Elsewhere, Backstage

“Oh LUUUUUUUUUCY!” Reyna kicked open the backstage door, carrying a rolled-up parcel in her hand, strutting forward excitedly.

Lucian pulled his eyeglasses from his face and looked up from his paperwork on the desk to glance at the irritatingly vivacious woman he had been saddled with, “Reyna, I’m trying to finish my work here. The contestants are going to be handling live ammunition, and I don’t want some pansies complaining I didn’t fill out the proper forms.”

“That can wait, Lucy!” Reyna hopped up onto the desk, sliding across the smooth surface, sending a potted plant, several binders, and the papers Lucian had been looking at cascading to the ground as she opened the parcel and held out a brightly coloured, glossy bound printing, “We got our first review!”

Clicking his tongue in irritation, the demon leaned over to collect the fallen paperwork, “I’ve seen the comments already, Reyna. This would hardly be the first 'review' we’ve seen.”

Reyna puffed up her cheeks and pouted in irritation, “No, Lucy! This is different! This is Marcie and Gina! They’re practically the Siskel and Ebert of smut, the Statler and Waldorf of porn, the…um, The Bert and Ernie of erotic fiction!”

Lucian stared blankly at the assistant, “Four of those people are muppets, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Also, I’d hardly call what we do fiction; reality TV is scripted, yes, but the reactions and results of Harem Hotel are very real.”

Reyna rolled her eyes, her expression souring for a moment, “Yes, that was definitely what I was referring to.” A bright grin returned, “Ignore that for the moment, Lucy, what’s important is that this perfectly prestigious pair pandered to our perverted purveyance!” She leaned in closer with every word, her eyes shining bright with excitement.

The demon rolled up his paperwork and promptly batted Reyna on the nose, “Stop. That. Whatever that was, it needs to stop.”

Undeterred, Reyna peered around his hand, “Come on, Lucy!” she dragged out the nickname, “It’s a chance to see what some of those nasty humans think of all your hard work! Don’t you wanna know, so you can put them in their place?” she put her hands in a praying position and stared up at the demon with eyes filled with hope.

“You really have no shame, it might be admirable if not for being so disgusting,” Lucian sighed, “But if these two are as prolific as you say, it would be prudent to peruse their piece. Dammit! Now I’m doing it!”

READING IN PROGRESS (BGM)

The room is ablaze and filled with the cackling laughter of Reyna as she kicks her feet hysterically on top of the desk and Lucian runs around the room, chucking flaming chairs as his voice carried throughout the room in a roar, “WORST HOST YET?! YOU SELF-RIGHTEOUS CUNTS! I HOPE FOR YOUR SAKES YOU’RE PERFECT SAINTS OUTSIDE OF THIS BITCH RAG BECAUSE IF I SEE YOU IN HELL, IT'S ON FUCKING SIGHT!”

A cadre of fauns comes into the room and begins to spray it down with fire extinguishers while wearing Spirit Halloween’s best “slutty firefighter” wear, three of them taking special attention to spray down the fuming host and leaving him covered in fluffy white foam.

Reyna sits up and wipes a tear from her eye, “That’s a good look on you, Lucy! Hahahaha!”

Gritting his teeth, Lucian flicks his wrist and the foam vanishes in a burst of black smoke, “Vile fucking creatures, and you!” He turned on Reyna, “Making me read such drivel, Siskel and Ebert…” he sneers the words derisive from his lips, “A pair of gooning women, one incapable of imagining a woman beyond their 20s and the other a virtue signaling voice of reason, who still has more in common with the average redditor than anyone capable of touching grass. Both likely need to bathe.”

Reyna stopped her laughter, staring at Lucian, “Lucy, you know what Reddit is?”

“Of course, I know what Reddit is. I worked in hell.” He straightened his suit, “The fact of the matter is that these women hold themselves as if they have backing to their opinions, when really they’re just egotistical runts parading their reviews as enlightened. I hope it feels good having the ivory tower shoved up their snatches.”

Reyna tittered, jumping up from her seat, “Well, now is the time to set the record straight!”

Lucian glared over at the assistant, “Why should I waste more time then I already have on this?”

“Because your hate boner won’t go away till you do!” Reyna chirped.

“I do not have a hate boner for them, don’t be ridiculous.” Lucian spat contemptuously.

Reyna rolled her eyes, “You are at least at hate half mast, don’t lie.”

“If you will stop talking about my boner, I will respond to their review.” Lucian's face was red with fury as he barked at the redhead.

