thanks PURCHASE!

[Namira]

So it went something like this.

You made yourself useful. But not in the henchman kinda way, not trailing 'round on someone else's coattails, because what happened there was that eventually they turned on you or you were collateral damage. Naw, gotta think bigger than that, for it to be a plan and not just, y'know, doin' what people did in SOTF anyway.

You made yourself useful, on the big scale. So you provided a resource or a service. Or resource and service. Depended some on the arena, but if there was a good spot to secure, especially one that had good amounts of supply, then you were cooking with gas. You could be a safe haven, a place to come to when things got too hot, a place to restock and resupply and not fuckin' die. That was worthwhile. And, if you were smart about who you let into the place, didn't just fling the doors open to players and psychopaths, you built up trust. Trust was a currency all its own, in TV.

Cause set yourself aside like that, and maybe, just maybe, if things went real well, your customers stopped thinking of you like contestants and started thinking of you like you were outside the game. A place to return to, a place that wasn't gonna hold you to the rules that everyone else was following. It was a trick, yeah, but so what? People fell for dumber tricks in SOTF all the time. And, the longer it all held up, the later things went, the bigger your chances got to storm through to the end when the shoe finally dropped.

Hey, she never said anything about it being a fair plan.

'course it didn't work alone. Needed a couple people. Modern TV, ideally it was at least one teammate, but prolly didn't want to make it an all-exclusive thing because that would raise eyebrows, and if you had say, three black team and one blue team, the blue team could get real nervy, and that was when things broke bad. Anyhow, guards, staff, and if you really hit money on reliable people, scavengers. The fewer people you had, the more vulnerable you were, and the less buy-in. Folks wouldn't wanna stick around if the place was less established, and outside eyes would get greedy if it looked like they could knock it over in a fight.

Still, get the right people and the right location, and you were halfway there. The rest, that was building up your credit with the field. Start trading early. Trade in safety and shelter and information, and let them spread the word. Let them bring other people back. The more that knew, the more effective, cause if they used your place once, they'd use it again, when they were hurting and afraid, and every time, the trust climbed higher. Fuck, if you got real, real lucky, someone you traded with was working on an escape, and they remembered who'd supplied their way out.

There were risks, everything had risks, but Stokes reckoned that she had at least some of it worked out. Like... okay, so you could go 'oh hey, the execs don't like people just holing up forever, they'll DZ the safehouse for sure'.

Would they, though?

The producers DZed strongholds cause they were boring, not cause they had something against groups having bases. People just camping out forever didn't make for good TV. What did make for good TV was innovation, folks doing something different. Well, had anyone ever seen someone running a trading post before? No? Then that was pretty damn unique, wasn't it? Why DZ someplace that was giving a bunch of brand new content? You'd cop a bunch of flak from the audience for killing off the idea. Betting on what the execs would do was always a gamble, but you could calculate.

So, yeah. Out there idea, just had to weigh up if it was really more out there than gunning everyone down from the start, or tagging along with the team, or hoping you could figure out the collars. There'd been another sixty-six seasons and not all that many survivors. Worth trying out something different, right?

Stokes hovered on the post button, R/SOTFstratslight
..
nah. She had other stuff to do than check back on what the internet thought of her random plan. New episode to edit.