1. Nobody picked Natalie...ever...even though she was spoiled to go late into the game.
2. I and several picked Eliza right up to her boot.
3. Nat, Parv, Amanda, Alexis, and Cirie were equally spoiled in the first half of the season ("they do well, late game, blah blah blah") with no favoritism to one or another, and yet Parv and Cirie got the only serious support, with Alexis getting a little, but from primarily from someone who I sincerely believe 100% is not spoiled (OTH).
Some influence seems to have existed:
1. Talk of F2 in edgic popped up around the same time that it popped up in spoilers...can we track who brought that up?
2. Relynn started carrying the Amanda flag up the hill in edgic even though she/he was overtly spoiled (posted a spoiler in my spoiler thread), despite us asking spoiled folks to not speculate on winner and eliminations...and I propose Relynn be banned at least from spec and edgic.
Whether Parv's edit was edgically viable will probably be contentious with the nay sayers, but I think in a season of 20 (where they don't boot 3 in the first episode like they did in Palau) she got a perfectly balanced first few episodes...with her later actions backing up a key theme...we know their game, they know ours, so I have to play a different game...and she did exactly that. She wasn't neglected in a long stretch though her time at Airai was more on the UTR side as it was immaterial to the end game until she made her alliance with Alexis and Nat the episode they switched back.
CT theory held strong, as Malakal was easily complex the first 3-4 episodes, that being the key time to me. Some have some different perceptions and ideas of what CT really means, but I again stand by it as a definitive pointer to which tribe the winner is in early on. That complexity though is defined by me as being where you aren't quite sure where the alliances precisely are. We were early on led to believe Cirie was with Eliza's crew, her wavering was never fingered until the switchup. And in the end, it was the complexity surrounding Cirie (at New Malakal) which distracted us from the known pair of Amanda/Parv.
(However, known pairs have been dead as an edgic concept since the first F3 season. Didn't we remove that guideline? We voted for it as useless in the first edgies. But it was still important to distract us from it until it came up again in the finale). AND the episode where Amanda was upset with Parv helped to discredit the known pair F2. The concept is still there, it's just not a key edgic guideline as much as it is a minor factor.
I loved having a F2 as a twist because it makes it unclear how the end game is going to go down. There will never be a F2 goat like there was in the old days, as long as they keep the players on their toes.















