Episode 11

[Jeff Probst]

Welcome to the Merge!!!!

Congrats!

How are you feeling about your chances here?

Are you confident in your alliances/friendships or are you exploring other options?

Who are the big threats and are they early merge boots or is it easier to go after group/big targets first?

[Chad]

I'm putting this here. This was my explanation to Cochran and Ralph about what went down with Katie. And now this bitch is going around saying that she is out to seek revenge on me, Sarah, and Mia for "what we did to her." What the fuck did we do to her? This can't be real. We're being trolled or something.

I’m sorry if this is confusing, but I still don’t fully understand what happened and I was front and center for the whole thing.

So let’s start at the beginning. As soon as I get to Refuge, Katie scoops me up and tells me that we need to work with Sarah and Jane because they are numbers for our “side” against Mia and company. So I’m like OK whatever. This is not exactly what I want to do because I really have no desire to work with fucking Jane - you guys know how I feel about the Janes of the ORG world. And you guys also know that I never really trusted Sarah very much. I felt confident enough in my skills that I could get through until the merge without aligning with fucking Jane, but whatever. And Katie also tells me at this point that she has the Nuku Hiva idol and she will use it to save one of us.

So while I’m not crazy about this idea, Katie is my friend and ally so I play along with it.

During this time it was pretty much understood by everyone on the tribe, that if Refuge were to ever go to TC, Jane would be the first boot, because that really is the logical thing to do. And Katie is telling everyone she is OK with this, except behind the scenes she is telling me and Sarah that this cannot happen because of our “numbers”. She was adamant she was not going to vote out Jane and I’m dreading this whole thing because I would be more than happy to see Jane go and I didn’t see the need to cause controversy over a no-brainer vote.

Katie’s activity levels are also in the sewers here and you get a PM from her once every 2-3 days if you are lucky.

So last Thursday during the day, Sarah approaches me and tells me she has either talked to Mia or she is going to talk to Mia (I can’t remember exactly how this went down because it wasn’t important enough for me to commit it to memory but this is really really really fucking important to Katie). And the gist of this whole thing is to switch the vote from Jane to Kristina. Mia wants to do this because Kristina was getting close to Jo and Ken and wanted to cut that off. Sarah obviously wants to save Jane, like Katie, for our “numbers”.

So I’m sitting here thinking this is perfect. We have 5 votes. I had only every talked to Kristina 2-3 times ever, so there was no personal connection there for me. And this all avoids a potentially awkward situation where Katie is refusing to vote out Jane and then I’m stuck in the middle trying to explain why the fuck not.

Katie finally logs into the site after two days (not exaggerating) about an hour before the challenge starts. And this is where our ride on the crazy train begins. The first thing I do is go to her and let her know that Sarah got Mia to switch and vote out Kristina instead of Jane. Isn’t that great? Yay! Woo! Go us!

No.

Katie started flipping the fuck out. She starts freaking out on me that Mia is playing us and she’s just trying to get us to split our votes so they can take out Jane because it makes no sense for Mia to vote out Kristina (it made sense to me). Then something else weird happened that I don’t fully comprehend. It won’t be the last time in this story. But Katie starts getting all paranoid about Sarah too thinking Mia and Sarah are part of some conspiracy to screw her over on this vote.
So I talked to Mia and just asked her to reassure Katie that she was serious about the plan because she didn’t believe it was real. Mia does this and Katie calms down and all is well….. for now.

We lose the challenge and have to go to TC in 20 minutes or so. There was a group thread started between me, Sarah, and Katie (probably by Sarah) where we are confirming the plan and the vote. In that thread I let them know that I had told Ken and Jo that the vote had changed and everyone was leaning more towards Kristina now.

Round 2.

Katie starts flipping out AGAIN, this time because apparently according to her we were supposed to be lying to Jo and Ken about the vote. I don’t fully understand why we were supposed to be lying. But apparently Katie employs a strategy of purposefully alienating people by blindsiding them so they know they are on the outs and then the rest of the tribe has two easy votes. Now that seems perfectly moronic to me to intentionally alienate people for no strategic or logical reason. Doing this one round before the merge makes even less sense.

Anyway, both Mia and I had talked about this earlier and we weren’t going to keep them in the dark about it. But this whole time, Katie had been telling Jo and Ken that the plan was still to vote Jane out. So they are clearly confused and Katie realizes how shady she looks when the rest of us are all telling the truth and she’s making up stories.

So she proceeds to launch an investigation and get down to the bottom of this Kristina vote. And she starts throwing me and Sarah under the bus to Jo and Ken as if we did something wrong and were lying to someone/everyone about something that I still don’t understand? This continues as we go to TC where Katie publicly calls out Sarah a couple of times for lying about something that to this day I can’t comprehend. And she was making it seem like she was not on board for voting Kristina. And Sarah asked her why she never mentioned that before TC in public.

Much later I find out that Katie had formed an alliance at some point with me, her, Kristina, and Jo. She forgot to tell me about this. So perhaps that is the true reason she was flipping out the whole time about this vote? Who knows?

So after this is all over, Katie just won’t let it go. She spent the next three days playing Sherlock Holmes trying to solve the Great Mystery of the Kristina Vote. She’s trying to figure out the exact chain of events that led up to this decision and get to the bottom of who is behind the conspiracy. What conspiracy, you may ask? I have no idea.

