[Joaquin Souberbielle]

If this is your first time on Stranded - don't worry, we will be posting confessional threads for you each round, as well as a series of prompting questions! These questions will get more and more customized as the game progresses. Feel free to answer these, or not - they're just meant to get the brain juices flowing.

Congratulations on surviving the first night! And no tribal until Sunday...but there is still work to be done.

1. First Impressions - we all have 'em. Who has stood out to you in a good way and in a bad way from the first night of socializing?

2. Opening Twist - were there any intros from the other tribes' dossier that stood out to you? And do you have any plans for your newly-minted tribe member?

3. StrandedCoin - this will be the second season of Stranded to feature StrandedCoin! Have you been thinking about how you might use it to your advantage? Has it been discussed amongst your tribemates?

[Erik]

So going through the list of first impression:

Matt - Seems cool, could work with him. We're both from California so hopefully we don't get arbitrarily targeted for that.
Michael - Recommended I watch Nailed It! I watched Nailed It! The show was good, so I'll work with him.
Brandon - I'm a secular leftist and I think the person trying to bond with me the most is a conservative Christian. Checks out. I can see him being a liability as he's expressed willingness to make random big moves and throw my name into it, but if he doesn't vote me out that's fine. If he comes off as kinda unstable to everyone else I think they will chock that up to Brandon being Brandon.
Alexis - She told me she was hot and met Biden once. I believe exactly 0 of those two things, but she called Jay Inslee "climate daddy" so she seems legit.
Allie - she forgot to eat last night, so I'm afraid she might get a little too in character.
Elizabeth - if she truly does hate ketchup I think we can get something going with Michael.
Hope - she has a cat and because of that I fear her. Anyone with cat photos early game has some powerful social currency.
Laura - no opinion.
Reynold - who?
Shamar - I think I'll call our alliance the "Quiz Masters".
Sherri - we both love donuts.

Opening Twist - That's fine, I didn't care about Eddie anyway. Brandon wants to try to get Elizabeth to flush the idol, but I'd rather just hope there's a passive anti-returnee environment that could do that without the extra work. I figure whoever spooks her is the one who goes home. I honestly don't care one way or the other at this point but I'd rather work with Elizabeth than against her.

[Erik]

So going through the list of first impression:

Matt - Seems cool, could work with him. We're both from California so hopefully we don't get arbitrarily targeted for that.
Michael - Recommended I watch Nailed It! I watched Nailed It! The show was good, so I'll work with him.
Brandon - I'm a secular leftist and I think the person trying to bond with me the most is a conservative Christian. Checks out. I can see him being a liability as he's expressed willingness to make random big moves and throw my name into it, but if he doesn't vote me out that's fine. If he comes off as kinda unstable to everyone else I think they will chock that up to Brandon being Brandon.
Alexis - She told me she was hot and met Biden once. I believe exactly 0 of those two things, but she called Jay Inslee "climate daddy" so she seems legit.
Allie - she forgot to eat last night, so I'm afraid she might get a little too in character.
Elizabeth - if she truly does hate ketchup I think we can get something going with Michael.
Hope - she has a cat and because of that I fear her. Anyone with cat photos early game has some powerful social currency.
Laura - no opinion.
Reynold - who?
Shamar - I think I'll call our alliance the "Quiz Masters".
Sherri - we both love donuts.

Opening Twist - That's fine, I didn't care about Eddie anyway. Brandon wants to try to get Elizabeth to flush the idol, but I'd rather just hope there's a passive anti-returnee environment that could do that without the extra work. I figure whoever spooks her is the one who goes home.

[Erik]

Woops on the double post, got confused and thought it didn't save. I'll figure out the interface eventually.

I'm going for 8 stranded coins. Looks like there's a plan to get everyone 3. Hope it works, but with so many names picking 1 someone could easily sabotage this and hide in those numbers, and it looks like I have the most enticing number to sabotage so that's cool.

[Cochran]

Erik what's up man?

Can you rank the people on your team for me and the guys over in the lurkers lounge? :)

[Erik]

Honestly bummed we lost Eddie since he was the least interesting for me, but if I had to rank everyone based on how I feel about them:

People I feel good about:
Michael - I probably feel best about him. He's a little flirty which I'm never a fan of but it's not an actual issue. And if he does vote me out he still turned me onto the show "Nailed It!" so I still got something out of him in the end.
Matt - I don't think he's planning to vote me out, but there's still the generic "wow two Californians? Should we vote one out?"
Brandon - "feel good" is a strong statement for Brandon since he feels kinda erratic, but I don't see him targeting him so as long as he doesn't use me to justify actions to others I should be fine.
Shamar - Either we have a lot of similar interests or he's going out of his way to pretend to have shared interests.
Alexis - I'm probably blinded by out bonding over Jay Inslee.

