#i promise that I'M not a patron though so all my takes are totally spoiler-free

[accirax]

Disventure Camp All Stars Power Ranking (Round 9)

Time to shoot my shot at nailing a perfect score for the next elimination. Something tells me that the power rankings game is about to change, though...

In case you haven't seen my previous power rankings ( 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 ), the Power Ranking Format is essentially a way of ranking how well each player is doing in the game. So, in essence, this is a long form way of predicting who I think will be eliminated from the competition in the next episode. There will be spoilers for last week's episode (obviously) and its power ranking, so make sure to read that first if you don't want to be spoiled on how I ranked our last boot. If you want more clarification on the rules, that first post will help you out as well. Furthermore, I'm going to be spoiling the preview for next episode, so if you want to go in TOTALLY blind, save this for later. Let's go!

Recap - Tess' Elimination

Current Point Total: 34 acquired/53 total

Um. Oops.

Needless to say, Tess wasn't the only one blindsided this episode. I guess putting Tess in the direct middle point of my rankings wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things, but I'm pretty sure it is my worst call of the season thus far. I had the right idea about Gabby being able to somehow eliminate one of the Cyan heroes, even if the "advantage" I was picturing was entirely different from the team-combining that wound up happening. Thanks a lot for throwing that one on me out of nowhere, Kristal.

Like I said in my initial thoughts, I do sort of wish that Aiden would have been the one to go home instead of Tess. However, I also feel like some opinions I've seen around have been... overestimating the extent to which Tess was a good character this season, in my opinion. I do think Tess' portrayal in All Stars is probably superior to S2, just because her arc wasn't solely hinging on Hunter. However, her portrayal this season was getting a little boring, at least to me. She was kind, patient, a good friend, super strong, great at claw games... what are her flaws supposed to be, again?

It was definitely supposed to be her indecisive nature; she needed to choose whether she should stick with her friends or do what's best for her game. Then again, that decision was kind of made for her by Ellie acting more villainously, such that Tess never needed to make a judgment call. (She got to stand by her friends and do what was better for her game.) I was starting to worry that she would just coast to the finale as a very likeable yet fairly bland hero-- sort of like what the show makes fun of S2 Aiden for being, but at least he wasn't solely solving others' problems as he went.

I don't want to make this sound like I'm some huge Tess anti. I like Tess! I'm sad she had to go! I found her indecision and commitment to kindness relatable, and I enjoyed her interactions with Ally and Ellie especially. I just don't fully understand all of the people bemoaning the fact that the DC writers sent some phenomenal, lynchpin character home ahead of her time when I think she served her purpose as a mid-game exit nicely. Even if you disagree, I hope you can respect me sharing my thoughts.

Trailer Analysis

Here's the big one out of the way-- it's finally the merge! Between the shared tent and everyone being present at tribal, there's really no way to argue around that. Finally, I don't have to try to anticipate when the merge is going to happen to predict where characters might go. Of course, this opens up the new can of worms that is trying to predict how everyone will act now that they're at the same camp. I feel like it should be easier, but... we'll see...?

Here's Gabby following after the villain's alliance. The fact that she's trailing behind them could imply that they aren't fully including Gabby in their proceedings, but... I genuinely don't know why they would do that? With 10 people at the merge, six votes is a majority, so it's super important for the villains to work with Gabby to have at least five in numbers. This is probably more that the former Yellow Team goes off to do something and Gabby follows behind them, making it obvious where her allegiances lie.

Tom and Jake are having a chat... again. Now that these two are on the same team again, this is gonna happen a lot, isn't it?

Looks like the merge color might be black, which makes sense as the K to their CMYK. Yul has some purple paint on his chin, which may be the result of Kristal demonstrating the paint gun on him. Or, the ammo might not be paint, but instead the blueberries we see throughout the trailer-- same point either way. Also, Ashley (and maybe Grett) is the only morning person. Tracks.

The challenge is something involving paint guns, not sure what. We don't see any footage of people covered in paint, which possibly means that shooting other people isn't part of the challenge? Or, maybe they're just trying to hide who doesn't win immunity. I imagine that, whatever it is, Ashley will be pretty good at it. Ally too. All of the guns and gear are the same color, so it seems like there aren't any inherent teams, but it is a challenge in which allies seem to be working together to some capacity.

Everyone at tribal! Very fun. Unlike Survivor, there's no immunity necklace, so we can't tell who may be immune at this vote. People are still sitting with their tribes, but I don't think that has any meaning beyond people sitting by those they're aligned with.

"Once the votes are read, the decision is final. The person voted out will have to leave for the Bus of Losers immediately!"

