Runouw Survivor Episode 5: Resigned to Defeat

Previously on… Survivor!

Both tribes faced the temptation of a mutiny offer, appealing to the outsiders of Oerhaos and the reduced numbers of Shadowsquid. However, the stubborn conflict between both tribes put an embargo on any action on the offer.

The tribes faced off in a level designing contest, where only three Shadowsquid members led by Yurimaster faced off against a scattered production in Oerhaos. Oerhaos originally took off with the win… but after the twist of exile was announced, with the potential to cause a tribe shuffle. Not trusting the Shadowsquids enough with a decision, Oerhaos gave away immunity.

This would be compounded by a confession by Raz where he covered up a mistake that had been made on the final copy of the level, nullifying their win completely. However, Raz finally established an alliance with Nin10mode, Brandobrawl, and Venexis, who he openly distrusted.

The vote focused on the outsiders, Emelia Kaylee and 1018Peter, but in a 3-2-1 vote, it would be outsider Peter who couldn’t save himself.

11 are left. Who will be voted out… next?

SPOILERS: Avoid the Breakdown if you don’t want spoilers!

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Breakdown:

Episode 5: “Resigned to Defeat.”

Challenge: This… Is… (Jeopardy!)

Description: In a form of trivia Jeopardy, teams would answer more forum trivia questions, gaining and losing money for the right and wrong ones.

Winner: Tie

Voted Out: None

Quit: Bomberman101

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This was a very bizarre, out of place episode. It’s the slowest episode of the season by far, but it builds up to a very stellar, dynamic merge. While doing the challenge, we get a sense of how the tribes are preparing for it.

There’s a big elephant in the room, but that will get taken care of at the end.

Post-Tribal-Council

Oerhaos has left Tribal Council, and no one really finds it that big a deal. Blackyoshi was surprised that Emelia Kaylee got votes. I was surprised that, being the other outsider, Blackyoshi got no votes. Apparently, he took the opportunity to join their alliance afterwards, which places him higher priority than Emelia Kaylee.

But yeah, no one really seemed to care much. Peter was voted out, and he expected it and wasn’t overly bitter about it (yet. He would then in Ponderosa start a game mocking Raz where players detailed the horribe things they’d do to themselves if they won). Apologies were given, little jokes were made, it was all very understated. It was the plan all along to vote out Peter and now their meatshield is gone. It’s just a matter of surviving until then. There’s still a chance that they can still lose both of the next challenges if the superstition of giving the other tribe momentum is to believed. It still stands to fact that the Squids had been down to the last time they could have lost a person and still be even in the game, but Oerhaos gave them an extra life.

Regardless, the forum is some what of a ghost town. The most exciting thing to happen to both tribes is that both of the ordained leaders have returned: Nan from vacation, Nin from exile. While Nin returned with some fanfare and comments on how the tribe is going (expressing surprise, again, that MK got two votes), Nan returns, says his quick hello, asks what happened, and then immediately goes into memorializing his fallen members. This goes further towards the cerebral vs emotional game of the two tribes and especially the two leaders.

Certainly mixing the two would bring exciting results.

Immunity Challenge: This… is… Jeopardy!

This round was an interesting transition period because I had to deal with people being behind schedule. I had sent out a questionaire for a challenge that’d be instead the first post-merge challenge… however, like, 3 people sent it back, which wasn’t enough, so I gave them a round to continue to answer, converted the challenge to an individual one, and scrambled together a round of Jeopardy based off of Runouw trivia. Personally I think this worked a lot better than the first Runouw Forums Trivia challenge, but the fact that I had to do this twice kind of bugs me. But hey, you gotta think on your feet as a host.

I decided to do an interesting pair of twists this round. For one, I made the money in the challenge an actual entity and not just part of the Jeopardy theme. This “money” will play a part in a future challenge. The second was, if people already didn’t have a clue about how Jeopardy worked, they would be given a crash course… with a couple of hours left in the challenge. I wanted to test and see how adaptable they were.

