Welcome, Kristina!

[Jeff Probst]

Epic way to go out! You were a big threat to win!!!

[Grant]

Well, that was painful to watch.

[Grant]

Oh, and also, awesome game, K.

You did great :)

[Ralph]

Sucks that your here Kristina :C

[Kristina]

sup bitches!

alrighty, so, first off, ask me anything you want to know, i'm an open book. i harbor no ill will towards anyone, i loved this game from the beginning. everything in here was a game to me, even my confessionals as you'll inevitably, eventually read, was all me trying to be fun and stupid. something worth reading in the end. i'm laughing already looking back on them. but you're all awesome in my books just for having played the damn game with me.

quick aside, i'm almost glad i'm out of the game. don't misunderstand this, i love d this fucking game, but work for me had gotten ridiculous over the past two weeks. by the end i was lucky to get on for 20 minutes a day, which isn't nearly enough time to work with people and get things going your way.

so, lets talk...

[Grant]

I'm most curious to know what happened following the tribal I went home.

Clearly everyone stuck to their guns (except David who crumbled under a little bit of pressure), what was going on? Who was doing/saying what?

[Ralph]

sup bitches!

alrighty, so, first off, ask me anything you want to know, i'm an open book. i harbor no ill will towards anyone, i loved this game from the beginning. everything in here was a game to me, even my confessionals as you'll inevitably, eventually read, was all me trying to be fun and stupid. something worth reading in the end. i'm laughing already looking back on them. but you're all awesome in my books just for having played the damn game with me.

quick aside, i'm almost glad i'm out of the game. don't misunderstand this, i love d this fucking game, but work for me had gotten ridiculous over the past two weeks. by the end i was lucky to get on for 20 minutes a day, which isn't nearly enough time to work with people and get things going your way.

so, lets talk...

can you give me a rundown of how you were voted out?
I'm writing a paper on the side and don't really have time to read all of that

[Kristina]

the game from my perspective:

pre-game

coming in i just wanted to play second fiddle to everyone. i wanted to be everyone's 'right hand man'. i had no intention of ever making a decision, just influencing them. almost being brought to the end as a goat, but then being able to give a great goddamn jury speech and winning.

pre-merge

this wasn't possible from the outset. matt, who ended up quitting pretty much as soon as this game began, had a REAL beef with me because i was trying to get into the game. some people were messaging me with role playing messages like, 'you loving this african sunset?!' and crap so i was trying to be bubbly and play along. matt didn't take to kindly to this and blasted me in the public campfire thread and shut me down in a private message.

well i'll be damned if i was going to be first out of this game because this shit already hated me two seconds in. i panicked. and in panicking i instantly dropped my plan and started making decisions. within 24 hours i had more alliances than i could count just to cover myself so i wasn't first out. i had a final two with ralph, a four person ralph-grant-david-me, and another four person ralph-stephanie-julie-me, and then we had an over-arching massive ovambo majority alliance of ralph-grant-steph-david-julie-me. basically, ralph and i could swing either way we saw fit. original ashley was inactive, i got everyone to hate/distrust matt, and mike still hadn't shown up yet.

speaking of ralph though, i knew instantly i'd betray him. sorry bud, but it's true. i wanted to make all the moves in the game with you, but then in the end we'd be indistinguishable and whoever was in with us at final three would win be default, so i planned to cut you at f5 or something. what i didn't plan on happening was to actually get to know you a bit and enjoy talking video games and crap with you. you'll see it in my confessionals. i instantly talked about betraying you, but then i go on to eventually grow to really appreciating you and hating that i might have to get rid of you someday. more on this later.

not a day or so later i made a f2 with steph. grant, i'll be curious when all is said and done to see who steph was planning on going to the end with, if one of us at all, because we were fairly solid. i genuinely had her as my number 2 by day 3/4ish.

luckily we kept winning challenges so the game never really started for us. matt quit as well so i never had to worry about him. when mike did start playing i tried to talk to him all the time so although he wasn't in my alliance, he'd still trust me and i'd have him if i needed him.

