Daphne Gives Masochist Mode a Go (And Drags Scarlet Into It)!

Daphne

Daphne is once again excited by the arrival of interdimensional mail. Her Marcie and Gina Reviews Official Masochist Mode Member badge arrived! Now, she can review other stories in the Masochist Mode section of the magazine. I’ll show Gina that I’m not a hypersexual cumguzzling freak! I can be an intelligent and insightful smut reviewer, too!

After first finding a clean oversized Marcie and Gina fan club T-shirt to affix her badge to (totally breaking the “no clothes in the Harem wing” rule, but it’s for a good cause!), she barges into Scarlet’s room (really, the room Scarlet, Alex, and her share when it’s not one of their nights with Tyalangan), declaring, “Ladies, it’s time to review!”

Alex looks up from her chord sheet and arches an eyebrow. Scarlet sighs, “Daphne, are you sure you want to poke the nehtaliante nest again?”

“This time, it’ll be different! We write the review!”

Alex starts to fade away, noting, “Oh, no, our naked purple goddess is having me perform my valkyrie duties right now. So sorry, my dudette.” She doesn’t completely disappear before Daphne hears a “Thank you.”

Oh well, Alex can help next time.

Scarlet sighs again, expecting to have to go through this for her, “So, Daph, what are we reviewing?”

“The Master, Mark Garret by legolus!” Daphne slams down two book-sized printouts.

“A Harem Hotel season? We could watch it. We have watched it. Why are we reading it?”

“The rules of the Marcie and Gina Reviews Official Masochist Mode club state that we have to consume the story in the same manner as Marcie and Gina, which means we have to read the show-runners transcript of the show posted to the CHYOA website.”

Scarlet, looking frustrated but wanting to appease her fish-wife, picks up the first page of her stack. Daphne does the same. They read for quite a while.

READING IN PROGRESS (BGM [I don’t care if it would work better for later weeks, it’s perfect for this season])

Scarlet begins with a groan, “Ugh, starting with flashbacks of our opening ceremony. I know it’s important to introduce the contestants and all that, but I always hate the big ceremonies.”

Daphne shrugs, “I know, but Chapter One introduces us to Mark and displays the first of many mistakes Cassandra makes this season. I know the rules say up to twelve contestants, but the initial contestants count should never be above eight. And never be an odd number. With the usual two contestants to a bed arrangement, the odd number makes things complicated. Plus, it is nice for contestants to get the bed to themselves every once and a while.”

Scarlet quips, “Not that we ever really had a bed by ourselves when we were kidnapped by interdimensional smut peddlers,” then offers a more legitimate thought, “I suppose you would say that too many contestants mean some fall through the cracks? Especially since, spoilers for several chapters ahead, the staff are actual characters instead of faceless drones like, say that Ora psycho’s penguins.”

“Between Cass, Mark, the contestants, and the staff, we have 18 different characters to track. That’s a lot, all at once. Even if the show-runner forgot to give Petra a scene the entire round.”

“Speaking of characters, our contestants are: Allie the fiancée, Merida the childhood friend, Talia the professor, Ellen the celebrity crush, Flora the forest ranger, Sam the Navy flygirl, Laura the Olympian, Chloe the industrial chemist, and Aubrey the grad student. Thoughts, Daph?”

Daphne does the thinking pose, “Again, nine starters is too many, especially since Cass didn’t let half of them breathe with their own introductions. She could have easily saved one, probably Aubrey, for a later harem introduction. Probably as a transformation for Chloe.”

Scarlet smolders a little, as she is wont to do when angry, “Punishing Sam for non-sexy **** was bullshit. The girl just buried her Dad and you didn’t have the sense to stop her BEFORE she took a swing at you? The hag had the forethought to do that with Josie and she was terrible.”

