Joanna


I don't really have anything bad to say about Joanna. Not that she didn't do anything incorrectly, just that she is already spot-on aware of what she didn't do right, so no point me dwelling on her mistakes here;


X times a million.

She deliberately wanted to be perceived as a follower in her early game, and these are the prices she pays for not pushing her own agenda. It's hard to fault her for it though, in another game it might have worked out beautifully for her.


Strategically, she was a helluva lot better than anyone gave her credit for in-game. Again I'll refer you back to her unused FTC speech for how she managed to assess the situation once Dan flipped, and based on this info changed her game to ensure she was always gonna be the last Asterian standing. If it weren't for Helen's immunity streak, she would have made FTC too, pulled out *that* speech, and we would have had an epicly hard decision. With Helen on the jury explaining Brian's game to them better than he has (or raging at his betrayal :D ), and him actually having claim to making his own moves in ousting her, and Penny pulling out the stops like she did here - we coulda been looking at a 3-2-2. Dammit Helen, I feel a little robbed of that despite the epic FTC we did end up with.

Simply put, Joanna proved herself a ~master~ of creating a facade.


Socially, she was pretty much the most loved member in the game by the other players. Who didn't like PMing Joanna? Just Ted I think, maybe Erin aswell? IDK. Dan, Shawna & Christy all saw JoJo as their #1. To compare her to my own style, I find building trust only comes when you get into strategy talks - but she was able to bond with anyone she wanted to - seemingly effortlessly. And she did too, picked and chose who she would let see how much of her social game to. She only ever allowed Helen, Brian, Erin, even Rob to see her flaky funzie side, and every one of them bought it hook, line and sinker. And we've mentioned her lie-detector ways here before too. Having Christy use her to ve her PMs is hilarious to me

Christy might have been the only person who got to see the full Joanna package (alongside the hosts), shrewd strategical side smoothly combined with social schmooze & smarts, and the engaging entertaining bitchiness against the stupidity of her peers. Though the hosts too were robbed a little of seeing her full strategy in her confessionals because she didn't really get in-depth on that side of her game all that much, but she still provided some of the best journals in the game with her rollercoaster of emotions.


I'm actually kinda glad she didn't make the endgame for one reason - the rest of the players finally got to see her strategical & bitchy sides without her needing to keep the mask on. (I would post some of her PM snark here but I'm saving the best ones for ff use :P ) She's finally getting the credit she is due from the other players.


Her story arc didn't end when her game did either. As soon as she had nothing left to hide she quickly stole Shawna's crown and became the Princess of Ponderosa, despite being last in the door. In there she can finally let her hair down, be as sassy and righteous as she wants, and in no small part is still affecting the anti-Helen sentiment on the Jury particularly the more easily influenced players. She's made me change my mind from a maybe to a must on whether Previously in Ponderosa parts need to be included in the fanfic.


Joanna was the undercover superstar of this game & should be the first one asked back for an All-Star slot. Legit.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Taj, you might wanna stop at the point of the thread, if you've not looked at the FTC votes yet...

I already saw it since Jeffrey decided it would be a good idea to AIM me spoilers.

CONGRATS PENNY PROUD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love the Joanna write-up, Brenda. There is so many things about Joanna that I wish she would've expressed to the rest of the players. She is very popular amongst the hosts because we got to see the real her. It's great that she finally let it all out in her FTC speech and in Ponderosa.

Brian




Ugh, Brian came into the game playing hard and overdoing it on the PM front. By the close of Day 1 he consciously toned it down. As the game went on he continued this pattern and ends up getting zero votes at FTC, and that in itself is no surprise because of how he finished. What may be surprising to post-game readers is that Brian was *the* best player in the game at one point. I'm talking of course about pre-merge on Helios.

While Penny, Helen & even Erin have claimed to be the mastermind of early Helios, it was in truth Brian who was doing the legwork - juggling the core trio with the Erin trio with the Ted/Jake trio. Had Asteria pushed towards the 8-2 merge the F2 of Helios would have been Brian plus the player of his choosing. Yes Penny pushed him into the danger slot of the web of alliances while sitting off to one side herself - but he knew full well & noted what she was up to. He played the position perfectly, and was never in any danger. While Helen was trying to save Ken or when Penny was so close to getting the boot due to her poor challenge performances, it was always Brian who dictated the eventual vote, and each one moved him into a stronger and stronger position, while making them more and more dependent on him. Even if the other two picked up on this, neither would really have minded since in each of their minds hr was their #1.

