Episode 08

Welcome to the merger!

You made it!

Tell me how you're feeling, nervous? excited? a bit of both?

Also, now that the game is shifting from tribes to individual, are you focusing now more than ever on how to win the game, or is it merely how to advance as far as you can?

How do you plan on making an impressive enough showing in the merge to warrant a vote from the potential jurors that you are playing with now?

Where do your loyalties lie? With the original tribe? Your newly swapped tribe? or your original fans/favorites split? Who do you trust the most/least going into the merge?

Alright, so I've apparently had a shave?

And my shirt is cleaner. Did I go back in time or something? This makes no sense.

Someone needs to tell John to fuck off. Alol at that post on the Australian Stranded thread

Alright then, onto those questions:

I'm feeling nervous, of course, because of the fact that I'm coming in down 4 to 8. But I do have hope. It's not exactly the most exciting kind of hope, but it's the kind that doesn't turn my nervousness into a feeling of being down and out.

The game having shifted from tribes to individual isn't a shift that I've really noticed as such. I still feel a little like our tribe is just going to go ahead and stick together for a while. For me, I absolutely have my eyes set on winning the game. I'm definitely taking a more serious approach to this game than I was in Greece. I compared a little bit of my game to Penny's game in Greece, and the difference is pretty astounding. I believe my philosophy going into the merge was absolutely of a mindset to just get as far as I could without winning the game, whereas Penny was all about visualising herself in the finals and the way she was going to get there. I'm trying to take a leaf out of her book in this case.

I think making it to the end after being down in numbers will be impressive enough, tbh. At this point, though, I'm probably going to the end with my tribemates, so that puts us all on an equal level in that regard. Hopefully, though, I can outshine everybody else. I like to believe I'm the guy to beat on my tribe.

To me, it's not so much about a split in particular, it's just about who I have relationships with, so I can't answer that last question.

As a general update:

Holly has apparently been targeting Chase and I. She tried to throw out there that Jill and her partner (that's me) had the idols, which is lolsy, and definitely untrue, at least on my part. This was mentioned to Jake, who mentioned it to me, and I mentioned it to Jill. Jill is now going to try to use this info to possibly target Holly.

According to Chase, who found out from Russell, it's possible that Dan has gone a little inactive. This makes him a bit of a target.

Russell could prove to be a good link for us. Jolanda is nice, but we've never really had a connection.

Wendy's a bit of a dark horse. Before the merge, I would have been interested in getting Jake to offer her a six-way deal with Wendy, but she seemed a little apprehensive about working with us. After a bit of talking, we think she might be in tight with the Palena majority. That makes her worrying to us.

Ken and Tyrone both seem like very legitimate possibilities to flip. Ken is the more interesting possibility to me - I like him this time around, we have an alliance with Jake. It's great to have him around. Tyrone, however, is the questionable one. We want him to jump over, but we don't love him. We might even try to compromise a deal with his departure.

The plan for me at the moment might be a little complicated. We're fairly certain the other side has both idols, probably in the hands of Holly and Jolanda. As such, I think we need to flush out the idols. To do this, I think we could start by trying to negotiate a deal to take out Dan with Palena, and specifically bringing Hollanda into these talks. At the same time, Jill is going to be trying to convince Palena to turn on Holly. This gets passed around, spooks Holly into possibly playing the idol. We go on to blindside either Dan or Wendy with the people we have on board.

The thing is, we want to make a pick that's not someone who's going to be able to get their hands on the idol. Maybe we'll even switch things to Jolanda? To be honest, I"d prefer a rookie, rather than a veteran. Jolanda may have an idol as well, so it would suck for that to blow up in our face after working hard to get a majority.

Word on the street is that both Chase and I are targets for being too social/strong in challenges. I'm hoping they go after someone else, though, in fear that one of us might have the idol. It would be nice to have a spare round, to be honest, even if we're unsuccessful. I'm not sure I want to bring a fake idol into the mix yet, but it could end up being a possibility, depending on whether we mess up this round.

