Tai Erato

***Tai*** was a castaway on Essential Survivor: Canary Islands. He later returned for Essential Survivor: All Stars 2

## Canary Islands

Tai is a person who loves to look on the bright side of people and situations, and her high morale was a major aid to her own well-being and gameplay. When marooned, she went to quick work with social bonds, most notably aligning herself on day one with Vince, Greenberg, and Claire, while also working on decent standalone relationships with Jon and previous ORG rival Jack. She also searched for the hidden immunity idol and concluded by the end of the third day that unless someone snagged the advantage before her, an idol was not hidden at Tenerife. By Brenden’s vote off, she was positioned extremely well within her tribe, and called Vince her number one ally.

By the next episode, her social capital was even better, as she had stronger bonds with Vince and Greenberg, and was becoming increasingly comfortable with Chelsea, Jack, and Jon. In fact, she was exchanging idol information with Jack, and even theorized with him that the season could yield no twists. So, when her tribe lost the second challenge, she felt conflicted on what to do - at first. Claire gave her word about a 5-person alliance created by Jon without her and Jack, and not only did this increase her trust with Jack, but she had a very easy target in Jon, and she voted with the rest of Tenerife to kick him off the tribe.

With another easy vote off, Tai started becoming unsure about who to vote off if the tribe goes to future tribal councils, but felt that Claire would be next, as she was more comfortable with Chelsea and Jack. This fear would become reality, as a trip to the summit (which was not utilized at all for any participating castaways) caused Tai to sit out of the challenge, and indirectly affected the tribe to losing a third challenge. She arrived at camp scrambling on who to vote for elimination, and at first decided between Jack and Chelsea, but Chelsea informed her of a potential Vince blindside with all the women of Tenerife and Jack. Tai and Chelsea leaked this information to Greenberg and Vince, and the tribe once again voted off unanimously, with this casualty being Claire.

Now, Tai is feeling a bit down about how the game will be at merge but decided to focus on winning the fourth challenge instead. They did not win the challenge. As a result, valuable ally Jack was eliminated for being at the bottom of the tribe’s social ladder. As of now, she felt secure bonds with everyone on her tribe, especially Vince and Chelsea.

After their first challenge win, Tai began to think ahead to the merge and was placing herself in a positive mindset of Tenerife having nothing to lose. She wished to continue this mindset come the next hopeful challenge win. Unfortunately, Tenerife lost this fifth challenge and caused her to cry, buy some Dairy Queen, and cry some more. She felt awful that she needed to vote out a 5th member, but begrudgingly accepted that Greenberg needed to leave for her game and to sustain her personal connections with Vince and Chelsea. Even after the vote, she still stayed positive by thinking about being proud for surviving five tribal council visits.

After the merge had finally arrived, Tai went to immediate work with social bonds like she had done at Tenerife, but this time began to play up sympathy. She enjoyed her talks with Jessica and Jonathan but felt that everyone else was dry. Despite this, she was approached by Phillip to have himself, Vince, Tai, and Chelsea in an alliance. She accepted the offer, and although she appreciated that Phillip reached out to the three of them, she knew immediately that Phillip simply wanted them as extra votes and shields. She decided to not push any strategic agendas this round simply because it was unrealistic to do so coming from such a small tribe. Luckily, the former La Gomera decided to spare the former Tenerife and vote off Phillip, and she as well as Vince and Chelsea voted with them.

At final 9, she hit a wall with her strategy; her thought process was that if she was not strategic enough, she would have little gameplay to talk about, but if she did too much, she would be voted off very quickly. Her urge for strategy would never be satisfied, as after Jonathan won immunity, the former La Gomera all ghosted her except for Jonathan, in which he lied constantly to Tai about the next vote off. Tai was frustrated, but she still had more respect for Jonathan for lying compared to everyone else not saying a word to her.

The remaining La Gomera were dead set on voting off a former Tenerife. They decided to spare Vince due to his birthday being the day before tribal, so the former La Gomera decided to riskily split their votes on Tai and Chelsea (3 votes each). During the revote, Jabari, Tai, and Vince got in a big argument about the vote, and Tai was voted out for being a stronger social threat than Chelsea. On her way out, she told the former La Gomera members to work on their jury management, as she stated that she only had respect for one of them.

At the Final Tribal Council, Tai voted for Jonathan to win due to having a more visible social game than Amber.

## All Stars 2 Voting History

Votes
 This Is A Blessing And A Curse
 Voted Out, Day 17

## Trivia

- Tai’s mangatar is the first in the Essential Franchise to have multi-colored hair, made via using Adobe Photoshop (use gradients if you want to try it yourself).