episode twelve part two - "atop stress mountain"

[Sam]

ooooooooooooookay. i had to write a confesh.

i am so stressed right now. =/ can't even convey. this whole week... has pushed me to my limit and beyond. exam in... 11 hours now? my brain is complete mush. i can't care to even care. medical school is ridiculous. ill be up all night.


this is going to be stream of consciousness b/c i'm having a hard time thinking atm haha. but i want to document this point in my game. this is so amazing, to be lucky enough to make it this far, and be in this position to affect my own game (for once, lol). it's really a pleasure and a privilege to get this far. so many fell before me... i've had so many ups and downs and rock bottoms it's just been nuts.


the pressure is immense. i can feel it building. I have NO IDEA who to vote for. no clue. i've run so many simulations. so many thoughts. i just do.not.know.

i could win either way, or maybe i'm losing either way? i think it's going to be close. maybe i couldn't have won final immunity b/c now joe or tomas won't vote for me? maybe tomas would have won and taken me? WHO KNOWS.

I just don't have the information and it's frightening. and i want to talk to my allies chris and sagar right now. =( and work together with them to make this strategic decision. =( but i can't. =(

i miss them right now

fortunately for me they are on the jury so that starts me off 2-0. But I still need 2 of the other 5 votes to win, and one of those must be Mbochi. Possibly 2 unless I can charm Renee lol.

its just so hard to know. =( the last f3 immunity decision i made (in a 4 hour chat mini, to be fair lol) I made the wrong one. sure i had 3 minutes to do that lol but still...............


what if i made the wrong decision here, AFTER ALL OF THAT JAZZ?!?!??! hahaha. after all that? really?


i keep going back and forth. it depends on key people and i don't know what they are thinking. =(

you don't want to hear about my optometry day do you lol. anyway i stopped sleeping to have time to do the challenge. which actually wasn't so bad b/c i could study for the 1st three hours so i really didn't notice. just hit "paste" and post every time my set-alarm automatically went off.

it did get kind of annoying at 2minutes though. i did take a long break. but my brain is mush. i cant even get it to study anyways.

i knew i could win if i wanted to. i am VERY VERY VERY lucky proboards went out though when it did, otherwise i might still be going lol. thank the goddess Leah for that one. (mob wives chicago <3)

i'd gif it next but i dont have time to make this pretty ;_;

um. wow. another hard decision. geez.

it's kinda like this.

Either dave/adrian/ryan think Joe played a smart game when he shockingly backstabbed him, or they are still bitter about it. =(

i mean juries are always bitter. but adrian didn't seem too bitter after TC...

dave did kinda but he's a big veteran and really smart...

plus i have to come up with stories to push at FTC. with joe, he kind of "beat against the odds" and survived lots of tc's without immuinties or votes. i kind of want that to be my story (plus immuinties lol). it can't be my story if it's his story.

if i took joe, the story would be that he lied too much and too hard. omg, that makes no sense lol. new story. joe broke the "morals" of mbochi and led to its destruction? no he didn't ryan did that lol. omg.

if i took tomas, the story would be that he didn't do anything to save himself, and I fought against all odds constantly. i have no idea what tomas did in mbochi *shrugs*. but with the time zone difference and english barrier i can't imagine he formed deep relationships with ryan and dave. but he is nice.

my story with tomas would be that he just sat there and didn't actively protect himself. he didn't do anything to get tribal majority at merge. he didn't protect himself when mbochi disintegrated. he didnt do anything in the finals. he got dragged.

that would work with kwele, but i dont need to convince kwele lol. i really dont know what mbochi thought of tomas. . plus he didn't backstab adrian, or ryan/dave like joe did... so maybe they like him and want a mbochi to win....


i just can't have mbochi pride at this FTC lol.

this is stressful.

i wonder if i would have made it here without immunity. i have no clue. or at f4.

i 'strongly hinted' to joe that i would bring him yesterday and we talked about it alot and i kinda went on and on about how great it would be for us two to be in the finals.

then ofc as of f4 i had an 'f2' alliance with tomas. so maybe he'd not vote me to win if i voted him out?

