Welcome to your confessional!

[Lennie Briscoe]

I'm sorry that you lost. Your individual performance was decent. Have there been any movements or shakings since your last commentary?

Saying my individual performance was decent is probably overly generous but thanks.

Jake is leaning towards voting Paul out, he seems to find it sketchy that Paul is bringing up tension between Hannah and Leon, with the implication that Paul is I guess like overselling or misrepresenting this? Except the first thing I heard from Leon post-challenge was that he's leaning Hannah specifically because of lingering feelings from before, Paul isn't making this up or (as far as I can tell?) exaggerating it.

Honestly Jake's trying my patience a bit. He's acting like this reflects negatively on Paul when I see nothing wrong with it. He's not being dishonest imho, and he's demonstrating what I would consider fairly effective gameplay. What Paul's doing is what I like to see, this is what I want in an ally, I want someone who's coming to me with his perspective on the game and what he's heard from people, this is the kind of person I think I can work with. Jake's talking about "I'm a little concerned he's a long-term threat", as if "It's final 19, let's take out the long-term threat" is a convincing argument? Yeesh. I'm much more worried about someone who's going to be a liability when we swap than I am someone who might gank me at 9 or whatever.

[Lennie Briscoe]

Bleah, Scruff basically has no interest in even pushing a little bit against Jake, which I don't think is necessarily a bad idea, but I wish I'd known that when we discussed before the challenge ended how we preferred voting out Hannah over Paul.

Jake doubled down on his dumbass "Paul is scheming by saying Leon wanted to vote out Hannah" bullshit. I honestly can't fuckin stand it, he keeps talking about Paul is making a "subtle" move but brilliant Jake saw through it, when Paul was just like, playing this straight? The person who's been sketchy and sneaky is Jake here. And like, I don't begrudge someone strategizing and using arguments maybe disingenuously to pitch a boot, but it's super super distasteful to me when he's trying to present himself as this upstanding citizen while he's trying to paint some dude playing pretty straight-up as somehow being duplicitous. We're allies for the moment and the foreseeable future, but I honestly won't mind it in the slightest when he's out, every bit of this has rubbed me the wrong way.

I told Leon not to even bother with trying to vote Hannah, Scruff has no interest in going against Jake here and that pretty much seals it. Hopefully I can salvage something with Hannah.

[Lennie Briscoe]

Apparently Scruff put in the work to flip Jake to vote Hannah, Jake still has reservations but is willing to go along with it.

[Lennie Briscoe]

So I was out earlier and couldn't write a proper confessional but apparently Scruff was able to convince Jake that voting out Hannah made sense, and reading between the lines, communicate to Jake that he was sketching me out I think. Jake clearly wasn't thrilled about the result even with Scruff's argument, but at least recognized that it was more important to maintain relationships than expend all his social capital on some pre-swap vote.

Ironically, I PM'd Hannah telling her she was safe shortly before Scruff and Jake messaged me saying they were willing to vote her out, so she's gotta feel kinda burned by me but at the time I sincerely thought she was staying. I felt bad about that, if Hannah is reading this in the future I wasn't just trying to fuck with you (though I was trying to vote you out so maybe that's cold comfort; it was nothing personal though).

Anyway onto the big news, we swapped! And it's into tribes of nine, which I was kind of hoping for, bigger tribes can have more interesting dynamics even if it is a lot more work to keep up with them. So I guess onto my tribemates:

Hercule Poirot: Great connection right off the bat. Apparently I'm the only person he's run into in the game who was in any way familiar with Poirot so we really had an instant connection. And he's a HUGE fan too, whereas my interest is only passing, but that's super cool. He wrote some incredibly long PMs about Agatha Christie books and adaptations but it's honestly charming. Also like, every time I do this (which hasn't been a lot) I'm like "oh no, I don't want to have to endure these gimmick characters" but honestly I tend to like them? and I like Poirot too. Great start here, I foresee us working together on this tribe.

Cheddar: Another good connection to start with, I have less to say about him but things are good. Both Cheddar and Poirot had similar stories of their TC, which was good to just hear multiple perspectives. Another person I'd tentatively like to work with.

