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Here are a few important notes about Episode 14 and the rest of this story. Please be sure to read them so that you have a better understanding of what is going on.

1) First of all, let me just give another huge thank you to everyone for reading this story. I appreciate all the comments and the feedback that I've been given, and it's great that some of you have been reading and commenting for four, five, six seasons now. I hope to see you all back for my next season, which will premiere sometime around December/January.

2) A few Congratulations: I guess this turned out to be my most predictable finale yet (sorry for that), because quite a few of you predicted where every person finished exactly correctly and some of you were just one or two off. I was very impressed with all of your predictions, and I want to congratulate the following people for guessing everything right: SFC (originally), KittyPryde1, tropical rain, chapera rocks, YemaGrl1988, and Brandon from Fantasy Games Central. And yes, just about everyone correctly got Tracy as the winner for a while now, so great job! Chapera rocks correctly predicted every jury vote as well!

I just want to post what KittyPryde1 said on Page 84 because it's like she had already read the episode, that's how accurate it was:

For next week, I'm thinking that Mikey, Tracy, and Mary all vote for Eliza, knowing that Brooke has no reason NOT to play the idol. Eliza goes home because she and Brooke probably think they're not even in danger. Then Mikey/Tracy/Brooke team up to vote out Mary, thinking the final will be a final 3 and not wanting to have to deal with Mary getting three votes automatically from Ian/Aras/Alexis. At that point, the final 3 basically comes down to who can win immunity, and I think it'll be Brooke, thus setting up the final confrontation between Mikey and Tracy, with Mikey losing out due to the fact that he would be more likely than Tracy to sweep up the votes of Aras and Ian. Then Brooke faces Tracy in the final 2 and loses.

3) I'll be working on updating everything in the thread over the next few days, but I don't want to put any of the final images up for a while, as not to spoil anything. Also expect the "EDITING ANALYSIS" to be posted within the next few days, where I will go through every episode and talk about the most important 'clues' and 'editing techniques' that I used throughout the season.

4) Why Did I Choose Tracy As The Winner?

With this season being "Fans vs. Favorites," I definitely wanted the Final Two to come down to one Fan and one Favorite. It seemed very fitting to me for this to happen, and I for sure wanted the winner to be a Fan. I'm not the biggest supporter of returning players and I thought that a Fan who really knew the game, who would be very clever and strategic, who would be an underdog yet a powerful player would be an amazing winner for this season. The winner would be a CPP one compared to CPN Dave, and Stacy/Candice, who both skewed negative as well. I was also 99% sure that the winner would be a woman this time. When the cast for this season was announced, like a lot of Survivor's most hardcore fans, I had some legitimate concerns about how many of these contestants really were "Fans," and I knew immediately that most of them would not be able to pull of the kind of game that I wanted my winner to have. But thankfully, there was one person who could pull it off: Tracy. She fit a demographic that hadn't won since Exile Island with Tina, so it wasn't like I was having the same "type" of winner again and I just honestly feel like she was the perfect choice to win. I think her strategy throughout the season was amazing and that she really did play a fantastic game.

5) Why Tracy/Mikey?

The way that I viewed Tracy/Mikey throughout this season was that I wanted them to be the "anti-Dave/Sherea," and this was the kind of dynamic that I was going for. Tracy even mentioned this once or twice throughout the season that she didn't want them to have the same kind of relationship as Dave and Sherea. Like D/S did, Tracy and Mikey had conflict very early on, but they took the opposite approach and instead of completely hating each other, they ended up putting aside their differences and working together to get to the Final Three. They really were a formidable pair, and I think they both played the game so well, making all the right moves while the Favorites continually fell apart.

I felt that having Tracy win the Final Immunity Challenge and vote out Mikey just wouldn't seem right after everything that had happened, so I ultimately decided that it was better to have Tracy sortof throw it to Brooke, so that it was a final showdown between Tracy and Mikey, and that either one of them could have gone home. Had Tracy won, it would probably be obvious that she'd keep Brooke, but I think it was a little more suspenseful this way. The conclusion to their story was when Mikey voted for Tracy to win and I purposely showed this vote because I felt that it was very important to hear him say that Tracy had his respect. I really enjoyed the two of them throughout the season.

