Silas' Thoughts

[silas]

Well I got my wish and at just the right time too! No need to turn on former alliances!

In all honesty i'm actually happy that if i could bring anyone from my old tribe over it's Andrea. I can trust her and she isn't as much as an outwardly target as say chase or a loose cannon as Ralph, so that's a big plus. Obviously there are a lot of new people to meet.

The big dynamic to figure out right now is how tight the original 5 tribe members are on this new tribe of 11. If they stick together, the other 6 from various tribes would need to stick together or get picked off. Jerri has already approached me about wanting to have a me/andrea/her/amber alliance with i'm assuming the other 2 new members. Obviously it's something i'll consider. There is definitely something not right about Jerri. She talked a lot of crap about Morgan but when given the chance never backed it up, and then everytime i ask her why she didn't post the evidence, she ignores the question. I definitely don't trust her but for now I might need her vote to survivie the first few rounds.

The tough questions becomes in the next challenge do you establish yourself as valuable or weak. Valuable might make the original 5 members of this tribe target me should we go to tribal, but so could weak if you cause the loss. It's hard to tell at this point if they're going to go after threats or weak links so i need to discover that.

Also, no one said these 5 love each other. Time to see if we can make fracture the alliance or find some cracks or what not. I'm sure there will also be plenty of twists coming up so the plan might just be to survive and advance for now. Hopefully Chase and Ralph can keep their heads above water on their tribes as well.

[silas]

man, so much going on right now. On our new tribe there are 5 old burrunguy tribe members and 6 members from other tribes. I'm trying to make several power plays once again. First the new 6 need to vote out an old burrunguy to keep us safe. I think it was a huge mistake to pick 5 old tribe members to make yourself a target on a new tribe without securing a majority. However, knowing this game is full of twists and more switches could come up, i need to make friends and deals even with the old burrunguy members.

So here is what i'm doing. I'm trying to pick off Eliza and Dave ball. However, i wanted to look like the good guy in all this so i'm approaching Taj, Erik, and bubba about making a deal that once we knock off 1 or 2 people we make an alliance of Taj, Erik, Bubba from old Burrunguy, with me, andrea, and 1 other non tribe member. This gives me a lot of wiggle room. If we win immunities it buys time, if there are more twists i have more people who like me, and if the time comes, i can stick with the new 6 or a power tribe. It also helps to kick off Jerri because i don't think i can trust her after what happened with the morgan saga.

Meanwhile, Ralph annoyingly has once again entered me in an alliance without asking me called popsicle something stupid or other. In a weird way he HAS helped me as 2 of the alliance members are Erik and Bubba, which helps me in my plan to secure their votes. Now i just need to talk to Andrea to get her on board with this.

For the short term, gotta protect Amber and vote out Eliza

[silas]

ummmm......what? that's how it ends? a freakin' self vote?!??! I'm sorry, Amber, you DESERVE to go home. I mean what the heck. I would waaaaaaaay rather be betrayed and have my plan go awry because of someone else making a decision to do something different........but a plan to fail because of a no show?!?! What is that?!?! Uggggh.......I wonder what'll happen now. Good thing there is the chance for that side alliance.....

[Natalie White]

Thanks Silas! I can always count on you having a current update here!

[silas]

Well i guess Richard and Lindsey are the most likely ones to have flipped. Once i overcame my initial gut reaction of amber self voted, it was clear that 2 people flipped, so i'm much happier to know that actual strategy was involved in this vote.

Moving along, gotta work towards the future. With Jessie joining our tribe we have the potential still to have 6 new members vs 5 old members. She seems on board with it. Now the issue becomes did richard and Lindsey flip pemanently, or just feel that amber didn't deserve to be here. All of the sudden richard has become very vague and non-committal, which is fine, he doesn't owe me any answers, but it does create warning sirens. As far as i'm concerned, Richard is not on board with any such plan.

So now do i try and make the new 6 alliance work? Do i try and form the bubba-erik-taj-me-andrea-1 other alliance now? I'm clearly made myself a target to some of the old Burrunguy. I'm honestly not entirely sure what to do. We'll see what happens.

[silas]

So i came to the conclusion that i don't want to win this challenge. It's basically like winning HOH. If you're in the minority winning is great cause it saves yourself and can swing the numbers. But if you're not worried about numbers, then all you do is make enemies by putting 3 people up that will all blame you and 2 will return.

