Weird Al Survivor IX - Gameplay Thread - WINNER REVEALED!

[Teh Dingo]

Jon, pick me. Killingsworth once said your mom smells and Joe kicked your dog

[TMBJon]

I officially choose Dingo to go with me to the Final Two.
Unless of course it "doesn't work like that," in which case, anth please check your inbox.

[Big Spoon]

Well, his dog called my mother a bitch.

[anthontherun]

Well, it's not really how this usually works, but dingo made such a compelling argument that I think I'll let it happen! dingo vs. Jon Final 2, everyone! Now excuse me while I take this phone call from the FCC...

...ok, never mind.


TRIBAL COUNCIL #14 RESULTS

Once the vote is read, the decision is final. The person voted out will be asked to leave the Tribal Council area immediately. That person will also relinquish their Survivor avatar and return to their normal avatar as soon as possible.

A reminder: Please don't take it too personally if you are voted out. No vote for any individual should be taken as an assault on or insult to them as a person or as a member of this forum. Remember, we are all still friends here in WOWAY. But remember too -- this is a GAME, and it is a game in which players must do what they must strategically in order to win!

The fourteenth person voted out of Weird Al Survivor IX and the seventh and final member of our jury...

Spoiler:

Big Spoon

Joe, the tribe has spoken.

It's time for you to go.
Please feel free to say some final words or leave a goodbye message in this thread. Thank you so much for playing; I hope you had fun.

However, your role in this game is far from over. You are the last official member of the jury that will ultimately decide who will win Weird Al Survivor IX. Feel free to switch to the Jury avatar:


The rest of you Survivors, remember to keep the chit chat in the other thread!

PARTING WORDS
After four months, we're finally down to our final two: Killingsworth and TMBJon. Congratulations to both of you! But now the power is in the hands of the people you voted out. They will decide which of you is most deserving of the title of Sole Survivor and the minor prize that comes with it.

Best of luck to both of you! Final Tribal Council details will be posted shortly.

[Big Spoon]

Wow.

I'm shocked, shocked.... that I made it this far! When I first signed on to play, I was hoping to make it at least to the merge, if not a little further. But I can't believe I actually made it to the final three!!!

I had a fantastic time playing. Thank you, anth, for being a great host! I've loved this, and while it was stressful dealing with the game and finals near the end of my semester, it all worked out.

Jon and Casey, congrats on making it to the final two! You guys deserve it!

[Killingsworth]

Thank you very much, Joe! Good challenge!

[anthontherun]

FINAL TRIBAL COUNCIL

Congratulations, Jon and Casey. You two did what 16 others were unable to do in this game: make it all the way to the end. The paths you took to get here were different, but you've both certainly earned it, and we should be in for an exciting final Tribal Council.

I PM'd the members of the jury with some info on how this will work, but basically, we'll begin with opening statements from the finalists. As soon as those are posted, the jurors will have a chance to make statements and ask questions to the final two. After that, Jon and Casey will each make a closing statement, and then the jurors will begin voting.

There is no set order for the finalists to post, or the jurors for that matter. If there are any questions, please ask. minnick27 is serving as an alternate juror--he will be able to make a post and cast a vote, although it will only count in the event that one of the other jurors fails to do so.

Casey and Jon--please post your opening statements no later than Sunday, May 27 at 7 PM EST. Good luck!

[Elvis]

I have two questions. Remember, honesty is not always the best policy, or is it?

1. Whose idea was it to vote Stephen out? Provide specifics.
2. Is "Bob" a video?

Dave

[TMBJon]

Opening Statement:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
Thank you for being here today. It has been an honor to compete against each of you in this competition which is about to enter its sixth month. I have enjoyed competing each of the challenges and strategizing as the game progressed. Today, you face your final challenge: whom to vote for to win the title of Sole Survivor. I believe I have earned the distinction of holding that title.
I am proud to say that I have made it this far without resorting to shady alliances or backstabbing fellow players. I have made it to this point in the game the old fashioned way - working with team members, building partnerships, and straight up winning immunities in the later part of the game.