Chase: Decent start, we talked some, it was fine. That sounds so damning-with-faint-praise but I'm trying to do this off the top of my head without going and rereading our PMs. I did say some sort of corny "oh so glad we connected, I feel good about our tribe" thing that in retrospect could come across as a little schmoozy? I'm not going to dwell on it, but not my finest hour.

Kate: Interesting start, she asked right away about our tribe's TCs, and then asked if I like history, which is not a typical icebreaker. She talked about a podcast she's listening to which does sound kind of interesting. There's potential to work with her, I do have nerdy interests like history and the like so maybe we can build on that.

Chan: Is this a gimmick? Someone, I think Chase said they'd talked the least to Chan and someone else on the original 12th precinct tribe, and just based off of one PM I can see why. I honestly don't know if this is shtick or what, completely ignored one oof my questions, responded to another with little chance for followup. Asked what Lennie Briscoe is from, which is fine, but yeah, not great here.

Judy: Sent a PM, no response, but that's fine, it's the first night and Poirot said she's got an inconvenient timezone.

Paul and Leon I was on the tribe with previously and feel decent about. The one thing that I'm wondering about here is whether to tell Paul the story of exactly how last TC went down, because so far I think he just thinks it was quiet, nobody said much, but it landed on Hannah, whereas Jake was fighting tooth and nail to put the vote on him. I need to think on this. I'm worried for Leon just because of the timezone difference, I'll probably PM him and tell him to explicitly make an effort with Poirot, Cheddar, and Chase at a minimum.

[Lennie Briscoe]

So I think we're doing well in the challenge, and while I missed that the challenge start time moved up, I feel like I definitely have contributed throughout the night and I don't think it's gone unnoticed. I'm honestly not worried about being targeted for challenge performance at this point in the game but even so it's nice not to have to think about that.

I'm gonna do this from memory rather than going and rereading so I may not remember all the details:

Leon: So as I mentioned in my last confessional, I sort of primed him to go connect with people I'd connected with, and it worked well. He was able to connect with Hercule and Judy at a minimum, and bonded with Kate over being a newbie (which I didn't know about Kate, good info!). He also reached out to me saying he wanted to form a two-person alliance with me, and admitted that on our original tribe he felt like he was sort of fourth and that Scruff, Jake, and I were in an alliance (which is kind of true). I told him I basically felt the same way about him, that he was third and I was fourth, which is also kind of true, and that I was very enthusiastic about forming an alliance with him. Incidentally, anyone reading this might be going "didn't you say you'd ideally see Leon go over Hannah and Paul like just a day or two ago?" which is true, but I felt like I had options with everyone from my former tribe going forward so it was really just an issue of who I thought had the most post-swap potential. I've been impressed with him, I was worried that he might have troubles connecting (it took a little while for him and me, after all), but he and Hercule get along and it sounds like he and Judy have gotten along well (better than Judy and me, more on that later).

So shortly after I tell him I'm okay with the two-person alliance with him, he also proposes to Hercule and then me a three person alliance of us three. Hercule brings this to me, which I really appreciate, and we're both agreed that while it seems a little premature for him to be doing this, it seems to be genuine and also in all of our interests. I won't lie, there's a part of me that's thinking "oh for once I get to be in an alliance with players that I might be able to beat in a challenge", but that's a long ways off from being relevant (and also only based off of one challenge).

Hercule: I feel like I should be calling him Poirot, nobody calls Poirot "Hercule", but I keep reflexively typing Hercule. C'est la vie. Anyway, still love him, very happy we're very much on the same page about Leon. Also he said the mods made fun of him for his challenge performance in round two, shame on you!

Cheddar: Continued to talk, found out we both like The Challenge, which can be a nice thing to bond over.

Chase: Talked more about board games/tabletop games, still cordial

Kate: Awkward to talk to. Like she led off talking about a podcast, we talked about that podcast, I asked if she listened to many others and named a few, she said no. I asked if she watched TV, no (of course not). She listed several other interests, such as reading, and reading on the internet, and said she liked listening to music but only mentioned Renaissance choral music. You know, that popular style of music we all listen to and talk about. Anyway, I asked some more questions about interests, not great. Leon doesn't want to vote her out because he says she's a newbie like him, which I guess checks out, so worth working at this further I guess.

