Survivor: LJ Idol Reunion - Part 10
Jun. 16th, 2021 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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therealljidol The final 5 started out with an epic hidden immunity idol hunt!
It was the most difficult one yet, because it was the most vital one to win. As long as they played it, that idol was a guaranteed spot in the final 4 and one of the prizes!
I know most people had forgotten about the prizes at that point in the game, and I don't think they played a huge role in how this week played out. But in theory, they could have...
I had so much fun creating the puzzles and clues for the idol hunt. I couldn't have done that for the first couple idols, most people weren't even looking for them. But now that people knew how to find them, I knew this one needed to be a little more work.
I was excited when I started getting emails from people as they solved the first puzzle and as they progressed through the others. I know that a couple people were even working together, to make sure they had control of that last idol.
Ultimately, it wasgunwithoutmusic who found his first idol! Which meant, going in the last tribal council to use them - he had one, and flipflop_diva had two.
Even if someone wanted to flip here, there really wasn't much room to do so - and there was a clear target -murielle.
Going into this week, I thought there was a chance that the prize MIGHT play into things - who wants to be the a-hole to snatch away a prize from murielle? On the other hand, you simply CAN NOT let her get to the finale. There are some people you have a fighting chance against. She's not one of them. Everyone loves her. The same reason no one moved against her all game is the same reason she needed to go at this point. When it comes to a Jury, you simply can't let someone like that sit next to you at the end.
The plan went out the window because murielle ends up winning immunity!
The question was brought up - by her - of "how did that happen"?
and I promised to share my thoughts on the subject.
The biggest component is "Where do votes come from?" Some people seem to assume there is a giant pool of voters out there that exists, just waiting for the opportunity to read their work. And sure, there are definitely people who have wandered in over the years, maybe played a season or two and then stuck around to vote... or their friends. But the bottom line is that these people come from somewhere! You have to let people know that you have wrote something and where they can go to support it! This was the first time that murielle *actually mentioned her writing* to other people... or at least the first time I saw her mention it. She was talking about sharing the stories with friends and how they were excited about the story.
If you are telling other people are your work - and where to find it - there is a better chance of getting support from them than you would if you sat there and expected people to show up for you "just because".
So that's one aspect of "how someone gets votes"... pretty straight forward.
In this case, she was writing a really popular serialized story, and things were moving toward the conclusion. So this was the right time for people to make sure that they got to read more of it!
Go back to the "why she shouldn't be allowed to get to the end" comments above and then think about that in terms of why someone would WANT her to be safe.
Now combine all three of those elements and put them in a blender. You can variations of that mix to pretty much every single person who has every "won" a week in Idol. Part of it is just getting the word out. Part of it is people wanting to see what you do next. And some of it boils down to luck of a specific situation. But in this case we are talking about murielle... and how she beats the odds, by quite a bit to win her first immunity!
I used the picture of Bob Crowley winning immunity - the oldest Survivor winner, who was seen as "floating along", just "being helpful" around camp... and ended up going on an immunity run at the end of the game that put him in the finale, where he dominated.
***
Which brings us to the vote.
flipflip_diva ends up giving one of her immunity idols tohalfshellvenus, securing her spot in the final four. A gesture that would be repaid when halfshellveus wins immunity at the final three and takes her...
If you assume that flipflop_diva and gunwithoutmusic AREN'T turning on each other at this point - because they both know the other has an idol, then it comes down to either halfshellvenus oralycewilson going home... and now halfshellvenus has been given an idol to play.
My big question at this point is WHY halfshellvenus and NOT alycewilson, other than "it's our final 3 and we're not changing our mind"... more importantly for my Survivor-brain though is why hand it to her to play for herself rather than flipflop_diva making the dramatic "I am saving you" gesture in front of the jury. I know there were conversations about this, who was playing the idols, when and why... and I'd love to hear some insights. From a viewer standpoint - it just looked like she had found one on her own and was using it to secure her spot.
Did halfshellvenus convince her to give away an idol? Was that the game winning move?
Was there a chance that halfshellvenus would decide NOT to play it?
