Round Number 9: Rhymes With Canine

[Oracle]

Well it certainly puts me on the bottom.  I hope your deal with Duke can keep you afloat but I won't be surprised if they take you both out before letting you near the final five.

I don't know specs, is Richie mad at me? I can't tell haha.

[Oracle]

Okay so the amount of PMs I sent last round is absolutely insane. I'm currently at 1250 PMs, almost 200 or so came from this last round. Please don't make me go back through all of those PMs and find specific quotes and just take me at my word for it.

When immunity results came out, Margot won. This meant no one could discuss her in the group chat, and I know Suzy, Writer and Richie all wanted to take a jab at her. So naturally the Crossed Keys alliance (hilarious because that's our current tribe) had four names to discuss, the ones not in it: Duke, Gustave, Madame and Royal. Well obviously I ain't going to throw my boys Duke and Gustave down the river. And Madame I was generally on good terms with due to the Across the Sea alliance with me/duke/madame/margot. So I initially approached the group with the vote option of Royal. It just seemed like the only one I could reasonably approach. I knew Richie wouldn't like that, he's expressed he didn't want to go after Royal. But I literally didn't have anyone else's names I could throw out. So that put me in a bind where I didn't know how to proceed.

All the while I get a PM from Margot going "...looking forward to working with you for the next couple rounds..." there's more to that PM but the ellipses represent basically a direct quote. So I'm sitting here like, oh okay so Margot is cutting me in two rounds. I guess i have to attempt to work with the keys since they are currently keeping me safe.

So then Richie and Herman almost simultaneously post "What about Madame?" And Suzy and Writer don't object. So now I have to figure out how the fuck to navigate this because if I say no to this it's effectively the end of the keys alliance and I have to be somewhat open minded. So I say yes.

It's around that time Suzy comes to me in a panic and says "OMG MARGOT IS TRYING TO COME FOR ME" because that's what Richie has told her. Now I would normally be skeptical, but given that Margot has told me that she's coming for me in 2 rounds (from the only way I could interpret that PM) I have to give some validation to this because Suzy is someone I need long term as a number. And the fact she is so close with Richie is something I eventually have to break up.

So I agree to the Madame vote in the chat because anything else is going to land me in hot water.

BUT IM NOT OKAY WITH WRITER THROWING OUT DUKE AND GUSTAVE SO FUCK THAT NOISE! THOSE ARE MY BOYS YOU CANT COME FOR MY BOYS! THIS IS AN ISLE OF DOGS AND IM FUCKING ORACLE BITCH!

So naturally the only thing I can possibly think of doing is leaking to Gustave, because why not. Immediately he starts running his mouth and going around stirring up shit about a split plan and it gets back and suddenly you think I'm in trouble right?

WRONG FUCK THAT NOISE! Richie's already been leaking shit to Royal about it! I'm not sure of the exact timeline when that got revealed to me, but yeah needless to say I wasn't happy.

However I acknowledge Madame is a social threat. She's so sweet and so genuine with everyone, how do you not want to root for that to win?

So the round proceeds and it's awkward because I'm agreeing with people and saying, sure why not let's do writer. I know Margot wants to do Herman and yes eventually I'm going to have to give her what she wants but right now Young Writer who has also said "wish Margot wasn't immune" is literally coming after everyone that I have been working towards building.

In the meantime, Gustave has told everyone (well not everyone but by proxy everyone knows about it) about an elaborate vote split between Writer and Royal. His plan is literally so bonkerballs and there was no way it was going to work. So do I go down a sinking ship?

It's about this point when Madame and I finally start opening up to each other and I really feel the guilt piling on as I now know she's getting at least 5 votes and has a chance to go home. But I'm already committed to working with the keys on the off chance Gustave really is doing a vote split. Again, I could flip to writer, but I've decided Madame at this point.

At this time, now that the plan is in place, I tell Duke even though I'm not supposed to. Because if nothing else, I have to keep him in tow. I straight up ask him, should I vote Madame or should I vote Writer? And Duke tells me to vote Madame after a discussion because he isn't sure if a vote split is happening either.

And then like 5 minutes before the end of the round, I drop the bombshell on Gustave because again I can't truly bilndside him or I lose him forever. I really should have thought this one through though and looped him in sooner. However when I tried to do that at the beginning of the round he went off the rails and I didn't want that information falling back on me before the votes were revealed.

So then the votes are revealed, and it's a fucking tie. Now I sort of anticipated it could be a tie, and if I make it to the end (highly debatable at this point) I'm going to have to fib and pretend like I knew it was going to tie, but I was never 100% sure especially since I didn't know what kind of deal that Royal had with Richie and Writer. So I did it as a precaution. Plus who knows, writer knew he was getting votes he might have played an idol and then who is the idiot?

