~ Episode Ten ~
So, things are going interestingly.
After the challenge, we sat down for our once-a-round brainstorming session. This is a thing we have to do, because we have people like Ami and Tyson in our alliance, who show up for a few seconds once or twice per round, and we need to get them all on the same page or else everything goes to hell in a handbasket. So we're talking, and I mention that I think Jeremiah seriously needs to get taken out this round. He came to at the last tribal council, begging to stick around, and giving me this massive spiel about how nobody talks to him and nobody wants to work with him, and he's a free vote and nobody's using him. It was basically a one-man
Les Miserables, complete with scratchy violins playing the background to underscore the complex suffering of poor hard-done-by Jeremiah.
It would have been moving - if Jeremiah wasn't more full of shit than a Super Bowl stadium's sewer access at halftime. The way he launched into his soliloquy, it was pretty obvious that he'd prepared it in advance, so there's no way that I'm the only person he went to. My suspicions were confirmed when he voted for Ami last round because he had a deal with Ashley. Sneaky bitches be sneaky.
So, I bring this up to our alliance, and basically got the "QUIET! THE
MEN ARE TALKING!" runaround from them. Turns out our lumbering sweaty overlords have decreed that Nick is going home tonight, and how dare I voice a dissenting opinion? That's not an exaggeration. Caleb pulled me aside to ask what I thought, and I gave him a few reasons why Jeremiah is a bigger threat - he's more persuasive, he's fighting harder than Nick is, he's better in challenges, and Caleb responds that Rudy hates Jeremiah more, so he's less likely to flip.
Well, shuck my corn. Rudy hates Jeremiah more? That must be why he's said he wants Nick out every single round since the merge, and why he continually gets pissed off that we keep keeping Nick around. It all makes sense now, Caleb. Thanks for helping me get my pretty little head screwed on straight.
He also tells me that Nick is pitching a Hmong final five. I think he was expecting this reaction:
OMG! A HMONG FINAL FIVE ALLIANCE!? NOOOOOOOO! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN!?
Instead it was more like:
I did actually consider this possibility when it came time to vote last round, and recommended against voting Ashley out for this exact reason. Caleb, on the other hand, had his tiny ego bruised by the fact that Ashley wasn't his number one fan, and wanted to take her out. This sort of attitude always confuses me. It's like if there are two packages in your bedroom. One of them is ticking, it has a clock attached to it, and it very clearly says, "This package is a bomb." You open it up, and sure enough, it's a bomb. Then you close it back up, leave it there, and get rid of the second package on the grounds that it might also be a bomb. You already know the first package is a bomb, why are you freaking out about the other package that only
might be a bomb?
And, sure enough, Caleb now wants to go after Nick, because Nick offered the Hmongs a final five alliance. Gasp! The horror! Except, oh wait, Caleb isn't on Hmong. Which means that someone on Hmong told him about that offer. Which isn't the kind of thing a Hmong would do if they were seriously considering taking a final five deal. Which means the offer was rejected. So, basically, Caleb is horrified that Nick has failed to make an alliance. Jeremiah successfully made one, and put Ashley on the jury without getting any blood on his hands, Kelly was flipping to save his ass, but that's not nearly as big a problem as Nick not managing to unite Hmong. Oooooooooookay, then.
So at this point I did what I always do when one of my allies says something that's paint-drinkingly stupid: I analyze the facts. There are only three good reasons to say something that's spectacularly moronic: 1) you're a spectacular moron 2) you have ulterior motives, and are trying to cover them up in a spectacularly moronic fashion 3) Ariana Grande told you she'd have sex with you if you say something spectacularly moronic to your online friends.
I know what you're thinking, but after Donutgate, that would totally be in character for her.
So, let's take a look at some facts. Firstly, Caleb isn't an idiot. He's a known scumbag, and he hilariously overplays, and he's pretty insensitive to what I regard as a pretty tragic event (Seriously, I would not wish Colton's situation on anybody, even Jakkbott), but he's not actually all that stupid in the intellectual sense. Secondly, it's highly unlikely that Caleb is being a dipshit to score with Ariana Grande. It's the ORGverse, so the odds are about 99.9% that he's into dudes, plus I'm pretty sure Ari could do better.
That leaves ulterior motive. The most obvious ulterior motive for saying, "We shouldn't target Player X despite the several good logical reasons to do so, we should target Player Y for this stupid other reason!" is that you have an alliance with Player X and don't want anybody to know. Given what I know of Jeremiah and Caleb, this is actually a really good assumption. Caleb went bitching to Rudy about how hard I was pushing to get Jeremiah out, and suddenly Jeremiah's showing up getting all hostile at me, like he knows that I was throwing his name out there. As they say in German, HMMMMMM DER PLOT VERDICKEN!
Luckily for me, Caleb and Joaquin made the hilarious mistake of bullying Rudy into admitting that he was the Hmong tribe's mole. That means he's almost certainly got a Tyler Perry idol that he's worried they're going to try to strip off of him. I'm pretty sure I can use that knowledge to my advantage. Rudy's paranoid as hell already, and the fact that Joaq and Caleb are giving him reasons to mistrust them means that I can open a few cracks in this final five. Nick is probably going to have to go home just for the sake of keeping things together, but I think after that it's going to be time for a lil bit of blindsidery. I don't trust Caleb as far as I can throw him, and I'm pretty sure he's got a side deal with Jeremiah. I'd love to bust that up as soon as I can, and send both of them home.
