#1: Survivor New Caledonia
2007

Winner: Laurie
Runner-Up
: Will
Third: J.P.
Fourth: Velva

The Cast:

Laurie (Winner)
Will (Runner-Up)
J.P. (3rd)
Velva (4th)
Eve (5th)
Amber (6th)
Karen (7th)
Morris (8th)
Tina (9th)
Jordan (10th)
Susannah (11th)
Alex R. (12th)
Alex M. (13th)
Sean (14th)
Vanessa (15th)
Jacky (16th)
Belle (17th)
Trevor (18th)


Description
:

One of the first games that I hosted as my real self, Survivor New Caledonia is and probably always will be the most exciting, dramatic, and strategically cluster-effed game that I've ever had the pleasure of hosting and watching play out. For those reasons, it comes in at #1 on this countdown.

I hand-selected this cast with the exception of Trevor, who randomly applied, disappeared, and was voted out first. After that, though, everyone was someone I knew to be strategically strong, an underdog, or completely bat-sh*t insane.

On team completely bat-sh*t insane, we had Belle, who claimed to be a 19-year-old mother from Florida who spent 8 hours on AIM at a time (that poor neglected fictional baby of hers), Sean, who started out normal but then started spamming people with gay porn links, vanished, and never returned, Alex M. aka BemusedChicken, who I think spent part of the game trying to convince people he was actually a 9-year-old black girl, and my absolute favorite human being to ever grace the world of cyberspace, Vanessa Michellice Short. <33

For those of you unfamiliar, Vanessa was a treasure. She was in every single online game for what felt like 7 or 8 years, usually voted out first for being inactive or, in best-case scenarios, utterly ridiculous. She had terrible grammar, was unseasonably hostile, and clung to her friend Amber, who played the abusive older sister to Vanessa's mentally challenged, backwoods-Kentucky persona. Shockingly, like most girls in ORGs, Amber turned out to be a dude named Mike, but that wasn't common knowledge at the time of this game.

Vanessa's best moment: After being voted out, she randomly messaged Will, who she hardly knew, to tell him "i hope you get hit by a fuckine car and die." Her final words were something to the effect of "why isn.t will dead yet. die will." It was so completely unprovoked and hateful that it made all of us crack up laughing.

As much as the whackos made it funny, we had several really great players. Laurie, Will and Velva were all people I met in a terrible series called Survivor Agent. They formed a solid alliance that stuck together until a tie vote at the final four. Eve, the only sassy black woman in my games that I think might have actually been a black woman in real life, was totally hilarious and a really skilled player. We've since lost touch and I don't think she plays anymore, but she brought a lot of great drama and was definitely an underdog. J.P. was a crazy flip-flopper who turned on his original alliance of Tina, Morris and Karen, and was literally hated by the jury by the end of it. Laurie hated J.P. so much that she voted him out at the final three simply because she couldn't stomach the idea of him winning somehow, even though she'd have a harder time beating Will. Morris and Karen were also pre-game friends who were completely hilarious and I wish I'd kept in better touch with them over the years. Essentially, the entire jury was composed of amazing players and there was not a dull moment at ANY of the live Tribal Councils (I had enough time to actually host those back then.)

There was honestly nothing about this game that I would have changed, which is really why it ranks as the best one I've ever hosted. Laurie was a tough, confident, no-nonsense player, Will was really personable but could get really fiery when he was upset, Velva was a total sweetheart, and J.P. was perhaps the best villain I've ever seen. Every single person brought something unique and different to the table, and it was fantastic. I look back on this game as a reason why I'm still in love with Survivor after all these years.

Thanks to those of you who actually watched this countdown at some point. It was a lot of fun reminiscing about good times past.



Last Edited By: Electric Autumn 04/22/11 5:12 PM. Edited 2 times.