I think our attempts to fix this scene ended up making it worse. It started out as just boring, like the “Byron studies ethics” idea before it. So we ramped up the conflict until Byron and Gravedust sounded way too snippy with each other to be true to who they were. And then we published it.

The primary problem is a lack of stakes. What’s the worst-case scenario: Gravedust walks out of the library? Byron gets writer’s block and can’t write the speech, so I guess Syr’Nj has to? Because I don’t think they’re all going to decide suing for their rights is a stupid idea and go out to found Fightopia II.

It’s not all bad, though. There is a conflict between idealism and cynicism that B and G can sometimes embody, as in their first real talk back in Chapter 5. Maybe if we’d kept the conflict in a minor key and intercut it with the more colorful job-post scene… might’ve worked.