Mariana

**Mariana** (Test Failed#1850) is the Second Runner-Up of Season 6.

Starting fairly quietly on the Isasabai Tribe, Mariana’s fairly pleasant social game would find her well aligned with her tribe. She was firmly in the middle of multiple alliances with Cherry, but unlike him was playing a much more passive, social game and thus did not have a lot of strategic agency. This would be a theme for her game throughout the season, where despite being well aligned and well liked, she did not give other players the perception that she was making game moves. Despite this, Mariana was able to obtain an Extra Vote prior to swapping and let her allies in on the tea. At the swap, Mariana was luckily able to keep with her closest allies Cherry and Xcync the Rose Gang alliance. However, an ill fated plan and self vote would relegate Mariana to the bottom of this tribe when Cherry was surprisingly blindsided in a revote after accidentally self voting. It was also this round that Jazzy formed a very one sided hatred for Mariana, despite Mariana being the only person active and attempting to shift the vote off of Jazzy at the end of the round. Due to this, Mariana was lucky to be able to escape a potentially messy Tribal Council when Jumble quit the game, as Jazzy was dead set on convincing the two OG Dakai members to blindside her. At the merge, Mariana gained another trick up her sleeve when she quickly found the Isele Hidden Immunity Idol. Despite this, the OG Isasabai members would be faced with a potential pagonging and their failure to work as a cohesive unit saw Mariana unwilling to waste her idol on someone receiving a unanimous vote out. At the auction, Mariana was lucky enough yet again to buy herself another Extra Vote; it was then that Xcync approached her, fed up with the majority and they revealed their advantages to each other. Xcync was able to deduce that theyd be able to control multiple votes by themselves alone with these, which made this duo a deadly pair and quite confident in their abilities. For the rest of the merge game up until the Final 4, Mariana was fairly quiet and seemed to be doing as told by strategic powerhouse Xcync, not even contemplating flipping on him despite pleas from other players. However, after a chat with Ives at the Final 4, Mariana decided at the last minute to tie the vote and send Xcync to fire despite stating her intention was to stay in the game. In her words, this was the best way to show that she made decisions apart from Xcync. Additionally, Mariana potentially made the mistake of telling Ives she convinced her to flip as well as giving this same impression to Xcync. Whether true or not, this blunder made this seem like yet another passive thing that Mariana did that had no tangible strategic validity for herself alone. Xcync would go on to lose the firemaking challenge, all while confused at Mariana’s last minute decision to flip on him while he was sleeping. At the Final Tribal Council, Mariana’s opening and Q&A felt largely ignored by the Jury. They disliked her completely for various reasons, and felt she did nothing for herself in the game and that her speech was more a retelling of events rather than supplementing her moves. To make matters worse, she was not able to deflect a pointed question from Xcync that implied any moves they made were largely to his credit, which soured the Jury even further to her game. Despite this, she would receive a single vote from him in the end “because she doesn’t deserve last,” but would still end up placing as the Second Runner-Up in a 4-2-1 vote when she was unable to convince the Jury she made any moves of her own. She is remembered for her many confessionals about her own life and how the game affected her social skills, which charmed many of the viewers.