Email this topic to a friend Printer-friendly version of this topic Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)		Previous Topic | Next Topic
Conferences Story Competitions Forum (Protected)
Original message

Estee 44384 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 06-30-06, 11:58 AM (EST) "Survivor: The Society Islands: Episode #1: We Just Met..." LAST EDITED ON 07-07-06 AT 08:42 PM (EST) Before ------------------------------------------------------------------- CBS Eyemail, Episode #1 1. One Survivor makes an instant impression on their tribe by doing something never before seen in the game. But will it work out for the best, or will it lead to an early division in the group? ------------------------------------------------------------------- During ------------------------------------------------------------------- {All right! Let's get this complete lack of party started!} {...blindfolds?} {And we have two idiots in swimsuits going for the maximum sunburn before the game even starts. Showing off much?} {The blonde is definitely there for exposure. At least two kinds. Could that bikini be any smaller?} {At least she used sunscreen. Gardener's going to be a lobster in about an hour.} {Jeff: blah blah blah sixteen Americans yadda yadda yadda hunt or be hunted brak brak brak one million dollars. Hooray for the ever-reliable Survivor speechwriting team.} {What the hell?} {Oh, yes! Instant contestant abuse: the first sign of a halfway non-stinking season!} {Ow! Did you see that slow-motion on Frank & Denadi hitting the water? We've got hurting DAWs tonight!} {Underwater camera on Alex: looks like they want the wet shirt shot inside the first two minutes...} {The rafts are going to work out to a more-or-less random shuffle.} {Looks like Tony and Angela are already working on the first alliance. } {Alex sees Connie's in trouble, goes over to help, and geez, you'd think she'd just kicked her a couple of dozen times. Did you see that look on Connie's face?} {Gardener's first to the raft... good short-term speed, but with all that muscle to carry, he probably can't keep it up...} {Maybe they should just treat Elmore as an extra raft.} {So much for the power of flotation devices: Gary just helped Alex in for the last few feet.} {He wouldn't have had to if Alex hadn't been playing tugboat for most of the swim. And what's with that focus shot of Connie glaring at the purples after she got on the orange raft? The editing threads are going to have a field day.} {Purples get their paddles out first, everyone's making their way to the shore, and -- opening credits.} {We're actually getting opening credits? I feel so honored.} ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- {Opening Credits Analysis: The hunter/prey mechanic seems to be represented by the occasional images of weapons that intrude between contestant appearances. The Haraikis show two spears -- coming after the shots of Angela & Connie -- while the Turare have a pair of blowguns -- Alex & Gary. Animal sounds can be heard at several places throughout the credits. There also seems to be a distinct elemental sub-theme to the credits: we have definite water, earth, and fire shots again. The usual displays of challenge activity vs. camp life seems to have been discarded: the Survivors are shown walking, swimming, or doing something involving flame, with the challenge footage minimal. Each contestant receives one to three images, plus their identity photo.} {Alex: Two shots plus her ID. The first shot is clearly from the pre-credits sequence: swimming, shortly before she reached Connie. Her face is obscured by a splash of water: we only know it's her from the blouse and hair. Second shot has her at the Turare camp, on her knees in front of the fire, in three-quarters profile to the camera. She's completely alone in this picture -- you can't even see the camp in the background, which seems to have been deliberately blurred -- and she's completely still, looking slightly thoughtful. It's almost a meditative posture -- but this is where we get the loudest animal sound in the credits: the growl of a very large, very unhappy great cat, which creates a very strange juxtaposition to the image. The head photo seems to have been taken directly from the Early Show promotional shot, and has a brief halo of flame ring it before shooting off to the right of the screen. A brief image of the blowgun, and we move to Mary-Jane.} {Out of all of the ID photos, Alex is the only contestant not pictured smiling.} ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rafting as walking. The others aren't used to being pedestrians. It shows in their expressions. Every time one of the camera boats shoots past us, heading for the beach we're so slowly making our ways towards, they get sour looks on their faces. These are drivers: they're used to being in the middle of a competition between a few hundred nearby people for the unofficial title of Best Commuter and the prize of pulling into work five seconds before they normally would, at a cost of six extra dollars in gas and ten freshly-acquired points on each side of the blood pressure reading. Anything moving faster than they are is registering as a personal offense, from mild on the tall black man to death penalty level on the burly sunburnt one. It doesn't bother me, especially since none of the people in the boats are blowing horns. They are talking, though. Loudly. We keep getting little directions: shift a little this way, turn towards us, turn away from us, point your chin this way and that. It's like being a puppy on nine sheets of newspaper: having figured out what you're supposed to do, but not sure why the so-called master keeps directing your attention to whatever page you're not on. It's a cross between basic modeling and basic training: they want to get us used to the idea of moving on their cue early. The bikini girl already has the hang of it. More boats pass us, and I catch a glimpse of my luggage on one of them, the knapsack piled up with the others. The outline of the sketchbook is clearly visible pushing out one side. Another bag, a dark blue duffel, has a very irregular shape tenting the fabric. I almost have it identified -- but then that boat is gone. Getting very itchy now. This is not fast progress. Against all odds and laws of ocean current, the waves almost feel like they're pushing us away from the island. It's slight, but it's enough to slow us down, and it's given the salt plenty of time to dry against my skin. I want to rinse it off and change clothes. I really, really want to take a hot shower, but the first available one is at least three days off. Some of the others are scratching here and there. A pleasant-faced white male, not much older than myself, keeps rubbing at his stomach, which is still an interesting shade of red. Apparently he belly-flopped in. We're close enough to get our first looks at the beach now -- what there is of it. There's a tiny splash of purple marking our future landing point, and it's surrounded by black. Apparently we're not on sand: we're on rock. Visible disappointment from redbelly and bikini. And then we get closer, and the seeming-rock resolves into something else. "What the hell?" the Amerind man breathes. He's in his mid-thirties, built like a runner, with extremely close-cropped dark hair and a no-yield way about his face. If he isn't in law enforcement, then central casting for the universe has finally stopped ignoring types, and if they did, the people who chose us didn't. "Black sand?" The oldest man nods. "Gotta be..." We all stare for a moment. Tiny particles of black silica, starting to sparkle a little under the still-rising sun, with greenery beyond. Black sand is not natural to the South Pacific. I shouldn't know that and I'm probably just telling myself that I do, but it sounds right. We've all seen pictures, especially from previous seasons, and it's usually white, sometimes yellow, never black. My media-trained mind is claiming that if black sand was even a little bit common around here, someone would have shown it to us by now. Instant experts, all of us. "Well," the bikini model says, "that explains the swimsuit recommendation..." What there is of hers is white and covers just enough so that any quick movement won't require more than a moderately-sized blur. She's a very pale blonde, almost white-haired, tall and slim and proportioned in a way that's probably supposed to make me instantly jealous, but instead makes me wonder if I'm looking at her entire strategy, on full and open display from Day One. Very intense blue eyes, moderately tanned, features just this side of perfect. Still, the hair is really her most striking feature, although it loses something when you compare it to the deep green on our third female. That one chooses to make her comment now. "Mystical," she says. I was expecting a dreamy, ethereal voice. I get a New York accent that could cut glass. We paddle on in silence, and finally we reach the beach. All of us get off the raft -- and then in mutual, silent agreement, we pull it well up onto the warm black sand, high enough to keep it safe from the tide. Others have had that experience before us. We stand around it and look at each other. These are my allies. These are my enemies. This is my -- -- and redbelly tilts back his head and screams to the sky. "Yeah! We did it! We all made it! We're it, dudes! We are finally and officially under way!" Laughter all around, some grins, some mutual back-slapping, with me just watching all of it, still too aware of the camera operators clustered nearby, about twenty feet off in two directions, clearly impatient after their early arrival, waiting for us to get something going other than self-congratulations... The bikini model starts it off. "Mary-Jane," she says, somehow making it clear that the hyphen is very much a part of the name. "Frank," grins redbelly. He really does have a bit of a stomach, along with slightly shaggy light brown hair and long sideburns. "Gardener," says the burly man. "Thomas Gardener, but just call me Gardener, okay? There's been too many damn Toms on this show already." Frank laughs at this. He has a very easy, ready laugh. "Trina," says the woman with green hair. She's not much taller than me and may be in the worst shape of the group: twenty, thirty pounds overweight, most of it in the belly, rear, and thighs. Romani, looks like, wearing jangling bracelets, and the only one in a skirt. "Trooper Reagan," says our Amerind, and glares at all of us in turn as if daring us to say something about it. No one does. "Desmond," says the oldest man, who's put together like animated beef jerky: all toughened strands that will never cut. "Alex," I say. And finally, a simple, friendly "Gary," from the black man with the salt-and-pepper stubble, who then adds "So what do we do first?" This stops the handshakes that were starting -- all initiated by Frank -- and puts us all to looking around. Our luggage is piled up near the edge of the vegetation, which starts thick and fast about fifty feet up from the waterline. There's a gap in one section, wide enough for three people standing side-to-side, and that's just a couple of feet away from our tribe flag. Apparently we're Turare, whatever that means. There are three bags hanging from the frame of the flag, one soft, one long, one laden with weight. "We check that out," Desmond orders -- and it's very clearly an order. "Come on..." We follow him up the beach. Despite the 'we', he does the checking, reaching the flag first and untying all the bags. The long one has our machete. The heavy one contains a large cooking pot. The soft one holds eight purple buffs, which he spends some time passing out -- and at the bottom, the mandatory map to our water supply. The camera operators close in a little and shoot over Desmond's shoulder to get a good look at the map. Desmond can see it, and they can see it, and the rest of us aren't getting a look any time soon: he's almost cradling it with his body, protecting it as if it was an unknown Van Gogh painting recovered from a garage sale, hoping no one else figures out the true value before he finishes paying fifty cents for it. "All right," he says. "Typical supplies." Trina tries to get a look at the map. He holds it even closer to his torso. "Our first priority is going to be shelter: this place may look benign, but in this region, a storm could blow up at any moment." Gardener looks huffy. "Our first priority is water," he shoots back. "We all just had a nice, long workout, and the day is only going to get hotter. We have to replace what we lost and what we're going to lose later -- which means we need to follow that map." Gary shakes his head. "Gardener's right," he says with an odd, almost careful softness, and Gardener shoots him a look that starts as hard and twists into confusion, visibly wondering why this man is disagreeing with him while agreeing with him. "We need fuel, and the liquids come before the solids. But we've got to purify the liquid -- and that means our first priority is fire." The awkward silence starts to close in immediately. Gary, in his accuracy, has brought us directly to the hard part. Tribes before us have labored in vain for hours and days without getting a single spark to flare. There are sticks aplenty waiting inside the jungle, but not much in the way of string. Hand rotation has mostly been proven not to work. There isn't a match among us. And to add some extra insult to what the camera crew is expecting will be our total incompetence, two of them have chosen that moment to light up cigarettes from large metal Zippos. "Nyah-nyah. What would you give for this, you poor bastards? Start negotiating now, but remember, we always say no..." But the next voice is mine. "I'll do it. The rest of you can start on the shelter and getting some water: I should have it ready by the time you get back." I'm instantly at the center of seven stares and five cameras. Gardener looks more than a little dubious. "You're our firestarter," he says as if someone's feeding the words in through his back. "Sure. You look like you've got the strength to twist a stick at ninety revolutions per..." His eyes go to my shoulders for a moment, drop lower, stay in the obvious area for a few seconds, come up to my face again. "So where are you hiding the ultra-prescription lenses?" Stay calm. Don't get angry this early... "Look -- if we follow the trail, we'll find where we're supposed to make camp. We're probably better off getting the fire pit going there. We can decide where we're putting the shelter, and --" He cuts me off. "I still want to hear how you plan on making this fire." Frank seems to be upset. "Look, man, if she says she can do it..." "We can't lose three hours to the delusions of a never-was Girl Scout," Gardener insists, and puts a thin smile on the last words. Which instantly annoys Mary-Jane. "Fire talks: muscles walk. Why don't you walk down the path and see if there's some trees you can punch into the shape of a ranch house?" And that makes Gardener's face twitch. It's very quick -- you would have to be looking directly at him at just the right moment, and I'm the only one who is -- but that upset him. No one wants the prettiest girl mad at them on Day One, as it makes the prospects for Night One so much less fun. "I'm just trying to say --" I can't be bothered with the rest of this. We're wasting daylight. I take three steps towards the path, which is just enough for the others to notice. "Come on," I say. "Let's figure out where everything's going to be." And move on without waiting to see if they follow me. Four steps, five, six -- then footsteps. Okay. Not too bold, then. Roughly sixty feet in through the jungle, and I stop once to pick up a large grey rock that'll help outline our fire pit. Thick greenery all around, bird calls, smaller insect voices that warn of incoming itches worse than the salt -- and suddenly, our clearing. It's about fifty feet across, and oddly circular. Two trails exit on the opposite side of the entrance, one very wide and almost a highway through the trees, one narrow with sticker plants on both sides. There are only a few trees here, and they look -- wrong. The trunks are wide, the bark dark brown and half-layered in rough tiles -- oaks. Oak trees should not be here. But they are, and the large canopies provide shade while two fairly close trunks look like they'd make a good base to start a shelter against. Two camera operators are standing to either side of them, quietly shooting our entrance. One of them is smoking, and there's already a cigarette butt at his feet. (He hastily picks it up as I enter.) Light greens and bright greens and a thick layer of old leaves on the ground, with soft grasses sticking up and through, and the chattering of birds protesting the new arrivals... Desmond follows me in. To his credit, he sums up the situation instantly and plays along, even if he doesn't believe me either. "Right there," he says, pointing at those two oaks. "That's the best place to build a shelter. The fire pit should be at least sixteen feet away from the front edge: we'll get some warmth, but we won't catch sparks." He flashes a momentary grin that shows a missing tooth on the lower right. "I'm blessed with a one-foot foot. I'll pace it off." And starts to do so, still holding the map. The others arrive. Frank and Trina openly stare at the oaks. They know something's wrong here, even if they're not quite sure what. Trooper figures it out first. "Those trees aren't native," he says. Desmond, in the middle of heel-to-toe pacing, answers. "Neither was the sand. Alex? -- this is the center of your spot. Give it a five-foot diameter." He's marked the edge with a heel-cleared line. I nod, come over, kneel down, and start clearing away dead leaves. The instant reward for my efforts is the first of the slugs. "Oh, gross..." Mary-Jane moans -- but then she joins me, as does Frank. I glance up. "Who's getting water?" Desmond frowns at Trina, who immediately steps up next to him. "We don't have anything to carry it in yet, but I'm guessing that's next to the supply." He glances at the map. "It's down the wide path." Said as if giving up state secrets under heavy torture. "I'll go check it out. You three keep clearing for a pit." Ordering us to do something we're already in the middle of. "Someone can get our stuff off the beach, and then we'll scout for materials." "Assuming Wonder Girl here gets a fire going," Gardener reminds him. "Fine. I'll go grab --" turns, and see Trooper already heading back towards the beach. Another one of those brief facial contortions: a half-snarl. "-- some water with you." Desmond's clearly reluctant to have company, but eventually winds up going with him and