Fun fact: Chapter 7.9, the fight with Empire Eighty Eight where coil saved the undersiders hides in? Wildbow wasn’t satisfied with the chapter so he rewrote it. The original chapter is the other reality mentioned.
When 7.9 (the beginning of the Night/Fog fight) was originally published, Wildbow received negative feedback, agreed with it, and rewrote the chapter with substantial changes, taking down the old version after a few hours (essentially the only time he did that). He said in the comments after the update that “The previous chapter is canon in many respects.” In the comments of 8.8, Wildbow announced that the original 7.9 is, canonically, the alternate reality that Coil eventually scrapped.
Interesting backstory regarding Coil’s use of his power in Arc 7: There were two times during the writing of Worm where Wildbow was so unhappy how a chapter turned out that he deleted it a few hours after posting and re-wrote it from scratch. The first one of these was 7.9. At the time, Wildbow made some cryptic comment that the original version was still “canon in many respects.” 8.8 makes it clear what he meant by that.
Huh, that’s a really neat way to tie that in with the story!
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