the candy bars I eat seem to have the same return on investment as lottery tickets
(which is to say I’ve somehow reached a stage where they’re all gross and the only joy I get is giving my hubby a Snickers that says “DENIED” on it for some weird-ass marketing reason)
Pleased to meat ya. I’ve played the lottery often enough to have won more than a couple of bucks and rarely enough to actually be slightly ahead. The only thing I’ve won from a candy bar has been excess pounds, but I’ve won a lot of those.
Knuf Wons
You should move to Britain you can put those pounds to work! I hear the exchange rate is weighted in your favor.
Um… Those huge bags of tiny candy bars are for the trick-or-treaters. Yes, even the 300 Dum-Dum pops. YES the white chocolate fun size Kit-Kats too NO I AM NOT EATING THEM ALL MYSELF SHUT UP.
Those are the bane of my existence, because I love Kit-Kats, but the white chocolate ones still have just enough regular chocolate in them to trigger a migraine (or rather, worsen the one I’ve had for…ever).
Sadly, $250. of lottery tickets have a greater chance of making any kind of of impact on Marcy’s problems than $250 does. With a highly non-linear utility function, gambling at bad odds can be rational.
Reltzik
True. Million-to-one odds sound bad until the alternative odds are worse.
Annonymouse
That always make me think of all those cop shows that spout off about one in a million would be a match – I always ask – Take the population of the city and divide by a million which gives you anywhere from 4 in LA to 9 in NY. That doesn’t even include the greater metropolitan areas.
Oh and over 7500 worldwide that are suspects due to air travel availability.
thejeff
Oh god yeah. Not getting math is getting dangerous.
Even very low probability false positives with huge data sets are a serious problem.
Now, if you’re using something like a 1 in a million match as an additional check on someone you already suspect for other reasons, it’s perfectly reasonable. If you’re trolling through millions of people hoping for a match, that’s a problem.
Using facial recognition software at big events to watch for known terrorists is a classic example. Just due to the error rate, you’ll get hundreds of false positives for any real match (assuming there is one.)
Geiger Counter – an art installation of the most disturbing juxtapositions of stainless steel and assorted bits and pieces of Osseus assembled into the form of a stylized establishment for the distribution and consumption of bitters and ales just off of Piccadilly Circus.
You know, Sal, I’m sure spending a dollar or two on a chocolate bar would cheer Marcie up. I’m pretty sure that counts as helping?
Oh, who am I kidding? Every dime that child finds is going straight into her fundraiser.
And dear god, you can just SEE her parents in the way she’s dressed. No wonder she just meets them in her school uniform. While it might not have helped, her normal clothes will most certainly hurt.
It’s more general. It includes chocolate bars, but it also includes stuff which is nothing at all like chocolate like a peanuts-and-caramel bar or a bar of white chocolate.
Annonymouse
Those non-chocolate confections like Eat-More, McIntosh, Turkish Taffy, Mary Jane, Tootsie Roll …. I know I missed some.
I am so damn pissed at the Walkertons on her behalf. Even giving her a raise on her allowance and putting a hundred bucks towards the bills so Sal could at least feel she contributed and didn’t have to deliberate on money for a while could have alleviated the guilt. (And THIS is why Charles going ‘I’m sure there’s a surgery to fix it’ and telling Sal how much the ambulance bill was is a bad thing. If he wasn’t willing to actually, substantially HELP, then telling her the Diazes are financially burdened and by how much when she’s blaming herself means she’d put the burden on herself to fix it. And 12-year-olds just can’t raise that kind of money on their own, not on the time frame these debts are on.)
And the clothes, augh. Everything about her appearance screams ‘Sal trying to be the daughter her parents wanted’ and the fact that she never will be because they want a fundamentally different child… FUCK Linda and Charles for that.
While Sal’s parents are pretty bad, is there anything besides head canon that says the 250 already in the go fund me didn’t come from them?
BBCC
The fact we know them and they really don’t seem like the kind of people who’d donate $250 to someone who, last we saw, Linda didn’t like?
cbwroses
Yeah, no. That’s just bias. Reasonable bias, but still bias.
BBCC
Alright then – how about because it doesn’t make much sense to not just give it to her parents, where it won’t have to deal with whatever processing fees gofundme has?
Or that, if they were inclined to give money, Sal probably would have said that to Marcie in the hospital?