Trina. Gary takes a quick look at my rock, then starts prowling the perimeter of the camp, looking for more. Frank grins at Mary-Jane and me in turn. "I want you to know," he says with a twinkle in his eye, "that I usually do much more fun stuff on a first date." Mary-Jane gives him the same look she gave the first slug. I just keep working. "Tough room," Frank comments, and goes back to work. By the time the water team gets back -- looking slightly and oddly shellshocked -- all the luggage has long since been carried in, and with Trooper having joined in, we've got the area cleared, dug out a bit, and ringed. Time is already becoming a little hard to judge, but it felt like they were gone for over half an hour. The water is not close by, and they only have two purple plastic containers full of it, maybe five gallons each. We'll have to make at least a trip a day. "Just about ready," Gary says. "We just need some thin dry stuff to catch first, and the wood." He straightens up and goes back to the perimeter, gathering. Gardener crouches down next to me. Too close. Way too close. My salt-itchy skin is now starting to crawl. "So," he says softly, pitched low enough so that it's picked up only by me and an attendant camera, "I'm guessing this is where you wrap those thick straps around a stick and start twirling it. Am I right?" And mark: didn't even get halfway through Day One. I don't bother answering. Gardener, as long as he's on my level, takes another look, then adjusts the position of a rim stone before Gary comes back with the materials. He hands half of them to me and we quickly arrange them, working in almost casual concert. I'm guessing he practiced this after he got the call. "Looks ready," he says. I nod, reach under my blouse's neckline -- Gardener visibly starts -- and pull out the cross. Frank's eyebrows twitch, and his laugh is awkward. "I didn't catch your last name," he says. "Weaver, right?" Gardener finds his voice as he straightens up to properly look down on me. "Oh, I get it," he sarcastically proclaims. "Not Wonder Girl, but God Girl. If we all stack our hands over your cross, will it help channel the divine heat into the fire pit? Or should we be working from the bottom up?" Trina shakes her head. "Now I know that's not going to work," she says, and most of the others are regarding me with expressions ranging from deeply amused (Trooper) to slightly frightened (Frank). The cameras are really closing in, and the operators are stifling giggles. They weren't expecting this sort of footage on Day One. Gary is the exception. He just watches me, not judging just yet, eyes large and calm as I take the cross off. "Now what are you doing?" he asks softly. I don't answer him. I look up at Gardener instead, then to the others in turn, back to Gardener. "If I do this," I say, "you don't vote me off first." The initial goal: don't be the first out of the game, don't be the first out of the tribe. Avoid the greatest humiliation of all. "Deal?" Awkward coughs and a little laughter all around, but then Frank says "If you do this, I'll place the sainthood call to the Vatican myself and nominate this as the first official miracle." Amused/disturbed/disbelieving assent all around, finished off by Gardener, who shrugs and says "Yeah, whatever. You get fire, yours doesn't get snuffed at the first vote. Deal." Clearly thinking he'll never have to keep that promise. I nod, put one hand on the front of the cross, the other on the back, press tightly, and sharply rotate my palms away from each other. The cross splits into three thinner crosses as the inner lock comes apart. Mary-Jane gasps. Frank blinks hard enough to hear. Gary grins. The camera operators, who must be silent, who must remain part of the unseen and unheard scenery at all times, start to yell something, but I have a pretty good idea what they're saying, it's not worth listening to, and they can edit it out later anyway. It'll take them a few seconds to realize they're not dreaming, they'll have to act, and before they can, I can finish. Shave a little off the middle layer with the frontmost one, scatter it over the tinder, then strike the front and back thirds together for a shower of sparks... ...and that's when a small amount of hell breaks loose. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ {Oh. My. God.} {Wanna revise your PTTE again? Only five points...} {And somewhere in prison, Richard Hatch just bit through his tongue.} {That disrespectful, sacreligious bitch.} {Yeah. I think I'm in love.} ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We've been told not to do anything, and that's as in anything. No shelter construction. No food hunting. No moving and definitely no talking, although they wouldn't really be able to hear us over their own screaming. We are supposed to stay in one spot while the camera operators call for every bit of help they can find. I'm thinking of a true story, a man who took flight using a lawn chair and a bunch of balloons. Made fifteen thousand feet and got spotted by a couple of planes before he started shooting some of the helium out with a pellet gun to lower himself back to relative safety. He made it down okay, but the FAA got mad. Their line was 'We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is...' This is the attitude of the production stuff. I must be punished, but they're not quite sure for what. And unlike the FAA, which eventually fined the poor man for going up without a flight plan, there's a chance they're stuck. Because things that make fire aren't illegal. It sounds strange -- it is strange -- but it's necessary. You can't ban everything that might be used to make fire, because if you do, there's always some contestant who'll say 'She's using the flint we won at the last Reward challenge! That's against the rules! Throw her out!' and not only do they lose a Tribal Council on a technicality, but unless the protest was carefully timed, everyone left dies of dehydration three days later. Put a near-universal prohibition on firestarters that excludes Reward items, and you've banned prescription glasses, a lot of plastic things that could be used to focus light, and Chad's foot if it hit something at just the right angle. It's too much legalese for one rulebook. Keeping flame-making items off the island is the job of the luggage inspectors. Confiscate the smuggled Zippos, the tiny magnifying glasses, maybe even the privately-secured matches -- they can take pretty much anything they want to and few people ever think to question them. It's part of the game: get your own fire, any way you can -- we're just not going to let you do it this way if we can possibly avoid it. But if something isn't obviously a tool at the start... They told me I could bring a cross. They never said what it had to be made out of. I count three realistic options. Confiscate it regardless and shoot the whole thing over. Throw me out of the game, which means losing the initial Tribal Council unless they call in one of the alternates and really shoot the whole thing over. Let it go through. The second doesn't seem all that likely, but it's the chance I took... There is screaming, there is yelling, all of us just sitting around listening to it, and then there is an Australian accent at the other end of a connection. This leads to temporary silence. A quick burst of protest. Silence again. One camera operator breaks from the huddle, still holding the cell phone, his jaw very slightly dropped as he approaches us. "Congratulations," he says through suddenly-pressed teeth. "First new trick in five seasons. We're going to have to spectroscope everything from now on, you know that?" I just look at him, no expression, pure listening. "Never again. Never. No one's getting that one past us a second time. But --" and he hates saying this, you can see it in his eyes and the jaw muscles grinding against each other "-- the big man thinks this'll make good television, so keep the --" visibly editing out a 'damn' here "-- thing and use it. As if it really matters..." Muttering to himself, mostly indistinct, but the word 'bitch' is in there somewhere. "All of you --" this to the other camera people and us "-- back in the positions you were in before this fiasco started. You --" and that to me "-- finish starting your --" spits the word " -- fire. I'll be on the beach." And stalks away. Slowly, carefully, with the occasional open assist from the other production people, we're placed back where we were before they mostly stopped filming. (Two people kept going: one on us, one recording the argument. Just in case.) One of them, passing by me, hastily whispers "Nice!" and then quickly moves on. Two others glare, and their eyes are angry. Reset. Restart. Within a minute (after removing the twenty guesstimated ones where we had to wait), the fire is under way. It only takes a few more to rig up a frame for the pot and get the first future drink on its way to safety boiling. We have fire. We have water. The rest will follow. Gary straightens up and grins at Gardener. "When someone tries to get you to bet against them making the queen of diamonds jump out of the deck and spit cider in your eye," he tells him, "don't take it, because only two things can happen: a wallet full of air -- and an eye full of cider." Gardener inhales sharply and takes heavy quick strides towards the wide path, soon moving out of sight. A few seconds after that, the sound of breaking branches resounds through the clearing. Frank is giving me a bemused look, but there's confusion and caution laced into it like sand inside a pearl. From Trooper and Mary-Jane, an odd respect. The shock stays with all of them as they scatter: shelter is next, although Gardener apparently got a head start on that. And food: Desmond calls out to me. "Go down the water path," he says, voice a little unsteady, "and see if you can grab some fruit. Mary-Jane, go with her." Pause. "Bring extra clothes. You both look itchy." Another pause. "The rest of us will keep stuff going here." Mary-Jane nods, smiles brightly, and heads for her bag. I stand up, knees a little sore, to find Gary still looking at me. His expression is -- odd. It's not anything I've seen before. Kind, yes, not angry at all, but -- weird. I can't place it. "What?" I finally ask, with no idea what's going through his head. A tiny shrug. "Nothing, really," he says. "It's just that -- fire is life in this game. And you -- brought your life with you." Another brilliant smile, like the one he gave me on the raft. "Interesting..." He walks away. I guess the expression was meant to be spiritual or something. I shrug at his retreating back and go to get my things. I'm safe. For three days, I'm safe. If they don't break their promise. If we don't lose the first challenge to give them the chance to. If... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ . . . . . . . . (And more of Episode #1 to come later, still on this thread. Stay tuned.)   Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Subject     Author     Message Date     ID    RE: Survivor: The Society Islands:... Glow 06-30-06 1  RE: Survivor: The Society Islands:... cahaya 06-30-06 2  Episode #1: We Just Met...: Part ... Estee 06-30-06 3    RE: Episode #1: We Just Met...: P... Belle Book 01-31-10 11   Episode #1: We Just Met...: Part... Estee 07-06-06 4  Episode #1: We Just Met...: Concl... Estee 07-06-06 5    RE: Episode #1: We Just Met...: C... Belle Book 01-04-09 10  RE: Survivor: The Society Islands:... cahaya 07-08-06 6  RE: Survivor: The Society Islands:... kingfish 07-08-06 7  RE: Survivor: The Society Islands:... michel 07-08-06 8  RE: Survivor: The Society Islands:... Belle Book 01-04-09 9

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic

Messages in this topic

Glow 14286 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 06-30-06, 12:37 PM (EST) 1. "RE: Survivor: The Society Islands: Episode #1: We Just Met..." I'm loving this. Great writing, Estee.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

cahaya 14104 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 06-30-06, 01:31 PM (EST) 2. "RE: Survivor: The Society Islands: Episode #1: We Just Met..." Yowzie. The outline of the sketchbook is clearly visible pushing out one side. (add: *gasp of horror* at the thought of it getting wet in transit!) These are drivers: they're used to being in the middle of a competition between a few hundred nearby people for the unofficial title of Best Commuter and the prize of pulling into work five seconds before they normally would, at a cost of six extra dollars in gas and ten freshly-acquired points on each side of the blood pressure reading. Anything moving faster than they are is registering as a personal offense, from mild on the tall black man to death penalty level on the burly sunburnt one. And a ticket from Trooper. "Sure. You look like you've got the strength to twist a stick at ninety revolutions per..." His eyes go to my shoulders for a moment, drop lower Ok... yet another take on "spin", with angular momentum. "I didn't catch your last name," he says. "Weaver, right?" Bwa-ha-ha-hah! (*thud*) What's the punchline? "God helps those who help themselves."? (*grin*) One of them, passing by me, hastily whispers "Nice!" (That's for this story. Understated genious. I feel like I'm there. Yeah, the cameraman. That cameraman.) "Interesting..." He walks away. (Waiting for the next half after this commercial break...) An Arkie Asian creation, with Foo dog images by Bob. Gardner. Chauncy not.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Estee 44384 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 06-30-06, 06:19 PM (EST) 3. "Episode #1: We Just Met...: Part II." LAST EDITED ON 07-12-06 AT 10:45 AM (EST) {Did you see that little jump cut where everyone's positions changed a little? Looks like they made a major edit there. I'm guessing they dropped most of Markie-Mark's coronary.} {They should have thrown her off the island. Right there, no excuses, no apologies. She can never apologize for what she did. The sheer unmitigated gall...} {im startng a protst sight. sign my pettion to hav her removd from ssuvivor!} {...could someone let that one know they're not live?} {Yeah, I think we missed a major rules argument, but either she found a loophole the size of Peter's primary or they decided to let her get away with it. Possibly both.} {Gary, Gary, quote machine! Did that cider line sound familiar to anyone else?} {I think he was quoting something, but I'm not sure where it's from.} {Million-dollar quote? She brought her own fire.} {Irony quote. She brought her life and someone else ended it.} {And now, a few words from Haraiki.} {It looks like Elmore will be all kinds of useful. Why, if he keeps lying there like that, they can use him as the foundation of their shelter!} {Phillip and Denadi taking early charge, Tony on firestarting duty. We're shown this water source: they have a small river about forty feet from their camp. They must be building up to something with Turare in hiding it for the next segment.} {Well, Turare was kind of busy.} {Connie leads a group prayer thanking God for letting them reach their beach safely. They're all participating with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Denadi is just mouthing the words.} {And they have white sand. Brute-force imagery much?} {Tony cannot get that fire started, even with Angela rooting him on. Stick and twirl, stick and twirl -- nothing.} {He should try using the awesome heat from his libido! Have we ever had this much open flirting in a premiere before?} {Yeah. One word: Romber.} {...I'm starting a petition: to have Tony & Angela thrown off Survivor, because I can't go through this again. You'll find it right next to my petition for a working time machine.} {Confessional from Michelle, who didn't think it would be this hard despite having watching every season, but she's going to give it her all, and she's going to give us the first boot on a silver platter.} {They've got something that might be a shelter on some distant, desperate, stupid day going, but no fire, and they're afraid to drink the water. Turare with the early lead.} {Can you believe this plant life? I'm a botany student, and this is wrong.} {Meanwhile, back at Camp Cheater...} {What's up with you?} {Clearly you're not Christian. Otherwise, you'd understand.} {Oh, so that's the kind of season we're gonna have, is it? I'm Protestant, and I'll take strategy over sanctimony, thank you much.} {We'll see. I think she'll see before you will.} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We pass the area where Gardener went off the path: I can hear him breaking more branches off, with grunts of effort echoing in my ears. I'm guessing we're going to be seeing some very, very large branches. He has to get some of his own back. Mary-Jane is walking right next to me, right arm swinging freely, left carrying her bag. I'm wearing mine as a backpack. We're passing through an absolute color riot of flowers -- but nothing visually clashes, none of the scents mix badly. It's pretty here. I resolve to come back and draw it later when I get a spare minute, which will probably be sometime late on Day Two if we win the first challenge or early on Day Three if we lose, so I can get it in before any possible betrayal. We have fire and water, working on food and shelter. There's just one essential element missing, and I'm working on adding that right now. Three people went off to get water. Three people had a chance to talk... The water carriers could have formed the first alliance of the game. If Desmond's open distrust of giving out anything too early was largely faked. If they decided to play their cards out right there. If is clearly going to be a major word in my life for as long as I'm here, and it's already starting to annoy me. The fire pit team hadn't talked alliances. We'd just worked in near-silence, with occasional bursts of disgust at the emergence of a particularly big slug. It had seemed too early, and -- -- well -- -- I don't think anyone had felt comfortable with talking to me yet. Potentially crazy firestarter girl. Possibly not the best person to put your faith in immediately. And now Mary-Jane and I were away from the main camp, and the others could be talking alliance while they worked, and... And: another word that was going to get annoying. Concentrate on the walk. If only my company would let me. "Pretty cool," Mary-Jane comments on something or other -- then clarifies. "Where did you get the cross?" "Jewelry shop in Manhattan, about a block off the Empire State Building. Made to specifications." Small place that manages to keep a niche in the shadow by doing custom work. I hadn't been able to find anyone local willing to try it -- plus they took my instructions over the phone, quoted a price, kept to it, accepted a postal money order for payment, and shipped the cross to me when it was done, addressed to 'Resident' at my address. Dodging around the potential future privacy rule violations early. The patent application had been notary-dated two days earlier, just in case. "They must have decided you were a really devoted hunter," Mary-Jane concludes. "You're from New York?" "Jersey." And wait for joke. None came. "You don't have much of an accent. L.A. here." She shrugs. "You probably guessed -- hey, do you hear that?" I realize I've been hearing it for a little while, but I've been blocking it out. Haledon is next to Paterson, which means that you learn to ignore the sound when you're close up, it's an easy skill to pick up when you hear it so often, because Paterson is built around -- "-- a waterfall?" I say, half to myself. Mary-Jane nods enthusiastically, beaming. "I've gotta see this!" And gone, dashing off down the path at full sprint, sandals slapping against the occasional small rock, a thin piece of white fabric serving for a cottontail flash before she vanishes around a bend. Fine. I'll walk. It didn't sound that far away anyway. But still -- a waterfall? Second time for the show, I think, and they'd put us near one if they thought there was a chance of swimming shots and majestic natural beauty (but mostly swimming shots). Probably a little four-foot drop into a small pond with underground outlets. Dipping pool. Jump in, splash around, climb out. It takes something under two minutes to discover I am one hundred percent dead wrong. The grass isn't so wild here: short-growing varieties that just line the edge of the lake, which has got to be at least a hundred feet across, and then you go fifty feet straight back to the waterfall itself, two stories high and maybe ten feet wide, cascading over the edge of black rocks in a hail of perpetual white foam. Much louder from close up: not so much that it's hard to hear, but enough to make raising your voice slightly a necessity for distance, and a whispered conversation would be audible at two feet and non-existent beyond, which explains the boom mikes strung from some of the trees with branches overhanging the lake. Underground outlets, definitely: it's not overflowing, therefore... Rock on the left side for diving from: check. Another oak tree, which is providing most of those branches along with a great place for either a rope swing or a tree fort if only you had wood, rope, or anything to work with: also check. Pineapple tree -- right next to the oak -- -- pineapples? -- -- pineapples. Also check. Tall blonde slipping the shoulder straps off her bikini: double-check and huh? Well, that explains the thudding sound: one of the camera operators just sat down, very suddenly. Another one is keeping a remarkably steady shot. For her part, Mary-Jane glances over her shoulder at me. "Looks fresh and clean!" she calls. "And I bet there isn't a fish in there!" Faces forward again, and there goes the top. No tan lines. "But --!" I start to protest, because if she's stripping to get washed off, I'm going to be stuck waiting on shore for her while doing a lot of not-looking -- well, I can gather fruit, then she can carry it back while I wash off, but then someone could come in on me, and... This dazzling lesson in real paranoia gets interrupted by Mary-Jane's response. "But what?" She twists to look directly at me. No, not a tan line in sight anywhere, and the camera operators might as well not even exist or are existing for her pleasure, take your pick. Unfortunately, my excuse is probably going to sound really bad out loud. "But that's our drinking water!" Oh, that's good. At the rate of flow, any taint would clear in minutes, and besides... Mary-Jane shakes her head, already having spotted the other flaw in my hastily-grabbed logic. "We can get it directly from the waterfall if you're worried about that." True. It's just a matter of walking around the edge of the lake and being willing to get a little wet. "Besides, I'm clean enough." A big smile. "Just a little salty." And there goes the thong-and-patch. The blur people are going to be doing some major work later. "We'll be okay." Steps up to the edge, checks her landing point, and dives in, nice and smooth. Okay. I am now officially on fruit-gathering duty. Let's see what's available. Pineapple -- next to the oak -- and I think that's a raspberry bush because there's some growing wild near one of my walks, but if I've got it right, it won't be in season for a couple of weeks still: the buds aren't far enough along -- and that would be a regular apple tree, Granny Smiths, looks like, and this is getting very, very weird... Mary-Jane calls out from behind me. "Aren't you coming in?" "I'll do the fruit first." Instant reply. A small laugh. "Shy. Cute. And typical." This is followed by a giggle. "Relax, willya? You've got to be itchy." Yes, I am. But I was doing fine until you mentioned it. By the way, typical of what? "I'm hungrier than itchy..." I think I can reach that apple if I stretch for it, crane my neck up, and do anything but look at the lake. Can we please get off this topic? Get me out of here... Wish granted via improbability genie: one of the camera operators who followed us in actually speaks. "Cole? Learner?" We both turn to look at her. I know because my gaze winds up crossing Mary-Jane's body again on the way. Back-floater, figures... "Listen up, both of you." One of the two female camera operators in the group: she was the one filming the argument. "Because we had some trouble with players trying to overhear confessionals last season, all of you have been assigned specific spots some distance from the camp. Both of you will be in this vicinity. Learner, you've got the diving rock near the waterfall." Large, white-gray, looks like and for all I know, could be marble. Presumably Mary-Jane nods. I am not looking. "Cole, you're off down that small path over there --" narrow, but apparently freshly cleared "-- in the citrus grove. No one else can use your areas for confessionals, they'll be cleared out before you arrive, and if you make the merge and this turns out to be the site, new areas will be assigned: no one will double up. Similarly, you can't use or intrude on any of the other areas when they're in use." Citrus grove? She paused. "Because it's a bit of a hike to your spots, keep it down to a couple of talk requests a day unless something major happens. We may also call you over to your area, but because that takes you out of camp and away from the action, we'll try not to do it too often." Fair enough: a straight walk out to our areas and directly back is probably twenty minutes without water weight added, and I just know Mary-Jane and I will be asked to bring extra back as long as we're coming out here anyway. That's a lot of time for me-free conversations to take place -- but the others are probably just as handicapped when they go out. I hope. "If it's an emergency, we'll clear a place for you and film right there -- but this is our best way of ensuring your privacy." Another pause. "If either of you has anything you want to say early, we can take care of it before you leave here." And again. "We'd prefer to get one each from you now, actually." "After I finish rinsing off," Mary-Jane calls out. From the sound of it, she's swimming for the waterfall to get a cold shower. And she'll probably be in there a while. Which, for me, means... "Now," I conclude instantly. "I'll get the fruit after we talk." I do grab the apple for now, though. It's been a very long morning and I can eat on the way. "Fine by me," the camera operator says. "Follow me in and we'll get this recorded." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (From the CBS website, Survivor Gold section: Alex's first confessional, unedited for premium subscribers.) {ALEX walks into the lemon grove carrying a half-eaten apple, and looks around.} "Those are pretty ripe... I'll have to take some back." {Off-camera voice prompt, female: 'What do you think of your tribe so far?') "It's too early to really get strong impressions. Anything I say now will probably be proven false later." {'Don't they say first impressions are usually the right ones?'} "They say a lot of things." {ALEX looks for a place to sit down and eventually winds up at the base of a lemon tree, legs straight out and firmly together, head tilted slightly back.} "It makes you wonder if they ever listen to themselves." {'What made you think of that cross?'} {ALEX shrugs.} "Everything -- everything -- revolves around fire in the first few days. With fire, you can boil water. With water, even if you're having trouble getting food, you can keep your strength up for a little while, or at least have it better than whoever hasn't gotten fire yet. With that extra strength, we might be able to win the first Immunity challenge and keep the tribe intact for an extra three days. I just wanted to get a head start." {pauses} "And if we don't lose, I can't be voted off. Usually. So I figured out a way to bring fire with me within the rules. But it's a classic Daffy..." {'A what?'} {ALEX looks forward and off into the distance for a moment before going back to her upwards gaze.} "It's a great trick, but I can only do it once. Eventually, we'll win something that can help make fire -- especially if you guys hold with tradition and make a flint part of the Reward for the first couple of challenges until we finally win one. As soon as that happens -- or one of the others steps up and twirls a stick really fast -- I'm dispensable. At most, I bought myself an extra three days with that stunt, and that's assuming the others keep their word. But --" {shrugs again} "-- better fifteenth place than sixteenth." {briefly looks around} "So far, fruit's not going to be a problem in the food department, but we need a source of protein. I hope there are fish in that lake." {'So you're worried about being voted off already?'} {ALEX briefly raises her left eyebrow.} "If you're serious about this game, you're always worried about being voted out." {'What do you think of Mary-Jane?'} "She's on my tribe and I don't know her very well yet. We just met... we all just met. I don't know where most of them are from, what any of them do for a living, and they can pretty much all say the same for me. It's too early. Sorry." {'How about her being so casual about her nudity in front of strangers?'} "She's comfortable with her body. Good for her. It's not a common trait." {'Do you have it?'} "Have what?" {'That trait.'} "It's in the fourth layer of the cross." {'Do you have any initial impressions of your tribemates that you're willing to share?'} {thoughtfully} "I probably don't get out of here in under an hour without giving you something, right...? Whatever Desmond does in the real world, he's in charge of it. I hope Gardener's physical strength will be an asset during the tribal stage." {used in episode} "I think Frank's playing the 'funny and harmless' card right now, but he might have trouble with the 'funny' part." {end episode-used exert} "I'm curious to see how long Trina's hair color holds up and what her real shade is underneath." {long pause} "And I'm really feeling the fog of war right now." {'The what?'} {very curious} "You don't know...? I can't be the first person to use that phrase out here." {'Assume you are for a moment and explain it to the viewers.'} "Okay." {stops, visibly considering her words, then looks directly at the camera} "When you're watching the show at home, you're usually no more than fifteen minutes away from knowing what the other tribe is doing. If it's a crucial event, the camera will cut over to it and let us all in the latest update. If something happens in the tribe the camera's currently with, the view will swing directly over to it. We've got a very limited form of third-person omniscience. We only see what you choose to show us -- but we know that eventually, we'll see something." {pauses} "In 'the fog of war' -- it's a term that both describes how you lose track of your own troops on a battlefield when orders and formations inevitably get distorted, and it also means just never knowing exactly what your enemy is doing, even if you're lucky enough to have spies in their camp. There's always something taking place just out of sight." {pauses again} "I'm out here, and I know where I am, what I'm saying, and I know you're here filming it. Everything else is a mystery. I don't know what the rest of my tribe is doing. I can ask them what happened while I was gone, but they can lie, and there's no camera to show me the irony. No one's going to open a window in the air and show me what the other tribe is up to -- what's their name, anyway?" {'I can't tell you that.'} "Had to ask." {stares up again} "But actually being out there as a contestant -- I'm cut off. No one's going to show me anything. I have to find it all out for myself, and there's a good chance I won't uncover any vital truths in time. Fifteen in sixteen." {unexpectedly sighs} "I'm deep in the fog of war, and I never thought I would feel so blind..." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mary-Jane's gone by the time I get out of the grove. So are several apples. My turn. This is going to be the hard part. Concentrate. Con-cen-trate... You knew this was coming when you took the call... The lie is 'It's easy enough to say "You knew that at some point, you'll be nude and people will be filming you." But when it comes, you still have to deal with it.' It was never easy to say. Forget the backstabbing, betrayals, twists, and carefully-aimed, self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the foot. If there's anything I've been dreading about the island, it's this. All right. Deep, slow breaths. One of the camera operators is focusing directly on my deep, slow breaths. Welcome to Suckville: population: me. The salt is really making me itchy... Fine. But I don't have to do it all at once and I don't have to enjoy it. Shoes off, rinse them out in the lake. Socks off, same. Leave both on shore. Then get in the lake with all other clothes on, swim out to the waterfall, get undressed under the waterfall to enjoy the benefits of natural blurring, scrub the clothes with hands and nearby rocks as best I can, make sure all the salt is rinsed out, rinse hair, palm-scrub face, don't look at the cameras, don't look don't look don't look, check the water for underwater camera operators, none, belatedly check the water for fish, none, just get cleaned off as best as I can... ...realize that all my clean dry clothing is in the bag on the opposite shore and there isn't a towel to be had for at least two challenges. Curse fluently. I hate every last stinking one of you. Slowly, warily swim back towards the proper bank. get out very fast, try to ignore what has to be the sound of zoom lenses closing in, someone on the production staff has to have a private collection, dry self in a hurry using sweater that can dry out later, get dressed even faster, use now-wet sweater to carry several apples, lots of lemons, and one pineapple knocked down from tree with a rock that was thrown in anger. Feel eternal loathing towards camera operators and leave. I meet Trina coming the other way. "Mind the cameras," I mutter as my private electronic shadow and I pass her and hers. She smiles brightly. "I love the cameras." Figures. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- {As Mary-Jane goes for the Playboy shoot on the first day.} {Nice editing there. Alex mentions Frank's humor efforts, and cut to Frank pretending to hammer his thumb into the oak with comedic screams of pain attendant.} {I hated that shot. I really don't like having people falsely raise my hopes.} --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By nightfall, we have the beginnings of a floor, two full walls plus a half, and a partial roof. If it rains, we're in trouble -- but the sky (what we can see of it) looks clear. No one has had the time to look for protein, although I spotted Gardener fire-hardening some wood splinters into what I think are eventually going to be hooks. We've been taking turns washing off, and we've all had big drinks from our new water supply. Fruit for dinner, then keep working by firelight. Desmond's luxury item has turned out to be one of those absolutely brilliant choices people make once every ten seasons or so. It's a carpenter's level, and it has several quick-reference building-related formulas written along it. Put that together with his construction experience and Gary's luxury item -- which, for some strange reason, is a calculator -- and we have not only a secure shelter, but one that's been mathematically tied, twisted, and hammered into solidity. It'll take an extra day to finish the base, but it'll be large enough for all of us, with the potential for expansion. Desmond has actually managed to rig up three slightly elevated sleeping bunks protruding from the completed walls, with the promise of more to come. They even take Gardener's weight, although there isn't one wide enough for him just yet, and while they're not comfortable (although padding them with unused clothing helps), they'll keep us from having water and mud seep up if the area gets flooded. Genius luxury item. Bossy or not, I don't think Desmond's going anywhere just yet. We all work for a couple of extra hours, moving under his direction in the fire-broken dark. Everyone's putting in an equal share: no lazy hangers-on here, which surprises me. I'd thought it was mandatory to cast one per season per tribe. The men are doing most of the heavy lifting, with Gardener clearly showing off and enjoying it tremendously. (No one minds right now, as it's getting the job done.) Frank complains about the weight of nearly everything he lifts, including, in one moment of non-inspiration, his own hands. The other women and I are put to work on hammering hastily-crafted pegs, whittled with the machete and fire-hardened -- when we're not doing the fire-hardening or, during what daylight we had, searching for extra vines to use as ropes. Trina locates a huge cluster not too far from the beach, and it carries us up until bedtime. Desmond takes one of the bunks and proposes drawing grass blades for the rest. We do, with Gardener sitting it out and surprisingly good-natured about it. Trooper and I win. Once a halt is declared for the night -- we'll have to be fresh for the first challenge, so we can't work too late with no threat of rain on the horizon -- we settle in as best we can. But sleep won't come. The fresh air is an intoxicant for most of the tribe, starlight a hypnotic. Conversation starts up, and the topic turns to our lives outside the island. Professions. It comes as no