Reyna just smirked and stuck out her tongue. “Such a virgin move…”

“ANYWAY!” Lucian grabbed the discarded review and began to look through it, “We’ll start with the positives, they hate Caleb, something I can deeply sympathize with. What sort of person gets thrown a free buffet of women and spends half the time whining while he lets said women shove him around?”

“Lucy, you of all people should know that Caleb is hardly in any position to feel in control right now. After all, as pointed out, you gave him a shoebox to live in.”

“Well, maybe more seasons need to stop treating their Masters like the next coming. At best, they’re honorable spineless gnats and at worst, deranged perverts. Maybe they should have to earn something for once in their miserable lives.”

“Hey, now Lucy, that’s not entirely fair, what about Laura from Shar’s season?”

“What about her? She’s fucking both her sisters, and I already mentioned deranged perverts.”

Reyna snorts and then points, “Oh, now we’re at a part that I can’t ignore.”

“Holy fuck, that’s a new record! I know the fucks who write Harem Hotel have an old people fetish but this is obscene. Everybody hates old people! First a bunch of gay guys and now this granny! The fucks’ wrong with this author?”

Reyna puts her hands together in prayer and gives a sincere look to the camera’s “Gina, I need you to look inward and recognize that this hatred of MILFS is only harmful. These are women who have lived full lives, they’re mature, they’re weak, and often insecure. Which means you can throw so much trauma at them and they’ll just take it and ask for more because they believe it’s the best they can get. Especially divorced ones like Eliza, like we can do ANYTHING to her.”

Lucian blinked, “THAT'S why you wanted a milf?”

“I’m sure there are other reasons to want a woman you can cum in without worrying about condoms, but I’m a utilitarian at heart, Lucy. I’m just trying to make things entertaining!”

Lucian straightened his collar, “Yes, well, Marcie and Gina go on to complain about the room compositions, and admittedly, team names may have been a bridge too far. Complaining about introducing a central mechanic at the start of the story, though? It’s honestly a no-win situation; if we hold off, it comes off as an ass pull. Introduce them now; we’re infodumping on the feeble audience too much. Oh, if only this were presented in an easy-to-revisit format to reference later…”

“Syndication motherfuckers! We got reruns running all he time, not to mention a wiki!”

“How many people use that thing?”

“No one, if the authors don’t use it, why would the readers?”

“Fair play, now we get to their conversation on the…” Lucian sighed, “Story Meat, as they elegantly put it.”

“Alright, fine. Which would be the dates and screwing around. Mostly screwing around. This harem is even more dysfunctional then usual.”
“I like it. Finally we get some proper backstabbing bitches.”
“Do we? Forcing another girl to say I love you to the master or using a sabotage on yourself is not exactly my notion of backstabbing.”

Reyna smirked, “Wow, it’s almost like this game is incredibly well designed. I bet whoever came up with the rules and sabotages is a really sexy fox.”

Casually smacking her on the back of the head, Lucian pressed on, “Masturbate later if you’re going to. I think it’s fair to say, regardless of the setup, the contestants did not maximize on the options available to them in the first round. More interference came from their behaviours than any magical interference, so a fair critique.”

“Well, maybe if someone spent more time in the first round applying pressure to the harem rather than sulking backstage, we’d have more action caught on film.” Reyna sniped at the demon

Ignoring the pint-sized assistant, Lucian continued, “The fact is that sabotages aren’t going anywhere, and while they haven't been used frequently, their effect tends to impact the harem dynamic. And this group of people has egos and personalities so fragile, it takes minor prompting to get them at each other's throats.”

“I would have made the chastity belt a punishment after Lily attacked Lucy. And any ruined orgasm would have resulted in a VP loss instead.”

Lucian frowned and then bit his lip in frustration, “I begrudgingly have to agree with this critique. Having it as a punishment would have yielded the same harem disruption while also working to break the impetuous brat and push her into a corner. It was an amateur move made in hasty action.”

Reyna looked on in amazement and slowly clapped, “Self-reflection! He’s learning! I don’t know if I agree, though. It’s true negative VP would likely have crushed her spirit, but she was already starting at a deficit. We need her to eventually be motivated enough to take action; if she’s given up, that’s less likely to happen.”

“We’ll never know, not like we’ll get a second chance at it, ha, who am I kidding. With this group, we’ll have plenty of opportunity to throw punishment their way.”

Reyna smirks, “We now approach my personal favourite section, their critique of the fanmail.”