Daphne moves the review along, “Cass sums up the rules, too much detail for regular viewers, maybe enough details for a new reader? Then we get to the transformations. Here, I think, is Cass’s second big mistake: not correctly setting up the polls to prevent shenanigans. Now, Cass’s show-runner took down the links to the data analysis department polls, so I could be misremembering, but having 40% of the Round Zero polls ending with a tie like that should not have been possible. That is more ties in one round than our sea slug of a show-runner has had in an entire season! So, with most of the contestants having 3-5 generally long, cumbersome transformations, it makes the game harder to track.”

“Not to mention,” Scarlet adds, “the sheer amount of change they had to undergo. We only had one transformation to start, and that was debilitating enough.”

Daphne scoffs a little, “Scarlet, the hag was trying to make your transformations miserable. Cass is incompetent, sure, but she isn’t evil. She even used her vetoes to help out Allie and Talia.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“Moving on, we have a brief walking tour. Smug and his/her auditorium, Chloe’s **** candy store which is basically never used as a store, best girl Slevia with her shop, a whole town street worth of clothing stores that seems super excessive, and cute little cottages with special amenities and sneaky effects instead of the usual hotel room scheme.”

Scarlet snorts, “Slevia is best girl? Really?”

Daphne pouts, “Slevia is cool. I mean, we got to hang out together at professional development conferences, since we were both Hotel shopkeeps. And her shopkeepering sisters were selling, yuck, clothes.”

Scarlet quips, while highlighting her obsidian covered nude form, “You’re wearing a shirt right now, Daph. Against family rules, I might add.”

“Only so I can show off my badge!” Daphne thrusts her egg sacs forward to show off her official M.G.R.O.M.M. Member badge.

“Right. Anyways, the subsequent meetings bring up a bit of a gripe. The long, rambling block of text speeches. While it worked perfectly fine in the show proper, we had the constant visual stimulus on screen. When they got rambling hard enough, I’d just enjoy looking at one of the contestant’s thighs for a bit and tune back in when it sounds like they summarized their point. Easy.”

Scarlet arches her back for a moment. Daphne scoots over to give her a massage, slipping out of her oversized T-shirt in the process.

The oread continues, “I’m sure our show-runner did it when transcribing the show for the site too, but eyes glaze over without the occasional paragraph break. Add a notation about an expression or a gesture. Have the reader play with more than just how they imagine the character speaking.”

“Wanna handle the other speech complaint, too?”

“Merida’s Scottish accent was sexy on air, sure, but a giant pain to read as transcribed. If the show-runner wanted to emphasize the accent instead of just using the closed caption text, that’s fine, but perhaps cut back on the phonetic language enough so it doesn’t take triple the time to figure out what Merida said?”

Scarlet sighs as Daphne finds a particular knotty chunk of obsidian in the oread’s back. The mermaid asks, “This a good time to critique the theme of the season?”

“Fairy tales, leaning heavily on Disney movies? I know how you hate Disney movies, Daph.”

“No, that’s the aesthetic. The actual theme is rules lawyering.”

“They do spend a lot of time parsing through the nuances of transformation text.”

“I think Mark has a contract law kink. Not that there is anything wrong with that.”

Scarlet rolls her eyes. “He probably does. Back to plot critique?”

“Sure. Day Zero ends with some shopping and some early plot lines. Talia is offered a deal, which she eventually takes, to exclude her family from potential elimination replacement fodder by letting Mark rewrite 10 words in her bio. The girls meet ASTRID, who is eventually revealed to be an eliminated contestant, and are mildly creeped out by how insistent the android is. Mark buys Princely Staff, which does the usual (boring) Master cock enhancements, plus puts the Hotel staff in his permanent employ, which also feels like a Cass mistake. Did she even really consult with them all before throwing them into the usual (boring) cock enhancement transformation to spice it up?”

“Our Beloved got similar transformations. Not the ‘get permanent servants’ thing, the ‘be really good at sex’ thing.”

“Which is appreciated, but Tyalangan had to earn hers with veto use or by beating up a boss. And she still had to practice before those transformations powered up. The guys always seem to just get the boring magical cock power as a Day Zero thing.”

“Mark had to at least buy his.”