Or I could be really blunt and just say ‘we have no reason to assume they did other than wishful thinking’ and the fact it’d be inconsistent with what we know of them makes it seem less likely than not?
cbwroses
As I said in another comment, there’s an idea that people will be more likely to chip in for something if they see someone else already has. So in that way, it does make sense. And if they do get to keep that money from the go fund me, then the money can be given to Marcie’s family when Sal decides to give up on it.
And regarding the probability of Sal saying something to Marcie if her parents would have given money, we have no idea how much time passed between the accident and Sal telling Marcie she’ll pay for it. We don’t even know if the bill has been calculated yet at that time.
And I don’t assume they paid into the go fund me. I don’t have a head canon about that one way or another. But I would argue that we don’t have enough information to say giving money or not would be inconsistent. We don’t have any data on how they handle money and there is a difference between not wanting Marcie to hang with Sal vs not helping even a little bit with something Sal feels passionate and guilty about (and might actually be right to feel guilty for all we know).
BBCC
I don’t believe fundraisers generally let donors keep the money if the payment goes through. And why such a specific amount of money? It wasn’t even a round number, it was $245.07.
She looked like she was in the same clothes, so it was probably the same day, and at the very least she knew how much the ambulance cost. If the Walkertons were inclined to help, I’d think it would have come up at that point.
We’ve never had any inklings they give a damn about what Sal wants or cares about versus a LOT of hints if not outright stating they pretty much ignore Sal when she’s not forcing them to pay attention by acting out. And again, Linda does not seem like the kind of person to give money to someone she does not like and Charles generally seems to go along with Linda. The information we do have does not point towards people who would give money and the information we do have also tells us that if they really cared, there’s a lot more they could have done.
cbwroses
There are people suing over kickstarters that didn’t deliver on their promises and that hasn’t been settled. This go fund me, on the other hand is to pay medical bills. there is absolutely no reason why the donors would be upset unless they knew the money didn’t go towards that. And I sincerely doubt the company is going to say “Well, you didn’t reach 65k, guess we’ll just give all that money back to the donors now without them asking for it.”
An ambulance ride is not 65k. And finding out the bill is higher than you thought can encourage people to contribute because they realize how daunting it is vs thinking it can be handled by Marcie’s parents.
BBCC
There are fundraising sites that don’t actually send the money over until they’re funded – again, probably to avoid dealing with cancellations and such. And if it didn’t actually manage to fund, I see no reason why the pledges wouldn’t just be cancelled and the money sent back to the donors. They probably wouldn’t let a 12 year old girl keep it.
It was 2K. That’s why I said they knew how much the ambulance was, at the very least. And Charles, at least, knew the Diazes would have trouble affording medical care. If he didn’t say anything to help with a smaller bill that he knew they couldn’t afford, why should I believe he’d offer help with a substantially larger one.
cbwroses
I’m not sure about what I’m about to say here, but I have this vague idea that each transaction would cost cents on the dollar, so voluntarily sending all the money back would cost the company money if that’s the case vs keeping it or sending it to Sal in one transaction.
There’s also the possibility that, like a bank, they can play with the money in the stock market while it’s in their systems. But again, I can’t even pretend to be sure about that.
BBCC
That’s partially why they don’t fully complete the transaction until the thing’s funded, and why those processing fees often get charged to donors. It seems less likely to me that they’d send money for an unfunded campaign to a 12 year old.
The product/project development-centric crowdfunding sites have that requirement (except Indiegogo, where you can run a “flexible funding” campaign which doesn’t require meeting the goal – there’s usually two kinds of projects that run flexible funding: scams that never come to fruition; or established projects that are already done, and are just using Indiegogo as a storefront for preorders).
BBCC
Fair enough then, although I just checked and Sal’s not legally old enough to set up a gofundme (you have to be 18) so it’s probably been set up by the Diazes.
not someone else
$245.07 would be kind of an odd amount to have come from one source? Also it would be kind of weird for them to have pledged the money into the GoFundMe rather than giving it directly to her parents or something.
cbwroses
There’s an idea that people will be more likely to chip into something when they see someone else already has.
It doesn’t ALL have to have come from Sal’s parents. We can’t see how many donors there have been, only the amount raised
Though even if they DID donate, $200 seems like the largest probable amount, which is nice of them, but still rather cheap of them when you remember that the Walkertons are pretty well off. It no doubt seems like a huge amount to Sal, but I doubt she knows how much of a non-sacrifice it is for her parents
BBCC
That’s true, although based on what we know about the Walkertons, I still find it unlikely they’d donate (or at least donate that much).
