Dorothy's Journal - Episode One (Welkom et Bienvenue!)

[Dorothy Hui]

Bonjour et hallo, Benelux!

Welcome to the first of hopefully many pages in my journal! Here's the place where I write my observations, gather some data, and narrow down my suspect list to find out which of these other 26 reality television stars is...The Mole!

...

Wait. What? I signed up for Survivor? This isn't The Mole: All-Stars? But...but...we're in Europe again! The Benelux States aren't too far from Switzerland and Italy! We're even speaking Dutch and visiting Belgium, for crying out loud! Why would you even give me another journal if this WASN'T The Mole?!

Well, okay. Whatever the game, I'm here to play! I know a thing or two about winning reality television shows while on crazy European vacations. The same rules apply anyway, right? Don't trust anyone? Always be suspicious about sabotage? Figure out who you can and can't trust? We're really just trading in exemptions, quizzes and executions for immunity challenges, tribal councils and snuffed torches. Just like last time, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make sure I'm the last one standing!

---

I guess since this is the first one, I should start with some introductions, right? I mean, if the world is going read this journal, I might as well kick things off with some context!

Hi! I'm Dorothy! I'm a 22-year-old, recently graduated English Literature major currently working at my family's pub and grill in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I do a combination of waitressing, bartending, and social media operation. I'm living with my family at the moment - my parents and my two younger siblings, who are both still in high school (the older one works at the restaurant too, but the youngest is still too young to take actual shifts). I have an older sister who lives in Portland, Oregon, and she's about to get married to her long term boyfriend at the end of the month. I'm working to save money and I'm keeping my options open as far as grad school goes, but I don't want to rush into it before knowing exactly what I would want to study, because otherwise it's just a waste of time and money. I'm an avid reader and writer who enjoys the outdoors whenever I have the chance. If anyone asks, I've only played in a couple of ORGs, the last one being in November.

That entire paragraph above is just what I'm going to tell everyone else in the game. The player BEHIND Dorothy is actually me, Clayton. I'm a 23-year-old newspaper reporter living in Utah, and I've been playing ORGs for a little over a year now. I don't know who's all in the VL, but some of you might know me as Chris D. (Warriors), Dreamz (Twisted), Saul (Good and Evil) and Ace (Pure) - and if you know me from those, you know that I take these things seriously, and I play for keeps.

I am SERIOUSLY stoked to finally be playing alias again. Four out of the last five games I've played have been non-alias, which is fine considering they were All-Star games, but I've missed the hell out of the feeling of playing with strangers and meeting new people. I've been fearing that I've been becoming ORG-jaded after the last few games I've played, often with a combination of the same people and often with some frustrating drama to deal with. Luckily, I think I'm as strong an ORG player as I've ever been - I think I know exactly what it takes now to do well in games like this, and I'm excited to see if I have the winning recipe for an alias game. I know I have everything it takes to finally win one of these, and there's nowhere better to do it than Benelux!

---

So, what's my winning strategy?

Well, kind of like Dorothy, I'm utter garbage at most challenges. And, also like Dorothy, I'm pretty much Mr. Magoo without my glasses. A challenge beast I will not be, so any kind of strategy that depends on me winning challenges will almost certainly mean I will flop.

One of the big reasons I chose Dorothy as my top rep choice (outside of The Mole being an awesome series and Dorothy herself being a badass) is because I think I'll play this game pretty similarly to how Dorothy played in her season of The Mole. She was never a standout in any of the physical challenges, and often brought suspicion on herself as a Mole suspect because she wasn't exactly the best physical player in the room. What Dorothy did have was a seriously awesome brain and some Jedi mind powers to get the right people to trust her at the right times. She could simultaneously be the center of attention and then fall back into the shadows to observe whenever she needed to.

To win, I can't outmuscle these other players. What I can do is befriend them, get them to warm up to me, and when the time comes, I've got to outthink them. And with cross-tribal communication thrown out (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, by the way, because I love not having to meet 26 new people at once), I can focus my relationships on a much stronger level than I could do otherwise.

This social butterfly is going to take flight!

---

I've been put into the lovely yellow Bruxelles tribe, and even though I still have to talk to Daniele, Shelli, Ricky and Steuart, I'm pretty impressed with most of the tribemates I spoke with last night! (Even though none of them seem to know who Dorothy is. RIP.)

