Lucius and me suggested something that might help, I passed it onto Syn, so it's worth a try at least if anyone's game? 

Essence has massive collabs and those types of scenes take up a lot of time which might be part of the problem, so what if we break down large collabs? Like post up sections of a collab at a time? This has some natural positives to doing it this way. One it moves the IC and a scene at a nice pace, possibly keeping it from being nearly weeks before a new post is put in. In addition, you do not have to wait until a scene is completed to post. This enables the scene to go onward without making a long read, adding life to the IC. Another perk is that it allows other players outside of the scene to more naturally pop in rather then miss out on a chance to be included after it's over, possibly missing out on a change to be dragged into the mix of events related to that key scene. This also prevents Players from having to wait until the scene if fully done and say their PC leaves during the collab and can interact with others shortly after that section is posted, making it possible to jump from one collab to another between scenes occurring within the IC.    

Example: Say Olivia and Aeris were talking in Aeris's room, with the first section posted all Players are aware of an ongoing scene between those two PCs. Now Rtron could have Mary over hear, possibly Olivia and Aeris voices got louder, then started to earsdrop out of worry. That enable many different options from Yoshua's Mairyell walking in behind the little peeping tom to someone noting Mary's current actions, then over hearing Aeris and other voice (one they might know shouldn't be there) and likely knocking on the door to interrupt. This could end up drawing the other PCs into the action as it easily interrupts the scene and allows changes to be more fluid.