Reltzik
Because it’s the most nonsensical mixture of contributions made and contributions not-made. I went into this yesterday with BBCC and Regalli and a few others. Short version: With Linda’s contacts, she could have gotten a fundraiser organized and gotten literally a hundreds of times what’s currently in the account without pitching in more than that sum of her own money. Even IF she did put in $200, that’s… pathetic. Not because the money’s a small amount, but because the EFFORT is a small amount.
cbwroses
I’m not asking about whether they could pay more.
I was asking if there was anything that said they didn’t pay “the bare minimum” or “the least they could do”.
Maybe a strip I forgot about or something said on twitter. Something concrete.
And it looks like there’s nothing like that, that it is indeed just head canon.
It’s reasonable head canon, it may in fact be right, but it’s still head canon, at least for the moment.
BBCC
It’s also no more than head canon to suggest they did, only suggesting they didn’t has far more support based on what we know about them.
Reltzik
Fair enough, I suppose. But it’d be a pretty irrational strategy for them to contribute 250 and offer/do nothing more, and the characters in this comic are all far more sensible than that.
Regalli
There’s nothing so far indicating they did or ANYTHING, but we know Charles told Sal how much the ambulance cost and that Sal told Marcie she’d pay it back rather than some kind of ‘we’, and that the only money Sal had to offer was allowance with a vague ‘I’ll get more’.
Coupled with no response from Linda whatsoever and Sal feeling all the pressure herself, plus the general dynamic between Sal and the Walkerton parents? The absence of a ‘we’ or ‘my parents said they’ll help’ is in fact evidence of absence here.
BBCC
After a couple hours thinking about it, I think we’ve been communicating at a cross-purposes here, cbwroses. Some of your comments sounded a lot like people I’ve seen make posts in bad faith to be pedantic/condescending/derail in-universe analysis (usually about character motivation) which generally requires some amount of extrapolating or putting things we know in larger context based on canon information. I think part of that was using the word ‘head canon’ which I generally associate with things without canon basis or in direct opposition to canon. That probably made me impatient and short tempered and for that I do apologize. No, there’s nothing that straight up says they haven’t donated, but we haven’t seen anything indicating they have and based on what we know they’re like, I find it very unlikely.
cbwroses
Ah. I see. I do have a knack for accidentally choosing words that end up bothering people.
No, I was acting in good faith. It is not my desire to work people up or derail the conversation. But apparently, I just seem to come off that way a lot. Not just online, either.
My father once told me it took him 23 years to realize that I wasn’t trying to disrespect him or anger him the times he felt I did growing up.
BBCC
It’s not your fault. I’ve just seen waaaaaay too much fandom drama lately.
Kinoko
Just wanted to say, thank you for the distinction here. It’s nice to see a side-by-side on given data vs. headcanon.
I’m not knocking speculation. Most fan-related activities involve speculation of some kind. But this was refreshing to read.
cbwroses
Well that’s nice of you. I appreciate it.
Honestly, the head canon is probably right, but I personally think acknowledging it is head canon is important, or at the very least shouldn’t be a big deal to do.
If we can’t do that, then we may be taking the situation too seriously.
Reltzik
Indeed, it’s an important distinction. Headcannons can be dangerous.
In my world, it is ALWAYS “Fuck the Walkerton Parents”O’Clock.
Regalli
Cursing the various parents of this strip is basically my constant background noise.
(Except Sierra’s parents, who are absolutely perfect much like Sierra. I also think well of the Keeners, Saruyamas, and Stacey, and am cautiously optimistic about Hank and hopeful the Ruttens are Fuck Realism Comic Book Billionaires a la Bruce Wayne who somehow have massive amounts of money while being excellent employers.)
(Remember that episode of BTAS where Batman gets amnesia investigating the disappearance of Gotham’s homeless population, gets taken to a labor camp in the Nearby Gotham Desert run by some Generic Oil Baron-type villain, and after saving the day makes sure they have long term lodging and offers jobs at Waynetech? Wasn’t a particularly great episode all told, but Bruce Wayne actively using his status as Bruce Wayne to help people without beating monsters and the mentally ill up is always a thing I like emphasized in my Batman.)
