#host-thoughts

 righty, guys. What's going on? Everyone's favorite org host here, back with this season's first iteration of some host thoughts from the main host, from the one who puts the show together, who puts the cast together, who makes the final calls, the executive decisions. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Fio. Some of you know me as Inferno Fio. Some of you know me as Ty Fiorino. Some of you know me as the most evil org host of all time. And regardless of how you know me, take a moment to try to forget that and focus on this cast, because holy shit. I honestly, out of my five years in this org-adjacent community, have never seen a cast to this caliber. And that's not me trying to toot my own horn, rather to toot the horn of the people that are here on this cast. Even the quote-unquote weaker picks are incredible in their own right, will never die without a fight, and oh my gosh, I mean, I am just stunned, truly. I mean, go look at the confessionals, go watch the gameplay, look at all the fucking alliances that are already made. We're on episode three, and most orgs aren't even this good by episode, like, twelve. Like, wow! We're really putting other seasons to shame here, so massive congratulations and thank you to all these incredible casting pulls. Kristen, Saturn, Neptune, Baz, Sylvia, Jiv, Brent, Penelope, Riley, I mean this is incredible, Vinny! Like, wow!

 want to talk a little bit about the game design for a minute. So, at first, what I wanted to do was have it be strictly just heroes versus villains. However, due to the nature of my cast division, was not quite it, rather just the good versus the bad. There were some questionable heroic picks and questionable villain picks. Katie and Kebab could have been swapped. Griffin and Dallas could have been swapped. I mean, it wasn't quite the 12 most heroic versus the 12 most villainous. I mean, we had some intricate level of decisions had to have been made to assemble this cast. Now, why was that? number one because it gets boring when it's like that it gets boring when it's just the 12 good guys versus the 12 bad guys because all the good guy tribals are little walks in the park and all the bad guy tribals are the entertaining ones and so my thought process was to shake up a little bit with that some questionable picks for each tribe but also what if i just threw a giant curveball in there i gave them a second set of tribes instead of a traditional swap where they just to drop their buffs at a certain point and the whole point of the season right the garden versus the undead is lost at a certain point what if instead of doing that i incentivize the longevity of it by swapping them every round and something how do i do that old school versus new school was the pick and i'll explain why

 big thing that I wanted to do this season were the preseason interviews. Please go watch. If you don't want to sit down and watch the interviews individually, please go watch the highlight reel that Play made. It is incredible. The feedback and the responses and the level of excitement from everyone is really, it's so astounding to me and I'm so happy with it. what I noticed is that there was such a divide on this cast based off of how they will play the game. The old schoolers were ready to shake it up. The old schoolers were coming in hot. The old schoolers were ready to change their game, whatever. The new schoolers were very much so of the opinion like, yeah, you know, we're going to take it easy for a little bit, and then we're going to shake it up come the merge. like it was such like a difference between a difference of philosophy of this uh willingness and readiness to to play almost like an old school kind of org game versus the newer textbook kind of meta in orgs. And that to me actually stuck out as more of a theme of Garden vs Undead. But by that point, I'd already kind of locked in Garden and Undead. So I'm like, well, why don't I make more use of Garden and Undead by also throwing in this other theme? and holy shit, it fucking worked. It worked. I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot. I've seen orgs do like a two-tribe twist before. I tried to do a two-tribe twist before. It kind of flopped. But I think this is working out because I think that now everyone is balancing two different sets of unique tribes with two different power structures with two completely different dynamics. And it's sort of incentivizing people who share tribes together to actually stick together as a tribe. But it's not that simple. There are tensions forming. It's very fun.

's talk a little bit about the Safari. And I want to give a massive shout out to Leighton and Fishpog. Um, and Mike too, actually, to be honest, I mean the first, I was just going to do idols in the Safari. I wasn't going to do in server idols at all or anything like that. I was just going to be like, you could stumble upon it in the safari you know get lucky right layton and mike were very big on the idea that we should bring back advantages from old seasons and at first i was like no i don't really want to do that i'm not really big on like advantages and whatnot i'm a very like traditional kind of host like you know idols are better than advantages however i wanted to add something else i wanted to add another layer of complexity to the game. And with it being All-Stars and celebrating three years worth of FioViver history, I was like, you know what? I'm going to listen to the latent mic pitch. We're throwing in some goody advantages. You'll see them as they come. People haven't really been confessionalizing about them. I mean, obviously the big thing right now is that Saturn and Sylvia both have halves of an idol, right? Those are the ones from season six. They actually um buffed a little bit um more on that later as the game plays out or you can just go read the fucking confessionals

 in terms of what Fishpog did for the Safari, I mean, I honestly, I don't think I would have done a Safari without Fishpog because Fishpog made it to where the players could just move themselves. They have an up, down, left, and right feature, and they each have their own little, in the Safari server, they have like a navigator channel. They have a graphic. They have, it's really cool stuff. It's really cool. And there's a new bot we can do slash item hide. and I'll I'll randomize it I'll be like all right we're gonna put it in this time like I'll close my eyes I don't fucking like pick one right or I'm on vacation right now with some some close family I went to my cool aunt who I haven't seen in years and I'm like hey pick a tile on the Safari and I forget which one she picked yeah she picked the most recent one I think I think was c7 She goes like, oh, I like C7. I'm like, all right, we'll hide something on C7. Like it's very, it's very unserious. I host my games very similar to how Dungeon Masters will host Dungeons and Dragons. I don't play Dungeons and Dragons. I spectate Dungeons and Dragons. So I could be making an ass out of you and me here. I don't know, but we'll see.

