First of all: I really appreciate your questions specs (Monaca), and I mean no disrespect in saying this, but I don't think I can answer them. I am playing the game on a tight schedule - PMing is taking up a large portion of my time playing this. Every time I sit down and attempt to tackle your questions, I get more PMs and feel obliged to respond to them. So I don't think I'll ever actually get a confessional update out unless I do it as a sort of stream-of-consciousness thought-spill. Hopefully I cover most of what you want to know in my regular updates; if not, I can probably handle one-off questions.

Now, on to the actual update!

The tribe swap was a blessing. There was a lot of pressure being on a tiny tribe where you had to impress to survive. Now that I'm on a tribe of eight, I can play in the way I intended when I signed up for this. I want to be under the radar, especially in the early stages of the game. Cool, calm and collected, allowing others to take the reigns and keep me safe while I scout out who I truly want to align myself with long-term. I want to position myself in the middle of this tribe, and so far I think I've achieved that goal.

If I were to describe Monokuma's Masterminds in one word, it would be "eccentric". Every member of this tribe is quirky in one way or another. I don't think most of these players have played many Survivor games on MS - and if that is the case, I really appreciate the direction the mods took in casting. It's only the second round, and I can say this has been a truly unique experience.

As far as the social dynamics on this tribe go, the power players from my perspective are Gundham, Makoto, and Gonta. Gundham lacks tact, but has an assertive personality and a charm to him that naturally makes him the center of attention. He and Makoto have fallen into the trap of playing too hard from the get-go: Makoto has already proposed an alliance of five on this tribe (me, Makoto, Gundham, Gonta and Sayaka), and Gundham has suggested we even bring in a sixth (Korekiyo). Six-person alliances have never worked in my experience. It encompasses most of the tribe, and it leaves all members feeling like they're not particularly meaningful. Plus, come a swap or merge, large alliances consisting of members of one tribe fall because the rest of the players in the game won't let them get far. Thus, I have my doubts about this alliance, and about the reliability of Gundham and Makoto as strategic partners.

Gonta is clever. Before Teruteru joined the tribe, I had Gonta pegged as the strongest player here. He's friendly, everyone likes him, yet he's not putting himself in the spotlight. I have a natural distrust of people playing the game with shticks like his, but for now, I see no reason not to play ball with him.

There is one person on Monokuma's Masterminds who has particularly grabbed my attention, and that's Sayaka. I don't think she's an experienced player, and she's been slightly difficult to hold a conversation with. But she seems eager to play, and I enjoy what we talk about. I'd like to get closer to her; I think she has potential to be a good ally, someone to go far with in this game. I don't know if she likes me very much, but I'm doing my best to connect with her.

I haven't connected too much with the other members of the tribe. Korekiyo seems like a fairly strong, capable player, but I haven't been around at the same times as him to chat. Himiko is unfortunately hard to talk to. She brings up conversation points, but doesn't keep current ones running and occasionally drops one-liners from which it's hard to continue conversation. And Teruteru seems like a strong player to me, but he just got here and I haven't yet had a chance to verify that.

I like this tribe... but I'd like to get off of it as soon as possible. I'm hoping this game has frequent swaps. I'm trying to play an under-the-radar game, which is great if there's always action, but if a tribe ever gets stagnant, I'm concerned I would be an easy target. So I'm banking on you having tricks up your sleeves, mods.