when the swap happened i has furious we lost grant, but otherwise, meh? rick was clearly our first boot. figured ashley would be the same on nama, and i was just hoping grant would guess for the mole. either he'd get an idol and join us again at merge with a tool to help take out nama, or get flipped back over and be with us again, win-win. he got flipped, rick went home.

all the while i fully wanted to work with the ovambo mole, but they would never talk to me. i sent messages, but it'd take days for them to come back and the responses would be short brief sentences that didn't indicate a desire to work together. as for the nama mole, ralph told me fairly early he was the mole and could earn an idol. picking up where i left off on him, by this time i really did start to like ralph and i couldn't bring myself to get the idol and have him flip knowing that i'd lose a vote i could rely on and that all of my fellow ovambo tribe members would start distrusting each other knowing one of us had an idol, and i didn't need that with an upcoming merge. which meant i would have to tell everyone i had the idol, but i would never want to do that. and again, i really liked ralph and wanted him around, i had so many reasons to not turn him in.

[Ralph]

D'awwwwww
You'll see in my confessionals I talk highly of you.
If you weren't so nice to me I probably would of flipped.

[Grant]

not a day or so later i made a f2 with steph. grant, i'll be curious when all is said and done to see who steph was planning on going to the end with, if one of us at all, because we were fairly solid. i genuinely had her as my number 2 by day 3/4ish.

In my confessionals (and a lot of what I said in my thread about the game from my POV), I figured I wasn't as significant to her as she was to me. At the very very beginning of the game (days 1-2), I got along very well with the original Ashley and we planned on working together but then she went MIA and missed out on the majority alliance and then was gone. I quickly wanted to form a three person alliance of me, Ashley, David and maybe Steph, but without Ashley that wasn't happening (and David nipped this in the bud when I suggested it while she was still playing). I knew quickly that I needed someone else to replace her void so I kind of pigeon-holed Stephanie into that role of my plans even though she probably was not as on board with it as I was. I think she was the least committed to the core-4 alliance, so I was a little bit surprised that you + her didn't flip on Mike and David to move yourselves up a few slots. I also called that you and her had something, she'd always say "Kristina says" or "Kristina wants to" so I figured there was something there pretty early on in my talks with her and just realized I had to be careful with her knowing things would get back to you. I'm sure she was more solid with you than me, though she could've been like you and wanted to cut whichever one out at f5. Actually, like you with Ralph, in my confessionals I spoke of cutting Steph out at f5 (and bringing Julie to the end, ugh).

You didn't give a whole lot of insight post-merge and that's really where the crux is. You and Ralph started a three person group PM almost immediately post-merge and I was left wondering where the hell that came from, it seemed so out of left field to me but I wasn't complaining about the info you guys were giving me about PB and what they were telling you on the other side (such as telling you Mike was going home). Care to share more post-merge?

[Kristina]

post-merge

knowing that ovambo was coming in with the numbers i knew i would have to go to the finals with ovambos to ever stand a chance. even if i liked others on nama more, i could never beat a nama at the end. so long as they weren't russell level horrible at a social game they would ffor sure win in my eyes. but i also knew i wanted to get to know some of them and work with them to get rid of ovambo members i would inevitably betray.

p bear, with that in mind i was actually open to working with you, especially having known for some time the ralph was the mole and was already in contact with you. i knew about 'baboon' and everything. but the ovambo majority pm thread was still active, and when everyone started reporting simultaneously that you were offering pretty much everyone the same f4 2 nama/2 ovambo deal i got nervous. couple that with when ralph told me you had said a nama could go first as a sign of faith provided an ovambo goes next, well i was for that, and 100% prepared to get rid of an ovambo second, but then i heard from either grant or ralph, don't remember, that the deal changed and you said an ovambo had to go first. and then someone said you said two ovambos had to go first. that's when i was very much in, 'fuck that shit' mode. i wanted nothing more than for you to go at that point because i could see you would be great at stirring shit up.all of my hate went your way and it was all out of respect because i could see you were clearly capable of fucking with me. so in short, would i have worked with you? yes. but your story changed to much to fast. just like i told you after that vote when you confronted me. i was being completely honest with you, i just don't think you believed me at that point.