“Fair, I guess? Moving on.”

Scarlet rolls her eyes to note, “Oh, hey look, a trigger warning about another trigger warning. Funny enough, using trigger warnings actually increases overall reader anxiety more than just letting people discover the ‘triggers’ on their own, so they are less helpful than people think. Sure, they are nice for those who have severe trauma, but everyone’s anxiety ticks up from the warning until the reveal slightly. Sometimes that anxiety manifests as rage against trigger warnings. Also, the show-runner already did a decent job at hinting at the actual trigger (Sam’s sexual **** in college), so I imagine that those that would have been triggered by said scene have already scooted. Perhaps a more subtle approach would have been better?”

“Speaking of subtle approaches,” Daphne tries to segue, “the first sexy time scene definitely wasn’t. Ellen gets wrapped up in a bunch of mega bondage gear, thanks to Flora and Aubrey. They play that it’s consensual, but consent honestly requires more information. This also sets up the other major theme of the season: being idiotic with temporary transformation effects. Sooo many conflicts arise because they overdo those candies throughout the season.”

“Daph, maybe you should not critique their con **** bondage play, considering...”

The mermaid blushes. “Point taken.”

Scarlet picks up the pause, “Still, Mark came down on Aubrey and Flora like a ton of bricks in the morning. Flora gets the bulk of the blame; honestly Aubrey got off irritatingly light, considering she said from the beginning that she knew they went too far. Aubrey even admitted it when it was her turn to talk Mark down. This starts Flora’s week arc of being ‘Sword of Damocles’ punished.”

“Cass has a magic accounting boo-boo, which is caused by another mistake. She should have priced Princely Staff better, especially since Mark was really only wanting the usual magic cock Master transformation? Turn the staff thing into an upgrade, maybe?”

“As a positive, the dates are generally really good for a Week One set of dates. It helps not being in a Dark season run by a hag, I suppose. Allie has a fun video game date, with candy enhanced sex after.”

“Even if they cause trouble later on, it’s great that Allie’s egg sacs got super big and leaky!”

“Yeah, Daph, that happened. Mark totally lied when he said he wasn’t a BE obsessed pervert in the intro. Seriously, all the ridiculous, back-shattering **** Mark and the game inflicts on them is a little off-putting.”

Daphne pouts, her lower lip quivering. “But you said you like it when my egg sacs are full.”

“That’s... different. You’re egg sacs grew because you were carrying your children. If you stayed a Y-cup after...”

Daphne stops her massage and gives Scarlet a bite on the shoulder. “Stop while you are only a little in the whirlpool, Scarlet.”

Scarlet stammers as she rubs the shark bite like wound, “Sam takes Mark to school with a self defense class date. Then has a perfectly sensible panic attack that they work through with lots of talking and some rope play.”

Spending a ki to heal the wound, Scarlet continues, “Aubrey didn’t really get a date, as it was drowned out by Allie milk nonsense, Flora punishment nonsense, and then ASTRID drama. The first two things are more consequences for being stupid with temporary transformation effects. The last thing is more important. People need to understand that elimination is a terrible fate. ASTRID’s elimination honestly isn’t even that bad in the grand scheme of things; it’s Jezebel level, not Jenny level.”

“Still, it’s another sign that Cass should have not grabbed Aubrey so soon; the fact that she let her date evening be so consumed by others helps make her feel superfluous,” Daphne adds.

“And, hey! We finally got a sex scene without a dude in it!”

“You had sex with Tyalangan before she was a woman, Scarlet”

“That was for her sake,” Scarlet shoots back, “The scene was pretty good. Sam works on some issues, Laura gets some itches scratched, Flora gets to watch.”

“Could of used a good Olympics pun for Laura’s vagina. Luge tube? We could workshop something?”

“Javelin quiver?”

“That one is pretty good. After Laura and Talia both make deals with Cass, we get Merida’s date. Merida shows she’s an inconsiderate psycho with her whole ‘Just change what you want about Talia because she asked for it’ spiel. Cass admits to doing the Host thing of stopping the ladies’ birth control.”

