Chapter 4
by 
Zeebop
The review continues
Rowana & Azzie Read "Francis O'Connor, 47 year old adjunct instructor (COMPLETE)," by 4og8zzjkc, Part 2
Soft green tits hung over Rowana's shoulders. Azzie's hands found the pregnant ranger's own breasts, gently squeezing, letting the early milk dribble out from the darkening nipples. The Uruk-Hai's chin rested on her wife's shoulder so that they could read together.
"Isn't this more comfortable?" the greenskin said.
"I suppose," Rowana said. "Anyway. As we left off, the contest proper was beginning, with many dates and transformations head in round one. From this point on, we'll mainly be doing spot-commentary. Maybe with a longer discussion if the story hits on any particular point of interest."
"A real one," Azzie observed.
"I think making the showrunner a part of the narrative, with their own personality, rather than some ineffable and omnipotent presence, is interesting. It sort of gives the contestants hope that they can manipulate the situation," Rowana said.
Ahh, Ms. Buzz-bee, I love you so much, Añil sighs as she inserts the stinger of her novelty hornet vibrator into the opening of her gushing cunt.
"Personally, I prefer to build up to sexy times a bit," Azzie said, as her wet fingers teased the stiff nipples. "If you start out with 'gushing cunt,' where do you go from there? If you start out with 'slight dampness between her legs,' you can build up the wetness and the explicitness. Slit to pussy to cunny to cunt to cocksocket to fuckhole to cum-catcher...y'know? But if you start out with gushing cunt, you can't exactly backtrack to 'moist womanhood.'"
This nightmare porn game is bad enough without you smelling like you fucked half the volleyball team.
"I mean, we don't have volleyball in Middle Earth, but that's only like, six people to a team? So three women? A foursome?" Rowana said, her brow furrowed. "I mean, when you're trapped in a harem anime, that's a warm-up. Actually, come to think of it, wouldn't it be fun if the contestants were a volleyball team, and the Master was the coach, and they had to compete against other volleyball harems?"
"Do not give them ideas!" Azzie hissed. "They'll start making brackets."
How much sex do you think you will have when no one on the team will touch you and will try their best to make The Master hate you?
"All of this collaboration and team-building makes me wonder if any of the writers have ever gone a completely toxic route where the women continually fuck each other over and they all end up as mindbroken sex pets," Rowana said.
"Stop. Giving. Them. Ideas!" Azzie pinched Rowan's nipples hard for emphasis. This caused thin streams of milk to spurt out, and a soft moan escaped her wife's mouth that made the Uruk-Hai's head go funny.
Team Hentai Harem, assemble.
"I do like the occasional pop culture reference," Rowana said. "Even if, again, we don't exactly have hentai in Middle Earth."
"We have cartoons on the Matrix about elves with dicks and tentacle sex," Azzie said. "Close enough."
"I do appreciate that each contestant gets their own clearly-defined section, but with the number of contestants, that also means it takes like three separate chapters to finish off day 0 and go to day 1," Rowana observed. "Which, if you're into the drama, is probably a plus. But it does drag a bit."
"The problem with this setup is that Fogeight has not established that Frank's cock is exposed before he reads the instruction to keep his cock out. Ideally, if you're going to make rocking the cock out an ongoing gag plot point, you first want to set up that the cock is actually out. Have him react to that. Or at least make Frank and the audience aware of it. Establish the fact that the cock is out first," Azzie said. "And saying that you established it four chapters ago is not good enough. People forget. Remind them."
"I suspect Fogeight has the image of what's going on in their head, but not everything makes it onto the page," Rowana said. "Happens with a lot of writers. Zeebop certainly can't throw stones."
Another text: “Solidarity!”.
"We mostly aren't talking about this kind of thing, but when it comes to punctuation, you don't have any after the quotation mark," Azzie said. Her hands shifted to life Rowana's breasts from below, letting her fingers rub the sensitive undersides. "I wouldn't make a deal about it except this happens repeatedly and is very annoying."
