Schmutz

Schmutz is a contestant on Visionary Survivor: Italy, Visionary Survivor: Clash of Casts, and Visionary Survivor: All-Stars.

## Italy Summary

The Queen of Conversation is a name that would be fitting for Schmutz as she heavily relied on her bright personality and social skills to carry her through the game. She started the game off rather slow with a couple of alliances but no strong connections to anyone except Luke who was quickly voted off at the first Versace tribal council. Luke's elimination forced Schmutz to regroup and start playing the social game that she later became known for. In need of a new main ally, she started talking with Sasha. The two quickly formed a rather inseparable bond that was dormant throughout pre-merge, but really came to life strategically after the merge.

Knowing that they were on the outs of the original Versace tribe, the two started communicating with Jack and Joel after the final Valentino evacuations. With a double tribal council looming, the four came up with a plan to take out Bandit. Little did Schmutz and Sasha know, the second part of Jack's plan consisted of taking Schmutz out in the same tribal council. Fortunately, Sasha caught wind of this and urged Schmutz to play her idol. When Schmutz played her idol and Sasha threw a wild vote at Brandon, they were able to take out their two main targets on old Valentino.

Coming off of a very successful tribal council with two amazing plays, the power duo became very popular names around camp, Schmutz' name in particular. With no idol left in her pocket, Schmutz was vulnerable and Jack took advantage of it while he could. At the final six it was clear that there were two dynamic duos, Sasha and Schmutz and Jack and Joel. Then there were the two swing votes of Chris and Ethan who became somewhat of a duo in the process.

At the final six tribal council, with Ethan immune, it looked like all four names included in a power duo were out in the open. Weirdly enough, Chris and Ethan decided to split their votes, causing a tie between Jack and Schmutz. As a result of Chris and Ethan's indecision, Schmutz was eliminated by wheel.

## Clash of Casts Summary

As one of the most popular season two castaways and the only female in the season five cast, everyone watching had high expectations and hopes for Schmutz. With a strong social presence as the backbone of her gameplay, Schmutz had an easy time coasting through the earlier stages of the game. Before the swap, the season two alumni tribe, Manjusri, was ironically the most social and had the best communication out of all four starting tribes. Which led to them finishing first and second in both pre-swap challenges.

After the tribes swapped, Schmutz was moved to the new Ksitigarbha with Luke, while Bandit, Brett, and Jack were all remained on the Manjusri tribe. Because of their numbers over Booty, CK, Darryl, and Monkey, it was assumed that the three season four alumni would team up with Schmutz and Luke to form a slight majority. Strangely enough, that was only somewhat the case. Schmutz and Luke did team up with Eddie and Sean, but they left Otter out of the loop. While the alliance was kept under wraps for one vote, it didn’t prove to mean much during Booty’s elimination and was later exposed when CK and Dawit started fighting as a result of the Booty elimination.

After her alliance was exposed and she was called out by CK, Schmutz did her best to cover up her name and push the heat onto others. She immediately threw Luke under the bus to numerous tribemates in fear that the vote had become between herself and Luke. What she didn’t know was that people were really questioning whether or not to vote for CK or herself, since Dawit was eliminated. At tribal council she voted for Luke, not knowing that CK had become the main target. When CK was eliminated, Schmutz’ rogue vote on Luke started a feud between the two of them that would last a couple weeks.

Thankfully for Schmutz, the new Ksitigarbha tribe was able to avoid tribal council up until the merge after CK’s blow up. In the first round of the merge the vote was between Dawit and Kiibo, who had both targeted each other behind each other’s back since the merge started. While their beef over Darryl did grant Schmutz safety for one vote, Luke was far from content with keeping her in the game for much longer. When she needed it most, she was able to win the final nine immunity challenge and secure her safety.

When Schmutz won immunity, Luke was forced to change targets. Knowing that he was the biggest target since Schmutz was immune, he started campaigning for Jethro to get eliminated due to him obviously having connections to every side of the tribe no matter how lines were drawn. But Schmutz was still adamant about eliminating Luke since she knew he was gonna strike the first chance he got. In order to secure the numbers she needed, she teamed up with the season four alumni. This is where her game started to sink.

Recognizing that there were four season four alumni left at the final nine, Dawit, Luke, Brett, and Monkey were all in agreement that their numbers needed to be cut down, whether they were working with each other or not. When they broke out a few advantages to ensure Jethro would be eliminated, Schmutz and the season four alumni were blindsided. With new dynamics formed that placed Luke at, or at least near, the top of the tribe, Schmutz was in trouble.

In an attempt to save her game, she reassured her alliance with Eddie and Sean. Immediately after affirming her allegiance to the two of them, she sold them both out to Dawit. Dawit used the info she gave him and the fact that she sold them out as a way to get Eddie and Sean to flip on her. Schmutz’ attempt to claim a position within the majority resulted in a unanimous elimination.

