VaGina

[Gina Crews]

Ok, first...congratulations on getting to where you are. Brava! I'll quickly address my personal concerns for each of you. There's really no need to address what I say because this is moreso me informing you want I am looking for in your answers to everyone and not so much wanting you to sit and explain to me here and now.

	To be honest, I didn't see much of you in this game. You as an individual, I mean. From my perspective, you seemed to always be overshadowed by Spencer. Always on his wing and never in the cockpit. I'm not saying this is necessarily true in action. Only in perception. So I need you to try and show me how you stood out above and separate from Spencer. What made YOU special and more deserving than he. What you did in this game that was unique to you.
	First, I just want to say I have ZERO hard feelings with your betrayal to me. If I'm honest, the plan Ashley and I created together would've given you 5th place. So you betraying me DID benefit YOUR game...and I can respect that. So don't worry on that front and hold your head high on that decision. Now, I do have concerns in other aspects...which oddly enough, Erica already addressed. You were WAY too focused on people's past games and personal connections. So much so it blinded you in some regards and gave somewhat insulting excuses to your actions.
	I don't really have any critiques for you and your game. You played strong, smart and were never anything but kind and respectful with me. It's refreshing to see someone able to do well and not be a dick in the process. So from MY viewpoint...just don't fuck it up with a shitty finale performance. xD

Okay, with all that being said...let's get to my actual question portion of this! Woo! ^.^

Activeness - Association - Communication - Honesty - Laziness - Luck - Manipulation - Numbers - Personality - Trust

I believe that these are the 10 biggest factors to any ORG. Whether it's the reason you win...or the reason you lose. In a positive way...or a negative one. At least one of these is ALWAYS attached. I now want each of you to do 2 things for me. First, list all Jurors and tell me which of those 10 factors sent them home...and why it did so. Secondly, I want each of you to give me an example of how all 10 factors got you here in the finale.

[Spencer Bledsoe]

Hey Gina, thanks for the question!

NATALIE - Numbers. I think this one is a bit straightforward. The boys had been in a minority all game and this was the first occasion in which the boys had the numbers all game on El Nido, and unfortunately for Natalie, she fell on the wrong side of the numbers. Carter and I talked and we believed Natalie would work with us after the merge if we kept her, but with the annihilation the boys had suffered already, it just didn't make sense to send another guy home given the numbers.

KATHY - Manipulation. It's hard for me to comment on Kathy's vote since I wasn't on her tribe at the time and in fact I never got to be on a tribe with her. However, from what I have heard, a move was made, a tie was forced and consequently I put Kathy's vote down to Manipulation on the part of the rest of the Coron tribe.

RICHARD - Numbers/Trust - combination of the two. I would put Richard's vote down to this because the Numbers were against the guys and we knew a guy was going to go home one way or the other. However, I would also put it down to Trust because of the alliance that existed with Jon for the rest of the guys and we were able to push for Richard in order to keep the rest of us in tact, and hence Richard unfortunately just fell on the wrong side of both of those factors.

ALLIE - Communication/Manipulation - combination of the two. The reason I would put Allie down to Communication is that from what I heard at the time and just after the vote, a few of the girls hadn't really spoken as much with Allie as they had with each other, and hence that made her expendable to them. Also the Manipulation part is rather blatant with all that went down to get such an unlikely group of people together to vote Allie out at that round.

GINA - Numbers. Gina, your vote was similar to Natalie's in that it was only the second Tribal Council in which there were more guys than girls. You made a really good case as to why you should stay and we should vote for Rudy on that occasion, but it was a bit like the Natalie vote where Natalie wanted Carter and I to vote for Richard - on both of those occasions, I believed the girl in question would be willing to work with me, but it was such a rare opportunity for the boys to be in the majority and we just couldn't pass up the numbers.

ERICA - Association/Luck - combination of the two. I sent Erica to the special Alpha Tribal Council with Nadiya and Ashley because of the association between the three both in the sense that they were three of the strongest players and they also voted together with the boys to take Allie out. It way bad luck for Erica that she ended up being the only person eligible to be voted for beside a girl who had two idols - it's a pretty unconventional situation and it was the primary reason behind Erica's vote.

JEFRA - Association. I was going to say Personality because Jefra seemed to rub a few people the wrong way, but now I'm hearing there was a perceived Association between herself and myself that motivated the vote just as much. I will get into all that when I address the other jurors who asked those questions, but it seems as though that Association largely motivated the vote.