Why Not Have A Final Three?

One decision that I struggled with in the early stages of planning was whether or not to have a Final Three in this season. If I was ever going to do it, it probably should have been this time because it would have definitely made the final vote more suspenseful, whereas it was probably pretty predictable with Tracy/Brooke.

Had the Final Three been Tracy/Brooke/Mikey, it would have certainly been interesting because it would have broken down as follows:

IAN: Mikey or Tracy?

KATHY: Tracy

SHEREA: Tracy

ARAS: Mikey

ALEXIS: Tracy

ELIZA: Brooke

MARY: Tracy or Mikey?

Depending how I had Mary and Ian go, it would have been a 3-3-1 vote. Eliza would have had to re-vote between Tracy and Mikey, and while I do have a hunch which way she would go, I'm not going to say it. I'll leave it to you to decide who would have won in that case. I think it would have been interesting to have a tie at the final vote like this, but the finale was already long enough as it was, and the deciding factor that made me leave this season as a Final Two was because I wanted it to come down to a Fan and a Favorite. Had these all been first-time players, I probably would have done the Final Three…

6) I guess I'll go through the episode scene by scene now like I usually do and make some more comments as I go through that:

7) Final Five:

The only thing I want to say about the Night 36 scene is about Mikey's confessional. This was extremely good thinking on his and Tracy's part, and a few of you caught on to this as well. Them getting rid of Alexis meant that Eliza/Brooke had someone that they hated and would never team up with to get rid of Tracy/Mikey. Mary, of course, also wanted to get rid of E/B, so if T/M wanted to, they could go to her and vote out one of the Favorites. This would prevent a 2/2 tie at the Final Four and put Tracy/Mikey in the best possible position at the Final Four. Neither of them was going to be targeted, so as Mikey said, they could pretty much slide into F4.

On Day 37, Mary gets a couple confessionals and we see Tracy/Mikey discussing the idea to vote out Eliza. However, they don't actually bring it to Mary yet because, as Tracy says, if Eliza or Brooke wins Immunity, they could be in trouble if they hatch the plan to early. They have to wait to find out if it's viable first. The reason that they target Eliza is: 1) they know Brooke has the hidden Immunity Idol and she has no reason not to use it on herself at F5; 2) Brooke would probably be more easily beatable than Eliza in the F2, so why not keep her around?

What did Eliza expect to happen at the Final Four?

The three members of Airai (Tracy/Mikey/Eliza) had made an alliance to go to the Final Three, but Eliza thought that at the Final Four, Tracy and Mikey would be willing to turn on each other since they would see each other as their biggest threats and Eliza didn't know how close they really had become. Eliza was not going to vote for Brooke, so it would have probably been a tie between Eliza and Tracy. Eliza would have expected Mikey to vote for Tracy, however, but we don't know if he would have or not.

8) Final Five Immunity:

For this challenge, I ended up using the one that was really used in Micronesia because it was fairly simple and short and I needed short and simple. I don't have much to say about it other than: there was originally a part in the Day 37 scene where Tracy told Mikey that if Mary is second place in the challenge, he should lose on purpose and let her win so that they can vote out Eliza without having to betray her. Of course, Mary IS second in the challenge, but the reason Mikey does not do this is because they were also playing for a new car. That's why he says later on "I wasn't going to let Mary win the car." I just wanted to clear that up because I had to cut out some parts from the episode.

I definitely don't think any of the challenges were the shining part of the finale, but hopefully they were all readable…

9) Final Five Strategy Scene

I think this scene is pretty self-explanatory and probably predictable to most of you. Eliza knows that Mary will be voting for her because of Brooke having the hidden Immunity Idol. This time we see Mary approach Tracy and Mikey about voting for Eliza, but we already know that they were planning the same thing. However, instead of saying that, they play it off like it was Mary's idea entirely so that they can get the credit for "saving her" by going along with her plan. Very smart move once again - attempting to gain her support on the jury.

Mary then wants to make an alliance to go with Mikey to the Final Two, and she suggests voting out Tracy at F4 because Tracy would be his next biggest threat and everyone would want to take Brooke to the Final Two because they could beat her. This wasn't hugely important, but it was in there partly because the vote at the Final Four was between them and they ended up voting for each other.