Julia - At first I have to admit I was wary about her, given her immediate activity in the pre-game meet and greet thread. She comes across as super extroverted and definitely here to play - and talking with her one on one, she's absolutely engaging and easy to talk to. She's just entering college and wants to study neuroscience or genetics, both of which are subjects totally over my literature major head, but I think we've got a lot of common ground between us and we get along just fine. Even though my first instinct about her was that she's a threat, I have a feeling she'll come across that way to everyone else NOT on our tribe. I think I could see myself working with Julia and letting her take away some of the visibility. I want to be in the sweet spot between active member and obvious leader, and given how most of my other alias games have turned out, I'm perfectly okay with someone else stepping into the leadership role and taking all the dangers associated with it.

Burnie - Burnie rocks for his rep choice alone, but also rocks because he's got a cool sense of humor and a willingness to play along with me when I started quoting Red vs. Blue at him.



I don't know a whole lot about the guy behind Burnie yet, but we both like Rooster Teeth and we're both reality TV junkies, and that's common ground I can get behind. I'm looking forward to getting to know Burnie better, and I think I could absolutely work well with him down the line.

Carrie - Ehhhh. I think the conversation I had with Carrie was probably the most forced out of any of the ones I had last night. I suspect English might be her second language, but I didn't catch where she's actually from. I kept the conversation going as well as I could, asking her about the parties she throws (I guess she's a prom planner?) and some of the things she writes. She said she has a degree in journalism, which if she does is SUPER exciting as someone actually in the press, but she didn't volunteer much about any journalistic stuff, saying she writes more creatively. She didn't ask about me much, but she got it in her head that I know how to use Photoshop when I told her I have social media experience, and now I guess she thinks I'm going to be good with that if/when the time comes. Boy, is she going to be disappointed.

Mackenzie - Mackenzie sounds like a pretty level headed guy. He's a senior in high school and he's captain of his school's wrestling team, so he sounds pretty responsible. We talked about working out and he told me about a big ORG he was in with someone who's been playing since 2003. The topic of magic came up and I asked him to teach me some spells, so I'm just going to call him a wizard from now on. Overall, he's alright, but I think I bonded better with Julia and Burnie even though he's much easier to talk to than Carrie.

I'll hope I can get a hold of the other four today and tomorrow before our challenge. Time to keep making some friends! 

[Katia Winter]

I am fanning myself at this.

Please keep this up.

[Dorothy Hui]

I'm still doing my best to befriend my tribemates before the challenge, and I think I'm making some really solid connections with Julia and Burnie in particular. The above gif is basically what I did with Julia for most of the evening, and it probably would have been me with Burnie as well if he hadn't gone to bed earlier.

I think the both of them are really intelligent, friendly individuals. Just like I hoped I would, I learned more about Burnie the guy instead of Burnie the rep, and we ended up talking about our futures and about writing for a long time. Turns out he's interested in creative writing too, which is a slam dunk for Dorothy the English lit graduate and a blast for Clayton the literal creative writing major to chat about. He was especially interested in finding out more about MFA programs in creative writing, so I'm glad I actually went with an identity that can talk about this without looking like a total poser.

Julia and I talked about medium-rare steaks and aliens among other things. I wouldn't have pegged Julia as a big fan of the paranormal, but she's actually really into alien stuff - Area 51, War of the Worlds, the Roswell Incident, etc. That's a fun quirk about her, and definitely a blast to talk about.

No formal alliance with either of them yet, but I'm hoping they feel the same way about me and that they would be interested in working together. I want to make an F2 with at least one of them, but I don't want to look too eager.

As for Mackenzie and Carrie, I didn't talk with either them a whole lot last night. I sent Mackenzie a PM, but it was before he came online, and he didn't really reach out to me after he showed up. He talked in the tribe chat for a bit, but the lack of one-on-one time kind of puts a dent in the momentum of our relationship. I think he's a fun guy, but he's not at the level of Burnie or Julia. Carrie was hard to talk to again - our conversations just don't really flow naturally, even though I think we're both trying.

---

^This is how I picture Daniele - a Wonder Woman who won't take any nonsense shit and will totally cut you if you even try it.

