I don't consider it bogging the thread at all, I actually really appreciate the insight and I'm sure you know that.
I wasn't trying to be intimidating - or at least intentionally. I had a pretty difficult time perceiving how you Nama people perceived me, if that makes sense. I went over in the tribe swap and tried to be cordial and all of that good stuff and you all seemed like decent people so I was glad to see that. However when it came to game talk, you straight up told me at one point "grant you're probably going home", and then Sophie would tell me "grant I honestly think it'd be better for your game if you stayed and were on our side" which to me in other words could have been written as "please be stupid enough to stay so we can vote you out". I knew I had no prayer of staying in that case, and I had my core alliance and the majority alliance on the other side. I tried pretty hard to make you guys think Mike was on the bottom so that you would approach him come merge time and see if he wanted to flip, and since he wasn't in the majority alliance, he might've. Of course, if that happened I'm sure he would have told our core-4 alliance (maybe, or just me maybe) and we could assess what we wanted to do from there. Mike was 100% the next to go for a lot of people in Ovambo (after Ashley, if it came to that) and I tried pretty hard to get him in a good position because I knew it would benefit me. But anyway back to the point of this paragraph, I didn't know how I was being perceived so I'd be interested to know why or how you thought I was being intimidating because that certainly was not my intention. My goal throughout this game was to mask my threat level and mask my position in the tribe the best I could, so being intimidating in any regard would throw that out the window. Of course winning all of the immunities that I won did that anyway, but my point remains.
In regard to me and being ambiguous, I honestly thought you were trying to set me up. After all Ashley was telling me about how my name's the one that was coming up a lot (immediately after the merge) so I felt like I had to win that challenge to stay in the game, because I didn't know how the pieces would fall post-merge. It would have made sense for others to flip to your side, just not me. I felt pretty comfortable within both of my alliances (the majority and the subset) so I wasn't very willing to compromise that to go to a minority. I hope you can understand why I was being so ambiguous and indirect and vague and whatever other adjective you could use to describe it. I was entertaining what you had to say, but unless you had something that really enticed me to flip (eg, not 2 Ovambo going out immediately), I wasn't going to so I felt that rather than leading you on (like I know some others did) and rather than ignoring you, I'd at least see what you had to say. As for your plan to vote out Ralph, I actually would have at that point but I just didn't trust you. I had a feeling that I was the one y'all wanted to take down, I was the one you guys would have quickly turned on and said "let's just take grant out right now". The "don't tell anyone or I'm out" was just to see actually how long it would take before you told anyone, to see if it confirmed what I thought about you selling me out and hanging me out to dry. Mike told me immediately that you copy pasted entire messages, he also included that you said "what grant doesn't know is that we are going to flip this on him and vote him out if he doesn't vote with us". Ashley also told me this in a separate conversation and told me all about what you guys were saying in your group PM, she even quoted large portions of to me, including the messages of mine that you sent to mike then I guess quoted all of that altogether. That pretty much confirmed that you weren't really willing to work with me, and that you just wanted me to vote with what I thought would be with you so it would be a number that you didn't need to overcome in the vote. That's what I thought and I didn't really have anything to indicate otherwise to me.
I know that a few people deliberately led you on. I know that Kristina and Ralph planned to lead you on in the first vote (and did, as it find out now), I was in a group PM where she'd quote you and comment on how obvious it was that you were trying to play us. You seemed pretty mad about that whole thing in our conversations after that vote. I also know that David was involved in that separately, but I told him it's not worth it to have several people "leading you on" because you'd catch on and we'd potentially "get idoled" as you called it. Also, everyone confirmed that you sent everyone the exact same deal so it was pretty easy to keep people from working with you and to instead want you out. Nobody trusted you on our end because we all knew that you were just looking for someone, anyone to get you through a vote or two so you can get a majority and then promptly go back on your deal and send us home - not necessarily my words, just the general sentiment that I got regarding you and your game. Ashley told me multiple times that Sophie was looking forward to you going home (worded weirdly) because then she could actually try and work with others and how you prevented her from doing so - and she turned out to be correct about that.
In the following vote, David and Mike picked up where Kristina and Ralph left off. I would imagine it felt a little odd to seemingly have two new people willing to flip after two others made you believe they would flip and didn't. David was supposed to vote with you all along, and try to get you to stick to that deal and work with him (and indirectly work with the core-4 of us, whether you knew it or not). Mike wasn't supposed to but he ended up changing his vote at the last minute because he got spooked. I'm not sure how it was idiotic because I was pretty sure I knew where the numbers were all going, I had it split (I forget the actual numbers, 11 votes, right?) so I believe David was going to vote with you to vote Ralph but wasn't going to if you tried to switch it to someone else. As long as he and Mike had you voting Ralph, it didn't matter if our numbers were split, we would have been ok with any of the 3 outcomes - you going home, Ralph going home/playing his idol, Sophie going home/playing her idol. We even protected against Ashley flipping, telling her the vote was going to be a straight vote on you but in reality it was only me and her voting for you, or me her and Julie, while the other votes were split. I don't know what you knew or what you choose to believe but I honestly feel like I had a pretty good idea of where all of the votes were going - including yours and the rest of Nama - because of David and Mike and their quotes from you. I don't think you would have been able to turn it around on me or Kristina like you said in the other thread, even if you knew the vote was going to be split. I don't think it was idiotic at all. It might've been risky but so would have throwing all of our votes at someone who had an idol.
Also, if I had told Ashley who we were voting when Cochran went, she would have told you, yes? And if she did, you (well, sophie) would have used the idol on Cochran, yes? In other words, was your telling Ashley we were voting Julie legit? Or was that just her attempting to mislead me to get an idol played on Julie while the votes were on Mike? Because Kristina told us all along the votes were coming on Mike (backed with quotes from you and Sophie) while Ashley's was a last minute thing to where she pretended to be angry that they told her the wrong thing but she was glad it worked out even though she didn't vote. She had me convinced that she was with me/us even while she was voting against me/us, which blows my mind now in retrospect. For that reason and her consistent performances in challenges leads me to confidently say, despite coming in late, she is playing the best game now that I'm out (especially now that I'm out on what she pulled on me - I sense that credit is 60% Ashley, 30% Sophie and 10% Julie - though I could easily be wrong.
Also for what it's worth, I wasn't blaming you or trying to make you feel bad about missing the challenge + tribal that you went home in. I was just sad to see you go out like that. You were a good player in the game (possibly at times too overaggressive but your back was against the wall, no one blames you for that). I hear you though, I woke up this morning and it hit me like a ton of bricks and I was surprisingly upset after being so cool about it last night. I felt like the Julie berry to Ashley's Chris Daughtery (sp?). It stings a surprisingly large amount.
That being said, I have no hard feelings toward you and hope you don't have any toward me. I hope that nobody feels the need to hold anyone against anyone, it is just a silly game on the internet after all.
Such a dedicated Juror.
