Merge! Making the merge/jury phase of a Survivor game is always one of my biggest goals. I haven't been stuck in pre-jury too often thankfully, but it's always an awful experience when it happens. Now you have a say in the end result of this game, and every vote and decision from here on out will be extremely important. I loved the surprise post-challenge merge as a twist, as it definitely created an emotional rollercoaster during that live challenge. There was anger, frustration, determination, and passion to win immunity at the triple tribal and make it to the top 11 like I hadn't seen before in this cast! It was a very very fascinating challenge to participate in as the first individual immunity of the merge, because it put into question certain relationships and alliances that may have formed. How far are you willing to go in order to win a challenge? Are you okay with risking a potential alliance or destroying a bond you worked hard to build? There are a lot of aspects you have to weigh -- Shórt term or Lóng term benefits -- what are more important for me?

If we had NOT merged, I would have expected three rather explosive tribal councils honestly. I think that the tribes were so small that any spark would have lit a massive flame. For the theoretical Shęngli tribal council, I was definitely going to come up as a target from Rachel and Hunter I think. Natalie showed me a message early into the challenge from Rachel that asked Natalie if she wanted to "target Jeremiah" in the challenge. Not Jeremiah's dragon, but specifically Jeremiah. Clearly Rachel wanted to ensure that I didn't have immunity because she thought I would be the easy vote at the hypothetical Shęngli TC. This reaffirmed how sketchy of a player Rachel is to me, as in the previous round she was VERY weird towards Natalie. During the Lillian vote, she kept trying to convince Nat to throw her vote in case Lillian had an idol, thus preventing Nat from leaving. Nat was extremely creeped out by this suggestion, and it framed Rachel in a very negative light. Moving forward into the Rat Race and how she tried to target me like this, it only sketched me and Natalie out even more -- so much more that we were both praying for her dragon to lose at the end so we could just vote her out! Sadly, she did end up winning the challenge, and our target would have fallen on Hunter, which would have been regrettable because I do think Hunter is malleable towards working with me moving forward. Anyway, right after I cast my vote for Hunter, the surprise merge was announced and everyone had a great night of celebration and socialization with those they've never met before or haven't seen on AIM for 2-3 weeks! It was so great to reunite with certain people like Jenna, Woo, Alina, Liz, Neal, and Jaison! Not being able to talk to them sucked and I was so excited to finally reunite.

The merge vote was a very strange one, and basically NOTHING was accomplished for approximately 21 hours. The cast just became so nonchalant and nobody was willing to discuss strategy. The only minor thing that was brewing throughout the day was that Alina expressed concerns that Nick/Jaison would be targeting her, and that original Lóng was about to fragment and implode. Nick also had come to me early in the day telling me that Alina needed to go, and that he wanted to work with me in this merge. I got the sense that he didn't specifically target Alina at this point to too many other people, so I definitely felt as if Nick was genuine with wanting to align with me long-term. As the evening progressed, Alina finally got the ball rolling on the vote, basically going to every single person and asking "I know this is sudden, but would you be willing to vote for Nick?" I, of course, immediately warned Nick to gain trust with him, and I think he really appreciated that. Within a half hour, Alina had launched a full campaign against Nick and Jaison, attempting to paint them as a villainous duo who would destroy everyone in the game. She said that they formed an alliance with her and Nat on original Lóng called "East to the Left" or something like that, and tried to use that as leverage to convince people that they should be voted out. I mean, I have to say it wasn't THAT surprising that the four of them had an alliance seeing as they were the last four standing from Long, but okay. Around this time of the Nick vs. Alina campaigns, Lizzie formed a group chat with me, Kenny, Hope, Woo (the majority alliance from NuMushu, as we had all expressed interest in getting back together once the merge hit), and she also added in Neal, who is a pretty cool guy and I think we can trust him. This group chatted for a bit about the pros and cons of keeping Alina or Nick, and ultimately reasoned that keeping Nick was a better move. Alina was more explosive and could easily do this to anyone else in the game moving forward. Neal was the only person who was the Devil's Advocate to keep Alina, but that was primarily because Nick hadn't talked to him at all yet. So I took another opportunity to gain some trust with Nick and told him to chat with Neal because that might be really important to keeping him around. A few minutes later, Neal was back in line to vote off Alina, and I think I definitely won brownie points with Nick for that. Ultimately, everyone seemed to fall into the same camp with Alina, and decided she was just too much of a headache to keep around. It was a shame, honestly, because I really did enjoy her pre-merge and wanted to work with her, but she seemed way too paranoid and rash in her decision making. She took being targeted in challenges a little too personally, and overreacted when she shouldn't have. Her story with Nick/Jaison didn't make much sense in my opinion, whereas their story about how she accused them of stuff and picked the fight made more sense in a historical context. I have to say that a 13-1 vote is a pretty rare thing, but I guess it can happen!