[Jeff Probst]

This is Shan's Final Tribal Council Thread.

All other Jurors should remain in their own threads. 

Shan, you have until Sunday at 8c/9e to post your statements/questions to the Final 2. Remember not to take up too much of their time as they have 8 other jurors to get to. Please no listing or questions requiring novels for answers. You should post all of your statements/questions in your opening post in this thread, keeping follow-ups to a necessary minimum, or congratulatory thank you/nothing further.

[Shan]

Abe: Would you vote for you if you were me?

Xander: Would you vote for you if you were me?

[Xander]

I think it depends on what you value in a competitor and what your vote represents. 

If you are voting based on challenge dominance and strategy then I'd vote Abe.

If you're voting based on social game and strategy, I’d vote for me.

At this moment, you know exactly how I feel about you and where you stand with me. Can you say the same about Abe?  Abe, betrayed your trust from the get go and shared all of your conversations and game talk with me. I was able to capitalize on my connection to persuade and guilt him into voting you out. He oscillated that round and kept wanting to vote for JR, but I convinced him it had to be you otherwise I would have flipped. 

I spent 4 hours into the late evening calming Abe down because he was exceptionally angry that I spoke with you one night. He thought I ruined his game and was paranoid that you knew we were up to something nefarious.  I had to talk him down and thru the strategy until 1am when he finally understood that the sky wasn't falling.  He wanted to keep you around longer and longer. Had he, you would be sitting here today and we would not. Does that make Abe sound like someone who had a strategic and well organized master plan? Or how about someone who had me blindly under his spell? 

You and I played a similar social game. But I was unable to work my “charm” on you. You saw right through me. You knew you couldn't trust me and you were right not to. You are exceptionally intelligent and socially aware and that was dangerous for my game. Based on that, I can say with conviction that if YOU were in my position I'd be voting for you to win.

[Shan]

I think it depends on what you value in a competitor and what your vote represents. 
 

Exactly.  So yes or no?

Thank you for the response thus far.

[Xander]

Yes I think you should vote for me because you and I are quite alike Shan. 

​​​​​No, you should not vote for me because I called you out in tribal. 







 

[Abraham]

Hey Shan! Hope the boss doesn't piss you off this week.

I understand the reason for your short but fair question. I did spend a lot of time building a relationship with you and saying that you were my closest ally. We spent a lot of time together in this game working on plans, ideas, strategies, etc. You were actually one of my favorite people to talk actual gameplay with. You're incredibly brilliant, your challenge prowess is much better than you give yourself credit for, and you were a strong under the radar threat to win this game.

I did break your trust and blindside you after you saved me during a previous tribal. I put all my trust in you and relied on the relationship we built in order to get further in the game. In turn, I took you out of the game when I saw the best opportunity to do so. If I was in your position, it would be hard to vote for me.

However, I do believe you're a fan of this game. On our first day, we talked about our favorite Survivor players and how much we liked the game. Countless times in my confessional, I did mention I was worried how people would feel about voting for me after blindsiding them when I built such a strong relationship with them to begin with. But if the people playing this game are true fans, they will see through the cutthroat nature of my style of gameplay and vote for me to win based on everything I was able to accomplish.

So yes, I do believe if I was in you, I would vote for me. Abe played the most dominant game of the season and despite what he had to do to get to the end, he did it while also being the biggest target. He made the moves he had to make in order to get to the end, putting emotions aside and voting out his closest allies to be sitting at the top with all the best players on the jury. I would vote for Abe without a doubt.

I hope that answers your question, but do please provide some follow-up if you wish. You were another jury member I was nervous about answering for as I know how brilliant you are and know that you see through bullshit fairly easily (like that night Xander just had to message you right when we were talking about voting out Sara/Xander and you figured the two of us were close).