If only you were 10 years younger, waxed, and grew some tits...
"Give it a hundred chapters," Rowana said.
"Bet?" Azzie said.
"We're not reading that far on this review. Maybe next time, if there is a next time," Rowana said.
an impromptu trainer
"This feels like something they could have leaned in to," Azzie said. "Like, if Francis was their personal trainer, and his interaction with them through the training sessions caused their transformations. That would have been a very different approach, though. Less show-y, more organic. This Harem Hotel setup tends to prefer these wild changes in scene and dramatic transformations."
“But 2 women don’t make a baby. 2 women and a properly supervised male do.”
"I am still not 100% sure what Skye's deal is, but I'm beginning to get intrigued," Rowana said.
"Is it weird to say that after Añil going full slut-mode and Skye suggesting assisted semen donation is normal, that this date is a little too vanilla?" Azzie said. "Like, I'm all for slow build-up because Josie is a dedicated lesbian and doesn't find Francis attractive at all, that's a major part of the tension of the game, but I feel like one or both of them should have worked out a scene where they could find an accommodation."
"You wanted one of them to masturbate in front of the other one," Rowana said.
"Like exposure therapy!" Azzie said.
"That is not how turning a lesbian bi works," Rowana said.
"It worked on you!" Azzie pointed out.
Josie, shivering, feels the giant damp spot on the bed, smelling of her drooling cunt.
"See, this is what Azzie was talking about. We just went from platonic to drooling cunt, and skipped the entire hairgasm scene," Rowana said.
"And seriously, what happened there?" Azzie said, brow furrowed. "It feels like we skipped a chapter."
"I assume Fogeight is doing something on purpose, but I do not know," Rowana said.
"Does anybody have a positive balance at this point?" Azzie said.
"We don't get a running total with every chapter," Rowana said. "But it does feel like they're all sort of fucking this up."
Angry “Francis” always ended up a monster, abusing his or her harem girls in terrible ways. Depressed “Francis” usually failed to really get anywhere with the harem and most of those girls ended up eliminated. He hopes that he bucks those trends and finds a way to allow himself to be loved.
"They're not the only ones," Azzie said. "What is the point of this? To build or subvert expectations?"
"Frank is a Nice Guy Loser Protagonist," Rowana said. "All of the participants are flawed in some way—and that is part of the whole purpose of the reality show drama, the stress of the situation causing people to do things that result in entertaining freak-outs and personality clashes. Frank is being set up to work for his success. He isn't just going to swing a dick and turn a bunch of lesbians into cockthirsty sluts. Victory is something he'll have to work for."
In the middle of the night, however, Josie is startled awake by a sudden orgasm. Damn it, she curses as she sees the sleeping Dinah has wrapped an arm around Josie’s midsection, still rubbing her stomach gently, Can’t I go one night without this happening?
"I feel like Foreight is not comfortable with writing an actual erotic belly rub scene," Azzie said. "At least, not yet."
You’re gonna be a Were-Slut!
"I know Josie is the woobie, but I feel Scarlet is getting the worst end of the transformations so far," Rowana said.
"I think watching alternate reality scenes of Francis getting feminized is a bit confusing," Azzie said. "It doesn't feel like foreshadowing as much as impatience."
I don’t want to wake you up like that in the middle of the night.
"Boo," Rowana said. "Hiss."
Azzie snorted. Her hands slid down, to rest on that small belly. Beneath her fingers, she could feel the swollen womb. Like an overfull waterballoon beneath the skin and muscles.
"It does seem like the pacing on the erotic sections is off," Rowana said, appreciating the massage as her tits continued to leak. "Ideally, these date nights should have the arc of a seduction. Even if they're not in love or lust with each other, they're trapped together and they know they need to get along. Some of the women will push further than others, Francis likewise. That's the tension we should feel. It doesn't really come through yet. Like they aren't actually very good at this."
“Why do I keep sticking my foot in my mouth?”
