Episode 5: Masterminding a Murder

[elise]

Good morning y'all!

So it's our first day post tribe swap. Woo! Supposedly Catania kingdom fell (As if. We were doing awesome thank you very much) which sucks cuz Catania was the only tribe name I could pronounce. Im now on Palermo aka the middle aged tribe. Geez I feel like I need to get a divorce and a fancy new sports car just referring to myself as "middle aged". When did I get this old?



Anyways, my tribe consists of myself, Eric + Kate from messina, and Stephen + Patrick from old palermo. Ive talked to all of them on a regular basis so thats good. Normally Id be working a lot harder to turn the two groups against each other (or at the very least, against not me) but fortunately we have the option of voting out the other tribe. It's a lot easier to sell " lets all work together", at least at this stage. With this 2 day challenge I can take my time getting into peoples heads a bit more before attempting to form smaller alliances. Timing is everything.

Im not generally the person to make day 1 alliances, so my strategy is to pick up the pieces when the weak day 1 alliances inevitably fall apart. Theoretically people will be looking at whats best for them at this point, as opposed to a knee jerk reaction to make any alliance to avoid being first boot. Create the alliance the people want, and they'll be far more loyal to you than if you make an early alliance and just hope they'll stick with the first person who talked to them. Once you make a couple of these you can choose which one is in your own best interest and run from there. Or work with a combination. Whatever ensures you're a) not voted out and b) in the best position possible on day 39. 

So anyways, I've been trying to bond with my tribe as much as possible. The quickest way to bond by far is by mutual hatred, so we've been plotting to murder the hosties over how ridiculous this challenge is. 20 gems?!?! None of us are Heidi Strobel, you guys. I highly suspect half these people cant even tie their own shoelaces properly. So I feel like this is gonna come down to whatever tribe can collectively suck the least. Riveting.


^If only I could be like Heidi. Mastermind puzzles are like, scared to death of her.

At this point Im really tempted to just tell my tribe I got in a car accident on my way to an amusement park and cant do the challenge. But I dont wanna be booted next, so I guess I should practice. Sigh. Wish me luck!

Xoxo
Elise

[elise]

I'm on my way to the Nas/Iggy Azalea concerts today (not as exciting as the Kanye concert yesterday but whatever) so apologies that this will likely be short and devoid of my usual sylistic flair rofl.

Obviously we lost the challenge despite me doing pretty well. Sigh. I really hate losing so much. Anyways, everyone on new Palermo agreed pretty quickly to vote DeJuan because he's DeJuan. His name is basically synonymous with "waste of space" at this point.

Apparently as of last night Bryce was trashing his name and everything pointed to an easy vote.

Obviously if that were true I wouldn't be writing this.

Today I was talking to Justin about pokemon and casually asked who he was voting for. "It's too early to tell, my tribe hasn't all been online and we're still considering the what ifs."

Uhhhhhhhh.

I told him I'd be happy as long as Catania stayed together, which he whole heartedly agreed to and said he hadn't heard my name. We happily resumed our chat about Brocks backstory. But I'd be an idiot not to see that mess tribe was going after a Palermo.

So I asked Palermo if they had heard anything. It would have been smarter to go to them individually but that takes time, and I have shit to do. Apparently Mess has been ignoring everyone, which put everyone on edge because everyone is convinced it's them.

We all agreed to talk to any connections we have on mess. Nobodys been getting anything so it's probably safe to say they have Tom on board and one of us is going. Jack is offline/on vacation and Tom insisted on an alliance between us yesterday (which is a good sign) but was offline when all this was going down. So all I have to talk to is Justin.

Justin reminds me of my dog when shes conflicted because she was told to sit but really wants to chase that squirrel. He really seems like he wants to tell me, but his tribe insisted on silence. Which of course makes him relatively useless to me, but I do feel fairly confident I'm staying at least because about the one thing he didn't attempt to skirt around was that I'm not the target and Catania should stay strong. I let him off the hook and told him as long as we were cool I'm happy. I don't have time to press the issue as much as I'd like, but really it doesn't matter to me much who goes.

Kate and Eric both seem to think its them (and I had a heart to heart with Kate over it), which makes me think theres something they're not telling me. Idk anything about patricks game so who knows about him. Stephen told me today that he heard yap was worried about a chronicles alliance, which worries me because I don't wanna take the fall for an alliance that doesn't even exist. However, considering all 3 catania would have to betray me I feel like I'd be harder to sell as a vote than stephen. But who knows, I won't be around this evening. Because if I'm gonna die anyways I'd rather die and see a nas concert.

[elise]

Well shit. That was insane.

Good thing is, I didn't go home!



When I left for the concert I was sure one of us was going and pretty sure it wasnt me.

When I came back all hell broke loose.

