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Another story that takes place in the Sexy Space Babes universe written by
BlueFishcake. He owns the story, I just got permission to write my own. If anyone is interested is joining the Discord server and participating in writing, here's a link.
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https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/l9gljw/semper_shilvati_an_ssbverse_story_chapter_2/)
Chapter 3: Decisions
Zachary’s eyes went blank, and face expressionless, before turning back to the bartender. “Have a good night, Sheila.” Zachary said as he put money on the counter for the drinks, walked around the Shil’vati Marines, and walked out of the bar, not saying another word.
“Zachary, where are you going?” Mal’Ava asked, as she and her fellow Marine followed him out the bar. The response she got was the human flashing his middle finger, a symbol that became synonymous as an insult on Earth.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve asking me that question, Mal’Ava!” He snarled as he walked faster and faster, wanting to get away from the aliens. “After everything I lost to you people, why the fuck would you even ask me that?”
“Please just listen to me, I’m trying to help you!” Mal’Ava said desperately. This caused Zachary to stop, and turn around in her direction, a rage burning in his eyes she never saw before, and terrified her more than a little.
“Help me? You Shil’vati have a weird fucking definition of helping people out! Slaughtering millions from orbit, taking away the independence of billions, defiling our most cherished monuments, destroying religious sites, yeah, we totally wanted your fucking help!” he snarled at her, in a way that Mal’Ava had never seen before. “Like those people at the hospital, or that prisoner of war camp that was run by your Gestapo! Why the fuck do you think I want to join the same force that not only fucked up my life, but those of countless millions?”
“That wasn’t our fault!” she growled back, causing Zachary to intensify his stare.
“Which part, because I brought up quite a few!” he said, not breaking eye contact with her. Sergeant Kolani tried to interrupt, but a hand gesture from Mal’Ava stopped it.
“Our attacks on those cities were intended to knock out the military capacity within them, not intentionally damage or destroy them! And those latter two events you refer to had nothing to do with us, it was-”
“Those god damn SS that do whatever they want, yeah I’m aware. With the way they act, you wonder why you people get so much resistance from us. You talk about having morals, yet you seem to not realize why so many people are pissed off? After all you’ve done, you expect us to be happy, and welcome you with open arms! You people are as obvious as a brick through a window!” as he turned away from her, ready to walk off, he stopped but inches away from a Shil’vati Marine who was standing behind him, staring down at him.
“You’ve got a mouth on you,” she said in Shil, a smirk on her face. “I wonder what else it can do.”
“Ask your Captain, she knows real well of what it can do.” he replied in her language, before moving around her, and continuing on in the direction he was going. As he did however, he felt a hand grab onto his shoulder. He reflexively leaned forward, hoping to throw whoever was grabbing him, off balance. Grabbing the Marine’s arm, he kicked his leg out, sweeping her leg out from underneath her, sending her tumbling to the ground. Once she was down, he immediately backed away from her, not wishing to continue the fight, especially when more Shil’vati were coming closer to the ruckus on the street, and more than a few curious onlookers.
“I’m about to teach you a lesson you won’t forget, human!” she growled as she got up, reaching for her stun baton, only to be held back by a metallic hand gripping her shoulder, and pulling her back.
“Private,” Sergeant Kolani said, staring daggers into the woman’s soul. “Try something that stupid again, especially when unwarranted, and you’ll be on latrine cleaning duty until you leave this planet!” she said harshly. The Marine put away her baton, and quickly rose to her feet.
“Yes Sergeant!” she obeyed and walked on, but not before glaring back at Zachary. He could only sigh before looking back once more at Mal’Ava.
“You already know I hold nothing against you or your people,” he said. “But the way you went about coming here isn’t going to make you many friends. If you wish to continue our conversation, however pleasant, or unpleasant it may be, I suggest it be done elsewhere, so none of your own shoot me.” he said before getting into his truck, and driving away.
When he got back to his apartment, he slammed the door shut, locked it, and sat down on the sofa in his living room, and put his head in his hands. He still couldn’t believe she had asked him that. He pulled out his phone, going through his texts, seeing if anyone tried getting ahold of him. Like he expected, there was nothing, the most recent text being from an old buddy a few days ago. As he scrolled down further though, he came upon the growing number of contacts he’d never speak to again.
Among that list were his mother, brother, and many fellow Marines, who had died all those years ago. The last message he had from his mother, dated 3 days before everything happened, simply read; “Have fun out in the field, hope to talk soon!”. So many memories, so many people he’d never said goodbye to. Zachary couldn’t hold it in anymore, and just let it out. He cried harder than he did in a long time. The flurry of emotions inside him that was brought up in the last hour played hell with him. He already had so much built up in his system, with virtually no way to release it.
All the thoughts he had about being a failure, about being called a traitor, that most people he knew and loved were all dead now. If they weren’t killed in the initial phases of the invasion, a great many had died with the resistance. He too had joined up in the early days, roughly one month after the world fell under occupation. He remembered that day very clearly, as he, and others like him, had gathered in a small town in Georgia, planning their next moves.
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All those gathered in the room were pissed. Veterans, old and new, as well as civilians, looked over multiple maps that described the situation Earth was in. Among those in the room was Zachary, as well as some of fellow Marines from Okinawa, and many other military members. Some retired, others active duty when the war happened, but all ready to fight in any way possible.
"Alright, listen up, this is what we know now!" A man with a gold trident on his collar, said, garnering the attention of the room. "These alien bastards hit us quick and they hit us hard. The world had barely time to prepare and we got our asses handed to us. They must've been watching us for some time, as they indiscriminately targeted and bombarded, nearly every single military base on the planet. Some of us here were lucky not to be on base when this occurred, but most weren't. Many like me, and our friend Alistair here, were off on assignment, well away from targeted areas around the world. In the last month, those of us who survived made our way back here, trying to gather as much information as possible.”
“That includes a list of casualties and losses from around the world. We’ve done our best to do so, but it's not easy, not with how these eggplants have locked down travel as tightly as they have.” A British man with an SAS patch on his shoulder, said. “At least in Great Britain, 50,000 of our own were killed in the first few days. That represented a third of our total manpower available before they arrived. As of now, our only remaining assets that we know of are some of our submarines that have refused to surrender.”
“It wasn’t much better here in the states either,” the SEAL, who’s nametape read Jameson, continued. "Combining what information we have about those who were abroad and in the country during the attack, roughly 600,000 dead. Nearly half of our active duty personnel were killed, but luckily the majority of reservists didn’t get caught by them, and we’re trying to coordinate with them, as well as others that survived long enough to scatter.”
“And we shouldn’t expect them to get caught either, not after everything we did when it became clear we lost.” said a woman in a suit, the aura of a government agent radiating off of her. “Those of us in the CIA, NSA, and FBI did our best to wipe out files that contained information about those in the armed forces, to help ensure they didn’t get their hands on them, and hunt down those that escaped. Combine that with the beating they gave DC, important hubs ended up getting hit, and did our jobs for us. We didn’t get it all unfortunately, but most of the important information is gone, and they’ll never find it.”
“Which is a good thing for me,” Jameson said. “Because on my ID those purple bitches issued me, it doesn’t list me as former military, only civilian. Guess their files didn’t have my military records on them, which also works out for many of us who crept our way back here, ready to continue the fight. They won’t be expecting us, so that gives us one advantage.”
