In the last vote, Matty went home. He was the obvious choice based on inactivity and alliances. We tried to bring James into the fold on this one with a view to a future alliance, but that may not have worked (more on that later). We had also sort of speculated that voting out Matty was the safest bet to keep people on our side, and that seemed to be the case. None of us received any messages like "omg why did you vote him out" or anything along those lines.

Over the past couple rounds, Dana, Brad, and I have been approached more by the original Ki members (JFP, Marisa, and Spencer). It definitely seems like they would be open to a postmerge alliance in order to take out Sakai. As of now, neither party has approached the other or explicitly mentioned anything, but once the results of the orange tribe's TC are announced we'll start making plans almost immediately.

On Wednesday night, I made a serious effort to get to bed early. A lot of shit has been happening outside of the game so I wanted to forget about it and just rest. I turned off all my electronics: my phone, my computer, everything. The next morning, I wake up and eat my breakfast, I'm very calm and rested at this point. I sit down in front of my computer, and when I turn it on, I see unread messages from five different people. James had mutinied literally ten minutes after I went to bed. Immediately after, he messaged me, Brad and Dana messaged me, and a couple of people from the other two tribes had messaged me to say "what the fuck just happened?!"

I learned two important things from James' mutiny. The first thing I learned was not to leave the game behind. Things are always changing, and you can put yourself at a serious disadvantage if you're not online when those things happen. The second thing I learned is that I need to commit myself 100% to big moves. I've been planning out this alliance with Ki for a while now, which you can probably observe in all my other confessionals, but I've been putting off actually making the move and trying to form that alliance. With James' mutiny, I'm afraid that I might have lost some of the Ki members' trust and missed the boat to make that big move.

Now that James is gone, we're down to three people in the tribe. After this vote, we're gonna go down to two people. This probably means a merge is coming in the next couple of days. Aside from that, I have to decide who I'm gonna vote for. It's been made clear to me that I'm the swing vote. Dana told me she has no intention of voting me out, and she's made her case for why she should stay. If I choose to keep her, we'll both vote for Brad. If I decide to keep Brad, Brad will vote with me even though he's apparently been trying to recruit Dana to vote against me instead.

There are pros and cons to keeping both of them. Both Dana and Brad are consistent sources of information about the tribal dynamics of the original Mountain people, since Brad started out over there and Dana spent a lot of time on old Sakai too. My main concern right now is that none of the Mountain people, Ki or Sakai, like or trust Brad at all. Although he's extremely loyal to me, that loyalty stems from the lack of options he has. I think it would send a positive message to the people I'm trying to align with if I vote him out this round. Additionally, he's less of a strategic player than Dana is. Obviously I might not want to keep a really strategic player in the long run, but good strategy is important to have while we're trying to secure our spots at the end of the game.

My primary (and only) issue with Dana was Brad's mention of an all-girls alliance potentially brewing. This definitely worried me, so I asked Kat what was going on. I told her that I had heard two different accounts of her relationship with Sydney, which was true. Brad had said that her and Syd were really tight, and that they could flip Dana to start an all-girls alliance if I kept Dana around instead of him. Dana told me that Kat was really pissed at Syd because of the pressure Syd put on her to vote for Butch. Without disclosing who had said what, I asked Kat which of these things were true. She informed me that what Dana had told me was true, and that she definitely wasn't gonna get in an girls alliance with Sydney.

That brings me to another concern about Brad. Throughout the game, he's been a solid source of information, and he's told us a lot about how things worked in the Mountain tribes. However, a lot of the things he has told us have turned out to be wrong. Neither Jefra or Eliza had a double vote, Julia actually had it. James also didn't have a double vote, because Spencer apparently has it. It's not an issue of trust, I definitely trust Brad because he has no reason to lie. It just feels like he's being deliberately misinformed, and I don't want to keep someone around who doesn't know what's going on.

Regardless, this has definitely been the toughest vote so far. As much as it makes sense strategically to get rid of Brad, I've gotten pretty tight with him and it sucks that I have to choose between him and Dana, who I also really like. Expect to see a frowny face on whatever vote I decide to cast tonight.