"I feel like this was an opportunity for someone to quip about having better uses for her mouth, but we don't get that," Azzie said, with a sigh. "You know what this needed? Some sort of double date. Like two of the lesbians making out with each other as a show while Francis jerks off to them. That would be movement in the direction of progress."
"It's Fogeight's story, not ours," Rowana said. "It's easy to read and say 'I would have done that a different way,' it's much more difficult to actually write it in the first place."
[My religious exemption card to the federal drinking age limit, just in case the Master cares about that? Check.](<My religious exemption card to the federal drinking age limit, just in case the Master cares about that? Check.>)
"I don't think we needed that," Azzie said.
Skye: +6 VP (Seen Master’s Glorious Cock x2 Bonus [first time contestant participant])
"Okay, this is getting really fucking annoying," Rowana said, her brow furrowed. "We never actually SEE the fucking cock. We don't see Skye see the fucking cock. We don't see Francis see Skye see his fucking cock. All we get is an announcement that Skye saw his schlong. What the fuck is going on?"
"I think it's supposed to be a thing about her transformation, but it is not described well and it is not depicted in a way that really makes sense," Azzie said.
“Am I at least going to get the sex?” she tries to shriek.
"You ever get the impression the side stories in some of these Harem Hotel stories are more interesting than the main plotline?" Rowana said. "Or at least have more romantic potential."
"I think if this story were rewritten, the mermaids should have been introduced earlier, and becoming a breeding fucktoy for their depradations would be more of a constant for low-performance haremites. It would provide more incentive, anyway," Azzie said. "Though, as far as we know, that is something that happens in the future. Lot of story left."
"Is that an SCP wiki reference or a 5th edition reference?" Rowana said uneasily. "Neither of which exist in Middle Earth, but we have extradimensional Matrix hook-ups."
"Based on the Thirdist reference, I'd say the latter," Azzie said. "Is it weird that I would have preferred SCP wiki? The whole Gygax-religion thing is...hmm. It gives Skye personality, I suppose."
Skye: -4 VP (Cause Master Intense Pain [full body hair waxing] x2 Bonus [first time master participant])
"I think we need to just embrace the fact that events happen in Fogeight's head and we will be informed of them later," Rowana said after a moment. "Because if we stop to point out every non-sequitur event like this, we will never get through it."
"Just need to say, not a fan," Azzie said. "It's one thing to start in media res and then flash back to what happened, but we never get to see these things happen and that's just annoying."
I got map hops!
"Mad," Rowana said, automatically.
New Feature: Fox (Shark) – Indigo thinks she is foxy, but the hotel staff knows better. Indigo will become a shark girl, with the pointy teeth, webbed digits, and big ol’ tail (modeled after the common thresher shark aka the fox shark) one would expect. Her VStreemer model body will also be given a new color scheme to reflect her new fishy body parts. Her swimming ability and bite strength are also increased (Punishment – Shark Girl).
"So, this is just naked bait for Gina, right?" Azzie said.
"Yeah, 100%, no notes," Rowana agreed. "Like dick biting, Gina seems to like shark girls in a philosophical sense, but is uncomfortable with them up close. I suspect she wants to imagine being the swimmer in the water, legs dangling and ****, as the shark comes up from below."
I’m sure that, sooner or later, we’ll get a challenge that you will have an unfair advantage in.
"I am far less confident in Josie winning a challenge than Tina is," Azzie said.
"In this chapter," Rowana said, "we also get the option to look at the audience poll and 'Behind the Scenes: The Water is Acid.' The latter of which we will read, because we're curious."
When this season has an event that is settled using the roll of the dice, a Behind-the-Scenes vignette will be provided to help with the context. Since the Pop-Up Challenge was the first to use dice rolls, it would be helpful to explain them here for the clicky-clanky math rock goblins.
Azzie's brow furrowed, but her ears picked up. "Goblins?"
"Down girl. Metaphorical goblins," Rowana said. Milk was still leaking out of her nipples, down onto her stomach.
"Aww," Azzie moaned.
