OTz Survivor: Final Tribal Council

[freakofnature]

Our two finalists: GoldDust Woman and Siphorous

Our jury:
Zorak
hart
Carn
Tangerine
Boomerang
Maulds
HK

Here's how this will work. Each finalist will have the opportunity to make an opening statement. Siphorous may go first and then GoldDust Woman.

After the opening statements each member of the jury will have the opportunity to ask each finalist one question. You can ask one question for both finalists or ask them different questions; it's up to you. We'll go in the order that you were voted out, starting with Zorak.

Siph, the floor is yours.

 

[Siphorous]

I joined Survivor initially after being invited by Zirc on my wall. I'd never watched much of Survivor - the most I've watched is the final three (I think) in the one in December where a guy that looked like a blonde beach dude ended up winning.

The reason I joined was to have some fun and enjoy some challenges. Initially, part of me thought "You're never gonna win this Siph, look at the competition" - that was when I did want to win. Still, I thought I'd come on board and try to the best I could before I was voted off.

Enter Goldust Woman. She approached me for an alliance very early on after I found myself in the Spartans and seemed like a nice enough person. Told me her real name, I even got to see a pic (wowzers). I thought to myself, she seems to be like me - similar sort of person and I'll go along with her plan of going far as possible "under her wing" as she put it.

However, my mindset started to change when I realised that the chaff was being separated from the wheat and people that I actually didn't want to see go or that I thought deserved to win far more than I were the ones being voted upon. That's around the time I started to see some of the backstabbing that was going on.

I thought to myself "Siph, this isn't you. You're not cut out to be a Survivor, you're too much of a softy at heart to be backstabbing - even if it is just a game". So that's when I tried to develop an exit strategy for myself once we were a merged tribe.

The exit strategy I settled on was purely formed by those I felt I had interacted with more than the others during the course of Survivor and overall on the forum. In some cases it wasn't very much but still more. Those that I mailed about this seemed ok with it - at the time.

I had wanted to see these in the final three and me voted off at that point - Boomie, HK and Goldust Woman.

Goldust Woman - because of an alliance and that I had agreed to have her back (as I felt for the most part, she had mine).

Boomie - who wouldn't want to see a hot teacher win? Boomie was the one I felt I'd interacted with least during the course of Survivor and on OTz.

HK - during Survivor and after the merge I talked to HK a lot and felt that she was an honest kinda person - deserving to win.

Ultimately of course, you the jury decides who wins but I thought that your choice should be a difficult one. e.g. a choice between two good people and any of those three deserved to win it.

However, the plan started to go wrong when votes didn't go the way I thought they might with my exit strategy. Frustrated and annoyed - I had this out to some extent with Goldust Woman and then voting seemed to come back on track. This would be I guess the "begrudging" that Goldust Woman mentioned in the jury thread.

Then the worst thing that could happen - happened. Goldust Woman won the last immunity challenge rather than HK.

I was so ticked off by this that I reacted the way I did and then threatened to quit if Goldust Woman didn't keep to the plan. At the time I didn't think of how it would affect you - the Jury's - game.

Then a pm made me realise that I shouldn't be so selfish as to deny the Jury their fun in the game should Goldust Woman choose me to be in the final and hence I backtracked on that decision in the Jury thread.

I'm just relating things as to how I saw and experienced them. Those who know me from the forum will know that I try to be as honest as I can and I seriously only wanted one of those three to win. Whom would win - would be your call.

If you lot vote for Goldust Woman - that's entirely your prerogative and she's played the Survivor game as I guess it is probably played on tv, with the dealings and shenangigans that go with it. A deserved winner in that respect.

I never wanted to be in this position but if by some miracle I get your vote - I know what I will do with the tokenz - and they won't be remaining with me.

I apologise for waffling and thank you for your time

 

[freakofnature]

GoldDust Woman, it's your turn.

 

[GoldDust Woman]

See, Siph... that wasn't so bad, now, was it? I knew you could do this, instead of quitting. Good job. :cool


Hello fellow Survivor players and jury members. :waving:

I've been a fan of this game, all the way back to the notorious Richard Hatch - who, by the way, is now on Celebrity Apprentice... :eek

When Mz. Probst (zirc) first announced that she was considering hosting an OTz version of Survivor, I squealed with delight at the possibility of actually getting to play the game, without having to eat bugs, sleep in the rain, wear the same clothes each and every day, and go without brushing my teeth. I was ecstatic! :thumbup

This game has been fun for me from day one. The timed challenges were stressful... like OMG, am I gonna get a buzzer beater answer in, or die?! Whew! Way to make us stress out, Mz. Probst! ( I can hear your cynical snickers all the way to my house.)

