Episode 10

[Holly]

Wow. There was so much going down at that tribal I don't even know where to start.

Grant has left in what turned out to be a close vote. What's your view on how tight that ended up?

Does this major shake in the game start to change anything? Will the blindsides continue and everyone start stepping up even more as we get closer to the end?

The number of jurors is gradually increasing. Are you taking them into account as you work your way through each round? What feelings do you think they have towards you? What are you doing to improve your argument at the end?

[Kristina]

well, this is unfortunate.

time to adapt and move on.

but first, to reflect. i know that inevitably at some point in this game i would have to get rid of ralph. this was a necessary evil. i would need to make a big move to win over people from nama in the jury and ralph, unfortunately, was becoming more and more unstable. i had no idea where his head was at. he was literally, LITERALLY, sending me more plans faster than i could type out responses to them. i'd send him one message and he'd already have two more waiting for me with completely separate ideas in each one. top that with showing up drunk. wanting to give me the idol, wanting to play the idol, and all of these other random things that were happening, my great ally who i should be able to count on and rely on became the exact opposite of that and he had to go. and it didn't help that almost everyone left in the game wanted him gone and he no longer had an idol to protect himself. even if i could've somehow protected him i was just delaying an inevitability.

for him to go i had to replace him with someone else i liked and could trust. enter ashley and sophie. i knew for a long time i wanted to go to the end with ashley. she was likable, sure, but overall fairly inactive. not as much as say a whitney or a julie, but still not really ever there.so i wanted someone to take to three and i din't really want to go with any other ovambo. i wanted to get them all on the jury to possibly help with votes and be able to say i was a part in eliminating them from the game. so between sophie and ashley i felt people would be more willing to vote for sophie. she had made better alliances/friends and had made big moves while being in the entire game. ashley came in late so it was perceived she was less loved by the potential jury. i actually liked both of these girls a lot. i was planning on going to the end with ashley just because i thought others would see her as weaker for not having played the entire game. i thought she earned her stripes personally and could clearly see that she was making moves in a post merge scenario and winning challenges and thought she could even beat me. the only difference is i KNEW sophie could beat me, whereas i THOUGHT that ashley could beat me.

so i set up a final three with steph and ashley. i brought in grant four a final four because i thought ashley would like that and make it easier to work with her without her getting scared. i did plan on getting sophie out at five, but again, it was out of respect for her skills. if i brought her to four with ashley, stephanie and me i could see them cutting me to go to the end with stephanie because at that point they would see her to be the more inactive goat that i had started to see her as. so i needed grant to be there to help calm ashley to stay and help get rid of sophie at five so she couldn't get to the end, because if she did, she'd win.

all of the votes up until then were trivial to me. whitney, julie, david and mike could've really gone in any order. i just wanted to stick to my predicted boot order because i thought it was just funny. and it would've been a great talking point at final tribal.

i was hoping that after i was so honest to ashley, and more importantly sophie, that i would be given the benefit of the doubt in regards to me suggesting to vote of whintey. i thought they would trust me to follow up with voting out julie as they had just seen me vote out ralph after i voted for papa bear just like i told them i would. again, i had never lied to either of them, and they could see that in my voting actions, so why wouldn't they trust me at least this one more time to get rid of whitney before turning on three ovambos in a row? i guess i never imagined sophie could still feel so closely towards keeping whitney, especially after she had been, what appeared to be on the public boards, so inactive.

i thought something felt off tonight. everyone seemed to be less vocal. i could see people online but they weren't sending messages to me. i knew people were talking. and everyone just seemed to agree with me a bit too much. normally, i would have to fight and claw a bit to get people to agree with everything i had wanted to do so far. i would have to sell them on the idea of how it was best for them when it was really best for me. yet, i never had to do that today. everyone was just...on board. i knew things were off, but i didn't have time to scramble and figure things out. i had work functions i couldn't get out of. i was surprised i made the challenge to be honest. i knew sophie would play her idol tonight, i even thought it would be on whitney, i was just hoping i didn't get booted for it if it did happen. and luckily, i wasn't ousted, i'm still here, but it's still painful.

i was being honest with everyone tonight. i said i was going to vote whitney, so i voted whitney. i was betrayed from both ends. sophie and ashley left me to oust grant. grant left me to try and oust sophie. and no one told me shit.

there is a silver lining to this. i am exactly what people perceive me now. a stupid, ignorant, middle-of-the-road dummy. if people think i'm as out of the loop as i clearly am they might target others before they go after me. mike and david might be more on their radars than me. hell, this might've inadvertently turned me into a goat. at least temporarily.

and now, everything has changed. it's time to adapt...

[Kristina]

it's officially official. julie flipped. grant be booted because sophie and ashley flipped. and hell, grant flipped on me himself too. really, stephanie, as always, was my rock that was honest and wanting to work with me the whole time.

things are starting to glue back together for the old ovambo really fast. stephanie and are are already determined to go to rocks if we have to. i don't like it, but i will if i have to. i'm sure mike and david would be too. the goal now is to woo julie back over. if we can do that i will become the biggest 'blue bleeder' of all time, as sophie likes to put it, to try to eliminate all of these remaining nama bastards.

you know, it's funny. i didn't want ovambo to run this game. i wanted namas like sophie and ashley to make it deep in this game. and i wanted to work with them to see that happen. it's ironic that it took them being 'red bleeders' and sticking together instead of actually keeping this cross-tribe alliance going to turn me into a full blown 'blue bleeder'.

[Mia]

Can you win if original Ovambo goes to the end?

[Kristina]

I'm not sure at this point. I'm really trying to reevaluate a lot of things. All I know is that if Sophie or Ashley goes to the end I cannot win at this point.

[Mia]

Why not?

[Kristina]

After last night Ashley and Sophie have become jury beauties. They are loving everything that they're doing. Most of them are from their original tribe so that makes it hard enough as it is, but even Ralph was happy with last nights results. And although I think I've had more control over the game as a whole and everything that's happened, last nights vote was the one thing I didn't have control over but it was the biggest thing that was revealed to the public and is in the jury's eye. So all of my subtle moves that I've made throughout the game won't be nearly as recognized as their big splash move last night.

There is no way that I can get to the end with either one of them and when. The only way I would ever have a chance because if I went to the end with both of them and hopefully got some of their votes to negate each other and I would be a more appealing third option. But even that is an extreme stretch that I don't see is the likely outcome. I have to play to eliminate them from the game.

[Mia]

Those are all good points if that's what you think, but there is still plenty of game left to play. I always advise players to think of the big picture and to think about their moves before they lock themselves into the scope of what they thing they have to do.