Izzy

**Izzy** was the Sole Survivor of SurviVARs: Magic Kingdom and SurviVARs: Secret War.

## **Profile**

**Discord:** izzyibeam

**Gender:** she/her

**Timezone:** EST

## **Survivor**

* S3 - Magic Kingdon
* S5 - Secret War

**Player Ranking (1st)**

Could it really be anybody else? I have to own my biases, because Izzy is my ORG wife and one of my favorite people on Discord, but she also played one of the best damn games SurviVARS has seen. In every sense, she is a boss ass bitch who don’t need no man. She was a contender at almost every step of the journey, whether she was on top of the numbers, cruising through the middle, or controlling the game from the bottom. She had a killer social game that somehow never elevated her threat level, and successfully played all sides of the field without anyone trying to cut her out. The only moment where she lapsed out of some sort of control was the Quint blindside, but even that just motivated her to kick her ass back into gear and take control right back. And she did, time and time again. She never voted incorrectly except for the Quint move. She was a fundamental player of every damn elimination she saw, from beginning to end. Neen was pulling strings, but in a very visible way that made everyone wary of her. Izzy was always masterminding this game, but in a way where it seemed like nobody was really catching on that she was. She was three votes away from a perfect game: two votes against her and one vote for Nick to win. Even if she doesn’t fit the Survivor Wiki’s definition of a “perfect game”, she was pretty damn close in my book. The game bowed to her will, and she walked away with the most dominant win SurviVARS has seen because of it. Not dominant in the traditional sense: she wasn’t always on top or in the majority. But she always found an opening, and always maximized how to use it to her advantage. She was scrappy, sure, but she was a scrappy bad ass. She was tenacious and fiery, and her win came from fighting for every inch of power she held. In an absolutely stacked cast filled with firecrackers who almost all had a real chance to win, she still managed to beat them all. Congratulations Izzy. I couldn’t be prouder of my wife.

### **Awards**

**Voice of the Season**

Voice of the Season is an award unique to SurviVARS. Every survivor fan knows that there are people each season who become the narrator. This person describes the madness around them, and are generally involved with many major storylines of the season. This award specifically recognizes strong confessional usage, interesting descriptions, and being involved with any of the major drama going on in the season. This season was packed filled with amazing players who were also great characters. Any other season I could see almost all of you claim this award. Especially Kyle. That said there were two that stood out head and shoulders above everyone else. Red is the first he was an absolutely major force this entire season. Whenever I was lost at a tribal council Red's confessionals really made it easy to track of. Red's infectious positivity irradiated throughout his confessional and he would of represented this award brilliantly. That said there was one player who stole it from Red at the end. Red's star faded but her star burned brighter and brighter in the end game. This player was very creative, super compelling, and involved in possibly the only messy friendship triangle I've seen in ORGs.

#### **Voting History**

**Player Ranking (1st)**

First in the season, and first in character rankings… again! Watching Izzy was so bizarre this time around. It’s so strange to be, like… frustrated? By watching someone kick ass!?!? It’s a hard phenomenon to describe, because it makes it sound like I wasn’t rooting for her to win. This was definitely not the case. I can only describe it as being like watching a horror movie, and knowing that the monster is around the corner but not being able to tell the other characters that it’s coming. In this case, the monster was Izzy. It seemed SO OBVIOUS to the spectators that the cast needed to take out Izzy, almost from day one! But they never did. Izzy played one of the most incredible games I’ve seen on Discord, and I mean that. Like, I can’t articulate just how impressive her game was. She had an Australia-sized target on her back (she compared it to Texas, but even that is selling it short) and managed to win again in spite of it! Every single vote was orchestrated by Izzy, and somehow she tricked a cast of All-Stars into letting it happen. This game took a LOT out of her, and she received a decent amount of judgement (sometimes fair but very often unfair) because of how this game forced her to play.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was incredibly unfair to Izzy a few times during the season, and I wasn’t the only one. Izzy will admit that she had to play dirty at times, and this is just another reason I’ll compare her to the monster in a horror movie. She was always there, waiting to devour this cast like a bag of candies, but they continued to throw themselves at her feet one after another! It’s not that this cast was stupid. She’s just that good. She worked with all of the biggest threats as shields, and turned excellent players like Victoria, Biggy, and Red into nothing more than pawns on her chess board. I can’t think of a single moment when someone held more power than Izzy. She wasn’t always at the top of the Edgic chart, but that’s literally only because it seemed so obvious that she would get taken out soon. Yet… she never was. She won vote after vote, and then in the end she won challenge after challenge and swept Final Tribal Council like we all knew she would. If we weren’t always rooting for her to win, it was because it seemed so obvious that one of the underdogs would come along to stop her, and the horror movie monster would be slain by one of the scared high schoolers. In this horror movie, however, the monster came out on top, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think people were rooting for an upset because who doesn’t love an Underdog? In her first season, we loved Izzy for this exact reason. But this time, Izzy was far from an Underdog, so a lot of people thought her downfall would be more entertaining than a second victory. But that’s just entertainment. At the end of the day, this season was Izzy’s story from start to finish.

I know she isn’t always proud of this win, and sometimes spec lounge made her feel like shit. I will always apologize more for that. But no matter what, this is the best game of Survivor I’ve ever seen, and she owned every bit of this season. From day one, nobody thought she could pull it off. We thought she’d get turned on in a heartbeat, and eaten alive by a ravenous cast of All-Stars. But, no. She was the devourer here, and I couldn’t be prouder of the game that she played.