BBCC
One of my favourite pages in a Batman comic (I can’t remember the issue, sadly) is when Batman meets someone from the mailroom, asks how their child (I want to say their son?) is doing. They tell him they’re preparing for college and Bruce asks if they’ve considered the Wayne Foundation scholarships – it’s a full ride. His employee gets excited and asks how you qualify. Bruce just says ‘You, uh…work for me.’
Regalli
I like this Bruce so much more than Darkness No Parents Goddamn Batman.
Seriously the part where he grimly beats up a guy in clown makeup is the least important part of the Batman mythos to me.
Normally I’d say that paying generously for everybody’s kid’s education is probably the single best thing Bruce Wayne can do to lower the crime rate… but then I remember how many of his villains hold advanced degrees.
Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong in Gotham’s education system.
BBCC
You’d think grad schools would do a better job weeding them out.
Two Face (Law)
Hugo Strange (Psychology)
Harley Quinn (Psychology)*
Mr Freeze (Cryonics)
Poison Ivy (Chemistry and/or Botany)*
Scarecrow (Psychology)
Arkham!Black Mask (Psychology)
Man-Bat (Chemistry and/or Mammalian Biology)*
Prof. Milo (Chemistry)
Certainly others, but we’re getting to the point of one or two appearances…
It is a pretty impressive list…though kind of a drop in the bucket, both for Batman villains and for major educated types in the DCU.
But clearly if someone plans to practice psychology in Gotham, they bear watching.
* Currently mostly on the ‘face’ side of the face/heel turn.
Regalli
Comic idea: Batfamily members investigating every psychologist in Gotham as civilians under the guise of ‘trying to find one I click with’ and quietly looking for signs they might be evil. I mean, Cass and Damien can’t talk about their real sources of trauma, but everyone else can fill an hour easy without bringing up anything suggesting they’re vigilantes. (Steph would probably have to be careful, but the fact that her father’s a low rent super villain is public record. There’s also Jason… but if he were onboard with this his pre-Robin history is fraught enough to leave the Red Hood stuff off the table. Is it ever addressed how one of Bruce Wayne’s kids was considered legally dead, came back, and is still publicly acknowledged as his kid? That seems complicated to explain without bringing up superheroics.)
BBCC
Well, in the pre-reboot era, nobody ever publicly acknowledged him as Jason Todd. He was in Arkham as a John Doe and then was moved to a regular prison known only as ‘the Red Hood’ so Batman never had to deal with that.
He was also said to have been killed in a terrorist attack while he was in Africa for charity work.
No idea how they explained it in the new 52.
Regalli
I’m pretty sure I remember the first arc of New 52 Scott Snyder Batman Jason was sitting with the other Robins and Bruce for a family portrait. I have no idea how that worked with RHATO, but hahaha cohesive continuity in the first months of the New 52.
206 thoughts on “Value”
Ana Chronistic
the candy bars I eat seem to have the same return on investment as lottery tickets
(which is to say I’ve somehow reached a stage where they’re all gross and the only joy I get is giving my hubby a Snickers that says “DENIED” on it for some weird-ass marketing reason)
Ana Chronistic
LOOK Alt-Text, I’m a MEAT lady!
Clif
Pleased to meat ya. I’ve played the lottery often enough to have won more than a couple of bucks and rarely enough to actually be slightly ahead. The only thing I’ve won from a candy bar has been excess pounds, but I’ve won a lot of those.
Knuf Wons
You should move to Britain you can put those pounds to work! I hear the exchange rate is weighted in your favor.
tyersome
Sadly in the US while we use pounds avoirdupois, we primarily accumulate the pounds adipose …
Doctor_Who
Aha. Ahaha.
(Sheepishly pushes wrappers away with foot)
LazerWulf
I, on the other hand, still have half a bag of Fun-Size Butterfingers that I bought for myself LAST Halloween.
Needfuldoer
Um… Those huge bags of tiny candy bars are for the trick-or-treaters. Yes, even the 300 Dum-Dum pops. YES the white chocolate fun size Kit-Kats too NO I AM NOT EATING THEM ALL MYSELF SHUT UP.
Lucy Gillam
Those are the bane of my existence, because I love Kit-Kats, but the white chocolate ones still have just enough regular chocolate in them to trigger a migraine (or rather, worsen the one I’ve had for…ever).
