When I was on Exile Island and I was having trouble finding the idol, I wasn't thinking of myself. Not completely, anyway. What I was thinking about was the people I would be letting down if I couldn't find it, if I couldn't get US that advantage. Burnie and Julia were 100% my priority. They were my team. They were my rocks. Never in this universe would I have ever done anything to go against either of them.
It was heartbreaking enough coming back from Exile to see that Burnie was blindsided and I barely even had the chance to say goodbye to him. To find out only a short while later that it was Julia who essentially led the charge against him is absolutely crushing.
I could think about nothing else when I went to bed last night. I tried to read to take my mind off of it, but I kept reading the same lines over and over again without taking any of it in. I turned off my lights and then tossed and turned, unable to fully relax, unable to fully let go of what had just happened a few hours ago. I eventually did fall asleep, but the first thing I thought of when I opened my eyes this morning was this game, about how Julia's paranoia and complete selfishness put my game in the worst spot its been in all season. I should be thinking "YES! LABOR DAY! I HAVE THE DAY OFF AND I'M GOING TO HAVE SO MUCH FUN WOOOOOO!" Instead, I can't get out of my head how the person I thought I knew could do something like this to me.
I may have thought this was
The Mole: All-Stars when I arrived in the Benelux States, but I quickly accepted I was playing
Survivor and acted accordingly. It turns out that maybe I've been playing
The Mole this whole time...and if I have been, Julia is my top suspect.
---
Burnie...BURNIE.
I thought for a long time on Exile Island, since I had little else to do. I thought about this possibility, about how I might react if I came back to camp and found out one of my allies was gone. I figured if it happened, I could place the blame solely on the OG
Amsterdam side as the ones who really pushed for it and made it happen. I didn't think it would be difficult for them to strongarm Jaclyn into joining them and then playing an idol if they had to in order to really nail down the vote.
I thought I was prepared for losing Burnie. It turns out I wasn't. I'm not. I miss him greatly, and it's been less than 12 hours since he's left the game as I write this. I miss his humor, his practicality, the way that we had always been on the same wavelength no matter what was going on in the game. He was the best ally I've made here and he's one of the people I'm most looking forward to maintaining friendship with outside of the game. He was the JT to my Stephen, the Church to my Caboose (although I really should upgrade to Tucker now in light of what just transpired). Playing this game without him by my side...it's not going to be easy, and this game just got a lot less fun.
He didn't deserve to go out like this. If I was at camp, I would have never let this happen. Someone would have told me, right? I've got my connections. I could have initiated the game talks that could have kept Burnie alive. Now all I have left is Survivor's guilt, tears welling up, and a sincere desire to crack some skulls.
From this moment forward, everything I do in this game is for Burnie's memory. I hope I can really get the vengeance you deserve, my friend.
---
Burnie left the game 6-2, and if you had told me that was the vote before I left Exile Island, I would have assumed the two were Burnie himself (voting against who I presumed to be Natalie but was actually Jaclyn) and Julia, his closest ally still at camp. I didn't expect it to be Dustin of all people who was left out of the vote, but once I got back to camp, he was the first one who told me that he didn't know what happened.
Whatever the reason, Dustin was left out, or he claims to be. Part of me feels like this is a set-up by the majority that has formed to help me feel closer to him just so they can twist the knife into me even easier, but if he's being genuine, that's just another surprise in a night full of them. He did say if he had known he probably would have joined in that group, but I feel like that would have been more an issue of him covering his own ass than him actually wanting to vote out Burnie.
Carrie seemed to have been the other late arrival to whatever was going on, because she said by the time she got online today the votes were already against Burnie and there was nothing she could have done to stop that. I don't blame Carrie for being idle in this case given who started the vote against Burnie anyway, so she's suddenly jumped to my new closest ally, which is a weird feeling considering I've kept her on the periphery of my game for a long time now. I hope I can catch her online today so I can talk some more stuff out with her.
Jaclyn claims to have no idea what was going on and just went with Burnie because she was going home otherwise. Good enough for me. The good thing about a gamebot is that they're predictable, and now that I'm in a position where I need some new friends, I need to figure out a way to get on Jaclyn's good side in this game and keep her there before I end up the next boot...which, at this stage, looks very much like it could happen.
