was and where I was from (I guess you thought those things would be asked on the quiz, even though they weren't part of the bio questions that Travis asked us), and both times you didn't seem interested in engaging in conversation. That's a mistake that several other people have made. I don't understand why so many players felt it was so important to focus on the challenges, to the point that they'd get on gmail only for challenges and never at other times to chat (Kyle and Mitch are great examples of this – I never saw them on gmail after the first week). Yes, the challenges are an important part of the game, but I THINK that the place in which you FIND The Mole is in the conversations, where you assess behavior and analyze why people say things the way they do, etc. Despite the Mafia challenge, what REALLY made me basically sure that Elise was The Mole was when she started talking to me at the start of round 6 after I went more heavily for her, and started trying to convince me that she had gone 100% for Brian on the quiz and that we should work together now, etc. The challenges aren't enough to find The Mole because people (like Mitch, heh) do shady things on purpose at the challenges to throw you off. It's in the interaction with the players that you find The Mole, which is why it was always so important for me to converse with the other players, and it really looks like Cheri failed to do that.

Brandon – Oh man. You told me that I was your top suspect, and I didn't know whether to believe you or not. Of course, once you told me that, it simply gave me an opening to continue acting suspicious in my conversations with you, and I did it, because I had to. I said it before and I'll say it again, I would've PREFERRED someone else getting executed for thinking I was The Mole, because I really did like you a lot, but if I had an in with getting rid of you, of course I had to take it. I had to do anything that would get anyone but me executed. But with that said, you really were extremely cool to know in the short time you were here. I suspect perhaps you won't come to the finale since it's been so long, but it'd really be nice if you surprised me and showed up. :) Also, if the picture you posted of yourself on your blog is real, can we, like, go out, please? lol

Richard – For my sake, it was best that you left so early. I was extremely suspicious of you as The Mole, but ALSO, something told me that if you weren't The Mole, the information you were feeding me in our supposed coalition wasn't true. You just struck me as the kind of guy who is ostensibly harmless and pleasant, yet has a deadly agenda. It really was a shock that you left so early, considering how active you were, and I wonder if you've continued following the game after you left. It'd be cool to hear your thoughts at the reunion.

Kyle – I'd like to say as little as possible here. You couldn't keep yourself out of trouble, even after you got executed. I'm sticking to my prediction that it was you who contacted someone outside of executed lines (there's just no way it was Beth), and that's such an immature thing to do. Hopefully you'll be punished by not receiving an invitation to the finale.

Mitch – I actually kind of want to apologize for the mean things I said about you in earlier confessionals. Yes, I had good reason to be pissed off. You LIED about your bio information, which is a ridiculous and unnecessary thing to do in this game, but I didn't consider the fact that maybe you had formulated some sort of strategy in which you felt it was advantageous to do that, so I'm sorry. The blatancy with which you sabotaged some things was definitely too much, and I can't say I agree with those who say you did a good job at looking suspicious, because I don't think you did at all. I also didn't really see you on gmail after the first week, so you didn't do well in the crucial part of the game of interacting with the other players. I will admit, though, that I enjoyed the conversations I did have with you during the first week, and I thought you seemed like a really cool guy.

Ginger – I didn't always speak too positively of you in my confessionals, but I now realize that that wasn't actually because I didn't like you. It was because I was scared of you. I was scared of how into the game you were. I was convinced that your 10 million MBs would screw everyone over in the end. I really feared that I'd make it to the final round with you and you'd then be impossible to defeat on the final quiz. As much as I didn't lose a suspect when I lost you, I lost a threat, and that was definitely a relief. But now that you're gone, whenever I read a conversation that involved you, it's always so much fun. You really were quite a character. There was a challenge in which we were being disorganized as usual, and you randomly blurted out "Stop screwing this up, Mole!" and I thought that was so funny. I have to admit I also had a really fun time with you and Elise coming up with ideas for the MB story, trying to work through the sexual innuendos without making them dirty. And, of course, this excerpt from the second round of Mafia is awesome:

Brian: ok im the investigator for real now
Ginger: NO! SHUT UP! Brian is THE MAFIA
Brian: LOL U R THE MAFIA
JILL ITS GINGER
me: Vote: Player 10

You were definitely a very good player, and I could never even aspire to make a blog that was as technically impressive as yours, lol. I really hope you come to the finale and share your opinions.

