So everybody from my tribe seems to be online and social.... which kind of sucks. I'd LOVE to have an easy boot to bond people together. Everybody being here to play will make it harder to feel comfortable right off the bat.
There was a point earlier today where Tom/Sydney/Myself were the only ones really online and we definitely all discussed strategy. Not in a group chat, but individually. Tom told me he had a good feeling about Sydney, Sydney told me she had a good feeling about Tom, and I think both of them feel good about me. I told Tom that I was so down for alliances and strategy, but to also be careful because it's the first day and we still hadn't met people from our tribe yet. Like we don't know what our circumstances will be. So I hope I didn't alienate him from talking strategy with me, but I don't think I did. He seemed pretty understanding that the best strategy is usually to spend the first little while really feeling people out, even if you have a pretty good idea of who you want to align with right off the bat. And then when it comes to crunch time, you can have those original relationships to fall back on. But you're not locked into it. Like with the way we were all talking, I'm pretty sure that a Tom/Sydney/Me alliance will end up happening. So I'm definitely going to spend a lot of my time trying to naturally cultivate that. I think I earned a lot of credit with Sydney hopefully when I told her she was my bounty target.
Leaving to get drunk for the night, but Sydney, Tom, and Kat all reached out to me about working together so I think I'm leaving a good first impression and that's my primary concern right now.
Meanwhile I've been collecting DNA samples from my tribe mates and am currently waiting on the results. Someone here could be a mole... and I'm going to find out who.
Made a super tight alliance with Kat and she told me her target, so Nancy-fucking-Drew is back at at it again.
Tom -> Alexis -> Sugar -> Sydney -> Kat -> Dana -> Tom
This definitely helps me know how to talk to people when strategy time comes. I really wish Alexis had told me I was her target before I figured it out on my own
And now Alexis messaged me literally like thirty minutes after I found out she was my bounty telling me I was her bounty haha. I appreciate her telling me, wish it was a little bit sooner but I'm not one to hold a serious grudge.
I just had a like a -deep- talk with Alexis about life so I'm feeling a lot better about her, and she told me she had no intention of writing my name down. Kat like straight=up asked me to be her closest ally and I've talked with her like a good two hours today about various topics from gameplay to school advice. Sydney's asking me right now about my opinions of what happens after we lose.
I hope people don't read these and go, "Oh my god, Sugar is so cocky, she thinks she has everyone eating out of the palm of her hand," because I don't. I do think that I've invested the most time trying to have in-depth conversations with people, and that puts me in a decent spot as of right now. But it's also a really dangerous game, because I can't be allied with everyone. I don't message people asking them for alliances, so far every single person who has talked strategy with me has brought it up themselves. and what am I supposed to do, say no? that's not a good strategy. Even Dana, the only person who I haven't talked ANY form of game with, told Kat that she really wanted to work with me when Kat told Dana about having her as a bounty.
So am I in a good position right now? I think so. But I also think it's a dangerous position, because I can't keep promises to everybody. This happens in every game I play, I'm very good at getting people to feel comfortable about me early on, but as tribal councils start happening, I get put in tougher and tougher positions.
And all this just to stop a massive terrorist attack that is planning on being funded by the million won from this Survivor game. I'm a national hero and I can't tell anybody else about it :(
First off, every single person on my tribe is active and contributed to the challenge. It's so hard to vote someone off without actually having a reason.
So Tom wants me to make a chat with Me/Tom/Sydney. So I did, and Tom says that he wants to target Alexis, (his bounty). Which I would feel awful about, but I feel awful about voting anyone off and Alexis is middle-of-the-pack for that. So I agree and say that as long as we can get a unified vote on her, I'm down.
But then Alexis and Dana both message me asking me for alliances, and saying that they wanted Tom out because he barely talks to them. I feel like Tom talks to me a lot, and Sydney feels the same, but he doesn't seem to be branching off to other people in the tribe.
So I go talk to Kat, who is quickly becoming like my number 1, and apparently Tom doesn't really talk to her either. I tell her that Dana is leaning towards keeping Alexis, and Sydney is leaning more towards keeping Tom. Kat said that because Tom doesn't talk to her much, she'd feel more comfortable voting for him.
So I approach Sydney and tell her that Tom's mediocre social game is really doing him in, and she digs her heels in trying to find ANY way we can keep him. It was pretty obvious they have more than our three-person alliance going on, because she was VERY opposed to losing him. But after hours, I finally convinced her that it doesn't make sense for us to stick our necks out for Tom when he isn't socially connecting to people. Like it doesn't matter what arguments we make to Kat or Dana, if they don't feel a personal connection to Tom then they aren't keeping him.
It's so sad to see because I feel like I know what's going on in this situation. Tom's new to ORG's, he's only ever played in reddit one's before which are ridiculously fast-paced strategy and nothing like this. He still has yet to fully understand and appreciate the importance of opening up to your tribemates, showing vulnerability, and building strong relationships. Where he comes from, you can go up to someone and say, "Hey, alliance?" and that's good enough to be Final Two. That's exactly what he tried to do here with Me and Sydney, but the problem is that when push comes to shove, nobody is going to keep around someone who they feel like hasn't really opened up to them. Nobody else feels like Tom has connected to them because most of what he talks about is very surface-level materials, (strategy, challenges, game mechanics, etc..).
