Survivor New Era All-Stars Possible Returnees

I want to be clear that I'm only using people from the new era in this and I'm excluding winners even the ones I like.

Survivor 41

I think that Ricard, Shan and Xander are the biggest locks to return. I'm good with Ricard and Shan, but I'm not sure how I feel about Xander. That man was a goat edited as a final three threat. I still haven't forgiven the editors for 41 yet.

I'd love to see Danny again even if I think his outburst against Jeff will ruin that chance. On the other hand, the fact that he went on the Challenge and won clearly means CBS isn't done with him. Decent chance of Evvie and Tiffany. Somewhat chance of Naseer. Small chance of Liana.

Survivor 42

I feel very strongly that Omar is a lock for any New Era All-Stars returnee. I think he just has to say yes. Apart from that, Hai, Jonathan and Tori all seem like good shots. Don't love Jonathan but the man put in possibly the best group challenge performance of all time (before not winning a single individual to be fair). Drea has a decent chance but rumors of what went down in Ponderosa with her, if true, means that production might not want her to return and if they are true, I agree with them. Mike also had a decent chance, but not sure how well he'd do, although, maybe he'd embrace a cut-throat gameplay style.

Chanelle was put on the Challenge as well so CBS might not be done with her. If they do put her on though, I 100% want them to put on Strunk for the glorious fun of it.

Small chance but Jenny Kim was totally fucked over by everybody else. Please let her play for real.

Survivor 43

From this season, I feel like the strongest chances are Cody, Karla and Jesse.

Cassidy, as said before, was on the Challenge so that might work in her favor. Sami maybe but I doubt it. I'd love to see Owen but again, I doubt it (but Cassidy and Owen on a starting tribe together please). Dwight has an outside shot.

Survivor 44

Similar to Omar, all Carolyn has to do is say yes. After her, Carson is very very close to being a lock. Lauren has a decent chance. One of the two showmance - probably Frannie - might not be bad. Maybe MAYBE Brandon.

Danny (Massa) might have a good shot even if I'm not the biggest fan. I'd love chaos gremlin Maddy Pomilla to return against all hopes but it's unlikely. She'd say yes for sure though.

Survivor 45

So again, I feel like Kaleb and Emily, all they have to do is say yes. Good chance of Kellie, Drew, Austin and I want to say Julie but her edit makes me wonder. Jake has an outside shot. Sabiyah too but when you're that early pre-merge...

What do you all think?

I'm drunk, I love Survivor, let me ramble

You know what, all things said, there's a lot of negatives to be said about new era Survivor, but I have to admit, it has (so far) a much better gender ratio on winners. With five seasons, we have three female winners compared to two male winners, which is pretty even. Compare that to before the new era - I remember people complaining about the near unending line of male winners.

I am also incredibly happy with the 5-3-0 ending vote instead of another 7-1-0 vote. I hope I don't get jumped for saying this, but Austin played a genuinely incredible game for about 75% of this season before he decided to fuck up near the end line. Drew's vote for Austin makes 100% sense. I don't understand Kendra or Bruce's vote but whatever, they have that right. I look forward to hearing more. I've heard some possible reasons for why Bruce might have voted for Austin which I hope are not true and thus will reserve judgment until I hear more).

Clearly, Dee made the right choice in sending Jake and Katurah into fire over Austin if it was that close. If Austin had not been as distracted, he might have taken it over her. Which even if some people don't like Austin is an undeniably good thing. One of the reasons Season 42 and Maryanne's victory was so good imo was because Mike genuinely could have beaten her if he had owned his game a little more (albeit this was a Sophie-Coach situation in that Mike was unlikely to ever own up to this though in his defense, I do think between Mike and Coach, I think of the two, Mike had the better chance of doing what he needed to do at the FTC). But Maryanne was awesome and still the best winner of the new Era. (Erika, I love, but the underediting on her makes her hard to place genuinely - I have no idea if Heather would have beaten her, Gabler is...Gabler even if I accept that editing means Cassidy was more abrasive than shown, Yam-Yam was great but would have likely lost to Carson if he had won fire, Dee is also great and would likely still have beaten Katurah but her FTC performance was....okay whereas Maryanne knocked it out of the fucking park).

