Survivor: LJ Idol Reunion Part 5

[clauderainsrm]

 When I started the last reunion segment, this was the stretch of the game that I wanted to talk about, where things fell apart due to Real Life and where Asaga cost themselves control going into the merge. 

Thanks to the new configuration of tribes after the shake-up, Luzon broke their losing streak, with LaMina squeezing out a second place finish and sending Asaga to tribal council. 

But that's not the only important thing that happened that day. 

After WEEKS of hinting about a hidden immunity idol, the first one was found by flipflop_diva !

From my perspective, I'd been practically begging someone to find it - posting the same Tarsier picture after every clue. (It was hidden under the image of the first one I posted)

It actually ended up coming down to a mistake.  I'd made a clue, and hid it under the new Tarsier image, but when I went to preview it, I realized that the order had been flipped, and had I hit "post" at that point, the clue would have been visible.  Oops! 

So I changed them back around and thought "That was close!!" 

What I DIDN'T realize was that in making that change, the text around that image had been made into a link as well! So when flipflop_diva looked at it on her phone, she noticed that the text was different, and clicked on it... taking her to the location of the first clue!

She still had to figure it out, and go back through several weeks of posts to find where the hidden idol was "buried", but she did... and the game was afoot!!

Sure, there was a chance that she would misuse it, or go home with an idol in her pocket. But at least ONE of the Survivor fans in the game had a little bit of a safety net. So that felt good. 

***
I felt "less good" from the first new Asaga Tribal Council.  I found out after the fact that megatronix asked to be voted out.  Which is the ONLY way this vote makes sense from anything other than a self-destructing/imploding sense.  Adoptedwriter was the odd one out going into this tribal, and the fact that she managed to escape elimination at this point gave her a clear shot at getting far into the merge, and keeping the original Luzon in the mix. You manage to convince megatronix to stay (would that even have been possible at this point? *shrugs* I don't know how convincing you are! :D) and original Luzon doesn't make a comeback going into the merge. Which, to me at least, completely shifts the game. 

Then again, adoptedwriter didn't even get a single vote in that tribal, so maybe she would have stayed and lawchicky would have gone out... which again, would have been a huge mistake (to anyone except the winner) IMO. 

There are MANY "completely shifts the game" moments as we get closer to the end, but this one always struck me as critical. 

***
But critical losses seem to be a theme, because after the challenge, both impoetry and n3m3sis43 ended up quitting the game.
it did even out the tribes again - BUT took original Asaga down one more person overall. Meaning what was a 3 person-advantage was down 2. 

As I've said before, impoetry made the graphics for this event. He was one of the MOST excited about things coming in.  He was going to play as "The Wildcard", somewhere between a Coach and a Specialist. 
Real life just got the better of him though, and he never really had the time to get into the game the way he wanted. 

I wasn't entirely sure what N3m3sis43 was doing, strategy-wise in the game. But later hearing that she had been loosely working with flipflop_diva makes sense in retrospect.  I thought she was in a pretty good spot (Luzon being down in the numbers not withstanding... ultimately though, she wouldn't have been the first, or even second target, for anyone looking to get rid of "visible threats"... and she seemed to be willing to consider her options. Which would have been dangerous for everyone else going down the stretch just after the merge.) 

I didn't close the poll in time this week - and although no one has asked, I will tell you what happened. I KNEW about both of these drops before the poll was set to close. I had fully intended on closing it on time, but at the last minute I was called away from my computer and it didn't get closed in time... which is a pretty rare thing, and highly embarrassing. BUT, knowing that there wasn't going to be a regular tribal council this week, I didn't feel as badly about it as I would have... 

***
The two drops forced the merge to take place earlier than scheduled.  What would have happened in those two votes? How would the game have changed if new Luzon had been forced to go to tribal? Or LaMina? What if Asaga went again? I have no idea. 

But a merge also means that there is a hidden immunity idol hidden. And flipflop_diva now knew how to look... and ended up with a SECOND idol in her possession!

I believe it was around this time that I first heard about the alliance between her and gunwithoutmusic... so in that short period of time she went from "the next person to be voted out" to one of the people in the strongest positions in the game. 