surprise to learn Mary-Jane is a swimsuit and general fashion model. Trina displays her tarot deck, but teases that it's only for guiding her path through the game, not ours: no readings without payment. No one seems to take this very seriously. Gardener's occupation is -- predictable. Trooper sounds a little embarrassed to admit his, following it with a sigh of "Names are destiny -- damn parents," which gets a few laughs. Frank grins when he displays his scales, which was the strangely-shaped item in the blue duffel. "So remember, kids: we're in an area where nothing's illegal. You find the plants we can use, and I'll measure out the dosage!" Gary's a little more reluctant to divulge. "I'm -- sort of an accountant. Government work. Nothing special." And that's all he says, which makes me think he's either lying to cover up something spectacular or telling a half-truth to cover up something embarrassing. Some of the others are probably thinking the same thing. Lying about professions has been in the game for a long time, but I'm not sure what Gary can gain from it. He doesn't look like a top-flight secret agent, but I guess the good ones aren't supposed to... Of all the jobs we're willing to admit to, mine actually gets the most shock from the group. "Cartoonist?" Frank tries out slowly, making it sound like I can't be serious, which is how he's been making nearly everything sound. "You don't look like a cartoonist..." Mary-Jane insists. I shrug. "What do cartoonists look like?" Her response to this is instantaneous. "Older. Fatter. Male." "There's a lot more variety than that." Pause. "Internet, anyway. I think you just described most of the syndicated ones." "You make money off that?" Trooper, sounding honestly curious. I stare up at the stars. There shouldn't be that many visible through the canopy of leaves, but the open spaces are thick with them. No air pollution, no light pollution. It's just us and most of the universe. "Some. It's the classic dream, I guess: I'm making a living off my art. People click my banner ads, purchase drawings done to their requests, buy books and T-shirts. It's enough to pay the bills with." Most months. Sometimes the orders are a little heavier and I get to save a few dollars. Other times, the activity is low and I take them right out of the account again. "But it's -- well, it's enough to pay the bills with. Nothing more." A brilliant red star winks at me. "It doesn't sound like any of us are exactly rich." Gardener actually laughs at that. "College athletics trainers don't make anywhere near as much as the coaches." "I'm just starting," Mary-Jane says quickly. "I'm no supermodel, believe me." Frank chuckles. "I'd know. I would have seen the magazines. Which I would have checked on the rack because they're expensive." "Trooper and I are public servants," Gary says. "No wealth here." Trooper nods. Trina's reply sounds oddly mournful. "I tell fortunes. I don't make them." Desmond shrugs. "I get union wages and I've been on the job a long time. I'm comfortable, but things could always be better." Silence. Gary's voice finally breaks it with a little mirth -- and a little regret. "So much for the easiest way of picking who's going first, huh?" "Yeah," Gardener says simply. "But that's just one down..." And with the conversation killed for the night, we all go to sleep. ------------------------------------------------------------ . . . . . . . . . . (First challenge later, probably on Monday, still on this thread. If you're wondering: each thread will constitute one episode and cover that amount of time in During. (The looks forward and backwards don't count.) Next up: Tree Mail, the tribes get a good look at each other, and Jeff gets to talk about it...)   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Belle Book 1925 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Herbal Healing Drugs Endorser" 01-31-10, 01:21 PM (EST) 11. "RE: Episode #1: We Just Met...: Part II." *{Million-dollar quote? She brought her own fire.} {Irony quote. She brought her life and someone else ended it.}* Considering what happens later on, I'm going for million-dollar quote here. Belle Book   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Estee 44384 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 07-06-06, 10:52 AM (EST) 4. " Episode #1: We Just Met...: Part III" LAST EDITED ON 07-12-06 AT 07:43 PM (EST) {Yeah, Turare is way ahead. Look at that shelter. If Desmond lasts long enough to finish it, that'll keep them intact through the merge.} {Very industrious tribe. That'll make it more fun, watching them fall apart later.} {Clearly gonna be a one-challenge episode: we're spending a lot of time on introductions and first-night stuff.} {Eco-friendly Survivor: this year's car sponsor is a hybrid...} {We've made it to Day Two and no one's quit yet!} {Betcha Gardener wants to.} {Wish Cole would.} {I think Elmore will.} ----------------------------------------------------------------- Gardener's sunburn gets up before he does and puts most of us on our feet early. He was shirtless on the boat, stayed that way all through the day, and unlike Mary-Jane -- who changed into something a little more covering (but just as tight) after her swim, he didn't use any sunblock before he got on the last boat. He moans and groans and tosses about on the half-floor of our partial shelter, pushing elbows and knees into people without ever quite managing to wake up himself. This gets Gary and Trina up in a hurry, and after that, he just has more room to get up ramming speed in. The only person who manages to sleep through the whole thing is Frank, who stays in his light coma past Gardener's muttering exit and through the morning's fire kindling, until Desmond finally finds the light shake that lets him rejoin us without having to take his head off. After a lot of walking in slow circles trying to get his bearings and some non-heated water splashed in his face, Frank announces that he's one of those people who needs six cups of coffee in the morning for each synapse required to fire, and wanders off towards the waterfall. The rest of us stretch, yawn, listen to Desmond's extensive vocal survey of what remains to be done on the shelter, what order it has to be done in, and how we're going to work most of it in before leaving for the presumably-today challenge, then have fruit for breakfast and privacy for dessert. We're learning quickly -- at least the women are. We know the cameras will film the men during their bathroom breaks, at least from the back for urination. The women will be watched extensively for any possible moment of active nudity, but attending to bodily functions sends the camera operator back ten feet, lens searching everywhere else for mood shots. Presumably everyone's safe during defecation, which must have really sent Bruce over the edge: not a moment to himself for virtually his entire stay... As such, we scatter. On Trooper's suggestion, we're starting by pushing fairly far out from the camp, marking our spots, and burying whenever possible, even if it's only under loose soil. Bathroom construction won't start until after the shelter's done, and the best we can hope for is a shallow outhouse pit: no excavation tools, so we're limited to how far down we can scramble with our hands, and the extensive root systems get in the way. Desmond's already made mourning noises about being too far away from the waterfall for a decent continuous-flow toilet, whatever that is. A few large leaves later, it's back to work, and the really serious labors begin. Mary-Jane's the first one to get to the hard part. "Did you count?" she softly asks me. We're in the area Trina found yesterday: a haven for vines that have strung themselves over still more oak trees and the occasional severely misplaced beech. Old nutshells litter the ground here, which means the island has -- or used to have -- something that could crack them open. I wonder what a tropical squirrel would look like. "Count what?" Sadly, there's no nutmeat in season. Whatever the seasons are supposed to be here. I'm sure there shouldn't be so much fruit ripening at once. "Men against women," she replies. "There's five of them to three of us. If they get the idea in their heads, they can pretty much pick us off whenever they want to." "It's probably the reverse on the other tribe." Even gender divisions in the original contestant pool are pretty much mandatory. I briefly glance at Mary-Jane, who's adjusting her halter top. "I think we've got a smart group here -- they'll start by taking out whoever's weakest in the challenges instead of doing a mini-battle of the sexes." "That's still probably going to be Trina," Mary-Jane points out. For some reason, she's bug bite-free, and that's despite having slept in the least covering clothing of anyone last night. I had to tuck my hands inside my sleeves and put the thinnest blouse over my face. "Which would put them up five to two." I shrug. "We just have to win and stay intact. There aren't enough of us for a voting block, either." And why does it automatically have to be male vs. female? "We're probably not Korror," she says. Okay, that's two people who watch the show... "I think I made a mistake with Frank yesterday. If he comes on to me again, I'm flirting back." This said with absolutely no flavor whatsoever: if that rabbit raids my garden one more time, I'm setting out a trap. "You could do the same." "I think he's more interested in you than me." He's male and he's breathing: therefore, he is probably interested in Mary-Jane. She shrugs this time. "I think he'd be interested in a mud volcano." Serious watcher. But it's quickly followed by "No offense." "None taken." Heard worse. "Good luck." "You too," she says. "We'll all have to work it a little. If Frank or any of the guys come on to you, think about indulging them a bit. If I can get Frank, it's four to four, and if you lure in someone, we've got the majority on the first vote. I'll talk to Trina later when I get the chance." Absolutely cold-blooded. "Trooper and Gary are married, so we probably won't have much luck there. Gardener doesn't like you. Desmond's divorced and way past our age group. It won't be easy." And there's her strategy on full and open display. "It doesn't have to break down that way." Her expression is pure confusion -- then sympathy. "It always breaks down that way in the end... just think about it, okay?" I glance back at our current camera shadow -- male and looking very interested in the proceedings. Bet this is making the first-episode cut. "I'll consider it." I just don't think I can act on it. --------------------------------------------------------------- {Mirror images: the Haraiki men are afraid of the women, the Turare women are afraid of the men...} {Phillip telling Tony to play up Angela for all he's worth: jump cut to Mary-Jane in confessional, saying she'll reel Frank in for the first fish of the show.} {And they'll probably still hit the merge at five to five.} -------------------------------------------------------- Water trip. Gary and I have the empty containers, heading out. I don't mind taking the weight on the way back if I'm going in rotation. I'm used to it, and at least this one's over level ground. "Can I get a minute?" Gary asks, somehow sounding overly formal about it. "Sure." No one here but us and about six members of the production staff, visible and hidden. He pauses in the path near a spray of violets and turns to face me. I hold up, waiting. "What's up?" Immediately, "I think you and I should consider an alliance." What? "Me?" Us? He nods, looking so sincere that it almost has to be faked. "The usual. We share what we hear, we keep each other up to date on the game, we talk about voting and work as a pair when it makes sense to, and we don't write each other's names down unless only one of us makes Final Two and needs the vote." Grinning, "I had to throw that in. I've seen too many people caught the other way." Three fans... could this be the first season where everyone's actually watched the show before applying for it? "If it gets broken, whoever's moving away lets the other one know. And we don't let the others know we're working together. What do you think?" What do I think? I think I'd like to know what he's thinking. "Why me?" That came out a lot more confused-sounding than I wanted it to. The grin gets bigger. "I like the way you think." First time anyone's ever said that in an open setting. "I think you'll get some of the guys mad at you." I want to say 'piss off some of the guys', but there's something weird about Gary that way. It's hard to curse in front of him -- or use proper descriptors. He nods. "Desmond's already talking about taking all the women out first if we go on a losing streak. But I'd rather play with people instead of chromosomes. I think you're the best possible alliance partner, so I'm asking you first." Pauses. "I am asking you first, right?" "Yes." Not counting Mary-Jane, who never actually said the words. "But..." It's tempting, it really is. But this could be the first lure. The men could be easily working together, and I'm the first broken promise and target. Gary could have been put out here to make me stop looking for the knife a day before it slid in. You're never safe. Never. He seems to read my hesitation, which is very annoying. "I'm on my own here. I know how strong a two-person bond can work out to be in this game, especially if it stays under cover -- and like I said, I think you might have the most -- unconventional -- mind out here. I'd rather have you with me than against me." He puts out a hand. "So -- allies?" I just look at the hand for a couple of seconds. I'm not much for handshakes, and if I take this one, I'm making my first promise that I'll probably wind up breaking later. He's telling the truth. He's lying. It's a setup. It's a power play. It's the sixth two-person alliance he's made since we hit the beach and that's not counting the one he arranged in sign language on the raft. We are not Romber and that trick will never work twice... I take his hand and shake it. "Allies." A firm grip, but with no squeezing. "We'll need at least one place to talk where we can both head out to do different things and meet up there without being tracked. I'll scout, but let me know if you see a likely possibility." 'Secret agent' is looking stronger by the minute. "Will do." "Okay." And another easy grin. "So let's get the water before they wonder what's taking us so long. Anyone asks me, you came to me about an alliance and I said no..." He's off down the path, moving easily. After a heartbeat, I hurry to catch up. -------------------------------------------------------- No one asks us anything when we get back, because there's no time. Apparently the production people have been waiting on us, getting the entire tribe in one place before silently pointing off down the sticker-shrouded path, which I haven't been down yet. We all wind up going down it as a group, single-file. I deliberately place myself behind Gardener's wide back and walk sideways for most of it. Let him break off some of these branches, too. Which he does, unintentionally, with lots of little grunts and mutters as the consequences stick into his skin. The path ends about fifty paces from the camp in a small clearing, just about large enough for all of us, with some crowding around the edges so we can let the camera people find positions. There's a quiver hanging from a low branch, with a broken arrowhead attached to a tiny pivot at the side. It's currently in an upright position. Tree Mail has arrived. Trina, who's closest, reaches into the quiver and pulls out a tied scroll. Desmond, who's right behind her, reaches out and plucks it from her hands before she can open it, ignoring or unaware of her frustrated look while spreading the parchment for the camera. "Let's see... 'A day you've had to make your bonds, a day to find your friends. But be the first to find your flame, or someone's game will end.'" He re-rolls it and puts the tie back on. Gardener shakes his head. "And this is why my guys catch up on their sleep in English Lit." "Immunity challenge," Trooper unnecessarily concludes. "Which means we're supposed to be going somewhere..." And naturally, a camera operator is already pointing the way. It's a long trail, and it starts by going back to the beach, working along it for a few hundred feet, then taking off down a rapidly-elevating path that more or less follows the shoreline. This is our first chance to see the territory immediately away from our camp, and the plant life isn't getting any more stable. The place is beautiful, there's no doubt there. If the billionaire was trying for a private vision of Eden, he probably came as close to it in reality as was possible. But seeing all the flora from all over the world in a single place doesn't give me the feeling of being in the middle of a work of art, a giant painting rendered in chlorophyll. Instead, it just makes me feel displaced. There's an unnatural element at work here, and I don't know if it's the island or the intruders on it. Eventually, we hear crashing waves -- and crest the walk. There's about fifteen feet of grass field leading to the edge of the jungle on our right. On the left -- air. Twenty, maybe thirty feet down, and then a narrow slice of white-sand beach just barely visible, because the cliff face slants inwards as it drops, and if you take the most direct path to get to it, you'll have fallen onto some very large, very solid black rocks instead of hitting the sand, and be slightly too dead to appreciate the view. The surf crashing into them is loud, and some of the spray climbs halfway up to us before collapsing into a salt rain. Gardener steps up to the very edge and looks down, apparently completely unafraid of heights. "The Cliffs Of Insanity," he pronounces, sounding like he's quoting something. The newly borrowed name instantly sticks. Frank, who probably is afraid of heights, backs away, eyes wide and bright with fear. "Damn... hope we're not following this path every time." Gardener glances back at him, sees the expression, and smiles without showing teeth. An opponent has revealed a weakness. He's happy. "Probably. Part of the island is restricted territory for us -- even given the size of this place, there's only so many trails we can take. And the branch we passed back there probably goes to the Tribal Council set." One of the camera people pales a little. I'm guessing Gardener wasn't supposed to have spotted that. Most of us spotted it. It was a little hard to ignore the way they were rushing us past it. "Come on -- the other tribe awaits." -------------------------------------------------------- {Does anyone remember if we've ever been shown a tribe on their way to a challenge like that before?