“All this talk of how much we know, what damage did we do to these space orcs?” a soldier said from across the room. “Or did we really get rolled over like Iraq in '91?” The special forces operators and government agent just looked at each other, looks of disappointment written across their faces, before turning to reply.
“Not as much as we’d like unfortunately,” Alistair said, a somber tone in his voice. “Most of you should be aware of the various nuclear strikes in some of the major cities. Us, you Yanks, the Russians, and Chinese still have some subs roaming around the seas. Some landing zones that were away from cities, others that were directly inside cities, got hit from submarines that pulled up directly to the coastline, fired off, and dived back down.”
“We had asked the Russians and Chinese to hit our own territory, while us and the Brits hit targets in theirs.” Jameson said, the thought of it clearly bothered him, as it did to most others present. The Israelis wiped out one of their landing zones in the Sinai with a massive nuclear strike, while they tripped a nuclear trip mine in Pyongyang. However both of those nations are functionally gone now, and I don’t need to tell you why. We know some went off in India and Pakistan, but we don’t know much more than that.”
“Basically, most of the damage we did to them was via nuclear strikes, many of which hurt us more than them. We’ve still got subs in the water, and some very limited communications with them, but this won’t last forever. Aside from the nations already listed, only Japan has anything left in the water. And like we’ve said, they can’t go on forever. They’ll either have to surrender or make one last suicide attack, being completely blind of what’s going on.” Alistair told them.
“And conventional options are obviously off the table for obvious reasons,” the agent said. “While we’ve confirmed a few old weapons depots weren’t hit, trying to drag shit out of them when our enemy is watching us from orbit isn’t a good idea. As it stands, we have to play the long game here. Watch our enemy, learn their strengths, their weaknesses, and exploit them whenever we can. If ever possible, infiltrate their ranks should the opportunity arise. But until then, we wait, and don’t do anything too obvious.”
“So the question is, are you all in?” Jameson said, scanning around the room, and his gaze resting on Zachary and his fellow Marines.
“You're damn right we are!” he said. “Most of our brothers and sisters died on Okinawa, and we’ll be damned if we can't get revenge on these damn eggplants for that! You can count on us.”
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He continued to think about that day, and the first few years of the occupation ever since. He and his friends had taken part in more than a few operations back in the day, but slowly they realized that they were losing too many of their own, and that the current approach just wasn’t going to work. He and many others just gave up, at least for the time being. Granted, he still knew people in various cells across the US, but his days of directly helping them out was over for now. Partially because he was sick of seeing his friends die, partly because of his entanglement with Mal’Ava, and not wanting her to catch on to anything.
It still didn’t help him feel any better about the situation though, but for those he worked with, they understood. But the civilians didn’t, as many still held rather pointed opinions about him. He, and many others, had done their job to the best of their capabilities, but the Shil’vati were just too damn powerful. Earth wasn’t going to win alone, a lesson in Afghanistan and Vietnam would tell you that. But thinking back, when they were told to infiltrate if possible, Zachary thought if it would be a good idea to at least try.
He wasn’t a coward, but he didn’t see many ways to effectively fight back against their occupiers, not ways that didn’t take horrendous losses on their side anyway. He also wondered just why the Shil’vati were in the process of recruiting from Earth’s population, since the vast majority of the planet was still actively resisting. Something must be going wrong for them somewhere in the depths of space if they need humans to fill their ranks. He wondered if he should take the chance, but that was taking a backseat to his current thoughts. He sat on his couch for what felt like hours, trying to compose himself.
“God dammit Mal’Ava, why did you have to ask me that? Of all fucking things to ask me!” The Shil’vati had marked him, and many others, to keep track of them, and ensure they didn’t cause trouble. The same excuse Germany had used in rounding up those who they considered threats to their nation. The same excuse that saw members of his family rounded up for no other reason than their religion. Something his great grandfather learned when his unit liberated Buchenwald in 1945. The horror stories surviving members of his family had passed down. The parallels with the current occupation, and the Nazis, wasn’t hard to recognize. A POW camp run by the Interior early in the occupation was a great example of that.
Yet the Shil’vati wondered why so many people on the planet hated them for what they did, especially those like Zachary. He hated the Shil’vati for what they’ve done to his world. He hated those who ordered his planet invaded, who killed millions, and acted as if they were bringing civilization to barbarians, like the Empires of old did to much of the world, and expected them to be grateful for it.
About the only positive feelings he had for any of them are Mal'Ava, and neutral ones for Kolani, who he just met for the first time since he blew her arm off on Okinawa. Aside from that, the rest could take a long walk off a short pier for all he cared. Sure, he didn’t hate every last one of their species, but he’d be damned if he ever talked to one if he had a choice, or even thought of considering the propositions he’s heard from Shil’vati Marines on the streets.
But right now he just wanted to forget everything. He got up, hit the light switch to his living room, and made his way to the bedroom. He hoped he could fall asleep without much issue, and escape the stress of the day.
“What a wonderful way to spend my Friday night!” he thought as he plugged his phone in and collapsed onto his bed.
“Get my buzz killed by the only Shil’vati I can call a friend, and attacked by one of her Marines on the street.” he spent what felt like hours tossing and turning in his bed, until a look at his phone told him it was only 11:30 at night.
“Fuck me!” he said as he tossed his phone back down, trying to fall asleep. However the sound of his door opening jolted him upright, focusing on the sound of footsteps in his apartment. He reached for the Glock 19 he kept in the drawer next to his bed, and pulled it from its holster. As quietly as he could, he got up, and crept towards his door, and slowly opened it. The lights were off, and he could hear the footsteps getting farther from the door, and coming closer and closer to the living room. He felt around for the light switch, flicked it on, and stepped out and levelled his pistol at the home invaders. “Hold it motherfuckers!” he ordered, only to do a double take as he recognized just who came into his home.
The sight of two, seven foot tall space amazons, sneaking into his house half an hour from midnight, made him lower his sidearm, and run his hand through his hair in frustration. He was at a loss for why the hell they were here in the first place, especially after what happened a few hours prior.
“What the hell are you doing sneaking into my apartment? How did you even get in here, I locked the fucking door?!”
“You gave me a key a few years ago, remember?” Mal’Ava replied. “As for why we’re here, we wanted to apologize, especially in regards to the actions of Private Valek, who’s been reprimanded appropriately for unauthorized use of force. And myself for what I asked of you, especially when remembering your own ancestry.” she trailed off, looking over at a nearby shelf, and the photos that were displayed on it. One of which was a black and white photo of his great grandfather, with the 6th Armoured Division at Buchenwald.
“Yeah, I’m surprised you remembered that,” he said, placing the pistol on the living room table, sitting on his couch, and running a hand through his hair.
“I just thought that a different line of work would better suit you. Considering you don’t have much of your own, and have worked the same job for years, I thought you might have taken it.” Mal’Ava explained.
“Not to mention how you get treated by most people for your refusal to kill me.” Kolani said, sitting down next to him.
“As I’ve said before, it wouldn’t have been right. Hell, I was following the laws of war in my conduct. You weren’t a threat to me anymore, and leaving you to die would’ve gone against the values of my country. I might not have been a medic, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to try my best to save you.”
“I know we have differing definitions of honor, Zachary, but there are many, at least of those I’ve met, in the Shil’vati military that admire the actions you took, especially after so many other incidents across the planet were the opposite.”