cochran, you have me to blame for your boot, sorry man. it was my idea to send you home, and it was my vote you were quoting in that other thread. you were not the target, i wanted p bear gone because i was scared of him, but i knew that either he or sophie had the idol and wouldn't share with you, just a hunch really based on challenge interactions and such. i was right. and like i said in the vote, you were guilty by association and i wanted to get rid of an extra vote i knew p bear was controlling. again, sorry, but it had to be done.

this brings me to ashley, who, i'm with grant here, i think is easily playing the best game, although these past two days were a bit rough for her. more on that to come. ashley was clearly, now fully visible in hindsight, 100% nama. but i thought she wasn't a lot of that was based on grants glowing recommendation after he swapped back over to ovambo pre-merge when he said he got close with her. i thought she was on the out and she was just cool and easy to talk to. she had me convinced she didn't vote on the cochran vote and that ralph had flipped. more on ashley to come.

this is when things got rough for ralph. all of a sudden man, my #1 guy just wasn't showing up anymore! and when he was, he was a different person. i knew ralph had things going on in his personal life and i could see they were effecting his game. he was so wishy washy on the cochran vote on whether he was or wasn't with p bear that i genuinely didn't know. plus he wasn't online as much anymore and his pms were almost nonsensical at times and nearly impossible to follow.

once cochran was gone and i thought we had more numbers with ashley i made the call to get out p bear. again, this is where ashley was great, she had me convinced she had flipped. again though, looking back, grant, p bear ain't lying. ashley was having seriously problems with you even then, i just didn't see it. she mentioned how annoyed she was that you didn't come right back to talking to her at the merge and wouldn't give her a name to know who to vote for on the cochran vote. regardless, she was playing both of us, but she was doing it so well that she did flip. vote confirmed, she voted p bear.

and actually, ralph originally WASN'T going to play his idol. he was drunk that night and was admit that he was safe. and then when i specifically had told him otherwise because sophie directly told me ralph was the target he then said he wanted to give the idol to me. it was so bizarre. i finally convinced ralph he was in real danger and to play his idol, which i'm glad he did because that saved him there. again, sorry p bear, but it was out of respect, i knew you could fuck with the game, hard, and i wanted you to go because i knew after the cochran vote for sure you'd never work with me again. and the split vote was my idea, but it didn't go down the way it was supposed to. after confirming with grant, the vote was supposed to be something like 5-3 split, not a 4-4 split. david flipped and that's why it was so close.

all the while, since the merge i'd been talking to sophie. she wanted me to flip from the beginning but after i grew to not trust p bear i knew i couldn't do it. i thought i wouldn't be safe as long as he was in the game. but i knew that i needed sophie to get ovambos out later on and i wanted her to trust me/like me. i knew i'd have to make a big sacrifice for that to happen so i promised her i could get rid of ralph. my thought was if she lost p bear and i lost ralph, thinking that i had ashley as she had turned on p bear too, she would almost inescapably HAVE to work with me. and at this point, ralph, you had become even more inconsistent. i could barely understand half of your messages anymore. i just assumed things had gotten so bad in your real life outside the game that you shouldn't be hear anymore so you could focus on what mattered. i saw it as almost a mercy killing, if that makes sense? plus, you had already started to mention getting rid of grant, which i couldn't agree to because p bear wasn't even gone yet!

so when it came time, i yet again made the call to get out ralph. sophie and ashley were of course all on board with this. and i convinced steph and grant to do it as well as it was 'best for the game overall', plus you brought up their names as targets and they were none to happy about that. again, all the while i've had steph with me the whole time, just kind of telling her what should happen and her simply agreeing and going along with it. ralph, by the time you left, i was damn sad man. i never wanted things to go that way. but you just didn't seem like you on the boards, or even pms to me anymore. i had no idea where my #1 guy was at. and literally, almost everyone is starting to mention your name at that point. even if i could've prevented it for one more round of voting it simply would've been delaying the inevitable.

