#1: How the World Works
Following the anniversary of the story in 2025, I wrote some supplementary material on how the swapping and the timelines worked. I then proceeded to not ever actually publish this.
Well, here are my little notebook writings on the subject, with some diagrams to go with.
I have written up my handwriting for those who would prefer to read it this way:
12th April, 2025
How does the universe switching + alternate universes work in Reality Leak?
[diagram]
2017 - Scott creates STW
-> branch! 2022 - STW-verse, 2022 - Our universe (parallel)
So, when you create any kind of story, or any kind of media, whether you put it on paper or keep it to yourself, there exists a reality where that story is real and that world is the world of the story.
By creating Scott The Woz (probably earlier than 2017, the world birthed with the idea), it creates this universe of Scott The Woz. This created universe is quite flexible, and can change at the whim of its creator as the story evolves and retcons are made.
So what happened in Reality Leak?
[diagram]
2022
Reality Leak STW
STW
Real World
Reality Leak real world
If there are an infinite number of alternate universes created with each story and an infinite number of alternate universes made with each decision ever made that creates a branching path, then why not have two branches of two 'main canon' universe, and have these branches combine in some way?
Realistically, the Reality Leak STW branch would have been created a while ago in order to give it time to differentiate itself from canon.
And then *something* happened to the real world that caused it to branch and create the 'real world' in Reality Leak.
Where a world of story is created to be flexible, our timeline and its branches are rigid and unchanging. Changes just create more branches, they don't change what has already happened and what will happen.
So what happens when such a flexible timeline (especially as Scott The Woz is a very canon-flexible show) repeatedly interacts with a rigid and secure timeline of the real world? Well it causes instability.
Especially as the convergence was isolated to just one guy, it meant that a lot of the corruption would be affecting him personally. This explains his changes behaviour in the story.
With every swap, the flexible world of Woz and unintentionally Woz himself would cross into our real world and then when the time came to swap back, it would take from our timeline.
Over and over again, the flexible world would accidentally break and take from the rigid world, until the damage became too much.
It was actually a good thing that Scott was killed and revived in a story world. By sheer coincidence, the method in which they solved the dilemma inadvertently caused all that had been taken from Scott and thus his timeline to be returned to him and therefore re-balancing everything.
This corrected the fault and re-separated the universes while also (mostly) fixing them.