Chelsea's Cute Commentary

[Chelsea Meissner]

Congrats Yau and Anthony on making it this far! You have both done something that the rest of us weren't able to do. Which means you must have done something right.

My vote is honestly up in the air. I didn't have much of a relationship with either of you in this game.

Anthony, I think a lot of it was due to our time zone difference and the fact that I had classes all day and worked in the evening. You were a beast at challenges and while that is the one thing that annoyed me in this game, you still deserved it because you won each immunity fair and square.


Yau, the one time we talked you thought I was a totally different person than who I really was. Considering that was maybe the second time we ever talked, my first impression wasn't the greatest of you. It definitely didn't improve when I felt you were trying to bully me over that whole auction prize that you thought I didn't deserve to get due to so many people posting at once. Don't worry, I'm not one to hold these things against people because I like to see the good in everybody.

So here are my simple questions for the both of you:

Why should I vote for you over the other person? As I already stated, my vote is up in the air and this is your chance to prove yourself to me.

My second question is, how were you a better player than the other person sitting next to you. This is somewhat similar to the first question, but what I'm really looking for is for you two to sell yourselves to me and the rest of the jury.

I'm looking forward to hearing both of your answers, and good luck!

[Yau-Man Chan]

Yau, the one time we talked you thought I was a totally different person than who I really was. Considering that was maybe the second time we ever talked, my first impression wasn't the greatest of you. It definitely didn't improve when I felt you were trying to bully me over that whole auction prize that you thought I didn't deserve to get due to so many people posting at once. Don't worry, I'm not one to hold these things against people because I like to see the good in everybody.

First of all I am so sorry for my craziness this game when it came to you. I talked plenty of times with my friends on Skype how I wished we had a shot of working together cause you seemed like a cool girl, and then I was always confused who you were because not being tribed so many people to keep track of was confusing. I often thought you were Brianna and vice versa with her. Thank you for not holding my chaotic mind against me.

As for the auction I knew things would be nuts the last minute. Because so many hosts do auctions differently, I assumed if the table wasn't correct that it wouldn't count. It was not just you, if it had been anybody hun I would have said something. I think for this game we were just on different sides of the game, and never got that chance to bond or work together.

So here are my simple questions for the both of you:

Why should I vote for you over the other person? As I already stated, my vote is up in the air and this is your chance to prove yourself to me.

I think you should consider me for your vote because even though we were on opposing sides of the game I played hard. I can be a challenge threat, but with the style of this season I tried to underplay my "physical" abilities and hone in on strategical and social moves. I watch Survivor and see people dominate in challenges and I respect that strategy, but at the end of the day the game is about so much more. Regardless of how relationships formed I worked my best to get to know the cast as much as possible. I devoted myself to an alliance of strong players for most of the game, willing to do anything it took to keep that bond safe. Yes it hiccuped along the road when my bond with Courtney grew and people misunderstood my intentions, but that left me vulnerable and able to play an elevated game of Survivor. When it came to challenges, I only went balls to the wall when I knew I needed to make something happen. The story telling challenge was perfect. It was an opportunity for Jen and I to both get another shard. I was confident in her story as well as mine. It was also the chance to truly show Courtney I wasn't bluffing when I made my final 2 deal with. Giving her immunity prevented my allies from trying to cut those ties, and gave me the chance to gain the idol and secure another round in the game. At the end of the day I was able to be considered a threat on more then just my challenge strengths. It took manipulation, side deals, and being a social butterfly to happen but I always managed to avoid the vote. I didn't go to DV as much as the others, but often was gifted with their prizes, though fake. These did play a big part in the game and seemingly never really mattered in the votes. My auction prize truly was a shining moment as it prevented prizes from being played the round Brenda went. Because of her challenge strength and passion for the game, I almost was prepared to cave to her pleas to not use it but at the end of the day I chose not to piss on anymore of the allies I had still in the game. I went into final 4 knowing I could easily be Jen, Anthony, and Courtney's final two choice essentially setting me up to be sitting here in any situation. I admit my game wasn't perfect, but I defin feel it should have a shot at the juries vote.

My second question is, how were you a better player than the other person sitting next to you. This is somewhat similar to the first question, but what I'm really looking for is for you two to sell yourselves to me and the rest of the jury.

So I ranted and raved in my first answer so I will try to be more concise here. Anthony is amazing and though he played strong, and loyal, he is missing a vulnerability about his game that I had. Yes he was vulnerable in losing his allies, but I most often vulnerable of leaving on one of the many epic blindsides of this season. The Trinity was a great idea cause our strengths were brought together. My advantage was the time I could devote to the other players where Anthony often had to be caught up on plans because of the different time zones. It has to be wondered that without Jen or I, how far he might have gotten every time his name came up and we fought to change the target around. Anthony winning Immunity essentially for the Trinity, ensured that no one else had it and were left vulnerable to become victim to the three of us. Yau Jess has no game regrets and I hope the jury knows I am hear fighting truly believing I had more to overcome in this game then Anthony. Still love him to death though.

I'm looking forward to hearing both of your answers, and good luck!

[Anthony Robinson]

Hey Chelsea Thanks for your nice words! I will answer your questions in reverse order, then hopefully I won't repeat myself too much.

My second question is, how were you a better player than the other person sitting next to you. This is somewhat similar to the first question, but what I'm really looking for is for you two to sell yourselves to me and the rest of the jury.

