Confessional: Round 7

[AJ]

I normally don't comment on things so soon after Tribal Council, but this TC was too interesting to let slide by.

So it turns out that if I had wanted to get rid of Hillary, I DID have the votes to do it! I find two things about the situation really funny, though. Number one is that no one on the other side ever approached me about it! If someone had actually taken it upon themselves to try to discuss it with me, I would have had a hell of a decision to make and Hillary might be out of the game right now. The second thing is that the results of the vote tell me that Hillary was indeed telling me the truth, and that I didn't need to feel immediately threatened by her after all. If anything, Hillary was the one who should have felt threatened! I'm assuming that the votes came down mostly or completely along old tribal lines, and if that's the case then it's even better for me, because that would mean that Hillary's supposed friends Sarah Palin and Lady Gaga voted for her. If they did vote for her then hopefully that should make it more difficult for Hillary to come up with a back-up plan later on if she decides to turn on me and some of the other Anubis people.

All in all, a terrific Tribal Council. The Anubis people now have a two-person advantage, which renders the Tie-Breaker and Vote Nullify powers useless if we stick to the status quo. My task now is to convince Hillary to keep Ozzy around for at least one more Tribal Council - it'll allow us to retain our two-person advantage, plus it ensures that I'd still have some options down the line if things go south between me and Hillary. ;D

[AJ]

Oh, and a great challenge this time around. Don't expect me to be stupid and completely show my pecking order, though... I know how these things work.

[AJ]

I might do a more comprehensive confessional at some point tomorrow, because a heck of a lot has happened since yesterday. For now, though, here are my answers to the questions from Tribal Council:

1. What are your thoughts on the game so far?

I'm having a ton of fun. Strategically, it's been surprisingly challenging, and I doubt it'll get any easier from here on out. I think that I'm one of a handful of people with a realistic shot of winning the game, so that's good. There's an awfully long way to go, though.

2. Who cant you trust? Who can you trust?

It's cliche, but at this point I honestly don't trust anyone 100%. Hillary has been my closest ally for pretty much the entire game, but as my confessionals over the past few days have shown, I'm constantly aware of the fact that she's a strategic threat. I think that there's a very good chance that she'll choose to side with Sarah Palin and others against me if and when we get down to the Final Five or Final Four.

3. Have your alliances changed at all? Do you want them to?

Not until tonight! I was allied with the 4 other members of the original Anubis tribe, even though it took a ton of maintenance to get everybody to work together. That all blew up, though, because Terry and Ozzy decided to be stupid and try to vote out Sarah when it isn't a smart move at all. Basically, they decided that they want to force Hillary to decide which side she's on, not knowing that given a choice between them and Sarah, Hillary will choose Sarah 100% of the time. That leaves the little Terry/Ozzy insurrection at least one vote short of a majority, even if I went with them. If they had just shut up and voted out Lex, Gaga, and Sarah (in that order), then we would have been down to the Final Five and I would have happily led the charge to vote out Hillary. Instead, Terry and Ozzy are dead to me (although I did spend a number of hours mulling over the option of joining them... haha.) Anyway, my closest allies are now Hillary (as usual) and Sarah Palin, with (hopefully) Britney and Lady Gaga tagging along.

4. What are your plans to get further/to the end?

Oy. There's a question that I could write a book about. In a couple of sentences: I hope that Sarah, Hillary and I can take it all of the way to the Final 3. If I think that they're gonna cut me out, I'll try to make other plans.

[AJ]

So for posterity's sake, here's the full story of what's gone down over the last couple of days, resulting in a complete shift in the game.

Billy Joel was voted out at the last TC by a 5-4 margin. Yay, says I. I assumed that the vote had been completely along old tribal lines. Wrong. Soon after TC, Sarah Palin contacted me and told me that she had voted for Billy Joel. Later on, she even provided a screen shot of her voting thread as proof (though by that time I already thought that she was telling me the truth). I was fairly certain that Britney wouldn't vote for Hillary, so that meant that either Ozzy or Terry had outright lied to me and voted against our Anubis alliance. Hillary initially suspected that it was Ozzy, but at this point I think it was Terry. Either way, it doesn't matter. Terry and Ozzy are fairly closely aligned in my eyes, and the actions of one spill over on to the other.

So anyway, this turn of events led to me getting inundated by PMs over a span of about ten minutes. Terry laid out a plan to vote out Sarah at the next TC. He wanted me, him, Ozzy and Lex to go to the final four, with Lex being promised the spot in exchange for voting against Sarah, one of his former tribe members. Terry also said that he was sure he had Hillary on board for the vote against Sarah and "probably" had Britney. Well, Terry made a massive misjudgment. Hillary has told me that there is no way she's going to vote for Sarah at this juncture, which should have been obvious to anyone with a brain. And I seriously doubt that Britney would do anything to anger Hillary. So that left Terry and Ozzy in the position of needing both Lex's and my votes just to force a 4-4 tie.

At the same time, Hillary and Sarah organized a counter-strike against Terry. My guess is that Britney's on board as well, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Regardless, I was faced with a choice: go along with Terry's plan or vote against Terry and side with Hillary and Sarah. I chose the latter, because Terry's lack of foresight meant that even if I went with him, we still likely wouldn't have a majority.

Terry's errors are numerous. First off, relying on Hillary in a plan to vote out Sarah simply shows a lack of understanding of the relationships in play in the game, and asking her to do it virtually assures that there's going to be a counter-offensive launched in his direction. Second, he (or Ozzy) has alienated me by lying to my face regarding the last vote. Nothing was yet set in stone, but before all of this nonsense my basic plan for the rest of the game was as such: 1) Vote out Lex and Lady Gaga at the next two TCs; 2) Vote out Sarah. Hillary wouldn't go for it, but by that point we'd have the majority (or at least a plurality) and wouldn't need her vote. 3) Vote out Hillary, because she's a threat, and then Britney soon afterward. That would leave me, Terry and Ozzy in the Final 3, which is exactly what Terry and Ozzy wanted anyway. They were just too stupid to have some patience and not force out Sarah when we still needed Hillary's support.

So to sum things up, tomorrow's vote could be a gong show. With the usual caveat that everyone could be playing everyone and I might get voted out, I suspect that at this TC the votes will be myself, Hillary, Sarah, Britney (hopefully) and Lady Gaga (who I've gone out of my way to gain the trust of) against Terry, and Terry, Ozzy and possibly Lex against Sarah. Britney, Gaga and Lex are the wild cards - if I had to bet I'd put my money on the scenario I just laid out, but it wouldn't shock me if they voted another way.

Oh, and I've made a Final Three alliance with Sarah and Hillary as part of all of this mess. Who knows if I (or they) will honor it, but hey, it seemed like a decent idea.

So here's hoping that that lyin', cheatin' son-of-a-gun Terry sees the door. And thus ends the tale of the craziest two days of the game.