The Book of Masks Homepage

Complicating Some Complicated Complications

Whew! Today is complicated in the BoM multiverse.

In this just-completed chapter run, Will has assumed the identity of David Kirkham, the school bully who was hassling him into breaking up with Sydney, and made a hash of it by accidentally forcing his compliant doppelganger into for-really and for-true breaking up with Sydney's doppelganger. So what comes next for Will and Sydney?

Yesterday's chapter—

* Interactive: "Like a Boss" 
* Public: "Like a Boss" 

—gives Will entertaining three options for "getting back together" with Sydney (who is at the moment impersonating Kelsey Blankenship). The first is to slip Sydney into a girlfriend for Will/Kirkham. The second is to turn Sydney into a girl who can date Will's pedisequos. The third is for Will to give up on Kirkham and find himself a new identity that can date Sydney's pedisequos (as well as Sydney herself).

And there is now a poll that asks readers to choose one of these options: [Poll completed and deleted]

Today's chapters—

* Interactive: "A Girl for Kirkham"  + "A Girl for Prescott"  + "A Guy for Sydney" 
* Public: "A Girl for Kirkham"  + "A Girl for Prescott"  + "A Guy for Sydney" 

—expand on these three choices, giving candidates for Will to choose from. Each of these chapters also comes with a poll:

* [Poll completed and deleted] asks which girlfriend for Kirkham he should give to Sydney, assuming that he puts her in for a girlfriend for Kirkham.

* [Poll completed and deleted] asks which girlfriend for pedisequos-Will he should put her in for, if he decides to pair her with the pedisequos.

* [Poll completed and deleted] asks who he should turn himself into, if he's going to date Sydney's pedisequos.

You are allowed to vote in all the polls, so that you can influence the ultimate direction of the storyline even if the results for the first poll don't move it down a branch that you prefer.

Why all the complicated polling? Because two big decisions have to be made back-to-back, and I don't want to have to pile a dozen or so choices into a single poll. That would just fragment into the kind of confusion where no meaningful plurality would be possible. So I want to channel it. First, by asking which of the three general choices should Will make? And then, for each of those choices, which ultimate choice should he make?

There's also a commentary thread for the just-concluded run: "Commentary: "From Bitch to Bully""  

* * * * *

"But what comes next?" I hear you cry. Well, it ought to have been a run of chapters in the Doppelganger storyline, the sequel to the last chapter where you voted to see Kendra Saunders next replaced. But the last week has been way too frantic and I've not got nearly enough chapters written for it, so I'm going to publish something else I've been working on. It starts off with "A Conspiracy of Two" .

These are very early days in the story. Will has been messing around with the book a little and has shown it to his best friend, Caleb Johansson. Together, they have made two masks. But they are leery about experimenting with them, and need a guinea pig. Who will they use it on? Themselves? A friend? An enemy? Three choices have already been made and explored. Tomorrow I will post a fourth.