Austranded: Red Centre

Jajajaja, were you expecting the MERGE tonight?! I bet we caught you off guard – even giving you an unexpected day away from tribal! But now you have 13 other tribemates and an entire mess of connections to detangle and work through.


1. Your simple challenge ended up deciding your partner for the immunity challenge this round…but also your bounty for the next five. How do you feel about your partner? Do you plan to stay loyal and work together? Or are you itching to find out what’s in one of those mystery boxes?

2. As Jonathan said, all of the previous boots have been returning players. How does that news make you feel?

3. You have the weekend to reconnect with old tribemates and build connections with new ones. Right off the bat, who are your most trusted allies and primary targets? Any time this shifts – update us! Let us know how you plan to keep yourself safe at the beginning of this merge...and all the way through 'til the end.

4. Spill the tea! What’s the best piece of goss you’ve heard since merging? And who are your sources?

BONUS: An idol in your pocket and one more round to use it. Thoughts?


As always, you may submit guesses for the aliases of your tribemates, and the new player to gain coins! Due date at challenge results time, per usual.

Wait what? I have another round to use my idol? Oh my God, I did a dumb. You'll hear about it. I thought it expired today, I don't know what I was thinking. Wishful thinking I guess.

https://recorder.google.com/share/72a5c ... dff6d89c7a

I'm not going to make another voice confessional, but I'll just add that this puts a whole new spin on the whole intentionally lose the challenge tomorrow so Nova and I get put on the block idea, you'll hear a reference to that in the voice confessional

Having the idol would take a lot of risk out of getting booted off in an intentionally lose the challenge plan, but it's so risky in and of itself, and if I don't need it, it's silly to create a situation where I would want to use it.

But theoretically I could get Nova out here, even if she had the idol, play my own idol, and then I don't know, possibly get somebody else out that got one vote or something. That would be terrible.

I really don't see a way for that to go down that isn't terrible. So unfortunately my pleasure at having the idol situation done with is not the case, but I still feel okay about tomorrow.

If it does happen that Nova throws it, then I would probably have to use it and one of my allies would probably go home. So now I'm all anxious all over again.

I don't even think I'd be able to use it if it was one of my allies as the vote, because if they split the vote, which of course they would do if their main goal is to flush the idol, they'd throw a vote or two on me, or one of my other allies.

I think it's going to be a long night.

So yeah, I made a voice confessional!

I'll probably also answer the questions tomorrow. If the link doesn't work, I'll fix it in the morning.

Night night!

1. Your simple challenge ended up deciding your partner for the immunity challenge this round…but also your bounty for the next five. How do you feel about your partner? Do you plan to stay loyal and work together? Or are you itching to find out what’s in one of those mystery boxes?

I need to sort this out still. I’m nervous that Nova seems to be very well connected, so might want to go for the bounty to get me out.

2. As Jonathan said, all of the previous boots have been returning players. How does that news make you feel?

If the newbie knew who I was, particularly if my age was include, they may well dismiss me as a potential threat. Hard to say. My awards were probably mentioned, so that’s not good. At least they’d know they could talk to me.

3. You have the weekend to reconnect with old tribemates and build connections with new ones. Right off the bat, who are your most trusted allies and primary targets? Any time this shifts – update us! Let us know how you plan to keep yourself safe at the beginning of this merge...and all the way through 'til the end.

Loyal to the bananas, then the 5 alliance, then the 7 alliance. I’ll stick around Baden bc he’s a faucet of tea. Sharn probably to keep her close. We’d need more than 7 to roll the vote our way.

4. Spill the tea! What’s the best piece of goss you’ve heard since merging? And who are your sources?

Baden and David have filled me in. Baden needed someone to talk to and David is my very close ally.

BONUS: An idol in your pocket and one more round to use it. Thoughts?

Not good. My thoughts are right back where I was two days ago. We’ll just have to see how things go down this weekend. I think my pulling it out to save my ass would totally change the dynamics of how I’m seen in Bananas, and their trust and influence are my currency. Without it, I’m nearly broke. But getting voted out is unrecoverable and being broke means I can live another day.

https://recorder.google.com/share/8911c ... efa8d42833

Is this formatted correctly? It's not supposed to show a little player?

The think tank idea is working. I hope. All the bananas have shared their strategies and thoughts about alliances and David will stay in his separate alliance and be part of our Arumbera 7 as a secret member. Mat, Jarrad and I will have a similar situation with David's 5 tribe. All of this was exactly what I wanted, but I needed David to say it - how do you suggest to your core four alliance member that you don't want him in your main alliance?? This forced him to do it, so I'm happy about that.

They're giving me SO MUCH information in front of each other, I feel like I just must believe it's all true at this point. They would be going to a hell of a lot of work if they're making all this up just to keep me busy while they're plotting my doom. They were the Three Plantains all along, and I'm just a hanger on, and not a key reason we're still together. I can't rule this out, but my gut says I'm good. For today. I've learned not to predict the future in this game.

