Episode 2

[Joaquin]

I won't be around a lot this weekend because I'm going on vacation but I'll be around as much as I can and I'll confess for this episode later tonight.

[Joaquin]

This round started off with Parvati and Nat T leaving. Parvati appeared offline during the first challenge and fucked her tribe over. Nat T accidentally logged on near the start and fucked her tribe over. So both logical boots. It was nice to win the first one and so I pretty much just tried to keep talking to everyone and I felt like I got pretty close to Ian mainly.

The next challenge was finding random images posted on the board. I've done challenges similar to this and I don't find them very fun. I was assigned to look under members where of course there are no pictures. So my main contribution was figuring out who the pictures we found were of. I didn't think we did too bad but we only found nine and only guessed four of the people pictured so we got trounced. Sure enough, we were the first tribe completely eliminated from the challenge. Cirie was easily the most helpful in the challenge. Ian was around and helping so that's always good. John, Crystal, and I were there but we weren't doing a whole ton. And Debbie did Debbie things (making nothing seem like something).

So we lost and now it was a matter of talking to people and trying to solidify the relationships I had formed. Now, I'm not going to lie, life hasn't been too free the past few days since the game has started and though I did use the free time I had, I half-assed my gameplay in the first few days which is something I almost never do. So I basically just took the last 24 hours and played a but hard, trying to get myself back into things. My relationship with Ian was easily my most valuable tool this round since we were able to pick a target, agree on it, and spread it. We basically decided that John and Debbie were the most inactive. I would've preferred to see John go because Debbie seemed nicer and slightly more around but John was talking to both Ian and I at that moment about the gender ratio of our tribe. I tend to ignore stuff like that in these games because I don't think alliances split according to gender often but it was a fair enough point to affect Ian and I wasn't too deadset either way. So the target shifted to Debbie.

Ian and I first tried to bring it up with John and, at least with me, he was weird about it. He was pretty noncommittal and gave those really broad cop-out answers I love so much. So I talked to him more and though he still seemed hesitant and a bit weird, he seemed down enough. I then just spent the rest of the night talking to him about our lives so I feel a little closer to John which was sort of a goal in talking to him. We left it kind of up in the air as to a specific target and we wouldn't be around a lot so he said I could just PM him. Next, Ian and I talked to Crystal and (though individually) we brought up Debbie and she seemed to agree 100% because Debbie isn't around often, starts conversations and then just stops them abruptly, and the tribe would be kept strong if she was voted out. So Crystal was down.

No one else was on at the time but we presumably had 4 and just wanted to get the other two so it was a calm vote. So Debbie started trying to talk to each of us and it made us both realize that she was the smartest person to target because we both had pretty long conversations with her and she refused to reveal a target to either of us. She seemed very shady and obviously didn't trust Ian or I if she wasn't naming anyone as a target. I chocked it up more to her personality than actual mistrust but if she was going anyway I wasn't too concerned. It turned into a bit of a fun game between Ian and I trying to figure out who could get her to name a target first. We both lost.

Yesterday morning I confirmed everything with Ian and he was good with everything. He had talked to Kimmi so I decided to do the same. I talked to Kimmi more about ORGs and personal life stuff than anything else. I actually spent a very long time doing this and lost track of the main reason I had to talk to her. When it got close to when I had to go for vacation stuff, she brought up tribal and we both very easily agreed on Debbie since that was the name we had heard the most. I told Ian, he was good with it, and then I asked him to talk to Cirie and be sure about John since I wasn't going to be around anymore.

Based on results, he did just that. Debbie went home 6-1. She voted for me after I suggested we vote together but considering I didn't talk to her again after that to confirm a target or something it makes sense. Nbd, considering the rest of the tribe stayed loyal and we booted the least active person 6-1. Now I know I'm probably not in the most comfortable spot going forward because I haven't been super active because of how busy I have been lately but at least for now I trust Ian and Kimmi too have my back so I'm hoping for the best there. We'll have to see but I am thrilled to still be here considering my slow start and I hope I can gain some momentum now.

Oh and Debbie told Ian "Fuck you" before she left. That doesn't make sense considering she wouldn't even reveal a target to him and clearly didn't trust him. The whole situation seems pretty stupid unless Ian isn't actually telling me how much they talked. But not too much to worry about since Debbie is gone. I'm thinking one more challenge where one tribe loses. That gets us down to 16 and then we swap into two tribes of 8. If that is the case, that may not be that bad because I don't trust my tribe a whole lot rn and a new group with new possibilities could be really good. So the goal is to win this challenge in any way possible so that I can go into a swap unscathed. The issue is I suck at creative challenges and I'm not even going to be around that much because I'm on vacation. So I pretty much have to rely on my tribe but we need to win rn no matter what. Hopefully they can pull it out and I can just relax until the probable swap. My main goal before the challenge will be to just keep talking to my tribe mates so I can bond with them, stay if we do lose, and stay close to them if we win but then swap. Should be fun.