Year 11 Confessional

[Ryan]

The aftermath of the Chuck vote was insane. Not only had my plan to disguise a Will vote from Aaron backfired, but I immediately found myself back in the minority of a brand new tribe.

At first, I had no idea how to pull out of this one. I started by trying to tell Will that I'd voted for Chuck. He called me on that pretty quick. After a totally unnecessary violation of his trust, I admitted to him that I cast the vote against him. I tried to play it off as being on the fence and not knowing what to do. I said that he was one person that I expected to stick around. I immediately assumed that Will and the other Yupiks now hated me. At that point, I probably wasn't too far off base.

Word had gotten around that Lexie and I had tried to mastermind an alliance on Bajau. It was to be me, her, Chuck, and Matt. Matt, of course, blabbed this to the others. This put Lexie and I in terrible position. I completely unneccessarily put myself into another outsider position.

[Ryan]

Aaron also felt betrayed by me. To be fair, he was. I told him that I voted for Will because I thought he was going and that I'd promised to never vote for him, but he was still upset that I hadn't explicitly told him about any plan to oust him. When word came to him that I was one of the masterminds behind his vote, well, that didn't help my case any. Conversations with Eric were few and far between at this point, but, I assumed that, as everyone thought, he and Aaron were a duo, so I figured I wouldn't be on his good side either.

I felt that the only person I had any connection with anymore was Lexie (and Kevin, but to me he's always a wild card), and the two of us were the next targets.

The best move I could think of by that point was to save face. Apologize for the drama. Admit everything. Regain trust. Lexie still wanted to deny, deny, deny. At some point during the round, the Yupiks formed a chat and confronted her about what went down, based on what Matt had told them. Lexie was freaking out about this interogation, so I told her to ask them to invite me in the chat so I could lay my story down as well.

Instead of agreeing on maintaining the lie with Lexie, I told everything that had happened and reasoned it out for them, making a point that it was unreasonable for anybody to assume that others can't make alliances, and that we needed forgiveness if this tribe ws going to work as a whole. Yadda yadda yadda. Wholesome crap. That spiel, when set against the backdrop of Lexie's denial, ultimately set her apart as the clear outsider of the tribe. Lexie wasn't making the same attempt to save face as I did, and she resigned herself to her situation. I like Lexie a lot, but I can't say that her resignation to the game came much to my chagrin.

I couldn't attend the challenge, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, since it was a double TC. The vote that evening was unanimous for Lexie, with my vote going towards her with her permission. Lexie got one catty vote in for Lynne, and the game chugged forth, hopefully with my transgressions all but deleted from the minds of my tribemates.