But somewhere along the way the relationship with Helen turned from a two-way street into a parasitic one instead. Not that she wasn't willing to listen, he just got comfortable and lazy. He was happy to allow her do the work, and while he always claimed to be planning on cutting her off - there's just no real evidence that he ever tried to do anything independently of her. Nevermind her immunity streak stonewalling him into a corner in the final few rounds, long before that he was allowing her to make the call on what was the best move for the pair of them, never really thinking what is the best move for Brian alone. I can see from my hostie vantage point good reasons for Brian not to want say, Ted or Daniel to leave. Both were smart moves for Brelen together, but not the right moves at all for Brian alone.


The Brian/Helen dynamic rivals Christy/Joanna for closest pairing of the game, and like that pair, their PMs ended up producing some of the more lulzy quotes of the game. Most of the time their messages were novel length planning but every once in a while - the venting of frustrations they shared between them about the other players were just laugh out loud funny for two such dry, analytical players. Couple that with Brian's griping in his confessional about Helen herself, and it's a routine you couldn't write. At times they resembled that old married couple that everyone knows, with Brian as the long-suffering husband - married to the same wife for just a little too long.

Interesting to note that where Christy got Joanna to vet her incoming messages for truthfulness, Brian & Helen had a similar system set up to vet each other's outgoing messages to see if they were pitched right and sounded genuine before they'd send them off.

If I wanted to see what the plan was at any point during the game, it was always the Brian/Helen chain I'd go looking for (quickly followed by the Penny one to see what the incoming spanner was gonna be :P )



Ugh, I hate to do it, but his FTC performance was so bad it needs discussing. Might I first point out how good a read he had on the game way back in Episode 3;


Foreshadowing much? All game long, at least since the merge, he has been humming and hawing about what he can do to pick up a bit of Jury credit. He's been running scenarios on who he could take out. Who he needs to be up against. And in his endgame confessionals, what angle he can take to beat Helen. Yet nothing ever materialises.

He had played himself into a corner for sure, and what he needed was an epic FTC performance. What he needed was to come out guns blazing and completely trash both Helen & Penny's games. Lie through his teeth if necessary to steal the juror's votes. He knew Helen's long-winded approach would trip her up, he could have capitalised on that. Use Penn's arguments as to why Helen shouldn't win. Use Helen's arguments as to why Penny shouldn't. Knowing the Jury sees him as mediocre at best means he had to make the other two look like an awful alternative.

But then he gets to FTC and ew, damp squib opener and it really just went downhill from there. He couldn't handle Penny, he couldn't handle Helen - only to support her, which ironically drives the jury to support Penny even more. He neglected to actually see what he needed to do to get any of the votes - and there was maybe even three there for the taking had he done it right. He srsly needs to look & learn at how Penny handled the same situation - she too was looking likely to lose before FTC began, but she found her angle.


Brian has been the biggest disappointment of the cast for me, but part of that is because he showed such early potential. He was great pre-merge, positioned beautifully, and socially working exactly the right people. But the around the time of Rob's mutiny he allowed Helen to take the driving seat, and then post-merge he relinquished all control of his own game to Helen. To be blunt - his own game went to shit because of it. I understand RL issues got in the way aswell, but I think he got lazy too once he found Helen was there to put in the extra hours. You can even see in his confessionals how they deteriorated from meaty thoughts full of good grasp to short snippet one-liners on the state of the game. He did manage to get to FTC where he still had a slim chance of nicking the win so long as he could do something amazing, but he belly-flopped that too.

He is obviously a skilled player, but we've not seen the best of Brian here by a long shot.

We discussed in another thread how the cover for the Season would pan out and I suggested the F7 minus Brian as the 'correct' choice. There is a case for Shawna to be in there instead of whoever, or even Daniel or one of the pre-merge boots. There is no real case to be argued for Brian at all, and that pretty much sums up how his game turned out.

Helen




I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but start with that line. She will be the first to admit she got a little obsessed with this game.

I know Helen is the one player who will analyse their write-up more than anyone else in the game, so I'm gonna tread very carefully here. Had I wrote this out two days ago I'm sure it would have been more complimentary than it's gonna end up, but having seen her snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at FTC, it's hard to skirt around her faults. And there are many. :/ Straight off the bat I'm gonna say that Helen was *the* best strategist in the game. She was the merge HBIC and she moved her pieces around like a chess player planning six moves ahead, covering every scenario. But like Daniel alluded to regarding her treatment of Erin & Penny - these are people, not chess pieces you're playing with.