Judy: She replied to my message today, I replied to her and didn't really get anything the rest of the day, but I kind of made the mistake where someone follows up with questions, you answer them, but there's no jumping-off point for conversation in your response? My bad, so I followed up again asking about other interests, hopefully she responds. I also asked Hercule to put in a good word if she seems less than crazy about me based on that interaction.

Chan: Probably the least chatty person but apparently likes The Challenge? So maybe we can talk about that. Leon seems to currently want him to go if we go to TC, which I guess is the best option, and also from what I know the most likely. I'm still hoping we win the challenge though.

[Heiji Hattori]

New friends? New enemies? How would you rank your new tribemates in terms of favorability?

[Lennie Briscoe]

New friends? New enemies? How would you rank your new tribemates in terms of favorability?

Not a lot has changed in terms of how I feel about people, the biggest would be that Judy and I finally clicked a bit, in no small part to Leon and Hercule's help. There's a part of me that's concerned that Judy sees herself as the fourth in that group, but she could see me as the fourth too.

Short summary of the day: we lost the challenge (fucking ugh), Chan was the early name thrown out, with Hercule doing the dirty work. Chase and Kate pushed back a bit, but unbeknownst to them I think everyone from the former 27th and 99th had kind of decided on Chan already.

Hercule: Things are going swimmingly, I can't say enough good things. He's gone above and beyond as an ally and I feel great about him. He told me about a group chat that Chan made with the former 99th precinct members, and filled me in on what went on there, and he offered a fairly lengthy set of thoughts on Judy and basically her approach to the game, which was that she's very frank (his example was her telling him very early in the game "I like you but you're not my favorite on the tribe" which is hilarious). We're very much on similar wavelengths with how we approach this game and I'm thrilled to be working with him.

Judy: We finally exchanged more than one message a day, and actually have some overlapping interests, we both like British panel shows, and I'm actually a big fan of Masterchef Australia, which she doesn't actively watch but is at least aware of since I think it's a big thing there. Decent start.

Leon: I like the guy, I'm honestly impressed with his gameplay, he's done better than I expected, I was worried I'd have to do work to keep him out of the crosshairs after we swapped, and I think I did help give him a leg up, but he's really done a great job. we haven't discussed this but I think he's really loving being in this role of being able to orchestrate an alliance, drive a vote, etc, which is great because it's a fun first experience and also because it makes his target bigger. I hope that doesn't sound too cutthroat.

Paul: Still feel decent about him but we haven't talked a lot and I don't know where he stands with other people other than "above Chan". I dunno if that's because he's making bonds I don't know about or if it's because he's just laying low as a strategy and trying to stay out of the center of things. It's not the worst strategy for navigating the game.

Cheddar: good talks about Survivor and The Challenge and we discussed the vote, he said he's not voting Paul.

Chase: saw the writing on the wall with Chan, I think he's okay with it but understandably maybe a little uneasy. I think I sold him on watching The Leftovers if he can find a way to do so (it's really good, everyone should watch it)

Kate: still not easy to talk to. Didn't want to vote out Chan but that's how it goes.

Chan: I think I had the best experience talking to him out of anyone on the tribe maybe? Another situation where someone who feels good about me is leaving, but most other people feel good about me too and it'd be tough to steer this vote elsewhere without expending serious social capital.

[Holly Short]

I'm actually a big fan of Masterchef Australia

So after a VERY LONG time of not watching the show I got back into it with the current season and HOW GOOD IS IT???

[Lennie Briscoe]

I'm actually a big fan of Masterchef Australia

So after a VERY LONG time of not watching the show I got back into it with the current season and HOW GOOD IS IT???

It's so great! I love every season but it's so fun seeing people back (admittedly I haven't seen Callum's season but I think I've seen the rest remaining) and they're doing such a great job. Reynold's thing several weeks ago where he made the tempered chocolate log with the branches and the flowers at the ends, and then with the caramel sauce melting the forest floor, it was just breathtaking, Top Chef could never.