Someone needs to tell John to fuck off. Alol at that post on the Australian Stranded thread

ikr? The "derp, don't post if you are or were playing" friendly warning was written with him in mind. ofc the very next post is him. I'll say nothing or he'll only talk more.

Also, you got a reward for making it to merge with your partner :o disposable razor and a sachet of shirt soap, gj!


So I'm playing catch-up here before I can get into questioning you on future plans, can you give me as brief a recap as you can manage about how your game got from the night of the Jimmy/Erica boot till now? Also I guess that will give me a good eye on how your relationships stand with this four-man minority. Which is probably important if your plan is to go to endgame with them.

Brief recap:

Came into the switch with Marty under the illusion that the Palena alliance was our main concern, and that we were intent on making sure we made the merge. To be honest, this was actually a bit true, as I was interested in ensuring that we could at least misguide Dan/Wendy/Russell in their first vote at the merge. We booted Fabio, because he was partnered with Dan, who was believed to be a huge threat.

After this, we were going to target Jake, but John tried to spread lies about Yve that didn't add up, namely that she had been targeting Chase the round before, but none of the people she had apparently approached with this idea knew anything about it. We blindsided John 4-2 when Jake came up with a similar plan to the one that we had.

Once again, Jake was in the cross hairs, with me/Chase/Yve pretty much in control and ready to make the necessary moves. It was decided, however, that Jake would make a better asset for the tribe in trying to flip either Ken or Wendy, and that this was imperative over keeping Marty. We booted Marty 4-1.

I really wish I felt safe enough to throw this challenge, but I don't :/

Well, all I can say is HOLY FUCK.

I guess I gotta work my ass off to save myself. I guess Plan A at this point is to talk the target onto Tyrone at the very least.

Oh shit, that recap is exactly what I was after. Is Jake aware that he was being possibly targeted, or is his priority this Atacama foursome?

The other thing I'm interested here is your relationship with Jill - fair to say that's your tightest bond outside the NuNuAtacama-four? Or is there still tight bonds with the Vets since early days? Actually, merge is a prime time for a rankdown of sorts based on who you trust most to least in the game. I see you have good specifics above, so even a numbered list would cover it, or you could drop some reasoning to each person's position if you aren't too busy scrambling :P

12. Tyrone - He's just not around much, and doesn't give a lot of info. I don't hate him, I just don't care for him.
11. Holly - I just don't have a lot going with Holly. She's being a little stand-offish. I'm pretty sure she's gunning for me, but telling me something else to my face? It might be that she doesn't want me to play an idol, so it's kinda annoying.
10. Jolanda - Pretty much always been a target, never been with the in crowd.
9. Dan - Not around much, hard to get back in with him, even though we were previously in an alliance together.
8. Wendy - Helping but being weird about it. She seems to only be working with us for her own agenda.
7. Russell - Still trying to build up the relationship we had at the start of the game. I think we're getting there. Rumour has it he's looking at getting vets together, so this is good for me.
6. Yve - She's cool, I guess. Not much to say about her. We're working well together, and I don't see that changing for a while.
5. Jill - As much as I'd like for the two of us to end up on top, I just feel like she's failing me at this crucial point. She's not handing on critical information, and I feel like her heart just isn't in it as much as some of the others, but I have to try and work with her for our mutual benefit.
4. Jake - I love Jake a whole lot. He's a great person to be working with, and it's clear that he's intent on getting the Atacama 4 pretty far, even at the expense of Wendy. That's great for us, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the game with him.
3. Ken - Ken's pretty cool as well. He's helping out the Atacama cause, he's from Greece, and I feel like we have a pretty great thing going on here. I'm really hoping he can pull through for us in the long run.
2. Chase - My boy. I don't know where I'd be without him. I'm not sure if I can win against him, but he's definitely a tight ally, and I'd like to believe he's with me to the end.
1. Ted - This guy right here is amazing <3 I hope he wins.

I recycled my voting confessional this round because it wasn't revealed last round.

Holy monkeys, I just nearly voted myself out