Bad gameplay is not the same thing as a bad edit

After the second episode, I’ve seen several people here talk about how Aubry is set up to be a goat or to lose the war against Genevieve because of how we’ve seen her being clueless and on the outs etc.

But I think all of y’all are missing the point. Bad gameplay does not equate to a bad edit. If a player simply isn’t playing well at the start, the editors can’t just magically concoct footage of them being some well-connected and thriving player if such footage didn’t exist to begin with. My take is that Aubry is likely a far more important character to the season than most of y’all think, and will very likely win the war against Genevieve. I don’t think she will win the season with her terrible premiere but I don’t think she is being set up as a FTC goat either.

One strange thing I’ve noticed about the Vatu tribe dynamics is that while we know about the core 5 + Rizo alliance, we don’t get any explicit confessionals providing direct negative SPV towards Aubry. The editors could have VERY easily made Aubry super undermined and clowned if they wanted to, but they went as far as to give her a KR flashback randomly and dedicating a whole failed idol bag search for her. Look at Chrissy’s and Angelina’s edits for examples of how the show could really,clown someone real bad if they wanted to. Heck, she was even shielded during the work ethic segment and was the only one of the three Vatu minority members not named by Q. Also, them putting a failed bag idol search BEFORE Aubry receives the idol felt like they were trying to make Aubry’s idol scene more emotional by showing her beating the odds of her entire tribe ganging up against her.

Also, I can’t help but notice the idol scene fro Aubry contained extremely positive soaring music that makes it clear they want us to root for Aubry in some capacity. Again, I can’t see them doing this for someone we are supposed to mock or not expect much of. Based on what we’ve seen so far I fully expect Aubry to have a strong underdog journey arc that culminates in her taking out Gen and linking up with Christian at the merge (and potentially feed into Christian’s winning storyline thereafter).