Anthony

**Anthony** (bestcape) placed 5th in Season 2, 7th in Season 5, 8th in Big Brother Season 2 & was is Runner Up of Survivor Season 10.

A major player since Day 1, Anthony did the unthinkable on Vula and found the Hidden Immunity Idol mere minutes into the game. This only emboldened Anthony to play hard, forming the dominant Eevee Alliance with Will and Emy and running much of his premerge tribe. After the second swap, Anthony’s game took a hit as he opposed the socially dominant Brandon when recognizing how much of a threat Brandon was. While he failed to eliminate him then, Brandon’s underestimation of Anthony would prove costly as Anthony formed a new majority to blindside Brandon at the merge. For one round, things were looking up for Anthony as he felt he could continue to control the game. This all came crashing down when Gabriel took hold of the game & concocted a plan to force Anthony to use his idol while still eliminating a number from him. With his strong social and strategic game recognized, Anthony had nowhere to hide and began to lash out at everyone not in his alliance thinking he was going home. This proved to be an embarrassing mistake, as he was consistently left with a tribe of people that he just insulted after his allies were blindsided. Luckily, Gabriel saw him as a perfect shield and decided to eliminate all of his allies but use Anthony’s vote in the process, which succeeded. Anthony fought tooth and nail to win when he could and try to make up deals, but it wasn’t enough. At the Final 5, he was deemed too much of a potential jury threat despite his constant villainy and blowups, being voted out in a 5-1 vote after his campaigning fell on deaf ears. He is best remembered for his fierce, almost one-sided rivalry with Harry and his several blowups both at camp and Tribal Council. He is also distinguished for having a vote cast against him at every Tribal Council he attended except for one.

Returning in Season 5, Anthony instantly established himself in a powerful position on Kisiti. Forming the dominant premerge “3 icons” alliance with Dex and Azzy, these three would not see themselves separated for the premerge and would control most of the votes. Anthony was also able to secure both the Kisiti and Gata idols premerge, as well as the Sipi Extra Vote. The 3 icons were an alliance doomed to fail due to them all disliking each other privately, but Anthony rightfully felt like he was calling the shots and would be victorious when the foundation crashed. He had a notable one-sided rivalry with Suari while on Sipi, as Suari was the only player that out social gamed Anthony on any tribe premerge and made Anthony have to vote out Niall to nerf his own game. At the merge, Anthony was growing bored of being unopposed in the game and thinking of shaking things up to prevent a pagonging. This was only heightened when he was reunited with Season 2 ally Will, forming a duo that brought the cracked side of Anthony out a bit as he spilled his entire game to Will. The two were successful in gathering the votes to pull off a Dex blindside in an attempt to set the tone of the game away from a pagonging and toward something dynamic, as well as Dex’s ego growing. However, Anthony immediately reverted back to trying to manage his threat level and relying on his allies no matter how much they annoyed him. This was very evident with his other close duo, Azzy, whom the game and Anthony himself viewed as a minion. Anthony’s relationships with Will, Azzy, and Izzy in particular saw him set up for an almost guaranteed win. He was calling shots, only really being blindsided by Alec’s departure when Harry sneakily drew the numbers against them. Will and Izzy saw Anthony as a shield to take out at the Final 6 or 5, foolishly not even entertaining that Anthony could have even ONE idol let alone TWO as safeguards. Azzy also had no intention of blindsiding Anthony, and was more than willing to use his own advantages in Anthony’s favor to ensure the duo made the F3 together. Anthony’s game would begin to unravel at the Final 8, when Harry attempted to pull a blindside on Anthony. When this got back to him minutes before Tribal Council, the game exploded and Anthony’s paranoia got the best of him as the DMs were flying, wasting one of his two idols to send Lucas to the jury despite him voting with Anthony. The following round was very tense, with Harry publicly making clear that Anthony was running the game and that they’d be foolish not to consider his tight duo with Azzy, who publicly had enough advantages so that he and Anthony could vote whoever they want out between the two. Another turbulent Tribal Council ensued, in which middle man Will was attempting to flush the advantages but genuinely keep Anthony in despite wavering. This clear consideration of the other alliance’s plan as well as perceived shadiness lead Anthony to decide it was best to just blow Azzy’s and his voting advantages now and blindside Harry on their own, despite Izzy and Will voting who he said in the end. At Tribal Council, a 3-3-2 tie ensued between Harry and Anthony when Azzy did not know how to play his voting advantage, and Anthony did not play his remaining idol. Knowing he was likely done for due to blindsiding his allies with Azzy on this vote and causing the tie himself, Anthony still made an impassioned plea to the others to flip on Harry until the very end. Of course, this wasn’t enough to damage control his concealing of so many of his own advantages and blatantly blindsiding his allies out of paranoia twice, and he was sent to the jury in a unanimous revote. He is remembered for his insane luck with swaps and advantages.