Some Random Name
Even if she could get the ticket and won, she wouldn’t be able to cash it out.
Doctor_Who
Guess she could give it to Marcie’s parents.
But yeah, not a practical plan in any case.
Clif
Sadly, $250. of lottery tickets have a greater chance of making any kind of of impact on Marcy’s problems than $250 does. With a highly non-linear utility function, gambling at bad odds can be rational.
Reltzik
True. Million-to-one odds sound bad until the alternative odds are worse.
Annonymouse
That always make me think of all those cop shows that spout off about one in a million would be a match – I always ask – Take the population of the city and divide by a million which gives you anywhere from 4 in LA to 9 in NY. That doesn’t even include the greater metropolitan areas.
Oh and over 7500 worldwide that are suspects due to air travel availability.
thejeff
Oh god yeah. Not getting math is getting dangerous.
Even very low probability false positives with huge data sets are a serious problem.
Now, if you’re using something like a 1 in a million match as an additional check on someone you already suspect for other reasons, it’s perfectly reasonable. If you’re trolling through millions of people hoping for a match, that’s a problem.
Using facial recognition software at big events to watch for known terrorists is a classic example. Just due to the error rate, you’ll get hundreds of false positives for any real match (assuming there is one.)
lilyliv
So cute, so innocent… 🙁
NF
I feel called-out by the alt-text.
shadowcell
the moment i truly achieved Adulthood was the moment i realized that i both could and could not purchase candy bars all the time
Doctor_Who
Today was a co-worker’s birthday. I declined cake because I’m trying to eat healthier.
Somewhere inside of me, a ten year old roars with indignation.
Tacos
Well maybe you shouldn’t have eaten that 10 year old in the first place.
Doctor_Who
Right? After that, cake is an unnecessary indulgence.
Lokitsu
Can you blame him? The ten year old was probably sitting in the breakroom fridge with nobody’s name on the wrapper.
Knuf Wons
Eeewwwww mystery ten-year-old is the worst kind. Someone could’ve slobbered all over it when they wrapped it up! You don’t know, it might have Zika!
(Side note I’m pretty tired so my internal sense of rationality isn’t telling me if it’s too soon to make a Zika joke or not)
Needfuldoer
I hope he didn’t reheat it in the microwave, those things stink the whole break room up.
I’d rather eat leftover-from-meetings-yesterday, sitting-out-all-night local delivery pizza.
Khyrin
Always fun working in an office on Friday as a Catholic, eating my cold fish because i’m considerate. Until my co-workers start staring at me.
Delicious Taffy
Zika? You mean the Magna Defender’s son from Power Rangers Lost Galaxy? How would you even eat him, he’s coveted in armor?
Deanatay
Yeah, the LEAST you could do is send that poor kid some cake!
Reltzik
All maturity is Shroedinger’s maturity. And also Shroedinger’s immaturity.
…. I don’t know what the Geiger counter is analogous to, but just roll with it.
Annonymouse
Geiger Counter – an art installation of the most disturbing juxtapositions of stainless steel and assorted bits and pieces of Osseus assembled into the form of a stylized establishment for the distribution and consumption of bitters and ales just off of Piccadilly Circus.
Stephen Bierce
Today I bought the household Halloween Fun Size bags. So I not-adulted.
*plays the Florida Lottery version of “Bingo (Was His Name-O)” on the hacked Muzak*
BBCC
You know, Sal, I’m sure spending a dollar or two on a chocolate bar would cheer Marcie up. I’m pretty sure that counts as helping?
Oh, who am I kidding? Every dime that child finds is going straight into her fundraiser.
And dear god, you can just SEE her parents in the way she’s dressed. No wonder she just meets them in her school uniform. While it might not have helped, her normal clothes will most certainly hurt.
BBCC
On a lighter note – candy bars = chocolate bars in Canadian, right?
Inahc
for certain values of “chocolate”, perhaps.
Reltzik
It’s more general. It includes chocolate bars, but it also includes stuff which is nothing at all like chocolate like a peanuts-and-caramel bar or a bar of white chocolate.
Annonymouse
Those non-chocolate confections like Eat-More, McIntosh, Turkish Taffy, Mary Jane, Tootsie Roll …. I know I missed some.
