Hallo, Yuzuru! I'll take a stab at answering both questions.
Because we all know that's what Hermione would do!
Very well. Here's the game as I remember it. My apologies for anything I might get wrong, this is just my own personal perspective, and I can't possibly claim to know everything that was running through everybody's mind.
Round OneBefore the tribes were formed, I mostly just attempted to play the social butterfly. I made casual non-game conversation with a few different people, hoping that I'd be seen as someone who was nice to talk to, and would make a decent ally when the game started to get interesting. I actually made a pretty colossal blunder right out of the gate by posting a confessional in the open, which contained my pre-game cast assessment of the other players. Guilherme found it, and more or less blackmailed me into an alliance with him so that he wouldn't leak the information. After that happened, a lot of my social interactions were mostly attempts to suss out who might have seen the information, and what might befall me as a result.
Also around this time, Chris and I discovered that we knew each other. We decided to look out for one another, but we both made it very clear that if there came a time where one of us needed to vote the other off, we would.
Once we got placed into tribes, I bonded most closely with Macklemore, and I brought him into the alliance that I was forced to make with Guilherme. I also found Lee intimidating and considered her a large threat, but I didn't take much action right off the bat.
Round Two Macklemore and I discussed who we wanted in our alliance, and how we could ensure that we were controlling the votes to keep ourselves safe. To that end, we brought Leo into the discussion, and started to make him feel more included. We also maintained some communication with Lee, since she was proving to be valuable in challenges.
Round ThreeGuilherme got evacuated, which was a huge relief for me. Since Mack and I had ties to Leo, we were already looking at Guilherme as a target, and he would likely have gone home at our first tribal council.
Then came the tribe swap, which was probably the most pivotal round of the game for me. I was partnered with Nikki for the individual challenge, so I knew straightaway that there was absolutely no way that I could possibly win it. The Foxes were down 4-3, and that meant that there was a significant risk that power players like Ryan and JLaw would see this as a prime opportunity to take us out. I later received confirmation from Chris that this was, in fact, the case. Ryan appeared to be the mastermind, and he had approached JLaw with the intention of getting her, Betty, and Charlize to take one of us out. Macklemore won Immunity, which put me in an even more precarious position, since that meant it was essentially a coin flip between me and Leonardo.
Then, Ryan threw another curve ball at us. He approached Mack and Leo with the idea of getting us to vote for JLaw, in the hopes of taking out her idol. The idea was that Ryan would force a 2-2-3 split between JLaw, Charlize, and Betty. I instantly smelled a rat, because it seemed far too easy for Ryan to simply change things up and go after one of the Foxes if he chose, leaving us down in numbers and giving JLaw a perfect reason not to trust us. Macklemore and Leonardo were fairly resistent to the idea of turning on Ryan, and Mack was dead set on taking JLaw out. I spent literally hours trying to convince him, to no avail. At this point, I decided to play the only card I had left. I discovered that I knew Charlize from having played in her series, and I decided to take a gamble and approach her to flip. Turns out she was frustrated with JLaw and had wanted her gone for quite some time, so she was quite eager to work with us. Once I had proof from her that Ryan and JLaw were indeed playing us, I was able to secure the votes to send Ryan home. Not only did this move eliminate a huge power player, but it gave the Foxes new life going into the merge.
Round Four My social game this round basically consisted of reassuring Mack and Leo that I was still with them. Mack was feeling a bit suspicious because I had steered the target away from JLaw, and he repeatedly wondered whether I had a secret backdoor alliance with her. So a lot of my conversations were just about making sure they knew that I still had their loyalty, and that we could trust Charlize to help us out against JLaw when the time came. I also made a point of talking to JLaw and spilling some of Ryan's secrets to her. I did this for two reasons. Mostly I wanted her to feel less betrayed, but I also wanted to make sure that if JLaw did use her idol for vengeance that it wouldn't be me taking the fall for it.
Round FiveIt was a lot more of the same story. We went into the tug of war challenge thinking we were going to lose, and making preparations for it. I went around implementing the plan I'd come up with during Ryan's boot, which was to split the votes 2-2-2 between Betty and JLaw, and then either vote JLaw in the revote or flush her idol. So I spent the majority of that round making sure that Charlize and Mack/Leo were able to trust one another enough to pull this off, because I didn't want either side to panic and start going after each other. Then we won, and it was all kind of moot anyway.