Placed on the Brain Tribe in Season 10 for his strategic dominance in both prior seasons, Anthony would play this game very differently than his last two. Rather than being a huge, OTT strategic threat as per usual, he opted for a more social route. Making genuine and good connections with almost every player, Anthony would cruise to the end on virtue of being well-liked. While perhaps not making many if any definitive moves in the game beyond this, Anthony's surface level social stock was very impressive. The thorn in the side of his potentially winning game was Dangan, who was constantly immune or immune by proxy of an idol when Anthony most wanted/needed to make a move on him. Likewise, Dangan recognized Anthony's jury threat potential and also came up short gathering numbers against him. Their journey in the game was truly tied by destiny, with a brutal 29 hour endurance challenge seeing Anthony physically need to quit to check on his own health. Despite losing, Ben would ask to be voted out which let Anthony reach the Final Tribal Council- his Aurora Survivor Dream! Initially an overwhelming lock to win for many in the Jury, Anthony's FTC performance would leave much to be desired. Unable to counter many of Dangan's critiques of his game or own up moves beyond social play, Anthony began to lose steam. The Jury gave him a lifeline, trying to get him to essentially lie about his social game being better than it actually was to warrant some of them voting for him, but Anthony was a true man of honor and opted to tell only the true tea... mostly lol! Dangan's FTC performance and absolutely dominant gameplay would be too much to overcome even if he HAD embellished a ton, leading Anthony to become the Runner Up in a 5 - 2 - 0 vote. He is distinguished as having one of the best average placements of any Aurora Survivor multi-season player & is respected as one of the greatest to never win the game.

Starting the game shockingly quiet socially compared to other seasons, Anthony would begin the BB2 premiere on the outs in house. Blindsided Week 1 when he was the only vote to evict Mitch, Anthony would suspect there was likely a majority power structure that did not include himself. During Week 2, Anthony would put in a lot more social work with key players such as Tara, avoiding becoming a renomination option after an incredibly messy HOH. Despite this, he would still be roughly on the bottom in the house. In Week 3, Anthony would be paired with TJ for the Team Twist. In Week 4, Anthony would win the Fast Forward, saving himself from a potential backdoor plan that Denim was cooking up pre-HOH. Anthony would lightly clock this, but shrug it off as paranoia due to it on paper not making sense for him to target him yet. Moving forward, he would be on everyone’s radar for being perceived as inactive and a snake. In Week 5, Anthony would begin a more aggressive game, throwing his fellow alumni under the bus in his rat era. He would begin to look at finding players he could trust, slightly oblivious to his social standing as no one trusted \*him.\* In the Week 7 detour, we would be part of the House group. Anthony would win HOH this week, putting up Dee and Austin, with Austin as his target. He would make the massive mistake of trusting Parker, however, over Motha Vanity (though both wanted him out, as the whole game did) when Parker would OTT pledge allegiance to Anthony in an attempt to stay off the block if the veto were used. Despite this, his trust in Parker would wane when most needed: renoms. After Dee won the veto, Parker would be much too OTT about wanting Austin out, tipping Anthony off that something could be up and leading him to protecting Motha Vanity and nominating Parker. Despite genuinely being one of the only players in the game with Motha Vanity’s best interests in mind, Motha would completely blindside Anthony keeping Austin in the game, leading to an explosive house fight between the two once both sides reunited. Anthony lost all respect for Motha, calling him out as a goat and “waste of space.” Despite some coming to Motha’s defense and Anthony clearly being on the bottom, he would not go for the Fast Forward in Week 8. This would prove to be a huge mistake, as he was one of only three people HOH Kyle was willing to nominate. After Austin won the veto and used it to save Motha Vanity, Anthony would fight for his life to Kyle. He would accurately read that if he were nominated, Kyle’s target would not go home as the vote would flip onto him instead. Kyle did not want to hear this, however, having blind trust in Austin and promising Anthony he would be safe due to Denim “having a bigger threat level.” Unfortunately, he would still be nominated due to Kyle’s blind faith in Austin. Anthony would put up a good fight campaigning, but would not be surprised when a 3 - 2 blindside on Kyle sent him out the door.