HEY, HOW ABOUT SOME MORE SEPIA WORLD? EVERYONE LOVES SEPIA WORLD! And they ESPECIALLY love it when it’s a Sepia scene that doesn’t even have HR in it!

Ah, but we needed perspective on what effect HR’s obsessive schemes were having on his game and company. Spoiler alert: both are still dominant but starting to stumble.

Phil wanted to leave “my half” of the script alone, but once it became clear we needed this scene, he had to step in, so I got page 13 in exchange. He was by far the more knowledgeable about World of Warcraft and David Wurzel’s dialogue. I would’ve been nervous about self-inserting any Guilded Age creatives beyond a brief cameo, but the next page will introduce another reporter we’ll be following instead, one who wouldn’t be caught dead in a gathering like this.

Like most of Guilded Age, this page was written before the current presidential administration as of late 2019, but I do get some weird echoes of the future in it. (It’s been more than half a year since the White House gave an on-camera announcement to the DC press corps, and this will be the last time we see HR or Carol putting on a show of being accountable to the public.)