Shadowsquid is just not all there during this challenge. Only NanTheDark and Harmless show up. Harmless is as disagreeable as ever, and even Nan is grumpy. Yuri throws in a decent number of answers, and Magnen saves their ass on an important answer, but it’s clear to see with dwindling numbers and other camp events that the motivation just isn’t the same glossy, happy Shadowsquid they were going in.

Oerhaos, however, has never been stronger. They’re enthusiastically working as a team, like the human conveyor belt that they are at their best. They’re dividing work up, doing individual searching in their specialty areas, and confirming answers with each other.

Then came the twist.

Confirming that there were representatives of each tribe online at the time (Raz and Ven for Oerhaos, Nan and Magnen for Shadowsquid), I let them know that they gained money for right answers, but lost answers for wrong answers, and they can opt out of answers they aren’t confident in. So it was a matter of where you wanted to take bets and where you wanted to lose them.

Shadowsquid, struggling with a few answers, opted out of several answers. Oerhaos, however, was willing to take more risks with their answers, keeping in big-money answers they weren’t sure of. And… what happened after that was insane.

In the first round, a misreading of a question got Oerhaos a wrong answer, losing them $400 and putting the Squids ahead, but then the Squids opted out of an answer that Oerhaos got right for $500, closing the gap. But then, Oerhaos starts building steam and in the next two categories and start gaining towards a runaway victory… then the last round happened. Survivor trivia.

Here’s the score going in: Oerhaos: $4500, Shadowsquid: $4000.

There are no words about how this went… so I’ll just post it straight from the topic:

$100

The very first winner of Survivor originated from THIS tribe.

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Both tribes got it. Richard Hatch originated from the Tagi tribe. Hopefully you caught that off of my very first Tribal Council story.

$200

This country is the first country to host four Survivor seasons in a row.

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You both guessed Samoa. You almost had it.

Samoa was the first to host four seasons, but not in a row. In Seasons 21 and 22, the show was hosted by Nicaragua. Seasons 19, 20, 23, and 24 nonconsecutively took place in Samoa, but not at the same time.

The correct answer was the Philippines, which Seasons 25, 26, 27, and 28 took place in.

No points for either tribe.

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$300

My avatar on the game site is of this person.

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You guessed Garrett Adelstein, the latest Survivor: Cagayan boot. You’d be right.

(I still can’t believe the tribe fucking kept J’tia.)

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$400

This game's merge will occur with nine people, much like this season, the first to have a nine person merge.

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Again, both tribes have it with All-Stars.

This is where this leaves us. The final question, worth $500.

Oerhaos: $5100

Shadowsquid: $4600

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$500

There have been four wins by people of color in Survivor History. Name all four in order of their first win.

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Shadowsquid…

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Omitted.

This means, they will receive no money for this question.

Oerhaos, on the other hand

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Got it wrong.

They guessed Vecepia, Yul, and Earl, which were all right, but they also included Aras, which is… debateable. I’d have let it pass on a technicality (Aras is a white Lithuanian) had the person they forgot not been very obviously a person of color and a two-time winner… Puerto-Rican Sandra Diaz-Twine.

So… if you’ve followed along with the numbers…

The final score is…

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Shadowsquid: $4600

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Oerhaos: $4600.

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We have a tie.

A tie. They could get anywhere from -$7500 to $7500, and they tie. I had a tiebreaker quiz in the backup… but due to prior events, I did something I don’t think anyone in the game expected:

I triggered the merge a round earlier.

Why did I do this?

Resignation

While the inactivity was hinting at it, I still wasn’t expecting it at all. After all the enthusiasm they had shown for the game, every round up until the end, I didn’t expect them to do this. But as I watched them go through the game, I watched them become swiftly emotionally exhausted from the vote-outs and the beating sustained from the other tribes, so at the end of the day, it makes sense. While I defend quitters, I wish people wouldn’t quit especially when they have a team relying on them, a team that is now permanently down a member no matter what.

It was a shame to see Bomberman go, and despite Faggot-Gate I was sympathetic to him just lose the passion he had because he was sick of losing his friends and was becoming embarrassed and ashamed of his reactions. Regardless, when he confirmed he wanted to quit, I was respectful to his wishes, but I think it was definitely inconsiderate of him to leave his tribe unrecoverably down in numbers.

