Today's Menu/Confessionals

“	Cf: as much as I really don't want the target on my back that comes with winning a match the competitive side of me is telling me to win every single match. Its the Kermit meme	”
–Zakriah

“	CF5 Our third Main Match was Today’s Menu! I was a bit upset not to see any jjajangmyeon available, alas all we got were some chicken, seafood, and sandwiches. But this game is pretty fun! I wasn’t really sure what strategy I could use for this, but Matt messaged me asking me who I trusted. I brought up Gavin, Loren, and Will, and he said he agreed with trusting them as well, so we created a 5-person alliance (that we later added David onto to make it 6)! With this 6-person alliance, we want to try and get as much of us to win as possible; a 6-person joint win would be so unlikely but would be completely optimal. Our strategy is to have us split 4-1-1, with those in the four choosing the 4-6 range, and those in the ones choosing the 2-3 range. We think this would optimize the amount of points we could get, without taking too great of a risk regarding what the other five will do. I think this should work out decently, at least I’m really hoping it does. However, Loren approached me with a little something extra. He told me for that the whole game he’s also been pretty close to CJ, and wants to leak the information he gets from him to me, so that he and I can win and protect ourselves. This is pretty awesome, and I’m totally open for the idea, as long as we can keep CJ safe as well because he’s gonna be the one (likely unknowingly) helping us in the end. Hopefully in the end, no matter what happens, I’ll be safe and no one will get too mad at me, haha. I think I’m definitely gonna break out of my UTR shell this round, I feel like I’m kind of taking control over this 6-person alliance, and with this CJ thing I might be blindsiding some people to win. So we’ll have to see! I just hope I don’t get in danger because of all this.	”
–John

“	cf : Nobody has approached me for an alliance for this MM today and its weird because both David and CJ were all for it yesterday.I'ma wait till they get online to submit but I'm getting worried	”
–Aromal

“	C/F so i got added to a group chat with will, loren, joseph, gavin, and john. from what i know they already had a group chat without me before i got added to this. i assume will is just reiterating the plan they already had before this 2nd group chat was made. not sure who made the original group but i would guess it was probably loren? which i find funny if true because earlier he was trying to give off the impression to me that he had absolutely nobody to work with and that i'm his only ally lol. anyways, working with a group to get a joint win in this game is fine, but pretty difficult to pull off in reality i think. unless you have super reliable info about what the people you're not working with are picking in the last couple rounds... whatever though, i don't really care. i don't see myself getting picked for dm so as long as i'm not elim candidate, i'll be content with how this round goes. i'll gladly be selfless to help someone else in this round if there's an opportunity to.	”
–David

“	C/F https://i.gyazo.com/b649a8a3157890257c6bb046ff7960ca.png such subtlety. much utr. wow. loren - totally not conniving, confirmed.	”
–David

“	Confessional: I love just sitting back and letting my alliance work.... not. Zak and CJ need to feel wanted so I'm keeping them in the loop... in the loop with what I'm doing, not with what my alliance of Loren, Matt, David, Will, and John are doing. Zak plans to do Chicken this round and so does CJ, which is dicey b/c that means I could get no points... I've asked CJ to pick something else, and only time will tell if he does	”
–Gavin

“	CF: So I called out Gav on his double dealing via pm and we talked it over. I told him he better tell the whole alliance the entire truth or else it could get blown up. Hence the reason for that. But anyways, CJ and John and I are secretly working together. THat's how I found out about Gavin telling them information. I know I said I didn't want to directly influence anything, but I’m trying to play really hard really secretly. The first round went according to plan, now I have to decide whether or not to sabotage Gavin and Zakriah with chicken, but idk yet. These people don't understand the REAL way to win this game. They just think if we have six, use the 4-1-1 strategy and we should be good. BUT, I think this challenge is more about gathering information, learning everyone ELSE'S movements, not your own, and moving accordingly. Not blindly going here because of the 4-1-1 strategy, but to read your enemies and counter their moves.	”
–Loren

