I've been pretty sick for the past couple days, but I'm on the upswing now so I thought now would be a good time to post a confessional.

So...alpha male Butch Lockley has fallen. As soon as I saw multiple votes for Butch, I knew something fishy had happened. He had assured me that Jefra and Eliza were on board with our plan. He said he was really tight with Jefra and she was really tight with Eliza, so Eliza would do whatever Jefra did. They did the same thing, but they both voted for Butch. That was the first thing that went wrong. After that, Sydney was persuaded to flip and vote for Butch as well. She later explained to me that she just "didn't like him". Very clear, thanks Syd. Maybe she was unhappy because people kept leaving her out of the loop and the Three Amigos (me, Butch, and Reynold) kept on discussing stuff and just telling her later on. Maybe Butch's OTT personality just pissed her off. We'll never know. The third thing that went wrong was Kat not wanting to draw rocks. Instead of either James or Jefra/Eliza using their double votes, they decided that she should vote with them too.

I'm not really mad at Kat, because drawing rocks is a sucky thing to do and I wouldn't have wanted to go out like that. In addition, she has apologized profusely and she sound pretty sincere. But I am pissed at Sydney right now. Butch did say at one point that she would be the most likely Coast person to flip, but I didn't expect it to happen (and he didn't either). We had the numbers: 5 Coasters and Brad vs. the Mountain people. But Sydney completely messed us up. And then, after all that, Butch still picks her to go to Ukiyo! What the fuck? Butch, you pointed her out as the person most likely to flip, and someone flipped. Who do you think it was? "Syd, thanks for voting me out! Here's an advantage in the game!" Well, we were actually allies, so I would've liked that visit too.

Since my day one final three of myself, Butch, and Debbie has been wrecked, my game is in a bit of a transition phase. My general under-the-radar play apparently kept me around last tribal council because the Mountain people didn't even consider voting me out (or maybe it's because I'm so nice lol). But that's basically done now. Butch had been doing the strategic heavy lifting for our alliance, trying to flip people and gathering intel (although a lot of it ended up being fake stuff from various Sakai people). Reynold and I will probably be sharing that duty now, and I'll try to use the quiet, "nice guy" persona that other players apparently attribute to me to figure out where everyone's at.

The new tribe (I've had to say this so many times now) is me, Dana, Brad, James, and Matty. As usual, there's one person (Matty) who I've basically never talked to and isn't ever online. James is my target for this round and I'm okay with that. He's a nice guy, he lives near me, and we share common interests (The Walking Dead), but I'm not sure if he'd trust me in an alliance, especially because I just voted for him. Dana and Brad are my alliance on this tribe. I trust them both, neither of them are at all tight with the other two. Brad had been completely on the outs with the original Sakai people (which is why he's with us now) and I don't think Dana would align with people that tried to get her out three times. There is a rumor that James has a double vote, but Brad has acknowledged that the people who told him that might have been lying since they don't trust him, which makes sense because he's not aligned with those people any more.

In more good news, the other two tribes look awesome. Ozato has a Coast majority, with Reynold, Syd, and Kat. I'm uneasy that Syd is part of that majority, but hopefully she doesn't flip again. On Sakai, we have FIVE Mountain people. This is what we were dreaming of. None of them are clearly on the outs. There are 3 Ki, 2 Sakai. If a Sakai gets voted out, they won't have their original six any more, and that would be fantastic for everyone because having all six of your members at this point in the game is a huge threat. If a Ki gets voted out, the other Ki members will be really pissed and everything will erupt into chaos. I'd love some chaos, especially after some of them have flaunted how tight their super-alliance is. See how tight it is when they have to turn on each other.

RIP Debbie and Butch