The last round was pretty boring because Richard was so obviously going home, so I didn't write anything there. Except that in the last couple of hours, Richard was finally successful in getting in my head a little bit. I invited the trouble by taking him up on his offer he had made in episode 9 where he said "you can tell me what to do and I'll do it, even if it's just a 'vote X' instruction an hour before." So I told him, condescendingly but apparently not condescendingly enough, that he should vote for who he thinks is the biggest threat as a parting shot. He told me that he didn't want to help anyone on his way out and that he found it insulting that I'd ask for said help without offering him any shot to stay in. Somewhere in the middle of that, I told him Jamie was in charge and that I was planning a move at the final 7. This was meant to give him a little something to chew on, but of course he had to go and say "well I don't think you have the votes at final 7, I think Jamie/Todd/Dave/Kelly are the four that will take over from there, but I know I can get Dreamz and you can get John and Chet and we can turn it around." I ignored him at this point. Jamie then came to me saying that "somebody wants you out at the 7 and they know you're in power and they want you out, you arrogant fucktard lololololol." So Richard either came very close to revealing that I had told him all this, or he actually did and Jamie is holding his cards close to the chest just in case. I really hope it's the first one, but fear it's the second, based on little clues in the way Jamie phrased things. I didn't tell him what I'd said to Richard because I wasn't sure how much I had meant what I'd said to him. I don't want to lose Jamie's trust over a stupid thing I did to try to win favor with a jury member, especially since I probably lost favor with said jury member. But just like I didn't really believe his story about who the four was (especially since he's put together numerous other fours that were supposed to be in charge, and also he gleaned the entirety of that last theory from the Majority Rules challenge, which lol), I don't believe anything he says about who he will or won't vote for in the end, because he's probably saying the same shit to everyone else.

But this all rattled me, and it was because I didn't have a plan together. I had been trying to play both sides with regard to whether I wanted Jamie out or not, and that was because I didn't have a plan together for what happened after the 6. I have a better idea now, as I'll get to in a bit, but that uncertainty led me to be uncertain whether or not I was actually leading Richard on or not, which ultimately meant I panicked and made a bad call. This is the first time I've had to manage something like this with an eye on the individual game (because it's a few rounds into the merge, which is somewhere I have never been), and as such I have learned a lesson: no half-measures. They talk about this in the last episodes of season 3 of Breaking Bad (which I have been watching lately), and really a lot of the show is about that, in ways that I'm coming to see can be applied to Survivor. Don't just cast stones in a particular direction and hope things work out. Trying to paint someone as a leader may look well and good when Todd or Tyson does it to Aaron or Aras, but if you want someone's ass out, vote his ass out. Or if you don't, then don't. This means no bullshit. Lies, certainly, but no bullshit. Clear eyes, full heart, pendulous balls heavy with hot bloatum, and clean colon, because you're too busy taking a shit on your opponents to be full of shit.

Anyway, the next round has arrived, and it was an auction today! Surprisingly, it was mostly for extra planks to try to win tomorrow's challenge, meaning immunity was not decided tonight. Double surprisingly, there were only 4 covered reward items in the whole thing! Chet's, as he posted in the results thread and then (suspiciously?) also sent me a screenshot of, was a visit from his family. One of the others, as per Sausage Island tradition, is a burnt sausage, which went to either Dave or Dreamz. I say this because I got a covered reward myself, a key to the brig. I'm aware that this is a typical mechanism in Sausage Island, where two people win a crate and crowbar or key and chest, and they have to decide which of the two of them gets the reward that's inside. So I know that one of either Dave or Dreamz has it. (For a good few minutes, Rory had me thinking he was the other person. You should look in the Brig for our hilarious antics! This kind of thing has precedent, you know.) But I checked, and they both logged out for the night before the Brig thing was posted, so the immunity necklace that's most likely in the chest in the middle of the room will go unclaimed if neither of them wakes up in the next 3 hours.

Which is fine by me, since they're both targeting Todd! John came to me this evening with a fascinating little nugget of information that says that Dave wants John and Chet to join him, Kelly, and Dreamz in getting rid of Todd. I'm getting pretty close with Todd, and I think his level of bitchy honesty (and self-pity) could prove fatal to him at FTC, so I'm interested in protecting him. (I'm certain Jamie is thinking the same.) I think it's interesting, though, that just as I was getting the feeling that Jamie/Todd/myself are a tight 3 (Jamie mentions Todd kind of often, and Todd said in response to Richard's parting offer that he'd gladly get rid of Dave and Kelly well before he'd get rid of me or Jamie, which sounds oddly specific), Dave would gradually get harder and harder to talk to. His responses have always taken a while, but over the past couple of days they've taken forever. Out of Kelly and Dreamz, the two people outside the six, Jamie had preferred Dreamz, and since Dreamz has told me that nobody's talked strategy with him in a week and he'd vote however to stay in the game, Todd and I had preferred Kelly since we could theoretically use Dreamz for devious ends. Dave, however, was really hesitant to talk about it, saying things like "I haven't heard but I assume people are voting Dreamz" and being content to let conversations sputter into 20 minute gaps between replies. This twigged me that something was up, but I didn't quite know how to listen to the gut and to put a name on it until John came forward with that useful little nugget of information. So now the vote is against Dave, because Todd and Dave don't like each other much and because if Dave's going to abandon Lugata, then we're sure as hell abandoning him.

In a way, Dave's guilty of a half-measure. He's reluctant to sell the illusion that he's okay with voting out Dreamz, so he didn't follow through in convincing us that we had his vote. So now he's receiving my vote tomorrow, assuming he doesn't win immunity. This could be a trick on any number of levels, anything from it being John trying to break up the Lugata core to a coordinated plot to get me to believe that a move is being made against Lugata when really I'm the target because I've been so indecisive recently. But if this goes through, I have some valuable pieces of information, because at that point it's Jamie/myself/Todd and John/Chet and Kelly/Dreamz, and when there's three groups who know of each other's existence and demarcation and who will stop at nothing to win, then it's anybody's game. And I, in my humble opinion, am most certainly anybody.

I love the Breaking Bad references

Brig update!

So Dreamz got the other key to the brig. Just my luck. His offer to me is for him to take the chest, not use it at TC, and then give the necklace (or idol, he seems to think it'll be an idol) to me after TC. I probably would take him up on it if it wasn't for knowing about him and Dave. His plan is most likely to turn the game around and then give me the necklace as a life vest after Jamie and I are twisting in the wind. If this is the expectation he has, then if it turns out he's still in a disadvantageous position at final 7, he will probably be less likely to give the necklace away. So the odds are that there's no deal.