Jeff Probst wrote:
'Oh good Penny, you're here! Your thoughts on Ted, AND please walk me through your booting of Rob.
Also, I want to know about your general gameplay throughout, you made quite a few mistakes. You were horrible in challenges, you were constantly ALMOST fucking up Helios's strategies, but not fully doing so. I remember pre-merge you flat out told Rob that there was no more idol on Helios when he was mutinying purely to retrieve the idol. So had he believe dyou, he would have not mutinied and you probably would have lost immunity and helios would be fucked. There are so many other times that I can't think of, Carl probably can remember more. I have written it in the admin discussion forums so you can comment on that after you read it.
THANK GOD SOMEONE SAID IT BECAUSE AT FTC NO ONE BELIEVED ME.
Jeff Probst wrote:
On that note, Helen, you were actually against the plan to boot Rob. So much so that you were furious with Penny and were sure that she had ruined your game. Talk to me about your feelings at that point and then the aftermath of actually succeeding in booting him which might have lead to your final 3 placing.
Here was the issue. After the clue for the HII was released, I was monitoring "Who is online" with great scrutiny. I saw that neither Joanna nor Christy were in the forum more than a few minutes after the clue, and Rob was the only Asteria checking it. A few minutes later, he left trying HII codes, sent PMs (perceivably to Joanna/Christy, since they sent PMs afterwards), and then left, never to check the HII forum again when he returned later. After that, I was hesitant. Then, for Helios, Brian and I had compiled a list of nearly 500 Greek mythological terms from the categories you gave us earlier in the game for use in the word search, and later applied to the HII forum. After none of those words worked, I became even more hesitant that Rob had the idol, and we needed to beware of it.
Throughout the game, Penny regularly screwed up our strategies, or demanded last-minute (oftentimes unnecessary or unnecessarily complicated) changes. Then, just before F6 TC, she told me and Brian that we needed to vote Rob (in spite of everything that we knew) since he was going to vote Christy. She didn't explain the full detail of the situation. So, Brian and I were convinced that this was another inane and inevitably-unsuccessful plan, but Penny REFUSED to budge. Since Brian's neck was on the line, I asked him at TC what he wanted to do, and he agreed that it was better for us to vote together and have him potentially get idoled than for us to vote differently from Penny and inevitably lose without a chance.
Given what Penny actually did to execute that move which she later explained, it made a lot more sense, and definitely paid off. It certainly contributed to some degree to us being in the F3 (depending on how F6 tiebreaker may have played), and I may not have won the later immunities, or if I did, the other finalists sitting beside me may have been different. So it was absolutely a pivotal move that turned out to be incredibly advantageous.