RUDY - Manipulation. As we know, Carter looked like he was going home that night, and he made arguably his best move of the game on that occasion by making that public pledge to Ashley, which manipulated her vote and basically turned the tide of that vote. It didn't look like Rudy was going home until then, hence the Manipulation sealed the deal.

ASHLEY - Trust. I played a large part in the Ashley vote since I forced the tie that swung the pendulum and gave Nadiya a shot at the tiebreaker. I put this down to Trust because I made a deal with Nadiya before I won Immunity that the Immunity winner would keep the other person safe, and I was always going to honour my word with that, and hence I forced the tie that led to Ashley's elimination.

Now as for how the ten factors that affected my game:

Activeness - I remained Active throughout the game. There was a perception that I might be inactive on the original tribes which had me at the bottom of the pecking order, but that was down to my time zone as much as anything else, and I battled through that to help my tribe as much as possible. Then throughout the endgame, I gave the challenges everything I had and that greatly helped me get where I am now.

Association - From what I'm hearing from other jurors is that there was a perceived Association between myself and some jurors and that could work against me today, but I will address them shortly. As for how Association actually helped me, I think Carter and I both did a good job dissociating ourselves from one another at those two critical votes - the Coach vote and the Richard vote - in order to get the female majority to go after targets other than ourselves. So I think Dissociation helped me as much as Association in this game.

Communication - Communication is of paramount importance in a social game. Obviously I have the added burden of being in a time zone which complicates Communication for me, but I was online on AIM and available through PM to Communicate as much as humanly possible. I was always available to chat, and I spoke with every person that I was ever on a tribe with (minus Ethan lol) to varying extents and I believe that helped my game and helped me build connections.

Honesty - It's very difficult to play this game and always remain honest. However, I was never a compulsive liar lmao. I was pretty honest throughout the game - aside from having to turn against Coach and Richard at their votes to save myself and the rest of the guys, I was true to my word. I was as honest as possible with you at your vote, and I was perhaps too honest with Allie at her vote. I was also honest with Ashley at the most recent vote and told her I was strongly considering voting against her. Obviously it's difficult to remain fully honest in a game like this, but I feel like I did as much as could have been expected of me.

Laziness - Laziness helped me in the early game with the disappearance of Frosti which altered the tribe dynamics of Coron significantly and got me off of the bottom of the totem pole and into a majority alliance. I don't think I was ever Lazy myself when it came to challenges, although I certainly did very little when you made that incredible SOS image, lmao.

Luck - One could argue that there was an element of Luck in that Rudy, Carter and myself were the last three men standing, and that is true to some extent. Certainly if a different group of men were left, it could have been a lot more disorganised for us heading into the business end of the game. I also got lucky in that one challenge I won which we had to pick squares, because I picked a lot of squares that were not picked by anybody else, which gave me a lot of extra points.

Manipulation - My best act of Manipulation was the Alpha Challenge for sure. It really allowed for the game to significantly change and the game probably would have played out very differently without that round. There were also other instances of more subtle Manipulation, such as those Richard and Coach votes that I keep mentioning lol. I think I used Manipulation when I needed it to turn things in my favour and it allowed me to get to the end with my closest ally.

Numbers - Numbers are a big part of the game, and Numbers are something I seldom had, which made my battle an uphill struggle most of the time. I fought against the Numbers, but I also used the numbers when I had them at the El Nido round, and I created Numbers and tilted Numbers in my favour by winning the Alpha Challenge.

Personality - I tried to be as friendly as possible throughout the game. I talked with people about myself and things outside the game whenever I could, and I asked people about their lives and such when I chatted with them. Personality is so subjective and it's impossible to control what people think of you, but I was as respectful to people as I could be, and that's just who I am, so I think my Personality helped me build the bonds that I was able to build.

Trust - At the beginning of the game I placed a lot of trust in Jon because he told me that Penner was targeting me, and then that trust transferred into Carter after the swap, as we were both in the Jon group. I trusted Carter 100%, we talked about every vote and I was loyal to him all the way. I think I was a trustworthy ally to those who I gave my word to.

Thanks again Gina for your questions, and thanks for being part of this great adventure!

[Nadiya Anderson]

I'll have my responses for you and Allie up tomorrow afternoonishly, Gina.

[Carter Williams]

Hey Gina! I have about 30 minutes till class so I'm gonna do this quickly.