I also don't hate Drew* and Austin as much as everybody else does. Idk, I think there are people on reality shows who are genuinely misogynist and dick-ish and those who in the moment are kind of annoying or even just a little too successful until a certain point and get conflated with that but in reality are perfectly lovely people. Austin and Drew really, I think, fall into the latter category.

Anyways, our new Era All-Stars should really just be mostly a mix of Survivor 42, Survivor 45, with a sprinkling of Survivor 41, 43, and then put Carson and Carolyn in there.

*That being said, super fucking arrogant of Drew to say he was the smartest person ever to be on the show. I do think without the last 25% of his game if Austin doesn't tell Dee, Austin beats him. But I get the feeling that that arrogant statement isn't the entire scope of him.

I’m not sure if they expect me to feel sorry for Vadic...but I don’t? Her entire speech was “woe is me, me the innocent who did nothing wrong ever” like she wasn’t an active and enthusiastic participant in a warmongering theocratic fascist regime that also 100% used torture and genetic engineering to create vast slave populations, genocided entire worlds, sentenced other worlds to genetic disease that would painfully and slowly kill people over entire generations, and was actively seeking to do the same to the Federation and other Alpha Quadrant and Beta Quadrant polities? 

Like okay, the torture you underwent was terrible but how were you captured in the first place? Was it possibly maybe because you were infiltrating the Alpha Quadrant in a war effort and got caught? 

War prisoners should be treated humanely, don’t get me wrong. And the Federation’s (apparent) goals to try and make Changelings spies during the Dominion War (okay, I guess) is evil. This isn’t justifying what the Federation did. But Vadic got a tiny taste of what the Great Link has done for a long time to the Gamma Quadrant and is acting that this now makes the Federation irredeemably evil. 

I’m not sure if this is her in-character evil and hypocrisy or if worse, the writers expect me to agree with her. 

I get that they established Captain Liam Shaw as a dick by forcing Seven to go by her pre-borg name and eating food before Picard and Riker arrived (a go-to “this guy is a dick” scene) but if you remove those, you’re kind of left with the uncomfortable feeling that he’s kind of 100% totally right about Picard, Riker and Seven seriously endangering the crew, overstepping their authority for personal reasons, and directly going against a superior officer’s orders for personal reasons and biases. 

 They’ve established him initially as a dick with petty actions to trick you into thinking his later actions are also dickish/bad but when you look at them objectively, they’re completely understandable and reasonable. 

Also Jack Crusher is too old (he should be around twenty or am I getting my numbers wrong?) and should speak with an American accent considering his mother speaks with one and she’s been his main parental influence for his entire life. It makes no sense he speaks with a British accent and you can tell that’s out-of-universe reasoning. 

Overall though, I’ve enjoyed this season a lot more than Season 2. 

One can only admit when they were wrong...

IMO, with how much attention he has gotten, at this point Sami is either

1) the winner. 

2) the fallen angel (aka the person who gets taken out at five just before firemaking because everybody knows they’ll sweep at jury). 

3) the big threat taken out at six/seven to be the big resume move of the eventual winner or fallen angel. 

IMO, with how much attention he has gotten, at this point Sami is either

1) the winner. 

2) the fallen angel (aka the person who gets taken out at five just before firemaking because everybody knows they’ll sweep at jury). 

3) the big threat taken out at six/seven to be the big resume move of the eventual winner or fallen angel. 

The Wizard Competition

I don’t know why I’m suddenly remembering a TV show from my childhood except for the fact that I’ve been watching Only Murders in the Building. 

Does anybody else feel like the wizard competition should have been an essential law of magic? Like once they reach a certain age, the magic in a family starts naturally coalescing together and unless all of the siblings but one give it up, they they all lose it regardless. (If I were writing a darker more adult version of that story though, it would be horrible terrible agonizing death for all but hey this is a kid’s show). 

I mean, it would have been better than the very clearly arbitrary and nonsensical rules of the canon series. Like instead of “we’re making this happen and destroying individual rights and families for reasons that are never apparent,” it instead becomes “yeah, this sucks ass and we’d love it if you could all keep your powers, but that’s not the world we live in so we devised the competition to make it fair-ish.” Like you could even make it so the Wizard Competition is an imperfect attempt at making it so the parents can’t just pick their favorite or that it doesn’t become just a long list of the eldest sons getting magic over and over again. 