Ultimately, flipflop_diva and gunwithoutmusic decide NOT to play their idols. Which means had the other three taken a shot at either one of them - their game would have been over. But part of the game is knowing when you are safe... so good on them for having that awareness.
But it also means that alycewilson didn't know in that moment that she had just joined the ranks of greats like Cirie Fields and Keith Nale... where she was literally the only choice anyone had to vote for, and was eliminated by default. it was an epic "slow motion back against the wall" moment - with a tragic ending.
At this point everyone was still thinking it was a Final 3, despite my known dislike for them on the show. :)
So there was only one more round to get through until the alliance made it to the end... and flipflop_diva won that challenge by a landslide.
Which meant that it was a no-brainer that murielle was going home. She managed to get to the Final 4 without a single vote cast against her in the game! Which is remarkable and speaks very highly of what people think of her as a person... they knew she was a threat, and no one wanted to get rid of her, until it was almost too late...
***
Now here is something that I've been pondering - I do not think murielle would win the Final 3 challenge, I think she would give it a good go and we'd get some great chapters of her story out of it... but submitting an entry every single day for a couple weeks? I don't think that is going to happen.
and as I've said, it's game-suicide for anyone remaining to take her.
So I think her own real path - at this point in the game - was to make the Final 3 and hope that both of the others missed a deadline. Regardless of the make up of that 3 (if different moves were made in the last round) I think the double tribal council made it nearly impossible to get to the end. Had it been a regular vote? Yeah, I think there' s a good chance of her getting there. But an endurance competition? Probably not. I'd love to see her prove me wrong with more chapters of her story every day for the next week or so though. :D
flipflop_diva, gunwithoutmusic and halfshellvenus had made it to the end of the game... or so they thought. What came next completed the transition from "it's like Idol" to "This is Survivor!" :)
It was the most difficult one yet, because it was the most vital one to win. As long as they played it, that idol was a guaranteed spot in the final 4 and one of the prizes!
I know most people had forgotten about the prizes at that point in the game, and I don't think they played a huge role in how this week played out. But in theory, they could have...
I had so much fun creating the puzzles and clues for the idol hunt. I couldn't have done that for the first couple idols, most people weren't even looking for them. But now that people knew how to find them, I knew this one needed to be a little more work.
I was excited when I started getting emails from people as they solved the first puzzle and as they progressed through the others. I know that a couple people were even working together, to make sure they had control of that last idol.
Ultimately, it was
gunwithoutmusic who found his first idol! Which meant, going in the last tribal council to use them - he had one, and flipflop_diva had two. Even if someone wanted to flip here, there really wasn't much room to do so - and there was a clear target -
murielle. Going into this week, I thought there was a chance that the prize MIGHT play into things - who wants to be the a-hole to snatch away a prize from murielle? On the other hand, you simply CAN NOT let her get to the finale. There are some people you have a fighting chance against. She's not one of them. Everyone loves her. The same reason no one moved against her all game is the same reason she needed to go at this point. When it comes to a Jury, you simply can't let someone like that sit next to you at the end.
The plan went out the window because murielle ends up winning immunity!
The question was brought up - by her - of "how did that happen"?
and I promised to share my thoughts on the subject.
The biggest component is "Where do votes come from?" Some people seem to assume there is a giant pool of voters out there that exists, just waiting for the opportunity to read their work. And sure, there are definitely people who have wandered in over the years, maybe played a season or two and then stuck around to vote... or their friends. But the bottom line is that these people come from somewhere! You have to let people know that you have wrote something and where they can go to support it! This was the first time that murielle *actually mentioned her writing* to other people... or at least the first time I saw her mention it. She was talking about sharing the stories with friends and how they were excited about the story.
If you are telling other people are your work - and where to find it - there is a better chance of getting support from them than you would if you sat there and expected people to show up for you "just because".
So that's one aspect of "how someone gets votes"... pretty straight forward.
In this case, she was writing a really popular serialized story, and things were moving toward the conclusion. So this was the right time for people to make sure that they got to read more of it!