***
The Edge of Extinction ended up being more anti-climatic than I had wanted... just due to the amounts of drops toward the end. I was in communication with jenwithapen, so I knew she wouldn't be able to come back, and the last three people hadn't had the time to really change their minds about fighting.  Which means it came down to 2 people! 
I was really regretting not saying "AT LEAST one person will be returning"... instead of just 1.  Bringing both swirlsofpurple AND bittyjane into the game would have shifted things. But it would have also meant that everyone voted out was back in the game, which felt like a complete reset. And besides, the only time 2 players had ever come back was in Pearl Islands, and that didn't seem like a good move (which is why I didn't make that call in the first place.) 

Still, I felt bad for bittyjane, who I think could have done really well if brought back into the mix. 

***
The question of "merge boot" always comes up in a game of Survivor.  Traditionally, it's the strongest player from the weakest alliance. It sets the stage for the game to come. 

This time, that decision was taken from the group when minikin25  missed the deadline and was eliminated. I was personally sad to see her go. 
She's an "old school Idol" competitor that not a lot of the newer folx had the opportunity to interact with before, and I thought that was great to see how well she had been doing. 

From a game perspective though, I saw her as someone who would have had a clear path to the very end of the game. As the "bigger names" went after each other, she would have just been behind the scenes/outside the chaos, writing her entries and disappearing from their radars. 

She was doing well enough in the polls that she wasn't going to be at the bottom either. In my "head canon" she would either be brought into someone's rag-tag alliance or be the outlier that surprises everyone at the end of the game. 

Plus, it took out yet another original Asaga... bringing the original tribes in at 6 each.  Would the new relationships shift things? Would swirlsofpurple go back to the tribe that voted her out, or get vengeance??? I was excited to see what would happen next. 

***
What were YOU thinking at this stage of the game? 

Comments

[gunwithoutmusic]

After the tribe switch, I felt like I was in a pretty good position. Losing impoetry almost made me feel like I had been shot in the foot - was aligning myself with him in the beginning going to be a mistake that would end up seeing me get the boot shortly after the merge? It was scary. But I think that, regardless of how things shook out at that point, it was ultimately the right decision, since he had a prior relationship with bsgsix and (since I had a prior relationship with impoetry) that helped me out with her trusting me and wanting to be on my side, which I think made all the difference in my game.

At that point, I'd already been in talks with flipflop_diva, so it wasn't a difficult shift to say, "Look, impoetry was my day one alliance and he's out of the game, so I need someone else on my side to help maintain numbers," and pull her in as an "offical" alliance member. bsgsix was in talks with halfshellvenus, so going into the merge looked okay. We didn't have enough for a majority, but we had enough where we could probably get a majority through talking to other people.

My hope was that, when we got to the merge, original Asaga would still have numbers and we could group back together and Pagong the original Luzon, but after the drops, that was not to be. Going into the merge tied freaked me out. That first Tribal Council with the merged tribe was going to be a doozy, I knew, and had a strong possibility of sealing my fate in the game.

I almost wish that La Mina did have the opportunity to go to Tribal Council, just so I could really solidify my alliance with flipflop_diva and show her that I was being honest when I said I didn't want to gang up on her for being a former Luzon, but luckily that wasn't really necessary.

I would have also liked to have seen bittyjane come back into the game - with only two people competing, it does seem silly to have them both come back in; that kind of makes the challenge pointless in that case. But I would have been interested to see how far they went. swirlsofpurple managed to avoid the curse of returning and being immediately voted out again; I think bittyjane could have, too.

[clauderainsrm]

How do you think your alliance with impoetry would have gone if he HAD been able to devote the time to his original strategy of being the Coach of the season? Especially with his talk of just throwing out seemingly erratic votes to mess with people?

Would that have made it difficult, or KNOWING that was his game, would that have made him an appealing goat?

[gunwithoutmusic]

Honestly, my expectation in the beginning was that the final three was going to be me, bsgsix, and impoetry. That was the plan, anyway.