Regalli
Seriously. Oh, Sal, honey…
I am so damn pissed at the Walkertons on her behalf. Even giving her a raise on her allowance and putting a hundred bucks towards the bills so Sal could at least feel she contributed and didn’t have to deliberate on money for a while could have alleviated the guilt. (And THIS is why Charles going ‘I’m sure there’s a surgery to fix it’ and telling Sal how much the ambulance bill was is a bad thing. If he wasn’t willing to actually, substantially HELP, then telling her the Diazes are financially burdened and by how much when she’s blaming herself means she’d put the burden on herself to fix it. And 12-year-olds just can’t raise that kind of money on their own, not on the time frame these debts are on.)
And the clothes, augh. Everything about her appearance screams ‘Sal trying to be the daughter her parents wanted’ and the fact that she never will be because they want a fundamentally different child… FUCK Linda and Charles for that.
cbwroses
While Sal’s parents are pretty bad, is there anything besides head canon that says the 250 already in the go fund me didn’t come from them?
BBCC
The fact we know them and they really don’t seem like the kind of people who’d donate $250 to someone who, last we saw, Linda didn’t like?
cbwroses
Yeah, no. That’s just bias. Reasonable bias, but still bias.
BBCC
Alright then – how about because it doesn’t make much sense to not just give it to her parents, where it won’t have to deal with whatever processing fees gofundme has?
Or that, if they were inclined to give money, Sal probably would have said that to Marcie in the hospital?
Or I could be really blunt and just say ‘we have no reason to assume they did other than wishful thinking’ and the fact it’d be inconsistent with what we know of them makes it seem less likely than not?
cbwroses
As I said in another comment, there’s an idea that people will be more likely to chip in for something if they see someone else already has. So in that way, it does make sense. And if they do get to keep that money from the go fund me, then the money can be given to Marcie’s family when Sal decides to give up on it.
And regarding the probability of Sal saying something to Marcie if her parents would have given money, we have no idea how much time passed between the accident and Sal telling Marcie she’ll pay for it. We don’t even know if the bill has been calculated yet at that time.
And I don’t assume they paid into the go fund me. I don’t have a head canon about that one way or another. But I would argue that we don’t have enough information to say giving money or not would be inconsistent. We don’t have any data on how they handle money and there is a difference between not wanting Marcie to hang with Sal vs not helping even a little bit with something Sal feels passionate and guilty about (and might actually be right to feel guilty for all we know).
BBCC
I don’t believe fundraisers generally let donors keep the money if the payment goes through. And why such a specific amount of money? It wasn’t even a round number, it was $245.07.
She looked like she was in the same clothes, so it was probably the same day, and at the very least she knew how much the ambulance cost. If the Walkertons were inclined to help, I’d think it would have come up at that point.
We’ve never had any inklings they give a damn about what Sal wants or cares about versus a LOT of hints if not outright stating they pretty much ignore Sal when she’s not forcing them to pay attention by acting out. And again, Linda does not seem like the kind of person to give money to someone she does not like and Charles generally seems to go along with Linda. The information we do have does not point towards people who would give money and the information we do have also tells us that if they really cared, there’s a lot more they could have done.
cbwroses
There are people suing over kickstarters that didn’t deliver on their promises and that hasn’t been settled. This go fund me, on the other hand is to pay medical bills. there is absolutely no reason why the donors would be upset unless they knew the money didn’t go towards that. And I sincerely doubt the company is going to say “Well, you didn’t reach 65k, guess we’ll just give all that money back to the donors now without them asking for it.”
An ambulance ride is not 65k. And finding out the bill is higher than you thought can encourage people to contribute because they realize how daunting it is vs thinking it can be handled by Marcie’s parents.
BBCC
There are fundraising sites that don’t actually send the money over until they’re funded – again, probably to avoid dealing with cancellations and such. And if it didn’t actually manage to fund, I see no reason why the pledges wouldn’t just be cancelled and the money sent back to the donors. They probably wouldn’t let a 12 year old girl keep it.
It was 2K. That’s why I said they knew how much the ambulance was, at the very least. And Charles, at least, knew the Diazes would have trouble affording medical care. If he didn’t say anything to help with a smaller bill that he knew they couldn’t afford, why should I believe he’d offer help with a substantially larger one.
cbwroses
I’m not sure about what I’m about to say here, but I have this vague idea that each transaction would cost cents on the dollar, so voluntarily sending all the money back would cost the company money if that’s the case vs keeping it or sending it to Sal in one transaction.
