Worm Power Quest by JPublic

[Mamorien]

Coil believes his ability is to independently live two separate timelines, and at any point shut one of them down and make the other reality.  He's incorrect.  

What really going on (based on Wildbow's comments) is that at the point of split, his power simulates two timelines, selects the one Coil would choose, and then autopilots his body through the selected timeline while playing back both simulations to Coil's brain.

DOUBLE FACEPALM! ALL THE WAY ACROSS MY HEAD!

My friend David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, said it better than I ever could:

Worm, like Harry Potter, is an excellent example of the “dear God just please stop talking” theory of death of the author.

That particular Word-of-Wildbow is one of the two best pieces of evidence I've ever seen for that. (I haven't actually seen the other one directly, but in comments on one of the "Glow-worm" parts, I learned of his hints that Taylor's meeting with her mother's Earth-Aleph counterpart in Teneral E.x is just a hallucination she's having as she dies from Contessa shooting her in the head in Speck 30.7.)

Here’s to more Worm fics that consciously stick to the text and actively ignore the author’s post-publication rationalisations.