To Tierra, an Open Love Note

Dear Tierra,

  I know I've been a little bit hard on you over the past few weeks. Sure, I haven't stopped talking about the moment you walked into a room and I haven't tattled on you about any off-camera misdeeds. But I have doubted your viability as a villain.  And after this week's double header, I feel like I owe you an apology. You stepped up your game, and while Sean may still be confused by the vagueness of your particular brand of evil, I'm finding myself more and more impressed.

  Courtney, you are not, and yet my affection for you is blossoming.  How do I love you?  Let me count the ways:

1) You play the victim card like a birthday party magician. The girls' accusations of your love of being the victim ring a little bit false after an episode in which pretty much everyone sought Sean's attention for the wrongs of childhood past. Everyone has picked up on Sean's need to protect and serve, and most of them are doing their best to leverage this. You're just doing it much better than everyone else. You does it through words - saying things like, "No one ever gives me credit," and "I don't deserve to go through this," and "I don't think it's fair [that the girl who didn't fake hypothermia got the rose instead of me]" - and through deeds, faking injury at every step of the way. And yes, I finally believe that you're faking these injuries. While it wasn't a particularly brilliant idea to dunk seven girls with very limited body fat into near freezing water and the risk for hypothermia was probably very real, I saw you come out of the cold and go straight for your mascara.  If your hands were really shaking that badly, you wouldn't let those babies get anywhere near your vacant, emotionless eyeballs.

2) You finally threatened to cut a bitch!
Perhaps it's a wee bit perverse for me to be excited about this turn of events, but a good villain always threatens others with physical violence. And if you can threaten others while referencing your horoscope, even better!  I was almost as pleased to learn that you were a scorpio as I was to see your stinger finally on full display.

3) You flip the victim switch to full-on aggressive manipulation at a moment's notice.
Clearly, over the past few years, the show has begun to condone and even encourage seeking the Bachelor/Bachelorette out outside of sanctioned show events, but chasing him down during a group date to which you were not invited took some sizable lady balls. It would have been enough if you had found Sean just because you're so deeply in lust and you wanted to gaze deeply into his dreamy, dreamy eyes, but you basically sought him out to threaten him. You're one of the few girls I've ever seen who has had such tremendous success willfully misunderstanding the central conceits of the show, and watching you berate Sean for "misleading" you by forcing you to participate in a two-on-one date that even a casual Bachelor fan would have seen coming was truly a thing of beauty. All the greats have one with two parts sex and one part fear, and I'm glad to see you finally living up to the legacy of your predecessors.

   Impressed though I was, Tierra, I think even you can appreciate that there is always room to grow, and, in the interest of seeing you make many happy returns, here are a few tips for next week:

1) Get naked - In the great tradition of Jake and Brad before him, Sean is making all you-related decisions with an organ that can't hear the other girls screaming, "Hey Sean. Tierra's awful."
2) Be a model - It might be a little bit late for this in the scheme of your life, and given that you're 24 and tiny, I'm not sure if you're still growing, but if there's any way that you can get on this, I feel like it's going to serve you well in the future.
3) Hint at Sean doing some really terrible things in really vague language - This one should probably go on the back burner until your off the show, but if you win and once you inevitably break up, you have to make sure that the world knows that it's because of Sean. If you can make veiled references to a "temper" and dance around suggestions of "abuse," that will probably play out nicely for you.

 With enduring love and devotion,

 Megan