Another great issue.
I have to say, Francesca is rapidly shooting to the top of my favourite of Sturkwurk's character designs (tied with some of the ladies from Roll Playing, and the 'Some Rules' mom). Both her expressive face, and her makeup really match the sultry, playful personality Daphne's created for her. I'll bet her and Craig's sex life was a lot of fun even before they were drawn into the web of hypnosis and harems.
It didn't play out quite as I thought. I think Francesca's really the "monster" Monty has created. Craig is nominally her master, but the drive to recruit a harem is much stronger in her. As we saw last issue, she's not above taking the programming Craig's administered, and cranking it up several steps.
Of course, Monty was just acting in accordance with his own programming by Olivia. I think this is definitely showing as weakness in H's using Olivia to program Monty, and basically remaining hands off. Monty knows H is his wife's Master, but I don't think has any conscious or subconscious awareness that he's subordinate to H, and should be reporting an oddity like Francesca to H, or even to Olivia.
And now Francesca knows about H, and the harem, and probably Monty as well. Monty still has her override trigger (as does Craig), but Francesca has waaaaay more information than just about anyone at this point. And now that she controls Olivia, she has Monty's direct controller, and she controls that flow of information to H as well...
I still think, given the nature of By the Book, that this is mostly going to result in more hijinks before things settle down. My bet is that rather than H noticing and moving to counter this, it is probably going to be Charlotte or even Kayleigh (who've become H's most enthusiastic recruiters), which is a nice parallel to Francesca. I think that by the time H and Craig actually sit down, they're figure out something reasonable (plenty of room in town for two main harems and lots of communally available women with trigger words), but I think it would be amusing to watch Francesca and Charlotte work to out-maneuver each other in some kind of harem-mistress hypnotic cloak-and-dagger (cloak-and-titties?) competition.
As always, thanks Daphne and Sturkwurk for creating an enjoyable setting and cast that makes it fun to speculate. It elevates it above a simple serial recruitment
