I'm BACK

OKAY FIRST OF ALL LET'S LOOK AT THIS TEAM





She's helping me with my french practicing, which is being sorely neglected thanks to this game, and I'm really gonna feel guilty about my lack of studying if I vote her out so I should probably keep her around. Probably my closest ally on the original Serpensortia tribe, which is saying very little, but it is crucially important that I got swapped with her and can trust her short-term loyalty. I increasingly feel like she's just not playing very well at the game though, and I worry she's a bit too trusting of people on our original tribe (I think she wanted to throw the challenge to help Lily). I see some difficulty getting her to flip at merge with me if that needs to happen, although she's very close with Draco and might consider flipping herself due to that. Right now our interests are aligned, its when they stop being so similar that this relationship will get rocky and she's a little too independent to be easily persuaded to blindly follow my lead.





Oh my god Dudley showed up! At least a bit.
And he's trying to strategize, but more on that later. I just want to point out his complete inability to be online and hold a thought long enough to compare the results of our idol guesses.





Amazingly even though this has gone on for two days, it's weirdly more likely that he's just not on slack long enough to ever finish a conversation than that he doesn't want to answer me.

Spoiler	+
Look at how smoothly the conversation flows!

I live in fear that he thinks I'm faking liking him. Because I'm so used to pretending to get along with people or desperately searching for things in common with people that it feels weird to be so in sync with someone. First time in a long time (sorry Kreacher!) that there is someone in an ORG I'm playing who I get really excited to see a green slack dot beside. I'm pissed that he wasn't on my team at the start because that creates a natural barrier and I want to throw caution to the wind and ally primarily with him, but he might think i have other stronger connections with my old tribe and my old tribe might take it as an affront if I start to prioritize fred over them. It would be seen as a big move to completely flip this early, especially only knowing Fred and Draco well from the other side.




Also good vibes. Clearly Maxime connected with him a lot already, which is interesting, and I'm not sure I can trust him yet, but we have had some really good conversations so far including some eerily closely shared tastes.



He's no Fred, but he's good enough that if I committed to Fred I would be happy to also have Draco to work with .








****

ALLIANCE

Dudley strategizing has led to something.

The moment we swapped he shocked everyone including the hosts by existing enough to pick his own number.

And then he immediately pushed for an alliance of the OG Serpensortia members on our tribe (Dudley, Maxime, Mirabella)

I know it's an alliance he wants because he made an alliance chat.

It is called alliance

alliance



****

CHALLENGE

Host Cedric announced a challenge

Host Cedric asked us "to elect a tribemate that you think knows the tribe the best."

Naturally there was only one option.



I would like to point out that I've been trashing the History of Magic class in my confessional reflections on the books repeatedly, so the pressure's on to deliver on these questions. Although if I fail I will blame the inadequacies of the education system.

****

PLANS

Happy birthday to all you out there in PW Land! Your gift is that I'm planning to reach across the aisle in bipartisan fashion to delete the black hole of irrelevancy that is Dudley Dursely. Even if I thought I could control his vote as a mindless drone who will just show up when it's time to vote (which I don't - he doesn't actually seem particularly trustworthy), he still wouldn't help me as much as fred or draco who have the ability to connect me in alliances with new cast members.

It complicates things a bit the more Dudley actually shows up because it might encourage Maxime to want to work with him and target Fred. But I still feel confident in the chances of a vote being directed on Dudley and I'm virtually certain he has no idol yet, whereas Draco may.