Apparently my story, Sarah’s story, and Mia’s story don’t 100% line up to the gnat’s ass detail about how the switch to the Kristina vote came to be. This is probably because none of us cared enough to remember every minute detail? I can think of about 560 things in my life that require my attention more than this does. But anyway, at some point over the weekend, Mia admits to everyone that she is the one that originated the whole thing and her reasons why. This is in line with my recollection as well because I’m pretty sure Sarah told me that she already talked to Mia and Mia wanted to vote out Kristina. But this is not good enough for Katie. She keeps digging and digging and she’s going to get to the bottom of this. She kept going to Jo with all these wild ass theories and proof of how we are all lying because I said it was pink and Sarah called it fuschia. And to this day I have no idea why any of that mattered and what the end goal was.

It’s also important to note that Katie has not sent me one PM during this entire period.

So now we are at Sunday. And we are faced with potentially two Tribal Councils. I am officially off the crazy train and I’m going to vote with Mia, Ken, and Jolanda period. And they all want Jane and Katie to be the votes, but heavily leaning towards Katie as Option 1. But I’m sitting here with the information that Katie has the idol and if there was ever a time for her to use it, it was last night.

Meanwhile, Sarah still wants to work with Katie for some reason. She must be a masochist. Sarah tells me that she thinks Katie is probably going to want to vote out Ken. I’m not sure if I actually even agreed or just gave some vague answer. Katie finally sends me a message after 2-3 days and she says to me that the “four of us” have to stick together and wants to know who I think we should vote out. Mia or Ken or both. I pretty bluntly responded back that after the last round I wasn’t going to put any information out there and they could work it out and let me know who to vote for when they figured it out. And then I never heard from Katie again.

Fortunately we won one of the challenges and I didn’t have to stress out about what to do. Jolanda was pushing for Katie, but I tried to steer them to Jane. I told Mia that Katie had the idol and to convince Jo and Ken to vote out Jane instead, which we managed to do in those 10 minutes. At that point I was afraid she would idol my ass out and I didn’t want any risk there.

And while that was going on, in the 10 minutes between the end of the challenge and TC, Katie proceeded to: try to get Ken voted out, try to form and alliance with Ken, Jo, and Mia, try to convince everyone that Sarah was trying to orchestrate a Ken boot, flip out on Sarah AGAIN for yet another conspiracy theory (who was still thinking we were going to all vote together and that Katie wanted to vote out Ken), stop talking to Sarah, and try to get Sarah voted out, who is now literally the only person that Katie has on her side on the entire tribe.

Sarah is now freaking out because she knows Katie is trying to get her voted out, has no idea why, and doesn’t know who to vote for because Katie stopped talking to her. At the last minute I told her to vote out Jane, but not to tell Katie.

We get to TC and it was actually hilarious. I think Katie thought that she was going to idol out Ken. I suspect that Mia dropped her a “hint” that if she had an idol she should play it because the votes were going her way. So she was sort of smug the whole time. The time comes and she plays her idol.

When the votes are revealed, Katie voted for Ken, Jane vote for Sarah (probably because Katie never told her she changed her mind again ), and the rest of us voted for Jane. And then Katie posts: what the fuck guys??? And Jo and Ken both came back with: I know. We did exactly what we said we were going to do all week. It’s crazy! Then Mia expresses genuine concern for Katie’s well being because of her odd behavior. Katie once AGAIN accuses Sarah of throwing her under the bus. Ken tells her she threw herself in front of it. Katie asks what she did that was wrong. Everyone’s jaw hit the floor and the TC closed with me posting: Is this real life?

After the TC, apparently Katie is now trying to explain her failed attempt to idol Ken out as me, Sarah, and Mia being an inseparable trio that planned the whole Ken boot. Yet somehow in some bizarre twist, Katie is the only one who voted for Ken.

So that’s the story from my perspective. I know it sounds nuts because it was. But either way I have no plans on speaking with her again in this game at all. It’s really not worth the headache and associating with her really only ends up in ruin, apparently.

[Chad]

And I want to save this in case there's any revisionist history going on at some point:

No - honestly, I was pissed that the move was being attributed to you and I but who knows how much of that was an actual thing and how much not.

The reason I was all for keeping Jolanda and Ken in the dark (and this is going to sound super cold) was that it would have made it a lot more black and white in terms of the dynamic - the tribe would have had a couple of clear outsiders who went against the majority vote and it would have established a pecking order with them on the bottom. Now, with Jolanda at least "in the mix" I don't think things are that cut and dry which may be a mixed blessing.

It just pissed me off that Sarah was making those "I'm just that kind of person" remarks, like it felt like a shot at me as a person because I do prefer the deception route- I think it makes it seem more like a game than if you just hustle up to someone before Tribal and say "yeah, we're strong-arming you out" and then you have to deal with all that painful personal bullshit while Jeff draws the whole Tribal out saying "So, person who I can clearly see is being voted out tonight cos everyone has voted - what intensely personal plea do you want to make in vain in the hopes of making everyone here feel like a literal piece of shit???"

I mean, some of those questions in Tribal were as subtle as a sledgehammer and Sarah was being so self-congratulatory I just felt so suffocated by the whole thing for the first time ever in one of these games. Not to mention I had just spent time and effort setting you and I up with Jolanda and Kristina just to see that be completely tossed out the window the second Sarah (whom we have both had established trust issues with) says "Mia wants this to happen instead and so do I"...

Yeah, it was kinda frustrating. But, sometimes you gotta bite the bullet. Had I not gone so far with giving Jane my word I would not vote her out I wouldn't have felt like I was backed into a corner.

[Chad]

I think I just totally fucking bamboozled Cochran into changing his vote from Ken to Lisa and he has no fucking idea and he thinks he's masterminding this all.

I'm about to pee myself laughing. That was child's play. I just have to confirm with Jolanda she did what I told her to and that's what started all of this. We were hitting him from two sides and he probably thinks he's the one driving this bus.



Sorry buddy.