[Shan]

Thanks guys, I got what I was looking for from both of you.  I wanted to know what you both thought you knew about me, because relationships are the core of a lot of the jury's problems with both of you, but for different reasons.  Xander, I think you read me correctly-- we didn't click for whatever reason, and neither of us wanted to pour our energy into fake relationships.  I think I said in my confessional on night one that you would be my downfall, and how hilarious is it that I was right.    I appreciate your answer-- at least the first attempt, I think you might have been smoking for the second one.    I'm annoyed you took me out but I obviously can find no fault in you for it because I was dying to do the same to you.  No ill will here, but I'm not sure if it's enough to get my vote.

Abe, I'm a little disappointed in you, honestly.  You, Evvie, Leslie, and JR are the people I clicked with on a really personal level, therefore the four of you didn't get "Shan" you got the real me.  I'm not entirely sure why, if you really had thought about it for even two minutes, you would think that the dominating gamebot strategy is a game I would respect.  Funny enough, I don't watch Survivor.  I've played a lot of orgs but am not a fan of the show, so your perception of what I would respect is wrong, and I guarantee you are the only one of the four people who would have gotten that wrong.  This is why I struggle with rewarding your game-- your charts and graphs, the analyses, you thought of us all like data.  And I think that's where a lot of the hurt feelings are coming from, because nobody else seems to have removed the human element from their games as much as you did and it stings to feel like we were being real with someone who was just constantly using us as calculations.  I realize this is the part where you step in and refute that and talk about your personal connections with everybody, which I don't deny.  The part about how you used to send me links to the threads because I'd be rocking my kid to sleep at challenge start times was very real and so incredibly kind-- but it feels devalued now because it was just means to an end.  And really, you can't claim both-- you either played this dominating calculated game, or you played a personal one.  Trying to claim to ride the line between both won't help anything-- you took a chance on your gameplay, and with me at least I'm not sure that you made the right call.

There's no direct questions in this but if either of you feel like responding, feel free.  I've been angry with both of you for different reasons and sworn I would never vote for either of you for different reasons, and I'm still struggling.

[Abraham]

Thank you for sharing with me how you perceived my game. I don't want you to think that I just used people as data points with my charts and graphs. Those were something I did personally in my confessionals in order to sort out my place in the game. They were made to help me figure out my place and where I stood in everything. I don't understand how my graphs sorting out my place in the game removes the human element. We all made lists, graphs, boot orders, etc. Xander sent me his own graphs as well during the game. Because this game moves so fast and gets so complicated, it would help to have some visual to help sort out my next move. There's nothing inhumane about it.

Something that always comes up in the show Survivor, is the struggle between the real life relationships you have with people and the game. Every season, there's a clear struggle with teetering this line of gameplay and relationships. At the end of the day, I'm not making any excuses for how I played the way I did because that's what got me here to the end. However, the relationships I built with people are real to me and I'm sorry if you feel that our personal relationship has been devalued by the way I played.

I don't believe this has to be black and white. You need both a dominating game and a personal one to get through Survivor/Stranded. Even though this is a competitive game and everyone has the same goal of getting to the end, we're all human and we can never remove the feelings and emotions that come up in this game. In my view, you have to teeter this line. You can't be completely dominating without having personal relationships in this game. Otherwise, I would have been gone a long time ago and no one would care enough to keep me.

Shan, it's pretty clear to me that you're hurt by the way I played and you're probably questioning whether our personal connection was real. I can tell you from my side, that it was real to me, and it meant something to me. Whether you believe that or not is up to you. And I do apologize for hurting you, if I read your responses correctly. I obviously hope to have your vote, but I also respect if that's something you can't do. I'm hoping once this is all over that we're able to have a real relationship. Thank you for your response.

[Shan]

At this point I've been out of the game long enough where I wouldn't say that I'm hurt, I'm looking forward to knowing you outside the game regardless.  There are pros and cons to both of your gameplays, and it's challenging to decide which strategy to reward.  

Thanks to both of you for your time answering  

[Xander]

Thanks for saying that Shan,

I appreciate the challenge that you were to me and also commend you on driving me bonkers for a good portion of the game. I am also flattered that you thought i would be your downfall. Yet another example of your prescience and good instincts.