For what it's worth, everyone I talked to last night knew I would probably be upset by the results. I tried to keep my emotions in check as best as I could, but I know I probably didn't succeed completely. It was a very raw way to find out my closest ally had left when I was in a position to do absolutely nothing to try and stop it, so I was a combination of pissed off, sad and scared, which is never a good frame of mind to talk game in with anyone. What sucks the most is with Burnie gone and the people I would have otherwise trusted most being the ones most responsible for it, I had no one I felt I could really vent to other than the hosts. Don't get me wrong, Katia and Nikki are lovely, but they are in a position where they need to be impartial to the game, so there's only so much comfort they can offer. I want to be able to cry on someone's shoulder and have my mourning period, but...I don't think there's anyone left I can do that with. Not still in this game, anyway.
---
What hurts the most about Burnie being gone isn't just the fact that Burnie is out of the game and I couldn't do anything to save him, but it's WHO did it.
I hold no grudge against Tim and Natalie for voting against Burnie. In a perfect world, Burnie would still be here and we would be plotting our blindside of Tim, so it's not as if it wasn't in Tim's interest to vote against Burnie. Tim even told me that "someone" (probably Julia) told him that Burnie and I wanted to blindside him after Natalie's elimination, and he still didn't want to do it until there were already four votes against him (Juila, Ian, Natalie and Jaclyn). The fact that he told me anything at all once I got back and didn't just straight up hate me once I got back says good things about his character, even if he's still denying he has an idol and low key implied that I'll need mine (since he thinks I have Exile's now, even though I've abandoned my plan of bluffing that I have it - I don't have the numbers to pull something like that off anymore). And Natalie wasn't online last night, but given everything she's been through over the past six episodes or so, I don't think I can ever feel angry at her for voting against anyone that isn't her.
I can't even believe I'm typing this, but Julia and Ian are the ones that did this to Burnie. To me. The two people in this game I felt closest to on a personal level other than Burnie. THEY'RE the ones responsible for his ouster, and they're treating me like they don't trust me anymore when I haven't done anything to either of them.
---
I'll start with Ian, because I can understand why he would do this move better than I can understand Julia's motives. On a game level, Ian explained he was having trouble feeling like he could trust me completely when he found out that I didn't tell him I figured out the password for the
Bruxelles idol but had told other people. He said he felt hurt, because he was honest with me when he said he had no one, and when he found out that Burnie and I were in an F3 with Julia and would have cut him first, he felt like he needed to make a preemptive strike. He told me if I really had wanted to work with him, I would have told him everything, but now he feels as if I didn't trust him enough to let him in completely.
I can accept some of that, sure. It's true, I didn't tell Ian about my other alliance...but he also hasn't told me about what he tried to do with Burnie and Tim just 48 hours ago, and if he's not currently working with Tim in some greater group now, I'll be shocked. It's also true I didn't tell him I got into the board to know the
Bruxelles idol was gone, but I reiterated the same point I made in my journal that I didn't want to cause a greater panic, and that I thought the clues would be simple enough for people to get in and find out it was gone anyway, especially if Tim showed his clue to more people than just Burnie. But Ian didn't ask me anything about anyone's idols, and if he had, there's no doubt in my mind I would have told him the truth about what was on my mind.
He couldn't wait for one round for me to get back before pulling the trigger on Burnie, so I feel like I didn't get any opportunity to defend myself to him in any way until it was done after the fact. I can't believe after all the late nights talking and the way he's been interacting with me from the moment we stepped into the
NuBruxelles camp that he wouldn't even wait to give me a chance to TRY and make things right with him and reassure him that I didn't want him going anywhere and that we really WERE close strategicially.
He tells me he wants to still work with me, even if that doesn't happen overnight. Which, you know, feels a little bit like he's breaking up with me because he's decided my best friend (Julia) is cuter.