“	CF6 The plan for the six-person alliance (hereafter “the Spa” because typing out “the six-person alliance” every time is going to get annoying fast) was to split us into three groups, as I mentioned in my last confessional. We went for Loren on seafood/2-3, Will on sandwiches/2-3, and Matt, Gavin, David, and myself on chicken/4-6. When results were revealed, we all actually got points! Six people ended up on chicken, and two each on seafood and sandwiches, giving the four 2 points each, and Loren and Will 3 points each. I’m assuming Loren told CJ to go for seafood/2-3 as well, which gave him 3 points too, giving those three joint first place as of R1. Most notable, though, were Zak and Aromal going for chicken/4-6 with the four of us. Loren and I discussed the possibility of someone leaking information from the Spa to them, since it would be a pretty big coincidence if they chose that randomly and got it correct. And our suspicions were correct, with Gavin (presumably) telling Loren that he went to Zakriah and Aromal and told them to do just that. I really thought I could trust Gavin, so it’s kind of unfortunate that he feels like he needs to defect from the Spa, but I guess it’s understandable, considering that there’s really no way a six-way joint win is going to happen, so he feels the need to protect himself. Anyway, Loren and I decided that our new main goal was to figure out how to sabotage Gavin, Zak, and Aromal. The Spa’s plan was to do Loren, Will, Matt, and David on seafood/4-6, me on sandwiches/2-3, and Gavin on chicken/2-3. What we want to try and do is, assuming Gavin tells Zak and Aro to go 2-3 on chicken, have me and Loren go to chicken and do 4-6, therefore giving us points but denying them points, and have CJ and/or Alex go to seafood so that the other three in Spa can get their points. Honestly, this plan sounds incredibly risky, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I feel like it’s going to make me into a massive target, and it’s a very risky move at that. It could easily be ruined if Gavin, Zak, and Aro go 4-6 instead of 2-3, if CJ or Alex don’t go to seafood, if someone does something unexpected, etc. I would rather just see if CJ or Alex can go to chicken and do 4-6, spoiling Gavin, Zak, and Aro’s 2-3, instead of having Loren and I do it, but I don’t know if that will work out. I’ll have to propose it to Loren and see if he can get CJ to do it, perhaps. We don’t even know if Zak and Aro will be on chicken with Gavin. Ugh, this is just so confusing. Speaking of Loren though, I’m starting to get a bit weary of him. He’s really become a big threat, and has made a lot of good moves. I really like him, and I like working with him, but if everyone starts to see me as his right-hand man that will never backstab him, I’ll become a huge threat myself, and will only be seen as his number two. I feel like I might want to try and blindside him soon, but at the same time I’d just feel so bad about that. It’ll be tough, but if I can find the right time to do that, it might be worth it…	”
–John

“	Cf: everyone thinks I was a part of this coup that guessed chicken together but I literally blindly threw a guess before I fell asleep and a number a second after opening my eyes the next morning and happened to land into some majority which sucks bc now everyone thinks something's going on??? Which might be the case but idk about it bc I don't really care???	”
–Zakriah

“	CF: In terms of game, I am going to see if I can get Zakriah to switch his numbers to 4-6.. So Gavin gets no points but Zak does. It makes no sense to have both sides be mad at me. But I was going to wait until the last half hour to carry out the plan to leave no time for more scrambling xD	”
–Loren

