(i wrote this on the day needle got eliminated from tpot. please excuse my probably shoddy writing; its a chore to keep my tears away from the keyboard)
What happens to a contestant after they get eliminated?
That's a question the people of the Battle for Dream Island thought about perhaps a *bit* too late, immediately after they signed up for a competition they didn't know the first thing about, after they've sold their life without even knowing it. It didn't even register for them until a team lost for the first time, and it was announced that one of them was getting the boot.
In a reasonable world, in a rational world, in a logical world, anyone that's been eliminated should be allowed to just... walk away. Go home. Move on with their life feeling a bit sad and disheartened because *they* didn't get to win the eponymous island. And that's the crucial thing, no? You get eliminated, you're no longer Battling for Dream Island. It's as simple as that. It *should* be as simple as that. But when the Announcer first announced that the eliminated would be treated with TLC, or when Flower was sent away under suspicious circumstances, it became rather evident that things weren't gonna be *that* easy.
Fortunately for them, however, the answer turned out to be rather simple. Those that had the gall to anger the horde of unseen voters would be... thrown into a metal box. Or a metal box *inside* a metal box. Or a Weak, Trembling Fortress. Why? Uh... There's several chances to rejoin scattered throughout the competition, and you *definitely* don't want to miss out on those, right?
No matter how one thought about it, even if it was just for 2.763 seconds, there really wasn't much of a way to justify it. It was weird. It was *awful*. Not only did you get the shame of not winning the Battle for Dream Island, you also got packed like sardines for the foreseeable future. They couldn't have invested in a more spacious prison, or something?
But also, it was *somewhat* reassuring, in some twisted way. They were talking about a speaker box with unknown purposes and motives, that fell out of the sky one day and orchestrated this grand competition out of nowhere. He could've had the eliminated go through *anything* he wished, and yet he chose a punishment that was... rather tame in comparison. Being stuck in the Tiny Loser Chamber was no way of living, of course, but at the very least there was the reassurance that the outside world was just a few inches of steel away. And for those still in the running that have lost their friends, they can rest easy knowing that they're safe and sound, by *some* definition.
Then the algebralians arrived.
Just as the living objects had *finally* moved on from that weird chapter of their life, yet more alien lifeforms descended from the heavens to make them participate in long, drawn-out battles for some strange prize they've never heard of before. It was already weird when the Announcer did it, but now the number Four was making them do it as well? And the number Two too?
Some (ie. Golf Ball) would be able to connect the dots and follow the trend. They all followed the formulate to a T, and so they *had* to be related somehow. As such, they can expect most of the major mechanics, up to and including eliminations, to follow much the same pattern. Sure, the numerals did it in a strange, unnerving way; they just *absorb* the eliminated onto themselves, making them disappear without a trace. But if they were playing by the same rules, this *shouldn't* be cause for alarm, right?
Right?
But with that change, what little trust the contestants had with these new hosts was strained even further. With the speaker boxes, they could follow the fate of those that got the boot: they get the most (or least) votes, the host announces this fact, then they're sent away to their new home using some physical, *visible* means. Again, the algebralians don't exactly do that; one moment they're there, and in the next they're gone.
