User blog comment:Coolio15/Tonga Boot Order/@comment-27391152-20170119053121/@comment-9949103-20170119151009

1. Brandon was very much an under the radar prescence for most of the pre-merge as he was alligned with much bigger characters like Nathan and Gregory. However, though Nathan displayed a lot of social and physical aptitude, Brandon very much played the strategic part of the duo while hiding behind his big prescence. He played a crucial role in keeping Kevin from flipping voting off Nathan on Day 12, which ensured the dominance of the male Liahona members for the rest of the pre-merge. Post-merge, Nathan's blindside was the catalyst that made Brandon start playing ballsier and bigger. He won immunity at the final seven, cutting a deal with the girls to help them vote out Tybalt while also strengthening bonds with wildcards like Careta and Patricia. At the final six, Brandon was the next to go in the majority's eyes, but Brandon took advantage of the fact that the other three were split, Hallie wanted to blindside Gregory as more of a threat, and he was able to convince Careta and Patricia to vote off Hallie with him and form a solid three going into the final five. He was much more loyal to Patricia however, as the two had made their own final two pact and Brandon protected her at the five to make sure that Tamara went home. Their close relationship in the endgame is what caused Patricia to also turn on Careta at the final four and allowed Brandon to secure a final immunity win and oust Gregory from the game. He had a pretty easy time winning over the jury, who thought that Patricia waited too late into the game to start playing and praised Brandon for having the better social game overall. With our other winners, he wouldn't be the top, but I can definitely see him around Meredith's level as they both used a similar strategy of hiding behind bigger characters to make big strategic moves. I'd actually say Brandon might edge her out though the fact that he did it without being targeted until the last few days, where as Meredith was a target the moment she made her play against Jonas.

2. Oh, boy. I would've love to write this in full, but here goes. After the women lost the challenge, Mary Sue gathered all the women except for Tamara together to make sure that she went home. Despite some misgivings from Kaili and Hallie, everyone agreed. Shih-na, however, saw a prime opportunity to stir things up and she told Tamara the entire plan, including the part about all the other girls agreeing to boot her out. Shocked and paranoid, chaos ensued more than ever now as Tamara and Shih-na both worked to flip the vote onto Mary Sue for being a much more annoying and weak prescence around camp and in challenges. And for the most part, everyone had no problem with it because of their dislike of Mary Sue. However, it was Careta who made an EXTREMELY fatal error when she told Kimberly that the plan had changed to Mary Sue, thinking that she would be on board with it. She wasn't, obviously, and this had Kimberly now scrambling to change the votes back to Tamara. In the midst of all this pandemonium, it was Hallie that planted the seed in Kim's head that Shih-na was the one that leaked info to the group and pointed her out as the one causing trouble. In actuality, Hallie wanted a more "neutral" prescence like Shih-na gone so that the big players would keep clashing heads and causing chaos. At Tribal Council, Kimberly made a point of calling out Tamara as the outcast of the tribe and made it painfully obvious that she was still on the chopping block. Regardless, Tamara and Mary Sue's little armies went at each other, leaving the perfect opportunity for the other five to pull off a sucker punch of a blindside by voting out Shih-na for her tattletale antics, leading to a crazy 5-2-1 vote.

3. It was mainly men versus women at the start of the merge. Each group had a pretty core group of four, with one person on the outside. It was Mary Sue for the women, and Tybalt for the men. The latter was a lot more cagey about making a big play against the dominant male alliance, while Mary Sue had no trouble turning on the girls. However, due to two successive idol plays from the women's side, Kevin and Mary Sue went home. The guys lost another crucial number when Gregory flipped on Nathan and joined the women's alliance, engraciating himself to the leaders, Tamara and Hallie.Tybalt got picked off, Brandon's bonds with Careta and Patricia allowed them to usurp power for pretty much the rest of the game as two out of three of them made the final three and into the final tribal council.