“You really shouldn’t expect the same conduct from every place you’ve occupied. I’m far from a global standard.” he replied. “As for what else you said, you need to realize I don’t talk to any other Shil’vati unless I’m forced to. I’m not saying I haven’t thought about it, but I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of serving alongside your own for any extended period of time.”
“Was your own military always comfortable?” Mal’Ava asked.
“The difference with that is I was surrounded by people of my own species, ones I grew up with, and got along with. The opposite holds true for your people, for a number of reasons. Aside from my personal thoughts on it, being surrounded by women who’ve likely never had sex before, is not an ideal situation for me. Especially not ones almost twice my size and a foot taller than me.”
“I can assure you that’s unlikely,” Kolani said. “We had a male in my training cadre when I was a recruit, and the only woman who dared to try what you're referring to got kicked right out. Besides, don’t most of you human males love sex? It's what I’ve heard on the data-net, as well as from certain people.” she said, a slight smile forming on her face. Zachary gave a cursory glance at Mal’Ava as Kolani said that last bit, causing the Captain’s face to turn a shade of light blue, and look away.
“I can see where you might get that idea,” he said as he smirked at Mal’Ava. “And who’s been telling you such things. What we consider love for sex is entirely different than your own. We tend to have sex with people we love and trust, not just random people we encounter on the street. Culturally, it means something far different to us. You barely have any males, and from what I’ve heard, its not hard to imagine why you think we’re sex gods. Still though, as I’ve said previously, a great deal of us think you people are absolutely beautiful. If circumstances regarding your arrival were different, I can almost guarantee every one of your Marines, male or female, would be satisfied before they ever left our world.” he said matter of factly.
If they had come in peace, humanity would’ve helped them cum in peace as well. If they hadn’t invaded Earth, there’s no telling how many Shil’vati he would’ve tried to bed. Especially their guys, who you could barely tell were guys in the first place.
“So does that mean,” Kolani trailed off, twirling her hair between her fingers. Zachary only chuckled at what she was hinting towards, and he couldn’t blame her. To be honest, he hadn’t had sex in a over a year. He never really cared to go out and mingle, and given his reputation, those he was interested in didn’t care for him. He had gotten a shock when he found out that Mal’Ava was a virgin, but soon found out that wasn’t uncommon in their society.
“You know what, fuck it!” he said as he got up from the couch. He already guessed partially why they’d come here, since both of them were wearing a tank top and some rather tight fitting pants. He wasn’t enough of a dick to clam jam both of them, and quite frankly, he needed to take out some frustrations on something, otherwise the next person to piss him off was liable to get knocked out. “Just gotta ask this beforehand, will her tusks be a problem if you sit on her face?” he asked Mal’Ava, before turning to Kolani, whose face turned entirely blue upon hearing his question.
After 9 months of studying, I can speak with my Portuguese speaking friends now with ease and understand a lot of shows and movies now! I meant to write B2 in the title by the way now I can’t change it OMG!!!
I also recently tested with some free language level tests and considered an intermediate learner in Brazilian Portuguese. I’m really happy and wanted to share what I did to achieve this as someone who was monolingual their entire life.
I have no connection to Brazil or Portugal in any way, no family, no friends in real life, I’ve never even left the USA (one day!!!) My reasons for learning was only related to making music (bossa nova) so that’ll be something to explain some other time.
This is will be all self study and internet resources*
🔸 Important Background Info:
I was born and raised in the USA, only spoke English my entire life. I’m Asian American but my parents never spoke their native language to me and it is not a common Asian language so I do not hear it or speak it at all.
Forced to learn Spanish like everyone else in 2015 in high-school. Cannot speak it or understand now BUT I learned the concept of conjugation and the sounds of a Romance language, this helped me greatly when I dove into Portuguese.
Self studied Japanese for 1 year in 2019-2020. This by far was the most important thing as it taught me about what language learning really took and had me extremely disciplined from the start! Japanese was no joke! Used a textbook, flash cards, and YouTube only. No classes. I am probably barely an A1-A2 level probably.
I quit Japanese for Portuguese in 2020.
Reasons: too difficult to study both at the same time for me, suddenly felt way more motivated for Portuguese and followed my heart and let Japanese sit on the back burner
The Process and Apps:
My university did not offer Portuguese and I lived further out the city so finding a language school was out the question. There are absolutely no speakers of Portuguese in my small country town lol.
I opted for the Internet and as many free things I could find.
🔹 Started with Duolingo for 2 months to learn the basics. (I hated this at the time but looking back now, it was helpful and honestly good for learning very basic things) I just did this mindlessly in the beginning and things began to stick like “boy” and “bread”.
🔹 Tried using other apps like Pimsleur, Anki, Hello Talk, Tandem
Pimsleur - tried a few times times, did not fit me personally. I’m a visual learner I realized and I embraced this eventually, switching what I spent my time on.
Anki- So helpful especially when you’re on the go and need to put a new word in! But I ended up after while opting for real paper flash cards that I hand wrote... had to mimic the process of space repetition physically. So I guess the process was almost the same if I had just put everything on my phone.
For Language Partners:
HelloTalk- App for making language partners and friends. I could talk to so many speakers of Portuguese, mainly Brazilians. They are so helpful and kind and helped me with anything I needed.
Tandem- The same thing as HelloTalk but without the timeline feature. I feel like language partners are a bit more reliable here and I tended to have longer conversations than people on HelloTalk. So maybe you’ll have better luck here with language partners.
What Helped Me The Most:
🔹 Listening to music, learning how to sing it, then translating the lyrics myself and checking the definitions of new words.
I realized learning words with a beautiful set of notes behind it made it far more easier to remember vocabulary and have it stick.
Now when I say the word “lonely” in Portuguese (sozinho) I remember the lyrics “porque estou tão sozinho?” (Why am I so lonely?) From the famous song Girl From Ipanema that I listened to 1000 times cause it’s so good.
🔹 Following on social media of people your same age and interest group that speak that target language. You can do this on Instagram or Twitter.
I would search on Twitter the word “Brazil” or “Portuguese” and check people’s profiles that popped up and followed the ones that had super funny accounts that were of my interests.
I made 2 super close brazilian friends because of this and 1 Portuguese close friend. We talk on the daily now. They’re all so funny and similar to me personality wise so we have conversations that are natural and fun. I learn so much slang cause of the memes they share!
All this happened by taking some time out my day to check and follow random people that seemed interesting. Try doing this with hashtags on Instagram too, or following people on learning accounts
Also you can Google some discord servers and join as many as you can that seem active!! I just typed “Portuguese learning discord”
🔹 INPUT INPUT INPUT!
So much input. The most important thing in my opinion. I read so much. Short stories (i used the app Beelingua for this, highly recommend, they have some languages other than Portuguese on there) lyrics, subtitles of movies dubbed in Portuguese etc.
I did more reading and listening (and typing!) than I did speaking for the first 6 months and I don’t regret it actually.
I know some people prefer immediately trying to speak and utilize the language but for me, it worked out so well just typing for awhile only and getting corrected with clear visuals. I didn’t start actively trying to speak Portuguese until about 5 months in and it probably could have been fine if I had started earlier.
For SPEAKING and GRAMMAR:
🔹 DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE!
I pushed myself to speak Portuguese with random strangers on Omegle (I used the Brazil hashtag and matched with some Brazilians)
They weren’t learning English so I was forced to utilize the Portuguese I had been preparing and typing for awhile. This forced my active recall to be put to the test (meaning I have to speak the language on the spot without having time to type it or think long)
I did this with strangers on Omegle and then with my language partners on the phone!
