03: Loose Lips Sink Ships

[Dominic]

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."



In a game where everything was going so great, I knew it was just too good to be true. I feel like the game has gone pretty well in my favor up to this point, but unfortunately one loose cannon may just do me in. As a result of the ongoing paranoia that is this game, Gloria has once again gone off the deep-end. The news that Mark found the idol did not sit well with her and it's definitely gotten to her. I'm not sure if it's selfishness or just stupidity, but she wants to blindside Mark at this next Judgement... a move I don't see going well at all. I understand the benefits of having the idol in OUR hands as opposed to Mark's, but I for one trust Mark with my life in this game (despite being told by Ellen and Luca that I'm too trusting and delusional about what he can do). Yes, I'm aware of what Mark is capable of because I watched last season too. If I end up getting fucked by Mark then that's my own fault, but I'll have no one to blame but myself. Currently, Gloria is pitching a blindside plan in favor of Mark leaving. Luca is all for it but Ellen has her reservations and is at least being logical about it. I just don't understand it, I guess. Luca and Gloria are going on and on about this being a "Team AJ + Thiago vs Us" game, but I really think they're over-thinking the connections in this game. Yes, they are close and they want to target Ellen because...well, she's Ellen. But that shouldn't mean we should be closed-minded based on the connections we make.

Yes, I have a group of friends I have entered this game with, but that shouldn't mean that I can't look elsewhere for connections. Maybe that's my problem in this series. Ellen and John. Both great friends in real life that I went down fighting for. I was so invested in both of them that I failed to gain genuine social connections with anyone else in the game. This time around however, I feel like my connection in the game is much more stable. Apart from my alliance with Ellen/Luca/Gloria, I also have an alliance with AJ/Chase/Mark. I feel like both are very great groups of people and it is a breath of fresh air to step away from my typical (and obvious) former GvsE connections.

Concerning the last vote, I am absolutely thrilled and saddened at the same time. Annie leaving was definitely good for the overall game, but she keeps insists she was 100% loyal to me in this game. As much as I want to believe it I don't think it's genuine at all. Annie is not really taking her eviction well at all. I understand she's very upset, but the way she's trying to get information out of me and then just throw it back into the game to go against Ellen and I is just low. Funny thing is, she's actually hurting her friend Luca moreso than us by doing that. *shrugs* I feel like I'm still in a pretty good spot regardless of what I've done so far in this game. I feel like the move was justified regardless of Luca calling it (and I quote) "a really dumb move."

Right now, I'm going to talk to Gloria to try to talk her off this ledge, but I don't see it happening. Mark is also about to turn on Gloria so this is just a mess right now. You know it's the most unstable tribe in the history of Good vs Evil when I'M the logical peacekeeper of the group. The real strategy is going to take hold after this immunity challenge. I have no doubt we're going to lose, but hopefully I'll be immune because me and Gloria's posting is phenomenal. Thank God I'm working with her in this challenge. Now if only I could get her head in the game.



Also, Annie trying to affect the game after she has been voted out is simply maddening. You lost. Get over it. Get out.

[Dominic]

What a horrendous night this has turned out to be.

We ended up losing the immunity challenge which was honestly not a shock to me. Sure, I was surprised that we managed to somehow beat Eduro but us winning was never even a possibility in my eyes because of the poor performance of Michael/Wendy. So basically going into the vote I thought I'd come home to a pretty quiet and relaxing evening, with a possible freak-out or two from Michael because he's always paranoid. Unfortunately, this was not the case. At all. The first thing I did was touch base with Mark about how this vote was going to go down because I honestly appreciate his opinion. I could just tell something was wrong though because of the way he was responding. I decided to take a chance and just jump in with asking how the vote was going to go. He informed me that I apparently wasn't going to like his intended target. Uh oh.

I knew that the worst case scenario was coming true...
The epic battle that I wanted to avoid for a few more rounds...
Gloria vs Mark has arrived.



At first I thought I could possibly do something to help the situation. Sure they both have been expressing an intense amount of distrust towards each other to me, but I didn't think they'd be stupid enough to target each other so early on in the game. Especially right before a suspected tribe swap. I thoughtI had talked Gloria out of her crazy little plan earlier, but boy was I wrong. Not only had she gone to people on our tribe with the plan to turn the vote on Mark, but she took it a step further and told a bunch of people on the other tribes about Mark's idol... Mark is obviously super pissed off and betrayed and I feel partially responsible because I'm the one that convinced him to go and tell Gloria about it. I thought we could trust her. Whoops. I didn't know she was going to be a jealous, selfish bitch about someone besides her having the idol in their possession. I cannot believe she that untrusting of us. I should have known better honestly and I'm pissed this happened. She also told people that Mark and Thiago are working together again, but that's purely speculation based on the paranoia of Luca from our Skype calls, so I'm completely disregarding that. From what I've heard Mark wants nothing to do with Thiago based on what happened in GvsE 5, but then again that's exactly the card I'm playing this time to hide my relationship with Ellen. Whatever I'm just annoying. It's just a blatant slap in the face because Gloria pretty much promised me that she wouldn't pull anything like this. I feel hurt by this to be quite honest. But the madness doesn't really end there. Once the word of Gloria's treachery is spread, we all get kind of awkward and I guess start ignoring her. I of course already filled Ellen and Luca in about the situation, so they were super pissed as well. This causes her to go into SUPER PANIC MODE and become and even bigger pain than she already was. Ugh this is just too much to handle and I'm so tired.