## All-Stars Summary

Schmutz is someone who will always be loved for her loving and caring personality outside of the game, but for whatever reason, inside of the game she never seems to be a very popular castaway.

At the start of the season, Schmutz was placed onto the Legacy tribe. While her social game wasn’t terrible, it didn’t seem like she was doing too much to really get involved with her tribemates. But that didn’t matter too much, as she wasn’t a clear target. And even if she was, her tribe was never sent to tribal council so she was never in any real danger of being eliminated. After the tribe swap, the challenge prowess continued for Schmutz’s tribe as the new Legend tribe earned immunity at the first two post-swap challenges. But after placing in the bottom two of the last pre-merge challenge that sent two tribes to a joint tribal council, Schmutz got into some risky business.

After feeling a solid connection with Derek, she told him that she was willing to flip to help the new Legacy tribe blindside Dawit or Kaden. Since the new Legend tribe outnumbered the new Legacy tribe 5 to 4, Schmutz flipping was all they really needed for a majority. But in an attempt to gain some trust with Dawit and Kaden, Derek told them about Schmutz and they created a new plan to blindside her. While things were flowing smoothly for them for a majority of the voting period, Robby decided to inform Rochelle of the plan, which included telling her that Schmutz tried to flip to their side. Rochelle didn’t like this, and immediately confronted Schmutz about her trying to flip, which then created a frenzy of people scrambling to figure out a new plan. At the last minute Kaden was able to reunite all of the new Legend tribe members to blindside Robby in a close 5-4 vote determined by tribal lines. Ironically, him doing this saved the one castaway who had tried to blindside him. The blindside against Robby essentially gave Schmutz another chance.

At the merge, Schmutz became a much more lowkey player. She was really starting to position herself somewhat well considering all the heat she had just received at the joint tribal. She had been reunited with her original Legacy tribe members, but also had some ties to the minority which gave her a decent amount of options. But for the time being, Schmutz laid low and was content with throwing out a few rogue votes at the first handful of merge tribal councils in order to protect herself from idols. Throughout the first few tribal councils, that ended up being rather controversial, Schmutz found herself avoiding most of the drama going on.

At the final nine, Schmutz started becoming more directly involved with the votes. She had been informed by her alliance that Dawit was the target, so naturally, she cast her vote for Dawit. But in actuality, her alliance had left her out of the vote, which she discovered when the votes tied 4-4, Dawit and Kaden. Dawit was initially eliminated, which left Schmutz in an okay position. But after it was revealed that Derek and Kaden had broken a rule by sharing parchments, their votes were nullified and Kaden was eliminated. Having just voted in a two person majority, it seemed as though Schmutz’ days were numbered. Fortunately, Otter had made himself a bigger target, so he was eliminated first.

At the final seven Schmutz won retrospectively turned out to be a rather big immunity. It was likely that Dawit would’ve gone home anyway, but her winning really sealed the deal. With another big player now out of the game, it became a little more promising that Schmutz might reach the end of the game, despite still being a bit of an underdog as far as alliances went. Fortunately for Schmutz, when she really needed it most she pulled out another immunity win at the final six. Unfortunately, it resulted in the elimination of Derek, who felt like the only legitimate ally Schmutz had left compared to the rest of the castaways. So after her immunity streak ended at the final five, her time came to an end when she was unanimously voted off by the core Legacy alliance.