Madame of course is surprised, but acts really really nice with me in private. But like what else is she supposed to do. "Oh of course I won't hold it against you and I respect you" and all this stuff that of course makes my anxiety flare up to the point that I am full on crying (sent the mods a pic in private). I hate myself right now because I'm the one who did the writer shit and the only one in that grouping that didn't actually vote that way. So yeah Margot is giving the 10th degree burns, Madame is not intentionally guilt tripping me but understandably wants some answers, of course I can't give her those answers because I'm trying to keep the keys safe.

Meanwhile I literally haven't heard 1 on 1 from herman. Why this is relevant is that prior to results dropping Duke formed a group with me, Gustave, Suzy, and Herman and I want to see where Herman's loyalties lie because I'm not fucking around. If this 5vanhoe alliance is going to fucking work then I need more than 4 people responding in the chat. So I'm already sketched out by this obvious goat.

Anyways Suzy is all wishy washy because she feels bad about Madame and starts thinking Richie lied to her about Margot saying anything. At this time Margot is adamantly denying she ever said Suzy's name.

And it's about at this time I get the biggest bombshell of the game so far, Duke claims to have mutinied during the Mutiny round. Which, that doesn't make sense, Richie's basically implied he didn't try to mutiny. Now, Duke and I have been basically a tight for a good chunk of the game. He could be lying to try to manipulate me into voting for writer, but given we'd talked the round before and he thought it was the idea to go for Writer, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume what he is telling me is the truth.

That means unequivocally, Richie has been lying to me, and probably others since the mutiny round, if not earlier. So now with this realization in mind, it hits me that Richie does not have my best interests in his mind long term. Not that I already wasn't starting to doubt him, but then it dawns on me that a lot of little things I've been told throughout the game could all just be little lies and he's using me until he has no further use to me.

So meanwhile I have to go on the worldwide apology tour with like everyone because now I know that I have to cut Richie's power down a little bit or I'm going to be fucked.  He is tight with Writer and Royal, and presumably Suzy at this point. If he gets one more round farther he's going to be impossible to start breaking down because every person around him is going to be his shields.

So it hits me like a ton of bricks that I have to vote for writer no matter what happens here. If for no other reason than I refuse to be 5th or 6th in an alliance that doesn't value my opinion.

OH ALSO WRITER AT ONE POINT SAID "I HAVE NO INTEREST IN A PAGONG" WHEN I OFFERED ROYAL, BUT SOMEHOW WHEN MADAME COMES UP HES FINE WITH IT?! OKAY HYPOCRITE I SEE YOUR GAME YOU ARE ONLY ANTI PAGONG WHEN IT WORKS FOR YOU.

And that's kind of when I just decide, fuck it, I need to lay it all out there. First off, I get notified Herman has no interest in going for 5vanhoe and his lack of responses in the group and lack of response to me in particular kind of proves it when Suzy claims that Herman "has no interest" in that grouping. That seems to line up with his lack of communication with me in general. So then Suzy and I have to talk, because Duke and Gustave have approached us for an alliance (separately, we have no official grouping outside of 5vanhoe).

This is music to my ears because Suzy, Duke and Gustave are literally my dream final 4 scenario. If this works out and we survive this round, then we are set to get to the endgame.

Getting there is a whole other issue though since Herman at this point has told others he's not interested in the grouping.

Suzy and I have a long hard chat today after all of this and realize that Richie has been lying to us and after thinking things through we decide to flip and join up with Duke and Gustave in a vote.

Meanwhile Duke, Gustave and I are all but saying we are a final 3 in a chat I've formed where I've laid everything out (except selling out Duke who protected me during the Madame vote.)

So now the plan is in place, and it's time to execute it. I go back to the 4 person chat with madame/margot/duke and basically give this crazy apology with how I'm scrambled and screwed up and feel lied to and I'm all in now and it actually kind of sounded legit (Margot and Madame have to go, neither of them can touch the endgame). So now they are happy with me because Royal is flipping to the other side and they need my vote to keep Madame in.

Do I want to vote just to be on the bottom of an alliance? FUCK THAT NOISE!!! BARK BARK GRRRRRRR! ANGRY ORACLE!

So no I flip and basically put Suzy on the spot to flip with me, and she does and apparently decided to leak it to Richie minutes before the results so he was in my DMs giving me a shitty ass time, well THATS JUST FINE YOU LYING MOTHERFUCKER BRING IT LETS GO!