Like there was once a full on revolution led by Alex’s new best friend Stevie and they never explained why she was evil and wrong because apparently enough wizards working together could overturn this unjust system? She was a heroic revolutionary imo. Whereas in my version of the story, you could make it so that, Stevie loses to her brother but runs away. The magic begins to coalesce and it is hurting both her and her brother so maybe she starts trying to steal other wizard’s magic. So this version is demonstrably selfish (rather than being so because the writers said so), unwilling to surrender herself and her magic even though she lost (you can even add a speech or scene where it reveals that Stevie always assumed she would win and supported the system up until the moment she lost). Whereas in canon, it just comes off as the Russo’s being the boots who crush the righteous wizard revolution (that was clearly well-peopled) on behalf of the Wizard Elite. 

Yeah, the universe would still be cruel and capricious but that’s just the universe. 

MARYANNE! 

I have a lot of thoughts, but I want to take a couple days to process before I make some takes that are super effing wrong. 

I want to really know where Mike was in terms of winning equity before I start to make real claims. Was he as the edit suggests close to first but whiffed the Final Tribal or was he actually fucked and Maryanne had that on lock from the moment Lindsay was voted out? Either way, super deserving winner whether Maryanne herded three goats (although by their very nature, at least one of those goats could only be a near-goat) or whether she genuinely lapped frontrunner Mike with an incredible Final Tribal performance perhaps even knowing that Mike would not say the things he needed to clinch the game. Before those exits and post-game interviews and such land, I’m genuinely curious to hear from Tumblr as to which they would prefer to have been the truth - “master goat-herder Maryanne” or “denied genuine threat Mike the Win Maryanne.” 

I am curious about Jonathan’s vote - did he think Mike deserved to win over Maryanne and if so, can he defend that when everybody else so clearly thought by the end of that that Maryanne deserved to win over Mike? Or did he do what Danny did in Survivor 41 and throw a pity vote on Mike to ensure his close friend would at least get second over Romeo? Or possibly even thought Maryanne deserved to win but (perhaps not wrongly) thought Mike deserved second. 

Near-Goat

What’s a good name for a Survivor Near-Goat? I.e somebody who has exactly ONE winning Final Three/Two Combination by mid/late merge. If they lose either of the two people they could beat, they lose and themselves become a goat. But it is possible (and arguably has been done) to win as a Near-Goat. Bob Crowley won as a Near-Goat, Rob Mariano is arguably one as well in Redemption Island. Winning as a Near-Goat is basically not being liked/respected by the jury but less disliked/disrespected by the jury. 

I feel like Near-Goat is just a little too on the nose. Anybody got a better name? 

Maryanne is winning. 

Not a doubt in my mind. I’m not going to take away from Omar for being such a good player and genuine threat at the F6 but DAMN! 

Not only did she take him out, but she made Omar intimately aware of who took him out. She could have let him think Jonathan or Mike but she made sure he knew. She killed the king and she didn’t miss. That can only guarantee good things, right? 

My prediction is Lindsay goes next as I think on the island win equity, Lindsay could still beat Maryanne and Queen Maryanne recognizes that. I will say I predicted that Maryanne could beat any of the guys left (save Omar of course) but none of the girls. Next week will show how right or wrong I was on that but I genuinely think if she gets rid of Lindsay, the only person who’s kind of a threat to her is Mike but while he had great win equity earlier in the merge, her play plus his misplays mean I think she can beat him. Basically, my assumed order (not necessarily how they do, to be clear, but at the final five at the time, who had the most win equity) is

- Lindsay, Maryanne, Mike, Jonathan, Romeo. 

Which quite frankly brings me to a weird feeling. If Maryanne wins sitting next to two guys, that will be twice in a row that a woman wins sitting next to two guys and that’s great. I genuinely mean that. Obviously apart from Erika, Natalie White, Sophie Clarke and Sarah Lacina exist but 2/3 of those have their victories discredited on an almost 

To a certain extent, despite what some people may claim, perception is reality on Survivor. And we’ve had this long long time of male winners getting credit over female finalists. Not to say that’s always been necessarily false since there have definitely been some male winners who 100% deserved the W over a female finalist. But it is a factor and there are some female finalists who deserved more credit than they got. 

