On a vaguely-related note, I'm sure that the word "Thomas" does not appear in the mod, although you clearly caught the allusion (crouching anvil, hidden subplot ...). Similarly, I couldn't pass up the Rand reference. I would have done even more to break the fouth wall, but experience tells me that Our Overlord is not as fond of it as I am.
Looking at the mods that have scored well, I'm not certain there's a statistically significant advantage to employing or omitting ye olde fourth-wall breakers. Domi's entry is certainly not spectacularly immersive, being essentially a Neeber/Noober in-joke. It's worth noting that I didn't score it as high as some of the other judges--but then, it won anyway, for I am but one judge. In fact (trivia note) in both of the very close IM contests (3 and 6), I did not "pick the winner." Is there a lesson there? (Hopefully, yes, "Compton hasn't picked judges who think exactly the way he does," which is good, because if I just wanted to look at my score sheet 4 times, I'd save 3 people the use of a perfectly good Sunday afternoon and just make photocopies.)
My thought when I saw what you'd done is, "Ah! A joinable NPC from _another_ canon! Give Wes three _more_ years and he'll have a joinable, completely original character!" Had Covenant been made instead of linguini and clams ala Weimer on Sunday afternoon, the Originality score would have been tricky.
And to our little birdie: yes, vi is fine.
How efficient, saving valuable electrons putting that here.