FINAL TWO: OPENING STATEMENTS
Skruffs wrote:HEllo Jury Members, Pie.
Well, I'm not sure what to say about the game, and I have no real idea what anyone would want to ask of me, so I will jsut give my rundown of the game. It is based entirely on my recollections, so some of it will be faulty or outright lied - because the game is almost entirely about perception.
First, first impression change the entire game. What happens week one in any game will set branches of reactions and repurcussions throughout the rest of the game, and each of those have other branches, etc, etc.
I had actually played in a game with Cubsfan before - which is why me and him formed an alliance early on. We had to, because we know how each other plays. If we didn't join up, we knew we'd be tryign to take each other out first. At least, that is how I saw it.
IH and PBuG were both in my mini game - and Bird1111 was not. At least, not anymore. He lurked out. *shakes fist* It gave me a rather simple, non-offensive reason to want someone out, which gave me a reason to start talking.
Cubsfan put together the first alliance, almost singlehandedly. He wanted to have a big alliance to own the game early on. Cubsfan, IH, me, adn Pie (I believe) were that alliance. And then he realized it would be good - at least at first - to have a throw away member to part with later. I'm not sure if it was PBug or Pie that was the 'throwaway member' - but I want to think it was PBug. Basically they were a 'buffer' so that if, say, one person not in our alliance got immunity, we could safely cannibalize them without feeling bad about ourselves for it. That didn't really happen, like that.
It's funny how much of the game is about rolling with the punches rather than calling them. I kinda talked to the few people I talked to - cubsfan, pbug, ih, about how I wanted bird1111 out, but cubsfan seemed pretty set on bethelmark. I don't know why - I never really met bethelmark. I think that cubsfan also had a secondary alliance in the works - or maybe knew about one and wanted to keep it open, with bird1111, him, and maybe eteocles and jules. I have no clue, though, I wasn't invited. I remember that Elias won that challenge, and I congradulated him to open up a line of conversation. He said thanks, it was all silly ifrst week talk - but the line of communication was open, anyways.
So everyone in 'our side' voted bethelmark except me, and I voted bird1111 for the first time. All of the others voted cubs, I think. Or at least quite a few of them did.
It turned out to be a good thing I hadn't voted bethelmark, because it left me 'open' to the people not in our alliance to think they could try and recruit me. I believe week two was when cubsfan started wanting elias out, and elias started returning the favor. Elias talked to me about how he and eteocles and someone else weretalking and wanted to form up an alliance. I found out the other person was Pie. This was kinda unique to me since PIe was the one person on the Cubsfan alliance that I really didn't know much. At this time, knowing that pbug (and presumably pie) were the expendable alliacene members, I could only assume that IH and Cubsfan were final two. So it made sense to me to at least keep my options open. a Four person alliance with two people from cubsfan's alliance would keep everyone not in the cubsfan alliance happy and content - and that would keep them rom tryign to make deals with pbug and ih and cubsfan to get *me* out. So I told cubsfan about it, and I told elias that I was in cubsfan's alliance, and for a while I was trying to keep the peace.
I got my wish week two in getting bird1111 out - cubs wanted elais - who I believe won immunity - so I pushed for bird1111 because he wasnt takling to me. Aroudn this time, the site crashed, and with a week of info, went Jules. He's never been ehard from since - but that made it good for me, because there is a dummy contestant who will be self voting until they are gone. I talked more with pie - we kind of had to trust each other if we were really going to do what was starting to look like we would do; vote out everyone not in the two alliances, pick off a few people in cubsfan's aliance, vote out elias and eteocles, and then vote out the last person in the original cubsfan allinace. Now I saw the voting pattern going something like this, at this point :
Bird1111, Jules, Pbug, IH, Eteocles, Elias, Pie_is_good, and then go to final two with cubsfan. I thought it would be easy to vote everyone out - and I kind of 'owed' cubsfan for what happened in a big brother game that we played in together. That was my ideal. That's not really how it happened, though. (obviously). Cubs wanted Elias out,a nd bad - and it took a lot of convincing at this point to push for a Jules lynch. In fact, I don''t even know if cubs's side was part of that - I think that it was cubs, pbug,a nd IH on elias, and me, pie, and the two Es on Jules - along with jules himself.
Everyone was sayign that I was running the game at this point - cubsfan starting really screwing up. He forgot to tell IH to talk to everyone else in the alliance, and when I did get IH to talk to me, he would refer to "The Plan" - which I would then have to ask him what it was. Everything he said was from Cubsfan, which suggested that IH felt comfortable as Cubs' #2, and wasn't bothering to takl with anyone else. PBug, similarly, wasn't really communicating, probably feeling safe in teh pocket of the now overwhelming alliance. But Pie talked, and we talked a good bit. Elias also talked a good bit, and I thouroughly enjoyed talking with him. IT was neat to see that level of paranoia and think back to my own first or second survivor game. I didn't know who eteocles was talking to, other than elias - but I knew the two of them were tight. Cubsfan was also very paranoid, and kinda turned me against him by playing silly little mind tricks and alliance tests on me. I had told him I was loyal to him, but he was feeding things to other people tosee if I would hear about it from them. Stuff like that. I found it kind of aggravating - if Cubsfan was worried about me allying with someone, he shouldn't backfeed info to me through the alliance. What he should have done was talk to elias and *tell* him that I was just playing elias and that he was next on teh block, etc. It would have made it a lot easier to remain loyal to the original alliance - instead, I began to feel distinctly isolated from him, and because of that, it made the next tribal council more difficult to think through. With everyone else gone, one alliance would have to be betrayed - but IH was in cubs pocket, and pbug may very well have been as well - so I *had* to break that up, at least one person.