"Anyway, this is more of a score card and rules addition than a replacement for any of the scenes that were missing. Useful for keeping track, but not much else," Rowana said. "I'd care about the mechanics if this was an actual game, but it's more like reading someone's D&D game results, so...not so much. I'm sure the original audience appreciated things, though."
For the first morning after a date, Francis awakens to an empty bed.
"Didn't Josie leave early on his very first date?" Azzie said.
"I'm not going to read back to check. There are 30+ chapters until the end of round one," Rowana said. "Just roll with it."
Francis takes what feels like way too long during breakfast explaining nocturnal penile tumescence to the frightened farmhand.
"Do cows and horses not have morning wood?" Azzie said.
Rowana, who grew up on a farm instead of being decanted in a tank, smiled. "No. Most mammals have a bone, called a baculum, in their penis. While the cock isn't always visible, they are always ready to go when the time comes. So now, they don't get morning wood. Cock can leave its sheath for a variety of reasons, but it is perfectly possible for farmgirl there to have never seen an adult human male prick before."
Azzie considered that.
"When did you first?" she asked.
"No comment," Rowana said.
The Sacred Texts briefly mention how the Goddess’s sisters and brothers would use silk ropes in certain... marital rituals.
"Loviatar needs a new handmaiden," Azzie said.
"But she isn't even Finnish!" Rowana protested. "Not that we have Finland in Middle Earth."
Sure, he attended lectures at his local Federalist Institute monthly to maintain his voting rights
"I previously hoped Francis wouldn't lose his balls," Azzie groaned. "But this makes it clear he never had any."
"Let's not get into politics," Rowana said. "Even though the Federalists have basically been behind every contraction in voting rights in the last five decades."
I’m so glad that your I totally lost my mouth virginity last night making out with your hot redheaded contestant while fingering her cloaca!
"Mermaids may not be completely up on human anatomy," Azzie noted. "Understandable, really."
I’d like some yummy cummy wummies in my egg sac tummies
"That is more disturbing than anything in recent memory," Rowana said. "Including the time I watched my friend bite an Orc's cock off."
Mi español no es tan bueno.
"Good enough," Azzie said. "I do like some of these dates reflect the personality of the participants. Like, it made sense that Francis and Josie would do exercise things, because that's what they have in common. So Francis and Añil doing a livestream of a video game (sortof) makes sense."
"Sortof being the operative word. I'm not exactly sure I understanding the gaming setup situation," Rowana said. "And for a lesbian adult toy streamer, Añil seems to be the least stressed about this situation with a dude. Like, she isn't reaching for the dick, but she isn't actively working to feminize Francis either."
“How are you eligible to drink? Aren’t you like 18?”
"Fogeight is very weirdly focused on minimal drinking age," Azzie said. "After the Federalist revelation, I wonder if this is a political thing leaking through."
"Not our monkey, not our circus," Rowana said.
Maybe Josie will want to have a threesome with us when she comes in? That would be fun...
"The mutual triangulation onto lesbian threesome is being heavily foreshadowed, but 'why' escapes me," Azzie said. "Like, none of these ladies seem to be really into group sex? And none of them have been exactly having sexy thoughts about group sex with the others? So it feels like the fact that they're navigating toward lesbian threesome indicates we either missed something or hasn't been established very well."
"Option 3: Harem Hotel operates in part on porn logic when threesomes magically happen," Rowana said. "Let's not overthink it."
Am I really thinking about trying to use a magical sex app to condition Vix into becoming a functioning adult? Is that what this game is pushing me into?
"Honestly, this could be a season unto itself. Dude gets these fucked up failwomen and turns their lives around through magic puppeting software or whatever," Azzie said...then shivered, as she realized how close it was to how she grew up. "Nope, second thought, let's not do that. Ever."
"Just touch boob, babe," Rowana said, and let her wife's hands slide back up to her aching, leaking udders. "That's what they're there for."