I actually didn't know until just now that's how he was planning on playing the game, and I can imagine if we had all gotten further, bsgsix and I might have had some conversations like, "What are we going to do with this guy?" lol - but I think he could have been an appealing goat had he gotten to the end and played that way.

At the same time, for the entire competition, it was really hard for me to judge what people were going to do, and what that meant ultimately for strategy. Taking a goat to the end is usually decent Survivor strategy, but in this game, would bringing along an erratic player to the end get me votes because people like me better than an erratic player, or would it lose me votes because they see me protecting someone they don't like?

Personally, if I was on real Survivor and ended up on the Jury, I'd give my vote to the goat if it came down to that, just to spite the person that thought it would be a good idea to torture everyone with an unlikeable person for 39 days. The best strategy for this game was probably always going to be "ally yourself with strong people that stand a chance of rising to the top on their own." I think that the Jury wouldn't have respected someone dragging along a person to the end just to "be better than."

[clauderainsrm]

I saw Asaga as having the advantage in that swirlsofpurple was part of that Luzon number, and she had already been voted out by them AND flipflop_diva knew she was on the outs with her original tribe, was forming bonds with you and others from Asaga. She also had 2 hidden immunity idols in her pocket.

At that point I thought we might see a couple Luzon members go before the two of you went rogue and started taking out Asaga threats. (I didn't know about the Bsgsix alliance at that point)

[gunwithoutmusic]

I would have happily taken out original Luzon members immediately post-merge if that looked like it was a possibility at all. I was okay with losing original Asaga members that weren't part of my alliance, but I really wanted to see original Asaga stay mostly intact.

But without majority numbers, most Tribal Councils were just figuring out where the wind was blowing and making sure it wasn't blowing toward one of my alliance members. I figured that if we could keep everyone off of our backs for just a few Tribal Councils, we'd be okay once we could get a majority.

Of course, I didn't know about flipflop's idols at this point - if I had, I might have felt a little more secure. :)

[clauderainsrm]

I just had a thought - given the conversation about protecting bsgsix during the tribal swap, did that contribute to you not going after bleodswean at the merge?

Given the talk at the start of the game between her and halfshellvenus about how much they wished that they were playing with each other, on the same side, I remember wondering why people were letting the two of them get back together.

Or did you just feel secure enough with halfshellvenus that the notion of her going in a different direction wasn't a real possibility?

[gunwithoutmusic]

At that point, I wasn't working directly with halfshellvenus, but I believed that she wasn't quite as into the strategy side of it at that point, so I wasn't really worried about her - I sort of assumed that she'd still want to work with her Asaga teammates and not defect, especially after we had worked so well together as a team!

When we went into the merge with a "tie" at Tribal Council, however, I was a little nervous about flipflop... Well, flipflopping. Even though we had gone through the tribe switch, there was no telling how those old Tribal lines held, and flip-flop and I didn't talk too much about her time on Luzon, so there was a possibility for me that flipflop might have just agreed with me to keep herself in in the event of a LaMina tribal, but that she already had people over on Luzon that she'd go right back to.

So, if anything, I was more worried about whether or not I could trust flipflop than halfshell!

[alycewilson]

At this point in the game, I wasn't thinking strategically, being relieved to have secured immunity with Luzon. The piece I wrote was one of my favorites from the season, about my family's connection to a young boy who traveled to the colonies on the Mayflower, facing hardship and tragedy. I ended up sharing it with my family and can say it's one of the best things, for me, that came out of this season. Sometimes it takes a deadline to make me write the pieces that need to be written.

[clauderainsrm]

Having the pressure to actually sit down and write something helps *a lot*.

When we shifted into the Merge, was that something on your radar as "Oh, at some point it becomes an individual game" or were you just taking it one moment at a time?

[wolfden]

You manage to convince megatronix to stay (would that even have been possible at this point? *shrugs* I don't know how convincing you are! :D) and original Luzon doesn't make a comeback going into the merge. Which, to me at least, completely shifts the game.

Not persuasive enough apparently. I really didn't want to vote Megatronix out at that vote but I also really didn't want to end up being the one voted out. I would have preferred Megatronix to stay.