First off, I'm gonna address the Spencer overshadowing me thing. The way I see it, that's 0% true. Not once did Spencer tell me to do something, I made my own descisions based on instinct. In fact, since Spencer never logged on until like 10 PM, I sometimes had to catch him up on what had went down and who to vote for. That having been said, Spencer made his own descisions, it just happened that we saw eye to eye on everything, and never had to dispute over the descisions we made (until f4). I proposed the Rich vote, like I've said, and the Allie vote was something I had to do to stay alive. It was a very conveniant, having an ally with the same goals as me, because neither of us were, as you put it, a pilot. We both had our own planes, they just luckily had the same destination.

I'll start off with how I believe I've used each of these 10 factors.


Activeness: I was extremely active, even through my midterms I checked the boards multiple times a day and helped with every tribal challenge. My activeness helped me build the relationships that got me here, without them, I'd have been toast long ago.

Association: A lack of association to any alliance made me seem less threatening, I think (once there were only three boys left, that is). Not being associated to a majority alliance, for instance, was a good thing for me. It made me appear less threatening to everyone else. 

Communication: Similar to activeness, I tried to keep in communication with most people post merge (and pre merge) on a daily basis. If not, then people's trust for you fades away. This got me to where I am today, without a doubt.

Honesty: I've made it clear that that honesty is what I pride myself on in this game. I tried to stay as honest as possible, and always stay true to my word. Without a reputation like this, Ashley would never have trusted me at f5 and I'd have gone home then and there.

Laziness: Being lazy helped me seem like threatening, I guess. Though I have it my all in every challenge, I didn’t have it in me to post every minute for 6 hours like Spencer managed to do. I guess in a sense, that boils down to laziness. And that helped me seem less threatening to others, knowing that I wasn’t ever gonna be winning immunity and could be taken out in future rounds if need be.

Luck: I got extremely lucky that, by coincidence, the person I chose to go to F2 with was a massive challenge beast. Him winning every week made me only have to watch my own back and not have to worry about him (especially in the rounds where Nadiya and Rudy were doubting him after the Allie vote).

Manipulation: I really don't see myself as much of a master manipulator. I guess my best act of manipulation was convincing the girls to vote out a guy they thought I was closer to than I actually was (Richard), as I've explained in past questions.

Numbers: Numbers was something I just about never had in this game. I felt like I had the numbers at Coron, which was a good feeling, and at El Nido. Since then, they've been more of a hinderance than a help. 

Personality: I like to see myself as a fun and friend;y guy. If I was an asshole, I doubt I'd have made it into any alliance or gained anyone's trust. Being non-threatening and reasonable helped me socially a great deal.

Trust: Trust is something I find it hard to give to people in this game. Despite Rudy and I being in the same alliance, I was never able to trust him because of things other people were telling me about him behind his back. A lack of trust gave me the paranoid rep I had in this game, because no matter what people told me, I never felt safe. This was a good thing, because it made doubt things people said to me, which turned out to help at the Allie and Rudy votes. If I hadn't doubted Allie and yourself saying we were voting Erica that round, then I'd have never jumped on board for the Allie vote. I did, however, trust Spencer, which was great because it's always good to know you have a number on your side, no matter what.

OK I'M LATE FOR CLASS, I'll answer the second half later!

[Carter Williams]

Now for the juror part, I'm past the deadline soooo

Activeness - Association - Communication - Honesty - Laziness - Luck - Manipulation - Numbers - Personality - Trust


Natalie - A mix of numbers, luck, activeness and association. Pretty self explanatory. Association with the girls made her a target from the 3 boys. Numbers because she was in a 1v3 scenario. Luck because a twist sent her to El Nido but activeness because that's what made her Erica's choice, apparently.

Kathy - Not 100% sure on this one, because as I've said, I never met Kathy. I'd say communication (?) because something must've forced Nadiya to flip on an orginal TayTay for an original Coron. Could be activeness or laziness also, I wouldn't really know.


Richard - I'd say being too trusting was rich's downfall. After the Penner vote, he should never have trusted me, Rudy or Spencer again, and should've instead sided heavily with the women. Not doing so cost him him big time, cause we were never all that invested in an alliance afterwards.

Allie - I'm gonna throw this one down to luck, purely because you were on top of Erica's bootlist, so we had to switch our vote to you, there were no other choices. Obviously communication played a part in you being so high on that bootlist to begin with, but I'd still say luck played a big part.