I have shown to be a very strong players on all fields. I think my physical performance speaks for itself. I won 7 out of 11 individual immunities (three were shared immunities), and did more than 50% of the work in the two team/tribal challenges. That in itself I think is a huge accomplishment that shows how passionate I was about the game and how serious I have been about this from start to end. My challenge performance can be seen as something that has brought me here, and that made the game easier for me to play. It was not though. That challenge performance took a LOT of time and it put a huge target on my back forcing me to secure my spot for when I would lose immunity. Even when safe, I worked hard to keep the people that were close to me in the game and I never sat back. So I don't think the challenge performance made it that much easier for me; it just came with extra pressure to win the next one and forced me to secure my spot ahead of time. All in all, my challenge performance is one thing I definitely did better than YauMan, though he typically gave his all and deserved his win in the storyteller challenge.

Did I need all those immunities? For keeping DV items out of other people's hands, yes. Not for my safety, I'd like to think. I had social ties with a lot of people in this game. Whenever I was on my computer (during work or in my free time), I have always been available on AIM for a chat. I think my social game was up to par. Compared to YauMan, I wasn't the social butterfly talking people into doing certain things for the vote. However, I did socialize as much as I could. I remember YauMan saying that he "doesn't talk to Brenda" or that he was going to ignore Richard for example. Well, I never avoided or ignored anyone but Angie. Unfortunately you and me didn't talk a whole lot, but I do remember the times we talked, during your four hour endurance in the beginning of the game for example. We just had a fun conversation. I was all about having fun, and socializing, and this helped my game a lot. It resulted in getting closer to for example YauMan, Jen, Shawna, Kenny, Penner, and Courtney and had I ever lost an immunity early in the game then I think I would have been able to rely on those people to try and keep the vote off of me. We are all different type of players; I excelled at challenges, YauMan excelled at working his magic on people. The latter is something that I typically don't do myself. I typically just talk and try to get to know people, in order to see who I can trust and who is willing to work with me. That's what my social game was about, and I think my social game was really solid. Was YauMan's social game worse? Better? Nah, I think it was just different. We both had a different approach.

Finally, while most of my strategizing was strategizing as part of the Trinity's strategizing, I did have a key role in it and I did have my own plans and options in the game. In the beginning of the game, I kept two options wide open. One option was to go with YauMan and Jen, who showed to work very hard for my safety in the one round that I wasn't safe, and the other option was to go with Penner. My bond with Penner was one of the better kept secrets during the game I'd like to think. When I went to DV on my own in round 2, I gave a (real) 2x nullifier to Penner. That was kind of tricky, as we didn't want anyone else to know about that. It formed a bond between the two of us, it showed him that he could trust me, and I trusted him so it was the best option for me at that time. Penner was a very logical and strategical thinker, while I had more social ties with people and was performing well in challenges. In my opinion we were a great duo. I kept this option open for a long long time until we drifted apart unfortunately. This shows though, that even though I had multiple things going on, I was simply playing the game to the fullest. I didn't just rely on one alliance. Then later, when things started looking worse for Trinity at Final 8, I did a lot of work to get Shawna and Courtney on our side. Getting Shawna back on our side was initially my idea, showing that also as part of Trinity I had an important role in strategizing.

So all in all, in all fields of the game I did a good job. Looking from the outside, of course my challenge performance is the most obvious. I definitely worked very hard in the other fields as well though, and I don't think YauMan was significantly better in those fields.

Why should I vote for you over the other person? As I already stated, my vote is up in the air and this is your chance to prove yourself to me.

For this, I can only conjecture what you are looking for in a player and how you would/should determine your vote of course. I think that you would stay close to how you play yourself and therefore I will try to relate our two games to each other.

I can see why you think my challenge performance, at times, got annoying. It got kinda old after a while, right? I was a fighter though, and I kept fighting no matter what the consequences would be. A target on my back? I didn't really mind. I just gave my all in challenges, tried to have fun with them for as long as possible, and yeah it gave me those immunity wins. I don't think that you and I are that much different from each other as players. I have seen you performing very well in challenges as well. You did great in the endurance challenge winning a shard, you did great in the rope cutting challenge giving you a trip to DV, you got far in the Round 5 challenge, and you did great in the second merge challenge with these balls. I took that blue immunity from you, and yes that must have been very frustrating. When you tried to win it back, I cut you off. I know that I was annoying you at that time, but I knew that I would be up for a few more hours and I didn't want you to waste more time and then be cut off right before you beat me. That would have been very cruel. You showed to be a strong competitor, a fighter, and I don't think you would ever throw a challenge or hold back in them. In that way I can see similarities between the two of us and I hope that you can relate to how I played in the challenges.

Second, we didn't get to talk to each other much due to our time difference, but when talking we always had a little bit of game talk and typically more small talk. That's what I love about the social part of the game, and I got the impression that you like to play in a similar fashion.

Last but not least, a final reason to give me your vote could be that I played the most memorable game. If you ever look back at Survivor: Kalahari, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Besides the fun experience this has been, it may be the annoying thought of Anthony winning so many immunity challenges... I'm biased of course, since of course that would be the first thing that comes to my mind, but also for someone else this may be a very memorable thing. It's one of the things that shaped this game, I think that I have been a key player and perhaps played the most memorable game of everyone by being so dominant in the challenges. I hope that I was enough of a key player to deserve your vote.

If you have any follow up questions, let me know

[Chelsea Meissner]

Thank you both for your answers, I think I have made my decision

Good luck to you both.