Fetish of the Week 03: Money, Luxury and Status

[TheRedChamber]

(These haven't had a massive response in previous weeks. If anyone has any suggestions for how to shake them up...)

TheRedChamber presents...
Fetish of the Week
for the Week starting 10th March 2024.

In this week's episode: 'Money Can't Buy Me Love' sang the Beatles in the 1960s, but then Madonna came along in the 1980s and told them just how wrong they were. Most of us will never own a private jet for real, but it's actually less effort to type 'He had a jet' than it is 'He had a bicycle', so why the hell not? After all, chicks dig the plane, right? So, does your heroine have to turn up in a Ferarri or would she still be as sexy as all hell on a funky moped? Does she really need to order the lobster and how is he ever going to build his harem without a twelve-bedroom property in the country? Is your story really about when the country's leading heart surgeon met the CEO of Europe's largest jewelry store, or would it work equally well if they were both stacking the shelves at Lidl? Would the romantic beach adventure work just as well if the holiday fund only stretches to Brighton rather than the Bahamas?

So, authors of Lit...

Sub-Fetishes:
Any kinds of display of wealth or status that is erotic, exciting or integral to the sexiness of the character.

Not included:
Sex work and any upfront pay-for-play. (We may do this in another FotW but not for a while given it's been extensively covered on the AH recently.)

(New set of questions for a topic which is a bit different from previous weeks.)

1) To what extent does or has money and status played a role in your stories? Any specific examples?
2) What kinds of displays of wealth do you write as erotic or find creeping into your stories?
3) Is money and status in your stories gendered in any way? That is to say, is he or she more likely to be loaded?
4) On the flip side, maybe you've never written poverty porn (or maybe you have) but do you find your characters tend to be more salt of the earth?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

This is a fetish? 'Rich' isn't a lit category.

I've found that money is often merely a very convenient plot device. An easy way to get the girl is to snap your fingers for the chauffer to bring the limo around and take her back to the mansion and the pool, or at the very least to whip out the credit card for the posh hotel penthouse suite (no sleazy shag carpet motel 6 for my girl) to go fuck in.

Now obviously there are countless interesting stories to be told about wealthy people, but too often I see stories where the plot could have been told the same but more vividly or more uniquely using poor or lower class people but the writer just wasn't going to be bothered to deal with the logistics of it and so gave his characters a thick bank account just to wave away that tension instead of working with it, and whether intended or not, made the story less interesting.

Then of course there are the 'debt owed' or 'keep your job' or 'indecent proposal' plots which basically use money to bail out the (almost always) male character's lack of game or charm to get the girl to put out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My stories tend to be middle class suburban erotica, because that's what I know. With an overlay of art gallery culture.

I can't write about gross wealth, because I have no idea what it means for day to day life, other than the obscenity of it. Similarly, poverty is never a story theme for me because I've never been there, either. When it comes down to money, it really is, "Write what I know."

 

[TheRedChamber]

This is a fetish? 'Rich' isn't a lit category.

I'm going to be fairly broad in what I consider a fetish. If a girl smoking a cigarette can be a fetish (and @Bazzle will confirm for us that it can be), then surely the same girl wearing a diamond tiara is also a fetish. I'd also argue the Fifty Shades of Grey, the most popular work of erotica ever (if not necessarily the best) should really be called 'Yes, but he has a helicopter'.

 

[MyBareTorso]

Just about anything can be fetishized, yeah? That's why it's so much fun...I've been enjoying these continuing threads very much...

 

[HordHolm]

I would agree with the plot device angle and a certain amount of wealth enables characters to move about more easily than poverty does. Also, we're dealing with escapism here - most people have experience with poverty, even if it was only in their younger years as they struggled through university until they graduated and then the salaries started coming in. But others have spent much of their lives slogging through minimum wage jobs for arsehole bosses, only to slump back to a rented room with not much in it (less is only more when its a rich less). Given this, it's hardly a wonder that most entertainment has an aspirational element to it. It doesn't need to be Succession level, but let's face it, worrying about money and living in a slum/ghetto/tenement just ain't very sexy (most of the time - there are certainly well-written/filmed/drawn exceptions).