Shelli wasn't online last night (I missed her in the morning, which I hope doesn't become a pattern), Steuart posted on the board but not on AIM (even though it would have taken the same amount of time to log onto AIM and say hello as it would have to put on the tribe forum), and Ricky is still 100% MIA, but I did get to meet Daniele and talk with her at length.

She's...intimidating.

I mentioned in the last post that I thought Mackenzie playing with someone who has been doing this for a long time was cool. Well, Daniele has been doing this SINCE 2004. She knows her way around these games, has a killer read on the new generation that plays them, and she's incredibly blunt and honest about her life experiences. She told me about her teenage kids, her former professional fighting fiance who now suffers from terrible seizures, and all of her responsibilities that she has to deal with at home, and I was basically in awe of how she's able to STILL play these games while holding everything in her family life together.

Oh, and she hates whiners and won't tolerate any garbage personal attacks. If anyone's on her shit list, I think she's going to let them know about it.

Her choice of Daniele as a rep is apt, because I think she's playing Daniele more based on her BB13 appearance than her BB8 appearance. BB13 Daniele was there to play. She wasn't there to coddle Rachel and the other vets - she was there to play her own game and to hell with everyone else. BB8 Daniele is one of my least favorite BB players because I really hated her "woe is me" attitude and poor sportsmanship, but BB13 Daniele was all business - she was a threat, she knew it, she owned it, and she just showed her hand a bit too early.

I have a bunch of respect for Daniele right now as a person...but the thought of her staying for a long time makes me squirm a bit.

---

^Me and the missing members of Bruxelles as we get ready for this challenge.

I'm nervous about the challenge tonight for a number of reasons - my internet tends to cut out at inopportune times, my speed challenge abilities are bad even with internet that works, and two of my tribe mates haven't even said hello on AIM to anyone yet. Throwing in the mystery of this twist that Hostess Katia has told Julia will be a doozy makes me even more squirmy.

Last season, only one tribe went to Tribal Council at the first challenge. I'm hoping that's the case again this time and that even if me and the rest of my tribe mates suck, there will be at least one other tribe worse off than we are. Fingers crossed!

[Dorothy Hui]

Over here and over therrrre!
Water everywherrrrrre!
Water in the pooooool!
Keeping us cooooool!

Shout out to Hostess Nikki for getting this song stuck in my head to the point where I had to make a gif of it for this page of the journal!

Bruxelles won the challenge, unbelievably! Leading into it I was super nervous since I hadn't talked to Shelli, Steuart or Ricky at all AND Mackenzie said he would need to disappear for when the challenge started, but incredibly, everyone who was MIA actually showed up to help out in the challenge on time! Even with Daniele's technical issues, Ricky doing the challenge from work AND Mackenzie showing up late, we were the first ones to cross the finish line and guarantee ourselves the honor of NOT being the first boot!

I'm really thrilled with our strong start, especially since I wasn't expecting it whatsoever and had already halfway resigned myself to the fact that I would probably be voting out Ricky for perceived inactivity. Turns out everything went fine, and we all really held our own in figuring out all the water passwords!

Burnie, Carrie, Julia, Steuart and myself all figured out at least one password each - Steuart easily got the hardest one on Pit Stop #9 (last night I learned what a freshet is, thanks Benelux!), and I pulled my rep off well by cracking two passwords, the less exciting "pond" and the more exciting "oxbow." I felt pretty good about that one! Dorothy would be proud, I think.

As far as Carrie going to exile instead of me after I found out the last password, I'm actually incredibly relieved to not be going. The possibility of finding a hidden immunity idol is tempting, but being 100% cut off from my tribemates this early in the game AND having the whole entire game seeing that I'm going to exile puts a visibility on me that I'm not excited about receiving. Carrie apologized for posting first on Pit Stop #10 thinking that I had already posted what I needed, but the reality is I didn't want to be the first one there in the first place. Carrie can enjoy her exile trip and work at finding the idol - as far as I'm concerned, she and I have been getting along, and I don't think the possibility of her finding an idol at this time is the worst thing in the world for my game. If anything, I can hide behind her as long as I stay away from exile myself for as long as possible.

---

One of the good things about winning the challenge is that I've now officially had conversations with everyone on my tribe! I mean, three days after the game's start is good enough, right?