i think i know all my possible strategies at FTC, cultivated for each individual juror, for each scenario. but i just can't pick out which is better. =(

trying to focus on key jurors. like i know sagar/chris are voting for me, and i probably won't get adrian's vote either way. right now i think dave/ryan are key.

but dave would probably vote for me if i was versus tomas
and ryan would probably vote for me if i was versus joe

so -_-.

gosh this is stressful.

i am just worried that I take Joe to the finals and the mbochi love him for playing "an excellent game." but then when have jurors ever not been bitter??? i mean he backstabbed them pretty hard. but he did it smart.

and joe would have been voted out if kim had not fucked up, i think that's a huge negative, i dont think the jury would think that though.

i mean f9-f7 really has no idea at all what went on during the last half of this game anyways...

maybe i should take that into account more stringently, and re-access.

it'd be nice to sleep on it but i dont think thats going to happen. i dont really want to talk to joe or tomas. i need information and they're just going to be filling me with false info the whole time lol.

back to the drawing board....

[Sam]

on one hand tomas didnt do anything, but why do anything if you're in a perfect position anyways??

i might have to argue that tomas would have lost if mbochi went to f5 because he didn't care to actively position himself well.

i think if it was f5 or f6 with me and mbochi, dave/joe/ryan would have voted out adrian then. this is based on stray comments they both said to me over mic.

in that case, it would be either dave/joe/ryan/tomas or dave/joe/ryan/tomas/me.

i dont see how thats good for tomas.

anyway ive been going over old skype convos. (unfortunately a lot of it was mic to protect me from being copied/pasted lol). ryan said something about thinking it was dave/tomas/adrian f3 on mbochi. i could kind of see that. joe being #5, at least before the merge.

i think with tomas i might have a little general advantage. one his english isn't the best, two he didn't win any challenges. i feel like i could out-debate him. third i told joe -some- juicy secrets he could use against me at the ftc.

*pauses to study*

[Sam]

oh ill talk to both of them on skype now lol. whats the point of going through all this jazz if i'm not going to milk the most of this drama thing we all create for ourselves. <3 how boring would that be haha. i just hope i dont say something stupid!

or let their lies infiltrate my mind....

[Sam]

well I talked to Joe on skype for awhile. he didn't really make an impassioned plea or anything. he was kind of passive about it. now was not the time for passive lol. i needed a strong argument as to why he should stay. i didn't really get one.


so I thought about it for awhile, albeit not in the best, most rested state of mind lol. But I did the best I could I think given the situation and the information I currently have. I thought about it quite a bit. I think it will be very close either way. It is very difficult to choose.

I need 2 of 5 votes to win. I could be totally wrong, but I think Dave is more likely to vote for me versus Tomas than versus Joe. Ryan is less likely to do so for sure, but I still have a good shot I think with Ryan's vote against Tomas.

I suppose there is a tiny chance Renee and Joe will vote for me to win against Tomas as well moreso than the alternative.

Finally, I need a theme for final tribal council. I can't use my underdog theme if Joe is around. I can't use my "played the game intelligently" theme if Joe is sitting next to me. What am I supposed to say? Joe lied a bunch? *I* lied a bunch lol. They point that out and my theme's down the toilet. I can't say I tried harder than Joe. I can't say I schemed better than Joe. I could say I was nicer, but really not by much, Joe is pretty nice too. What am I supposed to say really???

I'd just have to bash Joe over the head and rile up the jurors and constantly remind him of how he backstabbed them. Maybe that would work. Jurors are pretty bitter. But my targets to win are Dave, Ryan, and Renee.... Renee who doesn't care about that, and Dave who I (think) would support Joe in this situation. Ryan sure but I can't rely on him to win.

I'd rather aim for Dave's vote as my third, and then pray I get one of Ryan/Renee/Joe for my fourth. I think that's what I'm going to do.

Oh Joe. I'd say this makes me sad but I'm really a heartless sod when it comes to these things lol. I mean I pretty emotionlessly cut out Dave, Sagar, and Adrian in the last three rounds. The part I do regret is making you wait around for it though. =( Waiting is the sucky part.

This vote is particularly brutal though, given what I said to you yesterday, and your backstabbing of Dave, however.

Well, all with the aim of giving me a marginally better chance of winning this game lol.

Godspeed, Joe!