[Lennie Briscoe]

God I wish I could complain about the nature of the challenge or whatever, but in this case I do kinda feel like we just got outplayed. I feel like I'm in a very good position on this tribe but even given that it's sincerely draining to go to TC just immediately back to back.

So Leon, bless his heart, is all rarin' to go about this four person alliance between me, him, Poirot, and Judy. He asked for an alliance name, I didn't have any good suggestions, Judy apparently came up with LL (Her)cule J, which is really inspired, so I'm in my first group chat of the game. Probably not the best decision to create the group PM while we were doing the challenge, but whatever.

A number of people I think have had their weakest interactions with Kate, so her name was brought up pretty quickly in our group chat, and I brought it up to Poirot too. Poirot feels like Kate trusts him and we all know this, and he's open to eliminating her, but brought up the point (which I think all of us have thought about) that Chase has expressed concern about this just being original tribes ganging up on one and eliminating them, a pagonging as it were, and if we were to take out Kate, Chase would really be alienated and feel on the outs. What people are kind of dancing around is the prospect of targeting Paul.

Honestly, I'd been thinking about this. I really thought maybe that going into the swap, Paul and I would get closer, more like Scruff and I were on our original tribe, and it really hasn't happened (and I'm not putting this on him, I could have made the effort to do so and didn't). If I'd really been committed to that idea I probably should have filled him in immediately on what went down on the Hannah vote, and how much Jake was pushing for him, but I wasn't sure if that was the right idea. I was hoping we'd win the first challenge and I could bring it up then but we went to TC and it didn't seem like the right time.

I trust in the LLculeJ alliance I think, and I very much trust Poirot and Leon, so I think I'm gonna be good no matter what, and this might be the time to let Paul go? I was pretty frank about these thoughts to Poirot, and I'm sort of hoping he can orchestrate this without me getting my hands dirty. He says that Cheddar is leaning that way, and I like Cheddar, our chats are arguably better than those with Paul, or at worst on par.

Anyway, ironically, Paul voiced the same "well I'd like to target Kate, but do we want to eliminate two original 12s in a row" sentiment. I honestly don't even know where he's going with that, whether he's got someone from the 99th in mind or if he's suggesting Leon or if it's just lip service because other people are saying it.

Also, weird thing, Kate was like "so it sounds like you and Chase are getting along" and I'm like "oh sure, I like chase, do you guys have something in mind?" and then she said she got confused and must have misinterpreted something he said. Whatever. I responded and said it wasn't a big deal and reiterated that I don't see this as being on tribal lines, previous relationships matter but we need to be open to new opporrtunities, blahblahblah. I feel like she made a mistake (not as in, something bad for her game, but something unintended) when she contacted me like that, and I want to defuse that.

(edit: below I digress into a thing about general strategy but I forgot to mention my actual response, which was "hey, I understand, no big deal. FWIW, I told chase that this isn't about original tribal lines and I mean that, of course previous relationships matter, but the swap is about building new bonds" roughly)

Anthony Douglas on BBCAN7 had a really insightful view on interactions with people, where he said he didn't want to put people in a situation to lie to him, and by that he didn't mean "I want to make people tell me the truth all the time", but rather that when someone is less than honest with you, it implicitly distances you from them in their mind. Some players see value in testing people by asking them questions where they would have incentive to lie, so you can see where they stand. But I think the point Anthony was making is that sometimes by avoiding those situations, you're able to keep lines of communication open in the future, so in responding to Kate like that, I was kind of hoping to ensure that we're still able to talk. This is one of those situations where she might feel self-conscious or wary and I hope I can smooth that over.

I'm kind of walking a tightrope here in that I definitely don't want to be like "hey guys, I'm fine with voting Paul out" too openly, because it can easily seem like I have no loyalty, but I also want people to be able to come to me and broach tough subjects.

[Lennie Briscoe]

Well that wasn't supposed to happen, lol. Like honestly, if Paul was going to idol himself, I guess this was ideal? I can't complain too much.

So Cheddar and Chase both contacted me this afternoon to broach the topic of voting Paul, and you know, I pretended like oh, well, I guess I saw this coming because of last round his name being out there and gosh there's only so much I can do, I'm in on this tribe, no previous tribal lines, and I like Paul but if you guys want to get rid of him then I guess I'm okay with it. Of course Hercule and I had talked this through last night.