Go back to the "why she shouldn't be allowed to get to the end" comments above and then think about that in terms of why someone would WANT her to be safe.
Now combine all three of those elements and put them in a blender. You can variations of that mix to pretty much every single person who has every "won" a week in Idol. Part of it is just getting the word out. Part of it is people wanting to see what you do next. And some of it boils down to luck of a specific situation. But in this case we are talking about murielle... and how she beats the odds, by quite a bit to win her first immunity!
I used the picture of Bob Crowley winning immunity - the oldest Survivor winner, who was seen as "floating along", just "being helpful" around camp... and ended up going on an immunity run at the end of the game that put him in the finale, where he dominated.
***
Which brings us to the vote.
flipflip_diva ends up giving one of her immunity idols to
halfshellvenus, securing her spot in the final four. A gesture that would be repaid when halfshellveus wins immunity at the final three and takes her... If you assume that flipflop_diva and gunwithoutmusic AREN'T turning on each other at this point - because they both know the other has an idol, then it comes down to either halfshellvenus or
alycewilson going home... and now halfshellvenus has been given an idol to play. My big question at this point is WHY halfshellvenus and NOT alycewilson, other than "it's our final 3 and we're not changing our mind"... more importantly for my Survivor-brain though is why hand it to her to play for herself rather than flipflop_diva making the dramatic "I am saving you" gesture in front of the jury. I know there were conversations about this, who was playing the idols, when and why... and I'd love to hear some insights. From a viewer standpoint - it just looked like she had found one on her own and was using it to secure her spot.
Did halfshellvenus convince her to give away an idol? Was that the game winning move?
Was there a chance that halfshellvenus would decide NOT to play it?
Ultimately, flipflop_diva and gunwithoutmusic decide NOT to play their idols. Which means had the other three taken a shot at either one of them - their game would have been over. But part of the game is knowing when you are safe... so good on them for having that awareness.
But it also means that alycewilson didn't know in that moment that she had just joined the ranks of greats like Cirie Fields and Keith Nale... where she was literally the only choice anyone had to vote for, and was eliminated by default. it was an epic "slow motion back against the wall" moment - with a tragic ending.
At this point everyone was still thinking it was a Final 3, despite my known dislike for them on the show. :)
So there was only one more round to get through until the alliance made it to the end... and flipflop_diva won that challenge by a landslide.
Which meant that it was a no-brainer that murielle was going home. She managed to get to the Final 4 without a single vote cast against her in the game! Which is remarkable and speaks very highly of what people think of her as a person... they knew she was a threat, and no one wanted to get rid of her, until it was almost too late...
***
Now here is something that I've been pondering - I do not think murielle would win the Final 3 challenge, I think she would give it a good go and we'd get some great chapters of her story out of it... but submitting an entry every single day for a couple weeks? I don't think that is going to happen.
and as I've said, it's game-suicide for anyone remaining to take her.
So I think her own real path - at this point in the game - was to make the Final 3 and hope that both of the others missed a deadline. Regardless of the make up of that 3 (if different moves were made in the last round) I think the double tribal council made it nearly impossible to get to the end. Had it been a regular vote? Yeah, I think there' s a good chance of her getting there. But an endurance competition? Probably not. I'd love to see her prove me wrong with more chapters of her story every day for the next week or so though. :D
flipflop_diva, gunwithoutmusic and halfshellvenus had made it to the end of the game... or so they thought. What came next completed the transition from "it's like Idol" to "This is Survivor!" :)
no subject
Date: 2021-06-16 06:02 pm (UTC)Why halfshellvenus over alycewilson is a good question for flipflop_diva, but I do think it kind of boils down to, "We decided that this was going to be the final three and that's all there is to it." This whole game, for me, was about loyalty and keeping promises, and I think it was for flipflop, too. She or I might have fared better at the end had we said, "Maybe we should look at taking Alyce to the top three with us," but honestly the thought never crossed my mind. Of course, halfshell, flipflop and I had all been working tightly together for a good chunk of the game, so it just sort of seemed like it wasn't necessary or wise to change our top three plan.