To make matters even worse, Wendy is finally starting to form her own opinions. Lol jk but she did message me with some juicy drama. Apparently Hannah came to her and is starting rumors about Ben/Dominic/Gloria/Mark being in an alliance. Granted this is true-ish to an extent. We did vote together and all, but I doubt any of us are down to go to Final 4 with each other. I may consider Mark depending on how this goes though. Why Hannah would take this shit and run with it is beyond me though. I've never even spoken with her and I hope I never have to now. To be honest, Luca and Ellen already want her to be the boot this round and I'm right on that train too now. I decided to go and have a little venting session with Selena about it in hopes that she will step up to the plate for me and take out someone that is making the game rough. Selena seemed receptive to the conversation and hopefully it was enough to sway her into the direction to vote Hannah out of the game. Fingers crossed that this actually works.

Right now, I would ideally like to see Gloria and Hannah be eliminated from this game. Goodbye drama, please. The only downside to this is that you know Gloria is going to do something crazy on her way out. Ugh definitely not looking forward to being thrown under the bus by an evictee yet again. Gloria, there is a reason you keep getting 17th place in games. STOP LYING.




*Random bit of information. Direct quote from Luca in a Skype Call tonight:
"I used to think of myself as a villain in ORGs but I feel like over the past year I've gotten so good at just seeing through all the bullshit. I can just look at this memory wall and everything is so transparent. I'm not trying to mean, but I feel like I'm playing with a bunch of idiots. Like seriously everyone else in this game is idiotic. Chase is an idiot. Henry is an idiot. Thiago is an idiot."

In my opinion, that's kinda too personal for my liking but whatever. I like Luca as a person, but that just made me raise an eyebrow. Especially since he tends to play games in the very obvious role of playing all sides. It just rubbed me the wrong way. Granted this is the same guy that called the move to blindside Annie last round "dumb." Whatever.

[Dominic]

So... time for a little update on the Gloria situation. I'm typing this as the night goes on, so when I submit it has yet to be determined. Through everything that's going on, it is very apparent that I can no longer trust Gloria in any aspect of this game. She has lost not only my trust, but my respect as well. Despite promising me that she wouldn't make a move against Mark or doing anything risky, she did. And now she's lying to me about it. Ben came to me earlier and we talked about Gloria vs Mark and apparently Gloria had approached Ben about blindsiding Mark earlier that day. This came as a complete shock to me because honestly Gloria was golden in my eyes at that point. Wow was I blinded. I even received a screen cap of IMs from Gloria telling Ben to "not tell dominic" certain parts of conversation.

The worst part of all this betrayal is that I know about it. Every detail. With evidence. Yet she is still lying to my face. Despite me literally LOOKING AT THE EVIDENCE while I'm talking to her, she's still just sitting there playing dumb and acting like this information just came out of thin air. She then tries to play the pity card and make me feel like the shitty person for targeting her? No... I'm not about to play that game.

All night has been a back and forth battle of awkwardness with Gloria and I honestly had enough of it. I asked her like five times and gave her so many chances to come clean and fess up, even stating that I wouldn't hold it against her and would help her with damage control. She still denied everything and said she has done nothing and told no one, not even Ben. I swear I'm too sensitive sometimes, because this really hurts.

After a long night, I am emotionally drained but I decide to give Gloria one last chance. I tell myself that this is the last chance I'm giving in this situation. I approach Gloria and tell her that I have one final question, from which I want complete and total honesty. I also tell her that this is the question I want our conversation to end with after she answers.

My question:
"Gloria, have you ever lied to me in this game?"

So there I sit... waiting for a response. Honestly praying that this person I've become so close with over the last few weeks actually respects me as a person enough to be honest with me in this final moment where it matters most. I see the chat move up. The response had been posted and my heart dropped.

Gloria:
"No."

It hurts... I'd be lying if I said it didn't. I'm beyond upset and all faith in her is gone and I'm honestly so upset.

Gloria is dead to me in this game.