Scarlet smolders again, “It’s a really fucked up thing to do. I would have seriously blistered Tyalangan’s hide if she did that to Mona and the rest here.”

“Things happen, featuring Chloe and Aubrey visiting worst girl Maja on a date, then the dates find the fountain of ‘making everyone into young bisexual women!’”

Scarlet interrupts, “Maja is worst girl? Really? I mean, her third person speak is a bit annoying, but...”

“She’s into fashion, like A LOT. She tried to make us wear those bras things during professional development sessions! That’s a hate crime!” Daphne shakes her egg sacs to emphasize her point.

Scarlet rolls her eyes and continues, “Back to the plot. So, Chloe, Aubrey, Merida, and Mark all turn to college aged bisexual women. So, they naturally throw a sudden surprise temporary gender reveal slumber party (with Mark going as Mary while being a lady). A slumber party full of... you called it rules lawyering, Daph?”

“Yup.”

“Mary changes Talia, and 4 of the 5 word swaps aren’t bad. The ‘pansexual’ one would have also been fine, if it weren’t for the extremely adjective in front of it. Then ‘Two Truths and a Lie,’ with a bunch of stipulations and being stupid with temporary transformations. Mary gets horny enough to be pulled into a closet for ‘7 Minutes in Heaven.’ Again, a great scene that could have used a good fly-girl pun for Sam’s vagina. Cockpit too tasteless, considering?”

“Probably, but I definitely don’t know enough about aviation to come up with another. Why couldn’t Sam be a submariner? I could fake knowing about submarines better.”

“Finally, ‘Would You Rather’ with more rules lawyering and temporary transformations. Games stop after that to watch some Princess Mononoke. No orgy.”

“BOO!”

Scarlet continues summarizing after that bit of back and forth, “Talia’s date starts with showing off that Cass kidnapped a Morgan Freeman to narrate home movies, which is unnecessarily cruel.”

“Maybe she grabbed a Morgan Freeman from a doomed world? That would make it at least somewhat okay. Else, I hope that Morgan Freeman got paid well and not shoved into extras limbo. That would definitely move Cass into incompetent evil territory.”

“They fight some about adding Freya, Talia gaslights Mark, who’s now back to guy mode, about him not thinking is causing most of the problems instead of blaming everyone being stupid about the temporary transformations. Finally, Talia does a strip tease for Mark, they have naked dinner and movie cuddling, which was cute.”

Right on cue, Daphne quips, “I like cuddles!”

Scarlet boops Daphne’s nose. “I know you do, Daph. Anyways, Flora’s date is kinda blegh, mostly trying to resolve the Sword of Damocles for the third or fourth time. Then, they head to the suite for on-line shopping talk, where Mark would have really annoyed Tyalangan with his ‘I lift some tiny weights while queuing for PvP matches and I have something approaching a six-pack’ spiel. Not his worst crime of the week, but it’s one of them. Then we have puns. A lot of puns. Really, the show-runner should have had Mark punch up some of the sex scene descriptions. Add some variety.”

“It seriously feels like the show-runner’s favorite word for vagina is ‘insides.’ What kind of gal wants their vagina described as ‘insides?’ At least call it a not-cloaca.”

“Ellen takes Mark to a bowling alley and is such a breath of fresh air. ASTRID, oof, the Jezebel personality Cass put in place is kind of awful. Cass herself is kind of awful, pushing Ellen for more BE.”

“And screwing up with the phones.” Daphne adds.

“Right. At least Ellen takes the fact that Mark has read a lot of smut about her well enough. Mark claims to have a bunch of physical activity hobbies. That contradicts what he told Flora. And, unless he has found a gym that has all of those activities, I highly doubt he does more than one of them. They check out Ellen’s potential library, then watch movies, with a little modeling interlude. Cass’s contraceptive theft ruined the mood for sexy times.”