“Really, it seems strange to really critique fanmail, it’s not like we control what people say, and the moment we start picking and choosing what fanmail we show, people would be in an uproar.

“I’m personally just amused they called out Hadric. I want to make it very clear to Hadric, I hold no ill will against you. In fact, I think your attempts to…” The redhead giggled, “ ‘unmask’ me was very fun. I just think you overlooked something.”

Lucian pinched his nose, “The fact that it's overwhelmingly obvious you’re a no-good rat?”

Reyna glared at the demon, then winked to the camera, “You overlook the fact that this is motherfucking Harem Hotel. I may be cute and adorable and funny and wonderful. But c’mon? Good? There was no way that was going to happen.” Reyna pushed her fingers against her cheeks and twirled them around.

Lucian’s hand descended on the girl's head and pushed her out of frame. “Also, the idea that Reyna controlled what was really happening in the show isn’t just an insult to me, but to the agency of everyone else here. So even if your words were true, they would also just be kind of inherently insulting to tell everyone they are Reyna’s puppets.” The demon rolls his eyes, “As if we’d let the girl from Wendy’s do anything but deliver burgers.”

Reyna’s hair stood on end, and she mounted on her heels, “Don’t confuse me with that red-haired trollop!”

Lucian turns the page, “We reach the challenge now and they have thoughts-”

“It was a rather unfair game. That you can just outright incapacitate another contestant via a sabotage was ridiculous. And orgasms as means of elimination feels awfully derivative, would you not agree, Gina?”
“Yeah sure, whatever.”
“I do say, in the future, Lucy will have to do a lot better in terms of balancing. So far, I am not particularly wowed.”

“You know, I’d say the concept of being fixated on the fairness of a game designed to get a bunch of degenerates off might be missing the point, but I will concede that, while the results were quite amusing, a single sabotage being able to totally knock a contestant out is flawed. They are meant to sway games, not flip the board.”

“Also, I don’t think it’s an inherent flaw that the person who won didn’t deserve the win; if anything, it puts more pressure on the Harem by feeling unsure of their future position and being able to rely on challenges to get points.”

Lucian clicked his tongue in annoyance, “I’m afraid I'm gonna need to side with Marcie and Gina on this.”

Reyna gave an over-the-top dramatic gasp and made a sound like she was inhaling a whole hot dog at once.

“Stop that!” Lucian slapped her across the head again, “I agree with your point, sowing unease in the harem is good, but if the audience deems it unfair, it can become easy for them to lose interest in the nature of the game. If it’s going to come down to chance, you’re gambling, not cheering for someone to do well.” Lucian’s eyes glinted dangerously, “Don’t worry, though, next challenge will be decided solely by the girls' ingenuity and effort.”

“OOhoooo ominous Lucy!” Reyna cooed, hopping around him

“Anyway, I digress, they go on to lambast the audience’s taste in transformations, which I’m not going to get into. As far as I’m concerned, all humans have rather poor taste. They’ll go for the easy “unga bunga” option over something arguably more sensual but not as quickly rewarding every time.”

“Oh, you find things sensual, Lucy?”

Turning crimson again, “I’m a demon, not a eunich! Regardless, we’ll have to make our fetishes for Caleb’s transformation suitably freaky so as not to bore these two. If he’s upset, he can just blame Marcie and Gina.”

“Hmmm, yeah, I’m sure he would totally accept that logic. He’s a very understanding person when it comes to all of this, after all.”

“From here, Marcie and Gina discuss their favourite members of the harem and make the horrendous mistake of judging me in the same motherfucking breath as Al.”

Reyna leans in towards the camera, “Marcie and Gina, you wouldn’t know this, but this guy watches all the seasons like a mom watches the Housewives series. He’s a sucker for trashy TV”

“Shut up!” Lucian slaps the assistant’s head again, “I can’t really speak to their opinions on the girls in the harem, all humans are equivalent piles of filth in my eyes.”

Reyna bounced back up and smirked at Lucian, “See, that wasn’t so bad, feel better now?”

“I’ll feel better once these two are in a **** cell in hell, but I suppose they should really do their utmost to earn it, so…I look forward to hearing their future thoughts.” Lucian looked away.

“Aw, Lucy! You big ol’ darn softey!” Reyna cheered

“Shut up!” Lucian stuck his hand out, beckoning to the camera, “Just you wait, I encourage you all to keep watching, you won’t want to miss what’s coming next.”

Reyna leaned against him and smiled, giving a bright thumbs up, “Yeah, just you wait, you haven’t seen anything yet!”