Breaux – During these last few rounds, I have SOOOO felt the absence of your lulziness. It really sucks that it wasn't until the last like two rounds that you were in the game that we started to talk because I could've been having a riot with you from the start, but then again, you actually weren't on gmail a lot during the beginning rounds. Talking to people online can be like pulling teeth sometimes because you can't sense any sort of expression, but somehow, you managed to be extremely expressive in our chats, and I was never bored for a second with you. You really made me want to let my guard down and just talk to you normally without restraining myself from telling you my true thoughts, and it WAS hard to be dishonest with you about who I thought The Mole was, but when you told me that you really didn't think it was Elise, I HAD to keep it that way, because I obviously needed to do everything I could to ensure I stayed and everyone else got executed. I just wish you had been there at the final 4 instead of Brian. But jeez, I REALLY hope you do come to the reunion because we're definitely gonna be in need of your entertainment, and I really want to find out who you are so that we can talk after this is all over. Thanks for being awesome. :)

Paul – I'm sticking to my prediction that, once everything with the game is over and done with and the challenges are no longer a concern, you'll be a pleasant guy to get to know. You definitely did irk me with your constant jabs at the group for not doing well in the challenges, especially in your public confessionals. I hope it was mostly strategy because if it WASN'T, not only was it annoying, but it was detrimental to your game because it led people to not suspect you. People who play this game NEED to freaking understand that it should NOT be a player's priority to do well on the challenges. I could do nothing but cringe whenever I saw you having an enema over us losing a challenge. The only USE that the challenges should have for a player is to sabotage them to look suspicious and to observe what others do to figure out The Mole. If you try too hard to win the challenges, chances are you're just putting money into someone else's pocket, and at the same time, you look unsuspicious – so, it's not worth it. I don't know if you were being honest when you said this, but you did tell me that Mitch was your top suspect and then later you said Ginger was #2 on your list, and if that's all true, then you're definitely not as observant and as good at this game as I initially thought you were, because there was clearly no way Ginger or Mitch were The Mole. However, I do hope to see you at the reunion and to hear what you think of how everything unfolded.

Brian – I wonder what more there is to say, lol. I'm still curious to hear how much of what you did was strategic and how much of it wasn't, so I guess I'll find out soon. I suppose I should commend you because apparently a lot of people did think you were The Mole, but the thing is, I'm wondering just how much of it was intentional. I'm wondering whether you actually purposely did things to get people to think like that, or if it simply happened that way. If it's the latter, I can't really say you deserve a lot of credit, but if it's the former, good job.

Blaise – Best… coalition partner… ever. That's all I have to say. Blaise is so awesome simply because of how laid-back and easy to talk to he is. It was so simple to work with him, and we were definitely on the same wavelength in so many respects. The one thing I feel sorry about is round 6, because I did try to sort of steer him in the wrong direction by making him think it was Breaux, but he obviously caught onto it, and it really was a bad idea, anyway. Everything was going to work better in terms of getting rid of Brian and Paul if he and I played together rather than against each other, and that was obviously the case with the exemption auction. Blaise, you're obviously a good player, since you've made it this far… now I wonder just how good you are, mainly because of my apprehension of what's gonna happen with the final quiz. It's come down to you or me, so I wonder if maybe you've been concealing the fact that you've known it's Elise since the beginning and it'll be impossible for me to win. No matter what the outcome at the reunion, it's been really great to do this with you (I still can't believe we actually did it!!!!!), and I'd really like to be able to keep in touch with you after the game is over. You've always struck me as the kind of guy who has a sort of quiet intelligence about himself, and that's always intrigued me. Also, I think you probably stated one of the most satisfying quotes of this game when you cast a vote at the Mafia challenge:
Blaise: VOTE: Player 10 DIE
LOL. Put that together with Elise's quote in the In The Dark challenge where she said "Brian, will you give me your key and die?" and you've got total perfection, lol. Blaise, you're a great guy, and I can't thank you enough for helping me get to this point.

Elise – You're probably tired of hearing me talk about you so much, huh? :) Well, I'll try to keep it short, but I can't make any promises. I can't stress enough what an incredible charade you've pulled. As someone who's been The Mole and who is really into the dynamics of this game and the different strategies that go into the deception of playing this role, you've no idea how happy it makes me to have witnessed a performance as amazing as the one you've given in this game. I feared early on that The Mole would just suck, and a bunch of people would figure out who it was, and I'd be executed early for being careful with my quiz-taking strategy of allocating points to each person. The other thing I feared was that The Mole would be annoying, which actually could have definitely been a possibility. If Brian or Paul had been The Mole, it would have pissed me off like you don't even know, and if it had been like Ginger or Mitch it would've also bothered me a lot because they were blatant in a way that The Mole shouldn't be blatant. If it had been Brian or Paul, I could've still been able to do well in the game and made it to the end, but it would've just been blah. I would've been happy if I had won the game with The Mole being one of them, but it's so much more satisfying to know that The Mole is not only someone who was great at keeping their identity hidden, but also someone whom I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know. You're incredibly sharp, which is something I knew the second I met you, but you're also unbelievably hilarious and you have no idea how much entertainment you've provided for me during all these months of playing OMC 6. My theory has been that the angry persona is something you've been putting on for this game, and that the personality you've been displaying when talking to me is the real you. It was the best move to be the real you when talking to me because, honestly, there were SO many freaking times that you were talking to me that I just wanted to trust you completely and tell you everything I thought, so you were obviously doing a perfect job. Likewise, I bet the angry persona worked well on someone like Paul, and I can't wait to see his (and everyone else's) reaction when the unveiling is finally done. I wonder if it's been difficult for you to carry on the angry persona because my guess is you're not really like that. I do know that being The Mole is incredibly hard. People think it's easy because it's a free ride to the end of the game, and they don't realize how tremendously tough it is psychologically. You have to try to work so many angles and cover all your bases and be REALLY careful about not even coming close to slipping up. It's a challenging role, and I think you've done it perfectly. I just can't wait for this to be over so that you're able to talk openly about everything. I bet you have a heck of a lot of really interesting things to say and that your private confessionals should be a great read. Thank you so much for being such a good friend to me in this game. I can't even imagine how much less fun this whole experience would've been for me if you hadn't been a part of it. And I can't wait to know who "Elise" really is. :)

