This, dear readers, is where some really hard decisions have to get made.

First off, let's get some details straight. It's the final 5. John is immune. I have an idol, which everybody but Jamie believes is a necklace.

Now for the thinking on paper part. My idol, if not played by tomorrow morning, is going to make people super suspicious, because it's supposed to be played 12 hours before Tribal Council results are due. So I have two options: either tell everybody via the TC thread that I have an idol and that I promise I will play it on myself and not try any shit, or I could keep it to myself and just play it normally. If I keep it to myself, people will certainly think I have an idol, and in their state of panic might be more inclined to try to pull something. I don't know if the threat of me pulling something would lead people to be less inclined to target Jamie for fear I would give him the idol, or if they would be more inclined to target Jamie in order to get back at me. The more logical conclusion, though, would that it would lead to people being less likely to target Jamie.

Now the main targets at this stage of the game are Chet and Kelly. Chet thinks Kelly should be targeted because she is a jury threat. Jamie thinks Chet should be targeted for two main reasons: 1) he is a proven endurance guy, which would make him tough to beat at the guaranteed-to-be-endurance F3 challenge; 2) he is close to John, which would make the final 4 a deadlocked tie if Kelly were to go. Ideally, I would be most interested in going to the finals with Chet, but the way I would like for that to happen isn't feasible. I thought he was proposing what I wanted him to say when he said in reference to Todd's F3 theory that "it'd sure be nice to have an F3 right about now" and mentioned Kelly's lack of challenge ability, but then he said he wanted Kelly out next. What I would have wanted him to do was propose a final 3 with myself and Kelly, knowing that Kelly is not very good at challenges and therefore we could take each other to the end. The problem here is that he says he can't win, and he says it in a way that makes me believe it. I'm in a similar boat in that I have serious doubts about my ability to win against Jamie (although all the reports are coming back that this jury is going to be as bitter as hemlock). However, if he thinks he can't win, then it is in his best interests to stick with his first and best alliance, because if he can't win against anyone, then why not at least lose to your best ally and be an honorable loser. I'm almost coming to the same conclusion here, but for more practical reasons. Jamie is the only person who I 100% know has my back, and since he's the only person besides Chet or Kelly that I could target, then if anything breaks wrong in the future, I'm without a safety net. So getting rid of Jamie at this point is out of the question.

John and Chet will probably vote Kelly, Jamie will tell Kelly about Chet trying to target her, and the two of them will probably vote Chet. This leaves me as a swing, weirdly enough. I'd like Chet to stay, but at what cost would that happen? I could try to make some shit up about how I heard there was a plan to come after Jamie and so we had to get rid of Kelly, but I'd really have to sell that. Chet's biggest assurance he could give was that "we watch each other's backs at the final 4 in case Todd's thing about Jamie and John being together is actually true," which isn't even what I said because Chet would have to be in with the two of them as well. Really, in order to get Chet to the finals, I'd have to either win final 4 immunity or beat John at the tiebreaker (assuming Jamie doesn't turn on me because I voted out Kelly), then win final 3 immunity or have Chet win and take me.

The above is kind of a stupid plan, because way too much would have to go right in order for that to work. But I really kinda want to do it, or at least part of me wants to. I'll call this part BB, as I'll explain shortly (RIP). Part of BB's rationale is that if I stay put and get to the final 2 with Jamie, the jury may not be bitter enough for my liking. The reason I'm even having to worry about this is because I don't have any confidence. I'm absolutely unconvinced that I have any business winning this game. Every time I've played, I end up getting sucked into the pocket of someone much more charismatic than myself, and although I hate being in that pocket and will stew and plot about how to get out, circumstances and practicality always dictate that it's smartest to stick with your allies. I don't have the confidence to go out there and play my own game. Even this time, when basically every next move that I was thinking was along the exact same lines Jamie was thinking, as much of an equal footing as I've ever been with someone in a tight alliance, he takes the lead because I'm not a good lead-taker. Some would say that it's smart to draft behind someone to the end. Leann herself once said she was the Amber to Ami's Boston Rob, which is how she liked it. One might even say that that situation applies here. But BB doesn't like how it feels. If I stick with the plan and get to final 2 with Jamie, I think it would be good to get some experience fielding jury questions, but BB already knows how it would go. I wouldn't win, even with a jury determined not to vote for Jamie, because I wouldn't believe a word I was saying in support of my own game, because I don't have confidence, and people would pick up on it, I'm sure. I would at least be confident that I played as hard as I could if I made the move to vote out Kelly. BB likes that plan, because a) it allows me to feel like less of a useless shell on the beach, and b) if it doesn't work out, I'm almost certainly guaranteed to be voted out, which as BB himself would put it, means that I've "engineer[ed] an escape route for myself." The question is, is it worth it? I know that while my sense of humor is fun to read, my safe playing style makes seasons less fun overall. Do I want to be the crazy person who tried pulling something and at least made the endgame a little more memorable, or does that make me Sugar, switching things up at the end and making the season entertaining but for strategically invalid reasons? Is it worth breaking trust with Jamie?

All I know is that I'm fessing up to the idol first thing in the morning.

So I talked to Kelly, and she basically confirmed my suspicions that Jamie is going to win. The Todd thing was absolutely a way to take away my options. The jury is going to be bitter, but not so bitter as to deny him a win, since we all basically have been following him to our slaughter like he's the Pied Piper of Spradlin. The last round proved my suspicions that Jamie has as good a working relationship with everyone as he does me, and that makes my position inherently unstable, because he has his pick of who he wants to go up against at the end. I may not have come in expecting to win, and I still don't think I have a chance at it, but I think I owe it to the viewers to at least make things a little interesting. So you know what? Fuck it. I'm blindsiding Jamie. Fuck this game.

EDIT: Well maybe not this round, anyway. Basically here's my thoughts: if I vote off Kelly, then it's me and Jamie versus John and Chet in a fire tiebreaker. If I vote off Chet, then it's me and Kelly versus Jamie and John in a fire tiebreaker. If I vote off Jamie, then it's me and Kelly versus John and Chet in a fire tiebreaker. I have zero sure things heading into the next round. But if I vote off Chet, then that means that I have Kelly and Jamie still with me. We can get rid of John and then go into the final immunity with Kelly taking me and me taking Kelly. I think Chet is the better option here, emotions be damned. But Jamie is going before the final 2. Mark my words.