Cherry

**Cherry** (cherryspaghettie) is the Sole Survivor of Season 8, placed 14th in Survivor Season 6 and 9th in Big Brother Season 2.

A force to be reckoned with on the Isasabai Tribe, Cherry’s charming personality and quick wit saw his early game flourish. Well aligned with every single member of the tribe, it was clear Cherry was calling the shots. On the OG Isasabai, it seemed as though his true allegiance was with Xcync and Mariana, with Penny especially getting on his nerves. He often voiced concerns about how much Isasabai smashed pre-swap challenges, as he feared they might be swap screwed. This manifested when the swap split OG Isasabai 3-3 on each new tribe of 7. While he was luckily swapped onto Nu Dakai with his core alliance of Mariana and Xcync, he knew instantly that the odds would be stacked against them. Well… should be! To Cherry’s surprise, his strong social game instantly cracked the OG Dakai members who swapped over, revealing a major crack between the Reese and Mercury duo and Jumble, who threw Mercury under the bus to Xcync. With this, he formed a tight relationship with the duo to insulate himself well in the worst case scenario, but saw an even better option present itself: Jazzy. The lone OG Moto, it was expected that she’d be in the best spot, but she ghosted the entire tribe and made herself an easy agreed-upon target for everyone else on the tribe. This was especially good news, as Marirana revealed an Extra Vote, so the Isasabai Trio could have the majority in theory and completely survive the impossible! Unfortunately, the Tribal Council proved to be a massive trainwreck, and a Series of Unfortunate Events led to Cherry being completely blindsided. During the initial vote, everyone ended up voting for Jazzy, who shocked everyone with an idol for herself. She voted for X, but in the end rather than a 6-1 it was a 5-1-1… as Cherry self-voted for failing to submit a vote in time for the deadline! He had taken pain medication and fallen asleep much earlier than normal, and was shocked to see he was now stuck in a tie. Confident he had the numbers, he was initially correct and felt safe. He had already built strong bonds with Mercury and by proxy Reese, so they should have no reason to eliminate him. However, Xcync devised a dastardly plan to lie that Cherry has an idol and that the opposing OG Tribe could take it out now. This was effective, as Cherry’s new allies were quick to believe this lie for no reason and not even check in with Cherry. As Cherry headed to bed for the evening feeling confident he would stay and putting in the work with his allies, he would unfortunately wake up to a 3-2 vote and had no one to blame but himself for such a strong front runner being eliminated early. He is remembered for humorously lying about things and being annoyed at himself for having to keep up the lie, such as being a writer.

Returning in Season 8, Cherry naturally established himself as the hidden puppet master of the Ilolma Tribe despite his threat level coming into the game. Playing up that he was the only premerge returnee, Cherry was able to successfully deflect from the fact that his Season 6 game was very impressive despite the massive mistake he made. Allying closely with Nyx and using Brian as a shield, Cherry had complete control of the Ilolmas being the only one never targeted at all, even privately. To make this even sweeter for himself, Cherry was able to secure the Ilolma Hidden Immunity Idol early on. As time went on, Cherry’s demeanor would shift from one that was very silly and lighthearted in confessionals to more of a “gamebot,” feeling that he needed to be “sweaty” with his strategy to survive. This noticeably cropped up after the Tribe Swap, in which Cherry found himself as the only Ilolma on the new tribe with a 3-3-1 split. While initially about to “pull a Jazzy” assuming he was completely fucked, Cherry quickly calmed to realize this was actually an ideal scenario, with the entire tribe minus Tanner playing into the idea that the war had to be 3v3 vying for Cherry’s vote. Cherry further manipulated this, allowing Hao to run crazy and believe the OG Takis were a unit while telling the OG Kisas that Hao was firmly against them, so if they said otherwise it was a lie. This would actually put a huge wrench into Tanner’s plans to bring Chase into the OG Takis over Cherry, as Chase would believe Hao’s fake intel from Cherry to convince Chase the OG Takis were lying. At the following Tribal Council, Cherry lightly and seemingly unknowingly caused a massive and questionable move to occur when leaking to Naran that Tanner and Chad wanted him out after Lola. This caused Naran to reveal that he had an Idol and intended to Idol out Tanner, which Cherry was very okay with given that it would completely mask his own threat level even further. Going into the merge, Cherry was initially worried his threat level would quickly become obvious. While it eventually did, many players such as Naran and Smokin being messy would give him a lot of wiggle room to play hard, and he certainly delivered with The Lie. Cherry would tell Brian that Rikki had created an all he/him alliance without Brian in it called “The Frats,” in an attempt to have Brian become a public target when pushing for Rikki to go. However, upon seeing Rikki was actually beneficial for his game because nobody trusted him, Cherry flipped to the opposite of this to then tell Rikki that Brian had made up this rumor, effectively causing the two to go to war and become back to back boots. At Rikki’s vote, Cherry was left completely blindsided and robbed of his power, exposed for the first time in the game. However, the tribe made a critical error targeting Rikki over Cherry himself (who was discussed as a target) which would lead to a chain reaction of him winning the game. However, at the Rikki vote Cherry was very confident that his new, literal “Frats'  alliance (named cheekily by him) would prevail to the end. Chase, however, proved to be more perceptive and a bigger player than Cherry had perceived, and when he put together a counter play to Cherry’s alliance on top of Cherry’s own misplay of being overly paranoid about auction advantages, he was left squarely on the bottom as the new target. Fortunately, Cherry was able to have good rapport with Chase, who realized the value of keeping Cherry around as a shield for himself. Because of this, despite heavily feeling the need to play his idol early in the round, Cherry would impressively be able to survive without it when Chase targeted outsider Rye instead and blindsided his own allies on the opposite side. This would officially be the last time Cherry was eligible to be eliminated from the game, as at the following vote he idoled out Elise and went on to win the final two immunity challenges. During this time, he notably had bad blood with Katt due to Katt being so mad that Cherry idoled out Elise and kept winning immunity challenges, with him dubbing her as a bitter player. At the Final Tribal Council, Cherry’s biggest critique from some jurors was being a “gamebot” versus his opponent Naran, who was messy and full of personality. Cherry took this as a major compliment, feeling as though certain Jurors were essentially grasping at straws for a reason to not crown him the winner. Additionally, Chad’s lack of FTC opening and Naran’s often being self aware that Cherry was strategically more dominant and preferably would have been voted out at the Final 4 left Cherry feeling as though he were the clear and obvious choice as the winner. After all, why be so desperate to get him out for three straight rounds if you’d go on to just not vote for him to win after all then? In the end, Cherry’s dominant and self-preserving gameplay resonated with the Jurors, crowning him as the Sole Survivor in a 6-1-0 vote. He is remembered for personifying the coveted attribute of “playing for yourself,” a point he effectively drove home in his FTC speech.