I know I've given Ian a bit of a hard time in my journal because of the way he flirts with me, but aside from that, I got along with Ian GREAT. I have no doubt that had I started on
Luxembourg, he would have always been my best ally. Luck of the draw didn't work out that way and I was unwilling to abandon my commitments to Burnie and Julia to shack up into an F2 with Ian, but that didn't mean I wasn't connecting with Ian really well on a personal, platonic level. I'm really hurt that he expected less of me than I thought he would. What was all of that interaction even for, then? I'm not the type of person who forges relationships THAT STRONG out of a sense of game advancement. I wanted Ian to stay in the game long term because I liked him, because we were friends, and anything can happen at a F4. I guess that wasn't good enough for him.
---
Julia has lost my respect and she's lost my vote to win. I can't believe she did this to me. This is high up there with the worst betrayals I've felt in ORGs.
She tells me this wasn't a vote against me, that it was a vote against Burnie. That "everyone" thought he was a threat after the mini, that he was "obviously going to win this game." It was a decision "we" made, that it was "us" who decided Burnie had too many connections and needed to go.
I truly don't understand Julia's logic to cut Burnie at F9. She was as close to Burnie as I was. Burnie wanted us in his F3. We were together and getting along from the very start of the game. If she had truly felt this threatened by Burnie, why couldn't she wait for a round until I got back to talk to me about it? Why is she keeping any of
Amsterdam in the game when their loyalty will always be to each other and not to her? We could have had the numbers on our side for a time. If she was so worried about Burnie winning, we could have cut a deal with Carrie and made all of Ian's worst nightmares come true - Julia had as good a chance at winning in that scenario as I did, I think, if not better because she hasn't been exiled as much as I have.
Did she think Burnie had deals all over the place? People respected Burnie and liked him, but I feel like I can say with certainty that Burnie would have never, ever gone against Julia or I. I can't believe Julia is truly this foolish to throw away what could have been a profitable numbers advantage for both of us for the sake of...what? BIG MOVEZ? Proving she was here to play after getting her vote randomized?
She tried to push responsibility on everyone who voted for Burnie and say it wasn't just her, but that's such bullshit to me. I EXPECT players like Tim and Natalie and Jaclyn to vote against Burnie when it's their neck on the line otherwise. What I DON'T expect is my closest ally getting his throat cut by my OTHER closest ally when he was never going to go against her in the first place. What I DON'T expect is having to listen to Tim's tales about how he knows I was going against him because I was SOLD OUT by that same ally. How DARE you not own this stupid move for yourself. I place the blame completely on your shoulders because you just voted out someone who was never going to write your name down.
And guess what? Now he never will. I still might, but not in the way you're expecting.
I doubt Julia will ever trust me completely anymore. She even told me she's worried that I'm going to vote her out the first chance I get.
...We'll see, GG. We'll see.
---
I told both Julia and Ian that I still want to be their ally - not because I especially want to anymore, but because they're still my best chance at moving forward in this game. I don't want to work with a solid
Amsterdam group because I know that I'm disposable to them. If I'm lucky, both of them will realize that keeping me in the game is what is best for them - I think Tim, Dustin and Natalie are all far more likely to get jury votes than I am at this stage, especially if they all get there together.
I feel like I can still trust Carrie. She went along with this because she had no choice, and I don't think she would have voted against Burnie if 5 votes hadn't already existed against him.
And as much as I hate saying it, I want Jaclyn to be on my side. I don't know if she thinks she has even a remote chance of winning this game (the only way I would vote for her is if she was in an F2 against Julia because fuck yes I'm bitter right now), but if she does, I hope she realizes she'll have a better shot against me than she would against people who have been to Tribal Council way more. Unless the jury respects that I got to F8 of this game by only going to Tribal Council once, I think they're going to place more value in people who had to hustle more to get to their positions. This is the first real bit of major adversity I'm going through in this game, and I don't know how much the jurors will respect that arc when all is said and done.
But at the end of the day, I have no more allies that I'm unwilling to vote against. Burnie leaving has changed everything about my outlook of this game. I have people who I can be open to working with. I have people who I think I can count on for a round or two. But there's no one...NO ONE...I feel like I can trust completely with everything anymore. If Julia wants to play a ruthless game, I'll show her that I can play just as ruthless if given the chance.
That's if, you know, I can survive this round. But I've been through worse and made it to the end before. Hopefully this time will be no different.
"