I didn't really want to go up against halfshell at the end, and I played out different jury scenarios with the three of us there, most of them still ending in a halfshell victory (if it had been a final three, I had maybe two or three votes I could count on, but I could see a lot of people leaning toward halfshell). I can't quite remember exactly what the discussion was surrounding flipflop giving halfshell the Idol to play rather than playing it for her. At that point, assuming the three of us were still good, we didn't really need the Idols, but I think that maybe we were thinking the optics of having halfshell appear to have found an Idol would be better.
At the top five, I definitely wasn't expecting murielle to win immunity! I was worried that she might pull off another one, and, for all of the reasons you listed, I didn't really want to go up against her in the end! It sucked that Alyce ended up basically being a default vote, because I didn't want to see her go, either.
For me, Alyce was the reason that I didn't play the Idol that I found that Tribal Council. I trusted my alliance to vote together and I didn't see any reason to pop three Idols all at once and have Alyce actually just eliminated by default. I know that it's sort of six of one, half-dozen of the other, but I felt like it would have felt worse getting eliminated on a technicality (I can just imagine you saying, "Well I guess there's no need to vote.") than getting eliminated by a vote. I don't know how true that is, but I did what I thought was going to be the least hurtful thing, which is generally how I tried to play all game.
Looking at it in retrospect, I might have tried to not take halfshell to the top three, but to be completely honest, between halfshell, alycewilson, and murielle, who wants to sit next to any of them at the end of Survivor? They all have similar things going for them and they're all a huge Jury threat. :) So any moves I made around this time were just about keeping the status quo - it seemed better to stick with the plan than to risk doing my own thing and going against my alliance (never mind the fact that when I started this game, I told myself that I wouldn't go against any alliances I made, so going in a different direction at the top five would have been against my principles there).
no subject
Date: 2021-06-16 09:12 pm (UTC)In my dream game, I'd love to see you and Bleodswean going up at the end and duking it out. That would be some seriously awesome writing. :-)
no subject
Date: 2021-06-16 10:39 pm (UTC)I actually would have loved to have seen bleodswean make it to that last challenge if only to see what she'd come up with given those time constraints. The thing that was actually FUN about that last challenge was when we all had to start getting more experimental to come up with something every day.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-16 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-16 08:54 pm (UTC)I'm going to go from the bottom up because frankly, I'm gobsmacked. I need a few more minutes to digest all of this.
I would never have survived the rapid-fire rounds. Never! I'm still recovering from the last few weeks I played. So, not making it to the final three was an absolute mercy. Also, I had other deadlines in my life, Holy Days--a whole slew of them at one point--and Sabbaths. Gary was so gracious and kind to me when I'd have my weekly meltdowns about deadlines on Sabbaths, etc. I lost hair, friends. I lost hair! ;-)
There's another aspect of the final few weeks I need to talk about, the love. What a loving group of people was in the weeks approaching the end of Survivor. There was so much support and generosity. It didn't feel like a competition at the end there at all. I think we were all rooting for one another and that made this game. It really did.
As for my story. Totally lucked out there! I was passionately following The Musician's House on Curiosity Inc, and with the very first story, I came to a point where I had no idea what was "in the box," so I wrote, to be continued. And the rest...well, is what it is. There was no pressure to end anything and that made it all so much easier.
I know of only one friend from my church who joined DW in order to vote for me, bless her heart! I don't know how anyone else could have because there wasn't the FB option. Some friends from LJ were voting, I know that, but other than that, I'm stumped. (I may have to email you for more details, Gary.) What the folks from my church really did for me, was boost my confidence SO much. I think I might have packed it in a few weeks earlier, but they kept demanding more. That was totally new for me and I'm so so grateful for it, and still, even after all this time, am overwhelmed by it.
When I saw the numbers the week I won immunity I couldn't believe them. I kept going back in to check expecting to see someone else's numbers shoot up and overtake mine. It completely blew me away. Completely. It was seriously humbling and I was so grateful.