Daniel isn't the sharpest tool in the shed but he was damn right on this point. Survivor is first and foremost a social game, and somewhere between Rob's mutiny and the merge, Helen forgot that. She started lying to people's faces so she could position herself better and took a leaf out of Rob's playbook by not bothering to build any connection with the players who she couldn't see fitting into her plans or who she saw as immature gamers (Shawna/Daniel/Joanna who?). There's a knack to getting a read on each individual player and catering to their particular social wants & needs and it's not even that Helen is missing it. But somehow she forgot how or figured she didn't need it anymore midway through. If you look at her early Helios relationships it was there for sure. Jan/Ken/Jake are still rooting for her from the LL. Brian/Penny/Erin all had nothing but good things to say about her at that point (well Brian maybe had a preview of it), even Ted said the only Helios player he wouldn't mind turning up at Asteria was her - but as the game went on she stopped paying attention to other's perception of her. Early game she put in the time with everyone, chatting netflix with Jan, bonding with Ken (where no-one else managed to), talking holidays & Australia with Ted. But for all her preparedness, she neglected to concentrate on the massive social element of the game once she started sending people to the Jury.

Her vote from Jake was an early warning shot across the bow that she didn't heed.


It's a double-edged sword in that some of her best points are also her biggest faults - most obviously allowing herself to be seen as such a massive threat. Were it not for her immunity run Brian & Penny both would have voted her out for sure - even at the cost of allowing an Asterian in the finals in front of Asterian stacked Jury. Yes of course you need to let your allies know you are worth allying with, but you also need to keep it under tabs. Look at the non-strategical airhead persona Penny put on, look at Joanna's lol I'm drunk & skyping facade, and take notes as to why & how these two made it to F4 without an individual immunity win yet Christy & Ted didn't.

It may not be fair, but it's a solid fact of Survivor that Jurors tend not to favour challenge whores. Especially when everyone knows full well you were a goner without the wins. I'm not saying don't win challenges, but you can't ever let yourself be perceived as unbeatable - the person that even your allies don't want to take to the end.

Ew, I'm sorry for trashing her game so much when it was actually quite epic and really well-played, but I know Helen will *want* details so I have one more game-damaging point to cover before I can get to the *fanning*; - Her relationship with Penny, and how she handled her during FTC


All game long their playstyles clashed, it made for car-crash viewing as Penny would shoot off her mouth and jump two-footed into schemes with no thought for the consequences - obviously the polar opposite of Helen's map-it-all-out, consider-every-possibility approach.. but the thing is, it worked.

Penny was the one who roped Erin in setting up the core four & risked being caught in two alliances early in the game, while Helen played it safe on the outs. Penny did start the tribal rivalry (& kiss & make-up session) while Helen kept her head down. Ted flipped at the merge because he wanted to, Dan flipped because Penny worked him over. Helen wanted to safe vote at F6 and force a tie, Penny capitalised on Rob being a dumbass and gave Helios the advantage that carried the three of them to FTC.

Sure she sometimes endangered them too while Helen never really did, but Penny's risks paid off & Helen reaped the benefits. I touched on this in Helen's confesh but this is the benefit of pro-active play versus reactive play. Penny did this publicly too for the most part, and owned her moves, she wore the target on her back with pride. Helen worked in the shadows wherever she could. Yet Helen still became viewed as the bigger threat..

Simply put, for all Helen's meticulous planning, Penny's "sure lets give it a bash" approach was more successful, giving both of them the advantage at key points of the game. But because their two styles were just chalk and cheese, Helen had a hard time acknowledging Penny's game, and consequently was unprepared for the Jury assault.

Now obviously not everything Penny claimed at FTC was true, but the untruths were peppered between the above facts - and the above facts were what Asteria and the Jurors had seen of the game. Helen's rebuttals were mostly solid, but when she denied the real ones it discredited her legitimate claims. Combine this with the social rapport she forgot to build with some jurors, and her offputting longwinded approach, and she simply hemorrhaged votes.

FTR at F4, pre-voters who stated they'd likely vote Helen over Penny: Dan, Christy, Shawna, Ted, Erin & Rob.
People who stated they'd vote Penny over Helen:

Her & Penny's (& Brian's) FTC performances changed the outcome of this game :/

***
Damnit, this is all coming off incredibly negative but at this point reunion has started and I have yet to do Penny.

Helen knows what her strong points are though, and she only has to read back through the blog to find me praising her more than I've squeezed in here so I'll wrap it up with her final words;


I do hope this is a genuine comment, and not just a token nicety. Because Helen should be proud of the way she played. Helen's style makes her an acquired taste, as it happens she's to my taste but she's not to everyones. If she just had the composure to keep the social chameleon thing going that she had with the early Helios members all game long, all the risky moves in the world wouldn't have mattered to a Jury that were willing to listen to her arguments.

Penny will have to wait..

DEAR POST GAME READERS..

It's five am after a month of five ams, you guys need time to read and digest & I need sleep :P
I'm going to bed, comment in here all you want, and I'll address things tomorrow.

And remember, it's not bias if I'm rooting for you all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnYoFmBagmk

Am totally waiting with baited breath!!

baited

Have you been fishing funnily?

Ive never used that term before, is that how you say it?

I dont fish, I just put snags on the barby.