Point is it would be awesome if Survivor got to a point where being the only woman in the F3 isn’t seen as a guaranteed loss. For context, of the sixteen final threes with two men and one women, twelve of them have gone to a man and only four to a woman. I’m not saying that all of those men didn’t deserve their wins. I love some of those men and applaud their games but I would be lying if I said the unfortunate sexism of subconscious bias didn’t play some part in at least some of their wins. 

Ironically, of the Final Three Tribal Councils with Two Women and One Man (of which they have been seven), of the four male victories (over the three female victories), I actually think three of those men actually deserved their victories. It’s hard to argue that Tony Vlachos (WAW), Cochran, and Todd Herzog (albeit I do think both Tony and Todd had really stacked F3 but apparently Michelle knew by the end of the F4 vote that she had lost when Tony was still there - Nick imo really tanked a lot of her chances with sloppy gameplay imo) didn’t deserve their wins. 

Rounding back, I would love it if we got to a point, where being a woman doesn’t hurt your chances at the Final Three as much as it does right now. 

Most Likely To Win Rankings/Power Rankings: 

S Tier: Omar

A Tier: Drea, Lindsey, Maryanne (in that order)

B Tier: Romeo, Jonathan (in that order)

C Tier: Mike

You ever see a player so totally sink his own game faster than Mike? Well, yes probably. Zane Knight. 

Last time, I had him as one of the top winner candidates along with Drea and Omar. Now? I think he could lose at the Final 3, tbh. 

I think Mike falls into that particular rank of being very good socially but not so great strategically. Your Keith Nale, your Jud Birza, and so forth. Everybody likes him and even if he’s not the most strategic player, he can win with the right combinations. But he just made such a disaster of a strategic move there that if it gets out in Ponderosa, I can’t see Mike recovering from that. 

To be clear, this is not about Mike voting Hai, this is about Mike making a bad move while voting Hai. And to be fair to him, I thought that Hai keeping Romeo over Rocksroy was a bad move. Rocksroy was a goat, Romeo was a danger. Sure Rocksroy wanted his guys only thing, but realistically how long would that have lasted? 

But it is a nice show that while win equity really begins to set by late merge, it’s technically never over until it’s over. And this game has been really fluid in terms of win equity as far as I can see (or at least we’ve had a pretty balanced edit - I’ve put Omar up as my S Tier but I still think anybody but Mike could win this game still - hell if he’s next to Romeo and Jonathan and he has a really good final tribal and they do poorly, he might still be able to pull it out). 

Like two weeks ago, if you had asked me who would win in a Mike/Maryanne hypothetical Final Two, I was sure it would be Mike. And I think if somehow magically, the rest of the cast had had to vote between Mike and Maryanne two weeks ago (more accurately a year ago), Mike wins. But now? Maryanne clobbers him. And that is just such a show of how fluid this game has been. 

That being said, right now, with the exception of our virgin Muslim veterinarian Godfather, I think any of the ladies could beat any of the guys left. Omar needs to make it to the end, however, and I worry if he can hide his threat level for long enough before Lindsey and Drea turn around and go “wait a minute, this guy’s going to sweep.” 

If my read on this is right with Maryanne, she needs to get rid of all the other girls + Omar before the game is done. And she’s in the ideal situation of being in the middle of win equity/power rankings which is a good thing so long as you know exactly who the people above you are and who the people below you are (I still hold that Adam Klein, while underrated, was a master of this). If you don’t...that’s not so good and I’m not sure Maryanne does.. And from her perspective knowing the history of past games, it’s probably not an easy thing to try and process “I need to go to the end with guys as the sole girl,” or even want to be the woman who votes out the other women. This game is littered with that one woman finalist who gets (justifiably or unjustifiably) ridiculed by the fanbase. 

That being said, I’ve had some bad reads before so who knows? Because it’s not over until the final votes have been cast.

Survivor is a social game. Race is a social issue. Period. To be honest, this is not the platform to say that but still. Reddit is going to go to war for a while between those who accept that and those who don’t (like there’s tons of posts saying what I just said and others saying this was a whole thing and being racist). 

And yes Drea just voted out Chanelle but I think as Maryanne pointed out, one Black person going is not a big deal, it’s when a pattern emerges that it becomes disturbing. One Black person going could just mean they were bad at the game, but three or four in a row? 