at this point i started getting cocky. i had a new #1 permanently in steph, i knew people didn't see me as the #1 threat because ovambos still wanted sophie out and nama wanted grant and mike out. all the while i had made every call in the game up to that point. i just saw things going very well for me. so well that i thought people wouldn't take me to the end if they started seeing what i was doing. so i wanted to get rid of the goats, not just for my sake, but everyone's really. i didn't want one of them getting a spot that one of us deserved, i felt.

this is when it all went to shit.

i knew something was wrong, i even mentioned it in my confessionals. it felt, 'too easy'. everyone was just agreeing with me. before at least people fought about it, but this time? no. i suggested whitney and julie should be the next two. again, i had called every other vote prior so i just thought i could keep doing that shit. i then even came up with the rest of my end game. once the goats were gone i would then continue to use sophie to get rid of david and mike. then grant, ashley, steph and i would get rid of sophie, because if she got to close to the end she'd win. i figured this'd work for grant because he was close to ashley and i promised him a final three with her so he'd get rid of sophie thinking we'd axe stephanie at four. in reality i had a f3 with ashley and steph that i had set up days before. i figure taking ashley to the end would be wise. like p bear said in the other thread, she joined late and people could hold that against her. plus, by this point i would've gotten her to betray everyone in the game but my and steph. steph, although played big pre-merge, had gone huge under the radar and mildly inactive post-merge and i thought she was turning herself into a goat. thought there was no way i could lose, haha. stoopid.

as we all know, none of this came to pass. i thought it felt to easy, and that's because it wasn't happening. and i knew it too, i called it, you can see it in my confessionals. ashley came up with the idol plan to get out grant, julie flipped, it was a thing. what's funny is that right after the ralph vote is when things started getting crazy at work and i couldn't game as much and that's when it started to slip away. p bear, i'm 100% with you. it's a cold hard pill to swallow knowing your own inactivity probably cost you more than anything else.

now comes the part to did upset me, the one part of this game that bothers me, is sophie and ashley's reaction to the vote. because i thought they were playing us/me, but i went ahead and voted whitney because i promised sophie and ashley i would. it's funny that ever since the cochran vote i was 100% honest with p bear when he confronted me, and sophie as well about everything. i was honest with ashley about everything from the get-go on grant's recommendation. what hurt me is when i stuck with the plan against my better judgment and still voted whitney and then i instantly said something along the line of 'saw that coming, bye bye' at tribal after sophie played the idol because i figured i was the target, not grant, so i was saying by to everyone. but they were so caught up in their own perspective they couldn't even fathom to see it that way. they saw iy as me saying bye to them like i had outsmarted them, so thy thought i flipped and voted for sophie, or that i knew about it. when in fact i did follow through and vote whitney, and the only time i ever heard about it was once from grant and i shut that down as fast as i could because i wanted grant to work with sophie just like they had together on the ralph vote i had set up before p bear ever left. simple basic math even proves that i was with sophie and ashley in sticking to the plan to vote whitney. because had stephanie and i known and flipped then sophie would've been voted out because she played the idol on whitney. the mere fact that there were two votes whitney and she was in the game should've shown her i was on her side.

[Kristina]

THIS VOTE

and that's what bother me. this is were the attitude of the game changed. sophie and ashley both pretty much immediately attacked me after grant's boot when i went to them asking what the hell happened. i genuinely didn't know. stephanie and i were the only ones out of the loop. we both voted whit. for the first time in the game i was on the wrong side of the vote and didn't decide/know what happened. and although i was 100% honest with them, they both got cold and harsh towards me. blamed me for everything pretty much.

this isn't sour grapes either. i applaud their move. i told them that right away. i even gave a congrats to whitney on surviving, and one to julie too once i figured out it was her that flipped, but even that took me hours because i didn't trust mike or david so much because i knew one of them had flipped on the p bear vote out. literally, the only person i trusted was stephanie, and, like normal as of late, she wasn't even online to talk to and try to figure things out.