She smiles and picks up the pace at that. She grips a little firmer, too; not quite as hard as that squeeze, but firmer. She starts to lightly lick at the base of his cock. He twitches and gasps as she rubs his frenulum with her sandpaper tongue. She squeezes him again to give that part another, more solid lick. And another. And another.
"You don't often read the word 'frenulum' in porn," Azzie mused. "What's the over-under of getting a mermaid in the harem?"
"No bet," Rowana said. "It's not actually a bad little blowjob scene. Fogeight can write sex scenes. They just mostly don't."
Oh, Penis Points. They are a remnant of the work I did for the other season. Honestly, I predicted they would be the primary driver to get the contestants interested in exploring the dungeon, at least initially. One can expend a PP with me to either increase or decrease the length of a harem member’s fully erect penis by an inch.
"I thought I missed something when they mentioned PPs earlier, but nope, new mechanic," Azzie said. "This story feels like it needed more of an outline."
"The Harem Hotel narrative gives a lot of shape to things, but the constant addition of new rules and changes does make the narrative more chaotic than not," Rowana admitted. "But an outline isn't really workable, because there's all the audience votes and things, right? So what should be done is a very robust setup at the front, and then things play out. But new rules, transformations, and items keep getting added, and the participants change in response, so there's a lot less consistency of tone than might be hoped for."
“I don’t know exactly where you are on your cycle, so these are the low end numbers. A woman of your health and age has the following probabilities of impregnating me: 3% per act with toy use (and I refuse to let you borrow a toy from Indigo for that), 5% per act for fingering, 12% per act for oral, 28% per act of vaginal on vaginal stimulation. If you are actually ovulating, those numbers increase significantly. Those numbers do not include the ‘double odds’ for being my harem sister. I have absolutely no desire for anal. So, I just have to suck it up for one more day and then have the professor put a bun in my oven, as it were.”
"I know we're not speedrunning impregnation kink, exactly," Azzie said, as she gave her wife's breasts a comforting squeeze. "But it does feel like the narrative is being dragged in seven different directions. Like it isn't sure whether it wants Francis to have a dick or not, if it wants the haremites to be pregnant or not, if it wants Josie to be the woobie or just kind of a karma sink for a broken universe, etc."
"Mostly, I think it wants to explore Skye's Gygaxian theology," Rowana added.
Big sis usually doesn’t let me out of the IT area. Just wanted a friend.
"In another story, a mermaid IT would be a bit of worldbuilding worthy of careful consideration," Azzie said.
"I'm just wondering how they waterproof the equipment," Rowana said.
Josie +4 VP (Sexting Master x4 [first time both participants])
"I would not consider that sexting," Azzie said. "There was no sext. 'Keep that pussy warm for me' would work better if he had a pussy or if they had established that Francis was becoming her girlfriend."
"Well, it's sexier than any of the other texting so far. Honestly, Harem Hotel should ban smartphones," Rowana said. "Honestly, I'm far more invested in the mermaid cum-extraction relationship than with any of the haremites at the moment."
“Jenny has been given the Basic Bitch Coffee Table elimination transformation. Here are the details. Basic Bitch Coffee Table – Jenny has always been a boring basic bitch, now she’s the most bitchin’ piece of furniture ever devised! With easy access to both her former upper and lower cock warming holes, still readily available, up to two people at a time can use Jenny to sate their sexual desires. And those holes are always warm and wet and stimulating. Cumming inside Jenny will cause her to excrete a cleaning and waxing solution to keep her shiny and protected. She is also perfectly balanced and able to hold the largest coffee table books with ease! A perfect prototype for future furniture considerations for your chain of coffee shops, Bob!”
"I feel like this is a response to something specific we aren't familiar with," Azzie said.
"Everybody has their kinks," Rowana said, uncertainly. "Although in this particular instance, it feels like he's specifically addressing the prevalence of pregnancy kink in other Harem Hotel paths. Our unfamiliarity with the other branches is really making it difficult to say how much of this is metatextual."
A sandpaper-like tongue licks at her nipple. That feels odd, but kinda good.
