- Tue Dec 06, 2022 11:31:57 pm
#75574
YOU PEOPLE REALLY THOUGHT I'D CHANGED AND LEARNED FROM MY MISTAKES?!? I'm the bad guy who's pretending he isn't.
Listen - my growth and evolution this game is about supporting the people I KNOW I can support. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm sure I'm gonna come out of this game and discover that James was 100% loyal to me and was never going to take a shot at me. But I fucking LOVE the chaos. I've weighed that out already. But the fact of the matter is, I can't save him in this game and I've known that since the moment he started pushing Morgan to Paul and Michelle as part of the core. That was something I would do last season, pushing the idea of having the person that best benefited my game in the alliance. I'm kinda everywhere right now and that's okay. I'll pick up the pieces and figure it out as I go. For James - go back through the logs, I warned him about Paul/Michelle being rubbed the wrong way by him. He didn't listen to me. His immediate reaction was something to the effect of "it'll be a unanimous vote for her into the group". Could Paul and Michelle have played me? Yup and they probably did but we made the move and now we have to live with it. I told him Naseer is working with everyone "nah I don't think so". Man, listen - we want to work together and you're not making me feel as heard as you think. It feels dictated almost and I'm clearly not alone in feeling that otherwise this move wouldn't have happened and come together how it did. Did I make the same mistake I made last game by going against who could be my #1 ally? I'm pretty fucking certain I just did. But trust is a two way street and I just never got there with James. It the nature of how he plays and again, other people feel it too. I genuinely LOVE the dude. And I'm so happy he's here and if it costs me my game so be it but at least something exciting happened right? It was at the expense of Morgan which I don't love at all but let's get into it a bit. So yeah, taking out a major ally for myself is a mistake I've made before and one I'd like to not replicate again in the future but we'll see what happens.
Today was a busy one for me as I set up the inevitable collapse of an alliance that you could tell 4/6 people weren't vibing with. It just didn't feel right. Everyone felt like pawns under James - or so they said. I worked on Paul and he and I really bonded over some personal stuff. I worked on Voce and I felt like he got closer with me, I feel closer to Michelle, Rodney, etc. I could be totally wrong but on a personal level, I feel more connected to everyone now than I did yesterday and I like that a lot. Which is what everyone says before the get blindsided the next day. But hey, I beat my former Stranded placement record by surviving today and that's a victory in and of itself.
Sydney came in with a shock that her friend is in the ICU and could die and in that moment I knew pretty well that I'd have a hard time taking out Sydney tonight. It's the easy vote, and it's too early for a big move but this is a season of second chances and people are here to play. Why can we not as a group decide that the right thing to do is give Sydney a second chance because she needed a day off. James stayed strong on Syd and then it was all kinda downhill from there. Or that's the story I'm sticking to anyways. I might have embellished a bit of how our conversation went when I talked to Paul about it but hey, if it gets Paul on my side it's a move worth making. He was already nervous about James and I, so hopefully now I come out looking like the weaker of the three of us and get a little slept on.
During Tribal I got asked "do you think people are making the same mistakes?" which I take as code for "Mike, YOU are making the same mistakes." which yeah, I agree. I see the parallel between what I did to Vince from my season vs. James/Morgan this season. But I've got one good blindside in me per season and I've basically positioned myself (it feels like) to just watch people attack each other for a bit? I have the leverage of Paul being the one who pushed the Morgan vote and told me the lie he wants me to share around. James immediately thinks Stephanie is the mastermind, Sydney wants James. I look at the variables around me and I'm like "huh, well what a clusterfuck, guess I should just watch chaos unfold for a bit". I like James a lot but game James makes me nervous and I think he has bigger fish to fry than me right now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Rodney is plotting my demise actively. I've got two #1s in Hali and Steph (potentially) and maybe even a future one in Paul. Assuming they're all loyal to me, I could be in a good place but I have to assume one has my bounty and I'll die pretty soon anyways. Oop, and as I'm proofreading this Sydney just outright offered me F2. Better say yes to that I guess. I really like that pairing if she's serious because out of everyone here, I feel like a Mike/Sydney duo would be the least expected.
I'm so scatterbrained from my usual novel-self. So much has happened today.
I guess to start from the TOP TOP. I set up the move to try to kill James days ago by talking about the photo - he's claimed it didn't mean anything and honestly I believe him now. But fuck it, I love the idea that a picture torched some people's games. It was an intentional move and I knew the inevitable powder keg I was lighting, even if I didn't expect it to blow up so soon. That's what so funny about this season, without hiding behind an alias (technically) and actually knowing some of these people the relationships are so juicy. I think I can claim an indirect kinda kill on Morgan but it feels like Paul's move...which I'm fine with. But I got the ball rolling with my rumouring mongering days ago and I'll own that shit ALL day. I'm the one who introduced the photo talk to Steph and then Hali also brought it up to me ten minutes later so ultimately, if it can benefit our shots at winning, I'd even go as far as to say it's Hali and I's move to get the James ball rolling, which caught Morgan in the collateral and taking out Morgan was a Paul move.
On to questions...
Nothing went according to plan tonight. Should have been James gone but him winning was clutch as hell and I kinda called it to Hali shortly before that "this is how it goes in Survivor". I think it's absolutely fucking hilarious James won when just minutes before he and I were saying we don't want a maze. Lo and behold a maze appears. Had a good laugh about that. I didn't want to lose Morgan this early but she's just collateral and guilty by association. She's awesome, got nothing but love for her and it sucks to lose her. The season is worse off without her now and I genuinely mean that.
Chat Rooms - this is a fun question. So I've got access to every chat room now except :o which I think might be fake? I never see people in it but maybe it's a thing. I've genuinely tried the vain passwords of "mikesux" and such just to see because that would be hilarious and I do in fact suck. I started Thot Patrol as a two fold thing - 1. To start paranoia and 2. To take the piss out of the game and rank people based on the "Thot Or Not" scale. That was fun for like three days but now it doesn't really serve me a purpose. I used it to sell that I'm with Steph 100%. She'll probably betray me at some point but them the breaks. I can live with losing to her or Hali as of right now. The next Chat Room I'm in (that's dead now probably) was Test - that was where Hali, Myself, James, Paul, Michelle, and Morgan did no strategy talk whatsoever because our alliance was broken before it even started because James felt like a dictator. Lastly, tonight I got invited to mykooooonos by Sydney which has such an eclectic mix of cast members that I don't even know who's in there. So yeah, I've somehow stumbled into being a majority chat room member for whatever fucking reason and they all feel pretty useless. But it's better than last season when there was like 72 on night one.
My bounty means dick all to me. There's three boxes left and I don't see Hali dying in the next three votes so I'm just accepting it's not gonna be for me and that's that. I will not be trying to get Hali killed. If she dies on me and I get an advantage, great! But I value her being in the game infinitely more than any little advantage.
On that note, I don't think I have much else to say. I did a thing, it'll come back to haunt me, and at least this time around I'm more aware of it I guess?
Otter out.
