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The Next Doppelganger

Today's chapter—

Interactive: "A Junior Partner" 
Public: "A Junior Partner" 

—concludes the latest stage in the Doppelganger Plot. There's a thread about it in the forums:

* "Commentary: "A Coup Quashed""  

And a poll for where the storyline should go next: [Poll completed and deleted.]

Next up is a return to YouTuber shenanigans with "Crushing It as Cindy"  To recap: Will has been recruited by a group of seniors, friends of his friend Keith, who are using the masks to replace and impersonate cheerleaders. Will has turned himself into Cindy Vredenburg as part of a side-plot with Keith to torture Keith's nemesis, Seth Javits. But Keith needs an impersonation of his own, and in the poll conducted last week you guys voted for him to impersonate Yumi Saito. That's where things will pick up again tomorrow.

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As for the just-concluded poll ... Ho ho ho!

It seems that some people learned from last time, when some heavy GP voting gave Yumi Saito the win; and it appears that many others didn't. Or maybe most of the readers and voters were ambivalent about their choices, so they didn't try backing up or defending those choices with GPs.

Whatever the explanation, this poll was an even more dramatic repeat of last time, with the leader in the Free Vote (that would have been Kim Walsh) getting badly skunked by some come-from-behind favorites, to finish in third place.

But the upsets aren't over there, for the number two Free Vote getter, Alana Ocampo, also fell to an onslaught of GPs, to finish in fourth. Only poor Blake O'Brien, stuck in last place in the Free Vote, remained mired where he started, despite a hefty GP gift that at least made his last-place finish slightly more respectable.

For much of the voting period, it looked like Mindy McAdams was going to win the vote, albeit narrowly. But in the end, two giant GP bequests rocketed David Kirkham, who in the Free Vote was a distant fourth-place finisher, to a very comfortable win. Final standings:

David Kirkham: 31,120
Mindy McAdams: 20,680
Kim Walsh: 17,800
Alana Ocampo: 16,740
Blake O'Brien: 9,780

Kirkham wouldn't have been my own first choice, but I'll admit I'm intrigued by the possibilities of a Will-as-Kirkham storyline that moves in counterpoint to the Sydney-as-Kirkham storyline, so that we get an idea of how much of the development and choices reflect Kirkham's imposed personality, and how much reflect those of the people impersonating him. So while this isn't the line I would have picked for myself, I'm actually pretty excited by it.

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Finally, but not least, my thanks to ThePrussian, Easy, Wordsmitty, and Puuuuuth for some GP tips during this last run of chapters. They seemed to like stories about parliamentary procedure, but I remain wary of turning this interactive into a kind of CSPAN with magic beans.