There was exactly one exception to this, which was the ousting of Stephen from the game. I made the determination early on that my two toughest competitors in the game were Stephen and Dave. In order to defeat Dave, I made sure that the Minor Celebrities voted against him as soon as we had the opportunity. I knew that we would have the votes given how the team challenges had played out, and not knowing what would be in store in the future, I made sure we did so right away.
As for Stephen, however, I felt as if my hands were forced in that case. Because Dave has asked, allow me to elaborate. Stephen approached me early on suggesting that he and I should go all the way to the Final Two. I was immediately skeptical of this idea because I had heard it once before... from Stephen himself in 2006, the last time I played Survivor on this forum and came in third place. In 2006, Stephen and I were "in an alliance" and I was also "in one" with Elsa. As it turned out, however, the two of them had also forged an alliance which was stronger than those which I'd formed with either of them. Thus, I was eliminated from the game.
Determined not to let this happen again, I took advantage of the fact that Stephen was trying to make underhanded moves the entire game. He was always whispering bugs into my ear (and from what others had told me, I was not the only one he was whispering to) about why we should vote Mystik Tomato out of the game. His motivations for doing so were clearly personal, unrelated to this game.
The round in which he was ultimately voted out, I was planning to vote out Casey. Casey had earlier suggested that he was considering quitting the Minor Celebrities because the JCGs "needed the help," which obviously made no sense strategically. I was fully planning to vote Casey out as soon as we had the chance for his disloyalty, however we just kept winning and winning. When we finally lost one, Stephen actually laid out a very good case for why we should eliminate a stronger player rather than Casey. Casey, he argued, would be someone we could count on to vote however we wanted him to. (This did pan out to be true, as Casey voted exactly as I suggested him to any time he asked.) However, I disagreed with Stephen's suggestion to vote out Chris. I saw more upside in eliminating someone who was actively scheming to win the game -- and someone who I know first-hand would betray any alliance in order to win -- than someone who was generally more helpful to the team (ie Chris).
I'd like to stress one point here which is that this round of voting was the only time throughout the entire course of the game that I actively whipped up the votes to go a certain direction. However, I think it is also interesting that, without fail, every single time I voted in a Tribal Council, I voted for the person who was ultimately voted out. I will gladly answer any further questions on the topic of voting out Stephen, but I'd like to add one final note on the subject which is that it obviously was NOT a personal vendetta of any kind. It was merely a strategic decision which I think has since paid off in spades.

And now, a word about my opponent.
As I mentioned above, Casey gave early indication that he was considering quitting the Minor Celebrities and joining the Jungle Cruise Guides. I found this to be an unfortunate sign of disloyalty to our team which had bonded quite well by that point, and I almost certainly would have followed through in ensuring his early demise had Stephen not put so much pressure on me/others to vote Chris out instead.
Though Casey was certainly a devoted member of the Minor Celebrities who gave nothing less than a full effort, I don't think there would be any Minor Celebrities, on this jury or otherwise, who would tell you that Casey was actually a valuable member of the team. Many of his ideas were misguided, and some were just plain bad. I mean no disrespect to Casey, but several team members complained about having to work with him. One example comes to mind: when we were putting together the music video, Casey waited until very close to the deadline to send Alicia his part and when she received it, there was no audio included. This put Alicia in a real bind as the entire edit had to be put on hold while we waited for Casey to re-record his video the following day, and she had to edit everything at the absolute last minute and even necessitated a request for a short extension in order for the video to upload to YouTube.
In all honesty, I do think I contributed far more to the successes of the Minor Celebrities than Casey, and I would be interested to hear if Casey agrees with that point or if he thinks he contributed more to the team than I did.

Thank you, jury, for reading this opening statement post. I trust that you will consider all evidence and come to a fair decision, and when you come to that decision, you will agree that I should be the winner of Weird Al Survivor IX.

[Killingsworth]

Members of our fair jury, I’d like to thank you for taking time to read both mine and Jon’s statements. As I have previously stated, I believe it is my sheer work ethic and willingness to cooperate with others to the best of my abilities that has got me to this point in the game. I also believed I have bonded with my teammates through this ordeal. I also firmly believed that what was best for my team was always right and that as long as we all were looking out for each other, the odds would be in our favor. As the game went on, I knew more and more that my fellow Minor Celebrities and I gained the abilities to trust each other and put aside our petty personal differences (well, some more than others) and do what ultimately worked best for a collaborative effort. This, of course, brings me to Jon’s accusations of my alleged disloyalty.