I feel as though I've played this game with as much dignity as humanly possible - for the game of Survivor, that is.

When the original Spartan tribe was being run by the one and only USF Sam - it was interesting, to say the least. Sam's mission was to save his girl Leah, who had been taken by the enemy! There was a lot of behind the scenes maneuvering to ensure Leah's safety, by voting off our very own tribe members. Each week it was... "Siph's gotta go"... "We gotta get rid of Siph"... "Make sure you write Siph's name down"... etc...BUT! "We need him right now... when the time is right to vote him off, I'll let you know."

Then, the light bulb came on. :ninja I was like... "wait a minute here... this Siph fellow is playing an incredible game and Sam is killing off our own members!" USF Sam kept assuring me that he had my back and to just go with it. Goldie wasn't liking it so much, now. Slay all, to save one? Hrmf! My arse, you will. :willy_nilly:

That was when I went to Siph and told him exactly what was going on. I felt like USF Sam was strong-arming most of our tribe by calling the shots in who was to be voted off next (to save his Leah). USF Sam called our strategy "Victory by defeat". :ninja We were to throw challenges until the merge! :eek
Well, Siph and I worked together and blindsided Mr. USF Sam. Awesome strategy on our parts, Siph! :clap

Game play continues. We cross tribal lines opening up conversation... after all ... a merge was near.

Most of my conversation was with Siph. He and I discussed who we should try to align with, and why. Once a few strong alliances were in place... I felt a shift in my alliance with Siph. Suddenly, I felt not so safe with him. His loyalty was wandering over to Boomerang and HK. It showed in his PM's... I said not a word about it. I kept quiet and listened. :nod:

I knew I was standing alone by now. I had cast a vote for my one alliance I had left, and he was gone. Now, the game belonged to Siph and HK. Siph pretty much called the shots. He even sent out an exit strategy. SAY WHAT? For reals? You're gonna quit on us after all we've been through together? No way, pal... not if I can help it. :ninja I begged... I pleaded... I grovelled. Please do not quit!

(I feel that we all had a feeling of wanting to quit along the way, due to having to vote off friends, but, that would negate the entire reason for playing to begin with.)

Siph was not going to budge.

Well, doll... you wouldn't agree with staying in the game, but, here you are. Final immunity was the only way I could have a voice. Here we are.

Was I right about my feelings of the shift in allegiance with Siph?

You (the jury), be the judge...

[FONT=&quot]

Then the worst thing that could happen - happened. Goldust Woman won the last immunity challenge rather than HK.

:nod:

I rest my case.
[/FONT]

 

[freakofnature]

Thanks guys. I've let Zorak know that he can ask his questions so we'll give him a little time to do so.

 

[freakofnature]

Not sure where Zorak has gotten off to. If hart wants she can go ahead with her questions and Zorak can take his turn later.

 

[hart]

What did being on survival teach you about yourselves?

 

[freakofnature]

GDW and Siph, you are free to answer whenever you want.

 

[GoldDust Woman]

Ooooh. I thought Siph had the floor first.

hart, what I've learned about myself, is that I can stand firm in making a decision on my own. Being a Libra, I have a tendency to waver in the decision making process. I've often sacrificed what I've wanted for myself, for the sake of others. The reason being is that I don't like going against the grain (or group in this sense), to make a decision that might hurt someone else's feelings. In other words, I'd much rather hurt my own feelings instead of another's feelings.

I hurt Siphs feelings here at the end, by voting the way I wanted to vote. Siph knew I didn't want him to quit. To be perfectly honest, I'm really surprised at myself that I went ahead and cast my vote the way I did. Since this is a "game", I do hope that at the end of it all, he'll not hold my decision against me, and will continue to be my friend.

 

[Siphorous]

Apologies for the delay in answering hart - I'm at a friends house Friday evening / Sat.

hart, Survivor has only emphasised something that I already know about myself. That being - that trust is a valuable commodity and whom I share that with I need to be a little more careful of. I'm the type of person that will get to know someone and when trust is broken by people I thought I could trust it does hurt and it takes time to build up that trust again. Yes, a few people have reiterated to me to "get over it" (paraphrased) and that it's "only a game". It's not as clear cut to me.

In summary then, what Survivor has taught me about myself is that I cannot just turn on a side of me that doesn't exist. Other people can quite easily - I cannot. And it's this fact that has caused me consternation during this game as has been witnessed.

 

[freakofnature]

Zorak seems to have ignored my message to him about this and Carn is MIA so what I'm going to do is just remove them both from the jury and go with the remaining five. Tangerine, you're next with your question(s).