If you’re scared of strangers then try what I did and make a friend by texting for awhile... then calling once you guys are comfortable! The conversation will be way more fun.
🔹 Train and Shadow
I shadowed a lot with Portuguese, this means to copy the sounds of natives. I had some help me find the issues with my intonation and certain sounds and this TOOK TIME.
I could not hear what I was doing wrong at first and this is normal. After time, you WILL eventually start to hear what you’re doing wrong.
It was frustrating but I had to trust this process and practice all the time and write down what sounds I kept doing wrong. Why did my “maçã” sound strange? They said the “ça” wasn’t nasal enough.
Pay attention to vowels, consonants, nasality, pitch. When you actively start paying attention to this, as you listen and speak with natives, you will improve! It comes with time.
🔹 Don’t be afraid to use AND not use textbooks!
I like using textbooks a lot especially for in-depth grammar explanations. I searched on Reddit for good textbook suggestions in my target language since it was easier to trust than a simple google “Portuguese textbook”
There was a lot of value to be had with using a good book. ESPECIALLY IN THE BEGINNING STAGES! I can’t stress this enough.
But I also didn’t use a book for a lot of grammar that I learned... how??
Like I said input, input, input!
I started noticing PATTERNS after a few months. I knew the words like “to study” but started noticing certain conjugations happened to this verb if the sentence was in the context of the future or past.
I started noticing I have to use a verb in its dictionary form if I wanted to say it like this way or that way. I had to place a certain synonym of a word if the nuance was this way and not the other way.
I wrote these patterns down if i needed to, I asked natives to give other examples of this type of sentence and the patterns were always correct. And sometimes I even learned exceptions! An app I used for this also is called HiNative, perfect for questions like this!
Conclusion:
All of these things combined led to my language skills now. Friends, apps, music, books, pressure, even procrastinating by watching a movie in Portuguese helped...
I have many more tips I’m probably forgetting cause language learning is a huge mountain of things to do.
I hope you got something of value from this, if not only inspiration. 🎉
submitted by Game Changers is probably the most complex season I’ve broken down so far – I’ve got about twice as many notes as usual to prove it – and Sarah’s win is incredibly intricate to analyze. There also seems to be a ton of misinformation about it; there’s at least a handful of facts/opinions I’ve seen repeated on the sub ad nauseum that are easily debunkable. I’m not sure why Sarah seems to inspire such hatred or praise, but I found it really interesting to do this deep dive. There’s just so much that didn’t make the edit, and so much that was misrepresented by the show or by fans after it aired.
I definitely come down on the side of believing Sarah played a really strong game, but it is one of the most unique performances in Survivor history. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a game quite like it.
*For simplicity’s sake, in this post I will be separating two aspects of the social game; when I say “social game”, I’m only referring to the relationships that are made and used through the point when someone is voted off. That does not include jury management – which I’ll just refer to as jury management.*
Big Reputations It’s impossible to talk about Sarah’s success without mentioning how fortunate she was to be a virtual nobody entering a season called Game Changers. It was infamously a top-heavy cast, making it virtually impossible for some players to succeed and much easier for the “wtf?” casting choices to go far; and Sarah was definitely a “wtf?” casting choice.
In her defense, though, this is an advantage at least half the cast had. By my count, there was roughly 10 nobodies and 10 big threats:
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Nobodies: Sarah, Troy, Brad, Zeke, Michaela, Hali, Caleb, Debbie, Sierra, Varner
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Big Threats: Tony, Sandra, Aubry, J.T., Malcolm, Ciera, Andrea, Cirie, Ozzy, Tai
As you can see, the list isn’t cleanly divided; Varner wasn’t a nobody but he wasn’t a threat, and Tai was perceived as dangerous because of making it to the end and the Kaoh Rong 4, but he wasn’t exactly a “threat” that people were eager to take out.
While Sarah clearly had a huge advantage coming in, I do think over time it’s been blown a bit out of proportion; I completely agree that players like Tony, Sandra, Cirie, and Aubry were basically drawing dead from Day 1 (Cirie does an unbelievable job getting herself into a potentially winnable position because that never should’ve been possible), but players like J.T., Ciera, Andrea, and Ozzy all had plenty of friends and playing room on the cast. Most of them made mistakes within the game that cost them, not their prior reputations going in.
Especially because most of the big threats were taken out before the merge. Only Cirie and Aubry were left of the truly big names at the merge. By the time the game began in earnest, the playing field was in large part leveled.
What really gave Sarah the biggest advantage was not that she was a small name; it was that her gameplay this season stood in direct contrast to her gameplay from Cagayan. Aubry put together a dossier on the whole cast, of which Sarah only had one line:
Doesn’t like people who lie3
Because everyone assumed Sarah would stick to her straightforward and honest approach from Cagayan, she got away with a lot of early game moves that would’ve been impossible for someone with a bigger target to pull off; and people truly believed her when she swore on things like her family.
On RHAP, Sarah talks a lot about how much she intentionally leaned into this
1; part of why she played so fast and loose with her word is because she knew people would implicitly trust her based on her previous season. In her RHAP interview, Aubry was incredibly impressed at how Sarah played into her persona; saying she intentionally played dumb in groups, only letting her strategic acumen shine in one-on-one conversations
3. Which is a strategy Sarah explained in her RHAP interview
1; playing dumb in groups kept the attention away from her, while making people think the one-on-one bonds with her were special. And it should be mentioned that Sarah began openly flipping on people at F12 and did so consistently through the F7; the jury is consistently floored no one is catching on
20,22,23,24,25,26,27. There was a ton of opportunities for people to vote her out once it became clear that she wasn’t playing the same game this time, but they never did; that speaks volumes to the bonds Sarah was making.
And on the topic of Sarah’s low threat status coming in, it’s worth noting that Sarah was easily one of the biggest threats coming into Winners at War – arguably the biggest threat based on answers given in pre-game press – and she managed to go all the way to F4, never being voted out. Based on that success alone, it’s impossible to say that the only reason Sarah succeeded in Game Changers was because of her lowered threat level.
Pre-Merge Similar to the way Jeremy had such a huge advantage heading into the merge of Cambodia, Sarah was very lucky that almost everyone from Original Nuku made it to the merge; J.T. was the only Nuku to go home in the pre-merge, leaving Hali, Michaela, Troy, and Aubry as the only Manas.
Especially for a player like Sarah, this is a huge advantage; she had Day 1 alliances with Sierra, Cirie, Andrea, Debbie, Tai, Ozzy, and Zeke; by avoiding Tribal for the first 16 days, she was able to keep juggling all of them through the merge, making it to Day 24 before she had to turn on one of her own.
She also got really good draws on both of her swap tribes; on Tavua, she swapped with Zeke, Andrea, Ozzy, Cirie, and Troyzan. This gave her plenty of time to firm up her bond with Zeke, which is crucial to her post-merge success, as well as with Andrea, Ozzy, and Cirie, who all had complete faith in her going into the merge.
And on Nu nu Nuku, she swapped with Andrea, Zeke, Ozzy, Tai, Sandra, and Varner; this gave her an Original Nuku majority, and Sandra was the biggest threat in the game so everyone was focused on voting her out. Getting to stay with Andrea, Zeke, and Ozzy gave her even more time to develop trust with them because they got to vote together twice.