With Bomberman out, and a tie in the work, I wasn’t going to lose two members in one day. So I changed my backup plan before the challenge from “tiebreaker challenge” to “merge trigger.” However, I still did not expect a challenge tie under any circumstances. Well, what do you know?

The merge is imminent, and it’s time for both terms to plan.

Merge Planning

For the Oerhaos tribe, they’re playing it cool. They’re ahead six-to-four, and it doesn’t appear that any of them are going to be disloyal. When they talk, it’s of what order to get rid of the Squids. Who’s the biggest threat of going on an immunity run, who takes the steam out of the rest of the Squids, and other things like that, assuming they have the game wrapped up. Even before they know Bomberman is out of the game, they have a grip on the tribe and their abilities and who is the biggest threat. The one they zero in on? Magnen.

<Raz>: Ven if Magnen get's kicked out their one source of confidence pretty much gets kicked out

<Venexis>: I'm betting it'll be Magnen and Bomber for final members. Like, for sure final, assuming the worst case scenario where we win everything up till the merge and they're left with just 2 players

<Raz>: I'm telling you right now that I'm gonna be the way travis was to cameron if I see bomber acts like the way he was acting before he edited again

<Venexis>: Well, you'd need to wait for the merge lawl. But I think Mag will keep it under control honestly

Meanwhile, on Shadowsquid, a big change is in the air. Realizing the severity of their situation, the Squids decide to do something they had long ago said they’d never do.

And just like that, we have evolution in progress.

Here’s NanTheDark’s PM.

I had an idea.

However I think the idea might be evil by some standards... or something... I don't know. That's why I'm just gonna tell you and see what we should do.

Basically, I thought of creating an alliance. With you, Harmless, and Yurimaster. All that's left from the previous Shadowsquid.

Since we're all on our own right now for the challenges, of course we won't help each other there. That's not the point of the alliance.

Basically:

-We won't vote for each other.

-We will all vote for the same person.

That way, we can focus on taking down one person while at the same time ensuring the four of us stay in the game. Of course, when there's only us in the game, the Alliance breaks.

But I want to be there and say to Oerhaos' face that we won at the end. :3

...but this might go against some things I've said...

I mean, I did state I wanted to win this through skill. Not some... manipulation scheme. I know this is legal in-game, but it's still sorta manipulative. I'm not really that kind of person...

But I can't help but admit this could benefit us.

In the end... I'm not really doing this for the prize anymore. I'm doing it to play with you guys.  And I don't care if I don't win, as long as one of you guys does.

So yeah... what do you think? Is this too evil, should I drop this idea?

...or go on with it?

Magnen’s response?

Duude I am SO in!

The game is officially on. We’re moving beyond the days of people just being friendly to each other and into some real Survivor strategy.

Predictions:

Shadowsquid’s survival relies on two things: their ability to ingratiate with Oerhaos members, and the outsider Oerhaos’ desire to turn the game around. Ven now has the ability to force a tie if he wants, and if EmKay still wants to vote Brando because he feels on the outside, that could be their in. However, if Venexis still wants to ride it out to the end then it’s not looking good for the Squids. Ven has to play this in a way that won’t involve the Squids outnumbering them, and the Squids have to sacrifice team spirit a little to sucker him in, if they so wish.

The one with the best shot of fitting in is definitely Magnen, but being seen as the Shadowsquid’s true leader will work against her. On the flipside, I can see Harmless or Yuri slipping through the cracks, but not enough to get them jury votes.

There are many ways this can go down, but I think Oerhaos isn’t as happy a family as they seem, and it might start to show. The alliance is only of five, and EmKay and BY are clear outsiders, with Venexis itching to get a plan going. I can imagine him taking BY/EmKay and going 3-3 with the Squids.

10. NanTheDark

9. Brandobrawl

8. Raz

7. Harmless

6. nin10mode

5. Yurimaster

4. Magnen

3. Blackyoshi

2. Emelia Kaylee

1. Venexis