So I don't know. I'm so frustrated because I legitimately don't feel like anyone from this tribe deserves to be eliminated. Tom really wanted an alliance with me and REALLY trusts me and it's breaking my heart. He even is watching a documentary that I told him about! I think he's an absolute sweetheart, he just doesn't quite get the severity that relationship-building is brought to in a game like this, and if he gets voted off first then he never will :( I'm afraid it might turn him off ORG's like this for good.
At the same time, I definitely think I have options moving forward. If Sydney and I lose Tom as an ally, we can easily gain Kat. We've talked pretty extensively about setting up a majority "Sugar/Kat/Sydney" alliance after this round to lock down our safety. We could easily bring in Dana as a fourth to complete the Blonde Girl alliance, (which Dana is totally on board with), and be set for the near future. Speaking of Dana, I absolutely adore her. Girl get's me, and I feel like she trusts me.
So yeah. This vote is kind of a mess, but after a few hours of scrambling I feel like it's settling on Tom for his subpar social game. Which is such a shame because he's active and passionate about this game, but he comes across as a bit stiff and formal to other people because this IS his first game.
So far I have no idea how we're going to handle this TC situation. I think Tom is pretty much the vote right now, because he's not talking to Kat and she's the swing vote. And I am not going to threaten rocks or try to force people's hands on the first round. I feel awful for him, but he needs to be connecting with people. I fought hard for him to stay, but at a certain point I'm not going to help someone who won't help themselves. I am ride-or-die loyal to my close allies. Like I will go out of my way to try to save people who are close to me, (like that time I got voted out of GvE for trying to save Nellie round 1 rip), but I'm not going to show that kind of loyalty and commitment to people who aren't also fighting for themselves. Like if you want my ride-or-die loyalty, then you need to exhibit that same ride-or-die attitude and passion in the game. Tom needs to step it up and really FIGHT if he wants me to back him up. I'm pretty sure I could flip the vote on Alexis if I really tried, it would take a lot of promises to Kat/Dana but I think I have the social capital right now to pull it off. But I'm not going to do that unless Tom shows that me he would have that same ability to do that for me in the future.
The reason I don't know how to "handle" this TC is because I don't know whether or not to tell Tom. I have no idea why he's so confident at this current moment if he's hardly talking to the people, but I assume it's because he's used to situations where he can just say, "you're good to vote Alexis, right? good" and have that be the end of the discussion. That's what he did with Kat, and she said yes, and now he thinks he has her vote. But he hasn't followed-up at all or messaged her since that brief conversation so I'm still baffled as to why he thinks he has her 100%, or why he's assuming that Alexis/Dana aren't scrambling for votes either.
What this means is that he has no idea he's even getting votes right now. And to go from being completely confident to seeing EVERYBODY write your name down.... like, that's going to hurt. And I don't want to do that to him, especially because the primary reason for it happening is because this is his first game and he just didn't know the importance of in-depth relationship building. It's like he's a deer who just got birthed, and he's steadily taking his first steps and figuring out how to be a deer and shit, and then a lion comes and eats him just as he starts to figure it out. You can't blame the lion for being a lion, but you also can't really blame the deer for not knowing how to walk at first. (in this metaphor, the game is the lion). AND NOW I'M THINKING OF TOM AS BAMBI AND I'M GETTING EVEN MORE SAD
So do I tell him? Do I let him be blindsided? If I tell him, he'll leak the fact that Sydney and Myself had a chat with him. Which would mean I would need to do pre-damage control by telling Alexis/Kat/Dana that HE made a chat of Me/Sydney/Him to try to get Alexis out, and that we were forced into it. And that just sounds like so much work.
LOOKING PAST THE VOTE
Kat definitely wants Me/Sydney/Her to be a thing. Dana's getting very close with me, and apparently is on board with a plan for the blonde girls to stick together, (#Trump2016). So like I do feel like I have options and can place myself pretty much in the center of the tribe.
My primary goal next round is to really get to know the Aso members. I have to admit that I've been really lazy with responding to their messages or building up relationships with them, I haven't even talked to Sash at all yet. I've just been so focused on really building up STRONG relationships with my current tribe that I haven't had the time to really get to know the half of our community.
But if a twist comes that forces Aso/Ozato together, then I'll be very grateful for any strong relationships over on their tribe. So next round I'm going to focus a lot on making members of the Aso tribe comfortable with myself.
I'm nervous about both of our tribes losing the challenge. In my first season of Good vs Evil, we had a very similar setup where one side of two tribes dominated the other in the first few challenges, (The East winning challenges over The West), and when tribes started to swap around, the East side had such a numbers advantage that they were able to pick off a lot of the west members during the pre-merge stage. I don't want that to happen to the Coast, so we REALLY need to pick it up in this next challenge. If I get eliminated, I want it to be because I was a threat or because I did something wrong myself. Not because I end up in the minority of a swap and couldn't do anything about it.
