I am on a confessional roll tonight! I felt so bad about leaving this hanging over the past few days, so I wanted to catch right up to the present. Following the Alina vote, I've just been hanging out and socializing with everyone. The Simmotion challenge was actually pretty fun (despite the grumbling you received in the challenge thread), and I came pretty close to winning which I did not expect tbh. I got into a groove later on in the challenge that I wish I had known sooner. My ultimate mistake was not noticing that a reply didn't load until the next minute, and by then it was too late. Oh well, you live and you learn, and I don't really think I needed immunity for this TC.

So yeah, as I said, just chatting with everyone as much as I can and trying to figure out what potential groups might be forming. One of the weird things about the previous vote was that there seemed to be no major tension and splitting that is characteristic of the Survivor merge vote. Usually one group tries to take obvious control, and there is an outright war for power. Perhaps the sheer size of this merge put a damper on this? I am certain that this battle will arrive very, very soon though.

The other day, due to the amount of swaps and castaways remaining, I wanted to dissect the relationships that each person has from the pre-merge phase. I made a chart detailing who has been on a tribe (green cell), in a dragon together (yellow cell), or has never been able to communicate (red cell). As you can see, there are quite a few red cells spread throughout the chart, so there are major areas where relationships have barely been formed yet during this merge. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these red cell areas are the basis for the first merge votes as people will tend to go with what is safe. Last round's scenario with Alina was an outlier, I believe, as she attempted to throw people that she knew from day one under the bus. This suggested that long-standing relationships wouldn't mean anything, but Alina's nervous and firey personality was likely the reason for this. Other people are going to cling to what they know at this time, as they won't want to shake things up and risk putting a target on their back. Most of the people in this merge cast have about 9 connections on average, so there have definitely been a lot of get to know you type of conversations recently. Hope, Kenny, and Liz all have a few more connections than average. And then, of course, the most notable (and exciting) aspect of this chart -- my column. I am the ONLY person in this merge cast who was on a tribe with every single other person of the merge cast. This is HUGE in a game with no cross-tribal communication. I have been able to form a relationship with every single person in this game who remains. And not only that, I have been forced to go to tribal council with every single person who remains, and I have voted WITH them. This could theoretically mean that every single person in the game sees me as someone who they can rely on to work with them moving forward. I have proven that I am going to vote how I said I was going to vote, and they know that they have a history with me. This is honestly a huge blessing as far as my position goes, because I really don't expect anyone to target me at this juncture point since I have all these relationships, and I would hope they would want to keep me around. It's crazy how the swaps worked out for me, and I guess the challenge losses and boots too, because it ended up crafting this perfect scenario for my game. I thought when NuMushu kept losing, and when I was the only NuMushu on Shengli, that luck wasn't working in my favor. But maybe, just maybe, all of those swaps and scenarios were meant to be, because they've landed me here, as the only person with this major connection to every other person. I don't know how or why I had this happen to me, but I'm definitely grateful and hoping to take advantage of it. Once this merge really kicks into high gear, I think I'm going to find myself in the middle of the dynamic, being pulled in multiple directions. WE SHALL SEE!