"I am judging," Azzie said. "Sandpaper is not good on nipples. Try it."
"Yeah, gotta go with the wife on this one," Rowana agreed. "This is less believable than breeding kink."
Now this is interesting. Normally you would assume Beckie ends up as worst girl, but who wants to see some erotic punishment featuring the hag? I definitely think it will be either her or Indie.
"I don't know what story Gambio has been reading, but Beckie isn't even a haremite yet," the Uruk-Hai said.
"Possibly their vast familiarity with Harem Hotel stories means they see her getting roped in as inevitable," Rowana said. "But something twigged to me about why this story isn't doing it for me: in most feminization stories, the focus is on the process of feminization, how the individual feels about it, and the people that enable or **** that feminization. Here, none of them actually have that kink, either to feminize or be feminized. So there isn't really that drive. They sort of have to guilt Francis into the whole feminization thing, and even when he's enjoying it, he isn't embracing it."
"It has only been six days, even if it's been 40 chapters," Azzie pointed out.
"I guess," Rowana said. "But Francis is neither embracing or rejecting the process, and none of the haremites are really enjoying it. Like, if there was an exercise machine that gave Francis boobs, and Josie was really into making him use it more so that his breasts would get bigger, that would be something where there's potential dramatic tension and sexual excitement while progressing the story. As it is, there are a lot of story threads in play, but the motivations don't really seem there for some of the kinks we're seeing play out."
“1 Hairgasm, Ah, ah, ah.”
"The idea of remotely doing something that changes someone else is a concept sufficient to support an entire branch of a story," Azzie said. "Here, it needs to share time with the other fifty things going on."
"It does make it difficult to focus on any one or even one handful of kinks," Rowana said. "Which isn't Fogeight's fault, so much as it is the premise of the whole Harem Hotel concept. These things are overloaded with way too many things happening for any particular plot point to really gain ascendancy. At least, not in these early rounds. Later, maybe, that might change."
He shifts his weight onto his back leg, pivots it with a slight hop, and delivers a devastating side kick directly into Beckie’s knobby knee.
"Man, those Tae Bo sessions really paid off!" Azzie declared. "Not that we have that in Middle Earth."
I feel so powerless. How can I save them when I can’t even stop this travesty?
"There seems to be a real issue in the Harem Hotel format with the lack of agency," Rowana noted. "Frank has lots of power over the women in his harem, but is **** to use any of it, and is therefore miserable. While I get he's trying to be a nice guy, the one time he actually did much of anything proactive was when he tried to make the streamer-girl less lame, and almost nothing came of that."
"It really is a format where the master should ideally be straining against their limitations of what they can do to their harem, or at least a sense of camaraderie at all being prisoners together. My creche-mates understood that. I don't think any of these people really take control of their own lives or face their own limitations in a way that makes you either root for them or despise them," Azzie said. "And to Fogeight's credit, he does point that out."
“I enjoyed the little shout-out to the perverts last night, by the way. That’ll make it to the edited episode. My main purpose here is to just encourage you a little. Let you know that there are people rooting for you. Let you know that you can thrive in this game, if you just give yourself the chance. Invite should have sent by now. Come chat if you want some advice. I’ll even give you a taste for free. If you are wanting to watch a season that doesn’t make you want to die, you should check out the season with ol’ Frankie Hornblower. I think I saw her around, so you will probably meet her today.”
"The alternate parallel universe stuff is still bizarre to me," Rowana admitted. "I can't say I really appreciate the alternate versions of characters we've barely met so far. And that's weird to say when we're fifty chapters in, but like, consider this bit:
The bestial woman pulls out a little black notebook and flips to a page entitled “Bubble-Butt”. Below the title is a photo of some horrible caricature of Josie’s oldest sister Mary Elizabeth, warped almost beyond recognition. The Mary Elizabeth back home does tease Josie from time to time for making friends with her old asshole of a lab instructor back from college.