I arrived at like 11:20pm, and start talking to Tom. Tom had insisted on an alliance yesterday (which, who knows how many he has cuz he seems to talk to everyone) so we went on call and he explained his decision. He said he was voting Stephen because hes gotta think about threats at merge or idek I wasn't really paying attention. I just told him I appreciated him telling me, and was glad it wasnt me. The interesting part is he mentioned people were worried about Chronicles people, which confirms what Stephen had told me earlier about yap. I mean, it is totally a legit concern because we're awesome, but there hasnt been an official chronicles alliance or anything. What worries me is people will be far more wary of me. Information is key in this game, and if people are tight lipped because of past games I've played then that really fucking sucks.

Anyways, I get several very insistant messages from Stephen to go on call with him so we all start a group chat. While I was gone they had ascertained that the boot was probably either me or Stephen. Kate had told me she would message me important developments, which I assumed would have included "everyone thinks Im the boot target" but apparently not. Whatever. Just means I know where I stand, and Ill deal with that accordingly. So anyways at like 11:30 Kate says she just got Tom to say the vote is Stephen, and Patrick reveals he has an idol and wants to play it. Lol.



Patrick, bless his heart, wants to use the idol so our tribe remains intact. I, of course, was instantly on board because a) it removes the threat of a pagonging and b) one less idol for me to worry about. If patrick wants to use his precious hii just to save stephen at final 15 then great for him. Well, maybe not great for him. Great for me*

Naturally, using the idol to vote Dejuan out would be a huge waste so we began to discuss who to vote for instead. PATRICK suggested we vote Yap because apparently he and yap had been allied and he had told yap about the idol, and presumably didnt wanna deal with a pissed off yap after the vote. Omg Patrick you're so adorable. I dunno why the fuck you told us you had a deal with yap or why you'd wanna vote him out over someone you dont know as well, but I am totally okay with this. Yap is the perfect target for me because he's the #1 anti-chronicles advocate, he seems to talk to a lot of people and none of those people are me. So thank you Patrick. Please, continue to benefit my game through your own naivety.

So after a brief celebration (if there's one thing my tribe thrives on, its smug condescension and self righteousness) we all went to change our votes.



I went to talk to Tom. I do not trust him a lot, and neither does he trust me. But I did wanna start building that trust by giving him a heads up that an idol was being played. This was of course at like 11:59 so there was little he could do about it. My goal was not to change the vote, but simply build a sliver of trust with Tom and ensure he wasnt totally blindsided. Also I was sure to include that it was Kate who told everyone the vote was Stephen, because I might as well weaken whatever alliance he has with Kate while I'm at it.

And so, the idol was played, Yap went home, and Dejuan was totally confused. Just another day in CYS.

Of course, after the vote I got frantic messages from Jack, Justin and Bryce all swearing they had nothing to do with the vote. Yeaaaaah. Im sure.



The only thing less surprising than them spamming me with messages is that Dejuan wasnt. Lol. Dejuan is too cool for that shit.

I just insisted to Jack and Justin that my #1 priority is keeping Catania strong. Of course, my actual #1 priority is making sure I stay in the game regardless of who Im with, but if they're dumb enough to believe my only goal is to keep them in the game then Im less likely to be targeted in the next few rounds. Which would be nice. Plus, I might as well at least try to hide the fact that I think they're sketchy as fuck.

So everyone on Palermo went on a group call to drink/celebrate. Remember when I said how much they love condescension? It reeeeaaallly showed here. Of course there's the necessary "good job Patrick, that totally wasnt a waste of your idol" celebration, but these people go above and beyond. Kate was hyping up how amazing she was at getting info from Tom, and laughed about how shocked he was after the vote. Stephen was straight up bragging about how smug he was in his confessionals/vote. I get it, I think I'm a mastermind too.


^Second only to Kanye lol

But I dont really wanna hear about how awesome everyone thinks they are for 3 fucking hours. Hypocritical? Yes. But that doesnt make it less frustrating to be on team ego. 

Anyways, then Kate says we should bring Bryce into the call/tribe alliance thing because he's cool.

Uhhhhhh.

And everyone thinks this is a great idea.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

You realize the reason you all think Bryce is the greatest person alive is because he has a great social game, is a huge threat, and is probably playing you all. Fuck, he must have an amazing social game to get invited to join an alliance by THE PERSON HE TRIED TO VOTE OUT LITERALLY 20 MIN BEFOREHAND. But apparently he's part of the group now. Congrats to me for going from 5th to 6th place.



Obviously despite everyone bonding and insisting we're top 5 tonight, I have no plans to make it to the end with these people. But itd be unwise to do anything without solid numbers. Catanias gone, Tom has an alliance with everyone, Nav is probably gonna die soon if he remains inactive.... Which means the only other official alliance I have is with Albee. Who is Albee. I highly doubt that will pan out.

Therefore, I plan on remaining Palermo strong for at least a few votes. Get a little bit of wine in these people and they're spilling the details on all their alliances anyways, so its worth my time to just gather information. In the meantime, I need to step up my game and improve my bonds with people outside Palermo. I will need solid allies if I ever wanna pull something, or really just to survive to merge.

This is gonna get ugly. Its gonna get ugly fast.

[elise]

Ps im sorry for the length/bad grammar/rambling-ness. Side effect of being on call until 4am