Of course, Sarah didn’t just rest on good luck; as I already mentioned, she immediately started making alliances with everyone she could on Day 1. She had tight alliances with almost everyone on Nuku before the first swap on Day 7, which set her up incredibly well no matter whose tribe she ended up on; in any combination of Nukus, she would be at the core of the alliance.
And once she swapped on Tavua, she immediately reached out to Troy; in his interview with the Survivor Specialists, he said that he was closest to Sarah on the swap tribe, and that Andrea and Cirie didn’t reach out to him
4. This gave Sarah more options than anyone else; she was close enough to trick Troy so he wouldn’t play his idol, or she could use him and her connections with Ozzy and Zeke to take out Cirie
1,2.
While Sarah was lucky to have the challenges and Tribal Councils break her way (with tribes she wasn’t on staying Nuku strong), she was also doing everything she could to maximize her win potential. She played a flawless pre-merge, building strong bonds with every person she started or swapped with, and angering no one. Her low threat level going into the game definitely helped to keep her off of people’s radar, but she also made no social or strategic blunders that would have drawn attention to herself. She was set up so well that going into the merge, she had tight bonds and alliances in so many places she could basically do whatever she wanted.
Luck definitely gave her a good draw, but it was Sarah’s skill in creating bonds that set her apart so much; her biggest competition after the merge (Brad, Sierra, Andrea, etc.) also had all the advantages of starting on Nuku, but weren’t able to accomplish what Sarah was.
The Merge This is the point in the season where Sarah’s game really starts to take shape, and also where some of the biggest critiques will start to appear; the most negative summation of her game would go something like
she was always just voting how someone else told her to. And that wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, but like I said at the start, there was a lot of moving parts in Game Changers and that’s an oversimplification.
At the merge, all of the Nukus came back together and it was very important that this vote be against an Original Mana
29; that’s why Hali and Michaela became the targets, even though they weren’t the biggest threats (Troy had pre-gamed with Brad and had grown tight to Sarah at the swap so was adopted as a Nuku, and Aubry was incredibly open about hating everyone she started with and wanting to flip tribes
3). Because of Sierra’s belief that Hali had the idol, Michaela was originally going to be voted out. But Cirie wanted to keep Michaela as a number for when she broke away from Brad/Sierra, and flipped the vote around near the end of the day, sending Hali home.
In Sarah’s RHAP Deep Dive
1, she says that she preferred the target stay on Michaela, but Cirie wanted Hali gone. So, technically, Sarah was only doing what Cirie told her to; but that misses a lot of thought Sarah put into this vote. As she explains on RHAP, while she favored keeping Hali over Michaela, it didn’t really make a difference; to everyone except Cirie, Hali and Michaela were interchangeable players. By acquiescing and letting Cirie get her way, Sarah was able to have Cirie completely on her side heading into the next vote, where she knew she was going to flip away from Cirie/Andrea over to Brad/Sierra
1. And it speaks to Sarah’s game that she was one of the few people Cirie was being honest with; Cirie didn’t want anyone to know she was saving Michaela, which is why she votes for Michaela at this Tribal, so she was telling the Brad/Sierra faction that she was worried about how splitting the vote would go. But as Sarah confirms on RHAP
1, she knew Cirie was trying to save Michaela here because Cirie told her.
As I’ll show walking through all the votes, when Sarah was “just doing what she’s told”, it was largely because she had the most and the strongest relationships on the island, and was able to be more flexible than anyone else because of this. By letting her allies call the shots on votes where it didn’t matter to her, she managed to lessen her own target while also making her allies feel safe with her, which made it easier for her to flip during future rounds.
The Ozzy Blindside Beginning here, Sarah flips for basically 7 straight rounds; which is the greatest streak of ping-ponging in Survivor history (the only person who could compete is of course Tony in
Cagayan). Digging into the specifics of how Sarah was able to pull this off speaks extremely highly of her as a player.
Coming out of the Hali vote, a fracture had appeared in the super-majority alliance; Cirie, Andrea, Aubry, and Michaela were on one side, with Brad, Sierra, Troy, Debbie, and Tai on the other. Both sides assumed they had Sarah and Ozzy, and the Cirie/Andrea side also assumed they had Zeke.
The Brad/Sierra/Debbie faction landed on Ozzy as their target because he was caught feeding information to the Cirie/Andrea side; depending on who you ask, the story varies a bit on exactly what went down. According to Debbie, Ozzy told her right before the merge that he was gunning for Brad and Sierra, and that’s why she targeted him here
12. According to Sarah, the Brad/Sierra side heard Ozzy talking to Andrea
1. I think Sarah’s story is probably the more accurate one, because it makes more sense with the timing of how the votes went down – Debbie/Sierra/Brad are all seen being very chummy with Ozzy leading into the Hali vote, and he was a large part of how the target ended up on Michaela before Cirie worked her magic.
Simultaneous to all of this, Andrea and Zeke’s relationship was blowing up; and that’s where Sarah’s social game really starts to shine. Contrary to popular belief, Zeke did not just randomly decide to ruin a relationship he could count on. What really happened is that Sarah decided to flip because Cirie and Andrea were too obvious with their alliance – they would go off into the woods and come back with marching orders
1,2. Sarah wanted Zeke to flip with her, so Zeke went to Sierra and Brad with his pitch
2,36. This backfired horribly, with Sierra immediately running back to Cirie and Andrea.
This speaks to Sarah’s social game for 3 reasons: First, Sarah had already come to Sierra planning to flip on Cirie/Andrea, and Sierra kept this secret, showing they had a meaningful bond at this point. Second, after the Ozzy blindside happens and Zeke receives votes from the Cirie/Andrea side, the whole thing blows up in an incredibly public way, leaving Zeke on the outside of both alliances; but because he was so tight with Sarah, he didn’t throw her under the bus to save himself
2, instead letting Andrea put all the blame on him. Third, it speaks to the bonds Sarah had created with Cirie and Andrea that neither of them ever suspected her of flipping on them
30,31; even after she voted against them that Tribal, they had no idea she was the one pushing to flip in the first place. Which is why she’s the one they approach at the next round, trying to flip her away from the Power Six instead of trying to recruit Tai.
And while this is another vote where Sarah was technically “following orders”, again it’s much more complicated than that. The episode presents it as Debbie’s decision, but Debbie herself wouldn’t take credit on RHAP and said it was a group decision among the Power Six
12; and Debbie is not the kind of person to play humble, if it was her move, she would’ve taken credit for it. Sarah wasn’t the first person to throw Ozzy’s name out, but he had been on her radar for a while; she didn’t want to let a challenge beast go deeper into the game, especially because he was in tight with Andrea and Cirie
1. And we know she had already planned on flipping before Ozzy became the target, because she already told Zeke who had gone to Sierra
1,2. So it is entirely incorrect to suggest that Sarah didn’t have agency here; it just made the most sense to go with Ozzy. And again, this is an example of her strategy to play dumb in groups
1,3; because she had tight personal bonds with Cirie, Andrea, Zeke, Tai, Troy, and Sierra, she had no reason to object to Ozzy being the vote, and doing so would’ve just drawn attention to herself. By going with the flow, she managed to flip without drawing any attention to herself, which is pretty incredible.
Flipping Again Considering she had just flipped against the Cirie/Andrea side, it may seem counterintuitive for Sarah to immediately flip back to them at the next vote; but that’s exactly what she did.