The dialogue is the standard thing that Kristal says before every vote reading, so nothing particularly special there. However, what I want to look at is who was shown reacting in the flashes before the votes are read. Can they give us hints as to who is in danger? Here's who was shown in every All Stars episode prior to this one:

(no votes)

Fiore + Hunter + Ashley/Jake

Gabby/Tom/Aiden + Tess/Lake/Ellie*

Riya/Grett/Alec + Miriam/Connor/Yul*

Ashley + Hunter/Ally + Fiore

Yul/Grett + Connor/Alec/Riya*

Fiore/Ally + Jake/Ashley*

Ellie + Tom + Gabby

Tess/Aiden/Tom + Riya/Yul/Alec/Grett + Gabby*

Okay, that wasn't actually as helpful as I thought, just because 5/8 rounds showed every person on the team, which guarantees 100% chance of showing the boot. Still, in the three cases that they didn't show everyone, 2/3 showed the boot, and 3/3 of them showed people who received votes. This could imply that some of Ally, Yul, Alec, and Jake could be major vote-getters, or the eliminated person, in the tribal council.

I hoped it would help me out more, because, with unofficial lines drawn between five heroes (Ashley, Ally, Jake, Tom, Aiden) and five villains (Alec, Riya, Yul, Grett, Gabby), I think this tribal could be fairly unpredictable. Will a villain ascend to heroism, or will a hero fall into villainy? Here are my thoughts.

Power Ranking

#1: Gabby

(I guess if the merge team's color is black, I just have to leave the name black.)

She finally did it! Gabby is #1 in my power rankings!!! What could be behind much a major shift in position?

Well, the merge, basically. Not from an edit position, though: this is a direct result of her swing-voting her way to safety. Gabby was the most recent addition to the decently tight villains alliance, so it stands to reason that, if the heroes are looking for a sixth to bring to their side, they would want to work with Gabby, not vote her out. Not to mention, the villains have no reason to target Gabby at the moment, because they desperately need her vote. Sounds like no votes will be cast in Gabby's name, eh?

As the cherry on top, Gabby was the merge boot in S1, and I would imagine that they wouldn't want to give her that exact same placement again. In my mind, there's basically no way that this episode will result in Gabby's elimination.

#2: Grett

My highest placed choices this time were chosen based on the logic, "which of the heroes would be the least likely for the villains to target, and which of the villains would be the least likely for the heroes to target?" Out of all the potential threats in the villains alliance, I see very little reason why the heroes would view Grett as the biggest.

While last challenge did prove that she is a baller, Grett isn't exactly known as being a huge challenge threat. (The one individual immunity she won in S1 was basically handed to her by Alec and Fiore.) She's not a strategic mastermind or leader, and most of the relationships she had coming out of S1 lean negative. The heroes would only target her to diminish the villains' numbers, but if you have the chance to diminish the villains' numbers, why wouldn't you target someone scarier?

Grett appears to still be in the middle of her character arc, and, at this point, I see her arc ending with Yul exiting the game before she does. That hasn't happened yet, so I imagine that Grett will be camping for a little while longer yet.

#3: Jake

Listen up, 'cause this next piece of reasoning is going to be important for the rest of my power rankings this week. I think that, if the villains are looking for a sixth vote to recruit, they're going to be looking to Jake as their most likely addition. Alec already manipulated Jake once this season to vote out James and save Fiore, so Jake would probably be at the forefront of Alec's mind when coming up with plans to eliminate heroes and save villains again. Jake is also... teetering on the edge of hero and villain this season, narratively speaking, so it would make sense if he had to face that music at some point.

Whether Jake flips on the heroes or not, if the villains want to work with him, he won't be their target. And, even if he isn't their object of recruitment, why Jake? The man is a hot mess! His mere presence causes conflict between the heroes, both on the Ashley/Ally end and the Tom/Aiden end. The villains should be trying to keep him around for as long as possible.

Despite my glowing(?) words, there is one way that I could see Jake going home. If Ally, Aiden, or whoever was so sick of Jake that they were willing to work with the villains just to take him out, the villains could exploit that and eliminate him on an "at least it's not me" basis. However, I don't think that would be the plan, because I don't think Ally or Aiden would really want to agree to it, and I don't think it makes much sense narratively. I don't think Jake will be eliminated. That's why he's #3.

#4: Alec

I believe that, if the heroes could somehow magically eliminate the villain of their choosing, Alec would be the smartest option for them to shoot for. He's their leader, and without them, the alliance might crumble (such as, if Yul and Riya start going for each other's throats again).

He's also proven to be pretty good at immunity challenges. Yes, he only actually won 1/5 individual immunity challenges in S1, which was the scorpions in the cave challenge. But, let's look at a breakdown of what actually happened. Alec had mastery of both the questions and cages challenge and the zombie apocalypse challenge, handing off the win to his teammates (Grett and Fiore) for strategic reasons. While it's not a guarantee, it's definitely possible he could have won the medals in the rain challenge if he didn't forfeit the win to Ellie. And, it took active sabotage on Ellie's part to prevent him from winning the final four paired challenge. Add all that together, and... there's a possibility that Alec could have won every individual immunity challenge based on pure skill if no strategy was involved. He's scary!