so i get slammed by sophie and ashley for 48 hours. and was passive aggressively told for two days to flip or your done. it was very cold. and even when i tried to explain i was on their side and wanted to work with them, they gave no fucks even though it was true. this is were ashley's game takes a dip for me. at least sophie was still nice ever once and a while to my. ashley was flat out harsh and calling my a liar, and bullying me into flipping. she's doing what i was doing four days previous, getting cocky about her accomplishments and throwing her weight around. and i wasn't the only one who noticed. mike, david, steph and i quickly got together and instantly realized it was time to draw rocks. although they, and mainly ashley was being a jerk to all of us and threatening us, we could still count, we knew it was still just 4-4. and we knew that after ashley and sophie's move that none of us could flip because we'd just go out fifth, and even if we could make it to the end we couldn't beat either of them. so we had to draw rocks. steph was convinced she could get julie to flip back, but i never saw it. and work was getting worse for me, i was on less and less.

mike won immunity, so that gave us even better odds in rocks, so we were thrilled. the clue for the idol came out and we four searched together but came up with nothing. it was actually my call to all vote whitney knowing sophie and ashley would never play an idol on her, so that when it came to rocks whitney would be immune and we would be protected against idol play and that we would have a 50/50 shot at rocks still because of mike's immunity. they were all convinced that since we couldn't find the idol there was no way they could either, which i thought was dumb, but steph decided we should just vote sophie. i ended up being right that we should've protected against the idol, we just got damn lucky that ashley played it on herself and not sophie. again, steph was convinced that she had julie back, and told her to vote whitney and we'd vote with her when we were really voting sophie so the votes would go 4 soph, 3 ovambo person, and 1 whitney. i never once thought we had julie and when it ended up being 4-4 i wasn't shocked.just shocked it was me because i was mobile and couldn't check. found out when jeff said who you could re-vote for.

at this point i was just pissed. i started ranting and picking fights with sophie and ashley. trying to shove it in their face that i was on their side, but once again they were just so blinded by their view they didn't care. grrr. i was actually happy being the one voted for though because i was confident we were going to rocks because david, mike, steph and i had committed to it several, several, several times before. so when david flipped i was pissed. pansy. guy has no shot of winning now. he could never beat ashley or sophie in the finals, but more importantly he can never get to the finals at this point. it's just not happening.

and that's what went down with my boot! ashley and sophie are firmly in control and are getting very brash and cocky about it and unless something changes soon there are several willing goats left out there they can just drag along to the end.

[Kristina]

keep in mind, again, like i said in the beginning, i loved this game and harbor no ill will towards any as i know this is a fucking game. and if i spoke poorly about you, it's not towards you as a person, it's just a commentary as to how i viewed you in this game at that time.

if you have questions, fire away!

[Kristina]

D'awwwwww
You'll see in my confessionals I talk highly of you.
If you weren't so nice to me I probably would of flipped.

goddamnit man i love you

<3

[Kristina]

You didn't give a whole lot of insight post-merge and that's really where the crux is. You and Ralph started a three person group PM almost immediately post-merge and I was left wondering where the hell that came from, it seemed so out of left field to me but I wasn't complaining about the info you guys were giving me about PB and what they were telling you on the other side (such as telling you Mike was going home). Care to share more post-merge?

post merge is in a separate post. as for that thread, i always liked you, and wanted to work more with you. but more importantly you said you got close to ashley while on name. i need to be closer to you so ashley would see us as close and be willing to work with me. i just wanted ralph in the group so that wasn't so plain as day and you'd think it was more just us talking strategy to get out nama. but i wanted to get ashley on my side because i instantly wanted her in my f3 for reasons previously listed. i thought at the time she'd be easy to beat.

it just happened to work out that p bear was messaging ralph, you and i, what seemed like, the most so we could see really quick he offered all of us the same deal and that he went from name first to ovambo frst to two ovambos first. had it not been for that i probably would've gone with p bear and sophie right there to do his 2 nama/2 ovambo f4 deal.