Scarlet moves to massage Daphne before starting again, “Before we get to Laura’s date, we have the harem commit to a mutual back-strain pact to get Ellen enough BP to buy the library. We also see Mark selfishly handle the rest of Talia’s word changes. Talia suggested one, and the word swap she offers, going from denying her wants to accepting them, is not ideal, especially considering what Mark does. Something like ‘considers’ would work better as I think ‘accepts’ would end up with her leaning into her more deviant desires too much. The polyamorous one is legit good for the circumstances, the animal girl one is neutral (I mean, our Mistress-wife got it basically as a punishment transformation, but it doesn’t bother her), and the other two are super detrimental. Seriously. Getting Talia to share the transformation fetish causes so much problems.”

“You really hate BE, don’t you?” Daphne asks between moans.

“You listen to strippers complain that their back pain medication is costing them more than the extra tips they get for having those stupid silicon beach balls for months, you learn to not like giant fake tits. Moving on, Laura’s date is fun.”

“Yeah, it starts with Cass showing off her incompetence again! Mark plays her.”

“They have sexy times at a hot spring on top of the mountain. One that, unfortunately, does not lead to Mark becoming Mary again. Then, after some Chloe drama, they go skydiving from space!”

Daphne chimes in, “And Laura takes some penalties, which is another sign of Cass’s incompetence.”

“Now, I’ll defend Cassandra slightly. Laura definitely knows that Mark is an anxious little pervert and fear of falling is a pretty common phobia. The girl should have considered that.”

“True, but she cleared the date idea with Cass ahead of time. Cass should have told her about Mark’s phobia. Also, if one of our contestants approached Tyalangan with that idea, she’d totally make Tina film a sexy safety video like some airlines do. Honestly, that was just as much a mistake as just letting Laura’s plan have that failure point in it unchallenged. ASTRID might have had fun talking about how the suits are ~optimized for safety~.”

“Laura’s date is then interrupted by the one-two combo of Chloe drama and Talia TF fetish nonsense. Again, Mark made a stupid, selfish mistake with that word change. And he honestly sounds a little creepy for a bit there when he comforts Sam. Laura deals with Chloe, kinda.”

“Sexy time at the Suite starts with some cunnilingus and javelin thrusts into Laura’s quiver. Then we get some Laura and Mary action! Laura is a fiend with her magic in a good way. Best sex scene of the week.”

“Then Mark continues to be a bit of a creep with the whole ‘Laura should just let Chloe get a temporary TF’ because they don’t take the candies for another round of sexy times. Next morning, we get the start to the Flora hypno-arc, then off to the Chloe date. Honestly, Mark should of had Freya be the hypnotist, but Merida is the least problematic of the contestants, I guess, as far as her current character sheet goes. Her attitude is a problem and the transformation train makes her an eventual problem, but her role as the hypnotist was established by then.”

“Chloe’s date starts with a long conversation about all of the things irritating Chloe. The game is stressful and she has been taking it the worst, especially after Talia had her brains scrambled with the biography word swaps. Then, we get another trigger warning and a ‘smash shit’ date. This warning is arguably slightly more justified, as the show-runner did a less overt job at foreshadowing.”

“Finally, they wrap up with a... blegh... Disney movie marathon. At least they didn’t get to the travesty that is The Little Mermaid. I hate that movie.”

“With that, we have finally got to the first challenge. It’s a ‘navigate a maze with sexy traps’ challenge, which is a pretty popular one in the grand scheme of things. Mark gets to serve as a Minotaur, with bonuses for actually serving the role. The results are a bit of a mess. Merida gets an undeserved first place. Flora abuses her invisibility aura. Aubrey ends up ‘Mooing’ a lot. Talia helps Ellen out and pulls off a neat trick while getting last place.”