However, that's only what the heroes would do ideally. In reality, I have no idea how they would bring the votes together to land on Alec. I don't know if all five heroes could count on all five of their votes to coalesce on Alec, much less pulling in one of the villains, who all seem to respect him.

For these reasons, maybe I should have put Alec even higher up on the list. I don't think it would make much narrative sense for him to go home at this point, either. However, I do understand why people would want to attempt to vote him out, which I can't say for Gabby, Grett, or (for the most part) Jake. Thus, Alec lands in spot #4... just like in S1. Smh.

#5: Yul

Kind of similarly to Jake, I think that the main reason why Yul would be voted out would be if the heroes were able to convince the villains (Alec and Riya at least) to flip Yul because he's just that annoying. However, this would be an incredibly bold move to make when the heroes have very little information as to the inner workings of the former Yellow team. As far as they know, Yul and Grett are still a happy couple. I also see Alec willing to give up one of his numbers at this point even less than Ally or Ashley, so the whole plan seems unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Anyways, Yul is still obviously involved in a plotline with Grett and the rest of Yellow, but that could be resolved in one episode at any point now, imo. I just think that's probably still coming a few episodes down the line, to break up the villains then instead of now. Yul should be thanking his lucky stars that Yellow never went to tribal again after voting out Connor. I guess he probably thinks that he is his own lucky star. Yul should be thanking himself. Yeah, that tracks with Yul's thought process.

#6: Riya

With Riya being placed here, I think you can pretty clearly tell that I think the villains are going to win this round, sending a hero home. I just think it makes more sense with my projected arc for the rest of the season. The villains will stick with their alliance and kick out a hero or two, but just when all hope seems lost for the heroes (for instance, when there are three of them left) the villains will turn on each other and start cannibalizing themselves. Therefore, at the end, we can have a mix of surviving heroes and villains for the finale. That's what makes most sense to me at this point, although I acknowledge that I'm not factoring in the status quo shakeup of a returning player. Mostly because I don't know when they're coming back. Oops.

Anyways, in the case that I'm wrong, I think Riya would be the most likely villain to be eliminated. This is mostly because of Aiden's vendetta against her. I'm not saying that Aiden would necessarily be the hero alliance's leader or anything, but in the case that no one else has any strong opinions on who to take out, we know that Aiden has a strong preference for taking out Riya. Tom would probably back him up, too.

Riya is in a weird spot narratively because what she has right now is, "friends with Alec, enemies with Aiden, friends and enemies with Yul." She clearly has some important relationships, but... she isn't really undergoing any kind of character development, as far as I can tell? Like, they aren't delving as deep into her character as they are with Gabby, Grett, Ally, etc. It's possible that could spell mid-game boot for her? Still, I don't think that will be now, because the villains seem far less shakable than the fractured heroes at this point. I was pretty wrong about Tess last time though, so, there's certainly a possibility that I'll be cashing in 6 points for Riya at the end of this episode.

#7: Ashley

Now that we've reached the merge, Ashley doesn't have that same sort of shield that I felt she had pre-merge. It's definitely possible that the villains would choose to snipe Ashley for the same reasons that the heroes would love to snipe Alec: she's strong and tough, as well as a calming/uniting factor between Jake and Ally. She's the most heroic hero. Take Ashley away, and the prospects of the heroes mustering any kind of alliance grow even dimmer.

However, because Ashley is so well liked, it would be really hard for the villains to convince one of the heroes to vote with them to take her out. Like, no shot Ally takes that deal, and Aiden and Tom would have to realize that it'd be a bad move for their games to do so. There's a small chance that they could manipulate Jake's jealousy to convince him to do it, but 9 times out of 10 that manipulation would result in an Ally boot instead.

Furthermore, there's a high chance that Ashley will win immunity in this country-ass shooting challenge, rendering this entire train of thought pointless. Ashley is probably still fine, but I could see her role in the narrative no longer being necessary at this point as well. It's that that landed her down here, instead of higher on the list.

#8: Tom

These next three are the ones who I believe are seriously at risk of going home. Like I said, I think that Jake is going to (temporarily) continue his chain of character degradation by letting his jealousy land him on the villains team, taking out one of the players he's been complaining about these past few episodes. And, boy, has he been complaining about Tom...!

Tom is a decently big physical threat, so I see no reason why the villains wouldn't agree to take him out if that's what they managed to get Jake on board for. If Tom, say, decided to tell Jake that he was lying about having a boyfriend in their chat on that rock, Jake could grow so fed up with Tom that he just wants Tom out. That could lead to a Tom elimination, as a result of his lies.