In this case, if i won, i'd either 1) have to put up eliza/dave and then 1 potential alliance member of bubba/taj/eirk, or turn on my alliance of new-burrunguy and neither option sounds appeal. Let someone else be the enemy, i already got enough heat on me after the eliza vote backfired. At this point, it was best to appear to have tried, commit 2 errors and lose and allow someone else to do the dirty work. If your ass is on the line this is a must win challenge, like for Ethan or anyone on red not from the original tribe.

For me i feel like i'm safe any which way. Worst case scenario is eliza or dave wins as i could see them putting me up but even then i don't see me being voted out. I think this was the best way to play this.

[silas]

oh cruel fate, of course the 1 person i don't want to win (eliza) wins. I still kinda feel ok with it since there is no way i was beating 5 minutes. I'd like to think even if i do go up i should be fine, and if me and andrea go up, hopefully the 3rd person would be voted out. If that's the case, then really no harm no foul. We'll see what Eliza chooses to do.

[silas]

Man oh man the amount of thoughts i have to share.

To start off i might or probably have been more over confident in my position in the game than i should be. I get carried away, it's stupid but it's how it is. That being said, it should be interesting as this vote really comes down to Bubba/Taj/Erik. If they want to work with me then i'm safe. If they have no intention, i'm out. I'd like to think Bubba and Erik would like to keep me thanks to this popsicle alliance. Ralph warns me that someone thinks i've over stepped my bounds and am more confident than i should be. Honestly i was very confident before the amber vote when i thought we had 6 and i was in a position to make deals. I haven't made deals since that but perhaps old crimes stick with me.

God, Richard is the most frustrating person to talk to. I've known for a while he's playing the dumb card, the woe is me i've never played before i don't know what i'm doing. But i know he's played sevearl games before, works closely with Bubba (hence why he flipped the first time), and refuses to give a straight up answer. There is nothing more i hate than double talk and political non-answers. Just give me a straight up answer and let's save 15 minutes of talking that goes no where. I mean, i completely applaud his gameplay. In terms of gameplay it's great but oh my god it's annoying, hahaha. The kind of thing that would make me not vote for him at the end.

If i do go tonight i deserve it and i'll be fine with it. There was no way i was beating 6 minutes on that challenge anyway. I THINK i'm stayign over Jerri. At this point i could use a twist to shake things up. I do have a few options on this tribe to shake things up if i stay, like exposing the popsicle alliance or Taj, or heck even Eliza and forming something new. Let's see how things go, keep my head down, and look for opportunities.

I may have over played my hand and i might go home tonight but if i do at least i went home having fun and playing (a little too) hard

[silas]

Oh and for the record, during my long talk with richard today i kept talking about how much i trusted him despite all his lies i've caught him in. I just wanted to try and draw more info out of him. I haven't trusted him since he flipped the vote. I've caught him lieing for not knowing anyone, for not having played survivor before, for being way out of his league, etc etc. I decided to see how much new stuff he could say and he actually gave up small hints that completely contradicted what he had said to me in the past. So that was fun.

I'm honestly thinking of blowing up this whole popsicle alliance. Bubba and ralph have way too much power. I might get far with them but far doesn't cut it: i want to get to the end and to do that you gotta take risks. If i survive, it might be time to lay plans for future deception. Nothing too soon, but if we go to tribal again i might have to flip things up before I or Andrea goes. I need her to stay, so losing her is almost as bad as me going.

[silas]

Oh well, it's the end of the line for me. I had a great time playing (thank you so much to the hosts for casting me and running the game, and to the PW for the time they spend on this). I think the one thing i forget when playing these types of games is how much previous relationships play a role in these types of games. I made an unfortunate mistake of assuming no one knew each other, and by rallying people on my new tribe, i tried to turn people who knew each other against each other, which of course made me a target. It was a good lesson to learn, and being that aggressive on a new tribe is never a good idea. I had a blast and hopefully can be around for another one in the future. Thanks!

[silas]

Wow, it's crazy for me to be posting in here again. I never thought in a million years i'd get off of DMI (failure island). I've never been a challenge force, and i HATE endurance challenges. Yet 5 eliminations, and 2 endurance challenges later, here i am. Frankly i'm shocked.

Now that i'm back, my original fear was being a quick easy target. I don't see that happening though. THere are 2 major alliances. THere is the Ralph/Erik/Russell/Chicken/Ami alliance against the JT/Yul/Mikey/John/? alliance. I suspect both groups want to eliminate each other and will want to pick up me and Bob Dawg for our votes. Bob and I want to look out for each other having come back from DMI.