Cut to like 3 hours before tribal, Cheddar and Paul both message me, Paul says that Leon told him that someone(?) had pitched Cheddar to him and Leon shut that down, Paul ran that to Cheddar, Cheddar in turn told Paul his name was out there. I responded to Cheddar and said I hadn't heard his name (basically true), I'm voting Paul, we're cool.

Cut to like 1.5-1 hour before tribal, Paul messages and asks if I'd be willing to vote Chase, then creates a group chat with basically all the former 27th and 99th members to pitch Chase, and I think Judy, Hercule and I are like "Wellll if everyone's on board, sure", eventually Paul says his vote was on Chase but he changed it back to Kate. We're all just like "THIS fuckin guy". Turns out he has an idol, plays it, Kate goes home.

Really, this isn't the worst situation but it's frustrating because who knows if he'll somehow find a second idol. I imagine that we're all kinda on the same page that if we go to TC, the vote is Paul.

I reached out after I got home to Paul to maybe try to smooth things over, no response but maybe something tomorrow. I don't know what his headspace is, and I couldn't really blame him for hating me a whole lot.

I should probably mention that seriously Poirot and I are so super-close. We message all the time, we have very similar perspectives on the game. I have to imagine one of us is going to cut the other at some point if we make the post-merge, but it'll be a fun ride to get there.

[Lennie Briscoe]

So today was a little more quiet. Reaching out to Paul went about as well as it could have gone. I think he's more hurt than he lets on but he has a good attitude externally to me, he's saying there's no point in cutting off ties entirely even though he acknowledges that basically if we lose he's going to be the vote again. I think he sees that last vote as being driven by the former 99 and 12 tribes and that Leon and I just had to go along. It's not wrong per se but also we didn't fight at all (which I also think he realizes).

So Chase and I talked a little more and he asked me how I see the tribe and if there's anyone I'm closer to than others. I kind of gave him a bullshit answer, I was just like "well I like Leon a lot and I really like you and want too work with youo, and I like everyone else too". I think he'll probably see through that, but maybe he buys that I'm most interested in working with him. I'm not sure I really had a good play here, because I don't want to give away the alliance but I also don't want to make it sound like I'm closest with Cheddar and then implicitly invite him to then target Hercule or Judy.

One interesting story was the question of what was that "Leon heard Cheddar's name and shot it down" thing all about? Apparently Leon said this to Paul thinking it might put him off the scent that he was the vote but it kind of didn't help, and worse, when Leon said that, he did so because he ostensibly heard Cheddar's name from Poirot in our group chat with Judy. Leon of course was never going to explicitly attribute it to Poirot, but I don't think he thought through what he would say if pressed on the question. There's a limited set of people it could be, either people in our alliance or former 12s. Thankfully, Cheddar's takeaway was "Great, Leon has my back" and not "wait who's saying my name". I told Leon that if the question comes up to pin it on Kate.

Anyway, I think it's just kind of understood that we all just voted Paul, and if we go back to TC, we'll vote him again, like I've explicitly said it in multiple conversations. And Paul completely acknowledged it to me, he's in the hero role for this challenge specifically to take his fate in his own hands, the tribe's success or failure is on his shoulders and he realizes if we don't win he's basically going to go. Does he have a second idol? who knows? I hope not, and if he does I'm a little worried he'll vote Poirot, because Poirot definitely feels like that relationship has changed and seems kind of passive-aggressive. Paul isn't the chattiest guy so I could see him being less than crazy about Poirot's affectations.

[Lennie Briscoe]

Life is pain

[Lennie Briscoe]

[Lennie Briscoe]

Things are frustrating, gotta be honest. In a way I'm glad we didn't swap tonight because I had some work to catch up on that I needed to address this evening, and I didn't need to meet new people tonight, but god it's going to be so tilting if we lose a fourth challenge in a row, six out of seven for me and Leon. And like, I have only passing familiarity with Mafia, I dunno, it's hard.

Paul on his way out said he thinks Cheddar and Chase are close, which they might be, I really don't know. If we go to TC we'll find out I guess.