However, part of me still believes that it's still too early to pull the trigger on sending Tom home. Both Tom and Jake have still privately admitted that they really care about the other, and if that's how Jake really feels, he might have a hard time actually putting pen to paper. They haven't been on the same team all season thus far. Couldn't Jake still feel guilty about idoling Tom out with his own totem last time, and not be able to write Tom's name down...? I feel like there are still other characters more expendable than Tom, but I wouldn't be shocked if Tom went here.

#9: Ally

Ally is one of the people that Jake could wind up targeting, for sure. Voting Aiden out might make Tom dislike him even more, whereas, theoretically, if Ally were gone, Ashley would have no choice but to make Jake her closest partner. That could be appealing for Jake.

Whether or not Ally would stick around in a narrative sense is... difficult. Now that Tess has been eliminated, I feel like the writers would want to keep Ally around as a representative of that relationship/plot point of S2. However, without Hunter or Tess still in the game, the potential for future Ally-centric plotlines has also been slightly kneecapped.

For whatever reasons, it seems to me like the writers didn't really like the HunTessAlly relationship in general? All three of them had pretty radical personality changes since S2, and Hunter and Tess were both eliminated somewhat randomly in favor of characters who made it further the first time (Fiore and Aiden). Out of the three, I think that changed-Ally both had the most care put into her and emanates the most potential. But, it could be that all three of them were brought back into the season with minor "improvements" (subject to viewer interpretation whether they are improvements-- I think Ally is better, Hunter is worse, and Tess is a draw) mostly as plot devices/stepping stools for other, more important characters.

(I don't hate Ally, either. I like Ally. I just think that the way the HunTessAlly relationship has been handled this season has been less than ideal. I get it, because the writers wanted to prioritize other relationships, all of which I've been enjoying, but I still wish they could have gotten more focus time for themselves and not just as props to other characters. Maybe I'm explaining too much. I don't like being negative :( )

However, I also think Ally could win this challenge with her pro gamer skillz. So, there's that. Besides, I can't help but feel like there's someone Jake wants out of the game even more than Ally or Tom...

#10: Aiden

Aiden makes the most sense as the next elimination for a lot of reasons. Or, namely, the lots of people who want him out may all come together to make him the next elimination. It's striking.

The villains alliance wants a sixth vote to establish the majority, for which they will probably turn to Jake. Jake wants Aiden out of the game because he kissed Tom and they now have a rivalry. That's one person pitching Aiden's name.

The villains alliance also wants to ensure that they keep Gabby on their side-- even if they can pull in Jake, it doesn't matter so much if Gabby flips back to the heroes because she, like, doesn't want to vote out Ally or whatever. Well, no matter. Gabby wants revenge on her former Cyan tribemates, Tom and Aiden. Gabby wants to vote Aiden out. That's a second person pitching Aiden's name.

But, what if the villains themselves don't actually want to vote Aiden out...? Haha, no. Riya very clearly wants to establish dominance over Aiden once again, and even already threw out his name last episode. And, even though Yul insisted that Aiden wasn't a threat last time, it's not like he likes Aiden, either. It was James' refusal to poison the man that got Yul eliminated and really sick in S2. I'm sure he'd be happy with Aiden leaving from a karma standpoint, if not a strategic one. That could be people three and four pitching Aiden's name.

If the villains want to remain united, throwing all their votes on Aiden makes the most sense. I don't think he would win this challenge, and, still, no totem has been announced, so if he gets six votes, I think he's just toast. This is my guess as to the dominant strategy of the episode, so we'll see if I'm on the mark.

Also, I want to acknowledge that I'm aware that it doesn't have to be a 6-4 (or even 5-5) vote at Tribal council. The villains could, for example, scheme to get Ashley, Ally, and Jake to vote out Aiden, and Aiden and Tom to vote out Ally, while the villains put four votes on Ashley (4-3-2 vote). However, due to the difficulty of executing that plan, I find it unlikely that that's what's going to happen. I feel like Disventure Camp usually sticks to pretty standard voting schemes (like a four person vote going 3-1 instead of 2-1-1 or whatever), so I'm working off of that assumption. I think they did some fancier stuff with Fiore in S1, though, so it's not totally off the table.

Anyways! Those are my power rankings for this week. This episode is going to be really important for establishing the key characters and plotlines moving forward in the post-merge, so I'll surely be keeping my eyes out.

Also, this week is the season finale of the actual Survivor 46! Not really related to DC, but I'm really excited about it, so I'm mentioning it here. I'm gonna be swimming in exciting game show content this week >:) I hope you all have a nice week, too! Bye!