As to the fetishisation of wealth... I'm sure it's there though I tend to be put off more than enticed by such displays. But then, I'm more of a 'subvert the system from within' kind of guy.

 

[AchtungNight]

My alter ego in my ficverse is wealthy but he still lives like he’s upper middle class in the apartment above his club- he’s only wealthy because he got lucky with one bestselling novel plus a few lottery wins and some sound investment advice from a secret society with insider trading deals combined to allow him to found a successful business- it could all easily disappear and he knows it plus he has no desire to be an arrogant jerk. If I ever get wealthy in real life I hope to be of similar attitude. As has been said, the wealth is more of a means to an end than a fetish for me.

Plus, a lot of the celebrities with whom he rubs elbows have WAY more money.

 

[Bazzle]

I'm going to be fairly broad in what I consider a fetish. If a girl smoking a cigarette can be a fetish (and @Bazzle will confirm for us that it can be), then surely the same girl wearing a diamond tiara is also a fetish. I'd also argue the Fifty Shades of Grey, the most popular work of erotica ever (if not necessarily the best) should really be called 'Yes, but he has a helicopter'.

The art of smoking a cigarette can be fetishsed, but just writing she lights up isnt?

the being rich can be fetished if stylised in a way that turns someone on?

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Anything can be fetishised, though not necessarily by me (equally just because I've written a fetish doesn't mean it's actually a fetish of mine!)

Wealthy fiction has been so fetishized it's the norm - from the classic bonkbusters of Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon, Jilly Cooper, to thrillers of rich criminals like James Bond, to historical fiction that's always about the royals and politicians and power broking gentry, never Joe Serf and Molly Peasant.

Part of that is just to make more plots feasible, but a bit of money and aspiration and escape from their reality is what loads of people want to read. Would Pride and Prejudice be a classic if about Darcy the stable boy on 15 shillings a week, however much Lizzie the chambermaid liked him?

Back on Lit, I've played with money and class a bit (most obviously in Educating Laura ch.6 where Laura switches chameleon-like through a half-dozen accents and dialects and goes "what's real?" in response to being asked if mirroring a posh woman's voice is her real accent. She later comments that "Money gives you options".

My character Adrian is well-off, very nice two-bed flat and lots of disposable income - but at the expense of his wife having died with a decent insurance policy. The money is a little intimidating to his new partner, a lot intimidating to another conquest years later.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

People are often attracted wealth to some degree or another. It is a primal thing dating back to the caves and the jungles, to choose a mate who can provide.

Yes, I suppose that wealth can be a fetish. We do see sugar daddy/mama/baby stories from time to time. I don't think it's all that popular of a fetish though. If it were, lit would have a sugar daddy category.

The vast majority of stories that do feature wealth in some way aren't fetishising it, they just use money for convenience of plot. For instance, guy runs an extensive dungeon in his basement with all of his slave subs. How he manages to build and maintain the dungeon and keep it secret and secure, and how he is able have the time to fly to third world countries to purchase his slaves and bring them home ... well he's just conveniently rich, and his means are never really worked into the plot, they're just mentioned early in the story to enable the money to just keep rolling in.

I also very much disagree that poverty isn't or can't be sexy. Trailer park shenanigans aren't sexy? Post-apoc stories living hand-to-mouth in the wastelands by your wits aren't sexy? The women of war-torn villages don't find the occupying soldiers sexy? Love lust and affections can mean so much more to characters that have little to nothing else in their lives.

 

[Bramblethorn]

1) To what extent does or has money and status played a role in your stories? Any specific examples?
2) What kinds of displays of wealth do you write as erotic or find creeping into your stories?
3) Is money and status in your stories gendered in any way? That is to say, is he or she more likely to be loaded?
4) On the flip side, maybe you've never written poverty porn (or maybe you have) but do you find your characters tend to be more salt of the earth?

