by Grant » Mon Apr 14, 2014 2:51:41 pm
This is all very chummy, but I figure why not, this was an awesome experience so I'll end it on a positive note (at least for now) and follow y'all's lead. I know I wrote a lot, I only expect the bolded people to read their own little blurb and nothing else, so no complaining if it is too long please :(
Cochran - Man, I honestly, truly wanted to work with you in Nama and then after the merge. I kept trying to get you to talk to me, but you seemed willing but scared and I couldn't break through that, no matter how hard I tried to chip away at the wall you put up. Ashley told me you were scared of me, so I kept trying but you'd always be short with me, but I had a feeling you could be swayed. Ultimately I asked you straight up if you were just going to hide behind PB and Sophie and be their personal bitch (or something like that) and you said yes, I figured I shouldn't even bother trying anymore. Ashley told me something about how you'd be someone she could get to flip, but for one reason or another, you went home. I won't try and recall why because I don't remember at the moment, something something vote in their pocket that they wouldn't play the idol on. That all being said, it was a blast spending my entire time on Ponderosa with you. My opinion of you changed almost completely when I started talking to you here and I wish I had tried to get you to flip a little more. Thanks for engaging in those back and forths and allowing me to dump everything that was on my mind.
Papa Bear - PB, PB, PB... It was very hard to trust you, but I thought you would be easy to work with if you weren't with the rest of Nama. I didn't want you to go when you did, but idol paranoia and Sophie's immunity wins was the end of you. If you had stayed and Sophie went here, like we originally planned, I think the game is soooo different and I think it includes you going on a little run of your own. I'm a little disappointed that you went MIA while here on the jury, I appreciated the insight you gave and wish you gave more. I don't necessarily agree that what you thought happened is what actually happened, but that is neither here nor there and we will see when all is said and done. You had a commanding presence, and you were so just.. available? that I think you would have made a really good ally and shield for me moving forward.
Ralph - Ralph, my hardhittin' amigo, nothing but respect for you my man. I was wary of you from the second you started the hard hittin' duo between us and figured you had some sort of convoluted strategy where you wanted to have me, Kristina, Julie and Steph all rely on you but you wouldn't start a group PM to allow us to form a group. I thought you had some evil mastermind plan going on early on in Ovambo. You didn't want to work with David (telling me to keep him as a vote in my back pocket) and Mike, so that led to me/Mike creating the alliance of me + the F3. You eventually stopped talking to me until the merge where you started a group PM with me + K that I didn't know how legit it was. I wish you would have been more willing to work with me and use that idol to push us forward, but you throwing me under the bus that vote kind of put the nail in the coffin for you, my amigo. Hope all is well with your mom and all that.
Kristina - I think you will be happy to see how much props I give you in my confessionals. I thought you were going to be the most difficult person to get out and I thought I needed all the help I could get to do so, with your connections to everyone in the game and all that. I always thought you were one of the smartest people out here, and one of the few that could go head to head with me in strategy and affluence to execute those plans. I was glad you were willing to work with me, but I always had to question what else you could be doing. I always thought you were up to something with the other side, especially the Whitney vote that sent me home. Ultimately you held true to your end of the bargain on that vote, and we admittedly had a bad and half-assed plan and so I lost and you followed me out the door. I think you would have been a force to be reckoned with if you made it.
Whitney - I tried to talk to you at so many different points in this game and you showed absolutely no interest in talking to me when you actually responded. Props on admitting your mistakes, I guess. Maybe you will be more willing to talk to me when the game is over.