There’s also the possibility that, like a bank, they can play with the money in the stock market while it’s in their systems. But again, I can’t even pretend to be sure about that.
BBCC
That’s partially why they don’t fully complete the transaction until the thing’s funded, and why those processing fees often get charged to donors. It seems less likely to me that they’d send money for an unfunded campaign to a 12 year old.
bhtooefr
GoFundMe does not require reaching your goal to make donations available: https://www.gofundme.com/questions
The product/project development-centric crowdfunding sites have that requirement (except Indiegogo, where you can run a “flexible funding” campaign which doesn’t require meeting the goal – there’s usually two kinds of projects that run flexible funding: scams that never come to fruition; or established projects that are already done, and are just using Indiegogo as a storefront for preorders).
BBCC
Fair enough then, although I just checked and Sal’s not legally old enough to set up a gofundme (you have to be 18) so it’s probably been set up by the Diazes.
not someone else
$245.07 would be kind of an odd amount to have come from one source? Also it would be kind of weird for them to have pledged the money into the GoFundMe rather than giving it directly to her parents or something.
cbwroses
There’s an idea that people will be more likely to chip into something when they see someone else already has.
BBCC
That’s still an oddly specific amount though.
Fart Captor
It doesn’t ALL have to have come from Sal’s parents. We can’t see how many donors there have been, only the amount raised
Though even if they DID donate, $200 seems like the largest probable amount, which is nice of them, but still rather cheap of them when you remember that the Walkertons are pretty well off. It no doubt seems like a huge amount to Sal, but I doubt she knows how much of a non-sacrifice it is for her parents
BBCC
That’s true, although based on what we know about the Walkertons, I still find it unlikely they’d donate (or at least donate that much).
Reltzik
Because it’s the most nonsensical mixture of contributions made and contributions not-made. I went into this yesterday with BBCC and Regalli and a few others. Short version: With Linda’s contacts, she could have gotten a fundraiser organized and gotten literally a hundreds of times what’s currently in the account without pitching in more than that sum of her own money. Even IF she did put in $200, that’s… pathetic. Not because the money’s a small amount, but because the EFFORT is a small amount.
cbwroses
I’m not asking about whether they could pay more.
I was asking if there was anything that said they didn’t pay “the bare minimum” or “the least they could do”.
Maybe a strip I forgot about or something said on twitter. Something concrete.
And it looks like there’s nothing like that, that it is indeed just head canon.
It’s reasonable head canon, it may in fact be right, but it’s still head canon, at least for the moment.
BBCC
It’s also no more than head canon to suggest they did, only suggesting they didn’t has far more support based on what we know about them.
Reltzik
Fair enough, I suppose. But it’d be a pretty irrational strategy for them to contribute 250 and offer/do nothing more, and the characters in this comic are all far more sensible than that.
Regalli
There’s nothing so far indicating they did or ANYTHING, but we know Charles told Sal how much the ambulance cost and that Sal told Marcie she’d pay it back rather than some kind of ‘we’, and that the only money Sal had to offer was allowance with a vague ‘I’ll get more’.
Coupled with no response from Linda whatsoever and Sal feeling all the pressure herself, plus the general dynamic between Sal and the Walkerton parents? The absence of a ‘we’ or ‘my parents said they’ll help’ is in fact evidence of absence here.
BBCC
After a couple hours thinking about it, I think we’ve been communicating at a cross-purposes here, cbwroses. Some of your comments sounded a lot like people I’ve seen make posts in bad faith to be pedantic/condescending/derail in-universe analysis (usually about character motivation) which generally requires some amount of extrapolating or putting things we know in larger context based on canon information. I think part of that was using the word ‘head canon’ which I generally associate with things without canon basis or in direct opposition to canon. That probably made me impatient and short tempered and for that I do apologize. No, there’s nothing that straight up says they haven’t donated, but we haven’t seen anything indicating they have and based on what we know they’re like, I find it very unlikely.
cbwroses
Ah. I see. I do have a knack for accidentally choosing words that end up bothering people.
No, I was acting in good faith. It is not my desire to work people up or derail the conversation. But apparently, I just seem to come off that way a lot. Not just online, either.
My father once told me it took him 23 years to realize that I wasn’t trying to disrespect him or anger him the times he felt I did growing up.
BBCC
It’s not your fault. I’ve just seen waaaaaay too much fandom drama lately.