"Has Mary Elizabeth appeared before this? Did we get any idea that Josie had a sister she missed or cared about? I feel like this is something that should have been established way back when Josie was slutting it up at the beginning. Like, even a photo in a wallet or mention her to the fellow haremites or something," Rowana said. "And this isn't a specific knock against Fogeight, I think it's an issue with the format of Harem Hotel itself, where the characters are being developed on the fly even as the game changes them. Alternate versions of characters work best when the character is already very well established and familiar, so that the readers get a sense of the difference easily. Here...I can't say I care about Josie's sister because we've never seen Josie care about her sister up until this point."
“You were always a stupid bitch, Tina. Of course you remember good old Mortimer.”
"It does not help that a lot of these people we're meeting are people that know alternate versions of these characters and so they and we have zero basis for understanding who they are, what their motivations are, or why they're choosing here and now to be an asshole about it," Azzie said. "Like, this isn't a badly written interaction, but it's not clear what the point of this interaction is. What does this tell us about Tina? What impact does this have on her character? I dunno!"
(Brain) Pop Quiz – Despite our helpful payment plan, Scarlet doesn’t seem too interested in paying off her loan. Let’s give her a little more encouragement, shall we? Scarlet permanently loses a point of IQ for every day she does not bring a new person to orgasm until either she pays off the loan or she reaches an IQ of 70 (whichever happens first). Harem members can be used more than once, but will not count for this transformation until all harem members have been given a turn (Bimbo).
"IQ is bullshit," Rowana said firmly. "But continue."
We don’t care if the testicles are from you or your most hated enemy; we just want to eat them.
"Game recognizes game," Azzie noted.
"You have never eaten a single testicle in your life," Rowana pointed out.
"I'm just saying, at least the mermaids have a consistent goal! They have the best-characterized motivation of any character in this story!" the Uruk-Hai said.
“You know what? If you’re old enough to be **** into sexual slavery on interdimensional TV, you’re old enough to drink. Booze for everyone!”
"I'm not complaining about the drinking age thing. At least Fogeight is consistent," the ranger admitted. "Hell, maybe that was all a setup for this one joke. If so: props."
“Um, Indigo, the audience can’t just... give you VP. It’s not how the game works.”
"I cannot tell if this is a reflection of how the Harem Hotel games play to the audience participation aspect or are building up Añil for either total failure or the biggest character growth in the story," Azzie said. "Like a lot of things in this story, it feels like this would normally be build-up for something but it could go either way. It would help if Añil had any redeeming attributes, but she's trying to reject reality and replace it with her own when the world does not work that way, and the only way for her to actually achieve anything is to stop being who she is. Which is kind of a shit moral, but then she's kind of a shit person."
"Let's be honest, that goes for a lot of the participants," Rowana said. "And it comes back down toward motivation. Nothing about this game seems to have triggered survival mode in Añil yet, but it also isn't really triggering be-a-better-person in any of the other characters either. The closest thing we've seen to real motivation (except for the mermaids) is Tina learning Real Magic, and the only real self-discovery is Josie finding out she's a shit friend, which she sort of already knew."
"We bitch, but again, part of this is due to the format of the whole Harem Hotel series. And the fact that at any given time at least half the participants are trying to fight against that format," Azzie said. "Presumably because in other branches we haven't read, characters just leaned into it and Fogeight is trying to do something new and different."
“Health potion. Flavored with orca blood. You’ll see.”
"These are not the transformations I would have voted on, but we got here too late to vote," Rowana said.
Part of Your World – With a magical bunny girl in his possession already and more magical transformations on the way, the Master could really use an advisor on arcane matters. Well, we know just the DoD obsessed mermaid for the job. Daphne joins the harem according to the rules laid out in the “Bring in Staff Members” section of this season’s official rulebook. Yes, it is a bit silly to state that someone from a unisexual species has same-sex attraction, but it does work for the theme of the show. Shut up (Dungeon Master).
"Well, that happened," Azzie said. "So now we have six lesbians and one certified obligate cumslut. Not sure how they'll square that one."
