Shaun

**Shaun** was a contestant of SurviVARs: Wildemount.

## **Profile**

**Discord:** Yakkowharner

**Gender:** he/him

**Timezone:** PST

Shaun was a great presence for the first half of this game, and an excellent antagonist for as long as he was around. At the start, it looked like the Parent Trap was ruling the roost on Lionette, so Shaun was on the outs alongside Ano and Deadpool. Thankfully for him, Famine drew the Donjon card and chose Shaun as her forced swap, relocating Shaun to the Brenatto tribe. This was great for Shaun, as Dongoosh and Roman both made an effort to integrate him into their alliance. Shaun crushed Survivor Um Actually and helped lead his tribe to a win, keeping him safe until the first swap. When Shaun was chosen to draw a card, he drew a cursed coin that had a 50/50 chance of removing his vote. At the first Tribal Council of the swap, Shaun managed to keep his vote safe from the coin only to lose it to Sparky’s skull card. Shaun became a bystander to this wild Tribal Council, and this kept him safe since the four players with votes were only targeting each other thanks to tiebreaker strategies. Shaun laid low, and seemed to be building a lot of relationships with his tribemates while simultaneously waiting for his chance to do something schemey and plotty. Shaun continued to obliterate the Cannonfire challenge as easily as he crushed Survivor Um Actually, leading to a victory for Tealeaf. He worked with OG Brenatto to secure a deck draw for Roman, showcasing his place in a majority alliance. Unbeknownst to him, since Roman has him as #1 on her trust rankings, this meant that she would have to vote for him at her next Tribal Council.

When they swapped for a second time, Shaun and Lars swapped with Orange and Jake, which definitely didn’t look good for Shaun. Lavinia was a clear target here, so Shaun survived long enough to make the social inroads he needed. The cursed coin ate his vote here, but it didn’t affect the boot. During the double tribal, Lars was less active than Shaun and hadn’t made as much social progress, so Lars was chosen as the target while Sindira was immune. Lars tried to create some bad blood between Shaun and Dongoosh, but they were smart enough to see through it. Safe Shaun had survived to the merge, and it was time for Sneaky Shaun to come out. This was the point in the game when it became very transparent that Shaun had been playing all sides.

This had helped him to survive the pre-merge, but now it put a target on his back. Sindira was an easy target at the first vote, even though most players were willing to vote for Shaun. The numbers were easily there for a Shaun blindside, but people didn’t want to rock the boat. He copped one vote from Roman (which her card had forced), but he survived. Once Sindira was gone, though, there was nothing he could do. He tried to bid on an advantage in the auction, but ended up with nothing. In what is perhaps his most iconic moment, Shaun decided to construct a spreadsheet of auction paranoia, precisely tracking everyone’s bids to see who ended up with what. This cemented his image as a sneaky little bugger, and all but sealed his fate. Roman and Flower leaked that he was the target, which allowed him to play his SITD, but all this did was cost him his vote and send him home in a truly unanimous fashion. Shaun spent this game fantasizing about the villainy he would be able to enact against his fellow players, earning him a nomination for Villain of the season despite not having quite enough power to pull off any of these plans. Shaun was a huge character, and a really fun presence in the season. He was conniving in the most entertaining ways, and had a ton of influence as a force for chaos, forcing the other players to work around him. It was a blast hosting Shaun, and I’m very grateful that he was a part of this season.

### **Nominations**

**Villain**

Shaun was a lot of fun this season. It seemed like every single round, Shaun was strategizing in his confessionals about who he wanted to blindside, why he wanted to flip on them, and how he was going to try to pull it off. Did it ever work? No. Did he even try to push these plans very often? Not really. But his confessionals were so amazingly evil and conniving that we have to recognize it. Unfortunately for Shaun, a lot of people were picking up on this, and it wound up leaving him on the bottom of trust rankings and made him an easy boot after Sindira went. I would’ve loved to see Shaun go further, and hopefully find an opportunity to pull off the big blindside he always dreamed of. His villainy may have been more theoretical than practical, but it still deserves props for how committed he was to playing this game hard.