Gina - I'm gonna say association and manipulation, at least for me. Mostly association, because I associated you with the movement to take me out at f9. But that's also a bit of manipulation, because I felt manipulated by you after you guys had told me we were voting Erica. That made me realize I couldn't trust you, Ashley or Allie that much ever again (although Ashley managed to gain back my trust way later).

Erica - I'll say luck, communication and association. Luck because you got screwed by the alpha twist. Communication because you went on that vacation and never got to form a real relationship with me or spencer and finally association, cause we associated you, Nadiya and Ashley together (and felt threatened because of your idols.

Jefra - I'm gonna say personality for this one. You were a bit stubborn about voting and you really wanted the votes your way. That's a part of your personality and that was why we felt like we had to vote you out, because you weren't a number for us and didn't want to be one.  

Rudy - A bit of luck but also a lot of trust. I've spoken about this in Erica's thread. Luck because you ended up being one of the only two people we (or at least I) thought we could vote for. But trust also, because I'd heard you were making deals behind me and Spencer's back, so there was a rupture in our alliance already.

Ashley - I never really pried into Spencer's reasoning for voting you out instead of Nadiya. He says it came down to trust, so I'm sure that's a big part. I guess the other thing I'll add is communication, because you always told me you and Spence never spoke, so that obviously led to him not feeling a need to bring you to f3. 

Thanks for the question Gina! 

[Nadiya Anderson]

First, I just want to say I have ZERO hard feelings with your betrayal to me. If I'm honest, the plan Ashley and I created together would've given you 5th place. So you betraying me DID benefit YOUR game...and I can respect that. So don't worry on that front and hold your head high on that decision. Now, I do have concerns in other aspects...which oddly enough, Erica already addressed. You were WAY too focused on people's past games and personal connections. So much so it blinded you in some regards and gave somewhat insulting excuses to your actions.

I think I've already explained this to death in my response to Erica and my personal conversations with you. It may have blinded me in some aspects, but I don't think I held to that nearly as much as I've been accused of. Other people in this finale benefited just as much, if not more than I did (Carter knowing Rudy, Spencer knowing whoever), and in some cases people knowing me made them more inclined to be threatened by me (Ashley) or to disapprove of my gameplay because they had higher expectations of me (Erica) or they derailed me by being such a terrible human being that I'd move heaven and earth to crush them (Jon).

Okay, with all that being said...let's get to my actual question portion of this! Woo! ^.^



Activeness - Association - Communication - Honesty - Laziness - Luck - Manipulation - Numbers - Personality - Trust



I believe that these are the 10 biggest factors to any ORG. Whether it's the reason you win...or the reason you lose. In a positive way...or a negative one. At least one of these is ALWAYS attached. I now want each of you to do 2 things for me. First, list all Jurors and tell me which of those 10 factors sent them home...and why it did so. Secondly, I want each of you to give me an example of how all 10 factors got you here in the finale.


Natalie - Laziness. She didn't complete the first Alpha challenge, and didn't really feel like being here. 

Kathy - Association. Rudy had better communication with me personally, and better communication with the other boys. Kathy lacked both of those factors. 

Richard - Manipulation. As I understand it (though this information comes from Ashley, so idk how reliable it is) you were the one who pushed for Richard to go, for whatever reason. I don't really understand what the underlying scheme was there, but obviously you had some reason for manipulating the votes to get him out. 

Allie - Trust. The whole Richard incident caused me to lose trust in the girls, and I knew I was at risk of getting idoled out if I stuck with the Carter vote, so I pushed for Allie to go instead. 

Gina - Partly manipulation (when you told me that Ashley told you something I told her privately, I immediately ran and sold that back to Ashley. That move pissed Ashley off and made her prioritize her alliance with me over her alliance with you) but mostly Luck. Ashley or I would have won the Alpha challenge if our computers hadn't both glitched (This is not an empty claim, my personal record in this exact challenge is better than Spencer's) and that's the only reason you got taken out when you did. Ashley and I both talked about putting up Spencer, Carter and Rudy, and then voting off Spencer if he wasn't and Carter if he was, and then voting off Jefra in the actual vote. If it hadn't been for that luck win, you'd have lasted at least a little while longer.

Erica - Personality, full stop. Erica is who she is, and that's why she left the way she did.

Jefra - Numbers. She didn't have them, and didn't seem willing to try and get them.

Rudy - Hard to say, but probably trust. I never know why Ashley does what she does, but on paper it looks like she probably screwed Rudy because Carter was reasonably trustworthy, and because she'd have kicked his ass at the finals. 