Heading into the F11, five of the “Power Six” - Brad, Sierra, Troy, Tai, and Debbie – thought they were going to stay loyal until the F6; and part of why they felt this way was their complete, 100% faith in Sarah. At the Reward challenge, Brad says he specifically left Sarah and Brad off his team because he completely trusts them and wanted someone to be his “eyes and ears” back at camp. And Debbie says this:
There’s not a line drawn in the sand, there’s a line drawn in concrete. Because now that we have Sarah, myself, Sierra, Troyzan, Brad, and Tai, we are a six that are not going to be blown away by the wind or the tide.
This sentiment of an “unbreakable” six is repeated by Brad, Sierra, Debbie, Tai, and Troy multiple times through the episode. They never saw a flip coming.
But Sarah was never on board with that. The morning after Tribal, she gives this confessional:
As much as people want to think the line’s drawn in the sand. Well I hate to break it to people, but the tide comes up pretty quickly, and that line gets washed away pretty quickly.
It really speaks to the depth of the bonds Sarah was able to make with players that no one ever saw her duplicity coming – even though she had just turned on Andrea and Cirie, and left her closest ally Zeke out of the loop the night before at Tribal.
Sarah flipping (again) here also shows off one of the things that makes Sarah’s game really stand out this season – she was the only player who was consistently able to work with, and subsequently connect, players from opposing sides. Once the Ozzy vote happened at F12, there really was a line drawn in the sand – for everyone
except Sarah. Andrea
5, Aubry
3,35, and Cirie
9,32 all had no working relationships with Sierra, Brad, Debbie, or Troyzan, and Zeke had pretty much no relationships at all besides his connection to Sarah
2. Part of why the Power Six felt so comfortable is because none of them had relationships with the bottom 5, which gave the bottom 5 very few inroads to potentially swing the game. The one exception was Sarah, who managed to somehow be in tight with the Power Six and have incredibly close bonds with Cirie
9,32, Andrea
30,31, and Zeke
1,2 – who says in the episode right after Tribal that his only option is to vote with the Power Six because of his blowup with Andrea, but ends up voting with Andrea this round because Sarah asks him to
2. And while she didn’t have quite that level of bond with Aubry and Michaela, she was still tighter to them than most anyone else; Aubry said she was “willing to risk my whole game” on Sarah
33, and Michaela said the only two people she could talk with the whole merge were Cirie and Sarah
34.
I also want to emphasize here that Sarah
already had plans of flipping again immediately after the F12 Tribal Council. This was not an instance of someone in the majority being wrongfully taken in by the desperate pleas of those at the bottom; she was looking to make a move, the only question she had was
when to make the move. In the conversation the episode shows between her and Cirie, Sarah is the one to bring up the potential of flipping when she asks Cirie who she thinks is in charge and who would look best in front of the jury. And in Cirie’s confessional describing the conversation, she says that Sarah already knows it’s a move she wants to make; it’s just a matter of pushing her to the point of actually committing to do it.
The reason Sarah was considering waiting to flip was because of Sierra telling her that she was in her F3; which Sierra has confirmed in exit press was true
14, though she could never firmly decide if she was going to go all the way with Brad or Sarah. This gave Sarah reason to hesitate, because she didn’t want to flip too early and ruin a good relationship; that’s why she says in confessional that Survivor is a “numbers game”. Debbie throwing her name out to Aubry is what pushed Sarah over the edge; she knew she was in tight with Sierra and Tai, but didn’t want to risk that Brad and Debbie could take her place in a potential F3
1.
Again, this is an example where Sarah didn’t pick the target; but it is entirely wrong to say she “followed orders” here. As this bonus confessional of Aubry’s shows
33, a huge part of why Debbie ended up being the target was specifically to appeal to Sarah, who was the only member of the Power Six that Cirie, Andrea, and Aubry felt they could flip. Sarah was in such a good position here that she didn’t even have to throw out a name; people were jumping at the chance to do it for her.
Zeke I think Zeke’s vote-off at F10 is what really cemented the impression for Sarah’s detractors that she just following other people’s lead throughout the season. That analysis misses
a lot that went into this vote.
The fighting between Zeke and Andrea was much worse than the show suggests; Sarah
1, Zeke
2, and Aubry
3 all said that you could hear them screaming at the well all the way back in camp. And they blew up at each other several times, it wasn’t just the night they got back from the Ozzy vote. Living with the two of them was becoming deeply uncomfortable, and beyond just the personal element, both really wanted the other gone since it was open knowledge that they had been gunning for each other.
Sarah and Zeke’s original plan was to vote Sierra off at F10, and get numbers together to take out Andrea at F9
2. But once Andrea won immunity, she put her foot down that Zeke go at 10; as she says in the episode, knowing you’re safe when you’re going to war with someone makes a huge difference.
Sarah was extremely hamstrung by the fact that Andrea had immunity. As she notes on RHAP
1, she would have had a lot more bargaining power if she could’ve been pushing for Andrea to go home instead of Zeke, but instead Andrea winning immunity meant that all Sarah could push for was a member of the minority alliance going home. And Sarah did have support in keeping Zeke; as this confessional from Aubry lays out, both Sarah and Michaela wanted Zeke to stay and Aubry was on the fence not sure which side to fall on
35.
Sarah decided she was okay with Zeke going for two reasons: Zeke pulled her aside and said he was okay if she voted him out
1,13, and she knew how important it would be to have someone campaigning for her on the jury. Going out as the Mayor of Ponderosa in Cagayan, Sarah had a front row seat to the entire jury experience; and as the victim of Kass’ game-changing (™) flip, she also knew how pissed potential jurors could get after a move like that
1. By sending Zeke out after Ozzy and Debbie, she knew she would have someone openly fighting for her to those already bitter, as well as a buffer between two bitter jurors and people who went to Ponderosa neutral
1. And this strategy paid off tremendously; in Zeke’s first “Thoughts on Tribal” video, he says that Sarah was playing a great game but was worried that she was angering too many jurors
22. But at F8, once him and Sierra are now on the jury, he says that he hopes people in the game mistake Debbie’s negative attitude toward Sarah as reflective of the whole jury and make the mistake of leaving her in the game, where she would be one of the jury’s favorites at FTC
23.
So while Cirie and Andrea got their way over Sarah this round, it is far from being as simple as “following orders”. Andrea winning immunity made it impossible for Sarah to go after her real target, and she only gave in on voting off Zeke because she had two very good reasons to do so.
Getting the Legacy Advantage At F9, everyone in the majority alliance (Andrea/Cirie/Aubry/Sarah/Michaela) was set on voting off Sierra or Brad; it was just a question of which one would go. Cirie wanted the vote to be Brad because she was worried he was going to go on an immunity run, and because they never got along
26,32.
Sarah was originally leaning towards voting Brad off too; she was close to him through Troyzan
1,4, but was much closer with Sierra. After Sierra shared her information about the Legacy Advantage, Sarah felt confident that she was solidly in Sierra’s F3 plans, especially with Debbie gone.
Sarah didn’t change to targeting Sierra until after the Family Visit, when her husband Wyatt suggested she should vote Sierra off now to get the advantage as early as possible
1. I’ve seen people use this to discredit Sarah’s game, but I don’t agree with that analysis; she was always going to make a play for Sierra’s advantage, she just wanted to keep Sierra in the game until after she had taken out Andrea, which was a long-term goal of hers. And the vote
always would’ve ended up on Sierra
anyway, because Brad wins immunity. Sarah’s husband giving her advice had literally no effect on her game.