Elias was frantic - he felt overwhelmed, knew about the alilance, and saw that any other potential alliance mates had already been removed from the game. It was definitely a three person Cubscamp vs a 2person Eliascamp. And then me and Pie in the middle. Could he trust us? I think cubs may have had similar doubts. I pushed for an eteocles lynch - I had promised earlier to Elias that I would vote out Eteocles before I would vote out him - and no offense to eteocles, btu I talked to elias, which is why. If I don't talk with someone, it's hard to trust them, because that meanst hey are talknig to someone else.
Elias wanted to vote out Cubs. I was kind of missing a bit of the action there but somehow Elias wound up scaring PBuG enough to think that PBug was definitely going to be voted out unless he voted cubs. He then told me that he had convinced cubs to ovote pbug - so I thought that PBuG was the play. I don't remember if I told cubsfan that as well or not, but this lynch was basically masterminded by elias, so the credit goes to him. Unfortunately - it didn't work the second time, at final five. But it was a good try.
The vote total was:
Elias, Eteocles, Pbug -> Cubsfan
Me + Pie -> Pbug
Cubs, IH -> Elias
This I guess kind of worked out later on, because when cubsfan was lynched, pbug and ih were kind of broken up, too. IH didn't really seem fazed, but I don't think he was much intot he game. PBug was nervuos - but he talked a lot more with pie than he did with me at this point, and for the rest of the game.
Voting out IH the next week was pretty easy, thuogh I don't remember if pbug voted him or not. Then it was final five, and I was on vacation, and I got kicked out for missing the tribal council.
I should have been left out, but blackberry thought that since others hadn't been kicked out before then, that I shouldn't be either, so I was reinstated.
I believe at this point I warned PBug and the DoubleEs that they should vote one of me or pie out. Do you guys remember me sayign that? Oh well. You should have. There weere in effect two alliacnes here: The me and Pie one, and the double E one, that I knew of. I think that there was a DoubleP alliance, too, but that was kept really low key, if so. Since I Was gone, I couldn't really talk to Pie or Pbug as much as I wanted to, btu the douobleEs voted him and he and pie decided to vote elias instead of eteocles. Why? This didn't make sense to me. Eteocles was a pretty good lpayer and very low key - he hadn't betrayed anyone or done anything rash, so it would be a fair bet that he would be very easy to beat at final two. But it came to a tie between pbug and elias, and, because I *had* to break up the Double E team, I was forced to vote out Elias.
Then came final four and a similar situation presented itself. Me and Pie were the last alliance, though apparently... APPARENTLY... Pie had an alliance with everyone in the game. I don't know about this and it's not bad mouthing, but when I foudn this out I kind of groaned inwardly, because when you make a final two and break it, it really hurts the person you are with. I had to break the alliacne with elias because other wise I thought he and eteocles would be able to tie-break-vote me and pie.
ME and Pie, I'll have you know, did not cooperate on the challenge. We both played for ourselves, and I think it was only by the shearest of luck that I out-wifomed eteocles. I was nervous.
Anyways, it wound up being unanymously against Eteo, and I think he was floored. I don't know what deals he made.
Final three was really rough, too. I was just recovering from a very bad sickness when bklackbrry pressured me to submit my answers, so I missed some of hte ones I could have gotten, because I misadded things and did things backwards and stuff. But I used my takls with people to peg a good bit of the quotes and movies, because I had a feel for a lot of the other people in play - something I didn't think PBug would be able to do. So I won that. And the obvious choice was to vote out PBug. But I love pbug. He's bukkaktacular. So I couldn't jsut do this - I had to give everyone the option to fend for themselves, so I gave up the trophy. I did it more to free myself of a lot of guilts and regrets I had over the course of the game - the immunity idol was in effect given toa llt he comrades who had been voted out before me...a nd I felt really good about it. I then found out that Pie was then forced to really decide which of me and pbug he wanted to go to final two with. He had said all game that he was going to 'have' to take me to final two with him, because after betraying everyone, anyone else would be an automatic win. But I wanted to give PBuG a chance at final two, too, so I gave them the chance to vote me out. I even told them they should 0- and I meant it. But pie stayed with the original plan and voetd pbug. Sorry pbug.
To be honest, I'm 26, a full decade older than some of the players in here, which makes me feel kind of bad that I'm here and they are not. Anyways.
My rendition of the events is completely my view of my own participation and how things looked to me. It probably looked quite different to a few other people. I'm not a brilliant mastermind, I'm just a paranoid joe. If I had any special abilities, it's probably my faith in my abillity to read people - enough to believe myself when I talk to those people or other people. If I was less confident in myself, I would not have been able to engage everyone so well. Pie is also very confident in himself - and if he wins and I lose, I think he deserves it.