Anyways I turn off my phone about 15-20 minutes before the TC since you know I'm fucking at work and shouldn't be on my phone anyways, and in this time Herman gets back to me and says "Yeah 5vanhoe sounds great" which I had to roll my eyes at later because he couldn't make it more obvious I'm an afterthought to him. He claims he just didn't see the DM, but I'm skeptical.

There's more happening now, but I'm going to dump at you all here because I don't have time to truly update during the day because well I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ON MY PHONE AT WORK ANYWAYS. Sheesh!

That is the play by play as I see it. I will work on answering my feelings and what I think of my long term stuff as asked in a bit. I need to go keep being social because apparently 1250 PMs isn't enough for these fuckers.

[Oracle]

How are you feeling about this outcome? Do you have any regrets about how you handled this round? Were you surprised by the final votecount?

So I've given you the play by play from my limited perspective as a player. At this point I don't assume I'm a spec favorite judging by the lack of questions and overall content here, and that's fine. I generally am not. And I know I'm probably working on killing the spec favorites, because that seems to be my lot in life.

Specs aside (though I don't want anyone to think this is disrespectful and I invite all specs to come bark with me!!!), this whole round isn't my finest piece of survivor work. I kind of don't think I'm in the greatest position so I kind of have to lay in the bed I've made and try to duck back a bit. I'm probably very much in the spotlight right now. I normally wouldn't play like this, but it's final fucking 9, we didn't go to rocks, and a choice had to be made. Listen, I'm very aware that I was well liked and setting myself up for a mid to late merge boot, that's how this goes. I've been too nice and tried to hard to be friends with everyone. It's been pointed out to me on multiple occasions from multiple sources.

So the only way people see me as potential endgame partner is to play badly at least once or twice. Was I really trying to play badly on purpose? Kind of but not really. Like if that thought wasn't in the back of my mind while I was doing stuff then I'm not playing a game that I can be proud of. I try to think of all the angles and see if there are ways I can be "less liked" or whatever. Plus the more I downplay myself and try to not be a threat like Margot or Madame or Richie, or even really I think people see Gustave as a threat at this point, the better chances I have at getting farther in this game. Writer was a threat, and ultimately his tight bond with the all powerful Richie was too much for me to handle.

I could have seen either Writer or Madame go and been fine with it. The result didn't matter much to me, except if we had gone to rocks that would have been bad as 4 of the 7 people who were eligible to go were people I want in my final 4 (including myself obviously).

So how do I feel about the outcome? It wasn't rocks, and Richie got knocked down a peg. Do I regret how I handled this round? Nah. If it went the way I wanted to I look like a genius and add to my threat level. Because it didn't go according to plan and shit got complicated, I feel like I'm probably viewed potentially more favorably to go to the end with because so far everyone that has gone has been a result of me screwing them over and I'm hopeful people will start having that perception that I'm just not really jury managing well. I fucking hate jury managing as a concept in general so I'm glad I'm not fucking trying to be that fake ass bitch who tells everyone I'm so sorry and I'm leaking to you and whatever. No fuck that, blindside, stab me hard! This is the game I came to play and I didn't come to make friends. I came to fucking win and if being seen as someone who is unfavorable to the jury is the perception I start having, then fuck it! I'm going to just keep playing the way I am until I'm either at FTC or I'm sitting on the jury.

Do I have to be like somewhat nice and give the whole "omg we were friends and I felt bad" shit at FTC in my speech? Yeah but I'm not going to hide the fact that I played a game that was flexible and adaptable and they can just all eat my dog shit.

No I knew pretty much exactly how the final revote was going to play out. The initial vote was a bit of a shock, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibilities. So I'm not like...super surprised or anything?

[Oracle]

Anyways I already asked the mods and no my dog flu serum won't automatically win me the challenge despite "already having developed it" by virtue of having it in my possession.

[Oracle]

I probably should have pointed out way back at the beginning that Survivor alliances named for the Four Horsemen don't have a strong track record of success

God if nothing else Richie cracks me up (this is what we named the chat on OG Ivanhoe between Anthony/Gustave/myself/Richie, which was renamed to this current chat without Anthony)

[Brendan]

Thank you for your very thorough response!

Were you at all surprised that the vote was 6-4 and not 7-3? Did you expect that before the votes were revealed?

[Oracle]

Thank you for your very thorough response!

Were you at all surprised that the vote was 6-4 and not 7-3? Did you expect that before the votes were revealed?

Suzy let me know ahead of time that Royal was likely going to be flipped and that she and I were the deciders that round. So no, the revote didn't shock me.