 

[Thornless]

Zorak seems to have ignored my message to him about this and Carn is MIA so what I'm going to do is just remove them both from the jury and go with the remaining five. Tangerine, you're next with your question(s).

Or add two others :ninja

 

[GoldDust Woman]

Or add two others :ninja

In as much as your suggestion sounds like a wonderful idea, I'd suggest not. This has become very draining on me - the end of the game needs to come. :nod:

 

[Thornless]

In as much as your suggestion sounds like a wonderful idea, I'd suggest not. This has become very draining on me - the end of the game needs to come. :nod:

I'd only exhaust you further :ninja

 

[GoldDust Woman]

I'd only exhaust you further :ninja

Go read your rep, beautiful.

 

[Tangerine]

Siph: Why should I cast my vote for you? It seems for quite some time you’ve been wanting to quit the game. If you had no desire to stay with it until the end, why didn’t you quit sooner and make way for those who desperately WANTED to stay in the game longer? Twice I lost immunity contests to you when I felt as though the rules of the game were clearly not enforced equally and fairly, and both times you said as much in follow up posts. Knowing that you were already speaking of quitting makes me even more suspicious that there was an effort to make it “easier” for you to decide to stay. Why did you not stand up for what was “right” in those instances, since you claim that honor is of utmost importance to you?

GDW: Where to begin. I am quite shocked to see you spell out your tight alliance with Siph and the claims that you played with dignity. Especially since you fail to mention publically how you made “solid” alliances with strong promises to keep true to the final two with myself, Maulds and who knows who else. I have a string of PMs where you and I discussed the same type of detailed strategy that included voting off your “partner” Siph. The plan you proposed to ME was that you, Maulds and myself would work together with others, gently eliminate our helpers, and be the final 3. Apparently you made the exact same deal with many, many people. You also took great care to NOT cast a vote for me, knowing full well that your vote was the key to me being gone by preventing a tie. Claims of keeping your “hands clean” are not valid – your vote is the direct cause of me being out of the game, and that’s not exactly congruent with my definition of “alliance.” So here are my questions for you: Exactly how many people DID you mislead into thinking you were in a one-on-one alliance with until the end of the game? How do you justify reneging on all of those deals and claim to have played the game squarely? And most importantly, how could you possibly expect anyone who you directly made promises to - and broke them - to support you with a vote to win? I would love to hear your logic on why we should consider doing that.

 

[GoldDust Woman]

GDW: Where to begin. I am quite shocked to see you spell out your tight alliance with Siph and the claims that you played with dignity. Especially since you fail to mention publically how you made “solid” alliances with strong promises to keep true to the final two with myself, Maulds and who knows who else. I have a string of PMs where you and I discussed the same type of detailed strategy that included voting off your “partner” Siph. The plan you proposed to ME was that you, Maulds and myself would work together with others, gently eliminate our helpers, and be the final 3. Apparently you made the exact same deal with many, many people. You also took great care to NOT cast a vote for me, knowing full well that your vote was the key to me being gone by preventing a tie. Claims of keeping your “hands clean” are not valid – your vote is the direct cause of me being out of the game, and that’s not exactly congruent with my definition of “alliance.” So here are my questions for you: Exactly how many people DID you mislead into thinking you were in a one-on-one alliance with until the end of the game? How do you justify reneging on all of those deals and claim to have played the game squarely? And most importantly, how could you possibly expect anyone who you directly made promises to - and broke them - to support you with a vote to win? I would love to hear your logic on why we should consider doing that.

Hey Tang.

First off... I did play with dignity. :nod:

If I hadn't played with dignity, why would I have told you about my secret alliance with Maulds, when you first approached me for an alliance? :unsure:

I PM'd Maulds about you contacting me, and he informed me that he recommended you aligning with me... he said he felt that you and I both needed a friend on our tribe.

Secondly, I did mention publicly that I made solid alliances - on the other tribe - in my opening statement in this thread. I simply didn't name names. You guys know who you are. There were 2. Maulds and you... that was it. Ask around.

Ironically, both you and Maulds approached me. Not vice-versa.


Regarding the voting off of Siph. Yep, you and I discussed that at length. Not that I'm placing blame on USF Sam here, but, voting off Siph was the plan, until my light-bulb came on. (Which I also mentioned in my opening statement.) :nod:

Siph and I never really declared an alliance. What was said was that we would have each other's backs, to go as far as possible, until the merge. (See Siph's first post in this thread, regarding that.) Siph was also very aware of my alliance with Maulds.