Kinoko
Just wanted to say, thank you for the distinction here. It’s nice to see a side-by-side on given data vs. headcanon.
I’m not knocking speculation. Most fan-related activities involve speculation of some kind. But this was refreshing to read.
cbwroses
Well that’s nice of you. I appreciate it.
Honestly, the head canon is probably right, but I personally think acknowledging it is head canon is important, or at the very least shouldn’t be a big deal to do.
If we can’t do that, then we may be taking the situation too seriously.
Reltzik
Indeed, it’s an important distinction. Headcannons can be dangerous.
BBCC
In my world, it is ALWAYS “Fuck the Walkerton Parents”O’Clock.
Regalli
Cursing the various parents of this strip is basically my constant background noise.
(Except Sierra’s parents, who are absolutely perfect much like Sierra. I also think well of the Keeners, Saruyamas, and Stacey, and am cautiously optimistic about Hank and hopeful the Ruttens are Fuck Realism Comic Book Billionaires a la Bruce Wayne who somehow have massive amounts of money while being excellent employers.)
(Remember that episode of BTAS where Batman gets amnesia investigating the disappearance of Gotham’s homeless population, gets taken to a labor camp in the Nearby Gotham Desert run by some Generic Oil Baron-type villain, and after saving the day makes sure they have long term lodging and offers jobs at Waynetech? Wasn’t a particularly great episode all told, but Bruce Wayne actively using his status as Bruce Wayne to help people without beating monsters and the mentally ill up is always a thing I like emphasized in my Batman.)
BBCC
One of my favourite pages in a Batman comic (I can’t remember the issue, sadly) is when Batman meets someone from the mailroom, asks how their child (I want to say their son?) is doing. They tell him they’re preparing for college and Bruce asks if they’ve considered the Wayne Foundation scholarships – it’s a full ride. His employee gets excited and asks how you qualify. Bruce just says ‘You, uh…work for me.’
Regalli
I like this Bruce so much more than Darkness No Parents Goddamn Batman.
Seriously the part where he grimly beats up a guy in clown makeup is the least important part of the Batman mythos to me.
Conuly
Normally I’d say that paying generously for everybody’s kid’s education is probably the single best thing Bruce Wayne can do to lower the crime rate… but then I remember how many of his villains hold advanced degrees.
Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong in Gotham’s education system.
BBCC
You’d think grad schools would do a better job weeding them out.
Kamino Neko
Hmm…
Two Face (Law)
Hugo Strange (Psychology)
Harley Quinn (Psychology)*
Mr Freeze (Cryonics)
Poison Ivy (Chemistry and/or Botany)*
Scarecrow (Psychology)
Arkham!Black Mask (Psychology)
Man-Bat (Chemistry and/or Mammalian Biology)*
Prof. Milo (Chemistry)
Certainly others, but we’re getting to the point of one or two appearances…
It is a pretty impressive list…though kind of a drop in the bucket, both for Batman villains and for major educated types in the DCU.
But clearly if someone plans to practice psychology in Gotham, they bear watching.
* Currently mostly on the ‘face’ side of the face/heel turn.
Regalli
Comic idea: Batfamily members investigating every psychologist in Gotham as civilians under the guise of ‘trying to find one I click with’ and quietly looking for signs they might be evil. I mean, Cass and Damien can’t talk about their real sources of trauma, but everyone else can fill an hour easy without bringing up anything suggesting they’re vigilantes. (Steph would probably have to be careful, but the fact that her father’s a low rent super villain is public record. There’s also Jason… but if he were onboard with this his pre-Robin history is fraught enough to leave the Red Hood stuff off the table. Is it ever addressed how one of Bruce Wayne’s kids was considered legally dead, came back, and is still publicly acknowledged as his kid? That seems complicated to explain without bringing up superheroics.)
BBCC
Well, in the pre-reboot era, nobody ever publicly acknowledged him as Jason Todd. He was in Arkham as a John Doe and then was moved to a regular prison known only as ‘the Red Hood’ so Batman never had to deal with that.
He was also said to have been killed in a terrorist attack while he was in Africa for charity work.
No idea how they explained it in the new 52.
Regalli
I’m pretty sure I remember the first arc of New 52 Scott Snyder Batman Jason was sitting with the other Robins and Bruce for a family portrait. I have no idea how that worked with RHATO, but hahaha cohesive continuity in the first months of the New 52.