Jonathan...I still hold that his scene about Maryanne and Lindsey was him being an introvert but this latest tribal...not a great look for him. He needs to do some real listening and learning especially knowing now that he was a bodyguard for Roy Moore (a job’s a job, fair enough, but he apparently bragged about this in his audition video...yikes). I’ll say that it has been some time since 42 was filmed so it is possible he had and has gone through that but as always on Survivor, we just don’t know. But this wasn’t the time for him to be comforted by Maryanne and Drea. 

At this point, I’m sitting on these people as the real winner potentials. 

First Tier - Mike, Drea, Omar. Drea and Omar for their strategic game, Mike for their social game. (Obviously, I think Drea and Omar still have social game and Mike has some strategic game but I’m highlighting what I think their current edited claim to fame is). 

Second Tier - Hai, Maryanne. Hai for strategic, Maryanne for social. 

Probably Not - Jonathan, Romeo. Lindsey. Lindsey is due entirely to the really UTR edit she’s been given but hey Erika. Romeo due to the sheer fact that I just don’t know if he can make it to the end and unlike other underdogs, I don’t know if he has an auto-win at the end even if he does. 

As for Jonathan...to be honest, I think Jonathan might have just lost tonight. I genuinely think Rocksroy was the only real goat left in the game (and thus to be honest, I think voting him out over Romeo was a mistake) and I think Jonathan probably could have pulled it out over Tori. 

I won’t say Jonathan’s a complete goat - his physical game is well-positioned and he has a decent (but not nearly good enough and in danger of sliding into a bad place) social game. Maybe if he’s with Romeo and somebody who completely messes up their Final Tribal, he could win. But I don’t see that. 

Now, to be fair, I might be giving into my own bias here and Jonathan can recover from what I saw as bad social game at that tribal. He still has plenty of days and other players can still fuck up. And I’m kind of excited because I don’t think that we are dealing with a situation where we don’t have any real goats left in the game. People with much less win equity? Yes, but with Rocksroy gone, I don’t think there are any “safe” goats left. From the perspective of somebody in the game, you probably have more win equity than Player X but you don’t know for absolute sure anymore. 

Is it likely that Jonathan, Lindsey or Romeo could win the game? No, I don’t think so. Is it possible? YES. And that’s exciting to be honest.

P.S. After seeing all of Zach’s (the first boot - second if you count Jackson) twitter posts, I’m honestly sad we didn’t get to see more of him this season. And I’m not saying his boot was bad for everyone, but Romeo REALLY should have stuck with his skinny guy alliance over his alliance with Rocksroy and Drea considering how insanely quickly they turned on him at the merge. 

The Chanelle of it All

I keep on going back and forth between whether Chanelle is a good player who made some missteps and just didn’t have the social game to dig her way out or whether she’s a bad player. 

I always want to give the benefit of the doubt but I think undeniably Chanelle made two and a half bad moves that really sunk her game. 

1) Risked her vote. I don’t think I need to say anything else on this. Even her most hardcore supporters are all too willing to admit she misplayed that move. I think even Chanelle herself knows it and probably has (understandable) nightmares about that ship wheel. 

1.5) I think as much as people really really want to blame Daniel for the dissolution of that alliance and the Jenny fiasco, but Chanelle shares her blame in that. She needed to not avoid the entire responsibility of the Lydia vote (and to be absolutely fair, Mike did it too so blame to go around). It made her look unreliable especially when Hai knew that she’d lied to him. It didn’t matter that you didn’t have a vote, if you’d had, Hai knew who you would have voted for and she should have realized that. That being said Daniel needed to not phrase it in such a way that it made her seem like he was throwing the whole responsibility on her. I really really think that if Daniel/Chanelle had played that whole tribal better, they could have regrouped with Mike and put Hai/Lydia back on the bottom. There was a loss on Jenny especially when Daniel caved but let’s be honest, it was literally Hai’s optimal move to go to rocks. 

2) Not telling Omar about his lost vote. She had a connection with Omar and there was a chance (a weak one but still a chance), that she could have gotten in good with the Takus. The optimal move would have been to swallow ego, admit that it was her fault and try and get in good. Instead, by failing to tell Omar, she burned that bridge. Even if she had been planning to tell him and later did, she let Hai strike first and control the narrative. 