} {It's just a really nice piece of natural scenery. Or artificial, given this place. Burnett just wanted the shot looking up from the camera boat.} ---------------------------------------------------------- As it turns out, we're the ones who get to do some waiting: the production staff holds us back in the bushes for several minutes. Eventually, I hear movement and soft conversations drifting in on the wind from the right -- not possible to make anything out, can't see anything through the thick vegetation that's lining our waiting area, camera people blocking the path in front of us -- and then Jeff finally calls out "Come on in, Turare!" We come in, Desmond at the fore carrying our tribe's challenge flag, which was presented to Trooper just before we left. Our mat is about ten paces in from the entrance. Jeff, dressed in light blue and khaki, coolly watches us from the black-sand beach as we enter. This part doesn't seem to be exciting him at all. He's seen tribes enter before us, and he'll see tribes enter after we're gone. He's just waiting for the game to begin. The mat is wide enough for all of us to stand in single file, and after some open instructions from the crew, that's what we wind up with: Desmond on the left, Gary on the right, me firmly in the middle between Mary-Jane and Frank. Jeff nods once after we're in place, then says "Haraiki, come in!" The first thing I see is the horrible gaudy orange of their flag, borne with something less than pride by a near-senior at a forty-five degree angle. This is followed by the rest of the opposition, which immediately lines up in single file on their mat with no instructions from the production staff whatsoever. They don't need any. They can just model themselves after us. The first sting of small jealousy makes itself felt, and I realize the staggered entrances have always been set up with just this in mind. We're supposed to feel something against each other on first sight: us for their organization and them for our having arrived first. Even the tiniest of petty sparks can start the conflagration. Haraiki comes to a stop, and what I see is this: Their standard-bearer is Hispanic, so this is officially the most racially-mixed group ever seen on the show: more than three non-Caucasians. She's probably in her late fifties or early sixties: a fair number of wrinkles, but thick black hair. She's wearing a long skirt in what I think is called a peasant style, and a sleeveless blouse. Weird wardrobe choice. Some silver patterns are sewn into the light green blouse: I have no idea what they mean, but Trina seems interested in them. She's the shortest here, maybe five feet even, and she's dwarfed by the man on her immediate right: about two hundred and forty pounds spread over five feet, eight inches of overly-pale, poorly-groomed, acne-scar flecked white middle-aged male, a man with 'first boot' written all over the sweat streaming from his forehead. I have never seen anyone this out of shape on this show, and I don't think I'll be seeing him for long. Gardener is staring at him with outright disbelief, and the rest of us aren't far behind: how could anyone this physically inept believe he could make it to Day Thirty-Nine in one piece? His shorts and too-small tank top are showing off his body flaws in great bulging detail, and while he might have the most weight to sacrifice and energy reserves to draw upon, he can't start doing it fast enough. Or maybe the title of Society Sacrifice Prime goes to the one next to him: a thin, very white brunette who's shivering a little in a non-existent wind, looking as if this is the last place she ever expected or wanted to be, although she didn't figure that out until after she hit the boat -- but before she hit the water. (I'm guessing that the instant she talks, the words are going to come out in a Southern accent.) She's followed by a tall young male -- six feet at least -- who's apparently there to balance out Mr. Pasty: another tank top, but this one is showing off muscles that Gardener probably would have been moderately non-displeased to have trained up: not too large, but solidly grouped and with decent definition which continues to the rest of his body. Dark-haired with a bit of a lantern jaw to go with dancing eyes and a nose too perfect for clumsy surgery to have formed. My first thought on seeing him is Soccer or baseball player: he's almost got to be a professional athlete on some level, the way the other male is a professional shut-in. He's got a ready smile and a slightly cocky stance. The heights level out for a moment: the women next to him is about his age and also at least six feet tall, with a trim figure and strong legs which her short-shorts are there to show off, and this is the one Mary-Jane is giving the fish-eye to, because this is also another blonde, although closer to cornstraw yellow than her near-white. Very attractive, but with a hard edge to her: her face seems to have been cut from straight planes, and her hands have the same kind of knuckle-scarring that mine do -- and also display a network of lines within her open right palm. Not someone to be tampered with. This moves down to someone you probably can tamper with: a green-eyed redhead, five and a half feet tall with a dancer's build and a tough girl stance that she keeps adjusting every second as if she's not sure it's actually working. Another looker, and you have to wonder how many of the audition tapes were thrown away after the first clear frame -- but this time, surgery was clearly involved somewhere: there's a contour to her features that looks designed. Not as much as the next one, though. This is my anchor, and the first thought for my first clear, non-survival-situation look at her is trophy wife, needs some polishing. Another white female, maybe early forties, but it's an early forties that you need either great genes or about fifty thousand dollars to achieve, where the only thing that really gives away your true age is your hands, and that's the sort of thing I look for, so it's not working. Blonde, but the too-bright yellow of a dye. Figure medically boosted, skin chemically-peeled, and I find myself wondering what it'll look like if I've got her in my sights when the Botox injections start to go. The most expensive casual clothing I've ever seen on the show. She is in decent shape and clearly has some strength spread out among five feet, eight inches of liposuction-adjusted form, but it's not easy to focus on that. What is easy to connect with is her eyes. They're an oddly dark blue, narrow, and focused directly on me. Staring, while her lips narrow and her shoulders tighten. I stare right back for a few seconds, then don't so much concede as move on. One to go. Their last tribe member is probably their heart and soul: a sandy-haired six-two standout in his early thirties with the thick limbs of someone who has natural strength and doesn't try to enhance it with machines, grinning as he blinks large hazel eyes and radiates the 'I'm just so happy to be here!' that you frequently find sitting somewhere on the jury. His homespun outfit screams heartland, and in a first for the series, his bowl-shaped haircut just screams for professional help, although it's clear no one's ever listened. The good old boy -- thirties, but age has nothing to do with it -- with a broad face, what's probably a narrow outlook, no hatred for anything in his world and little understanding of anything outside it. At some point in his confessionals, he will probably speak about 'the experience' and actually mean it. Jeff gives us about a minute for mutual survey, and then clears his throat. Everyone immediately switches focus to him: he's about equidistant from both mats. "Welcome to the Society Islands," he says, "and what really is your first good look at each other. But this is going to be the only time you'll ever see both tribes intact -- because after this challenge, one person will have to go home." Okay. Standard single-elimination to start, at least. Willard put the fear of doubles into everybody. Jeff turns to Haraiki. "Denadi, how's your tribe doing? Do you have shelter yet? Fire?" This is the woman with the flag, and I can't identify her accent: slightly flat tones, strange pacing. "We've gotten started, but there's a ways to go. We found food, but no one's been able to start a fire yet." The athlete blushes slightly, surprising all of us as that's generally not the type that knows how to blush. Jeff starts turning towards us to ask what'll probably be the same question. Frank doesn't give him the chance. "We've got fire!" he calls out happily. "Look!" And then he sticks his hand down the back of my blouse, grabs the chain, and pulls the cross up into the open air. The top of it gently hits my chin before he lets go, allowing it to fall on top of my breasts, where it just looks stupid and shows off why I never considered wearing it in the open to begin with. I want to kill him. Jeff looks confused, and it's got to be faked: surely the production staff gives him briefings every hour on the hour so he can ask piercing questions at Council... "Alex, you -- prayed for fire? And got it?" The anchor's stare, unbroken even after I stopped holding up my end, immediately goes to confusion. I still want to kill Frank, but now I want to sigh, too. I settle for neither one, shaking my head before splitting the cross again to display the three layers to Jeff: flint, coated magnesium, steel. The bowl-cut visibly catches on first and actually applauds: three quick claps with huge cupped hands that send baby sonic booms echoing over the beach. The athlete just looks like he's been confronted with a pop quiz the day after a hangover. The others catch on, at least to the degree of cross=fire with varying results on how it might have been achieved. My anchor leaves confusion, takes a running dash past hatred, and goes straight to seething, settling in for a long stay. Jeff just smiles, and yes, he knew all along. "Turare one, Haraiki zero," he declares, and then follows it up with one of those leading statements that I always hated as a viewer. "Or maybe that's Alex one, Everybody Else zero..." I try not to react and succeed, but it doesn't feel any better as a contestant. I've already had attention called to me and he just made it worse. Thank you for this shiny new target. Mind if I apply it to your back and try it out? I would have been happy if we'd gone with a simple 'We've got fire, and the shelter is really coming along.' Not this, and Jeff has to know it. Although not as much as the anchor thinks she knows the rulebook. "That's cheating!" she screeches. "Why is she still in the game?" "There's nothing in the rulebook against crosses, Connie," Jeff replies without looking at her. "There is against bringing things to make fire with!" she huffs, arms now firmly planted on her hips. "No," Jeff says. "There isn't. Alex found a loophole and she shot a flamethrower through it. We'll close it after this season, but whatever isn't forbidden is allowed -- and right now, Alex is allowed to have and use that cross." Focusing on me. "That's an official decision from the management and it is not to be argued with." Back to Haraiki and Connie in particular. "No rules have been broken, the cross stays, and if anything, someone should have thought of it seasons before this. We're clear?" Nods from Haraiki, ranging from admiring to boiling rage. "Issue over." And that with a harsh, this-is-my-final-judgment quality to it that says anyone who keeps arguing will go home. Connie shuts up. She's not happy about it. Jeff nods, then steps back a little on his own mat and surveys all of us, spending no more time on one person than any other. "Now this part isn't going to be broadcast," he said, "but you still have to listen to it." We're all paying attention, and even if it's not going to be broadcast, the cameras are still filming. "General challenge procedure: I'll explain how it works and what you've playing for, and ask if there's any questions. Generally, you'll all say no and we'll move straight into it. That's how it airs. The reality inside 'reality' is that we usually get a few questions which we'll answer off-camera, and if you're all really having trouble with the concepts, we may even show you a little bit of sample footage from where our designers and test staff ran the challenge." Mary-Jane nods. "Any really interesting questions may still make the show. After I explain today's challenge to you, we won't start right away, because we're going to shoot the official cast photo while we still have all of you here and in one piece." He smiles at his own perceived joke. "We'll only get going after production has a shot they're happy with. It usually doesn't take too long." He checks for understanding and gets it from all quarters. "Now," Jeff continues, "you've probably noticed how crazy the plant life is around here, and decided the briefing book understated the case." Lots of nods, with the strongest agreement from Denadi. "A little more explanation, then. The former owner really worked on this place. Virtually every square inch of this island was designed and reworked from its original state. Most of what's native has been relocated, and the imports are only flourishing because he pumped enough nutrients into the soil to grow crops for all of Kansas and kept replacing them. The plants aren't in competition because they don't have to be. That's why you can have all this variety around without having it cannibalize itself -- yet." Pause deliberate and a little spooky. "Since his death, no one's refreshed the soil. So far, the balance is holding, but everyone we spoke to expects it to start falling apart in a few years unless someone with just as much money shows up and keeps it going. You may be the last people to appreciate this place in the state he brought it to -- enjoy it while it lasts." Looking around at all of us. "We're encouraging you to explore. None of the plants are dangerous outside of a few stickers, and those were only brought here if they flowered. There isn't a leaf of poison ivy on the island and none of the fruit is poisonous, although we found a durian grove that comes pretty close. The more places you go, the more we can shoot -- and the more you'll truly enjoy being here." Some nods, but also a 'Are you kidding?' from the heavy male and a hard head shake from the tall blonde that somehow comes across as 'Who can afford to be away from camp that long?' "Animal life," Jeff continues, and we're all listening. "There's very little on the island itself: some birds, a few small mammals. No fish in the rivers, and the waterfall lakes are artificial." There's more than one? -- and you can see the instant jealousy on Haraiki faces. "You aren't allowed to hunt or trap the birds: some of those species were imported too, and we'll actually have professional trappers on the island after we leave, rescuing some of them for zoos." The forbiddance was in the briefing book: the rescue operation wasn't. "You can chase the mammals all you like, but we don't expect you to catch any -- or even see them." He hesitates. "There were large mammals here -- the prey, and you may occasionally stumble across an old lair or death site. We've found used shotgun casings in the ground, and some arrows. But they were extinct on the island before we arrived. The only big hunters you have to worry about is each other." And this next pause is awkward. "What I said on the boat is true: there are persistent rumors that humans were hunted here. We've found no graves or remains. If you locate any, don't disturb them and alert your camera person immediately." The way he says it makes it sound as if someone -- possibly local law enforcement, however many islands away 'local' is -- fully expects something to turn up eventually. "However, you shouldn't let that keep you from exploring. They're only rumors." His eyes darken as he says it, and I wonder if he believes his own words. "This means you're going to be dependent on the ocean for protein." I don't know, I find myself thinking. I'm sure we can roast the slugs. The redhead speaks up. "I'm sure there's good stuff at the Reward challenges," she says almost as a casual threat: we're going to win all of them, don't you know that? She has a moderate Bronx accent lurking around the edges. "But you have to win them, Robin," Jeff answers. Robin gives him the no-problem look that still has the scaffolding visible around the edges. "A few last notes about exploring: your camera people will stop you if you get too close to another camp or the production area. That last includes the mansion. You may cross some of the dirt roads that were built for quick travel around here, but if you see blacktop, you've gone too far and you'll be pulled back. Don't expect to see the mansion itself, although we may or may not use it as part of a Reward." Damn. Even in partially-restored disrepair, it would have been interesting to see how someone that rich lived, if only from a distance. "You'll also be stopped if you approach the Tribal Council area -- but right now, none of you want to go there if you can possibly avoid it anyway." Another pause, this time going for the drama. "And that brings us to today's challenge -- and we're back in broadcast time." Jeff inhales, and his voice drops a little. His lecture was a lot more casual than his on-the-air voice, and he's back in the 100% 'There are twenty million people hanging on my every word' zone. "Today's challenge is for Immunity -- and Reward." You could not get our attention off him with anything short of an explosion. "As you all know, this game centers around fire: acquiring it and keeping it lit -- on every level." And that almost felt like it was said directly to me, but it's an illusion, he's very good at appearing to be a personal speaker... "The winner of today's challenge will be the first tribe to get fire. Buried somewhere under those four flags --" four in each color, scattered a good distance apart around the beach "-- are boxes containing materials that you can use to make fire: coconut husks, wood, tinder, and flint. Near or at those four buoys --" the same: four orange, four purple, the first within wading distance, the last a few hundred feet from the beach "-- are boxes with steel, magnesium, paper, and extra wood. You'll be doing this as pairs. Four people will dig for their tribe's sand boxes, one at a time, and the boxes get progressively deeper as you go. Four people will be going for the water boxes, and they get progressively further out: the first person can wade, the second will swim, the third has to use a kick-float, and the final person will be paddling a one-man kayak. A new pair can't start until