On my particular tribe we have Ralph/Erik/Russell/Chicken and JT/John. So the first alliance is thrilled because they can pick off the other 2. But JT has tons of prizes up his sleeve and i don't think it'll be that simple. John will most likely go. I wanted to not pick a side, because when the big merge comes I wanted to lay low (unlike on burungguy) and let them take each other out. But now i have to go with the bigger group but that might paint me in their camp.

The way Erik talks, it appears ralph goes on and on about how much he loves me. AKA he sucks at hiding our pre-existing relationship. I'm sure he's looking out for me, but i don't want to be tethered to a group right now. If i don't vote with his group, he'll be mad. For now it makes sense: down the road it doesn't.

I know Fabio gave EVERYTHING to JT so that sucks and i gotta watch out. I might have to tell john and JT what is going to happen because i gave them my word i would if i heard anything. Honestly let's just survive and advance and see what happens.

[Natalie White]

It's very nice to see you posting in here again

[silas]

crazy crazy crazy times.

The expulsion of JT comes as a big surprise to me. I know he was a big player, made lots of enemies and made giant moves, but he seemed like such a great guy when i talked to him. Really humble, really down to earth. Maybe he's a good actor, maybe that's how others fell for his traps, but damn it all if someone was going to cheat, there were a lot of others i'd list first just because of how intense they all are.

Life moves on. And in a weird way, this is great for me. JT or John were going home. But now it happens without me needing to vote. If we merge now, i can claim free agency, didn't throw my hat in with either side. John is really buddying up to me (of course, he needs my vote) and i really like him but if we don't merge and go to tribal, he's screwed. Still, JT had so many prizes to get him out cleanly is amazing. I'm sad for him as a person, he was cool to talk to (for the few hours i knew him) but it's probably for the best.

It'll be interesting to see what happens once the merge DOES come. Or if john has any secret powers left.

[silas]

well it looks like Ralph's alliance of Ralph/Erik/Gary?/Amy?/Chicken/Russell are in the majority. By joining them i save myself for a while. But i'm not foolish enough to think when we get to 7 that i'll be safe. Ralph keeps sayign i'm his final 2. Even if he does believe that, doesn't mean the others would allow it. And i can't just skate by, as i'll never get jury votes by "coasting". On the other hand i learned my lesson from burrunguy of trying to do too much too soon so i'll lay low for now and collect info.

The problem is if i don't act soon, then everyone else will be pagonged. And Ralph would take me turning on him EXTREMELY personally, like big problems. Problem is i really like Mikey B and John K, two members of the "other side", as well as my DMI brotherhood with Bob Dawg.

I need to balance my deal with ralph, the expectations of his alliance, the people i like, not repeating old mistakes by making myself a target, while doing what it takes to make a memorable, strong arguement in front of a jury.

[silas]

God what a clusterfuck i walked into. I now know why Ozzy liked it on redemption (failure) island: things are simple. No game play, no voting people out, no emotions, etc.

Things have become nuts. So many moving parts, so many people who say one thing to one group and another to a different one. To the best of my recollection, there is a TIGHT alliance of ralph, erik, chicken, russell. They are trying to convince me i'm a tight part of it, as well as gary and Ami. They view ami as expendable and want to get rid of her ASAP.

Then there is John/Mikey, Yul/Lex who are in a pair but are drawn together to be safe. Add to that the perception that bob dawg is with them (which may or may not be true). If we say it is, it creates a 4 vs 5 situation with 3 swing votes (me/ami/gary, that ralph's 4 all believe are with them).

Here's my problem. I've given my word to ralph. Everyone who's played an ORG with me knows my biggest weakness is once i give my word i'll do everything in my power to stick by it. I hate to break it. Ralph has my word, but that alliance does not. I've been nodding along but claim no loyalties to it. In a perfect world i'd be working with ralph, john, mikey b, and 2 others. I'm worried that turning on the alliance but not ralph would be viewed by ralph as complete betrayl. I've started to lay the groundwork with him that we both want the same thing but want to come across it different ways, so he knows if i do something different, i'm not going against him.

His alliance is too tight. I would never advance within it. At least on the other side, they are more un-unified. I've been working John and Mikey B to tell them i want to work with them. Might as well since it's true, it could get me jury votes, and leaves open the posibility for the future.

Meanwhile ami thinks me her and gary need to stick together and go back and forth to whittle down each group. Then there is me and Bob from DMI watching each other's backs. I feel like i could be safe any which way right now, but as soon as i start picking one side or others, the house of cards fall. Rumor has it Lex wants to vote me out but we'll see if it actually happens.