Travis (Player 15) – Considering that you did so poorly as a player, not even making an appearance or submitting a quiz, I guess it IS a good thing that you did such a great job hosting. :) This game was extremely well-organized, nicely paced and completely fair. It's obvious that you've been really diligent in ensuring things are fair for everyone, which is why the initial decision to make it an alias game was definitely a great idea. The In The Dark challenge is an extremely well thought-out challenge, and it was incredibly hard. The challenges we've had in this game have been really fun, but at the same time, they've been very effective at keeping with the theme of this game. Take, for example, a challenge as simple as Trust Falls, in which all you need is for the players to send you an e-mail with one of two words, TRUST or BETRAY. It sounds like an awfully simplistic challenge, but it's perfect for a game like this in which it's all bluff/double-bluff galore. It's totally fitting for a game like this. Every time we've had a challenge you've been extremely on top of everything, thus making it clear that you prepare yourself really well for them, and you don't just half-ass things like so many other hosts. One of the games I played, the host was ridiculously lazy, and it came to a point, when we were at the final 5 that we'd just HAD it with his slowness, and we decided to end the game on our own, with The Mole voluntarily revealing himself. I'm so glad that this game was able to reach its completion and that it was so worthwhile the entire time. You were more "detached" than the other hosts I've worked with, who were usually online and would even talk to players, but that's probably a wise choice on your part to ensure you don't accidentally give something away or look like you might be giving an advantage to whoever you're talking to. You've been very professional in the way you've handled everything, and you've given us an extremely fun experience in doing so. I have to assume that you must do this because you find it fun, because I can't imagine why anyone else would put time and effort (and real money from their wallet!) into something like this unless they enjoyed it, and it's so good that there's still hosts out there who are aware of what an incredibly great and challenging experience this game of The Mole is and who want to host online versions of it. About 5 years ago was when the show had last aired and I last played in a game, and I figured that since the show didn't look like it was gonna air anymore, the online games wouldn't continue, and I was really disappointed by that and figured I'd never get to play again. Thank God that the show came back this year, not just because I was able to see it again, but because it led to a renewed enthusiasm in online Mole games, which obviously led to this game happening and having so many active people in it. Thank you so much for making this happen, and for making it happen WELL. I can't wait to hear about your thoughts and observations at the finale on all of the behind-the-scenes stuff – it'll be great to hear from the one person who's actually seen absolutely everything that's happened. Thanks again for a great game, and I hope you're really proud of the work you've done on OMC 6. :)

Oh, that's right, I've been doing all this jabbering, and there's apparently this big quiz that's coming up that I should be really worried about, right? Well, I indeed am very worried, but it's a different type of "worried". Prior to this round, there's always been the fear of possibly being duped and on the wrong track in terms of who The Mole is. I don't need to worry about that anymore. I just need to worry about how good Blaise is. I have no idea whether or not I'm capable of beating him. So, I AM nervous, but only in the sense that I know I have a 50% chance of winning, and that it can probably go either way. Regardless of the outcome, as I said a few rounds ago, if I discover who The Mole is but don't WIN the game, I'll still be OKAY with it, because the objective of the game, and the one thing that interests me the most, IS finding the real Mole, no matter what the final outcome is. My priority isn't the challenges nor the money nor anything else. My priority is the psychological part of the game, assessing each player and figuring out which one of them it is, and I successfully did that. This game is all about engaging in detective fun, and I think I can say without sounding cocky that I was obviously a better detective than several other people, and that's why I was able to make it to this point. If I don't win, I'll have nothing but the heartiest congratulations for Blaise, who has been an awesome player. If I do win, it'll be an incredible accomplishment and I can't even begin to describe how happy I'll be. I'm very excited about the reunion. I can't wait to learn who each executed player thought was The Mole, to read people's private confessionals and to finally hear everything Elise has to say after all these months of gameplay. No matter what the outcome, it'll definitely be an awesome night that will conclude what's been an extremely fun ride of an online game. Thank you again, Travis, and I know you're supposed to be impartial and all, but please wish me luck!