Episode 4

[liam]

and this is why I didn't scramble to save Sawyer. If I had managed to get a 4-3 vote in his favor, I would have made enemies on my tribe. Right now, with the tribe mix, we need to stay together. Honestly, it might be better long term if we lose this challenge. Chase or Jonah are probably going home if we win, while we have the numbers if we lose.

I do not like that i got a 3 on likeability. That is by far the lowest on my team :/.

Of course, since everybody gets 30 points, what that really means is that I'm perceived as more intelligent, more of a leader, stronger and elusive than likeable. They are scores relative with each other.

[liam]

This is long and mostly introspective

Didn't get to flush out my previous post.

So, the relative order of my attributes was

Intelligence
Leader
Strength/Elusive
Likability

I showed some strong leadership, and I guess I proved my intelligence with various puzzles. The Elusiveness was a bit high, but I realize that I spent a lot of time working on the puzzles, and am not online at the same time as other people a lot.

This could also hurt my Likability score (which really was lower than expected, even factoring in other stuff). Really, these scores probably match me fairly well in real life also. I know I'm really smart, I'm welling to step up for tasks, but I don't like to be the general go to leader. I can be hard to find because I don't really enjoy hanging out with people who I don't already have a connection with.

I think in real life I'm everybody's acquaintance. I don't get into random hijinks, I don't drink and go out with people much, and I find it difficult to get to know people. In general, I think people feel I'm friendly, but it's very difficult to build a friendship with me.

Bringing that back to game play, I'm trying to learn from these traits. I am really good at puzzles and math, but not so good at interpersonal connections. I'm a viewer of Survivor Chronicles 6, which is currently in the FTC phase. One of the Finalists posted this as part of an answer to a question:

"When I talked to people in this game initially, I tried to connect to them in some way. Really and truly connect. As a sorority girl, we're taught to try and steer conversations away from the boring "where are you from, what do you do?" spiel that so many people can't get away from. (Yes, I can't believe I'm actually referencing sorority rush right now. Really never thought I'd see the day.) So what I did with a ton of people here was insist that we ask each other those stupid "get to know you questions" that everyone hates at camp. I'd usually follow it up with "What would you do if you got a million dollars?" and "If you could only have 5 things for the rest of your life, what would they be?" This enabled me to see pretty quickly what people in this game really valued, and find out if I could relate to them on anything kind of random, which I often could. I talked to Rusty about roadtrips/live music, Andrew about the one Karate class I took when I was 5 and got scared of the instructor's bare feet, Lynette about weird weather in Houston vs Scotland, Rob about a badass bar I'd just gone to, etc etc. You get the idea.

And because I'd had quite a few really great conversations, this led to me putting more trust in people on a game level once I'd gotten to know them better on a personal level. (Sidenote: that was why I never got along with Anh, because we had hardly spoken to each other and he was trying to pry game info from me.) The other side of this was that I was so busy having really good convos, that I didn't go around and talk to/introduce myself to every single player in the first few days. I believe this only added to my likability/credibility with the people I did talk to, as they weren't hearing from everyone else that I'd talked to them. That's actually why I never was able to put my full faith in you, Colin, or Matt. Because from those very first couple of days, I perceived both of you as people that were trying to talk to everyone, which I viewed as a little bit shady."

What's my point in me bringing this up? This shows the exact type of social awareness that I lack. But I'm learning. When I first started thinking about playing Survivor, I thought I would do awesome. I was falling prey to the Dunning-Kruner effect (Incompetent and unaware of it (look it up, it's cool stuff)). I'm learning about my faults which is allowing me to somewhat compensate for them.

So, I'm trying to be more social, and less overbearing with strategy. I think I blew my UTR strategy out of the water with the last challenge. And everybody who was on Ellis, but is now on Liberty can see the thread I made where I did a ton of work. Which means there are only 3 people in the game who are potentially unaware of this. Now I'm a potential challenge threat come merge.

I'm taking this game as a learning experience. It is the first game where I'm not convinced I'm going to win. In fact, I severely doubt I'm going to win. But I'm improving.

Oh, and to get all meta with this post, Note how I always use, "I", and use citations when talking about my own feelings and experiences. Yeah, I'm very analytical, and I love Survivor which is an extremely social game. Doesn't work out the best for game play.

I could end up as a final 3 goat. If my tribe wins, the former Liberty get picked off, go to the merge, maybe outlast the few remaining players of my tribe, wait for cracks to appear in Ellis, join alliances, and make it to the end. It's going to be awesome...

Not actually going to happen, but if it does, I'm quoting that (except the goat part) and claiming it was my plan all along.

[liam]

Just sent this to the host:

"I figured out what the last board was. The way I did this was by going to www.gvse3.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=newestthreads

I had the thought to do this because one of the viewers had asked why the newest thread button was disabled in one of the previous games (I went back and read some). I figured out what url to use by visiting a proboards site that had a newest thread button.

So, I have the code for board 2 (1289). I'd like to tell my team, but I know I'm on questionable grounds in terms of how I figured it out.

It's late here, and I can't just stay up until you get online, so here's what I'm doing. I'm PMing you to ask for a rules decision. I'm going to post a thread explaining that I found the code, but it's questionable how I found it, and I'm waiting on a rules decision from you. Since I have listed the code in this PM, you know that a.) I know it, and b.) I would post it if I was certain it was within the rules. I ask if you deem this a legal way of getting the code, that you post it in the thread I make. Else, simply state that I did not comply with the rules."

If any PW feels like they have the authority to make a decision before the host gets online, I ask that you do so, as there isn't a lot of time left in the challenge.

[liam]

Ellis doesn't have a locked door anymore. They used to have a locked door.