She actually has a sense of humor, but it's slanted towards shadow. Alex is perfectly capable of recognizing when a situation is funny or absurd: she doesn't just doesn't do much with it.

I rememer reading that she was able to be funny for her strip...still, you can be funny and dark at the same time...

And no one gets the one about the leprechaun and the penguin.

I don't get it; that's for sure.

For the readership, I just wanted to get a mental image of each contestant going as soon as possible. Nothing excruciatingly detailed, but enough of an outline for everyone to fill in the brushwork.

When I saw what you wrote for physical descriptions, I almost kicked myself for excluding them in mine. I guess I didn't want people to think of my characters as tokens. I wanted Catharine to be the fun-loving schemer who slacked off whenever she got the chance, not the wild-haired token black chick.

It ended up that one person compared my story to an old-fashioned radio play, which is kind of a neat comparison. It also makes me wonder what Charlie would have looked like with a handlebar moustache.

Got a setting yet? Please don't say Panama.

Somewhere in the South pacific, most likely, though I could change that and claim 'production difficulties.' Fiji would have been nice, but it's taken and there was a coup there in December. I suppose I could do Japan again...

Virtually everyone leaves the game due to circumstances beyond their control, but that's usually known as 'other people'. ;)

True. That or 'their own stupidity.'

I'm just shocked Maria showed up for the Reunion wearing any clothing.

Yeah, me too. But it was a live show, and if she took it all off there, CBS would go out of business from all the fines.

And the clip would have 71 million hits on YouTube in the first hour.

Implies a barrier to intimacy and a lack of real knowledge about a person. When you get to address someone by their first name, it's offering a measure of equality on both ends: I know you, same the other way, so let's go with the granted ones. When you address someone by their last name, there's a degree of anonymity on their end, as well as a slight aura of superiority. Using the last name here kept a bit of Gardener out of sight early and left it there for a while, as well as saying he might not really consider himself part of a team in the end.

I never really thought of it that way...but yeah, it kind of makes sense. I guess I pictured him as like someone out of that movie "Mr. Deeds," where Adam Sandler's character used his last name simply out of hatred for his first. And really, it's not as if he was that close to anyone besides Phillip out there. He didn't understand Alex, clashed with Gary, didn't seem to do much with M-J, and didn't have much use for Angela, Tony, or Connie. If he's only close to one person out there, it stands that he distances himself from everyone.

That and, of all times he was called "Tom," it was right as he was about to turn someone into hamburger meat.

Also, there's just been too many Toms on this show.

At least his name wasn't Rob. Hmm, no one from Western PA, and no Robs. Wait a tick, that describes both our casts. And our strongest players were BOTH from Ann Arbor, Michigan (I swear I didn't know Gardener was from Ann Arbor when I picked Charlie's hometown. Though as a resident of Columbus, OH, my fellow Buckeyes should toss eggs at me for making my strongest character hail from that city.)