It was Sarah’s phenomenal social game that put her in the position to get Sierra’s advantage. This is what Sierra had said in confessional:
Sarah has been my closest friend. Not even alliance, friend
Sarah did such a good job cultivating this alliance that Sierra was still choosing her over Brad, even though she’d voted against Sierra the last two tribals in a row.
And it was Sarah’s idea to put on a show as the votes were read at Tribal Council; while Jeff showed votes for Sierra and Andrea, Sarah was intentionally making eye contact and giving Sierra thumbs up after each one
1. As soon as the tide turned, Sarah turned on the waterworks; looking genuinely blindsided and devastated to see Sierra go. Sierra confirmed in her exit press with RHAP that this is what sealed the deal on who she was giving the Legacy Advantage to; Sarah looked shattered, whereas Brad looked stoic, so she believed it was Brad who flipped
14. This is a testament to both Sarah’s social game and acting skills. This is what Sierra said as she gave away her advantage:
I will be giving it to Sarah. She was honest with me and real with me out here and deserves to win this game
Blindsiding Andrea This move belongs 100% to Sarah, and she got several people to work against their own best interests to pull it off.
While the edit presents it as Cirie’s idea to take out Andrea because she was talking about getting rid of Sarah, that’s only half the story. Sarah had already pitched Cirie on voting Andrea, but Cirie was hesitant to make the move so early. Sarah baited Andrea into admitting she only wanted to keep Cirie to the F4, and then took that information back to Cirie
3,5. That’s what pushed Cirie over the edge; because in that moment she thought only Sarah (of the players who actually had control in the game) was willing to take her to the F3.
This was a mistake for Cirie because Andrea had no connection to Brad, Tai, and Troy, and knew she couldn’t go to the end with them
5. Whereas Sarah was the closest person in the game with those three and planned on using them down the road. This is the first vote where she starts trading physical goods; knowing she was going to blindside Andrea anyway, she offered to give her bracelet to Troy as a good-faith gesture to show she was willing to take out one of her own to save him and Brad
1.
Part of why it was so easy to blindside Andrea here is because Sarah had developed such a close bond (the other part is that Cirie had also developed a tight bond with Andrea). This is what Andrea said in exit press:
I was very surprised that they didn't show how close I felt with Sarah. It seems like watching the show that I don't even have a relationship with Sarah, but Sarah and I played together from day one, and from the first day I felt super close with Sarah and Zeke and Cirie. I thought of Sarah as a sister. We bonded. I really, really liked her, so it was weird looking at what Sarah said about me, it was odd. Because I really, really enjoyed her out there and I had no idea she was coming for me the entire time basically post-merge.30
Non-Transferrable Oh boy is there a lot to get into here.
The first thing I want to make clear is that Sarah was absolutely correct here, and it was Cirie who had the wrong read. Sarah, Troy, and Aubry told the exact same story in exit press
1,3,4, which gives it complete credibility in my eyes.
According to them, this is what happened: Aubry was trying to get herself, Tai, Brad, and Troy together to vote Sarah. But Tai didn’t even want to talk about it; trying to convince him it was the right move, Aubry got him to play the game where on the count of three they’d both say who the biggest threat was, and they both said “Sarah”. Tai immediately looked guilty, and ran to tell Sarah; Aubry watched him go, and booked it to Cirie to try and beat Tai to the punch. Both Sarah and Cirie came away believing the person they talked to, and reached a deadlock; trying to convince Cirie she was right, Sarah agreed to give her the steal-a-vote as collateral.
But Cirie still believed Aubry, and in a
genuine attempt to
help Sarah’s game
32 decided to steal her vote at Tribal.
A lot has been made about the fact that it was Troy, not Sarah, who pointed to the “non-transferrable” line on the advantage. But people who get caught up on the semantics of that don’t understand one key fact: Survivor is basically a lawless land with no rules. Sarah was using the
actual definition of the word steal, which would have allowed her to let Cirie hold the advantage but not play it. Whereas Probst was using the “possession is 9/10ths of the law” definition. There is no precedent in Survivor history that would have made it clear whose definition would have been the technically correct one, and I think it is entirely reasonable for Sarah to have assumed her legal, police officer definition of the word “steal” would be correct. But I’m sure the producers had never even considered this scenario to begin with – it speaks volumes that Jeff
1) didn’t know ahead of time that the advantage was non-transferrable
2) didn’t even notice the first time Cirie read it aloud that it said non-transferrable, and had to have that pointed out to him by Troy, which led to Cirie reading the note again. Going all the way back to Cook Islands, the producers have intentionally left a grey area when it comes to rules like this; most likely so they can decide to pick whichever would be more entertaining in the moment. Even Palau has an example of how loose Survivor rules are; Jeff tried to get Ian and Tom to change to one foot in the final challenge, and Tom was only able to shut it down when he threatened to sue CBS over it.
And all of this is really a moot point because Sarah did know the advantage was non-transferrable –
we literally watch her read those words aloud on-screen when she gets it – she just didn’t think it was necessary to point that out because she believed “non-transferrable” and “cannot be stolen” were synonymous. If it actually came to the point of Jeff saying Cirie was allowed to play the advantage, I’m sure Sarah would’ve put her foot down on the issue. The only reason the story’s been spun as “Troy saved the day!” is because Troy is the one telling the story and consistently bends over backwards to give himself credit for the smallest things.
While it was technically a mistake for Sarah to give Cirie the advantage, considering the choices Cirie made with it, I don’t hold it too much against Sarah. First, this was the complete wrong move for Cirie to make – from having the wrong read on Aubry to not properly thinking through the consequences – and Cirie has made so few mistakes in 4 seasons of Survivor that I can probably count them on one hand, so it would be irrational to assume Cirie would do something so irrational. Second, Cirie was doing this only because she thought it was in Sarah’s best interests
32; it’s not like she was trying to use Sarah’s advantage against her. She made this move thinking it would solidify Sarah’s place in the F3.
Once everything went pear-shaped, the target landed on Michaela for a few reasons: Brad and Troy really wanted her gone; when Sarah whispered across Tribal for them to vote Cirie, they looked hesitant, but nodded eagerly when she threw out Michaela’s name. Even though Sarah could’ve pressed the issue and made it Cirie
25, she decided it made more sense to vote out Michaela because she was a threat to Brad winning immunity
1. In an example of Sarah thinking incredibly well on the fly, she gave Troy her bracelet again as a showing of trust, really building up the idea that it meant something to her and that it kept her honest
1.
While some people might critique how she uses the vote steal, I think it was the right call; as she says on RHAP
1, she had to use it once everyone knew she had it. When she pitched Tai on voting off Michaela, he looked hesitant; by taking his vote she removed the possibility that he could team up with Michaela, Cirie, and Aubry to vote her off.
Final 6 This is another vote with a lot of moving parts, but I’ve done my best to piece everyone’s story together.
Cirie, Aubry, and Tai all voted Sarah (3), Sarah and Troy voted Tai (2), and Brad voted Aubry (1). There’s only two explanations for the votes to breakdown like that:
1) Cirie pulled off another 3-2-1
2) Sarah, Brad, and Troy knew they were going to be safe, and split their votes accordingly. But there’s a couple complications with both of those theories.