### **Nominations**

**Underdog**

Something feels wrong about calling Izzy an underdog because of how much control she had from beginning to end. Yet, the title suits her. In theory, she should have crashed and burned. She had more going against her this season than almost anyone else, and had things going on in her personal life that made this ORG even harder for yet. Still, she persevered. She scraped and clawed and made it to the end. She wasn’t always in danger, but this was because she was smart in how she set herself up, because she should have been in danger. There are many universes in which Izzy gets sniped at almost any point in this game, but she managed to avoid the target at every step of the way.

**Best Duo (With Red)**

It’s a classic Survivor strategy. Are you worried that your threat level is too large, and that you’re going to get sniped once the other big players go home? The best solution is just to attach yourself to the other threats and make sure the players in the middle don’t get the momentum to take you out. It’s what Red and Izzy did in this season, and it worked wonders for both of them. If these two didn’t work together, I don’t think either of them would’ve made it as far as they did. They knew they’d have to vote each other out at some point, and Izzy wound up being the one to come out on top, but this didn’t change how much these two controlled the endgame as a pair.

**Best Move (Alice's Elimination)**

This is easily my favorite Tribal Council of the season, and maybe in all of SurviVARS. So many different factors were at play, and they all had different effects on the tribal. Two prior winners were targeted, which is already a recipe for a wild Tribal. It was right after the auction, so everyone was paranoid about advantages. It was also the round where the Soul Stone was revealed, so many of the heavy hitters were weighing whether or not they could safely vote against their #1. Alice played a Stone Steal, which allowed her to take the Mind Stone from Vic to steal JRay’s vote in an attempt to save herself. Great move! JRay used his extra vote to help balance this out. Great move! BK used the chaos to throw a vote towards Biggy, sacrificing Alice but earning a Soul Stone. Great move! (Although it also kind of ended BK’s game in hindsight). All of this compounded into one of the most chaotic, unpredictable Tribal Councils this ORG has seen.

**Best Move (Merlin's 3-2-1)**

Alice’s elimination was madness, but Merlin’s elimination was systematic execution. He was set up to potentially win the whole game, but losing Winston was not good for him. He lost a protector, and was left in the middle without either side really trying to save him. Still, he was far from being a major target. All eyes were on Biggy, Izzy, and Red as major contenders, and Merlin was set to skate through to FTC with some serious win equity. Unfortunately for him, Izzy and Red caught onto this and took advantage of Biggy and JRay’s trust to orchestrate a 3-2-1. Once the majority split their votes, Izzy, Red and Rich were free to grab a narrow majority and control the vote. It was smart, smooth, and entirely unexpected. It also left Izzy and Red with a greater chance at making FTC, which would have been much harder with Merlin alongside them.

**Fan Favorite**

Izzy is a force to be reckoned with in these games, and watching her play this season was a blast. This was a cast of all-stars, and Izzy still managed to outwit, outplay, and outlast her way to a second victory. We’re all proud of the game she played, and the specs had a blast watching her navigate this gauntlet of a season. She’s the Sandra of SurviVARS, and we love her for it.

**Player of the Game**

Come on… it's Izzy. She’s capable of pretty much anything in these games, and proved it again here. She can slide between alliances like nobody else, can burn bridges and then repair them just enough to do it again and somehow still catch the same people off guard, and do it all while still having players protect her and want to keep her. Izzy should not have made FTC! She could have (and probably should have) been sniped at almost any point in the game, but she’s just so damn good at avoiding targets and getting people on her side. She pissed a fair number of people off with how she played, but it was exactly what she needed to do to make it to the end. She played desperately and ferociously, and had more control than anyone because of it. I don’t have enough words in this message to list all of the moves she made that make her deserving of a POTG nomination.

### **Awards**

**Villain**

The queen herself. Izzy came in with a massive threat level, and not just from this ORG. It was no secret that she had been winning games left and right, and was consistently making deep runs across the ORG community. She’s easily one of the best players out there, so everyone came into this game looking to take her out. In order to survive, Izzy had to adopt a “whatever it takes” mentality, and it obviously worked out for her. She definitely burnt bridges as she went, but this was in the name of self-preservation and was done to guarantee passage to the end. She never needed immunity wins or advantages to make it far. She just needed her cunning, her wits, and a willingness to do whatever it took. Her gameplay didn’t make everyone happy, but it worked, and this makes her gameplay in this season some of the best that SurviVARS has seen.

**Best Duo (With Victoria)**

We brought back three badass female winners, and the fact that two of them worked together as closely as they did is a dream come true. Their alliance may not have lasted into the endgame, but these two legendary players teamed up to a great effect in the early merge. Izzy and Victoria both had massive targets against them, but they teamed up rather than target each other. They both belonged to the core alliance that sent Suzz, Alice, and BK home, and helped to keep each other safe when so many people wanted them gone. Victoria’s overflowing pockets and Izzy’s connections to the opposition allowed them to see the game from all sides and have contingency plans for when things went wrong. Izzy was the one that wound up severing this tie to send Victoria home, but this doesn’t undo how cool it was to see these two titans working side by side for so long.

**Best Move (Victoria's Blindside)**

This move was a major turning point in Secret War’s merge game. Victoria had so many advantages that I don’t want to go back to count them, and was going to be able to guarantee herself F5 and potentially comp beast her way to the end like she had done in Hogwarts. She was set up to become unstoppable, and all she had to do was survive F7. Unfortunately for her, Izzy recognized this too. It should have been 4-3 against Red, but Izzy flipped to send Victoria home. Victoria took a major gamble in holding onto her idol, and other players took advantage of that to send a massive threat home. It was the moment Izzy and Red cemented themselves as the players to beat, and set the stage for the rest of the game to come.