“Only thing to really note in the transformation options is that Shar was a bit of a bitch to Aubrey with her suggested transformation. We get a fan-mail chapter in real quick, with some random ‘Ask Me Anything’ questions thrown into the mix. Three big letter writers: Shar (with some additions from her wards), Sally, and a few from our old set. Shar and Tracy were themselves, pushing lesbian relationships, goth aesthetics, and being utter bitches to Aubrey for dissing cow-girls. Sally is her usual horny, optimistic self; I wonder if she’s ever going to get around to starting her first challenge. I think that was the first batch of fan-mail we wrote?”

“Why didn’t you write one, Scarlet? It’s fun making friends and writing letters! I would have done one myself if I didn’t get wrapped up in helping Josie.”

“I am totally going to tease her about her letter again, now that you reminded me. I just didn’t feel a vibe with any of the girls over there at the time. Might tell off Merida or write to Ellen after this. Dunno.”

“Anyways, Tina was nice to Laura and My Beloved tried to be helpful. Cass’s producer is a prick.”

“Last chapter for this review, finally. Round One transformations. Allie gets the expected ‘Get a buddy’ transformation. Isabella is someone that I kind of vibed with as a fellow dancer. Sam goes dragon. Aubrey gets both sheep-girl, which is fine, and lactating BE, which is not.”

“Scarlet, you are just asking for Shar to hit you with some BE voodoo at this point.”

Scarlet keeps going, “And she’ll have to deal with our wife if she tries. Next, Flora gets the breast groping transformation. Just a sensitivity increase and not a back pain inducer, so okay. Merida gets the threads thing, which turns into a bit of a mess eventually, and brat energy, which she really didn’t need. Laura gets the expected goddess promotion. Chloe gets world-wide BE, which is a super gross and invasive perversion of medicine.”

“Scarlet, stop complaining about BE. You are going to regret it.”

Scarlet ignores that, “Chloe also goes bunny-girl for not testing the Cockolate Bunnies and gets a fresh batch of candy. Ellen gets a three-way tie. The bondage and ‘focus on nice things Mark does’ ones are fine. The bimbo speak one is fuckin’ evil. Cass seriously should have vetoed it.”

“Thinking about your first transformation there?”

“Yup. Talia gets Anime Physics and yet another BE transformation, one that also skips a lot of their relationship development. Really, stupid perverts in the audience! Stop causing so much back pain!” Scarlet catches the bed on fire, as she is won’t to do when she’s really mad.

Daphne speaks as she starts to put the fires out, “Okay, I am going to finish this off. Isabella gets a big ol’ mess of five things: horny when thinking about marrying Mark, wolf-girl, cooking power, experience power, and presents from Cass. Finally, Mark has another three-way tie, getting the usual (boring) ‘make Master sexy’ transformation, plus a magic rulebook and a genderswap power. Cass still had an unusual amount of ties here. One last bit of incompetence to finish off the read. Best and worst girl?”

“Best girl Ellen; she is just so sweet and charming and well read. Worst girl Merida, not because of the accent, because of her support of Mark doing as he liked with Talia. That was messed up. You, Daph? Let’s ignore your staff picks. Pick best and worst contestants.”

“Hmmm… best girl, either Laura or Sam. It’s hard to pick from them two. Worst girl Aubrey, not because of the cow-girl thing, but she felt the least necessary for the initial cast. I mean, Isabella feels more needed than Aubrey and she was just brought on at this point. Should we text my Beloved and get her worst girl out there? I think Flora being her fav has already gotten out.”

“If whoever is going to read this wants to know, you can drag Tyalangan into doing this with you next time.”

Daphne smiles her big, shark-toothed grin, “Good point!”

By now, the fire is out and Daphne is magically mending the bed. Scarlet asks, “What now?”

“Next time I am bored at Dungeons for Damsels, I transcribe this into text and post it on the website. Wanna play the Laura Mary sex scene on a loop in while we have our own sexy time?”

“Sounds good. Load it up.”

And, with that, they start to make-out with Laura’s moans in the background, falling into the mostly repaired bedsheets. Fingers and tongues plunge into lava tubes and sea caves. And, just when things start getting interesting, Daphne decides to let the scene end.