[Grant]

Cool, thanks for all that.

once cochran was gone and i thought we had more numbers with ashley i made the call to get out p bear. again, this is where ashley was great, she had me convinced she had flipped. again though, looking back, grant, p bear ain't lying. ashley was having seriously problems with you even then, i just didn't see it. she mentioned how annoyed she was that you didn't come right back to talking to her at the merge and wouldn't give her a name to know who to vote for on the cochran vote. regardless, she was playing both of us, but she was doing it so well that she did flip. vote confirmed, she voted p bear.

She told me first thing post-merge that she didn't want to be seen as "that tight" with me, and that she didn't want to be seen as a guaranteed vote with us (even while she told Julie and David and maybe Ralph? that she was 100% with us, and at least Julie and David both told me they believed her at that time - David later changed his mind on this). I thought that was a little odd, but I went along with it. I tried so hard to be like "guys, Ashley is no guarantee, please stop counting her. we can't count on her, we can't split the votes, we don't have the numbers". I also had a sinking feeling that I shouldn't tell her who we were voting for and it turned out I was correct about not telling her. That being said, she played me like a fool. I was completely wrong. Despite coming in late, she clearly is playing the best game. She struck at the perfect time and look how it is turning out for her. Others may be thinking she won't be a big threat because they don't know what we are talking about here, and they think what you both think about her not being a threat because she came in late. I don't know if she is still under the radar but she is in control right now.

and the split vote was my idea, but it didn't go down the way it was supposed to. after confirming with grant, the vote was supposed to be something like 5-3 split, not a 4-4 split. david flipped and that's why it was so close.

It will be interesting how this actually played out because I'd been talking to David about the best way we can get out of this while knocking out the idols. I came up with a decent plan (though certainly not a mastermind plan, as PB points out). David thought it was a good plan. It was SUPPOSED to be a 4-4 split, but you weren't supposed to know that. I needed a reason to suggest a 5-3 vote that didn't appear too fishy - and that's when it happened. Ralph suggested a 5-3 split and I jumped all over that. I threw out "Ralph, love the idea, let's do this", "Ralph said he wants a 5-3 vote, let's do it" knowing right well that David was going to flip to turn that 5-3 into a 4-4. I forget the other details of what I expected to happen but I find it interesting that you say it went down according to how you wanted, because I think it went how I wanted.

at this point i started getting cocky. i had a new #1 permanently in steph, i knew people didn't see me as the #1 threat because ovambos still wanted sophie out and nama wanted grant and mike out. all the while i had made every call in the game up to that point. i just saw things going very well for me. so well that i thought people wouldn't take me to the end if they started seeing what i was doing. so i wanted to get rid of the goats, not just for my sake, but everyone's really. i didn't want one of them getting a spot that one of us deserved, i felt

Here it is again. I don't know what all Stephanie was telling you but from what you posted here, it doesn't seem that you knew David and/or Mike were going to flip when they did. You tossed up an idea and I piggybacked it and tweaked it just a little bit. If PB/Whitney voted here, Ralph would've gone home so it was a good thing he used his idol (he would have had 5 votes on him, had they voted). I'll be interested to see just how much went according to my influence, because things really go as I expected in most of the votes, save for Ashley voting Cochran in vote 1 and Mike voting Ralph in vote 2, so I can't wait to see how things actually went down because according to both your and PB's take, things did not go according to how I saw it going, even though it did... (aside from Ashley, of course)

then grant, ashley, steph and i would get rid of sophie, because if she got to close to the end she'd win. i figured this'd work for grant because he was close to ashley and i promised him a final three with her so he'd get rid of sophie thinking we'd axe stephanie at four. in reality i had a f3 with ashley and steph that i had set up days before.

Ha, spot on called this in my confessional.

now comes the part to did upset me, the one part of this game that bothers me, is sophie and ashley's reaction to the vote. because i thought they were playing us/me, but i went ahead and voted whitney because i promised sophie and ashley i would. it's funny that ever since the cochran vote i was 100% honest with p bear when he confronted me, and sophie as well about everything. i was honest with ashley about everything from the get-go on grant's recommendation. what hurt me is when i stuck with the plan against my better judgment and still voted whitney and then i instantly said something along the line of 'saw that coming, bye bye' at tribal after sophie played the idol because i figured i was the target, not grant, so i was saying by to everyone. but they were so caught up in their own perspective they couldn't even fathom to see it that way.

