My other story is driving me nuts, so I'm giving y'all this instead. It's pretty cracky, but everything I write is going to be at some level. Enjoy!

Making up reasons why my stupid, badly written fanfiction and other peoples' good fanfictions are real somewhere is an interesting 'intellectual' exercise. For me, that usually involved twisting philosophy and quantum mechanics to suit my needs. The result is a misbegotten hybrid between a distorted and inverted version of solipsism and the observer effect theory of quantum mechanics.

It's fun, if terribly inaccurate scientifically speaking. Spending too much time on this sort of thing and taking it too seriously isn't healthy either. Escapism is fine, but neglecting the real world because you're obsessed with justifying your fantasies is a really bad idea. Of course, that advice falls flat considering I actually got ROBed.

I'd been bored. My writer's block had been used to bludgeon my muse to death and I could barely finish typing out a single sentence.

So I spent my free time doing random stuff on the internet, waiting for inspiration to strike. I was re-watching old cartoons and reading whatever struck my fancy. It wasn't going to help inspire me. I could have all the ideas I wanted, but that wasn't going to make it any easier to get it out of my head and on paper.

As I was amusing myself I came upon one of the CYOAs for Worm. I'd always found those interesting. Worm had a surprisingly loyal fanbase considering how depressing it was. I always figured that the love for it had a lot more to do with all the work Wildbow put into the characters and powers, not the work he put into deconstructing the superhero genre. At least that was what I liked about it.

The CYOAs themselves are escapism at its finest. Most if not all of them are a thinly disguised way of envisioning an alternate version where someone could effectively rampage with overpowered abilities. The early ones were just plain ridiculous. As I read through the third version I realized that just with god mode and a couple of negligible disadvantages, anyone could choose an utterly ridiculous power like one that let you create powers, make yourself into any being in the Multiverse, buy a few quality of life advantages, and still be able to erase Scion from existence.

I mean seriously, how would being enemies with a bunch of nazis, asian nazis, and druggies be anything more than a mild inconvenience to someone with one of the main powers? Then again, that was probably the point. The Worm universe was a dark place after all, so maybe that much power was what was needed to ensure the Choose Your Own Adventure didn't become a Choose Your Own Hellhole.

...Well, that was my theory and I was sticking to it. Anyone who chose Skitter mode was obviously indulging their inner sadist or masochist, depending on how closely they identified with their self-insert. I was sticking with that theory too.

Fix fics and crack all the way.

As I looked over the CYOA I mentally filled it out. I honestly wasn't putting much effort into it. The only reason I was indulging myself was because I had just watched a couple of episodes of Samurai Jack and it had me thinking. Only the first edition let me be a 'real' endbringer, but the third edition let me pick a character from another fiction. That made me think of Aku. The Shogun of Sorrow looked a lot like an endbringer and was in a similar weight class.

The idea of having Aku's powers and running amuck in Worm seemed fun. Messing with the characters using power manipulation sounded interesting as well.

The disadvantages weren't that big a deal either. Helen Keller wouldn't mistake Aku for a normal human, so picking Case 53 was natural. Godmode made Brockton Bay's gangs into a bunch of glorified practice dummies, so picking all three as enemies was a no brainer too. Being able to teleport also made being dropped into the world randomly a minor inconvenience as well.

I glanced over the pages a few more times before shrugging and going to close the window. I blacked out the second my mouse touched the close button.