I'm not interested in eroticising wealth, but I do often write about how money and status affect relationships between people.

Magnum Innominandum is, among other things, about an attraction between two students from different walks of life: Josephine is a shipping heiress, Ruth is a scholarship kid, and as they fall towards one another both end up overshooting.

A Stringed Instrument is about a woman having an affair with her boss's daughter, who's trying to live like common people make a life for herself independent of her father's wealth.

Nadja in Loss Function is somebody who's achieved a precarious kind of status - again, partly through her family connections - and is scared of losing it.

 

[StillStunned]

1) To what extent does or has money and status played a role in your stories? Any specific examples?

It's come up a few times in my stories, but not in any way that fetishises it, I think.

In The Code:

Working in the City, [Allie]'d rubbed shoulders with the rich, powerful, smart set. The man who walked in now combined that aura of power with ravishing looks and a marvellous physique.

But Allie had been part of that "rich, powerful set", and had deliberately turned her back on that life.

In Orgy of Death:

Her face was beautiful, in an artificial way. The shape was perfectly symmetrical, the caramel skin was perfectly smooth, the lips, the nose, the brows were all perfectly shaped. The best that magic and the wealth of an Archduchy can buy, Sligh thought to himself. Presumably the body under the dress was just as perfect. It was about as erotic as a Second Empire vase. Less, to a scholar with an interest in the Early Empires.

The irony in this story is that once Sligh's background is revealed it creates a distance between him and Avilia.

In The Walled Garden, the narrator is a successful businesswoman. But precisely because of that success, her sex life has dried up. When she gets round to having sex, it's explicitly not her status but her femininity that's seductive. But that's the whole point of the story:

Suddenly I felt powerful. I have this boy in my grasp! Not because he was working for me, not because I was an experienced woman and he was a callow boy. But because I was a woman and he was mesmerised by my boobs like a small animal confronted with a snake.

 

[yowser]

I was about to conclude that none of my stories had much to do with wealth and your fetish thing until I remembered the bit I did for the Mike Hammer challenge,' My Nick in Time.' Central to the shaggy dog tale, but one step removed from the action is Jared Thrupshot, Cunxmor shipping magnate at the top-tier of 60s San Francisco society, who employs a slippery grunt bicycle messenger to do some illicit work. I had forgotten how much fun it was to do the contrast.

 

[HordHolm]

The women of war-torn villages don't find the occupying soldiers sexy?

Seriously?! Given the prevalence of sexual assault in war zones, both committed by individuals as a means of relieving whatever frustrations are bouncing around in their heads, and instigated by higher command as a method of cowing the locals, I very much suspect that most women in war-torn villages find the occupying soldiers one step away from being a potentially lethal threat. At best they might exchange tins of spam and packs of cigarettes for whatever sexual favours they can get, but is that really 'sexy'? Sure, one in a hundred (if that) might end up being a love story, but for the huge majority the reality is danger, mass sexual assault, unwilling submission, terror and starvation.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Seriously?! Given the prevalence of sexual assault in war zones, both committed by individuals as a means of relieving whatever frustrations are bouncing around in their heads, and instigated by higher command as a method of cowing the locals, I very much suspect that most women in war-torn villages find the occupying soldiers one step away from being a potentially lethal threat. At best they might exchange tins of spam and packs of cigarettes for whatever sexual favours they can get, but is that really 'sexy'? Sure, one in a hundred (if that) might end up being a love story, but for the huge majority the reality is danger, mass sexual assault, unwilling submission, terror and starvation.

Okay, get judgmental. You're right. My thoughts are just addled with sexist depravity. You win. Whatever.

 

[HordHolm]

Okay, get judgmental. You're right. My thoughts are just addled with sexist depravity. You win. Whatever.