Round SixThe merge hit, and this was when the game officially descended into madness for me. On the one hand, I had my friendships with Chris, Charlize, and Maggie, and those friendships were probably the only reason that the Foxes were still in the game. On the other hand, the alliances that I made with Leo and Mack were my first allegiance, and they had never betrayed me. As a player, I try never to turn against an ally who doesn't deserve it, but now I was in a position where I was going to have to turn on somebody at some point. Since I still wanted to help the people who'd been loyal to me, I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances, which was to paint targets on everybody that I didn't owe a moral debt to. I was an instrumental part of coordinating the joint effort between the two big alliances to split the vote between Betty and JLaw, in the hopes that we'd flush JLaw's idol once and for all. Unfortunately, some communication lines got crossed, and it wound up being a tie. Betty sacrificed herself to save JLaw, and that meant that plans had been delayed once again.
Round SevenJLaw was still public enemy number one, and there were still some fears that she was holding onto an idol. With that in mind, I set about targeting Yuzuru. I knew that he and Chris had strong affiliations, which could cause that alliance to shift away from me, and that there was a very definite connection between him and Lee. Idoling him out would solved both problems pretty handily. Most of the others were intent on voting for Lee, but I felt that this was a poor move for the Foxes (if we'd done that and she stayed, that would have pushed her to flip, and that could have spelled disaster for the three of us.) Notably, I asked Lee to vote for Yuzuru this round, and she gave me a series of fairly weak excuses for why it was better to keep Yuzuru and send JLaw home instead. I was able to present this information back to Macklemore and Leo, to convince them that Lee wasn't trustworthy. This needed to happen for two reasons. First of all, I didn't want the four Foxes to overwhelm the other alliance, because that would have forced me into a swing-vote position at the final seven and I absolutely didn't want to be in that position. Secondly, I wanted to make sure that we could get Lee out the next round.
Round EightThis was the first time that Yuzuru and I had any contact. He approached me to get the target off of himself, and seemed interested in trying to push votes onto Maggie or Charlize, since he felt that his previous alliance had turned its back on him. I would very much have liked to consider the offer, but I didn't for two reasons. First of all, I felt that the couple of him and Lee presented a huge threat, and could potentially flip back and forth between the sides to pick us off one by one. I also knew that Yuzuru was a huge challenge threat, and could have gone on a long immunity run. I implied to him that I would be willing to vote for Leo, and he instantly stopped talking to Macklemore and opted to try and take Leo out instead. This proved the theory that he would likely do anything to survive, and helped ensure that everybody was willing to vote him out.
Round NineThis was the round I'd been dreading all game. I knew that there would come a time where my two alliances would go after one another, and I wouldn't be able to stop it. I did try to push votes onto Lee, as she was the only person left in the game who wasn't in an official alliance with me, and I wanted to save Macklemore if I possibly could. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to convince Maggie and Charlize not to go against Macklemore, and the boys were convinced that Lee would vote with us, and that we'd have the numbers to at least force a tie. It's worth noting here that it would have been much simpler for me if I had voted Mack out, but I refused to break my promise to him. I voted for Chris, in keeping with our agreement at the start of the game. I knew it was a losing battle - probably either Chris would play his idol, or Lee wouldn't vote with us; the absolute best-case scenario was that we'd wind up drawing rocks. But I wasn't willing to turn my back on Mack just to make my game easier.
Round TenThis was the round that I self-voted, and it had absolutely nothing to do with strategy. I was sick, I was tired, and I simply forgot to do it. This round was similar to the situation with Mack, in that there was no way I was voting for Leo. If I had voted, I would absolutely have voted for Chris. If Lee had forced the tie, I would have gone with it, but in the revote it would have been 3-2. I really didn't have much choice in the matter.