“	CF7 Our final plan with CJ, Loren, and Alex for R2 was to have CJ and I do sandwiches/2-3 to give us each three points, and Alex and Loren to do chicken/4-6 to stop Gavin and Zakriah (each doing chicken/2-3) from getting points. But by consequence of CJ going to sandwiches to guarantee me and him 3 points, we did have to take a gamble that someone would go with Will, David, and Matt so that they wouldn't be too pissed off. Luckily, since I'm doing sandwiches/2-3 as the Spa wanted me to, I'll still be in their good graces, so that I can still gather intel from them as a double agent. Ninety minutes before the Round 2 deadline of 1pm, Loren comes up with the idea to save Zakriah this round to try and rope him into a potential relationship, so that we can get information about where he's going. To do this, we would tell him to go 4-6 instead of 2-3 on chicken, so he could get 2 points and Gavin would still get 0. Unfortunately, Zak was offline until far after the deadline, but Loren still sent him a message about what to do, which is perfect, so that he knows that Loren tried to save him, and that he would be open to doing something with him. Pretty good plan, imo. Anyway results come out, and everything works perfectly! Only Gavin, Zak, and Aro lose points, putting them in joint last with Alex and Saxby with 2 points. Saxby went with Will, David, and Matt on seafood, thus giving those three points as well, as I had hoped. With Loren's obvious deviancy from the Spa's plan, none of them trust him anymore, so I take this time to make a new alliance, the Five Courses, which is just the Spa without Loren. They still trust me, so I'll be able to get some information out of them to help La CJ (the new name for the four person alliance of Loren, Alex, CJ, and me, since it has the first letter of each of our names, and according to Alex, CJ is a Spanish woman lmao). Loren and CJ are able to rope Aro and Zak into the mix, but they don't tell them at they're working with me, so that they can't spoil the fact that I'm getting info from The Five Courses and using it against them. Hopefully this lets us control their votes as well, but to be honest they're still kind of wild cards. The Five Courses' plan is to have me do sandwiches/2-3, Will do chicken/2-3, and Matt, David, and Gavin do seafood/4-6. This is in an attempt to boost Will and I, the two with the highest scores in the alliance, up to try and secure if not joint first then just first. In response, La CJ is going to put me and CJ on sandwiches/2-3 and Loren and Will on chicken/4-6. CJ and I are going to try and gain points for a joint first, while we send Loren and Will to go try and block Will out of getting points this round. We've heard that Aro is also going to go to chicken, so this should work out that Will doesn't get points while CJ and I do. And I really hope it does work out! If I could actually end up winning this, that would be pretty awesome. I'm probably gonna end up as a prominent player in the game at the end of this because I'm actually like backstabbing people now, so it should be fun to see how this all ends up playing out.	”
–John

“	Cf: I'm at work for 8 and a half hours and the entire world explodes	”
–Zakriah

“	CF: Well we tried xD Idt it will work because Zakriah has been off but we sent a message explaining everything to him so hopefully he isn't blindsided by the results, unless he picked 4-6 anyways.	”
–Loren

“	Cf: so basically its just me aro and CJ against the world and that's all I really know rn	”
–Zakriah

“	CF: Things have been going according to plan in this game so far. For the first three rounds I hit it hard, putting together an alliance that could essentially gather all the information and work from there, which seemed to work out perfectly. I wasn't able to coordinate anything yesterday since I had some more private family issues, but maybe that was the best thing since I got to lie low for a round before the EC is announced haha. I'm excited to see what happens, since I feel pretty safe that I will not be the EC nor in the DM.	”
–Loren

“	VL: I remember when I said to myself that I would have no reason to dislike anyone after this game because it's all about betrayal and deception, but these people with their "I'm straight up not going to talk to you because I don't need you" antics are seriously making me go crazy lmao... I'm just considering being a flat out liar for the rest of the game and lie about legit everything because it won't really affect my position in this game, eh? If only i wouldn't be playing Genius with a bunch of people who were told by their grandma at a family visit that they were so smart when they probably don't even know how to solve a matrix in the wonderful chapter of math when that's one of the easiest things to do lol, rant over *drops mic* feel free to get triggered by this because I'm used to it	”
–Alex

“	VL Confessional: Alex needs to grow up... I've played with him before, and I know he doesn't handle defeat gracefully... but play with a little bit of class my man We're all going about this game in different ways. Respect the gameplay of others and do something to better your standing in the game if you're not content with how everything is going -- whining solves nothing.	”
–Gavin