In looking back at this scene and doing the visibility chart, I'm really surprised how little Eliza was actually in the finale, but I guess that's to be expected when there's 5 people in it.

10) Final Five Tribal Council

As you'll notice, the Q & A parts of every Tribal Council in this episode are shorter than I usually have simply because the episode was so long already and I had to basically fit an entire extra Immunity Challenge and Tribal Council into the finale (plus re-vote, plus fire-making challenge, but I'll get to that in a minute).

I cut some stuff out of this Tribal Council, and it basically ended up being left with Eliza and Brooke answering questions saying they were confident in their alliance, and Mary saying that she felt vulnerable. Obviously, this was leading up to Eliza being shocked and blindsided like many of you predicted (great job), and the irony of this was that Eliza had made comments about not wanting to make the same mistakes as she did in Vanuatu, yet she went out basically the same way. Betrayed at the Final 5(/4 in Vanuatu, but first out in the finale both times)…

11) Surprise Immunity Challenge & Double Boot

Well, if there was going to be a Final Two this season, there was going to have to be one extra person eliminated from the game somehow and I decided to use a post-merge double boot at this point in the game. For one, they were already at TC so it fit well with the traditional Fallen Comrades IC that they used to have. It was also something fairly short and something that should have been pretty easy to follow along with.

For this Tribal Council, most of the questions that I kept in were mostly the questions like "Why should you not be voted out tonight?" just because for the sake of fairness, I felt everyone needed a chance to basically plead their case. Tracy winning this Immunity was possibly more important than she knew. Mary wanted to vote for Tracy, and she would have definitely voted for Tracy over Mikey. Everyone knew Brooke wasn't going to be voted out. I think I got rid of it but Tracy, at one point, said that she wasn't voting for Brooke because Brooke would be easiest to beat, which was what Mary said in her voting confessional and why Mary targeted Mikey and not Brooke…

12) The Tie

I know there wasn't much of an explanation into this in the episode, which I regret, but Brooke ended up voting for Mikey at this Tribal Council partly because she was upset at T/M for just betraying Eliza and partly because she thought that if she looked like she was trying to help Mary, that she would maybe gain Mary's vote in the Final Two. Brooke figured that Mikey would probably beat Mary if it ended up going to a fire-making challenge but she was prepared to vote for Mikey anyway.

After Cook Islands, I had expressed that I was really getting tired of the fire-making challenge because it was happening so frequently, but I didn't mind it here aside from the fact that the whole TC was already huge. But I kept it very short and straight-forward, and the only thing I wish I could have done differently was to still give Mikey a confessional about how he won the challenge even though he'd never gone camping, and how he'd learned to make fire, etc. That was supposed to be in the Day 38 scene, but I had to cut it out for length. I wish it was still in there though because it would have maybe wrapped up his story a bit more from the beginning of him not being an outdoorsman and trying to make fire in Episode 2. It would have had him talking about the growth rather than just you see it by him winning the challenge.

Anyways, so Mary lost and ended up going at the Final Four, which a lot of you predicted. Hopefully the 2-2 vote was a bit of a surprise. I know most of you thought it would be 3-1, and it's true that part of the reason I made it a tie was because I wanted some of you to fear that Mikey might end up going home from it.

13) The Final Three / Rite of Passage:

The Final Three scene is always a very short scene on the real show, and this time, it was no different in my fanfic. Brooke got a confessional about Eliza being voted off and the shock of a double boot, and then it went right to treemail for the Rite of Passage. Next season, I'm going to try to switch this scene up a bit though because it's become so formulaic with the reading of the treemail which basically says the exact same thing every season now, so I need to change this a little.

I definitely think that the Rite of Passage was a little longer than it should have been, but there were 17 people to go through as opposed to 13 in China. I know that this is probably a boring part of the episode and it takes up a lot of space (5-6 pages!), but I definitely thought that the blurbs that the voted out players said captured their game/story pretty well for the most part, so hopefully some of you enjoyed this.

