Monday DE

[bjornwilde]

Let’s talk money. How does your pup earn it? Is it something they worry about or does it even exist in their world? Are they earning it in a way they’d choose or are they trapped or settling in their means of income?

Bonus round, what are some of the paying jobs you know of in Milliways?

Comments

[quick_clean_pure]

Ooh, money is a big Graverobber issue and definitely a major concern for him/his world. He earns his keep selling drugs and, for his line of work, he does okay. But since he lives in a universe where you can literally be legally, brutally murdered for missing your bills, and since it's also legal to kill graverobbers on sight, it's definitely a source of stress for him.

His situation is definitely helped somewhat by being able to sell his wares at Milliways without any cops/Repo Men to worry about, plus he's managed to score a couple of regulars (shout-out to Cassidy and Lucifer!).

[oldmancreed]

Tess generates income from stocks, bonds and revenue from Luthorcorp. Although she's about to make a major change...

Rose works at a costume shop and receives a modest monthly stipend from her parents estate. She worries about it a lot.

Something tells me Kylo doesn't need to worry about money.

Creed is an assassin for hire. He's good at it and makes more than enough to sustain his lifestyle.

[for_everyone]

The Ghost crew is kind of constantly torn between 'jobs that will actually pay' and 'good works that help others but don't pay.' Their actual paying jobs tend to be various forms of smuggling, stealing from the Empire, and scavenging. Once they're more openly part of the growing rebellion starting in season 2, I'm guessing they receive patronage from people like Bail Organa or other higher-placed allies that help them get by. But credits are always pretty tight.

As for whether it's what they'd choose - neither Kanan nor Hera have really known anything that different. Kanan didn't have to worry about money when he was growing up in the Jedi Temple, but job-to-job was how he survived after. Hera did a lot of scavenging and bartering growing up, and worked job-to-job on numerous crews. Basically for both of them the question is more 'what would they do if the Empire didn't exist,' which Hera can't really fathom, and Kanan doesn't want to think about.

[bjornwilde]

Sabine: See Hera's answer above for the present. As to choice, well Sabine has worked as a bounty hunter before and was quite good at it. She prefers the struggle for resources in her present than those days however. Being able to see a positive effect on the world is so much better than the clink of credits to her.

Ahsoka has the backing of the Jedi Order at present and, while they never go out and say it, the Jedi don't seem to be hurting for cash. I imagine she also gets a small stipend that likely increases once she goes up in rank. Once she chooses to leave the Order, life becomes much more challenging and she ends up working odd jobs and struggling for credits. I imagine she did her best to keep clear of morally questionable jobs, and instead worked errands, service/labor jobs, and eventually works as a mechanic. Then the Rebellion found her and things got easier.

Sam...I'm not sure. He doesn't seem to be hurting in the movies so I assume he's good with money and so has a sizable savings account. I can't imagine that hunting for Bucky pays well, so he was likely burning through it though. Once he joins the Avengers, I'd think he'd get some compensation.

Hank is currently on the road and so getting buy with day labor and the like. He's learning a lot. Once he goes back to Charles, he'll have his resources to fall back on. I'll have to see how Hank feels about that and if he'll want to look into ways of earning his own money.

Scrapper can always find a fight to win for money when she needs it. Or a new contender for the games. It's definitely work she'd rather not be doing but she's good at it and she does enjoy fighting, so...

Danny at present only has money he's gotten from backroom fights or day labor. Once he gets to New York and proves his identity, he'll be set for several lifetimes. There's some choice there but I'm sure there was something else Danny had in mind as a child.

Tybalt is a king and so is more about redistributing resources than earning them. Still, he earns his keep protecting his people and ensuring they grow strong. Oddly enough, I get the feeling he would rather not have the responsibility and was at least hesitant to claim his first Court.

[exiled_heir_of_the_eighth]

Sahaal, well. He takes valuable stuff from people that he kills and uses that to pay for things in Milliways, as well as anything he can pick up on his missions back home. Apart from that, his main source of steady income is through bartending Happy Hours.

I should probably see about getting him a real job in Milliways.

[cottoncandypink]

Money was a major concern for Wilford from the day he finished high school. It wasn’t supposed to be, but that’s how things worked out. It remained a concern for long enough that even though he has plenty of it now, he’s reluctant to spend any unless he’s blackout drunk.

[i_am_your_host]

Emcee is a sex worker and still considers himself one even though he hasn't earned money from it in a while due to circumstances back home. Throughout his life it was necessary, to supplement his wages from working in bars and clubs. At his peak at the Kit Kat Klub, at least he had a choice in whom he had sex with, but eventually beggars couldn't be choosers. Now, as of this moment? He's actually sitting comfortably with an income from Jay's world as co-owner of a nightclub. It's going to take some time to get used to living above poverty level, as frugal habits die hard, and I don't even think he'd object to still taking money for sex, if offered.

