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I mostly think of jury management as part of the "strategic game" or "social game" depending on the control strategy.
- Control players are responsible for who is on the jury so their elimination decisions need to be advantageous to their endgame, both in terms of who they put there and how. Their jury success is dependent on their ability to make correct strategic decisions.
- Non-control players don't make the decisions about who goes on the jury (which is a jury management strategy in and of itself, I suppose), so their jury approach will often be a lot more social. Forming social bonds with likely jury members in order to gain their vote is a jury management decision that plays to the social aspect of the game more than the strategic.

I also think of the bond-forming techniques we're talking about as part of the strategic game. It's influenced by social skills, sure, but when you have the ability to set up your alliance such that everyone considers you their #1 ally, that's more of what I would call a strategic maneuver. It's not like players manage to become everyone's #1 ally by simply having a good relationship with everyone. People make decisions like that based on other things too, such as explicit deals made, preconceived opinions about them, etc.

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As for Parvati, I am a fan so my judgment is probably swayed by that but I think her Micronesia game wasn't all that bad. She had good luck on her side and her endgame was suboptimal but I think she made the best of what she had throughout the game. Aside from luck going her way, she also had a relatively high degree of difficulty for this game, as her original tribe was STACKED with aggressive or at least highly strategic gamers (JFP, Cirie, Jonathan, Eliza, Ami, Yau Man). That she started out the game as a target and managed to reach the end is fairly impressive given the type of people she played with.

We can rightfully criticize the endgame opponents she set herself up with, but it's hard to envision a way to the end that works better. To get there, she would probably have to backstab/burn even more people, rendering any gain from better opponents moot. Half of her own original tribe set out to target her immediately (Yau, Jonathan, Ami, Eliza), two of the fans left before she played with them (Mary, Mikey), one fan quit (Kathy), and three of the fans were out on Nu-Malakal (Joel, Chet, Tracy). This leaves her with Ozzy, James, Jason, Alexis, Erik, Natalie, Cirie, and Amanda to work with at pretty much a bare minimum. Two of them would have been huge jury/immunity threats regardless of her gameplay (Ozzy, James). The only other person on that list that appears particularly goaty to me is Jason and there was no way she was dragging him to the end without earning the ire of everyone else for doing it. While her social game/reputation gave her few beatable F3 opponents to begin with, I think she made the best of what she had and maximized her chances of reaching the end and winning it. Strategically, I think that's all you can ever shoot for.

Among high-control players, I think of her as sort of a lower "Tier 2" player for this game. Not as good as Rich/Brian/Kathy because in addition to her poor social game she lucked out more, probably a bit stronger than Gregg/Yau Man because she didn't make any huge glaring mistakes (I agree that Cirie in the F3 is a bad idea, but possibly defensible compared to the other options on the table).

That's totally true. What I'm saying though is that Parvati knows how to play the hand she gets pretty well. Unfortunately, the social game she plays (and her reputation) will give her a pretty bad hand a lot of the time. She can be docked overall for this social game shortcoming. Setting that as a given, the way Parvati proceeds through this minefield demonstrates a strong strategic game that might not otherwise be noticed due to her poor endgame.

Russell, on the other hand, has a bad social game that limits his endgame options (much like Parvati). The problem is that he makes it even WORSE by intentionally taking huge jury threats to the end instead of people he has some prayer of a chance against. Even with a stronger social game, Russell would still have lost Samoa/HvV because he took nearly unbeatable people to the end on purpose rather than people with more ambiguous/poor chances (Jaison, Shambo, Danielle). At the very least Parvati was able to take two other backstabbers with her to the final 3. She wasn't favored to win, but Amanda being Amanda and a bad jury speech by Cirie and the outcome could have still fallen in her favor. Parvati didn't intentionally take, say, Ozzy and James to the end.

Parvati buys too-sour lemons and makes too-sour lemonade. Russell buys too-sour lemons, tells the clerk all about how he is the master of lemonade making, and then proceeds to giggle as he pees in the lemonade right before he serves it. Too-sour lemonade isn't impressive but it's the best you can do with an inferior product. That's kind of how I see Parvati's strategic Micronesia game.