I don't think I ever mentioned an alliance with you, to anyone. (I could be wrong on that, but, a lot has happened since then.)

Tang, I didn't cast a vote for you to be voted off, for the very opposite reason, of which you state... "preventing a tie". I FULLY expected a tie in that vote! Trust me there... Siph wanted to take my head off for that little ordeal. So, the claims of wanting to keep my hands clean there are VERY valid. There wasn't a tie because someone, and it wasn't me, did not vote the way they said they were going to vote!

Moving on to your direct questions...

I had 2 alliances. Maulds and you. The one vote on my part, to vote off Maulds was because he became wishy-washy with me. He went from" all the way to the end with me"... to, "Ummm... I don't know if I can vote off any of you girls." Our (mine and Maulds) correspondence had come to a screeching halt. So, should I have felt safe with him? I say no. I reached out to him straight up... he gave a very weak answer. So, in my mind, Maulds is the one who wasn't so solid on our alliance. If that wasn't the case, I gave him every opportunity when I reached out, to say otherwise. Therefore, I voted with the rest, and cast my vote for Maulds.

As for being deserving of your votes? Yours and Maulds? I can't say that I am deserving of them. I'm claiming responsibility for the lack of communication... without placing any responsibility on you guys. Funny that. You guys asked to align with me, then after the merge and a few votes, it fell silent. I think by then I had already resigned myself to the fact that the game was HK's. :shrug:


Did I expect to get this far? Hell to the no! But, here I am.


Adding insult to injury, I'm at the end with someone who doesn't even want to be sitting with me.


Thanks for the game, Tang. We played well, when we played it together.

 

[Siphorous]

Siph: Why should I cast my vote for you?

For two reasons:

1) I've tried to avoid influencing the jury by throwing in conjecture, misdirection and avoidance of details unlike the other finalist. I've tried to stick to the facts in whatever I've said here.

2 )Because although you quite rightly point out that I'm late with trying to do what's "right" - you can trust me to do what is right with the tokenz. I won't have a single tokenz from any winnings left. I shall distribute them fairly and proportionately amongst the last few in Survivor.

It seems for quite some time you’ve been wanting to quit the game. If you had no desire to stay with it until the end, why didn’t you quit sooner and make way for those who desperately WANTED to stay in the game longer?

This is a very valid question. Very early on, I could have been gone had my quit request been granted. I made the mistake of mailing Zirco-Probst to inform her of my desire to leave and her advice (paraphrased) was to "stop moaning and get yourself an alliance to protect yourself".

I'll also reiterate something I said earlier too - that during the course of Survivor and on OTz, I felt I had interacted with certain people more. I named those three earlier on and it was these that I wanted to see in the final. This didn't happen because voting did not go how I expected and wanted. Had it done so - I would not have been in this position but two of those three I mentioned would have.

Your point is granted though - given my reluctant participation (it wasn't always so though as I mentioned in the first post) I should have stuck to my guns and ignored the advice of those who told me to just "play the freaking game".

Twice I lost immunity contests to you when I felt as though the rules of the game were clearly not enforced equally and fairly, and both times you said as much in follow up posts. Knowing that you were already speaking of quitting makes me even more suspicious that there was an effort to make it “easier” for you to decide to stay. Why did you not stand up for what was “right” in those instances, since you claim that honor is of utmost importance to you?

On the very first 'epic' challenge that went over a few pages - I hadn't seriously considered quitting at that point. I was still very much enjoying the challenges. Later on, I felt pressure to stay despite my desire to quit, I was told in no uncertain terms (paraphrased) that "I'm fed up of quitters" by our illustrious leader. Trying to balance that our leader was trying to provide a fun game for all and balance that with my own desires was difficult. I just didn't make a clear decision. I should have - but I didn't.

The grapevine told me during the course of the game that there was a perception that I was being "favoured" to stay. If you could see some of PMs I got, you'd realise this was not the case. This factored into my decision too. I felt aggrieved that people would think this way when it for sure wasn't the case.

Honour is important to me, but I was trying to balance what was right towards Zirco-Probst hosting a game that she wanted everyone to have fun with and my own desires to quit. By staying in as long as I did and with fewer people left, I had to try to exit in the best possible way.

Had that happened, I would not have been here but the three I have mentioned before and subsequently two of those of course.

 

[freakofnature]

Boomerang, you're up.

 

[Zorak]

Zorak seems to have ignored my message to him about this and Carn is MIA so what I'm going to do is just remove them both from the jury and go with the remaining five. Tangerine, you're next with your question(s).

Sorry, I saw your message early in the morning and it slipped my mind the next time I logged in. I can ask questions now.