The Rite of Passage actually took place on an ancient path that was lined by stone money. If you remember Episode 10 of the real Micronesia, the castaways were shown walking on a similar type of path as they walked to the village. This was the thing that Erik had a confessional about saying "1000s of feet have walked on it and he was waiting for a dinosaur to come out," etc.

14) Final Immunity Challenge:

As you probably recall, this was the same Final IC that was used in the real Fiji season (I have never used it in a fanfic). My original plan instead of having Jeff increase the angle every few minutes was to do like I did in Guatemala and have the jury handicap the F3 by choosing a person and increasing their angle by a few degrees. However, when I did my planning for this, practically everyone did this to Brooke and it would have become even more obvious than it already was that Brooke would not win a jury vote. So I did what the real show did and had Jeff increase the angle, but I made it every 15 minutes instead of 5 minutes just because I wanted the challenge to last longer.

I think this challenge was pretty well written and I liked that Mikey's reason for dropping out was something that was new and unique. Tracy also put on a good show by pretending she was giving it her all, when really, she purposely dropped out at the end so that Brooke would vote out Mikey.

I could be wrong because I'm not sure about this kind of thing, but I think that realistically, Brooke would have the best chance of winning. Mikey obviously had the most body weight and his arms probably weren't all that muscular to begin with, so as the angle increased and he had to hold himself up more, he'd be supporting the most weight. Brooke would probably weight the least, so she'd have the least difficult time with it, I think, and Tracy would be somewhere in the middle. If I'm right about that…

So Brooke wins Final Immunity, that way she has to pick between Tracy/Mikey and it wouldn't be a situation where one of them has to vote the other off. Although, I must point out that I always said their allegiance ended at the Final Three, so it wouldn't have been a true betrayal either way.

15) Final Three Scene Before TC:

I don't think this scene was that great, but it definitely wasn't bad either. I just don't have much to say about it because I think it's pretty straight-forward. Brooke wanted to win Immunity so that she got to the Final Two on her own and was not dragged there for being the easiest to beat. Tracy admitted her plan to lose on purpose in a confessional, and Mikey said that he felt like Brooke was going to pick Tracy. Both Mikey and Tracy made a plea to Brooke about why they should stay, and it truly was a very close call between the two of them.

They both made some good points though: Tracy would have been guaranteed Kathy's vote, but Mikey probably would have got Aras' vote for sure as well as Ian's. Ian really did feel betrayed by Brooke, and remember, Ian/Mikey kindof got along at the merge whereas he didn't really have any interaction with Tracy. Mikey was also LESS likely to get Sherea's vote than Tracy would have been, so Brooke ultimately felt that she stood a bit of a better chance against Tracy, though just by a slim margin.

16) Final Three Tribal Council:

Again, not much to say here, although I really did like this Tribal Council. I already talked about why Brooke picked Tracy over Mikey. So they all got a couple of questions and then Brooke made her vote. I liked the idea of showing Tracy/Mikey talking while Brooke was casting her vote.

So Brooke votes out Mikey B, and we end up with the Final Two that so many of you predicted, and that Edgic also predicted for most of the season. It was interesting to note the shift from people picking Brooke to win and then every all of a sudden picking her to be the runner-up. And correctly, I might add, but I definitely think it's telling that they were pretty much always among the top Edgic choices. After Dave winning last season, I knew that I had to have a winner that was predicted through Edgic this time or else why would there really be a point in you guys doing Edgic ratings? So, at least Edgic was a success this time.

17) Final Two Scene:

I think this scene is pretty typical of the ones before the Final Tribal Council. Both Tracy and Brooke reflect on their games, and get some nice confessionals, but with eight jurors, there had to be some kind of final twist. Note that when I planned this out, I didn't expect or know there would also be eight jurors in the real Micronesia, and I didn't think there would be an even number of jurors due to the risk of a tie. So I took I new spin on one of my twists from Fiji by giving one person the opportunity to nullify a vote, but I didn't want to do it the same way…

18) Nullifying a Vote:

The idea that I came up with was for the Final Two to get treemail on the last day saying that there was an envelope hidden at camp that would give one of them power. Since the F2 usually burns the camp on the last day anyway, I figured that there'd be no harm in having them tear through everything to find this envelope. Also, I thought it would be something different to have happen in the final scene rather than just have them reflecting on everything. So there's a bit of time spent on Brooke and Tracy looking for the envelope, and after they destroy the camp, Tracy finds the envelope hanging on the back of their tribe flag (the side that wouldn't be visible from camp).