Ashley - Gonna say Trust. Ashley took a risk by screwing over Rudy, but by doing that she guaranteed that she'd be getting my vote if she didn't win immunity, and there was really no reason to ever expect that Spencer wasn't going to do that. She trusted the wrong people and made some wildly off-base assumptions about me and how I play without really having any evidence to back it up. If she hadn't screwed Rudy over, she'd have been in the finals, it's pretty much that simple. 

Now, how did those things help my game? 


Activeness - I dominated fire building every single time I was in it, and I put in a very good showing at the non-luck-based challenges.

Association - My association with Rudy, Erica, and other people helped me get myself into good positions and dictate a lot of what happened in the game.

Communication - It's hilarious to me that Carter and Spencer repeatedly trash my communication because I wasn't in group chat very often. I always knew how the votes were going and what was going down, because I had allies and feelers out everywhere to make sure that I always knew what was happening. The only time I wound up on the wrong side of a vote was when Ashley flipped the script - while I was in the middle of a night class and couldn't get on AIM to talk her out of it.

Honesty - I didn't have very much of this, if fake idols are any guide, but I was totally genuine with the people I trusted, and for the most part it worked out okay. If people didn't trust me, they would totally have sold me out as a fraud and I would have been gone at final five. 

Laziness - Most of the laziness came from other people, but I did totally blow off the SOS challenge because I couldn't have given less of a rip about winning it. I wanted Jon gone, and I wasn't going to lift a finger until he was out of here. 

Luck - Well, luck liked to jerk me around more than help me in this game, since it kept awarding immunity to players I wanted to vote off or made me lose tiebreakers because I wasn't there an hour earlier, but I guess you could say I had a decent habit of being in the right place at the right time. 

Manipulation - Me and my fake Coron and El Corontay idols. Say what you like, I got a crazy amount of mileage out of those babies. And (and this is something that I think people don't nearly give enough credit for), it's worth pointing out that those idols wouldn't have worked if I hadn't been playing a good social game. Spencer and Carter can whine about my lack of participation in group chat all they like, but even when Ashley decided to fuck me over, she didn't sell me out as a fake, and neither did Rudy to save himself. How's THAT for social game, fellas? 

Numbers - The girls having numbers was a huge part of why I got as far as I did. I tried to make sure that I had the numbers on my side, and my communication networks kept me in the majority right up until final five. 

Personality - Personality was a big part of why Ashley arbitrarily sided with me over her older allies, because she found me more entertaining until incest became funnier, or something. The Nadiya shtick definitely helped a lot of my interactions and made me a good deal less threatening to people, which is pretty key for me in a lot of games I play.

Trust
- I didn't have a great track record with this. Ashley backstabbed me, you had prior alliances, Erica left the game and gave away the idol I helped her find... really, the only person who I ever trusted and didn't get screwed by was Rudy (aaaaand I screwed up on that front, so yay me), so basically this game was all about Nadiya giving her trust to people and them laughing and walking off with it, but I guess that's just who I am. I think that my perceived trustworthiness affected Spencer's decision to force the tie with Ashley, but it's hard to say.  

[Gina Crews]

Carter Williams...I never told or asked you to vote Erica. o.O I'm not sure we ever spoke votes in this game even once.

Nadiya Anderson...I only copy/pasted that bit of chat because you were going crazy, accusing us of betraying you. You were telling Ashley lies about me. I called you out to calm you down and I explained all of this to Ashley. I do agree though, that whole thing was my downfall. Ashley freaked out over something so stupid. -.- Cost me the whole game.

[Gina Crews]

Thank you all for your answers! Nice work and you definitely made it harder for me in deciding who to vote.

[Nadiya Anderson]

Nov 14, 2014 11:32:32 GMT Gina Crews said:

Nadiya Anderson...I only copy/pasted that bit of chat because you were going crazy, accusing us of betraying you. You were telling Ashley lies about me. I called you out to calm you down and I explained all of this to Ashley. I do agree though, that whole thing was my downfall. Ashley freaked out over something so stupid. -.- Cost me the whole game.

Gina Crews... I'm definitely not implying that that was your fault, I absolutely overreacted that round. And, believe me, you're not the only one who's lost a game due to an irrational Ashley freakout. We should get T shirts.

[Gina Crews]

YES! T-Shirts!

[Nadiya Anderson]

Gina Crews allie