Clocked instantly as a Survivor winner and social threat, Cherry’s game would immediately be an uphill battle in BB2. Making his threat level even greater, Cherry would completely annihilate everyone at the Roadblock competition, even doing the Express Puzzle, cementing some in the house as wanting him out of the game ASAP. Luckily for Cherry, this competition showing came with the silver lining of the Express Pass, giving him some wiggle room in the game. During Week 2, Cherry would catch wind that if the nominees changed, Tara would attempt to backdoor someone. Feeling as though he was safe due to Tara herself starting their alliance, Cherry would be in disbelief when \*he\* was the attempted “backdoor non backdoor” from Tara. He would immediately and publicly play his Express Pass, putting Tara on blast for what he perceived as a critical failure gameplay wise and exposing her as making many alliances. In Week 3, Cherry would be paired with Motha Vanity in the Team Twist. Cherry would become the HOH this week, immediately revenge nominating Tara & Austin for eviction with Tara as his obvious target. He would later regret this decision, seeing as he forgot that he could not compete in the veto so a backdoor may have been better. Fortunately, and much to his amusement due to Tara’s taunting, Cherry would get his way when Parker barely edged Tara out for the veto and decided not to use it, sealing his target’s fate. He was very amused at the ensuing house fight she stirred, feeling as though she had no place to critique other people’s “bad games” and happy to see the nail in his target’s coffin. This week would leave him feeling a lot more confident in his game than he maybe should have been, as a lot of the house still had backdoor fantasies in mind for him. In Week 4, he would have a house fight with Chris due to Denim leaking that Chris was pushing hard for him to be backdoored this week. Nominated in Week 5 alongside Austin as a duo, Cherry would participate in the Whacking of Ness: a 24+ hour long house fight that sort of went in circles, with all sides making valid points and frustrating everyone along the way. Cherry would be saved by proxy when Kyle decided to use the Power of Veto to save Austin; it should be noted, however, that Cherry’s damage controlling with Kyle this week \*did\* see Kyle finding Cherry crucial to his end game rather than his number one target. In Week 6, Cherry won the Invisible HOH and targeted Ness, nominating Dee as a pawn alongside him. He would reveal to Austin immediately that he was the HOH, who would immediately tell Dee and Kyle, who would mess up and tell Parker… leading to a messy chain of a lot of the house knowing he was the HOH anyway. Cherry stated he did not care if people knew because he couldn’t keep a secret, approaching it as he would any other HOH. In the end, his target would go home… but Cherry was left with a bit of an empty feeling, as though he might have flopped such a great power as an anonymous HOH on an “easy” target & stating he was hoping for a tie to evict Dee. In Week 7, he would be assigned to the Backyard group and had to throw the HOH. Cherry would be nominated this week alongside Denim as the “Lethal Duo” by Chris, with his target being either of them. Despite an impassioned plea to stay and a lot of effort to get Chris and/or Kyle back on side, after failing to win the veto Cherry was evicted after Chris cast the tie breaking vote against him. He is remembered for his big presence in the season, and while having almost zero social pull in the house being labeled as someone running the game & a huge trophy eviction.