Round ElevenI was the last to take the quiz, and I was able to see that Lee had the best score and would win Immunity, and that meant that it was time for the alliance to start turning on each other. I went to Chris to pick his brain, and Chris told me point-blank that he and Maggie were never going to vote for each other, and that it was probably going to be me leaving that night. I went to Charlize and recommended that we try to do something about this, which effectively put Lee in the swing vote position. I have no idea what Lee would have done, or how that vote would have gone down, but it would have been a very close thing if Chris hadn't dropped.
Round TwelveThere really wasn't a whole lot of strategizing to be done at this point. If Lee had won the final challenge, I'm honestly not sure what would have happened. Charlize and I would likely have voted for Maggie, but I don't know what Maggie would have done, or whether she and Lee would have targeted me or Charlize. Instead, I basically focused on winning Immunity. I stayed up for hours whittling down my time on the puzzle, and making sure that I had a fairly decent score in the flash game so that I could hopefully keep the necklace out of Lee's hands and make it a straightforward vote.
2. List off what you know and like about each member of the juryI was heavily medicated for a lot of the conversations that I had in this game, so please forgive me if I'm spotty on some of the details.
Martin - Martin and I had some excellent conversations, bonding over our mutual love of Britishness, and the Hobbit. Sadly, we were apart for nearly the entire game, and since there was something of a stigma about cross-tribe communication I never got the chance to reconnect with him. I do remember that he was an excellent conversationalist, and I was very sad not to be on a tribe with him.
JLaw - She's very big into video games, and the Fallout series in particular. She and I have very similar taste in our loves of music, video games, and book series. I loved the fact that she was able to conduct herself with maturity and grace even after the rug got pulled out from under her. She demonstrated a lot of class, and that's something I deeply respect.
Yuzuru - Oh, this one will surprise you. In fact, I think you're probably the person on the jury that I know best. I know that you first started making regular appearances in the ORG world around the summer 2011. You gained a reputation as a notoriously unpredictable player, and there were a lot of very polarized reactions to your playstyle when you first started. You've also been a respected PW for various series, including Andy's Survivor Amanda series, CBSurvivor, and GSurvivor, in which you recently became the new cohost. The reason why I know all of this is that we've played something like twelve games together. I never mentioned it in the course of this game because, well, we have a really weird relationship. I'm alias almost all the time and SOMEHOW you still have an absolutely uncanny track record of completely destroying me, even when you don't know that you're doing it. Seriously. I don't even think it's your fault. It just so happens that each and every single time I've tried to work with you, it has directly resulted in me losing the game. Almost every time I target you, it doesn't work and explodes spectacularly in my face. That being said, you're a fantastically interesting player to watch, and I love your dedication and your intelligence. Outside of games, I think we'd get along fantastically. Inside of games, well... you terrify me a little.
- Macklemore is from Colombia. He's a fan of Sofia Vergara, and musician Pharrell Williams. He's also quite fond of the Survivor States series, and I believe he's done quite well there. In real life, he's a grad student (I believe it's in communications technology, or something similar to that) and he's very bright. He applied to Brown University, and was able to give me a lot of good advice when I did the same. He was always there with an encouraging word when I was feeling particularly ill or down in the dumps, and that was something that I valued incredibly much.
Leonardo - Leo and I didn't wind up talking much. For the most part we were aligned with each other through Macklemore, but from what I recall of our conversations, he was a very loyal person, and I believe he's also a fan of soccer. He's a very level-headed person, and he's very loyal, but he's also smart and strategic.
Chris - Chris works the night shift, and he has an excellent sense of humor. He's a big character almost every time he plays, and he can kick outrageous amounts of ass in challenges when he puts his mind to it. He has a soft spot for causing chaos, and he doesn't like going back on his word. Once upon a time he and I were mortal enemies, but now we get along very well, indeed.
Lee - Lee, unsurprisingly, is a big fan of J-Pop and K-Pop, and the group 2ne1 in particular. She also enjoys SNSD, and several other bands that I'm not cool enough to have heard of. I like her taste in music (seriously, 2ne1 is amazing, and if you haven't listened to them, you should!) and her attitude. She's very easy to talk to, and I'm really glad to have met her.
Alright, I think that's the lot of it. Thanks for the questions, Yuzuru, and I hope that that settles some things. Feel free to let me know if there's anything else you'd like from me!
~ Emma
