Selena's Slithering Statements & Questionsss

[Snakelena]

Selena's Slithering Statements & Questionsss

This has no doubt been the craziest game I have ever played. Each of you added to the craziness which is neither particularly good nor is it bad. Also, before I address each of you I would like to say that while I may have been overtly bitter within the Jury it does not mean that I dislike any of you personally. All of you were able to make it this far which means you did at least something right and I applaud you for that.

~ AJ ~

Oh, AJ there's definitely a lot that can be said about you. Starting with the pros I think that out of everyone left your gameplay was the most visible and consistent throughout the game. Simply because of that I believe you should deserve some praise because you somehow always avoided being a target. Also, from a Jurors perspective it seemed like you used a lot of your personal friendships outside of this game to your advantage and you didn't seem to care whether you damaged them or not. However, let's be realistic that kind of strategy has also proven to be somewhat detrimental to your game since it's changed people's perception of you. Also, it paints you as someone who is ruthless which is both a good and bad thing. Alas my question to you is what was your best & worst move in this game? Additionally, I would like to have an indepth description as to your initial strategy, and what your actual overall game strategy became.

~ Knox ~

Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm genuinely shocked you made it this far. Reason being because I think out of everyone in this Final 3 you had the most to overcome and prove. It seems as if you definitely have the ability to sell yourself as potentially being an underdog. While I do give you props for that there are definitely some critiques that I have. One being that from my vantage point and from what others have stated it seemed like you rode on others coattails for quite awhile in this game. With that being said I would like for you to describe in detail as to why that's a wrong portrayl of you (omit winning the last Immunity too & having others use idols on you). Secondly, in the context of the game it seemed as if you didn't own up to some of your behavior. For example, when I asked you about the "imbecile" banner during an Immunity challenge you stated that others thought it was funny therefore you continued using it. So my question is do you feel that certain people were egging on our feud and if so who was it and why?

~ Thiago ~

I'm sure you are still probably wondering as to why I blocked you once I left the game. The reason I blocked you was because I knew that once I left you were going to try to butter me up. You had already sent me a sad face or whatever after my departure which was the beginning of something I didn't want to deal with. In other words quite frankly your attempt at trying to emotionally connect with people comes off as fake, cold, and relatively annoying. Also, your ego, arrogance, and playing victim in this game has hurt you rather than helped you. Finally, I have already made my mind up on you so before you become Dr. Phil and try to explain everything to me please do not.

Good luck to each of you!

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[knox]

Aug 2, 2013 12:50:57 GMT -5 Snakelena said:

~ Knox ~

Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm genuinely shocked you made it this far. Reason being because I think out of everyone in this Final 3 you had the most to overcome and prove. It seems as if you definitely have the ability to sell yourself as potentially being an underdog. While I do give you props for that there are definitely some critiques that I have. One being that from my vantage point and from what others have stated it seemed like you rode on others coattails for quite awhile in this game. With that being said I would like for you to describe in detail as to why that's a wrong portrayl of you (omit winning the last Immunity too & having others use idols on you). Secondly, in the context of the game it seemed as if you didn't own up to some of your behavior. For example, when I asked you about the "imbecile" banner during an Immunity challenge you stated that others thought it was funny therefore you continued using it. So my question is do you feel that certain people were egging on our feud and if so who was it and why?

Hi Selena, thank for the congratulations. In all honesty I am probably as shocked as you are to have made it here. Like I said in my opening statement, I genuinely thought I would be gone in the first five rounds so making it all the way is still pretty surreal.

I will address the coattail riding first, if you don't mind. The way I see it, coattail riding means that you basically do nothing, see there looking pretty and let everyone around you do everything while you file your nails and then end at the Finals where you get destroyed because you literally did nothing all game but follow orders. I would like to think that this is not the case at all, and here is why:

One. I created true bonds with the members from the oposite side. I don't think you got to see this because by the time we merged you and I were already feuding hardcore, and after we made up I thought it would have been really fake for me to try and just have casual conversation [which I believe it would have been for sure]. My alliance members often told me not to talk to you guys or to be as honest as I was. Many times I got confronted because I said a little too much or answered a question too honestly, I didn't do what they wanted and I kept talking to everyone because I found it petty that there be no communication between sides. If I was a coattail rider I would have appologized, cowered in a corner and stopped talking to the others.

Two. I had a legitimate say in every decision, it was not just like "Knox go vote for X or Y" then I barked and went ahead. We had very in depth discussions on G-Hang about where the vote should go considering all the circumstances. I orchestrated the whole round that Wendy left, which a coattail rider would not have done. Likewise the round that Ellen left some people wanted to vote for Ben in case of an idol or concern and I was like "No, we have to take the risk, this is probably our only shot".

Three. I found an idol by myself. Did you ever see Sundra or Natalie T find an idol? I figured out the clues by myself and not only did I find it but I beat Dominic, the biggest challenge competitor in the game, in another quick idol search. And I also figured out the clues for the idol Ellen got [Close but no Cigar] by myself.