 let's talk a little bit about our first three boots of the season so far. So we have, oh gosh, I mean, this is a terrible boot order. Enya at 24th, Evie at 23rd, and Drew at 22nd. Wow. I mean, this is just insane stuff, truly. Because these are all three players who, in their own rights, would go so far, who are the types of players where, yes, they can go the distance. They can make that impact. And I fully anticipate them to continue making impacts whilst being on the distortion world. I mean, distortion world, I don't need to touch on it. It worked so well in Season 8. It felt so natural. If we're bringing back previous twists, of course we're going to fucking bring back distortion world. Are you kidding me? Got to give someone else a second chance, right? Got to let them keep playing the game. in terms of the Enya tribal, I thought that one was really sad, because what it seemed to be, from an outside perspective, was Enya, it's just harder to connect with those younger players, and I think he did a good job of it. It's not like he put up this barrier. It's not like he just didn't try. He was doing good, right? If they didn't have tribal right out of the gate, or if everyone wasn't so active and invested, then Enya survives. It's simply just because everyone's ready to play the game. And when we're thinking of round one tribal and we're thinking of threat to go home, obviously the season seven player of the season is going to be on the chopping block. He's going to be someone that people are looking at.

 notable thing that happened here was Neptune and Orr were actually very much so in danger. Orr, due to his connection to Woofley, is saved, is fine, is not going home. however Neptune was in a little bit of hot water but Kristen decides Neptune and that's my number one that's my person I want to ride it out with so Kristen goes to Neptune gives him a bit of a wake-up call and leaks the woman's alliance that was formed by Riley and says you need to start locking in and Neptune starts locking in and lo and behold Neptune is safe and this is how the vote flips onto Enya, which was insane to me. I mean, it was sad. It truly was. I mean, I knew it was going to happen as I was checking in for tribal and I'm looking like, oh, this is how it's going to end. This sucks. Oh my goodness. What I don't like is the fact that the narrative became, oh, Enya played so chaotic. That's why Enya went home. Enya crashed out. Dude, It was quiet on Enya's end for Tribal. What was he supposed to do? He's trying to not go home, he's gonna fight for his safety. The narrative being spun is that Enya threw out four different names. No he didn't. He's trying to see who people will vote so he doesn't get 24th place on an All-Star season. That's not chaotic in my eyes. He kept it classy. I'm Team Enya all the way, for the record.

 as far as the Evie tribal goes, Evie kind of felt a little bit like a fish out of water on both of her tribes, which villain alignment made sense. I mean, oh, that queen was sassy, right? They are a diva. New School was a little bit more questionable because Evie actually goes all the way back to season two of Theo Viver. but in terms of notable runs season six was on the newer side of things so i actually opted to put evie on new school i felt that the way evie was going to play the game more so aligned with that new school ideology and evie is more so remembered for season six which is more recent rather than season two I mean they got pre-jury season two right I mean I put drew on old but that also because drew is like a fossil in the org community drew has been around like for a million years um but regarding evie i mean like i said they felt like a fish out of water so they there were not a lot of people that he was really uh connected to at first but i mean eventually you know she really gets the ball rolling they're forming these uh allies like virgo uh i'm trying to think who else i really wasn't i I wasn't, like, too tuned in to the Villains' Tribal. I was more tuned in on the Heroes' side, because the big thing that happened here was, at the Villains' Tribal, there was a six-person alliance formed between all of the old-school villain players. Their idea was to stick together. They were like, guys, we're going to steamroll the whole pre-merge. Let's pick a vote here. And then it flip-flops between Evie and Steven, and I think, like, Tiff for a little bit. Like they just cannot decide like who goes home, but eventually their target falls on Evie and Evie goes home and Everyone else on the tribe is left out of

 Drew tribal, I honestly, I have no thoughts other than like, I'm not surprised. The vote switched like six different times. At first it was Baz, and then it was, I forget who it was after Baz. I think it was from Baz to Neptune. I think like later on Saturn for a little bit, and then it bounces on Drew, or it was on Vinny for a bit too. Like, it really was hectic. There was always someone vouching for someone else. And similar to the Evie tribal, half the tribe was left out. And I think we can sort of expect to see more votes like this. We can sort of expect to see those, like, division kind of votes. Because there are some big tribes this season, right? These tribals are not little, like, five, six, seven, eight, no, I said six, seven, fuck. These are 12-person tribals, for the most part. We had three back-to-back-to-back 12-person tribals. Even now, we have an 11-person tribal, right? These are big voting groups. You have to consider 10 or 11 other fucking connections when you cast your vote. And it's leading to some of the craziest tribals that I've ever seen in the earliest parts of the game. and I'm like wow if it's this good here either it's gonna really like fizzle out and it's gonna be a boring ass season like way later down the line or and this is what I'm more inclined to believe is that the momentum is just gonna keep going the momentum won't stop and these players are here to play there's a cash prize on the line legacies are at stake okay if I'm them I'm going Full throttle. Every tribal.