Floki earns his money from shipbuilding and raiding. Knowing a trade and being a master at it is a huge advantage in his world, so he had never been poor (even if he did prefer to live in a hut down by the river instead of near the village). Then as part of Ragnar's entourage (that's not the word I want, but it's the viking thing for like...the most loyal men who get to sit with the king and who are considered extended family), he gets a bigger share of the loot, and presumably gets paid more for every ship he builds for the king's fleet.

Pam runs a really successful nightclub with Eric, and Eric has amassed a fortune over a thousand years, so she literally has nothing to worry about. In a way, though, they are trapped in this business venture by the vampire Authority. This is actually Eric's punishment, to stay bound to Shreveport and be a productive member of society. Of course Pam had to be dragged into it. But over the decades they've made the best of it, so here they are.

Cassidy is shit at making/saving money and holding down a job. He takes odd jobs with random bursts of productivity, then is usually fired or he loses interest and quits. He lives hand-to-mouth most of the time, but I don't think it worries him. He's not going to die from hunger. Plus, he always finds a way to mooch off someone else, whether it's food or a place to live for a while. When he does earn some cash, it often goes straight to buying drugs. And the cycle continues.

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond: Money happens to people who aren't him, really.

Lois: In-Bar has not yet started working. Will get a job as a teen as an intern, basically, at the Daily Planet. Then she'll just refuse to leave ever.

Evelyn: Currently a student in the Circle, money is not really a thing for her. Her family might still send her gift money sometimes, iunno. Later, fighting monsters or bandits or terrible people and looting the bodies slash Inquisition funds.

R2-D2: Remarkably successful at having meatsacks who rarely need to scrounge for money for maintaining him.

Anakin: Jedi. Then, you know, Empire. Then dead. He doesn't think about money. Which is weird, for him, always, because he never really forgets being a slave and what money meant and that he wanted to win enough racing to buy his freedom, and Shmi's. He never did it, but-- he didn't forget. So as long as he doesn't have to think about money there's an aggressive refusal to think about it, almost, see, it's of no importance. Is he trapped? Yes. Would he say that? lol nope never. (PS if he weren't a Jedi he'd be married to a Senator publicly so he still wouldn't be worried about money honestly, a job would be way more about maintaining anything to do with his time and what masquerades as his sanity.)

Tavi: He has been working since he was a kid! He started off a shepherd and was going to take the money from that to pay for a semester of school and try to find someone to pay for the rest of it for him. Then he was a student with a day job for a stipend, then spy and Legion officer. Truthfully, though, even though that certainly affected his immediately available funds, he hasn't worried about money as a resource he might not have access to as such since his grandfather found him. These days his day job is "emperor" and his income is-- okay honestly I haven't fully worked out how tax money works in Alera and like what's Senate funds and what is Official Realm Treasury and what's "personal fortune" and what the spread on all that is, though currently even most personal funds are being put to use for rebuilding purposes 'cos like the apocalypse happened. Tavi very much chose to be a spy, at least. I think there's always going to be a part of him that wishes he could have just stayed a scholar or engineer or archaeologist, or even a spy, given the right leadership. But, well, he wants the world not to fall apart (and not be led by terrible people) and right now he doesn't see any other way that happens. He observes he didn't have to start screaming about who his father was, he could have run away with Kitai to join the Marat. He didn't. So he mostly chose to be where he is. Mostly.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Before Ellen joined the Brotherhood of Steel she made a chunk of her living as a bounty hunter. There's an organization called the Regulators in the Capital Wasteland that pays out cash- insofar as bottlecaps count as cash- for proof that you've killed particularly bad people. For Ellen this took the form of handing in the guns of particularly awful individuals. (In-game, if you reach level 14 and take a certain perk, any character of Evil karma that you kill will have a finger in their inventory which you can turn in at Regulator HQ in exchange for bottlecaps. I adjusted things a bit.) She also wound up making a nice bit of cash selling other guns and body armor, both to local vendors and at Milliways- turns out that selling body armor for its weight in water to people from other worlds is immensely profitable by Wasteland standards, given how much water was going for at the time. Also she got paid by the Brotherhood for turning in any readable pre-War books she found, and by a group of mercenaries called Reilly's Rangers for mapping the Wasteland and sharing the data with them.

Adrian Shephard is in a world where rates of pay are extremely nebulous and weird thanks to only recently coming out from under the thumb of alien overlords, but he makes his living by being head of his world's Marine Corps and by captaining a teleporting ship that handles a massive amount of intercontinental trade.

Quicksilver makes money by a hahahahaha haha ha yeah, sorry, dude's a kleptomaniac with no patience for the jobs available to a teenage mutant.

[iprotectyou]

Finally answering this! Baze isn't quite obsessed with money, but after growing up with everything provided for him and then violently thrust into poverty for decades, he worries about money an awful lot. It's why he works as a member of Security, and sells his beers. Once he's finished with the lightbow project, he'll probably get another job.

Speaking of paid jobs, I was under the impression that all the jobs in Milliways save the infirmary were paid. Waitstaff, greenhouse running, stables, Security, librarian... There are a lot of ways to make money in the bar!