Hoh boy, lots and lots and lots to talk about. I am no longer sad Mr Great Gozu - nothing like an insanely terrible situation to force you to stop moping around and get back into the game. Although this terrible situation very possibly emerged from the fact that upbeat Makoto disappeared and people don't like talking to downbeat Makoto. Or it was the case long before that and I've just been totally oblivious this entire time.
So - where to start? I guess I'll try to make the situation clear first, in case you haven't heard it from other confessionals.
When this tribe was formed, I ran around panicking and trying to form a majority alliance immediately because I barely knew anyone. That resulted in a somewhat tenuous alliance based around 2 Cliques - Ibuki/Korekiyo/Akane, and Leon/Mikan, with me in the mix too. I assumed that because these people had been together the whole game (or nearly the whole game in Korekiyo's case) they would be strongly inclined to work with one another... which was a mistake, but I'll come back to that later. I hoped that the connections with Leon and Ibuki would be enough to seal my position in the group and my own safety.
The following is somewhat based on guesswork but I believe it to be accurate.
In the meantime, a connection I'd completely overlooked was coming heavily into play right under my nose - the Mediators. Ibuki/Mikan/Hiro had all worked closely together on that tribe, so of course something was going to happen there. Hiro proposed an alliance of the 3 of them + Hiyoko, and they accepted, because why wouldn't they? They couldn't exactly say 'No, we're in another alliance' and even if they could, why pass up the opportunity to be able to decide which group comes out on top?
I am genuinely an idiot for not noticing this. Leon outright told me about it when we were starting out on this tribe and I completely overlooked it:
"Mikan/Yasu/Ibuki seem to be pretty tight. If we want in the majority here, it's probably through them. We can try to rebuild our Ibuki connection and go from there?"
I was too busy rushing around trying to make my Clique alliance work to properly take this into account - that must have been infuriating to Leon. But he never brought it up again, which confuses me a little. Maybe that was to do with the whole 'power couple' thing - he would probably realise from me ignoring this that what I was doing would likely lead to my demise, but him intervening might not have been in his best interests - he wouldn't be the one targeted (because Mikan was solidly aligned with him) and if he stepped in and got me to change what I was doing, it would make us appear even closer and would potentially be enough to put him in danger. I guess I won't know for sure until I'm able to ask him. Which hopefully isn't soon.
Later, Akane goes to Hiyoko and tells her everything about my alliance, offering to be a double agent for them. While I'm not sure whether Ibuki and Mikan had chosen a side at this point, I'm 100% convinced that Akane was not being honest with me and decided to work with them at this point.
Obviously it would not have been as smooth as I initially thought, but I think I could still have come out on top in this position. Korekiyo would have voted Hiyoko, and I believe my link with Leon was strong enough that he would have taken my side too. If Leon was with me then Mikan probably would have been as well, and faced with the options of tying the vote or sending Hiyoko home, I think Ibuki would have sent Hiyoko home. I'm making a lot of assumptions there, but there was a route to Hiyoko going home, the thing in question there would have been the difficulty of accomplishing it.
Leon going destroyed any chance that Hiyoko would go, because it severed the connection between Mikan and I (a connection I've tried to rebuild, but which is definitely not as strong as the one Leon would have had with Mikan) and even if I managed to convince Mikan to side with me, Ibuki's vote is no longer a choice between a tie or voting Hiyoko - it changes it into a casting vote. She's much less likely to take my side in that case, especially with Akane on the other side.
So - that's lead to the position I'm in now. Technically there's two overlapping alliances at play here - Me/Korekiyo/Ibuki/Mikan/Akane and Hiyoko/Hiro/Ibuki/Mikan/Akane - but in reality it's one alliance and one complete shambles. That means that the only two viable candidates here are myself and Korekiyo.
Before I go into what I'm trying to do about it, I have another thing to address - how do I know all this?
