User blog comment:FluffyYoshi/Survivor: Okinawa Bootlist/@comment-26910098-20170423160903/@comment-24454266-20170423162850

Austin started off in a majority alliance on Tarama, keeping everything intact and being a good leader. He mainly kept a bond with Marcus and Maria, one of those relationships he took to the end.

After swapping to Taketomi, he built a bond with Adeflake, while also maintaining his original Tarama majority, with Maria, Meagan, and Sarah. He made sure Elizabeth stayed on the outs, with no way of escaping her fate.

On Izena, he was once again with Maria and Sarah, along with ex-tribemate Marcus. He had a rough point here, with Sarah going with Marcus, in a 2-2 at their tribal council. Scared and paranoid, Austin pulled out an idol resulting in a 2-0 blindside for Marcus. This cemented him as a power player for the rest of the game.

When the tribes merged, Austin got back together with his Tarama alliance (Meagan, Calvin, Sarah, Maria, and himself), and tried to gather the numbers but the Izena group decided to stick together for an easy Meagan boot.

The second merge round is where things get interesting. Austin is obviously in the minority, until Adeflake blows up at John, creating a opportunity. With Austin wanting to go to the Adeflake, he was going to, until he found out Maria made a deal with the other side to vote Adeflake with them. After going to get water, Austin overhears Adeflake and Bruna plotting a move with an idol to get rid of John. Austin is fine with this, so he plans to throw a vote out to John this tribal as well. At the tribal, John is voted out 3-1-0 (Tohru threw a vote towards Bruna).

It was a mess back at camp with the alliance numbers being 6 - 4 (Tarama now has Bruna and Adeflake). They vote out Alberto, 6-4 due to him being an immunity threat. After that, Sarah decides to go to Austin and Adeflake, and proposes blindsiding Maria. Austin doesn't like this, and instead decides to try and blindside Sarah instead. This is where one of his moves didn't go through, as the vote ended up being 5-2-2, with Calvin being voted out.

Trying to recover from the loss of an alliance member, and the flip-flopping of Bruna and Adeflake, Maria told Austin that Michelle was beginning to piss everyone off, so Austin pulled of an immunity win, so he could be protected while making the move, and Michelle was voted out 7-1.

After this, Austin decided to lay low, letting other people make the moves, letting Adeflake take charge and blindside Sarah, Tohru, and her own ally Bruna. After realizing how dangerous Adeflake was, and how he just let her make three back to back moves, Austin won immunity, but the vote was tied at Day 38, 2-2 (Maria - Adeflake). After everything that happened, he needed Maria to pull through. Maria won the firemaking challenge, and as a result, the Final 3 was decided.

At the Final Tribal Council, Maria was blasted for her overall lack of strategic and social gameplay, with Austin and Brian getting praise for their gameplay. (Brian's own growth storyline and game moves did not intervene with Austin's own storyline, so Brian is never really mentioned here). In the end, Meagan, John, Calvin, Sarah, and Bruna vote for Austin, while Alberto, Michelle, Tohru, and Adeflake voted for Brian.

I guess overall Austin played an okay, yet messy game. I think that he deserved the win while writing (I hadn't decided if Brian or Austin would win yet), so I gave it to him. :)