-- 13th Place - 1st Juror - Voted Out 9-2-1-1 --
By Lara Álvarez
Posts
#68501
Hola castaways! Lo siento por the late confessional post, your favorite hostess de España needed a siesta! Pero, we hope you have been spending your time getting to know your new tribemates after tonight’s SWAP! :shock: :mindblown:

Entonces, Qué pasa?!!! :tea:

1. Were you expecting a swap? Is this welcome news, or did you feel like you were in a good position in your old tribe?


2. Give us a rundown of your new (and familiar) tribe mates. Who stands out? Who are you not very excited to see?


3. Double tribal tomorrow?! Things are really ramping up! Are you worried about attending tribal council so soon after a swap? What will you base your decision off of?


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

Lara Álvarez

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By Nova
Posts
#70371
What's this? Six episodes' worth of confessionals in one night? What could have spurred this on? Certainly not Jonathan mocking me and telling me that I'm basically the Steven Bradbury of this game in terms of competence and social game!

Hola castaways! Lo siento por the late confessional post, your favorite hostess de España needed a siesta! Pero, we hope you have been spending your time getting to know your new tribemates after tonight’s SWAP! :shock: :mindblown:

Entonces, Qué pasa?!!! :tea:


Desgraciademente, han pasado quince años desde la última vez que estudié español, y voy a machacar horriblemente esta respuesta.

1. Were you expecting a swap? Is this welcome news, or did you feel like you were in a good position in your old tribe?

Some sixth sense definitely told me we'd be swapping at the final 18. Call it a politician's intuition, call it my instinctual sense for the flow of the game, call it the fact that it was blatantly spelled out for me when I won the swap power, it's all the same, really.

I think I was in a pretty unassailable position in Arumbera, so I'm going to have to do a little hustling and get myself back into a position of comfort here. Also, I was in the middle of looking for the idol, after blowing 15 coins on the clues and spending more time learning about John Macdouall Stuart than any human should ever have to, and then suddenly I was on Papunya and it was all for NAUGHT. I'm pretty sure that violates the Geneva Convention in some way...

2. Give us a rundown of your new (and familiar) tribe mates. Who stands out? Who are you not very excited to see?

I'm still with Sarah, and that's awesome. She was absolutely my homegirl on the original Arumbera tribe, and she's someone who's sociable and fun to talk to, so I'm sure that we're going to take this tribe by storm. Mark has been an amazing competitor in the challenges so far, so I'm sure that he's going to be a great asset and hopefully we get along well. I haven't really paid attention to the others yet, so I'm intrigued and interested to see how they turn out.

3. Double tribal tomorrow?! Things are really ramping up! Are you worried about attending tribal council so soon after a swap? What will you base your decision off of?

Going into a new tribe, my usual trick is to figure out who's not making a first impression and just sort of loudly point it out to everyone else. So I'm definitely keeping track of who's impressing people, who's not, and slowly weaving my web and getting people on board. Psychological studies show that nothing bonds people together quite as well as uniting against a displeasing third party, so the plan is to find out who that person will be and start building against them quite quickly.

4. Nova, there wasn't a fourth question here, but you're adding one anyway. Is it because you want to talk about Mark and how good it felt to vote him out in this episode?

Why, yes! Thank you for asking that question, Lara Álvarez!

So, going into tribal, I was always gunning for Mark. He hadn't been around, he wasn't really talking with anybody, so he'd been who I had my sights set on. Then, imagine my disgust when he suddenly showed up to the challenge and started trying to take charge of it, telling everybody his strategies and organizing practice. I immediately thought, "Oh, great, there goes that plan," but as I paid attention, it seemed like he really wasn't actually leading the team, he had just sort of figured out an optimal strategy for how to do the challenge but he didn't have a solid plan for how to coach them through it. He picked Mat and Sarah to play when they were clearly struggling, didn't really even ask me if I wanted to have a go (I did), and wasted so much time in practice that we basically had to do it at the last minute. So I was basically able to take Mark's hero moment, and undermine him a bit and make people see him as more of an incompetent taskmaster. It really didn't help that Mark made absolutely zero effort to connect with me. He didn't say one word to me the entire time we were together. Not even "Hi, Nova, how's it going?"

And for me, that's just unfathomable. If I was busy for a period of time and then came back, I would absolutely spend that time apologizing for being socially inactive, and then try to work my way up from the hole I'd dug myself. I would NOT try to take a leadership role and boss the rest of the tribe around. So to have him do that, and then, after ignoring me the entire time, try to target me? It was go time. Nobody disrespects Nova Peris like that! I was one of the best players in the challenge when we practiced, I was one of the most active social players at the swap, and I have a track record of success. Oh, and most importantly, I had immunity. We actually all got together and had a good laugh about that, and basically nobody let Mark know, because we all thought it'd be hilarious to let him try and vote for the immune person and waste his vote on the way out. I wound up not playing it just because it seemed better to hang onto it and keep my aura of invincibility up for a little while longer, but it would've been hilarious.

And just to put the icing on the "Mark Doesn't Really Pay Attention" cake, while casting his vote for me, Mark started speaking to me in Spanish. I'm Aboriginal Australian.

Anyway, that's the saga of Mark.
 

Nova

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