The note inside the envelope said that she could nullify one vote. If I did this like Fiji and had the decision revealed, it would once again be incredibly obvious that Brooke wouldn't win the game because Eliza was the only vote I showed for her. So I decided to have it work that Tracy had to circle a name, seal the envelope, and Jeff would reveal it at the live finale. That way you wouldn't necessarily know in advance that Tracy was going to nullify Eliza's vote.

So the purpose for this was to make the jury 7 votes again. The only reason I had it go to 8 was so Ian could be on the jury after Brooke's betrayal of him to make him NOT be on the jury…

Anyway, Brooke knows that she's going to get some backlash from the jury but she says she's going to answer questions brutally honestly because she's there to win the game. I know a lot of jurors say they want honest answers for their questions, but as we saw in Fiji with Earl/Stacy, I really don't think honesty is always the best policy at the Final TC. The same thing held true for Brooke…

19) FINAL TRIBAL COUNCIL - OPENING SPEECHES:

I'm not going to comment thoroughly on every single aspect of the Final TC because that would just be too much, but I'll say that I think Tracy and Brooke both made exactly the right opening speech that they needed to for the type of game they played. Tracy talked about all the obstacles she overcame and how she didn't give up when things weren't going her way, and Brooke talked about how she was in the game to win this time. As much as I dislike Parvati, I actually feel that many of Brooke's arguments were similar to the ones that Parvati used at the Final Tribal Council.

20) JURY QUESTIONS:

I feel like this jury was pretty good overall, although not as great as some of the others have been for entertaining and memorable questions. Some of the people probably weren't as bitter as you might expect them to be, but I thought that all of their questions were pretty true to their characters:

For Ian, he was definitely going to have some speech about honesty and betrayal to Brooke, and I thought that him calling her a "robot" was fitting too. That's why I said a few times throughout the season that, in a strange way, she was supposed to come across as bland and emotionless, because she was almost supposed to have this robotic kind of feel to her. A lot of times, I described her as having an "expressionless" or "blank" look on her face, which was because she didn't convey a lot of emotion. I thought Ian's second part to the question was good, and his response "We'll see if it was worth a million dollars or not" was great too.

For Kathy, I wanted her to have a wacky off the wall question, but sadly, I couldn't come up with anything quite as wacky as I wanted to. Everyone knew she was going to vote for Tracy anyways, so her question didn't matter, but I hope that with her speech before the question and the way it was presented, that her personality still came through during it. I also feel that her comment to Jeff after he said "Are you satisfied?" was fitting to her character, although definitely awkward.

Sherea was, of course, bitter at Brooke for being betrayed, but even though she was bitter, she was right that it didn't really make sense for Brooke to get rid of Sherea at this point. Her vote might not have been against Brooke so much as it was against the absurdity of the move. Voting out Sherea was great For ELIZA and bad for Brooke. Brooke should not have gone along with it at all, and when she admitted that she would have taken Eliza to the Final Two, it was a sure bet that she would lose Sherea's vote.

Aras' questions were good, I thought. His question to Tracy tied in to an earlier confessional in the premiere where he said the Favorites didn't want a Fan to win. He said, "Why should I vote for a Fan to win?" Tracy's answer was just okay, and I wanted it to seem like Aras might vote for Brooke because he was upset about Tracy's place, but let's face it, was he really going to vote for Brooke anyway? His question for Brooke was about how her/Ami/Sherea excluded Joel and Kathy (and himself) early on after the switch, and how she could just alienate people that were potentially on the jury. I thought this was a great question, and although Brooke's answer kindof made sense, it was clear that it wouldn't fly.

Alexis' question was pretty similar to the one that she asked in the show, although I was fairly sure that she would ask something about a role model or something similar. This is one instance where I feel like being "brutally honest" wouldn't have worked, because Brooke basically said that she wasn't playing the game to be a role model, which Alexis obviously didn't want to hear. Tracy capitalized on this by saying she hopes she was a good representative of mothers and a role model for future Survivor players. Great! Since I had Brooke as Alexis' "Favorite," I definitely wanted to make a mention of that here because they ended up not really liking each other. This is another vote that Brooke basically lost because of her answers.