Just fake it ‘til you make it.
"Oh no. Fogeight's going to make her dumber," Rowana said with a sigh. "Like, I get the whole bimbo appeal, but Bettie already wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed."
“You got it. Third, I don’t know what the game is going to bring to us or how long it’ll run. We need to help each other through this. I need your help in getting through this. Take some time today to take stock of what you can do to help the rest of us survive. I don’t want to lose anyone to coffee table hell or...”
“Being turned into a human dick having bird?” Tina offers.
“Or an affirmation keychain.”
“Or being cursed into becoming a drider.”
“Or...,” Josie tries to add, “I got nothing.”
"Being a drider would be kinda cool, honestly," Azzie said. "I never understood that part of D&D mythology. Lolth is a demon spider goddess. You'd think being turned into a giant spider-woman would be something she did as a reward."
"The emphasis on the D&D angle these last sixty chapters surprised me," Rowana said. "Not that we have D&D in Middle Earth, but from what the interdimensional Matrix has taught me, I was surprised to see it used so prominently."
Josie, after thoroughly satisfying Tina with several hours of passionate sex, decided to check in on Francis in a borrowed top. The fish wanted a ride, and now she’s complaining about how that ride is being delivered.
"I'll bet the sex in Fogeight's head was magnificent when he wrote this," Azzie said. "Shame none of it got written down."
“Ladies and future lady, we have much mischief to cause this merry night. For we stared into the abyss that is the soulless beige eyes of evil and we have survived! Thrived, maybe? We definitely gotten closer. Had a lot of laughs. Had many, many mind blowing orgasms. And now we burn away her evil visage as a celebration of our achievements. Whoo!”
"Did I miss the part where they'd achieved much of anything besides adding a mermaid to the harem and putting the host on the path to bimbodom?" Rowana said. "Well, that's unfair. There's been a fair number of transformations. It just doesn't really feel like a lot of progress toward a defined goal. A week of game-show time translates into 63 chapters and my brain is struggling to decide what actually happened of consequence."
"Well, none of them got eliminated. So that's something," Azzie pointed out. "And this is only round one. Fogeight has already nipped a few things in the bud, like the whole breeding kink. The mermaid has thrown a cockwrench into the pussyworks of feminization. If it doesn't feel like the numbers went up enough, I suspect it's just because the characters weren't all working toward any specific outcome besides 'don't be reduced to a free-use endtable.'"
“She chomped straight through the stick on her corn dog. Had to do the Heimlich maneuver. She can’t eat like a savage when she’s in human mode.”
"It is wrong to say I might have enjoyed a scene where a mermaid choked on a corndog?" Rowana said.
"A little," Azzie admitted.
"Fair enough," the pregnant ranger said, as the last milk from her exhausted tits dribbled over her wife's fingers. "And that is the end of Round 1, which is where we'll stop this review and call it complete. Overall thoughts, Azzie?"
The Uruk-Hai considered.
"I wanted more sex. I wanted sexier writing. We get transformations, but they tend to be immediate and almost perfunctory; we don't often get to see the characters live in their new bodies or with their new desires. We hear a lot about mindblowing orgasms but we don't see them. And it feels like the characters don't really know what they want or how to achieve their goals, and most of their planning is indistinguishable from luck or foul play," Azzie said.
"Agreed on all points. However, I don't want to imply that 4og8zzjkc is a bad writer; a lot of that falls to the format of Harem Hotel and the inherent necessity of the plot bending to audience votes. A lot of the stuff we're pointing out is more obvious in hindsight, and much more difficult to see while actually doing the writing in real time on a schedule. Reading a roleplaying game session is very different than reading a novel, and if you go into a D&D replay expecting the erotic equivalent of The Silmarillion, you are destined for disappointment," Rowana said.
"Right. So, in the future: less telling us about the awesome sexual escapades, more showing us the awesome sexual escapades," the Uruk-Hai said. "And keep writing!"