Now there may have been some editing trickery so I’m willing to retract that upon hearing more info on her interviews tomorrow. It’s also possible that upon reading her interview tomorrow, I may decide that my benefit of the doubt was wrong and Chanelle really is just a bad player (but who could still be a good person - you guys know that with exceptions like D*n Sp**o, even if I’m criticizing gameplay, it doesn’t mean that I think they’re a bad person right?). 

I will say that her whole “I thought I was playing chess and everybody else was playing checkers but realized I was wrong last tribal” was not a good look for her considering what happened at her last two tribals before that. But again editing trickery - who knows? 

Last week, I predicted that Hai/Mike/Lydia would stick together. I was wrong. But I still do think Mike/Hai is going to be an important relationship this season. To an extent, I felt after watching that Hai/Lydia was always the precursor to Hai/Mike.

I also said the Taku Four would stick together which they have...for now. I do understand that Hai/Mike turned on Lydia considering just the numbers game plus Maryanne having an idol. Omar played really really well this episode. Like really well despite not having a vote. Player of the Week for sure. At this point, I’m willing to divide the contestants into five groups:

The Strategic Threats: Hai, Drea, Romeo, Omar

The Social Threats: Maryanne, Lindsay, Mike

The Physical Threats: Jonathan

The Goats: Tori, Rocksroy...and Chanelle (of the three, Rocksroy is the definite goat). 

I know that one of my selections for goat is going to be unpopular. And obviously with three possible goats, one must actually be the Almost But Not Quite Goat. Which Chanelle may well be. 

But that means she needs to go to the end with Rocksroy and Tori, two people who hate each other. Which tbh, would almost be an impressive enough task on its own. We’ve seen Almost But Not Quite Goats win before after all (Bob Crowley and despite what some fans might say, Brob in Redemption Island). It doesn’t matter if almost anyone in the final eleven would have beaten you if you’re sitting next to the the only two you can. But then, we’ve also seen countless times where an Almost But Not Quite Goat has turned themselves into a true Goat (which is why it’s so important to know your win equity people) by voting out one of the few people they could beat.  

But at this moment reading the edit, I think Chanelle has played poorly and is behind Tori. She should not have risked her vote. Nobody denies that. If Rocksroy had not smashed the hourglass, she would almost certainly be gone tonight. Not having any friends at the merge...not a great look especially since not only did she not vote for the person who went home tonight, but arguably  not even the backup (maybe, but I don’t think if Lydia had suddenly whipped out an idol, Jonathan would have gone home). Tori has burned Rocksroy but Chanelle has arguably burned Omar (and through him Lindsay, Maryanne and Jonathan) and Mike and Hai. That’s not a great spot to be in for the jury. 

Both she and Daniel shared the problem of chronic overplaying and when things were going well, they were buddy-buddy and when things weren’t...they almost immediately turned on each other. Everybody wants to blame Daniel but let’s be honest, Chanelle deserves a fair share of her portion of the blame for that fiasco. Daniel’s not entirely wrong that Chanelle wanted to abrogate her entire responsibility for that. This all sucks because before that, I was genuinely wondering whether Chanelle could be the winner. 

We’re still early merge which means things are still a little in flux now, but at this moment, if she’s seated next to Hai, Drea, Romeo, Omar, Maryanne, Lindsay, Mike or Jonathan - I don’t see her beating any of them. That’s not a great spot to be in especially when the two people you may be able to beat strongly dislike each other and want the other out. 

I don’t buy the supposed Taku Split. I could be dead wrong here, of course, but the split is Maryanne/Jonathan. Some people read Jonathan as being a jerk for not wanting to deal with Maryanne/Lindsey constantly talking, but as an introvert, I read him going off to swim as him recharging his battery? 

IDK, I think they’re trying to make us think Taku could split but those arguments are ultimately trivial and petty. I predict at merge that Taku will stick together with this whole argument made to make us think “but maybe.” 

My prediction: Taku Four stay strong, Mike/Lydia/Hai stay strong, Romeo/Drea stay strong together. 

Chanelle may or may not split - her Mike vote tonight means she at least realizes she must be on the bottom of the #GaysForMike Alliance. Tori, by her own admission is ready to split. Rocksroy is old school but this episode highlighted for him how out of the loop he was on Ika, so he might flip. 

