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10. What if the semifinal matches were flipped in 2008?

First, let's recap the 2008 contest. 2008 is a four-way contest and the star of the contest is Solid Snake, who takes a ride down the LFF slide for a spot in the finals. Let's recap his journey:

Quarterfinals:

Solid Snake 29.14%
Weighted Companion Cube 19.18%
Cloud Strife 38.41%
Mewtwo 13.27%

Semifinals:

Cloud Strife 30.5%
Solid Snake 30.74%
Sephiroth 16.1%
Kirby 22.66%

Cloud had no problem beating Snake without Sephiroth in the poll, but add him in and Snake pulls off one of the most intense wire to wire wins in contest history. Snake starts out the poll on fire and gets up to a 650 vote lead by 1:30. It's basically the highest point of the match - Snake breaks 800 for a short time around 3pm, but Cloud cuts and cuts until he runs out of time, down 300 votes. There are screenshots out there of the board celebrating. Yes, it was a fourway, and yes, Snake had beaten Sephiroth a couple of years ago. There's a difference between coming in third place and beating Cloud, our clear contest #2, days after going down easy to him.

The VERY NEXT DAY is the contest final, with people still buzzing about Snake's performance. Cloud gets another chance here, but with Crono in the poll instead of Sephiroth. And the result is.. well, it's pretty similar on paper:

Link 33.68%
Crono 12.23%
Solid Snake 27.76%
Cloud Strife 26.33%

Snake was actually battling Link instead of Cloud at the start of the poll. Snake was somehow leading Link for six full hours before the sun came up. Cloud wasn't even in the conversation. Snake went up 3000 votes on Cloud by morning and pushed it to 3600 before school let out -- at which point Cloud immediately ripped off 1500 votes to make it look more respectable. That's more in line with what you would expect from a 'normal' match, but this was the final.

But what if there was some breathing room there for people to cool off after that dramatic semifinal victory? Here's the first semifinal:

Link 38.45%
Mario 19.56%
Samus Aran 16.71%
Crono 25.28%

Does Snake still do this with 24 hours inbetween? Cloud got his revenge in the 2010 1v1 semifinal, beating out Snake by 5000 votes. He also had no problem on truly neutral ground in the 2008 quarterfinal, before the last days of the contest caused a shift. Snake's win over Cloud is certainly legitimate, but is it a transient result that only happened due to the circumstances? We'll never know.

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xyzzy