Ricky - I decided to snap an actual picture of Ricky for my journal. You can find it above. Apparently, Ricky knows everyone. Personal relationships with WWE wrestlers, following obscure tennis stars on Instagram (I've never met any casual tennis fan that has heard of Nicole Gibbs before - I watch a ton of professional tennis and even I forgot she's barely in the Top 100), getting tweets from Lady Gaga (and bragging about the notifications he keeps getting from it)...Ricky is a popular guy, I suppose. Our own one-on-one consisted of nothing but sports talk, all of which in sports that I don't follow. I guess he picked the right rep for him, but I'm not impressed by his name dropping and I didn't get the impression he cared much about getting to know me.

Steuart - I was most worried about Steuart showing up for the challenge after he failed to log into the board at all following his check-in, but he was active on AIM throughout the night and for the challenge, and I really got along with him well! He's the ONLY ONE who has recognized Dorothy from the start, and we spent a lot of time talking about our fandom for the Mole and how we both would have wanted to apply for it if it was still on the air. He's a senior at his university studying biology, which I have a slight background in myself (human biology was one of my real life minors for undergrad), and he just has a very friendly demeanor overall. He's well suited to his campus job working in admissions - I bet he gives great tours. I like him and hope he sticks around!

Shelli - Not a huge fan of her choice in font on AIM, and the only conversation we've had (after I've tried reaching out to her twice) was hitting me up about the HII clue we got and if I had any leads. She hasn't left the greatest of first impressions on me, but she said she's had company over for the last few days, so I have to give her the benefit of the doubt until I can actually have a real talk with her.

---

In alliance news, I told Burnie I like him most out of everyone else on the tribe (which I do) and asked him to be my partner, and he said yes! He said I can be the Caboose to his Church. I mean, I would have rather gone with Tucker...



But Caboose is great too!




Anyone, I showed him the gif I used on the first page of the journal and he said it inspired him to find a bunch of Church gifs for his own confessional. I think that's a good sign of things to come!

I think Daniele also tried to approach me for an alliance? Sort of, maybe? I think she was hinting at it last night by telling me she hadn't talked game with anyone yet but had talked to me the most. If she actually asks, I won't say no...but I'm still kinda scared of her a little bit.

In any case, I hope we can just keep winning challenges and avoid TC for as long as possible!

[Nikki Grahame]

[Dorothy Hui]

Not going to Tribal Council means I don't have a whole lot to update in my journal, but I did have a couple of conversations with Julia and Burnie that have been reassuring for a future tight alliance!

Julia and I were dancing around it for a while, but last night after coming up with a series of nicknames and promising to outshine the rest of the competition, we officially formed an alliance!

She wanted to give me a nickname, because I guess Dorothy is too long for people to type? (Burnie is trying to find something else to call me too, but nothing's really sticking yet.) I told her I was bad at coming up with nicknames. She tried calling me Lit Lady at first, and when I said that sounded like a stage name for a DJ, she started calling me DJ Hui, which we both loved after I told her about my music thread. Since it's only fair for her to have a nickname too, I christened her Genius Girl because of her science background, GG for short.

DJ Hui and GG. I do the freestyle raps, she does the producing. She's also my campaign manager for a third party presidential run. #Hui2016 #HuiBelieveThatHuiWillWin

Also, if you put our last names together (Sokolowskihui), it sounds like a yodel. It's going to be our trademark in every song, our producer shout out. It's hype.

Fun nicknames aside, I'm feeling kinda gratified right now. Julia AND Burnie both told me last night that I'm the one they talk to the most, which I'm hoping means they both consider me their number one. Throw in Daniele telling me the same thing, and I think I'm making a really positive impression on the tribe, which is exactly what I was hoping for. I don't want to overplay my hand, but Julia told me she has also talked a lot with Burnie and she would be interested in bringing him into a tight group - also exactly what I wanted.

Julia and I both want to play this subtle, and Burnie was in and out last night so I couldn't really segue into game talk with him, but I feel a really solid trio coming along. If the three of us can stay tight in a core and then draw in a couple more players (depending on who we're all comfortable with, natch), I think we can easily be good on this tribe and, if we're lucky, in a swap scenario.

Overall, it's been a pretty stellar Round One for me. If I would have gone to Exile, I don't think my position would be looking as comfortable as it is. But hey, knock on wood - I don't want feeling comfortable to be my death knell. Things are looking okay for now, but I don't want things to blow up in my face if I stray away from slow playing all this.