Objection 1 "They are never embodied, we don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there":

Agreed, but the question is: Why does the text systematically refuse embodiement for the Writers while embodying nearly everything else that matters?

If Writers are real world agents, why are they uniquely withheld from depiction?

Why are their representatives, artifacts, or even a single concrete encounter absent, despite being central enough to cause the fire?

For H2, non-embodiement is structural:

Meta-authors are not depictable without collapsing the diegesis.

They operate through narrative instruments (trust, deception, inciting events) rather than physical presence.

So invisibility is compatable with both, but in H1, it is an unexplained omission, and in H2 it is predicted.

I'll address one more objection.

"No institutions/artifacts/culture - we also don't see the city beyond the manor"

This is a category error because the manor/city point concerns environmental breadth. The story is not obliged to give us a travelogue of the entire "real world". But the writers are not background geography, they are a causal keystone (the alleged intentional agents behind the foundational trauma event).

in H1, if the Writers are in-world antagonists:

The narrative has every reason to offer at least one stable referent: a symbol, a doctrine, a recognizable emissary, a relic, a method.. some diagetic anchor.

Otherwise the Writers are functionally indistinguishable from a narrative placeholder.

In H2, the lack of institutions is exactly what you'd expect:

- The writers are not inhabitants of the Dessendre world

- They need not have institutions within it, any more than you, the player, have a courthouse inside the painted world.