“	C/F https://i.gyazo.com/740808cebd4d750765f1c17bf9cb15b2.png i decided to kinda try to help alex because thomas has said 5 words to me all game and is the only person i don't talk to all, so i wouldn't mind if he was eliminated. idk if other people are giving alex info anyways but whatevs, doesn't hurt to show him that i want to try to help him. i assume will is probably gonna tell thomas where to go this round, so there's a good chance thomas gets 2 or 3 points and i'd rather alex doesn't choose me for dm if he does end up as elim candidate. this isn't really going against the group i'm working with at all but i still hope alex doesn't tell anyone that i'm giving him any info, because i think it ends up looking shady anyways. not a big deal if someone does find out though. it's in my group's best interest if alex goes on one of chicken/seafood anyways because ideally the one CJ chooses has >3 people so he gets no points and then the other gets points so that one of will or john win. other than that i don't have much to say about this round. i'm just chilling. i assume aro and zak have been told what to food to choose and what to guess (at least last round, if not before then). if i had guess, i would say joseph is telling them? idk. i hope it doesn't reflect badly on me that i'm working with this group and haven't been telling them any info while someone else has been. but at the same time they could always approach me if they wanted info.... idk. i'm also low key annoyed that Will has gotten himself into a better situation socially these past couple of games. i wanted him to be attracting attention to himself but i don't think anyone is really pissed at him anymore.	”
–David

“	CF: So, it would be smarter for CJ to pickThomas, so that is what I am thinking he will do lol. CJ asked me about the token and we both agreed it should go to Zakriah. I also spoke to Thomas, to make a deal about working together moving forward and he told me he wouldn't nominate me. I told him he should do David so I am thinking that might be what he does lol. I hope so. I'd like to have some power at least in who goes to the DM, and I would totally want David there since he blows up easily around me xD Inb4 I somehow end up getting picked ugh.	”
–Loren

“	Cf: nothing to do with this game but I'm really pissed off at orgs rn bc of the confessional release for my boot ep of tumblr survivor arabia. It pisses me off so much that someone who didn't exist in the season can concoct a random lie about me and no one tries to come to me to clear the air And that makes me think that the same thing could still easily happen here And nothing makes me angrier than blatant liars Especially when the lies are about me. Long story short I'm just always gonna be paranoid that no one's telling me the truth about anything even tho CJ has proven to be looking out for me. I'm just really angry rn.	”
–Zakriah

“	Cf: dammit! I'm so upset because I could have easily gotten the win. With John too which would have been better. I knew the five course all going the same would probably be safer, and I wanted to pile on myself just to grab two points once we knew CJ would not want a joint win. Once I heard John was locked though, I couldn't go for the solo win myself because that would look shady as hell. I think I'm in a better spot than I was the first two rounds so I need to play for later rounds, and not just this round only. Still, I'm going to beat myself up over this one	”
–Will

“	VL: The future final 2 of this game in the bottom 2 for this challenge? That's iconic	”
–Alex