I could see the remaining people voting for me (or like anyone honestly, no one seems to know anything yet), but since Laura has directly approached me about the vote and the others haven't I still feel better about her than not.

At this point I think it'd be best to agree on a name with Michael or Matt and pass it along as my vote to Brandon or Shamar. That creates at least 3 similar votes that aren't for me in what seems kinda chaotic at the moment. I don't want to be too obvious in coordinating between people because that could look suspicious.

[Erik]

Or not.

[Erik]

Alexis blows up an alliance in the group chat which is kinda hilarious, so I've got about an hour to scramble together something. Not sure if she's humoring me or willing to switch targets.

Obvious I should not go sledding in the future, but hell it was a lot of fun.

[Erik]

Well I tried to save myself. No one could cross-confirm so that's how it goes. We'll see how unanimous it is.

[Erik]

RIP. Well I tried to get something going. Clearly didn't work. Probably should have just created a group chat but that's hindsight for you.

[Erik]

Looking at it a little further out my notes would be:

1) Obviously don't go sledding. I figured people missing out Thurs/Fri was enough. But hey, if you all want to know that I suffered for my decision I did get caught in a two hour traffic jam and I fucked my knees up slipping on ice.

2) Sorry I wasn't an engaging with these. Going through some other confessionals I noticed I was pretty behind on how I was supposed to invest/interact with these. I didn't have a lot going on yet though, was still trying to just figure it out. I did not mean for this to be the case.

3) I fell into thinking everyone was too nervous to say a name. I know I was and I guess I projected that onto the cast. If I had a dollar for every bumble match I let dwindle to noting because I was too uncertain to ask for a date I'd be a rich man. I didn't have a good idea of who to target, and missed that pivotal time where people swapped from chatting to strategy.

4) Glad my suspicion that Shamar was fake with me was right? I might have the wrong take but looking at everything he mentioned me before I alluded to Liz so I obviously made it worse but I'm not sure that was working anyway. Dude told me Deadman Wonderland was his anime recommendation, an anime only enjoyed by people whose anime taste is exclusively 2010's Adult Swim. My brother was in the room with me during that chat, I told him, and we both just kinda went "really?". But hey man, respect.

5) I wasn't trying to target Liz, I was mentioning she had an idol and since no one was giving names she might be spooked into using it. I figured she'd either be a target or people would flock to her. Brandon alluded to working with her by telling her she was targeted as soon as she jumped in but that seemed too quick. Though even if he approached me with that idea Friday or Saturday I would have been against it -- hilariously because I figured it increased by chance of getting targeted.

6) I gave coins to Michael, Matt, Alexis, and Brandon. They were all cool. Alexis was upfront with me and I respect that, same reason I gave her the coins from the reward. I think Brandon was trying to warn me earlier but I wasn't online to catch it. I genuinely believe Michael and Matt didn't want me to go (yet). I gave Hope a coin since I only voted her since I was told she was a name that had appetite. Though to be fair Hope was my gun-to-head target on Thursday since cats are evil and if I have to gun for someone it's the person willing to share pictures of their pets.

7) Michael was right, Nailed It! is a great show.

8) I thought Liz would either be ostracized or become the leader, but I just wasn't in the right mind to address that at the time. That's 100% on me, I could have put more effort into bonding with her instead of looking at her message, not thinking of a good reply, and then switching to someone else. I did not want to openly work against her since if she played the idol I could be a name.

9) Obviously I should have asked people how they felt about other people, maybe if the people who I was building better bonds knew I had bonds built with other people it could have been easier to stay out of the initial target (especially since it looks like they were all independently tight). A genuine fear I had entering this was not knowing how to read into social dynamics through chat rooms. Well, I confirmed that so that's cool.

10) Since everyone was playing dumb about the existence of alliances (guys she sent the wrong message in the chat menu there is no way that was meant to be a personal chat I'm not that dumb but sure whatever if pretending you're right can let us move past this then okay alliances are fake) it was pretty clear that I was behind. I didn't want to make a group chat because anyone in it would just say "yeah sure we'll save you" and I knew that I could get a little bit better of an answer in one-on-ones and the only way they'd follow through with it is if they confirmed it with each other. Alexis was right that I was tilting at windmills, but hey, trying to fight was more fun than finishing my work report.

So basically...
Be better. Be decisive. Sledding is great fuck you I'll go whenever I want.

It's been fun.