the last pair has both members finish, so consider carefully who's doing each task: your weakest links will slow you down. Once you've got all your materials together, pile them in your fire pits --" orange and purple rocks "-- and use them. First tribe to build a fire high enough to burn through the suspended rope --" three feet above the black sand "-- wins Immunity. The winning tribe will also receive a flint to help them make fire." I am one challenge victory away from being officially dispensable. "Does everyone understand the challenge?" Jeff asks, and looks around. The bowl-cut speaks. "Can we substitute for an injury?" he asks in a Midwestern country accent. "Someone gets cramped swimming, someone else can run two legs?" Jeff nods. "Only if that person's unable to continue at all, but yes, Phillip, you can swap then and have a person go twice. Anyone else?" Connie. "I want to make sure she can't use that cross in the challenge." Jeff looks like he wants to sigh, really badly. "You can only use materials from the challenge to make the fire. Alex, you understood that when I explained the challenge?" I did and nod. "Any other questions?" No one says anything. "Okay." I'm expecting to be told to look understanding for the cameras, maybe nod a little, probably a 'Yes, Jeff.' It doesn't come, which makes me think one of those questions is getting into the broadcast. I have a pretty good idea which one it's going to be. "Assign your teams, and then we'll get started." Who knew huddling was a natural instinct? Trina speaks first. "I should wade." "Yeah, you should," Gardener immediately answers, sounding frustrated with her capabilities already. "I'll take the kayak: that's all arm work and I've got the best biceps here. I've been in them before, too." "I can take the kick float," I tell them, and get looks. "I can push out there and back pretty fast, but I'm short. I won't be reaching that far down into the sand on a scoop." Apparently that made sense with no one, so I add "I walk a lot," and wonder if that gave too much away for later. Anything I say can and will be used against me... Gardener stares at me, then says "Pull up your pants." Is this entire game going to be about people trying to get me to take my clothes off? He catches my expression. "I said up, not off. I want to see your legs." Oh. I kneel down and pull the fabric up to my right knee. He looks down, and the lack of expression when he sees the results of a lifetime of carlessness only comes after he willfully banishes the shock that came before it. "Yeah, you can kick, all right. Take the float." Desmond speaks up. "I don't think we want any of the women that far out in the water, Gardener. One of the men can --" Gardener cuts him off. "You know building: fine. I know bodies." Open subtext: 'Run whatever you want to in camp, but I run the physical challenges. Got it? Good.' "I won't speak for her arms before I see them, but she can kick a hole through a wall. She's on the float." Desmond, looking shocked, betrayed -- and, after a glance around at the rest of us for unfound support, overridden -- shuts up. "Who's digging the deepest hole?" We sort it out, and signal Jeff when we're done. Haraiki finishes a minute or so later. "Good," Jeff says. "Someone write down who's doing what --" the production people pass over pen and clipboard "-- then go over for the group photo. After that, whoever's swimming get into your bathing suits, and we'll get started." I start tucking the cross away for the photo, as I really don't like the way it's openly resting -- but Jeff spots it. "Alex? Leave that out." And that is an order. I leave it out. We remove our buffs and gather by a large palm tree for the shot. The tribes are scattered through the two rows. I wind up kneeling again, in the front row towards the right edge, between Denadi and the athlete. Connie is standing behind me. It takes two notices from the production staff to make her eyes leave my neck. ----------------------------------------------------------------   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Estee 44384 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 07-06-06, 03:47 PM (EST) 5. "Episode #1: We Just Met...: Conclusion." LAST EDITED ON 07-19-06 AT 01:06 PM (EST) {Connie & Alex, sitting in a tree -- with Connie stringing a noose around Alex's neck before pushing her from a high branch. Could she possibly hate her any more on Day Two?} {In a word? No.} {Go, Connie. I still don't understand why Jeff didn't throw her off when he had the chance. And that was a great question Connie asked at the challenge. Cole probably would have used her cheat every time it would help.} {This is getting very weird. We always knew Jeff gave the contestants the occasional briefing, but this is the first time any of it's really made the air. They're pushing the hell out of this setting.} {Like I said, Cole is still here.} {I can't wait to see the editing thread tomorrow. The spoilers are going to be going nuts with all these new footage types.} {I'm rooting for Turare. I don't care about religious issues or tribe composition. I just want that hideous orange off my screen.} ------------------------------------------------------------- Here's the joke: there are changing areas for the challenges, and they are private: single occupancy tents. I get undressed slowly, already relishing the few seconds I'm getting without a camera on me, and put the red one-piece on with equal lack of speed. A careful check to make sure all reinforcements are in place and reporting for duty, and then I seal the thing for the second time in my life and step out of the tent, trying very hard not to think about all the eyes following me, not to mention more of those zoom shots. My own tribe gives me a group long, slow look, with Gardener in particular taking the chance to examine everything-- although he does keep a semi-promise by going over my arms, apparently finding them passable. Mary-Jane is right behind him for duration and Frank doesn't blink very much, although that seems to be a common thing with him. Gary keeps it the shortest, for which I'm grateful. Haraiki looks, the athlete whistles, the tall blonde gives him a mildly dirty look, Phillip grins, and in the split-second during which my gaze is crossing Connie, she's only plotting a single murder. Back to my mat, and wait. Eventually, we're all changed and waiting. Jeff makes the announcement in full voice, the clipboards carefully out of camera shot. "First teams: Connie and Elmore --" the heart attack waiting to happen "-- for Haraiki, Trina and Frank for Turare! Survivors ready --" -- which is when it hits. Twenty million people will be listening to Jeff. And those same twenty million people will be watching us. This is for fifteen minutes' worth of forever -- -- "go!" They go. Trina and Connie race down the beach, Connie taking the lead there. I don't understand Haraiki's choice: I would have put Elmore on wading duty, as it's the least physically intensive task. Gardener's confused too. "What are they doing?" he mutters from his position on the waiting mat. I feel like I can answer him, since he didn't protest my taking the float. "Don't know..." Maybe Connie refused to root in the ground like a pig. Yes, the hatred is coming very easily. But she started it, right? Gardener snorts. "Gives us the first heat," he decides, and he's right. Connie's first in the water, and she's already carrying her box back -- but Frank is plowing through the black sand like a man possessed, sending sprays of silica everywhere and annoying the camera operators, two of whom have to jump back to avoid getting it in the lens. By contrast, Elmore is taking long, slow swipes at the beach, looking nothing like a man digging for treasure and everything like a bear fishing for salmon. Frank has his box out while Trina's coming up the beach. They have to return to the mat and tag out -- all the boxes will be carried from mat to pit at the end -- but even with the additional distance, it's not enough to let Elmore land more than a two-pounder. Connie's at her mat looking frustrated while our first team is getting ready to swap, and Jeff's been in full voice the whole time. "Trina not showing a lot of speed out there! Frank a natural at digging!" and presumably Joe Rogan would have sued if he'd said 'animal'. "Connie unhappy, but Elmore just can't get going on the shallowest dig! Turare getting ready to tag out!" I had always wondered how the contestants could work through that on the show. It always seemed incredibly annoying. Now I'm in the middle of it, and it's even worse. It's like trying to take a test while the instructor screams step-by-step instructions on sharpening the pencil. Shut up, Jeff, I think, and it may not be for the last time. Our first team tags out: Mary-Jane and Desmond are next, swimming and digging, respectively. Mary-Jane's not a bad swimmer -- I'm guessing when you spend that much time in a swimsuit, you learn how to use the thing as intended -- while Desmond's been digging in dirt his entire adult life. Mary-Jane actually has her box by the time Elmore finally gets down to his, and Desmond recovers the second sand-buried container a split-second before Elmore reaches his mat, freeing Denadi to dig and Michelle -- the skinny brunette -- to swim. We tag out a handful of breaths later, putting Gary and I up. I run down to the waterline. The swimsuit does its very expensive job, which means the only embarrassing part of it is having to do it at all. That and the audience and if I start thinking about all those viewers, I'm in trouble, local and future. It sounds like there's someone saying something less than complimentary, and it sounds like Connie, but I can't make out the exact words through Jeff yelling "Denadi playing catch-up!" which makes it sound like she's starting digging either very fast or in just the right spot, which is the only thing Jeff could be good for here: keeping tabs on the other tribe so I don't have to look. Michelle's a steadier runnier than I am and has a head start: she reaches the water first. I get there a few seconds later, grab my kick float from the edge, and push off down my marked lane. A moment after that, I pass her, blowing past as if she's standing still, finally getting an idea of what driving must really be like and sort of enjoying the sensation before the self-hatred for even thinking it kicks in. In the brief instant where I can really see her, she's just barely managing any pace at all, and I think of those little dogs that I see women with on the other side of the hill, the incredibly tiny ones with toothpick legs that have to ride in adapted purses all day because they're too highly bred to be bothered with walking any more. There's just enough time to imagine a cartoon of Michelle inside a mid-sized Gucci knockoff, and then I'm beyond her and accelerating for my buoy. "Alex showing great form out there!" Jeff calls out, and the list of people I want to kill is getting longer by the hour. I am not giving this everything I have. We have a good lead and I intend to stretch it out a little, but I'm holding a little bit back. Maybe ten percent. I might somehow reach the individual competition stage, and showing off every last erg of strength now means I have nothing to pull out of nowhere later. Of course, Gardener probably figured out my exact energy burn potential with one glance and will be saying something snide about my not giving my all for the team once I hit the mat. I keep pushing, widening the gap and nearly reaching my buoy before Michelle gets to hers. Stop, recover the container, strap the box to the top of the kick float with attached strap -- heavy: I think I've either got the wood or whatever's in here was really well-packed -- turn and kick for the shore. Michelle's getting out of the water by the time I'm opposite to her buoy, having some trouble carrying her box: Denadi is already waiting on the mat, and Jeff is keeping things obvious with a lively "Michelle not helping her tribe's cause!", and I'm betting she'd like him to shut up now too. Her return gives them Angela -- the tall blonde -- heading for the water and Robin digging. Angela's very fast on her feet, and goes into the ocean as I'm getting out, eyes focused straight ahead on her buoy, paying attention to nothing else. She looks like she has the build to really swim, and the sounds of splashing behind me show she's not ready to give up on this challenge yet. Gary apparently had some trouble getting to his box, and he's just bringing it up as I pass him. We wind up reaching the mat almost one-two, sending Gardener to the kayak and Trooper to the final dig. Gardener is everything he promised: a raw terror with the paddle, pushing through the waves as if they'd drawn up a contract on his family and he had to get all of them before they got him, our beet-red action hero going for the spotlight shot, ignoring what has to be agony from his sunburnt skin, and Jeff is playing it up for all he's worth, momentarily in sync with me. "Gardener wanting to be the hero! Gardener trying to get the last shot in!" Poor Trooper's almost being ignored, and it's clear that we messed up a little on our own order: Frank's nervous energy might have been best placed in the anchor position, where Trooper is moving steadily and with great heaves, but not much in the way of speed. This is letting Angela make up some time while Robin roots around, the contrast of red-on-black during her head dips oddly startling, and granted a fifth leg and some strong tribemates, Haraiki would catch up and pull ahead. Instead, we make our switches within seconds of each other: Phillip and the athlete -- Tony -- going out to earth and water, us hauling boxes for the fire pit. There's some confusion in opening them -- they're water- and sand-tight, and require a real pull on the top to break the seal -- but we start getting them open and organize the contents. It works out to half of us running through boxes and passing the materials in to the other half, who arrange them in the pit. I'm on the arranging team, since I already proved I have some idea what I'm doing there. Gardener, once he sees the effort required to open a box, shifts out to that duty and lets Trina in to arrange, where she promptly puts the big stuff on the bottom and the little stuff on top. Gary loses time fixing her efforts, but my section's ready, and I start working on getting sparks. The first ones are just barely flying as Jeff lets us know Haraiki is working on opening their boxes, and that Phillip is practically tearing the lids off. Sparks turn to flame. Flame catches, spreads. The fire pit is fairly large and needs some shelter from the ocean breeze: I spot it, yell out, and our males block it with their bodies. Inside the pile, arranged as high and close to the rope as we could build it, three days' worth of yellow and red salvation builds, climbing higher as we back away from the sudden heat, blazing a path towards just a little bit more future than some of us could have hoped for -- -- the rope goes, all at once, and a purple flag flies up at the side of the brace. Instantly, "Turare! Wins Immunity!" Trooper's screaming, head tilted back at the sky, all reserve gone as victory bursts from his throat to reverberate across the beach. Trina laughs, the sound of reprieve granted from on high. Gardener is just wordlessly roaring, and part of me wants to tell them Guys, it's only one win, especially when there's so little chance we'll take them all through the merge and stay intact. Triumph seldom comes without a price attached, and here, it's only a final victory that's even partially free from reprisal... I start to stand up, not yelling, not screaming, just quiet because there should be a little dignity here-- and enough of them hate me already -- and then I'm lifted the rest of the way from behind. Before the shock can really hit, before my hands can close into fists, Mary-Jane spins me around and pulls me into a hug, screaming more than a little herself. My arms are pinned at my sides, my torso crushed against her. It's verging on painful, I can't find any leverage to get free and I so very badly want her to let go, I can feel my eyes going wide as my breathing gets faster -- -- she lets go, looks down, grinning, and sees my face. Her smile vanishes as if it had never been. A heartbeat later, my expression does the same. "Turare, get over here!" Jeff thankfully interrupts. I immediately head for him, almost matching the pace of my near-sprint for the beach, with the others following me. Jeff is now waiting next to a long thin table that was brought in from somewhere, the top of which is draped in fabric. There's a fairly flat shape underneath. "This," he says simply, "is Immunity." He whips off the cloth and reveals a spear, easily six feet long, topped with a chipped obsidian head. The rough wooden shaft is decorated with eight rings of feathers, browns and reds and parrot-greens. "As long as you hold this, you won't go to Tribal Council -- and your tribe stays intact." He looks over all of us in turn. "Who gets this?" Which is when Gardener surprises the hell out of me. "Alex," he says. "We're hydrated and kept our strength because of her." He nods at the spear. "That's the game ball and she's holding it for today." I glance back at him. Expressionless again, he says "Don't get any ideas. I'm carrying it to the next Immunity challenge." I nod, then turn back in time to accept the spear. The uneven bumps of the wood feel oddly good against my hands. "I guess that means you get this," Jeff says, and presents Gardener with the flint. "Turare, you are safe from the vote." He turns to Haraiki, which looks exactly like you'd expect them to look. Morose. Downcast. Frustrated. Enraged. "Haraiki, I'll see you tomorrow night at Tribal Council. Someone will be going -- wait a minute..." He drops out of his On The Air voice all at once, taking a closer look at Haraiki. "Where's Michelle?" Two production crew members point at some bushes at the exact moment we all hear the distinct sound of someone vomiting. "She swallowed some ocean on one of those strokes," Tony says apologetically. Jeff groans. "Okay -- someone make sure she's all right." Pauses. "We may have to shoot that last bit over." He shakes his head, looking briefly weary. "Turare, don't leave just yet." Surprised, we hold our positions. Michelle returns a couple of minutes later, looking vaguely green, with Phillip supporting her all the way to the mat. Once everyone's back in position, Jeff does the last line all over again. "Someone will be going home -- unless they can prove themselves as hunters." Uh-oh. Listen closely, and you can hear the twist approaching, the ground shaking with each step... Jeff knows he has our full attention. "There is no longer a hidden immunity idol in this game. Right now, there are potentially two. Since Haraiki has lost, their idol just went active. A clue as to the idol's location will be waiting for you at your camp. If you find it, you can use it at Tribal Council to keep the holder safe -- and you can use it after the vote is read, bouncing the ouster to whoever has the second-largest number of votes. That's the same. However --" dramatic pause "-- like tribal Immunity, it's only good for one Council. If you don't use it, you have to return it at Council before you head back to camp, and it'll be hidden somewhere else for the next loss. Each clue will be good for only one hunt, and the hunt can only take place in the time before Council: once you leave for Tribal, the idol will be recovered." We're all frozen in place. We have just been shot in the location of your choice: in my case, it feels like it went right between the ribs and punctured a lung. No more holding onto the thing for the entire game and never using it. No more semi-permanent custody of a gamebreaker that's never even used to inflict a splinter. The hidden idol -- idols -- are back in play, and this time, they will almost have to be used if they're found. And thanks to the rebound effect, safety within the majority is now a joke. Jeff lets all of this sink in -- and then drops the other shoe. "There's one exception to this at the tribal stage." At least half of us aren't breathing. "The day before the merge, both idols will be set out, and both camps will be given clues. That means that between idols and individual Immunity, there could be up to three people safe from the vote at Tribal -- and then the strategies will really start to fly." No, there isn't a single person breathing on either tribe. I hope that ends soon, or this is going to be a very short season... "Turare, head on back to camp. Your hunt can wait for at least three days," Jeff tells us. "Haraiki, you've got a little over a day to find a piece of personal salvation. Let's see if anyone can make it work." A slow, solemn nod -- and we're dismissed. Shaken, we head back up our trail to what isn't home, but can at least be a place to rest and celebrate and maybe even relax for a few hours, granted the best temporary safety the reassuring feel of the spear can grant -- but we won't relax for long. Once again, the game has been changed, and Immunity is always up for grabs -- -- which means true safety may never be within anyone's grasp... ...and Mary-Jane won't stop staring at me... ----------------------------------------------------------- {Please vote Elmore out. This is embarrassing. He could go faster if he started eating the sand.