[Dominic]

Just had a 2-hour long conversation with Chase over Skype. Needless to say it was definitely very telling to dynamics I have not seen in this game so far. Seems like there's a lot more going on over at Legatu than just a cohesive well-oiled machine. This post is going to highlight some important points that Chase divulged during the call:

1. Legatu used Julian's 18 Layers from the Good and Evil 5 board for the second challenge.
I'm honestly starting with this because it makes me absolutely livid. This is so unclassy it's beyond words. I worked so hard in that challenge during every single layer and to hear that they got to start on their 19th just sickens me. I had heard from AJ that they had to "start over," but apparently that wasn't the case at all. They had started on the challenge a little bit and then decided to go and just copy the first 18 layers from Julian after Thiago made the suggestion. This just shows what type of people they are and how low they're willing to ride to win a challenge. Chase was shrugging this off like it was no big deal, but it shows a tremendous lack of character. I seriously can't wait for this to become public knowledge. It will be wonderful.


2. Selena told AJ that I was trying to get Hannah eliminated.
The chain then continued as AJ relayed the information to Chase. This honestly frightened me at first because I honestly don't want to be seen as someone who does stuff like this. But seriously, Hannah was spreading rumors about me to my tribe. It needed to be addressed. What hurt was that I thought I could trust Selena with that information. It was all given in confidence and she ran to AJ with it. Maybe I'm just emotional tonight, but that definitely knocked her down a few pegs in my book.


3. Chase and AJ have been meddling in the Eduro eviction to evict Luca.
Yup, this is honestly low considering Chase was agreeing with me a few minutes before about how stupid Annie was for meddling, as well as filling me in that Selena tipped them off about my meddling. So yeah, Chase decided to tell me that he and AJ talked to Knox, Hannah, and Selena about blindsiding Luca this round. They despise Ellen and see this as a way to weaken her since she is immune. To me, this is absolutely bullshit! I don't understand why the entire focus of their game is set around fucking Ellen's game. (More to that in #4 because I'll get off on a rant and type forever). The thing is though, I don't think Selena will go for it. I mean, going against Luca is an obvious move against Ellen and I don't think Selena wants to do that. Plus, I have already expressed my concerns about Hannah being the vote with Selena and I think Selena will honor that. The one good thing from this conversation is that Knox was not receptive or appreciative of Chase's input in their Judgement at all. From what Chase told me, Knox kind of put him in his place and I absolutely love it. Hopefully that throws a kink in their plans and saves Luca because I'm honestly not ready to see him go just yet.


4. The Army Against Ellen Information:
This part honestly sickens me. During the entire call, Chase spoke very openly of his apparent distaste for Ellen. Most of his statements revolved her being around a horrible mind-gamer that manipulates people mentally and lures them into false senses of endearment before stabbing them in the back. He oddly then went into great detail about how AJ and he are the ringleaders behind the entire Anti-Ellen movement. Wow, I honestly thought they were classier than that. We all knew that AJ was against Ellen hardcore because she can't hide her emotions for shit, but Chase comes as a complete shock and is honestly going to hurt Ellen's feelings. I don't like the amount of personal comments that are coming into their arguments too. Sure there is the occasional mention that she is a strong player, but most of it revolves around their distaste of her personality and morals surrounding gameplay. To me this is heartless. Ellen is a wonderful human being inside the game and out, regardless of what she did to me in Season 3. It was so hard to swallow my tongue and listen to all of this because this is such an emotional night for me already because of the Gloria drama. I like Chase, but I love Ellen and if push came to shove, I feel like her staying would benefit me more. Part of this has to do with the fact that Ellen has a larger target than me (a point that Chase dismissed in an attempt to get me on the hate train) but honestly I'm mainly driven by my friendship and respect for her outside of this game. As much as I try to separate the game from personal business, I just can't with her. I absolutely adore her and care about her so much. The fact that this even has the potential to hurt her feelings makes me sad. She has such a big heart, especially towards this game, and the fact that they want to take her out because she cares so much just makes them bullies. Chase even said he would have loved for her to be the first boot of this game. How sick is that? It doesn't make me happy with him at all and I regret putting so much faith in his character. I appreciate the flow of information and all, but between the "Layer Issue" and this, I just think Chase has a serious chip in the portion of his brain that contains character and decency.

The obvious question is: "Well...will you tell Ellen this?"
The answer is OF COURSE I WILL! But I am also wise enough to wait until after the tribe swap is detailed and analyzed by us. Ellen is going to be so upset but this is information she needs to know. I don't feel like she sees Chase coming as someone against her and I don't think she realizes the extent of their disgust for her. Ugh that will not be a pleasant conversation at all. I love them all so much but this game is bringing out the worst in everyone. It's all so personal. I wish we could just drop everything and focus on the gameplay, but it doesn't seem to be possible with this cast. The pre-existing relationships are just too abundant.