Okay, get overly defensive. I am right, though: women in war zones aren't cosying up to 8th Army Air Force pilots and coming home as war brides. They are largely the victims of sexual assault and depravation.

However, to characterise your thoughts as 'sexist depravity' suggests that you've got some guilt bubbling around there. I never suggested that - that's all on you: methinks you doth protest too much.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Okay, get overly defensive. I am right, though: women in war zones aren't cosying up to 8th Army Air Force pilots and coming home as war brides. They are largely the victims of sexual assault and depravation.

However, to characterise your thoughts as 'sexist depravity' suggests that you've got some guilt bubbling around there. I never suggested that - that's all on you: methinks you doth protest too much.

I wasn't protesting. I had conceded. You continue to kick me when I'm down.

All right, I'll play along and protest. Certainly there is tons of ill-treatment and even rape in those situations, but even at your expert statistical analysis of less than 1 in 100 turn out positive, those stories can still be sexy and are valid to be told. Not that some of the negative stories can't be sexy in any way nor aren't they valid, even if they can or cannot be told here on lit.

But no, this scenario can in no way be sexy at all because you're a knight in shining armor. It's fiction, bro.

 

[VallesMarineris]

1) To what extent does or has money and status played a role in your stories? Any specific examples?
2) What kinds of displays of wealth do you write as erotic or find creeping into your stories?
3) Is money and status in your stories gendered in any way? That is to say, is he or she more likely to be loaded?
4) On the flip side, maybe you've never written poverty porn (or maybe you have) but do you find your characters tend to be more salt of the earth?

Here’s a different perspective:

1) This is the sea I swim in. I’m trying not to brag, but I live among people who fly to Honolulu or Paris on a whim. My stud characters drive Porsches (what I drive) or something big and German. And so on. Money is easily available, so has no special emotional charge for my characters any more than air or water does.

2) I make the super-rich my villains. I’ve been to parties at their mansions and seen the silly things they waste money on. Yes, people really do install AI in their staircase lighting and fly in famous opera stars to sing for their children. They’re lucky, but they think they’re geniuses. So they're creepy rather than sexy. My good-super-rich characters do have good taste and show it. Good taste is sexy.

3) I’m surprised myself to say this, but looking through my stories published here I have as many super-rich and powerful women as men.

4) I am right now about half-way through publishing a story series about a plucky young woman who out-thinks, out-manages, and (of course because it’s Lit) out-fucks the men running the trendy, hot startup she’s joined. She’s only middle class, but she’s about as far down the socioeconomic scale as I can write, my first character (except for some horny coeds) not to have a university degree of some kind. We haven’t met the story's super-rich villain yet, but he’ll show up soon.

VM

In case you're interested:

https://literotica.com/s/the-secret-app-ch-01

 

[HordHolm]

I wasn't protesting. I had conceded. You continue to kick me when I'm down.

All right, I'll play along and protest. Certainly there is tons of ill-treatment and even rape in those situations, but even at your expert statistical analysis of less than 1 in 100 turn out positive, those stories can still be sexy and are valid to be told. Not that some of the negative stories can't be sexy in any way nor aren't they valid, even if they can or cannot be told here on lit.

But no, this scenario can in no way be sexy at all because you're a knight in shining armor. It's fiction, bro.

I really don't get what your problem is here. I point something out. I don't make it personal about you. You decide that I am making it personal about you and take offence. You then make it personal about me.

Clearly you've got an issue, but you know what? I'm not interested. So you don't bother me and I will happily not bother you.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Clearly you've got an issue, but you know what? I'm not interested. So you don't bother me and I will happily not bother you.

You can even have the last word. (rolleyes)

 

[HordHolm]

You can even have the last word. (rolleyes)

And you can keep on being passive-aggressive.

 

[StillStunned]

@pink_silk_glove @HordHolm
You disagree. Neither of you will change the other's mind. Neither of you will get any satisfaction out of continuing the argument. No-one else wants to read it.

So leave it alone. Deep breath, shake hands and walk away.