Yes, I admit at one point during the first challenge I did very briefly consider joining the Jungle Cruise Guides once I got word from Jon that they kidnapped me. However, I did go through a very specific thought process under the circumstances that Jon conveniently left out. After our team lost the first puzzle challenge, he had asked me to do a little “recon” mission and come back with as much inside information on how the other team functioned as I could. What I saw in their forum from the brief time I was kidnapped was the JCG’s mostly sitting back and letting Dave and another member who may be solved two puzzles at best just do all the work. As his teammates later logged onto the forum, they just posted the solved puzzles in the corresponding thread that Dave and the other person had already solved. Meanwhile, seven out of eight of the Minor Celebrities were live on the forum busting our butts trying to get all the puzzles solved and posted in the correct thread. We only had one member of our team completely absent for whatever reason that we had trouble contacting outside of the forum. They weren’t able to post a puzzle in time, so naturally we thought it best to unceremoniously vote them out right away.

Because they irresponsibly shifted the workload to mostly one particularly knowledgeable and/or resourceful member of their tribe who happened to be present, the JCGs had an unfair advantage over us given the timeframe. Keep in mind that this was still the very first challenge in my very first game of Survivor so I really didn’t feel like I had a dog in this fight just yet. At the time, there was really no way for me to gauge who the stronger team really was as we had all been placed together by pure mathematical chance so the first thing that ran through my mind was that the JCGs needed some serious help coordinating challenges together in order to work as a cohesive unit in which everybody pulls their weight. If nothing else, I figured that good strong teamwork is something to be valued in this game as it should rightfully get one very far and that greatly influenced my decision. Then, as Jon was convincing me that the MC’s actually did need me more than the JCGs did (if for absolutely no other reason than strength in numbers), I realized that if these trends continued and I did indeed join the JCGs, that team would be reduced to nothing more than me and Dave doing all the work and that wouldn’t be a very fair game. That and the fact that I realized the JCG’s were pretty much almost strangers to me and I’d known more of the Minor Celebrities personally as most of us have bonded via social networking outside of this forum. I felt at the time that factor would also contribute to a healthier and more productive work environment with us.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and I ultimately decided to stay with the Minor Celebrities. I’m not trying to argue Jon’s point that I contributed significantly less to the victory streak of our team then he did, but I did contribute. Well, that much I can say. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t even be in the final two, would I? Still, I owe a debt of gratitude to Jon as I felt early on that he was looking out for me the most out of all my teammates. The fact that we somehow formed an alliance says a lot as he must have saw something in me that made him want to see me succeed in this game. It should be obvious by this point that Jon must have come around to seeing me as his most worthy opponent for the title of Sole Survivor. I definitely knew I could trust him and that I had his trust as the game progressed. A good example of this would be after the merge when Dave PM’ed me about a possible alliance simply because “no one would suspect it” and he thought we could easily make the final two. Already, I sensed his ulterior motives so I asked Jon whether I should just lull Dave into a false sense of security or just straight up turn him down. Jon just said I could lie to him as long as I had his true allegiance and didn’t tell him. Long story short, I took full advantage of a glorious opportunity to take Dave’s precious immunity away from him ultimately leading to his ousting.

Because of this, there are two claims to Jon’s plea for Sole Survivor and strategy to win that I can’t rightfully share with him: not backstabbing other players and winning a smurfton of immunities. Obviously, it sounds like I “backstabbed” Dave, but shortly after he left Jon won the last five immunities in a row. Dave was also notorious for winning large numbers of immunities before he got booted off (which he didn’t seem to take too much in stride, I might add) so in a way, it’s almost like Jon had become what he initially despised and ultimately succeeded in destroying. It was like Jon thought he would assume Dave’s powers or form if he destroyed him like he was some sort of Highlander. I don’t want to accuse Jon of betraying any part of himself in order to win or anything, because I’m trying to be fairly diplomatic here. On the other hand, I have never won a single immunity, even if after the merge a big part of my strategy was just to participate in as many challenges as I could just to win at least one individual immunity just so that I could keep it and not get voted off. In a bizarre way, I take some pride in that. The fact that I have made it to the final two without winning any individual immunities after the merge must say something. Maybe it speaks to other players strategies towards who they voted off or maybe it was just a fluke…or maybe it was solely my alliance with Jon that bought me this far. Who can really tell, honestly?

This is how I am choosing to rationalize your votes for me to win Sole Survivor…and if nothing else, who doesn’t like a great underdog story? Wouldn’t you like to be a part of one? VOTE FOR ME!!!



…oh, and to answer Dave’s second question, “Bob” is not as much a video as it is a series of cryptic clues regarding the inevitable downfall of western civilization as we know it. Thank you.


…OH, and to answer a question Dave didn’t even bother asking, it was Jon’s idea to oust you all along just like it was his plan to unceremoniously dump Stephen. I merely executed his plan.


…and one more thing, just VOTE FOR ME!!!