Four. I was willing to take risks. I put my neck on the line multiple times, I don't think a coattail rider would have done that as they would have been happy letting others do that. One example would be the Wendy vote when I made sure I had votes on me since no one else was willing to have stray votes on them. I was so confident on the end-result [at the moment of making the plan] that I didn't mind taking a calculated risk to show everyone that I was here to play and I was loyal to those I had sworn loyalty to.

I think it's really easy to tag someone like me as a coattail rider. When someone comes into an AllStar game without as big of a reputation as all the other people in their alliance it's easy to tag them as a follower. Not only that but I think the fact that I was so blindly loyal makes it seem like I was under some magic spell, in reality that's just my personality, when I give my word to someone I stick to it and then deal with the consequences. The Henry vote I voted in the minority, I knew he was the bigger threat but I had made him a promise and I was not about to break that. I know it was viewed as in I was just doing what Henry wanted me to do but it was more tha voting him out was not an accurate representation of who I am and it's not what I stand for. I believe that even though this is a game, we represent ourselves to an extent and that's not how I wanted to represent myself.

I never won challenges, besides the last one, but coming into this game I knew that my challenge abilities were never up to par, I have always been absolutely terrible at individual challenges. I don't think that makes me a coattail rider, if anything it makes me someone who sucks at challenges. But that didn't mean I didn't give it my all every single time. I am also kinda ditzy so it's easy for people to underestimate me and think that I don't understand the game or know what's going on, but that's not the case, I am very perceptive and

Wow, that went a little longer than expected... anyways, on to the second part:

Secondly, in the context of the game it seemed as if you didn't own up to some of your behavior. For example, when I asked you about the "imbecile" banner during an Immunity challenge you stated that others thought it was funny therefore you continued using it. So my question is do you feel that certain people were egging on our feud and if so who was it and why?

I am sorry if it made it look like I wasn't owning up to my behavior, that was definitely not what I wanted at all. Anyways, I absolutely agree that people were egging the feud on. I think it was both because they found it entertaining and others thought it was better for us to keep fighting as it would make the sides a lot less likely to come to some kind of agreement.

Ultimately though, despite the egging on, it was my decision to do and say those things. I could have as easily taking the high road and said "No, this is ridiculous. Glad you find it funny but I'm going too far" but I didn't. So it was my fault and my fault only.

I know you asked for names, but I personally don't feel comfortable throwing people under the bus, since like I said before it was me who made the decision regardless or not whether people thought it was funny or tried to egg it on. If you truly, 100% cannot live without knowing the names I guess I can do that, but I would much rather not since I don't want to create rifts in friendships or anything along those lines. I hope you can respect that.

Let me know if you want / need me to do anything else. And thanks again.

[aj]

Hey, Selena!! Thanks for the questions.

Also, from a Jurors perspective it seemed like you used a lot of your personal friendships outside of this game to your advantage and you didn't seem to care whether you damaged them or not. However, let's be realistic that kind of strategy has also proven to be somewhat detrimental to your game since it's changed people's perception of you. Also, it paints you as someone who is ruthless which is both a good and bad thing.

Oh gosh. This was the absolute last thing I wanted people to think. And so I’m sorry that I came across like that, I guess that’s a lack of awareness on my part. If I lost a friend because of this game, it would really take me a long time to forgive myself. I 100% cared about my friendships in this game. However, what was hard was that I am close friends with people on both “sides.” Because of that, I had no choice but to put personal relationships aside and focus only on game. And doing that was very, very difficult for me. No matter what I did in this game, I would have been hurting someone, because I felt close to a lot of people. I hated being in that situation, but that’s the consequence I had to suffer.

That being said, I really don’t feel like I used personal relationships to advance myself in this game. The only person in my alliance who I talked to regularly before this game started was Cassie. I talked to you, Luca, Dominic and Ben before this game much more often than any of the others that I ended up working with. Based on different events during premerge, I came to the conclusion that you guys didn’t want to work with me. But this still didn’t change the fact I consider you guys close friends. That being said, I never felt like there was any point where I “used” any of you guys. You and I didn’t talk much strategy after you lied to me, and I always told Ben and Dominic that as much as I love them, I wasn’t going to turn on my allies for them. I never used them for their friendship. In fact, even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could have, because neither of them showed any trust in me until they tried to get me to flip to them at final 7.

Alas my question to you is what was your best & worst move in this game?

My best move in the game was immediately solidifying a group at the first switch. However, there were two parts to this that were particularly instrumental, and ironically involved the two others sitting with me in the finals right now. First, I had to talk to Knox. I didn’t know if Knox trusted me because I knew something minor happened between him and Chase the round before, and he knew how close I was to Chase. So I took Knox into a Skype call and told him I wanted to work with him and he could trust me. After that conversation with him, I felt confident that we could stick together for at least a few rounds. Knox told me that he completely trusted Henry, so I knew that the 3 of us would be solid. Then I worked on Mark. Mark and I bonded very easily, and we seemed to trust each other immediately. I also knew that Knox and Mark were tight, and so there was no doubt that we’d all work together well.