[Oracle]

OH I DIDNT TALK ABOUT MY GOALS WITH EVERYTHING:

So during the initial vote I had two main objectives, keep Suzy and Herman onside with me. I knew Richie was getting his greedy little grubs in them deep and I needed to be sure no matter what they would break off here.

Did I do that initially? No. I don't think Herman was really ever on my side.

However I did separate Suzy from Richie effectively, so the end result did garner what I wanted.

I also wanted more information out there and I think I can effectively say I got quite a bit.

Either way, now Herman has nowhere to turn but the 5vanhoes.

So I have the choice to go with 4some or 5vanhoes. These are the two alliances I wanted to pick between this round. I think either one takes me to at least 6, which I don't know that keys chat was willing to do that, though I may have been wrong there.

The core for me is Duke, Suzy & Gustave though and I trust them with everything.

[Oracle]

Ugh yes. I'm immune. Fuck yeah. This is the best result for me. I know people wanted to dive bomb on Margot and her likely idol or whatever, but fuck those people, I want to be fucking safe after being a flip flopper. I already fucking know that I was on Royal's lips today and this immunity is just going to shut that down.

My target this round is Royal, but I'm not going to push it if people want Herman or Richie instead.

But if anyone even hints at going after my boys this round I'm going to go guard pug on their ass!

[Oracle]

I'm sorry too if I seemed spiteful in my message about you and Duke.  But I really do think it's something you need to be proactive about.  Obviously you're well aware of the narrative that's been pushed about you being Mr. Popular, but you're also now contending with getting tagged as a Dangerous Pair.  Those two things together bode very badly for you in particular, because when people go about breaking up a Dangerous Pair (and I'm speaking in a game theory sense here, not in anything that I've actually heard about yet) it's almost always the half of the pair that has a reason for being seen as more Threatening.  In the case of this whole narrative that was built up calling me and Writer a Dangerous Pair, he was the Challenge Threat.  Between you and Duke, you're a Social Threat and he is, well, not that.  He's Under the Radar.  So the voting gravity is going to be pulling towards you when it happens.

Whatever pops up this round, or if there are multiple things popping up and you have an opportunity to decide what is best for you or nudge things one way or another, remember what I said about how I'd like to use my vote.

Your friend,
Richie

Oh Richie, if only you knew my #1 was Gustave.

I probably should firm that up with him though because I'm pretty sure he's still not happy with me.

That being said I have been more vocal in saying I trust Duke. It's out there. It's the perception I've put out there to mask my true pairing with Gustave, love of my life (please be my friend after uwu). So I do have to take that into consideration with this vote.

[Oracle]

Madame wants Herman.

She wants Herman so bad.

If I go that route, I have to, without a doubt, have Suzy, Gustave and Duke on my side.

This is the scariest thing I've ever had proposed. Nothing is certain when Herman goes.

But perhaps that's exactly what my game needs?

This is SC-ARY.

[Oracle]

I'm going to predict that I'm going to get somewhere between 7th and 4th. If I happen to beat that expectation I'm going to be very proud of myself. I just don't know who is going to actually want to go to the end with me?

I would hope it's me, duke, gustave and suzy because I think that's my best case scenario, but I could be wrong.

[Oracle]

Richie is annoying me right now and I'm doing a bad job of hiding it.

I ask him to give me suggestions on what to do.

So instead of doing that, he instead starts talking to me about how I'm seen as a pair with Duke and that I'm the social threat and to use him as a vote.

Like dude, I already said no one's been around and asked you for suggestions.

So I basically just repeat back to him what he says to me because it's so obvious that's the angle he is going to take with me to scare me into doing something out of fear.

And he says "well yes that is the short version of what I said"

And I say "Well then what's the reason you said it since that's survivor 101? I never know what the angle is with you."

And he basically just says well sorry I tried to engage.

He still hasn't actually answered my question from 5 pms ago. Like dude. If you want to engage in a conversation, let's start with what it is you want this round.

It's just annoying. Like he acts like he wants to be my BFF and work with me, but he continually refuses to answer my questions and instead use fear tactics to make me scared like I don't understand what the perception is of me.

Like, he has to think I'm stupid at this point, and that's what's more annoying than anything. Like no shit that's the perception, I've literally never once hidden that I trust Duke. I've said it in group chats, I've said it 1 on 1, I literally fucking drew the guy a picture and he drew me one back. If that's not the perception then everyone I'm playing with is stupid which I very much doubt is the case.

[Oracle]

Okay Duke could be my undoing this game. I kind of need him to show up and confirm stuff.