## Return Interviews

* All-Stars

**Coming into your second season, which area do you think you can improve in most between social play, physical play, and strategic play? How do you plan on improving?**
I feel like I can improve on my social play. I plan on improving by making key personal bonds and being more vivid when chatting with others, as I’ve observed that I was mostly laconic and spoke mostly strategy to the people I wasn’t too close to, which may have turned some like Ethan away from working with me in the near future. I’ll also try not to sound like a beggar when my head is on the line, and use my refined persuasion abilities, with the personal bonds I made earlier, to be able to sway the votes and get my footing back into the game. I won’t ever give up, and that’s on period. Hopefully I can secure a ride or die that puts their 100% into me like last time too.
**What was the biggest mistake you made when playing in your first season? How did you learn from it?**
My biggest mistake was being too trusting and not keeping my options open. I knew when I was targeted at least. I learned from it by realizing that you cannot trust anyone in ORGs, meaning I come into ORGs without loyalty nowadays, though I still try to find people I can trust and work with long term and short term, to better my own game.
**Have you spectated any seasons besides the one you competed on? Have any other castaways stood out to you?**
I’ve spectated all seasons of Visionary, keeping track of confessionals and frequently giving out my opinions in the spectator lounge. To say this is one of my favorite ORGs to spectate is an understatement, now to get to the next part.
Castaways that stood out to me for each season:
Season 1: I feel like Rachel stood out to me the most, as she is a loyal player by heart and someone who is strong in challenges as well, just like me. They also had great voting parchments too, and I felt very sad to see them go. Another player that stood out to me was Shawn, because I liked how interesting and eclectic his gameplay was, that made him stand out from the rest.
Season 3: Quite a few stood out to me in many different ways, as I felt invested more than ever before, especially how intense the F4 vote was and the various storylines throughout, that, and a very active cast helped its case. Onto the players!
I know this is an unusual one, but Manifest stood out to me, as I could relate to his struggle of joining a new community and being on the outs of it, leading to his early departure, something I experienced when I first started playing ORGs, and I honestly felt bad as his tribe had established pregame connections that he was out of, it felt even worse seeing them idoled out early, as they had potential to go far and the correct strategies to do so, they also had fun confessionals, at least he redeemed himself from this by winning a BB ORG.
On a different note, Serena also stood out to me in quite a few ways, as I learned something from their game, is to never try to be aggressive with who you’re targeting, and to try not to use the metagame, as someone victim to it a fair few times, something she invoked with targeting Blair, it taught me that sometimes laying low and developing a target naturally could lead to a better outcome than the aggressive approach she took, yet on a more positive note, I liked how they effectively utilized pregame connections to gauge her options on who to work with, which lead to her being placed in a better position on swap Bennu as a result, and had players showing strong loyalty towards them, something I aspire for in ORGs as well.
S4: For me, Jethro stood out by far, as he brought a raw personality to the game and was one of the few to do DM screencaps, which was great to watch. I felt his strategical game was top notch, as he integrated himself into great positioning, and rebounded easily from people he was close to leaving early, though I felt kind of bad for him when his social became lacking, as he had the right ideas completely, but was executed wrong or not much was factored into them, which I can relate to as well, since when planning, you have to consider many scenarios and be able to have the right people and social game to facilitate with, and in that case, his game faltered a bit I feel, since I can relate to his flaw of lacking a bit socially as well, which is why I make sure to cover all the ground I could bonds wise and whatnot.
I also felt like Rey stood out as well, he played a near flawless game I feel, and had a genuine chance of making it to FTC had Rochelle not won a clutch immunity. I could relate to him laying out his confessionals in full detail, something I’ve been doing recently as well, and his struggle of being a bit too forward with game talk, which was noticed by a few, and is why I’d like to focus a bit more on personal bonds this season.
**How has Visionary Survivor impacted you?**
It impacted me because it was the first successful fusing of the ORG community and the TD camps community I have ever seen, and the attentive hosting and dedicated only drew my attention further to spectating it, when I got the priority cast ticket, I was simply overjoyed, so onto how my season impacted me, it impacted me because I made great friends like Luke, Chris, and Sasha, even if I had to lose one of them to move on in the game, and had unforgettable experiences bonding with others, and from that point on, I got to see the ORG grow into what it is today, an uniquely connected and diverse one that can still stick to its roots, which is an aspect I really like about it too, because it was interesting seeing folks I never knew before or knew outside of the community get casted and prove themselves as true visionaries within the community, regardless of how the results end up, like Bee, someone new to the scene, winning S4.
**In what ways do you hope to refine your legacy with this second chance you’ve been given? What do you hope to gain from competing again?**
I hope to refine my legacy by showing how much I’ve improved as a player since I last played in S2, and that this time, having gained more experience in Survivor ORGs, I can have luck on my side I hope.

I hope I can be able to make new friends that I can cherish and put my loyalty into for future games, as I started playing in more ORGs after this, I soon realized the importance of making friends for the long term, and having a good social too, something I partially succeeded at in S2, they can help you out in so many ways, and I'm genuine and loyal to my friends always, I also hope to gain some new insight into competitors I may have played with before in prior camps/ORGs, see how I can use it to my advantage in being their friend, or having them as a target.
**Clearly you did something right last time you played otherwise you wouldn’t have been invited back. So this season, are you looking to play more of the same way or change up your play style?**
I’m looking to play a more loyal and less cutthroat game like I did in S5, and to try and look at the bigger picture more so I can factor it into my plans for the endgame. I also hope to have better luck on my side too.
**What did you learn from your last season that will help you do better this time around?**
I learned to chill out more, think things through, look at the bigger picture, and try not to overanalyze the situation at hand.
**With 18 high caliber players returning, who are you expecting to see return? Who are you most and least excited to see again?**
I’m unsure who I will see return, but I’m most excited to see Derek if possible, as I feel like I have the best chance of working with him, least excited to see, well, no one else really. :))
**How confident are you this time around? Do you think you have what it takes to beat the best of the best?**
I’m very confident in my chances here, I won’t go down without a fight, so I feel like I have what it takes to be the best out of the best, and show that my prior performances weren’t a fluke either.
**What are you looking forward to most this season? What are you looking to accomplish this time around?**