Eliza's questions were also fitting for her personality I think. In Vanuatu, she asked for an apology and this time she asked for a "Thank you" for helping Tracy get as far in the game as she did. Honestly, I think Eliza did have a valid point here because if Eliza had stayed with the Favorites in Episode 5, Tracy would have been voted out over Earl. And Eliza DID vote with the Fans at every TC after that. Her other question was for Tracy and Brooke to critique each other's games and Brooke didn't really give a great answer to this, which was pretty telling to most of the jury. Not to Eliza though, because Eliza was a definite vote for Brooke no matter what.

I wanted Mary's vote to seem more up in the air than it really was, which is why she wasn't overly harsh to Brooke. She asked if they would play the same way if there was no million dollars, and they both said that they would. This was probably the most "typical" question, even though it's never been asked on the real show. I guess there was nothing really that special about it though.

Mikey's question to Tracy was about if she would have taken him to the Final Two if she won the challenge. Here she admits that she would have taken Brooke, but she doesn't own up to the fact that she threw it on purpose. Still, Mikey respects that she would have given herself the best chance she could. His question to Brooke is about why Brooke should win when Tracy has gone to almost twice as many Tribal Councils. I thought this was probably Brooke's best answer, or one of them anyway. But Mikey's vote had to go to Tracy for me to give the best resolution to their story.

21) CLOSING COMMENTS

In my opinion, Brooke really didn't say much to earn any votes in her final comments. Tracy did a better job of summing things up and saying the right things to people, but she also made a very risky move at the end by saying that she didn't want to win because of anti-Brooke votes. She felt that she earned votes through her own merit rather than because people didn't want to vote for Brooke.

22) CASTING THE VOTES

I was definitely going to show Kathy's vote for Tracy and Eliza's vote for Brooke since those were the two most obvious ones. I wanted to show Mikey's for Tracy because I felt it was important resolution for their story, and I decided to show what Alexis said just for the sake of it. I didn't show her vote and it really could have gone to either, but I think most of you would have probably guessed Tracy would get it.

23) REVEALING THE FINAL VOTES

So it's revealed that Tracy nullified Eliza's vote (as if you couldn't have figured that out), and then Jeff reveals the final votes. Just like predicted, every vote goes to Tracy, so it was either 7-1 or 7-0 depending on how you want to look at it. I've said before that I don't like to have twists for no reason. There's usually some reason that I have behind a specific idea or twist, and in this case, I had the vote nullification so that there could be a unanimous vote.

The fact that Tracy won by such a large margin was also one of the reasons behind her getting such a strong edit, and perhaps, why she was my most obvious winner to date. It had to be clear why she could win unanimously over Brooke.

A few days ago, the question was asked to be about whether the main story is about "Why X won" or "Why X lost," and I said that both are important because it should be justified why the winner won and why the runner-up didn't. I feel that this is a perfect example because you should definitely understand why Tracy was deserving of winning the game, but the story was just as much about how/why Brooke lost. It was impossible for her to win a jury vote. But unlike real Guatemala where the story revolved so much around Stephenie losing, I feel like Tracy's win was suitably explained and justified whereas Danni's wasn't. I hope that you're all satisfied with the edits that the Final Two got.

24) So that's it for another season. I hope these notes served to clear up some thing and that you all were able to understand what was going on. The only other thing I want to do is ask you to PLEASE COMMENT. Even if you don't want to fill out the entire comment survey, I would really appreciate any kind of comments, thoughts, criticisms, etc. Even if you just want to let me know that you read the finale or the story, I would be grateful to hear from as many people as possible.

25) I plan on writing a full Reunion Show this season, but I'm going to do the Editing Analysis first and then I might take a few days off before doing the Reunion, so I'll post more updates about this later.

My sincere thanks to you for reading this season and for being loyal readers! I'm amazed to still have so many people reading and commenting after seven seasons. It really means a lot, and I appreciate the loyal support!

Best regards,

- Guatemala fanfic