- Wed May 17, 2017 1:04:31 am
#5569
F4 Preview - Approaching Blackout / When Will the Bass Drop?
No need to do power rankings here, I'll just give my thoughts. As I said at F6 (and it was cemented at F5 barring a Steve immunity run), LJ is going to be the winner of
Stranded in Socotra. Especially now at F4, I believe he can and will beat any of the other players remaining. Additionally, he isn't going to get voted out next round no matter what - that's going to be Aubry or Natalie because of manufactured threat levels, especially post F6. If somehow things drastically change between now and Thursday, and the F3 is Aubry/Natalie/Tai, it's going to come down to FTC performance and who can play to their strengths better (
Aubry if she can emphasize likability and the fact that Natalie barely talked to anyone, and
Natalie if she can emphasize being in the majority for every vote and that Aubry really struggled strategically down the stretch).
Before I get back to why LJ will win, I want to talk about the other F4 contestant that I haven't touched on so far -
Tai. Tai, like I said before, is very similar to Heidi from last season to me. He's a huge personality that the season has been "told through" - he's been at the center (whether good or bad) of almost every power/social shift in the game. However, the fact that he has been pretty rude to some of the other contestants (particularly Nick) will render him no shot at the win - the jury is pretty close knit and have pretty much agreed that they cannot see themselves rewarding someone who had personally come at one of their own. His story is definitely complex, and I'm glad we are getting to see it through (we almost didn't when he was about to be eliminated in the early merge, but won a key immunity to buy himself time).
Aubry - oh Aubry. I'd actually really enjoy getting to know her post-season as a fellow intellectual. But after the Andrea vote, she's lost almost all of her remaining chance of winning. Yeah, beforehand she had voted throwaways a few times and could be seen as "gullible" more than "playing the middle" - but everyone liked her. Her move at F6 was 100% to vote out Natalie - take away even the possibility of others wanting to bring her to the end while preserving her Andrea meat shield, AND that she likely could have used the idol to do so which would have earned back those "precious" strategy points. Steve was even willing to do it. However, she got totally played - playing the idol on herself when she didn't need to, fumbling the vote by telling Tai about the idol and being the throwaway vote again is only going to cement her status in the jury's mind. She also still thinks she's winning if she makes it to the end which shows some unawareness. However, I think on a second play sometime she'd be a major candidate for improvement.
Back to LJ - the finale of this season is dead on the exact same fucking thing as the first Reddit series I ever played. Big threats are eliminated mid/late merge leaving two players in the FTC - one middle of the road who was ok but not horrendous socially, decent strategically, and pretty good at challenges but didn't really leave a huge footprint on the game - and another who was being dragged along to the end as a goat for never doing anything socially, and realized around ~F6 that they really needed to make some moves to try to impress the jury. LJ and Natalie are these two players respectively. And what you'll see as we go through the end game here, is that juries always vote on one premise -
Who am I okay with admitting, "they beat me!" People on the jury now talk about Natalie's voting record and timely flip on Andrea, but as they are already slowly beginning to realize (and they will in the voting booth), that they would unable to be okay with saying someone who didn't socialize for at least half the game beat them. It's just a fact. She may pick up a couple of votes - but the jury will be able to sleep at night admitting that LJ outlasted them all.
Let's hope these last few days are exciting - and I can't wait to haze our new alumni <333