[clauderainsrm]

You had gone from being exiled to part of a dominant team, to that team now being in trouble.

Obviously, you ended up being eliminated shortly after this point - but were you feeling more comfortable at any point as you headed into the merge? As a Survivor fan, I was looking at your position and thinking you were in a prime position for a deep run post-merge.

[bleodswean]

Honestly? This was the point when I realized I was "playing" the game wrong and that there was no tribe loyalty, and allegiances were to mysterious shadow alliances. It felt pretty lonely. But the writing was strong all-around at this phase and that was enjoyable - as a writer and reader.

[clauderainsrm]

You playing that way, with a strong core Luzon - plus bringing in other friends not originally on that tribe was a HUGE threat to anyone wanting to play with an alliance. You had what I like to call a "natural alliance" of goodwill working for you. Which is really, really dangerous.

[murielle]

I had only one alliance in the game, with Bleodswean. Guess that's no surprise. :-)

[bleodswean]

LOL! We were Babes in Woods, m'dear.

[murielle]

Yeah. And there was all this stuff flying around, pretty much from the get-go.

[clauderainsrm]

Which is why I couldn't grasp why no one seemed to be targeting either of you. If you have two people that everyone KNOWS will never turn on each other, you get one of them out! :)

[murielle]

Do you want to see the Monster? Do you? :-)

[clauderainsrm]

Do I need to sic a shower on you again? ;)

[murielle]

LOL! No! LOL!

[bleodswean]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA. Youse two.

[murielle]

(Giggles)

[bleodswean]

Oh, G. *pets* I was being targeted.....a little flock of birdies told me later.

[clauderainsrm]

Which just makes the fact that you were still in contention deep into the game that much more impressive.

[murielle]

That's because she's such an awesome writer and fantastic human being.

[swirlsofpurple]

Would swirlsofpurple go back to the tribe that voted her out, or get vengeance??? I was excited to see what would happen next.

The vengeance question is so weird to me because I honestly never thought about it as being voted out by 'the tribe' as such, and never felt any ill-will to anyone. It's a game, getting voted out just happens.

[bleodswean]

I’ve thought long and hard about why Survivor Idol didn’t work for me. Reading through these post-game threads have helped me get closer to the why and how. It was the alliances. They felt unfriendly. And disloyal to the tribes after the merge.

Regular Idol has alliances, too! But those alliances can only take its allies so far. I don’t think any of us here believe that Survivor Idol was won/lost without the alliances. We’ve seen many a regular Idol won by a darkhorse and it’s absolutely thrilling!

In regular Idol the writing does matter and the voting is more evenly distributed amongst allianced and non-allianced voters. Survivor Idol didn’t have those kinds of numbers. Perhaps it would have played differently with a larger voting audience. Oftentimes, it felt as though the writing was a sidegame to the more active game of private messaging and deciding who to vote off.

Those who entered into alliances worked hard to maintain those relationships, even when we were actively engaged as tribes. There was no way to work “around” an alliance, one had to choose either to work “with” the alliance or singly.

I’m not suggesting AT ALL that alliances are a negative thing. Humans love to join forces and battle it out. It was intriguing, if a bit threatening, to watch the alliances work behind-the-scenes. I’m sure for those in the thick of it, it was a weekly jolt of adrenalin.

It did feel odd in a writing competition, though. LOL!

[clauderainsrm]

"It did feel odd in a writing competition, though. LOL!"

I think it took a lot of people awhile to wrap their head around the change. Which is why, at the onset, I kept saying that Idol was "the writing competition with reality show elements" and this was a "reality show with writing elements". :D

Making that transition was easier for some than others.

[bleodswean]

This, sir, exactly - this was a "reality show with writing elements". :D

Idol has become a gentler experience than the first two seasons I played, and I think I've grown a bit soft because of that! EEP!!! Are my fightin' days behind me?

WILL you do this again??

[clauderainsrm]

:D

It's not in my short term plans to do another Survivor season. I won't rule it out another special event in the future, but it would be quite some time from now if I did.