Ugh, K, I even TOLD you guys in the group PM of me, you, Ashley and Steph that we need to protect from Sophie using it on Whitney and you or Ashley was like "just tell the other guys to vote for her, or whatever, she's not flipping". I wonder if that is where Ashley got "her idea".
Also another part of this quote that I like is how, even while on the jury, we all seem so caught up in our own perspective that we are all believing it went down how we thought it went down. That's very interesting to me considering how different our stories are from each other and just adds so much intrigue to finding out what actually happened. This part may be the most interesting part of the entire experience for me, it's honestly just so compelling to me to see so many people (well, 3 of us so far) being so sure things went according to our perspective.

Also, I found Sophie's defense (or whatever she was doing) in the TC you went home to be very off-putting. Not only was she blatantly incorrect about a few things, but she pushes is like if you disagree, you should die because you are so so so wrong. I intended on going into that without rooting for either end because as I said, I believe Ashley is playing the best game and my team was on the other side, so I wanted to try and take the emotion out of it, step back and appreciate the gameplay. With Sophie, I just couldn't. She's nowhere near Russell's level, of course, but her approach almost seems unintentionally Russell-esque. How can you so decidedly call out the other side and then expect them to want to work with you or flip in your favor? I didn't and don't get it, and I don't understand how it fucking worked. They probably quoted your messages, Kristina, about getting Julie out next. That's what makes the most sense in my head EVEN THOUGH I told Julie we were voting Whitney and putting votes on Sophie just in case, if she wants to as well. Then more toward the vote, I even told her that I was switching my vote to Sophie and asked her to as well. Little did I know...

That all being said, of course, nothing but respect for you and your game, K.

[Grant]

Also:

and that's what went down with my boot! ashley and sophie are firmly in control and are getting very brash and cocky about it and unless something changes soon there are several willing goats left out there they can just drag along to the end.

If I got anything about my boot followed by yours, as I think you have realized as well, once you get too comfortable, once you get too cocky, you'll be gone before you know it. That is Survivor 101 and I think we both fell victim to it. That being said, it would be in Julie's best interest to flip to Mike/Steph/David and vote out Ashley or Sophie. Ashley and Sophie are frontrunners to win this, while none of Mike/Steph/David are really THAT much ahead of Julie (I also don't really think Sophie is that much ahead of those 3 either). Let's see if Julie starts working it, we could easily see Sophie/Ashley Sunday night. In fact, I actually sort of expect it (though I mostly expect David, if Steph/Mike are pissed, or Steph/Mike, if David fully flipped). Ashley has to know that Sophie is her biggest threat. Granted we are only at 7, but she has to know she has to get Sophie out soon. Maybe not for another vote or two because then she is super vulnerable, but very soon. I think like us, she is getting cocky and I'm disappointed to see that she let it get to her head.

[Kristina]

I'll say it again just in case I forgot or didn't make it clear. My story is my story from my perspective at the time those events happened. When I say I made very decision and blah blah blah that's because at that time, to me, I felt like I had made every decision.

Just wanted to make that clear. I'm not actually that big headed now, I just thought that then.

Then only thing I have comment on as to how I feel now was about Sophie and Ashley's treatment of my character as a person/human being after I stuck by my word and voted like I told them I would and the clear as day results of the vote showed that but they still bullied me and did this that and the other thing. Like at tribal Grant like you pointed out. That was happening for two days in PMs. Being mean just because. Like you said, almost unintentionally Russel-esque.

[Grant]

Oh, yeah, I went back and re-read what you said and you made that clear. I just found it interesting in your wording during that part, not necessarily the end where you clarified pretty clearly. :)

[Ralph]

I'm really iffy on voting Sophie at the end if she makes it tbh.
She's kinda fuckhead
But shes playing really well
But shes kinda a fuckhead
..problems..