} {Michelle or Elmore, Michelle or Elmore -- the women might decide they have the majority anyway and can dump one of their own, since the intellectual challenges haven't started yet...} {And no slow-motion running shot on Alex. Where's my Baywatch edit?} {Did anyone understand what Connie said there?} {Yeah. 'The saline returns to the source.' Nice and nasty. Also hypocritical at best, because with what she's got on, I can see a bit of the insertion scars. I wonder if she thought no one would notice.} {This challenge is a Turare mortal lock.} {Angela doesn't think so. Look at her go!} {Do the words 'Too little, too late' mean anything to you? Turare wins!} {What the hell just happened there between Alex and Mary-Jane?} {Don't know...} {And in the first stunning twist of the season, the Immunity piece is A. not an Idol and B. not a complete piece of crap. That actually doesn't look half-bad.} {...} {...okay, and in the second stunning twist of the season...} {Second challenge: sixteen-man poleaxing. Everyone lost.} {I can hear the strategy thread people drooling from here. While pounding their heads against the keyboards at the same time. This is going to change everything...} {And unless something incredible happens, we leave Turare for the night and all of Day Three.} {Haraiki arrives to find their clue pinned to the side of their weak shelter, which is 'Run aground or run amiss.' No one seems to understand it.} {Elmore thinking it over aloud -- seems to believe it's in the area they cleared for their fire, or in the soil, or along their trails because you might run there... people are moving in all directions here. Elmore watching them all with disbelief, then walks off to the beach.} {And Tony just got fire! He has to run to the ocean because his hands are burning from the friction, but as of evening on Day Two, Haraiki can boil water. Of course, Tony being Tony, he runs to the ocean when the river is closer...} {Okay, if the Immunity Spear wasn't bad, the Tribal Council set just made up for it. What were they thinking?} {Dip your torches, get fire, get a new script...} {Jeff to Elmore: 'What are you contributing?' Jeff to Michelle: 'Can your performance improve?' Elmore contributes brains, Michelle contributes heart, they both think they can do better.} {Votes. Looks like they're going along gender lines, which means Elmore's going out.} {Elmore 5, Michelle 2, last vote will remain hidden, Elmore gone unless -- ohhell.} {No!} {Jeff asks him where he got it, and he says it was buried under the sand trail they made on Day One when they pulled their raft up onto the beach! Son of a *****! Mr. Useless just got three more days, and Michelle's out! The others are giving him dirty looks -- wanna bet he figured it out the second he heard it, and sent them off on wild idol chases?} {Oh, this thing is in play, all right... and so is my PTTE list...} {Which edition would that be now?} {Tune in next week. This season may not completely suck.} -------------------------------------------------------- There's a lot to celebrate back at camp. We're all staying for three more days. The other tribe is down by one. Trooper asks to see the scroll again, then looks at the tie for a long moment before undoing it and carefully unraveling it from its half-yarn state into a much longer thin string: two or three more, and he thinks he can weave together a fishing line. That can wait for a challenge or two, because Gardener borrows the spear, steps out into the shallows, and proves that he's got either great reflexes or incredible luck. The slugs are safe for another day, because we're having five pounds of fish for dinner. And just to top things off, Desmond successfully stole the pen. We eat, and talk about work and homes a little more. We work on the shelter before bed and work on it when we get up, completing it before guess-noon on Day Three. Desmond declares a break time -- we've all been working hard, we really need some extra tools before we make a serious start on a bathroom, and he thinks he's the boss, so he can give us all a break. I spend a lot of the day sketching while the others use the waterfall pond in stages, and join them at one point -- not to swim, but to draw them, sitting on the diving rock to get their abruptly-struck poses captured. I also have to film a confessional, but I suspect nothing from it will be used. The camera is locked into Haraiki now. The main subject of game discussion is which Haraiki member is going home. The majority opinion is Elmore, but Trooper thinks they might dump Denadi as their 'eat the old' move. They can't afford to lose Tony or Phillip. Michelle is a possibility, but her low weight might become vital if we wind up playing Rescue Cot again, which will probably come out as Save The Downed Hunter. There's also some pointless speculation as to what the hidden idol will look like, and how the clues might read. Gardener thinks they'll be as stupid as the challenge poems. It's hard to argue, at least until we see one. And the odds are very good that we'll see one. Mary-Jane is very awkward around me, joining in on conversations which I'm a part of, but not really talking to me. No one else seems to have noticed what happened. She's not discussing it. I'm not going to discuss it. This currently passes for 'issue settled', at least in a dim light. I keep my eyes and ears open, but any strategy talk takes place well away from me, so I haven't ferreted out any alliances yet. I haven't found a good place for Gary and I to talk, either, but there's no need to yet. The game seems to be on hold right now. We finish the shelter, Desmond makes plans for Day Four improvements, and we swim, eat, drink, do laundry, gather wood, clear out more slugs, and keep our strength up. On Day Three on a winning tribe, things are as peaceful as they can be in this game. Gardener still doesn't like me, but there's at least a temporary truce in place. Desmond's dreams of male tribe domination can wait for another day. It's the day we can relax a little, almost guaranteed to be out of sight from the public. The cameras still film us at nearly all moments, but this is the day we can start to get used to them. I decide to start exploring the island a little at the next possible break -- probably tomorrow after the Reward challenge. We chat, and I learn a little about the others that possibly isn't lies, and we all wait for Day Four to come, where the struggle will begin anew. Trina hopes it's a struggle for mattresses. The sleeping pallets are finished, but they're no more comfortable than they were on the first night. We all wait for the day when we have to start preying on each other... -------------------------------------------------------- After --------------------------------------------------------- I watched. I'd nearly talked myself out of it. Why should I bother? I knew what had happened, at least for our side of it. I was curious about things that had occurred at Haraiki, but I'd been more curious during those three days. No one likes reruns of reality shows, and since I'd lived through this one, it would be mostly see-over for me... ...except for me. I've never seen myself through another's eyes. No one really has. The cameras and editing were as close as I was going to get. I didn't watch to see Haraiki, although I was glad to have some things settled there. I didn't watch for the moments I'd missed from my own tribe, and there weren't really many of those -- just Desmond trying to talk the others into a males vs. females alliance, which I'd learned about. I wanted to see how I looked on the small screen. How I'd been perceived. I wanted to see who the public would think I was... They gave us ninety minutes of airtime: unusual, but it had been a weird first three days on both ends. It hurt to watch the falls from the ship, and I found myself short on breath and wondering why. They showed nearly all of the towing, in edited form, and Gary coming out to get me. Tony and Angela flirting in the water, missed during the struggle, although I'd seen them wake up at the end. Desmond's early power grab. Nearly all of the fire sequence, almost exactly as it had happened, with the screaming argument removed. The early troubles at Haraiki, and their joke of a first-night shelter. Elmore being useless. Us working hard, directed and focused. Mary-Jane with her body on display, Mary-Jane with a strategy on display. The challenge. Connie's failed attempt to get me ousted. Connie's comment, clearly heard for the first time, and you could laugh, you really could. I didn't. The group freeze at the twist announcement. And then what I'd never seen any of: Elmore's misleading his entire tribe so he could grab the hidden idol for himself. It's different when you've been on the inside. You don't see all the moments, but you see enough of them. And all the while, when you're still in it, you wonder what's going to make it out. By the end of the episode, I wasn't sure how I'd come across to the viewers, other than being slightly taller than I really am. I'd been presented as -- resourceful, an outside-the-box thinker, quiet, shy, prone to making quiet and slightly snide remarks about a fellow tribemate that gave away nothing of what we'd discovered later -- a character on a TV show. But what stuck in my mind -- what kept me awake for a while, staring at the ceiling -- was what had been shown, and what hadn't. They had shown the Cliffs Of Insanity. They had shown Mary-Jane hugging me, and my reaction to it. They had shown everything that had started between Connie and I. There had been nothing of our Day Three. They hadn't shown Gary and I shaking hands on Day Two. They had shown part of the briefing Jeff had given us, a show first. They had taken part of the opening credits and... I tried to make myself stop thinking, and eventually fell asleep. ------------------------------------------------------- {Topic Title: Based on the first episode, who's your Final Two?} {Gardener & Gary.} {Mary-Jane & Gardener.} {Phillip & Connie.} {Anyone & not-Cole.} {Trooper & Phillip.} {Elmore & the hidden idol. Quick, eat the smart!} {Denadi & Desmond. We've got to have the oldest ones get through eventually, right?} {Tony & Angela. The romance comes through for a second nauseating engagement.} {Frank & Alex -- or Frank & Mary-Jane -- or Frank & Robin -- whoever he thinks he has the best chance of scoring with after the show.} {Gardener & Connie.} {Gary & Desmond.} {al of u & not havng a lif} {So how's your petition going?} ----------------------------------------------------- I got up. I showered. I got dressed. I turned on the computer to make sure the website had auto-updated -- going to the island had been an act of faith, mostly in the software -- and my mail started downloading the second the connection was made. All twelve thousand messages of it. I blinked, let it hold, then eventually opened my eyes again. It now said 'Receiving: 29 out of 12,017.' After looking at it for a while, during which my supposed DSL line got up to Message #184, I left the computer and got some cereal. This was not going to be a morning I could face without eating. Breakfast at the computer desk, waiting for the mail to finish downloading, trying to ignore the titles that were coming in, and I finally tried doing something else: going to my website to check on the strip. Since I'm the owner of the site, the first thing I get when I log on is an account statement: the amount of bandwidth that's been used since I last checked in. It didn't come as much of a surprise to see that my number of visitors had gone up by a factor of twenty. It came as even less of a surprise to realize that I'd used up nearly half my never-reached bandwidth allotment in less than ten hours, and if this happened again, I was going to go into overage charges that I didn't have the money for... The new strip was up. No problem there. The forum had about three hundred new topics, and not a single one of them was strip-related. Lots and lots of problems there. I'd started the forum about a month after the strip had begun: people seemed to want to talk about the story, the software which let them do so on-site was free, and the bandwidth was minimal, so I didn't see any problems in letting them do it locally. I'd installed the forum in a dusty corner of the site, provided a link, then sat back and tried to do as little as possible with it. The forum was for discussion of story events, fan art postings, plot speculation, and assorted rants. None of this really involved me. I knew what the story events were going to be, gave the best of the fan art its own gallery, found no point in speculating over the plot, and ignored the rants. The most I'd ever really done with the thing was make the occasional notice when a really good piece of fan art appeared, and promoted a couple of people to moderator status so they could delete the spam threads at need. Beyond that, I stayed out of it and let the four thousand people -- five hundred fairly active -- hash things out to their heart's content. The current membership was at 9800, and going up by the minute. I checked the Email again. About a sixth of the way there. A selection of new forum topics: {Why heretics shouldn't be allowed on TV.} {Stuck-up bitches and the stupid people who read their ****ing strips.} {Go, Alex!} (Hell on one false idol a day.} {You're damned, Cole.} That one had several hundred replies, and only three were from posters whose names I knew. I would have remembered someone who signed on as DieColeDie... Email. Start reading it while it was still coming in. I don't get a lot of mail. The link provided on-site is for art commissions, and people placing book orders through the form also generate one. Add in the occasional person who still tries direct communication when my FAQ encourages use of the forum plus a moderate amount of spam, and it works out to maybe two thousand pieces of mail a month, 1800 of which will be junk. My spam had gone up -- funny to think that there were people who'd visit a now-known (if they looked -- I hadn't been allowed to put a URL on the show's site) area just to add it to their bulk mail generators -- but the majority of the letters were personal. Very personal. They mostly broke down like this: 1. Support. Maybe eight percent. People who'd seen me on the show, liked what I'd done, and wished me well. There were some sub-categories there. Some of them hoped I'd win. People wanted to know where I'd gotten the cross: that part hadn't made the edit. People wanted to know if I was still single. Male and female on that last, with some enclosing pictures, and that led right to: 2. Sexual proposals. From 'Can I have a date?' on up. Some of the photos were nudes. Few of the nudes would have been worth opening to anyone. All of them were attached so that opening the mail showed me the picture. Most of the proposals were fairly tame. The minority got -- involved. I didn't know half the fetishes and wouldn't have survived a quarter of them. The most graphic descriptions came from the people who'd masked their return addresses. I momentarily stopped putting mail into that folder after I found the one who wanted to remove my legs with the tribe machete. He said it would really turn him on. My feelings about the double amputation were not important. 2a. Rape threats. Not many, but far more than enough. 3. Death threats. Again, not many. No more than four hundred. Not very creative. Some of them used multiple fonts in a single letter to simulate cut-out newsprint. I was to be shot. Raped, then shot. Shot and then raped. Knifed. Set on fire and burned to death -- very popular sub-theme, easily eighty Emails on that alone, with no seeming duplicates. Dissolved in acid. Four people told me they'd find a way to fake my suicide. 