Julie - gah, Julie. You, more than anyone else, completely caught me off guard when you flipped. We protected against Ashley flipping, but I just didn't think you would. Throughout the game, I always tried to make sure you were in the know because, as you'd admit yourself, you were busy and didn't have a lot of time. I'd PM you longer messages at first, asking opinions and telling you plans, and you'd respond with just thanking me for keeping you in the loop. From that point forward I thought you just wanted to be debriefed before the vote, so that's more or less what I did. I knew the long plans were always in the group PM, so I figured it'd be redundant to send it to you again. I was a little surprised when I heard you wanted to vote me out the vote Ralph went home and I thought we smoothed that over. I should've been more alarmed by that. The following vote, I told you the plan, how the girls wanted to vote Whitney and the boys wanted to vote Sophie. I told you before we voted that us guys were all voting Sophie, so when you said everyone only told you Whitney, because I know I told you more than once that we were voting Sophie. I was wondering what you were talking about, and if you even bothered reading what I'd sent you and thought something was up. Turns out there was, and honestly I believe that was the best move for you and your game, so props on that :) You were always enjoyable to talk to in your short bursts of activity, but those periods of no activity lead me more toward my other options in the game :(
Sophie - heh. I don't think you realize what big of a pain in the ass you were to me and my game. You were a thorn in my side the entire time since the tribe swap. You were like a cockroach that I couldn't kill no matter how hard I tried, no matter what plans I tried to put into place. I needed you out asap, and when I finally conceded to keeping you around in conversations with Ashley/Kristina/Steph, you got me. We always had plans that were to get you out, contingency plans for if you won immunity which was always a very good chance, and backup plans for if you played the idol. Everyone was telling me that you hated me. Ashley, PB, others would say you HATE me but you kept talking to me. I knew that all along, so I tried to play into that and when you'd get mad, I'd try and push a little more and see how much you were willing to take. I was trying to bullshit you and you were trying to bullshit me (though you always claimed you were being straight up, which boggles my mind still). Like Scout said to Chris in Vanuatu, you can't bullshit a bullshitter, and yet we both tried and I believe that is why I was annoying to you and why you were so off-putting to me. I was always legit with you in our non-game talk, talk about the current season and previous or whatever else. I wasn't really interested in that kind of talk, but I always enjoyed talking about that stuff with you. I told you once that I honestly liked everyone, I meant it then and I mean it now. It's typically difficult for me to not like anyone, I can usually appreciate all varieties of people/personalities. I do like you, but you made it abundantly clear to others and to me myself that you really cannot stand me and I was a little bummed when you came to the jury and tried to tell me that I was bitter when I really wasn't. It seemed like you really wanted me to be bitter, that you really wanted me to really be angry with you and really wanted me to resent you for getting me out, but that wasn't the case at all. We've had our personality clashes and clashes in opinions, but I do honestly like you, I just think you hate me. I told you before that I hope we all hang around on the forums to talk about the current season and all that good stuff, and I still hope that is the case. You were an unyielding opponent and a worthy adversary.
Ashley - ugh, you. I'll be honest to you when I say I didn't expect much from you when I first messaged you in Nama, it was just a "I'll message everyone, see what happens". I knew pretty soon after I got swapped that I could go back, and I assumed you and Rick would be easy boots for both sides. I was honestly blown away with how much of a grasp you had in the game (little did I know you already knew how to play, I thought you were a noob being thrown into a pack of wolves). I was immediately impressed, with your comparing online times and all of that about Sophie/the mole. I knew you would be a very good player in the game, so my goal in the tribe swap went from getting myself out (which would have been very easy), to getting both of us out of there. I went through all the pros and cons of guessing each person with you, and how guessing Sophie/Whitney just was not an option because they'd be useful to you, even though I was pretty damn sure it was not PB. I still believe it would have been our best case scenario (for both of us) if he WAS the mole, and I got the idol and we both made it through that way, that would have been fun, but guessing wrong was perfectly fine with me because I was in the thick of things on the other side. I went to Ovambo and posted lots of info from my time in Nama, and I told my alliance of 4 of me + the F3 that I really want to bring you in as a 5th. You'll see in messages, I was absolutely thrilled when I saw Semhar went out and you were still in the game, but some others were wary because they all thought you made deals to make it through. I knew we set up the "throw Semhar under the bus" strategy, along with the "take the idol" strat, I knew you would be set up fine.
When we got to the merge, I was like "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and you said "I need you to act like we're not close", so I was like "oh ok". It made sense but it also made me nervous. I was afraid to tell you anything because I thought it'd get back to Nama. I didn't want to tell you who I was working with or who we were voting for because I didn't know how 'with us' you really were. I immediately thought you had voted Mike, but you astutely said you didn't vote. I so wanted to work with you and wanted that to be the case that I believed it more without much questioning, which is odd for me. You telling me Julie when Kristina told me Mike, and it turned out to be Mike, I was never sure of you. I still was so suspicious of you throughout the game, and had to form contingency plans in case you flipped, protecting against it - up until I went home. It sucks that things played out how they did, but I couldn't risk a majority for one person, and I had a lot of pressure to stay away from you from the alliance of 4. You did much better than I expected when you first entered the game, but after exchanging a few messages, I'm not surprised at all that you made it to F4 and I argued on your behalf some here in Ponderosa, about how you were playing the best game.
I wrote a lot again :\
tl;dr You are all good people and I wish you and I worked more together because we would've made the finals together, no doubt.
On day three you told me you wanted me and you to be main allies, and I of course accepted since I never wanted to feel the wrath of Papa Bear like Semhar ended up feeling. Once we hit the merge I knew I had to distance myself from you and tuck Ashley under my wing and make her feel like she was calling the shots, and unfortunately I knew you were going home that night because of the fact that you didn't vote and neither did Whitney. You were one of the best strategists in the game, and it sort of sucks to see you not here at Ponderosa as much. 
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