The second part to solidifying this group was tougher to do, because at the time, not many people agreed with it. I wanted to trust Thiago so badly, however, I was told by multiple people not to trust him because he was still working with Ellen. Also, Knox and Mark were still skeptical of him because of season 5 stuff. However, I trusted my gut and told Mark that he could definitely trust Thiago, and also helped him to come together with Knox. Had I not done this and just left Thiago in the dark like many people told me to do, he could have gone back to Ellen and made a different alliance. I do believe that I played a large part in gluing this group together, and had I not done that, the game could have shaped out entirely differently.

My worst move in this game was probably not clearing things up with Ellen at the start of the game. I was really bothered by something I heard pregame, and so my way of addressing that was to confide in a couple people on a personal level before the game started. However, I chose the wrong people to confide in. The way I handled the situation was extremely immature; I was going around complaining and acting like a victim. I should have gone directly to Ellen and addressed the situation, and cleared everything up before the game actually started. However, I convinced myself that if I did that, it would awkward and I would make myself a bigger target. When really, because I held it in and assumed things, the situation blew out of proportion and I could never recover from it.

I would like to have an indepth description as to your initial strategy, and what your actual overall game strategy became.

Initially, my strategy was just to generally be in a good position, where I would have options. I wanted people to overlook me and see me as someone they could “save for later.” However, I wanted to have good relationships with a lot people. And for the first few rounds, I feel like I did. I was in a prime position on my own tribe, having a tight alliance with Cassie and Chase, and a good enough relationship with the other 4 where I could have probably targeted anyone I wanted. Additionally, I had loose bonds on the other tribes to prepare myself for a switch.

At the first switch, I immediately felt insecure without Cassie and Chase. I knew that if I didn’t do something quick, Ellen could quickly rally troupes to send me packing. However, I quickly solved this problem by doing fast damage control on my tribe, and solidifying relationships with Knox, Mark and Thiago, which I explained in my “best move.” Our group undoubtedly bonded over the Wendy vote, when everything went according to plan, and we knew we could trust each other. After that, there was not much wiggle room due to the “sides.” So from there on out, instead of playing an angle to my own allies, I had to play an angle to the other side. I had to come across as weak, otherwise I would have been targeted. My allies were going home left and right, and I thought the only way I’d have a shot to make it far was to make myself seem incapable and incompetent. Which isn’t a total misconception by any means; I’m terrible at challenges, and I’m obviously not the brightest crayon in the box. However, if I didn’t make this clear to the other side, I think that they easily could have gone guns blazing after me. I had to carry this out through the merge as well, which was successful seeing as that I was never targeted by the other alliance.

During the merge portion of the game, I realized two things: one, that Henry was the biggest threat to win the game, and two, that Henry and Knox had a tight relationship that was not going to be easy to break up. This was confirmed by a conversation that Knox accidentally showed to Thiago, Cassie and I. At this point, I knew that Cassie and I would easily be able to make final 4. We knew that it wouldn’t be a problem to convince Thiago that Henry was the biggest threat and needed to go at final 5, which is why we took our chances of not flipping to Ben and Dominic in spite of the rumored “final 3 guys alliance.” Before Cassie and I even had to convince Thiago, he came to us with the information that Knox wanted me to go home at final 5. And so obviously we agreed; the situation was totally a GMTA.

My final moves in this game were getting rid of the two biggest jury threats, Henry and Cassie. I felt like voting out Cassie would be my final chance to prove that I was playing a purely strategic game, and putting personal feelings aside. It was a tough decision, but one that I made 100% on my own. It was something I really thought I would never do, but what I needed to do to prove that I wanted to win this game, and not hand it over like I did in season 3.

Thanks for the question Selena, I hope that this was in-depth enough for you, but if not, just let me know and I’ll elaborate more on anything. Good luck with your decision!

[thiago]

However, I trusted my gut and told Mark that he could definitely trust Thiago, and also helped him to come together with Knox. Had I not done this and just left Thiago in the dark like many people told me to do, he could have gone back to Ellen and made a different alliance. I do b

Sorry to interrupt your thread, Selena. I know you have no interest in hearing from me, but since I know that other jurors are able to read each thread, I would like to clarify something that AJ mentioned when answering your question

Much like I tried early on telling people that me and Ellen weren't tight, although (not to many people's suprise) I was working closely with her at the beginning, myself and Mark were also much closer than we told people. We both picked up where we left off around the time the first 3 idols were found (where he tried to help me find the idol, but I was heading home from work and kept losing reception, so he ended up giving the answer to Chase). Mark and I were both on the same page in making AJ feel like we weren't friends at all, and allowed her to feel as if she was the one bringing us together, when in reality we were very much together but wanted to minimize our working relationship to those in our to-be alliance. At this point in the game Ellen had expressed that she had little trust in me, so instead of working with both Ellen and Mark I ended up going with Mark, and we both quietly worked together so that people wouldn't fear us and prevent forming an alliance with both of us in it.

I'll slither on out of this thread now for ya Selena!