“	CF8 Round 3 results aren’t bad! CJ and I both get points, but Will also does, because Aromal lied to us and didn’t do chicken, so Will wasn’t blocked. This is really unfortunate, because Loren didn’t get points either, so a three-way joint win is out of the question, but now we have to deal with Will potentially getting the sole win as well, which wouldn’t have been an issue had Aromal stuck to his word... Ugh, frustrating. Anyway, Loren really wanted me to get sole first so that I could give the ToL to him, but I wasn’t really too fond of the idea. Giving him the ToL would reveal our alliance and would likely make a lot of people upset, plus I wouldn’t want to have to pick the EC and potentially fight with them or whatever. I’m trying to still stay somewhat UTR, not go guns blazing into the night. CJ and I have a conversation regarding the win situation, and we both agree to give him sole first, which was fine with me since he promised to give the ToL to either me or Loren. I really do hope I can trust CJ, because I’ve really only started talking to him this round, but I feel like we mesh well as strategic partners. For whatever reason though, I feel like I’m making a massive mistake in doing this, like he’ll go behind my back and get me picked for the DM, but I doubt it. This game just makes you paranoid 24/7. The Five Courses plan to have Matt, David, and Gavin do sandwiches/4-6, Will on chicken/2-3, and me on seafood/2-3. This was again to try and make it so that Will and I get a joint win, but obviously I don’t want that to happen, because Loren might be in jeopardy, so La CJ planned to boost CJ into sole first by putting him with me at seafood/2-3, and putting Loren and Alex on chicken/4-6 to try and block Will. CJ also said that he had Zakriah and Aromal on board to block Will, so Will really shouldn’t get any points from this, and CJ should be fine! And in the end, CJ ended up winning! It wasn’t exactly in the way we expected, though. Alex switched to seafood/2-3, basically ruining the plan because neither he nor CJ got points, so (1) Alex is now one of the two possible ECs with Thomas, and (2) CJ could have lost had someone else gotten more points than him. It was a really risky and honestly pointless move, that wouldn’t have have done him any benefit besides potentially putting him above Thomas, but even then he guessed 2-3 instead of the more logical 4-6 (since three people would’ve already been on seafood, so one could reasonably expect a fourth, which did happen). Oh well, in the end, CJ won, and he was able to pick Thomas as the EC. With regards to the Token of Life though, plans changed a bit. I was fine with him not giving it to me, because I was able to remain out of the spotlight for most of the MM despite my shady double dealings between La CJ and the Five Courses, so I didn’t feel like Thomas would pick me. Loren was a bit more of a risk, but he apparently talked to Thomas about who he would chose, and he said either Matt or David. In that case, I suggested to CJ that he pick someone who he wants to build a closer relationship with, to secure more information during the next MM. That mystery someone ended up being Zakriah, because he can drag Aromal into this too, and we’ll be good for info. It was a pretty low key pick too, no one really questioned it or anything, so in the end that worked out well! Saxby ended up choosing David for the DM, which sucks, because he’s part of the Five Courses and I do really want him to stay. Thomas hasn’t really done anything the whole time, it seems, so I feel like he deserves to go over David. Their DM was Black and White, which was pretty good because we could practice with David and try to help him win! The only problem was that he didn’t do very good in the practice matches, losing all three that we played with him. And unfortunately, that bad luck continued into the actual DM, where they first tied, but then David lost. It’s really sad, honestly, because I know David has more fight left in him, and he doesn’t deserve to go this soon over Thomas, who just stayed silent the entire MM until R3 when he started complaining about no one talking to him (even though he didn’t reach out to anyone anyway). Oh well. The Five Courses will have to go forward as the Four Courses. Of course, as soon as David leaves, Thomas just stirs up a nice heaping pile of drama, calling people out and just acting smug that he won. Like you're not immune, we can just as easily send you home in this coming DM. And the thing is, I can't even call him out for like being inactive and complaining about no one talking to him when he doesn't reach out to anyone, because then he and probably some others will be super annoyed with me, and I can't afford that this early in the game. Whatever, he just needs to gooooo…	”
–John

“	CF: Today was relatively quiet. Not much went on. I'm just loving this game so far. Last round was awesome lol. No blindsides there, well, besides Aromal lying to me, but otherwise everything went as planned. I was rooting for Saxby to win, because I do believe I have more pull with him as compared to David. It was an intense DM though, kinda makes me nervous for when I have to give it a go as well. John and I still talk pretty much 24/7, about game some, but mostly personal stuff tbh. Closest ally definitely. I'm trying to salvage my connections with Will and Gavin as much as I can, but I don't really think we are on the same page when it comes to just pure values and the best way to approach the game itself. I'm hoping I can get something going here, especially since I haven't been immune since the first round. I am going to keep a close eye on CJ, because even though we did work together, I don't know what our long term prospects are looking like. And I need to work on solidifying something more long term with Alex. Even though alliances are ever changing in this game, trust remains constant. I've come a long way since the end of the first round, and I want to keep away from being target number one.	”
–Loren

“	Cf: and THATS why I'm trying not to win main matches if I'm not the target	”
–Zakriah

“	VL CONFESSIONAL: So let me start this off with DECK THE FUCKING HALLS THIS IS MY ISLAND AND THEY CANT BEAT ME WOOOOO Okay but forreal, this epic ass comeback bc Im acting like I have no clue what im doing and EVERYONE IS FALLING FOR IT. Im going to win THE GENIUS	”
–Thomas