To understand the following you have to understand that I generally don't like lying to people. If I'm voting someone out, I'll shut them out and won't talk game with them unless I'm in a really dire situation and I feel like I need to do so. It's what I did with Chiaki, and I did the same thing with Hiyoko and Yasuhiro... and obviously it's incredibly flawed as a strategy, because it leads to me being the target every single time. I stick to it for two reasons - first, it feels better (bad reason I know) but secondly and much more importantly, it gives my word value to those who know that I'm doing this. If someone says 'I give you my word' and you know they've lied to other people, you're always going to have some doubt about how honest that statement is, regardless of how close to them you are. If someone says 'I give you my word' and has literally been the target every round because he refuses to lie to people, you know he's telling the truth.
Which gives me the advantage when I finally need to lie. Maybe the tradeoff is not worthwhile, but if you take the risk and survive it gives you the opportunity for a huge move later in the game - and that move can save your life. Having people believe you'll never lie to anyone is almost as valuable as a Hidden Immunity Idol in a tough spot.
So anyway, I had barely talked to Hiro at all - that's the important part to glean from this rambling. Then, Mikan comes in and tells me that she trusts me and is going to let me in on something she probably shouldn't be telling me - Hiro asked her and Ibuki not to vote for Hiyoko, and she's really hoping we win the challenge so that she doesn't have to break that. At this point I'm still really oblivious and completely fail to read between the lines - admittedly, I was more than a little shaken up at the time because it was right after Leon left, but that's not really a good excuse. I should have been way more attentive than I was.
Idiot Makoto decided to take this literally and thought that this meant Mikan liked Hiro and wanted to be able to work with him if we didn't end up going to two tribal councils. How did Idiot Makoto go about this? He thought that the best thing to do would be to try to gently inform Hiro of the Hiyoko vote and try to make him feel like he was part of the majority.
Seriously, I'm looking back on this and hating myself. How the hell did it not occur to me that Mikan was trying to feel out whether I'd be willing to abandon the Hiyoko vote? How the hell did I not stop and think 'hey, maybe, y'know, there might be something going on aside from what I'm trying to do'? OTHER PEOPLE DO THINGS, I'M NOT THE ONLY PERSON TRYING TO WIN THIS GAME.
Anyway, being presumably incredibly patronising and asking Hiro how he'd feel about a Hiyoko vote without talking to him about anything else first somehow worked out for the better, because instead of shrugging it off and just lying to me, he started to talk about the fact that he'd been hearing stuff about me targeting him and Hiyoko. This was the moment that what Mikan had told me finally clicked - of course that meant Mikan and Ibuki had been playing both sides. Since the vote was suddenly up in the air there was no reason to be holding back from Hiro, so I had a frank, open conversation with him about the state of the tribe from both of our perspectives that allowed me to piece together everything from that first section. It also gave me what I think is at least something of a real connection with him, so it may well end up being a lifesaver.
After this I got a little more info from Hiyoko and from Kyoko (somehow? I guess it passed from Hiyoko or Hiro through to... Celeste maybe? And then to her and back to me) which all confirmed everything Hiro had said.
So, what do I intend to do about it?
Well, when I started writing this message I was hoping to flip Mikan and Ibuki against Hiyoko somehow. Ibuki just changed that completely by bringing up the possibility of Akane being a second boot after Korekiyo if we need one, and supposedly getting Hiyoko to agree with that idea. It's not great, it doesn't put me in a strong position - but I do believe that Ibuki doesn't want me dead, so I think she's telling me the truth, and it gets me through 2 TCs - which gets me to that all important F12, where I can use my Legacy Advantage to change the game if I need to. It's weird having to time when people will be targeting you... but I think it's the best I can do here. Ibuki's made it fairly clear she's not intending to flip on Hiyoko, so I don't think pushing for that will work. I have to throw Korekiyo under the bus.
Which sucks
Everyone is saying how Korekiyo doesn't talk or isn't good to talk to - he's been consistently one of the best people to talk to in the game for me. Maybe it's specifically that he's good with my writing style? Whatever the case, I do have to eliminate him to survive here
Everyone is saying how Korekiyo doesn't talk or isn't good to talk to - he's been consistently one of the best people to talk to in the game for me. Maybe it's specifically that he's good with my writing style? Whatever the case, I do have to eliminate him to survive here