I'm not going to pull a Sally Fields, I promise. But I must say, reading Gary write that I was considered too much of a threat to be in the final three is confusing. I feel so, so honored that I'm liked and valued as a friend and seen as supportive. Total warm fuzzie! But it's not how I view things. I just think you all are the kindest most generous people ever, always.
I guess the thing that staggers me the most, is Gary writing that I didn't get a vote against me for the whole game. What's wrong with you people? LOL! I'm kidding. I'm in shock. I'm not even sure I know what that means, but I've so very grateful. Wow. That's quite a thing. Are you sure about that, Gary?
You know, it's really something to see what you've experienced through someone else's eyes. And while I'm extremely uncomfortable writing this much about myself, I am grateful for this new perspective, Gary. I am grateful and humbled and I'd say flabbergasted, but looking at how much I've written that's blatantly untrue--I'm rambling even!
Getting to the final four is a huge highlight in my life, something that will be precious to me always. So, to everyone one of you who made it possible--Thank you!
And Gary, thank you! For everything. You know how much you've done for me and I will always be...your number one fan! <3 And when a Stephen King fan says that to you, you know it means a lot! ;-)
no subject
Date: 2021-06-16 09:07 pm (UTC)Much like when someone mentions that "it's not my best entry" makes some people skip it.
"Wow. That's quite a thing. Are you sure about that, Gary?"
I remember checking at the time I wrote that in your original elimination. I haven't gone back to fact check myself. But it seems right. I know you didn't get any votes against you post-merge and can't recall any throw-away vote before that. Even though, from a game-perspective, there is no way any one should have let you get to the merge much less to the brink of winning.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-16 09:17 pm (UTC)Well, now that everyone knows not to let me sneak by I'm pretty sure it will never happen again. ;-)
Thanks for explaining. I'm still gobsmacked. I need an emoji for that!
no subject
Date: 2021-06-19 12:06 am (UTC)And, M, you are so humble! We LOVE you! I really want to read more of your serial, too.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-19 01:20 am (UTC)*Hugs*
no subject
Date: 2021-06-18 07:31 pm (UTC)(Too many work projects this week. I didn't have a chance to comment earlier!)
I know it's not what Gary wants to hear, or probably would have done, but for me, it did actually come down to 'This is our final 3 and I'm not going to go against it now.' For better or worse, when we made a final 3 with Karen, that was it. I wasn't going to betray her or Sean at the end, not after we had made it there like we'd hoped.
Some of it, too, though, was just looking at the people who were making up the jury. A lot of people came into this game wanting to do the fair thing and play fair, and I didn't think backstabbing my alliance at Final Five was going to be a good look. If it was a jury of Survivor fans? That's different. But it wasn't.
Also, even if I had seriously thought about it (I didn't, but if I had), I'm not sure at the time that I would have thought it was possible to pull off with serious repercussions. I knew Sean wanted to go to the Final 3 with the three of us, so I would have had to betray him, too. I guess I could have given my other Idol to Alyce or somehow convinced Murielle to vote for Karen, but I hadn't talked to Murielle outside public game posts, and none of that seems like a good way to win jury votes. Or even to get to the Final Four/Final Three/Final Two since it's always better to have people on your side!
As for the Idol, that honestly was less about game reasons than friendship reasons: I didn't want to vote for Alyce. I knew she was going to be the one to go, but I didn't want to actually have to vote for her. So if I gave Karen an idol and let her play it, I could vote for Karen, along with Alyce, and not be really voting for her but also not be voting for Alyce.
We did a similar thing with eeyore_grrl where Karen and Sean voted a different way so as not to vote for her while I went with the majority who did. So they understood and were okay with it.
I know Alyce went home either way, and I know in the end it didn't make a difference, but I just really didn't want to vote for her, and this way I didn't have to. And Karen told people after that it was a gift, so I don't know that it made a difference in votes at the end, but I don't regret it. This game was painful at times, and I did what I thought was best in terms of my relationship with someone who is a friend.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-19 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-19 01:25 am (UTC)How are you doing?
*Hugs*