Suspension of disbelief

That's certainly one way a spanking story can be over the top, but is that the only thing Rick is talking about? I remember when you described your early Health Club serial as "over-the-top," and the spankings in that one - with the possible exceptions of what happened to John and Tracy up on the stage - didn't seem impossibly harsh.

No, in that case it meant that the plot careened from one implausible spanking scenario to the next until you'd have to say "hold it--are you serious?" What can I say, it was my very first story ever.

Oh, that's an EASY one - it's anything beyond whatever I'd write in a story!

I didn't mind suspending my disbelief to read about a spanking-oriented health club, I enjoyed those scenarios, but the ending struck me as implausible.

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Wealthy, powerful people may or may not be interested in obtaining more money, but they likely would want retribution if they felt misled or mistreated--knocking the health club out of business via major punitive damages from a legal judgement, some of them might prefer that over getting to paddle the club's employees.

That was the implausibility that I had a difficult time accepting: "The auction was entirely a set-up for us club personnel to get our butts seriously whacked."

Pretty risky IMHO... --C.K.

I could not find that quote in the story, but maybe it is there and if it is, it's a mistake. The auction had nothing to do with staff being punished. At the auction, they were the punishers. It was the members who got whacked. The staff was punished as part of the settlement in the civil suit brought by Tracy and other members, not rich people. Only it was a set up--a thing that Victoria did periodically to her staff and then it turns out that Tracy and Victoria had been sorority sisters and then....yeah, ok. It's crazy.

I think, over the years I've tried to spot and plug plot loopholes so that when someone gets spanked, there is always a believable reason for it.

Well, that's what I meant by "The auction was entirely a set-up for us club personnel to get our butts seriously whacked," i.e. that the lawsuit was filed against the club because of what happened to the some of the members (which could be interpreted as public humiliation at the hands of the employees) during the auction.

I'm aware that it was all part of a complicated plotline that would (and did) result in the staff members getting their bare butts blistered by the plaintiffs in settling the civil action out of court.

My point was that it might be difficult to control a lawsuit like that if some of the plaintiffs wouldn't go along with administering the CP to the club's employees as agreed-upon resititution and wanted to push for punitive monetary damages instead.

Perhaps obtaining more money might not have mattered to them, but achieving serious retribution via bankrupting the health club might have.

Very wealthy people have been known to be rather spiteful... --C.K.