Let’s start with the 3-2-1 theory; it’s pretty clear this didn’t happen. Here is Cirie’s words:
We were voting Sarah out. That was it. There was no 3-2-1. I’m not really sure why Brad voted Aubry.
32 This is backed up by Sarah’s F6 interview with RHAP, where she says she was surprised to get 3 votes at F6 because she thought Tai wouldn’t vote for her
17; she says nothing about thinking she had Cirie’s vote, and there’s no way that she thought the votes would split 2-2-2 because her side was voting Tai, so they could not have explained that plan to Tai. And based on her RHAP deep dive, it’s pretty clear she was out on Cirie as an endgame ally after the vote-steal debacle
1, which is backed up by Cirie’s exit press
32.
That leaves us with Sarah, Brad, and Troy all knowing they had immunity and splitting the votes because of this, which is Sarah’s version of events; according to her, she told the guys about her Legacy Advantage at the F6 reward, and Troy told her and Brad about his idol
1. The problem with this is that Troy doesn’t think Sarah knew about his idol
4,17 (he did seem vaguely open to the idea that he’d forgotten, though). I kind of think Troy must either have forgotten or be lying, because if Cirie wasn’t pulling a 3-2-1, there is literally no other reason for Brad to vote Aubry. Sarah has also been incredibly open in exit press – admitting to pre-game alliances (WaW) and that she was shocked to get three votes at F6 – it doesn’t make sense to me that she’d make up a lie here (because why lie about intentionally splitting votes but then not also lie and say you knew you’d get 3 votes?)
Regardless, there’s one thing for sure: Sarah knew she would be safe no matter what at F6 and played accordingly. She had no idea she would get three votes at Tribal
8, assuming Tai was still on her side
17. I don’t really think this matters, though, because it’s pretty clear the only reason Sarah played the way she did this round is because she knew she was safe; throughout the whole season, she went out of her way to make the person going home feel safe, but says she didn’t talk to Tai the whole day
17 – clearly a symptom of her knowing she would be safe. It’s really impossible to say what would have happened without Advantagegeddon, because so many players
only made the choices they did because they knew they were safe.
Final Four Sarah had set herself up well enough that she had at least a 75% of making FTC; she made sure to get Brad’s wedding ring and Troy’s bracelet at F6 so they wouldn’t turn on her – and they trusted her enough to agree to the deal at this point because she’d done such a good job giving them the bracelet twice before. In reality it was meaningless to her; it cost 7$ and was easily replaced
1.
The only way they would vote against her is if Tai won immunity. But I think she still had a strong chance of making it to FTC if Tai won immunity (at this point even the jury assumed Brad would win the FIC
9, though, so this was a very remote possibility); him and Sarah had an incredibly close bond, and Tai is famously easy to sway. This is what he said in exit press:
The only thing I could do was work with Sarah, to make fire. That was my commitment to her.38
Of course, this is said in the context of knowing Brad and Troy won’t take him, so it’s hard to know if he would still feel this commitment to Sarah if he won immunity; but on RHAP, Sarah said that Tai told her he wanted to go to the end with her
1.
Jury Management Like I said at the top of the post, there’s two parts to Sarah’s social game: the relationships she builds and exploits in-game, and then the way players feel after they’re voted out – jury management. Before I get into her jury management, I want to call attention to her social game; which really is phenomenal.
We see that Sarah connects immediately with Cirie on the first day, and Ozzy
11, Debbie
12, Sierra
14, Zeke
2,13, Andrea
5,20,30, and Tai
37 have all confirmed they were tight with Sarah from Day 1. Troy has confirmed she connected with him as soon as they swapped to Tavua
4.
She also had a ton of options when the merge rolled around; Sierra
14, Andrea
5, Cirie
9, Tai
1, Troy
4, and Brad all had her in their F3 plans. Sarah appears to be so wishy-washy in her decision making because she had so many choices; she could vote out anyone in the first handful of post-merge rounds and still be left with several different F3 plans.
Almost everyone on the jury left the game thinking they were Sarah’s best friend
11,12,13,14,15,20,25. This is how she described it:
The person [who got voted out] would walk in and they would go, “who do you think voted you out?” And my name wouldn’t come up and they’re like, “No, it was Sarah!” and they’re like “What?!”6
This is backed up by several of the “Thoughts of the Jury” segments
23,24,25,26,27, as well as Michaela’s “Playing with Champions” interview before WaW
7, and is further evidenced by Sierra giving Sarah the Legacy advantage after she was voted out.
Where Sarah’s social game gets dicey is her jury management. The incredibly close bonds she forms with people makes them highly unlikely to turn against her, but it makes the sting of her betrayal that much worse once they’re voted out. Several people on the Game Changers jury felt incredibly burned by Sarah, and weren’t shy in saying so.
There’s a few specific things in particular that seems to have really caused people to be hurt by Sarah; both Ozzy and Debbie list her as the most painful betrayal, and specifically cite the fact that she swore on her son’s life
11,12; which Aubry also mentioned in her deep dive on RHAP
3. Andrea brings up that Sarah went out of her way to spend time with her on the day she went home, which Andrea felt was rubbing salt in the wound
25; in her Jury Speaks, she says she feels “gross” about Sarah, and openly wonders if she’s a sociopath
20.
BUT, with all that being said, I think the degree to which Sarah was in trouble in front of a potential jury has been
greatly overstated. There’s a few key misconceptions I want to set straight in this section – while there was a group of people extremely hurt by Sarah, she had a strong and incredibly vocal faction campaigning for her, and never would have lost to Brad even if he was nice to Tai at F5 and F4. I’ll run through the entire jury to back up these claims. That's gonna have to go in the comments section, though, because I've maxed out the word count.
submitted by Random Word Generator Generate random words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, letters, phrases, sentences or numbers to brainstorm and create new ideas at Random Word Generator. The Random Synonym Generator contains 1000+ words and their synonyms to help you improve your vocabulary. Within this random word generator, we've created a long list of random words that are unusual, weird, quirky and most of all, fun. Most of the words will be ones you have never before seen or heard, but each should make you tilt your head a bit, absorb the meaning and bring a little smile to your face. Another way to say Random? Synonyms for Random (other words and phrases for Random). Welcome to the random synonym generator. Since you likely arrived here looking for the different synonyms for the word "random" the first result of the random synonym generator is the word "random" -- yes, we realize this first result isn't random since it's always the same, but if you press the generate button after this first result, you'll get a random word with all its synonyms. Explore 'random' in the dictionary. 1 (adjective) in the sense of chance. Definition. lacking any definite plan or prearranged order. The order of events seemed totally random. Synonyms. chance. He describes their chance meeting as intense. spot. Random: lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern. Synonyms: aimless, arbitrary, catch-as-catch-can… Antonyms: methodical, nonrandom, orderly… Find the right word. Synonyms for random include arbitrary, indiscriminate, irregular, unpredictable, chaotic, disorderly, erratic, haphazard, unsystematic and variable. Find more similar synonyms unsystematically , arbitrarily, randomly, without prearrangement, without method, unmethodically, haphazardly, without conscious choice, leaving things to chance out of a hat , by lot Synonyms for random in Free Thesaurus. Antonyms for random. 44 synonyms for random: chance, spot, casual, stray, accidental, arbitrary, incidental, indiscriminate, haphazard, unplanned, fortuitous, aimless, desultory.... Another word for random. Find more ways to say random, along with related words, antonyms and example phrases at Thesaurus.com, the world's most trusted free thesaurus.
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