Okay, I’m going to move onto Chanelle’s Mike vote. After thinking about it for a while, I’ve decided that it falls into the category of “generally good move for what you thought would happen but unfortunately people already countered for it.” 

What I’m assuming is that Chanelle assumed it would be 4 on Daniel but this left the danger of Daniel playing the SITD. So she placed a vote on Mike, I think with the idea that if Daniel played the SITD and got safe, Mike and not her would go home because I think she was smart enough to recognize she would go home instead. And she didn’t want to go Hai or Lydia because she thought she could recover better if Mike went home. 

Unfortunately for her, Mike/Hai/Lydia predicted this possibility and had Mike put a vote on Chanelle. So if Daniel had played SITD and had been safe, it would have been a Mike-Chanelle tie, and Chanelle would have still gone home. But at least she would have had the chance to appeal to Hai/Lydia to keep her over Mike. Almost certainly, it wouldn’t have worked but I can’t blame her for making the most optimal move for her in suboptimal conditions. In the game of Survivor, sometimes your best move doesn’t mean game-changing. When they played their SITD, Zach, Marya and Swati arguably made their best move available...but even if they had succeeded, it wouldn’t have been game-changing or ideal. 

To put it another way, if Lydia had risked her vote, she would have made a dumb move that ultimately worked out. Whereas Chanelle was put in a situation where even her best move could have easily ended in failure. Fortunately for her, her fears of a Daniel SITD turned out for naught so she was safe. But I think she shouldn’t fool herself into thinking that Hai/Mike/Lydia won’t immediately recognize who voted for Mike. Hai and Lydia both know they voted for Daniel and Mike voted for Chanelle and Chanelle can’t vote for herself so...keep it gamewise, explain your logic, recover with Mike and play from there. Don’t bring it up but don’t try and deny it if they point out the easy logic (yes, I am aware that this all happened months ago - I could also be wrong and Chanelle has the skill to split the three). 

I’m also going to give Mike some props here for finagling himself into the majority alliance. No joke, but for his Survivor archetype, I did not expect him to have the ability to get past his number one Jenny being voted and it shows some insight. 

It’s weird that I have to say this, but if you’re physically threatening Survivor players or calling for violence against them for not voting/playing the way you want (sometimes even if it’s in their best interests to vote against the way you want)...don’t fucking do that. 

This is not aimed at the majority of you but it is aimed at more people than it should be. 

Hai

Welp. Friendship over with Chanelle and Daniel, now I stan Hai and Lydia. 

Chanelle told Omar that she really needed her vote tonight and then risked it. Dumb move. Also, yes, Daniel totally tried to put the blame on you, but you both know that you totally did tell him to go for Lydia both at the camp and at tribal council. She should deny it as best she can though so that when Hai/Lydia are picking which one of the two, they add to their alliance, they’ll pick her.  

Daniel proceeded to throw his number one ally under the bus for no reason. He literally could have looked at Jenny/Chanelle and gone “I’m sorry, but we can’t risk rocks when the dice are loaded in Hai’s favor,” and I think that would have been the end of it. Like he’s not entirely wrong that Chanelle told him “Lydia,” but dude, play it chill. He also totally telegraphed that they were going for Lydia. 

Hai knew the math was on his side. Based on the way the votes went tonight, that’s an alliance of four against an alliance of two. Voting for his top ally would put him in the deep minority, which is not great. He’d be fucked. 

If he goes to rocks, there’s a 1/4th chance that he goes, but a 3/4th chance that Mike, Chanelle or Daniel do and thus puts him in a better position. The probabilities favored Hai and he knew that and it kills me that somehow Chanelle/Daniel didn’t immediately put that together.  

Hai/Lydia know that Mike doesn’t have a vote but not why. They’ll either pick up Chanelle or Daniel and run Vati. 

I blame Chanelle for risking her vote and taking a sure thing and blowing it to high hell. And I blame Daniel for not doing basic math, taking the L on Jenny and then recouping with trusted ally Chanelle and Mike after Tribal. 

The two of them had my heart and they fucking blew it. I kind of estimate the Hai/Lydia alliance will pick Chanelle because Daniel’s got the whole shoulder thing and keeping Mike around for now is good for them strength-wise.