4. Religion-based letters. And this was the vast majority. I was damned. I was going straight to Hell. I clearly loathed Christianity and everything it stood for. I was going to be pulled off the air. They were going to find a way to shut down my strip and make sure I couldn't make a living any more without selling my body in the way I'd already started to on TV, and by the way, my art and story sucked. (Not that they read any of it, because they wouldn't read things written by a damned heretic who loathed Christianity. They just knew.) And given what they'd done to my bandwidth bill, they were very close to succeeding... A lot of #4 was actually the same boilerplate letter with spaces left for the name of the offended. There was actually a form set up for hating me. It was sort of impressive. 5. Business. Tiny compared to the bulk of hatred, but there, and it temporarily saved me. Thousands of people had come to the site, and where most of them had come just to loathe me, a couple of hundred had, for no reason I could think of just now, wound up buying books. I had two dozen new artwork commissions, Cafe Press had put even more T-shirts into production, and quite a few banners had been clicked.... I stopped, sorted out all the orders I could -- it took hours, and meant opening virtually everything to see if a 'I'm only buying this so I can burn it' was hiding anywhere -- and came up with a final figure that I could live with. The extra money from the additional sales covered the raised bandwidth costs with some room for still more traffic if this rate kept up for the rest of the month, but if it increased much more without getting still more purchases, I was in major trouble. I was going to have to think of something, fast -- or I was going to have to shut down the site just because I wouldn't be able to cover the flood. 6. Personal correspondence. One piece, at the very end of the overload. No return address. Title: {I hope you see this} {Alex, Congratulations. You didn't completely fling open the gates, but there's a lot of stuff getting out through the cracks. Here's what you missed while you slept. A small portion of the Internet has been set on fire, all from sparks given off by your cross. Overnight, petitions have arisen to have the show pulled from the air, to have all footage with you censored, to have you make a full apology on national television to everyone you've offended, and to get you to donate whatever you won to the Christian charity of someone else's choice. As I write this, your starting the fire is being shown on Fox & Friends, and they're saying O'Reilly will speak about you tonight, with his special guest of the current AFA president -- which means you can probably guess who you've irritated, why, and who's putting out the petition forms. And what's really behind it. What I find really funny in all this is that no one's asked what your religion is yet. You've also got some supporters. A few people out there are smart enough to realize that you'll use a loophole no matter what it's shaped like, and they're trying to make themselves heard -- but they're in the minority, and they're being drowned out. What you have to realize is that you're just the Issue Of The Day. And what no one seems to realize is that you can't say anything. You know the contract. Silence until your part in the show is over. Clearly that wasn't this week. If they want an explanation from you, they'll have to wait. I'm curious about what you'll tell them, but I'll have to wait too. I've been waiting for a while. But because there's a lot of time left, it's also time for things to fade out. Again: you're just the Issue Of The Day. Stay low, keep quiet, and someone else will come along. CBS will not pull the show or edit the footage beyond whatever travesty they've already committed. Burnett's story is spun, and he won't respin it to suit anyone but himself. There's nothing for the FCC to fine anyone for, and the First hasn't been repealed yet. This is just a lot of fuss over nothing. These people always need something new to scream about, or the world might start to dismiss them from its collective memory. For now, you're it -- but it won't be for long. Sort out your death threats -- I've got some too -- and save them in a separate folder. Hand them over to your local police. That'll keep them busy. Do the same with any sex stuff that goes over the line, which for you is probably all of it. Refuse all interviews. Keep your head down. I'm not signing this or letting my return address go on it because the current rules about communicating before the Reunion are so convoluted, I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to wave to you from across the street. I'm pretty sure you know who it is, and you'll listen to my advice. This time, anyway. And I have to wonder if any of those people will say anything different when they see what's to come...} I read it again, then created a new folder just for it and any future correspondence and saved it. I also finished sorting the rest of it, checked my strip backlog and found out I could go a month and a half straight without drawing if things got really bad, tried to figure out how commission time would work into that, and suddenly realized I didn't have two hundred books to mail. I called the order down to the printer in Paterson and transfered the money out of PayPal into my account to deal with the expense. Just packaging them all would take a couple of days, and as for hauling them to the post office... At least I had a stated four-to-six-weeks delivery time on everything, including the commissions. One burned DVD-ROM later -- the sex and death threats -- I left the apartment, triple-checking my locks before taking the staircase, and began the walk towards the police station. I'd pick up some envelopes on the way back: I could afford that, at least, especially since the Priority ones were free. And I thought I'd seen my answering machine light on for the first time in months: I'd have to see what those were... Engine accelerating behind me. A window going down. Voice, Spanish accent, male, slurred. "Over here, bitch!" I looked. I hit the ground. The bottle passed over my head and shattered into a dozen pieces against the wooden fence. Fragments of glass rained into my hair. Laughter as the engine roared a song of escape, and "You'll get yours! You'll see --!" before the car two-tired around a corner and vanished. I stared after it, thinking of nothing but a string of letters and numbers cascading into each other with each passing chorus. 26V D1L. New Jersey. Old brown Caddy with a ragtop. 26V D1L... My left shoulder and hip had taken most of the impact, but probably wouldn't be more than moderately bruised, and I couldn't do anything about it if it was worse -- because you don't call for medical, you just don't -- but the DVD, in the opposite pocket, was intact. I wouldn't have to burn another one. Slowly, painfully, I picked myself off the ground, carefully pushed what I hoped was all of the glass out of my hair, and headed for the police station again, forcing myself to move with a little more speed than before. It hurt a lot, but I didn't know if they were going to circle around, and if I moved quickly, I could get to the alley and cut across towards the main drag. There would be more people there. More witnesses. More safety. Except that I was never safe. And Jeff's voice in my head. "Alex?" "What?" No one around to hear me, didn't care if there was. "I'm sorry. I never thought this would happen." And that was an echo. I almost stopped where I was, listening to the past meeting the present -- and forced myself to keep moving just in time. The past is another country, and you can't live there. There are things that make you want to stop living there. "No," I told him. "You knew." And limped on. ------------------------------------------------------------------- . . . . . . . . . (End of Episode #1. Episode #2 will begin shortly. Things will probably get worse from here.)   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Belle Book 1925 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Herbal Healing Drugs Endorser" 01-04-09, 05:26 PM (EST) 10. "RE: Episode #1: We Just Met...: Conclusion." I've got a Love List for the first episode, divided into groups: those I like, those that are meh for me, and those I dislike -- in this first episode, just two: Like: 1. Gary -- his comment to Gardner was funny. And I'm glad he was willing to approach Alex with the offer of an alliance! 2. Alex -- as I said, clever! This is a player and make no mistake about it! I like her already! 3. Phillip -- don't know much about him but I like him already too! Meh (almost everyone else): 4. Trooper -- sorry, don't know enough about him so far. 5. Mary-Jane -- would like her more but her casual attitude towards nudity is a little annoying. 6. Trina -- as long as she downplays her fortune-telling role, that's fine with me. 7. Frank -- a little funny, but I agree with Alex -- he tries a little too hard. 8. Robin -- I like redheaded women, but I don't know her. 9. Gardner -- a little grumpy but otherwise, okay. 10. Angela -- good job on the kick-float. Otherwise, who? 11. Denadi -- also who? 12. Tony -- who's he as well? Dislike: 13. Desmond -- I'm not fond of guys who make power grabs early. 14. Connie -- don't like her. 15. Elmore -- this guy should've gone first. Out: Michelle. Who really was she? I don't know -- and I never got to find out. A pity. Belle Book   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

cahaya 14104 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 07-08-06, 03:47 AM (EST) 6. "RE: Survivor: The Society Islands: Episode #1: We Just Met..." Rather than pick out some outstanding lines (and even whole paragraphs - the Best Commuter being one of them), I just want to say this story is fantastic. That word has its roots in 'fantasy', and you've taken us into a world (an island, really) replete with color, attention to detail, unique characteristics, and even paradoxes. And, parallel with this, you've done just the same for the characters. The way you present this episode with real time action, the prologue and the epilogue, along with the DAW commentary, it reads like a mystery novel. Clues here, clues there, in flashback, in fast forward, and in the current action on the island. We won't know who won until the final episode post; we won't know the answer to so many of those mysteries that come up along the way until the final resolution. We won't know who Alex is, in whole, until the whole story is told. And then, when all is said and done, and even during its telling, maybe, just maybe, we'll see Alex as a mirror of ourselves. I've never been much a Survivior fanatic (like Alex, I'm a TAR freak), but you've just gained a convert. Well done! An Arkie Asian creation, with Foo dog images by Bob.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

kingfish 12060 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 07-08-06, 01:59 PM (EST) 7. "RE: Survivor: The Society Islands: Episode #1: We Just Met..." Wow. This is great. Keep it coming. NOw for part....next.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

michel 6689 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Playboy Centerfold" 07-08-06, 04:06 PM (EST) 8. "RE: Survivor: The Society Islands: Episode #1: We Just Met..." I never read Fanfic because it always is the author's imagined ideal cast with ideal twists. This is different and a good read.   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Belle Book 1925 desperate attention whore postings DAW Level: "Herbal Healing Drugs Endorser" 01-04-09, 04:38 PM (EST) 9. "RE: Survivor: The Society Islands: Episode #1: We Just Met..." I may be a devout Christian, but I'm not so fanatical that I can't appreciate a brilliant piece of strategy even if the person is using a cross as part of that strategy! I like the way Alex thinks! If I was a guy or a lesbian, I'd also say that I was in love. Too bad I'm neither. But still -- clever! Belle Book   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Lock | Archive | Remove

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic

Select another forum Lobby The Amazing Race Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--The Amazing Race Fanatics Forum (Protected)   |--The Amazing Race Basher Forum (Protected)   |--The Amazing Race Spoiler/Speculation Forum (Protected) American Idol Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--American Idol General Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--American Idol Individual Contestant and Judge Discussion Forum (Protected) The Apprentice Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--The Apprentice General Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--The Apprentice Spoilers/Speculation Forum (Protected)   |--The Apprentice: Martha Stewart General Discussion Forum (Protected) Big Brother Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--Big Brother Fanatic Forum (Protected)   |--Big Brother Bashers Forum (Protected)   |--Big Brother Live Feed Updates And Spoilers (Protected) The Mole Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--The Mole General Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--The Mole Clues & Spoilers Forum (Protected) Survivor Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--Survivor Fanatic Forum (Protected)   |--Survivor Basher Forum (Protected)   |--Survivor Spoilers Forum (Protected)   |--Survivor Games Forum (Protected)   |--Spoiler Island Fantasy Game Forum (Protected)   |--Survivor 6 Spoiler/Speculation Forum (Protected)   |--Survivor 8 Spoilers Forum (Protected)   |--Survivor Book Forum (Protected)   |--SurvivorMarket Forum (Public) Other Reality TV Shows (Conference)   |--America's Got Talent Forum (Protected)   |--America's Next Top Model Forum (Protected)   |--The Bachelor / The Bachelorette Forum (Protected)   |--The Biggest Loser Forum (Protected)   |--Dancing with the Stars Forum (Protected)   |--Flavor of Love / I Love New York Forum (Protected)   |--I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Forum (Protected)   |--Jon & Kate Plus 8 Forum (Protected)   |--Hell's Kitchen Forum (Protected)   |--HGTV Design Star Forum (Protected)   |--Laguna Beach / The Hills Forum (Protected)   |--Project Runway Forum (Protected)   |--The Real Housewives Forum (Protected)   |--The Real World / Road Rules Forum (Protected)   |--So You Think You Can Dance Forum (Protected)   |--Top Chef Forum (Protected)   |--Trading Spouses / Wife Swap Forum (Protected)   |--Other Reality TV Shows Forum (Protected) Non-Reality TV Shows Forums (Conference)   |--24 Forum (Protected)   |--Desperate Housewives Forum (Protected)   |--Grey's Anatomy Forum (Protected)   |--Heroes Forum (Protected)   |--Lost Forum (Protected)   |--Other Non-Reality TV Shows Forum (Protected)   |--Non-Reality Daytime Soap Shows Forum (Protected) Off Topic (Conference)   |--Temporary Off Topic Forum (Protected)   |--The Help Forum (Protected)   |--Off-Topic Forum (Protected)   |--Off-Topic Sports Forum (Protected)   |--Story Competitions Forum (Protected) Other Inactive Reality TV Shows (Conference)   |--Age Of Love Forum (Protected)   |--Average Joe Forum (Protected)   |--Beauty and the Geek Forum (Protected)   |--Beg, Borrow, & Deal (Protected)   |--The Benefactor Forum (Protected)   |--Boy Meets Boy Forum (Protected)   |--The Casino Forum (Protected)   |--The Contender Forum (Protected)   |--Cupid Forum (Protected)   |--Fame Forum (Protected)   |--For Love Or Money Forum (Protected)   |--Joe Millionaire Forum (Protected)   |--Grease: You're the One That I Want Forum (Protected)   |--Kid Nation Forum (Protected)   |--Last Comic Standing Forum (Protected)   |--Mad Mad House Forum (Protected)   |--My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance Forum (Protected)   |--Nashville Star Forum (Protected)   |--Next Action Star Forum (Protected)   |--On The Lot Forum (Protected)   |--Outback Jack Forum (Protected)   |--Paradise Hotel Forum (Protected)   |--Pirate Master Forum (Protected)   |--Playing It Straight Forum (Protected)   |--The Rebel Billionaire Forum (Protected)   |--Rock Star (Protected)   |--Skating With Celebrities Forum (Protected)   |--The Simple Life (Protected)   |--Superstars of Dance Forum (Protected)   |--The Surreal Life Forum (Protected)   |--Treasure Hunters Forum (Protected)   |--Wickedly Perfect Forum (Protected)   |--Joe Schmo Forum (Protected)   |--Todd TV Forum (Protected)   |--The Real Gilligan's Island (Protected)   |--Forever Eden Forum (Protected) Starting Over Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--Starting Over General Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--Starting Over Individual Houseguest Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--Starting Over Spoilers Forum (Protected) TemptationIslandSucks.com Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--Temptation Island Everything (Protected) TheOsbournesSucks.com Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--The Osbournes Everything Forum (Protected) BootCampBites.com Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--Boot Camp Spoiler/Speculation Forum (Protected)   |--Boot Camp Rant/Rave Forum (Protected) LoveCruiseSinks.com Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--Love Cruise Everything (Protected) Push-Nevada.net.com Message Board Forums (Conference)   |--Push, Nevada General Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--Push, Nevada Clue & Hint Forum (Protected) Inactive Forums (Conference)   |--BlowsVivor Forum (Protected)   |--2002 RealityTVWorld Blowie Award Nomination Forum (Protected)   |--September Eleven Forum (Protected)   |--Cornertime Forum (Public)   |--OLD The Amazing Race Basher Forum (Protected)   |--Survivor II: The Australian Outback Forum (Protected) TEMPORARY FORUMS (Conference)   |--Temporary The Amazing Race Fanatics Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary The Amazing Race Basher Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary The Amazing Race Spoiler/Speculation Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary America's Next Top Model Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary American Idol General Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary American Idol Individual Contestant and Judge Discussion Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary The Bachelor / The Bachelorette Forum (Public)   |--Temporary The Biggest Loser Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Laguna Beach / The Hills Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Other Reality TV Shows Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Non-Reality TV Shows Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Survivor Basher Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Dancing with the Stars Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Top Chef Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Survivor Spoilers Forum (Protected)   |--Temporary Survivor Fanatic Forum (Protected)