So either they have some concerns and side plan ideas they're not telling me, or they're fully onboard with my/our plans. Orrrrr they're remarkable players dragging me along as goat, or they will blindside me whenever they feel like it, or they think I'm an overbearing hag. I hope very much that none of those bad things are true, just the good one, but it will help me to steel myself if I've been Michael-Deaned by a horrible Dichael Kraken (that's Dick, for short btw) sent to bring me angst.

There's also a fair possibility that they aren't worried because they haven't thought to end game. I'm not sure. None of them have brought it up to me, and so I haven't, because I don't want them panicking and thinking the plan was impossible and they should scramble without me. We're not likely to be able to get lucky again and not have a majority band against us to desaturate yellow at some point, likely while they have the majority, so it might be awhile or it might be tomorrow.

I'm trying to create as strong of alliances as possible so the one they pick to vote out isn't me. I've kept pointing out to the 5/7 alliance about how relationship weakness is the best reason to vote out someone, so I need to work my ass off to make sure they like me best. They very well might not. I like them all immensely. I did get them all to identify Michelle as the vote out; I told the 5s it was about relationships, but I told the Bananas the real reason, it was because Michelle had way longer chats with me and I had a lot of people in that category already, so I needed Daisy, who had weaker relationships and was less likely to form a separate alliance, to stay.

Sorry future Michelle, you shone too bright! Orrr, this will turn out to be nonsense and I'll just look silly because you kicked ass and won. Having to carry on playing and confing without a clue how others actually perceive me is not my favorite.

I'd like to take out Jericho, Ben and Nova next. At that point, I would like our secondary alliance members to take out each other, with our help; David may need to jump over to whatever our new name is at that point. I'd rather him here than us there. We could get into a huge clusterfuck sometime in there. Something to look forward to. Immunity will play a huge role.

Or will the remaining side alliances finally band together and take us out one by one? Something will go down I think. Can the Bananas emerge victorious? Hell if I know. It would be fun.

I've 99% decided to just used the idol on myself tomorrow. I'd LOVE to win immunity and give it to one of the three other bananas in a lottery or something. After practicing with Nova today, I think our chances are decent to win, but my speed will be the downfall if we don't.

After the tribal, I'll tell the bananas that I one-clued the idol in an hour or two, which I did. I'll say I thought one of them could be Dean or Michael or someone and really good at working friendly women, I was just being careful, which I was. I'll say it was early game and I kept it ready in case they or I ever needed it, but we all kept each other safe, so we never needed it. I'll say if we hadn't merged, I wouldn't have used it, because I/we had total control of Arumbera, but now there's outliers that I've never spent much time talking to, despite no lack of trying, and they might land a vote on me if it's out that I'm one in control. They might try to put votes on all of us to flush our idol. That's horrifying.

With four, maybe five idols at play tomorrow and no control over every single vote anymore, I'd be a ghastly idiot not to play it. I'd have to win immunity not to.

I am still fairly worried about losing their trust; they will probably go after me fairly quickly if they're really mad. In which case, I'm extra super screwed, because between the two 8 alliances above, that only leaves three others to huddle up with.

At minimum, I'll be buying the clues and serving them up fresh at every opportunity; I'm not completely sure they'll buy that I one-clued it, and even if they do, they'll be offended that I didn't tell them and instead carried on the ruse of getting/buying clues I didn't need. I'll tell them I was burned before when I disclosed I was holding the idol to my alliance, also true. I don't suppose Mat will feel appeased that I gave him 2 coins as a consolation prize for my not telling him I had the idol.

Sorry Bananas of the future! I really do adore each of you in your own ways and hope we can all be great friends after this! This was just a game move. You're amazing players. If y'all can forgive me and move on with me in-game, I'll be so amazed and impressed. If you can't, I'll be fine with that too. I'll still think you're amazing and I value our friendship and the absolute blast I've been having since meeting you.

I do believe it's all been real, the friendship and the strategy convos, I feel it, but if not, then kudos to you. If you outplayed me, I'll be nothing but awed. I will also hope you've been kind in your chats. And I can't wait to finally find out who you all are!

Right on the heels of my submitting the above note, David declares he's my ride or die. If he's fooling me, he's an amazing actor, if he's real, he's a total sweetheart and so fun to play the game with! He made it clear it was just me, just us, so I hope that's true. We're deciding on names.

We are Kyvid-14.

If I'm getting duped, this is by far the nicest way to go. Can recommend.

Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 12:05:24 am https://recorder.google.com/share/8911c ... efa8d42833

Is this formatted correctly? It's not supposed to show a little player?

I got a 404 error. First one worked though!

Okay, thanks for letting me know. This is the voice conf recording I made on Friday night, take two. https://recorder.google.com/share/8911c ... efa8d42833.

If David or Jarrad go home tonight, I'm gonna cry for real.

This vote will either be nearly unanimous for Jericho, and his safety will come down to whether someone is willing to play an idol on him, or I have completely lost control and it will be a surprise.

No one is whispering to me.

Breathing has resumed.