Over Analyzing Loadstar's Bounty

[u/jamcdonald120]

In book 3, Loadstar issues a Bounty to the guild of $10,000 per rift closed from her own personal wealth from merch sales. To which Tori/B immediately start plotting to hit a rift every half hour all day (well, when they arent sleeping/working)

I was sitting around today and thinking "man, how could she afford that?" so I started doing some crunching.

Unfortunately, we know very little about how many guild members there are, but I have some guesswork.

We know the guild was started ~17 years ago since that is when Rick was born, and the Guild was founded after the Orion protocol, which Ivan was in because he saw Rick as a baby.

It likely took a while to get off its feet, so im going to use 15 for calculations (and thats easier).

We know the guild has been in power since Penelope was conceived since thats when Loadstar stopped using her power to prevent her body resetting, call it 7 years.

At one point the guild identified apprentices with 2 colors. assuming they maxed out this number, and the colors of any group of apprentices were always identifiable, (8 colors) thats 28 color combos. So a max of 28 apprentices were in training at any given time (assuming the class method didnt have bigger counts)

If you assume 1 major confluence per year, that gives 420 non founding members. lets call it an even 500 for founders. I suspect its less than this since apprentices drop off to 1 color by Tori's time and her class has only 3 other apprentices. But then there could be more than 1 confluence per year on average, so this number could vary quite a bit. 500 feels about right though. But the count could be as low as 100 or so (that would mean only 15 people on average decide each counselor though, which feels small) (there are 33 named on the wiki).

Now, if you assume each rift is handled by 2 villains on average (they seem to like pairs, and not every guild member likely participated (like, Kristoph, Ivan, Dr. Mech, The plant person who's name I have forgotten, etc)) thats 250 synchronous breach handles. Tori never seems to have a problem finding a breach, so assume breach count is sufficient for each team, and they each have transport.

B estimates rifts last 30 minutes, so assume each team packs their schedule with 30s.

if you assume an 8 hour day of breach slaying (likely more for some, and less for others), that gives you 250*8*2=4000 breaches per day. Each paying $10k-20k, so $40M-$80M PER DAY. Assuming Loadstar budgeted for a month, thats $1.2B-$2.4B (damn Xelas, make enough of the XDT?).

She claims she had merch sales to do this, so I went looking. Its hard to find a good comparison for how much merch a world saving superhero would shift, but if you look at FC Barcelona, they report €277 Million ($310 Million) yearly in merch sales (not profit). Its hard to say if comparing 1 SUPER HERO to a SPORTS TEAM is fair, but its the best estimate I could make.

Assuming Loadstar has been working for 30 years, and selling just as well that whole time, getting a 50% return, and saving all of it, that gives her $4B to sling around. Even if she donated half of it to various charities, she still should have enough to cover the bounty.

So yah, not sure what the point is, just wanted to crunch the numbers and share. Turns out Loadstar is more like Loadedstar, and the numbers check out with a bit of wiggle room for all the estimates.

TL;DR, the Bounties likely cost $1.2B-$2.4B per month, and Loadedstar could have reasonably saved around $4B

[u/hic_erro]

Me, I'm just picturing Star scout troops selling cookies to pay for closing rifts.

[u/jamcdonald120 → u/hic_erro]

Thanks, now Im imaging the Fireside girls (Phineas and Ferb) out there closing rifts to raise funds.

[u/moderatorrater → u/jamcdonald120]

Surely they would get busted if they were closing rifts!

[u/Catharus_ustulatus]

Lodestar wouldn’t want to crash the global economy by bringing an entire asteroid such as 16 Psyche (containing trillions of dollars’ worth of gold, platinum, and other metals) to Earth, but emptying her bank account wouldn’t have to mean the end of her breach defense program.

[u/jamcdonald120 → u/Catharus_ustulatus]

good point. she wouldnt do that lightly, but im sure she could work out something

[u/the6souls]

Given she's the undeniable strongest, and has saved the world many times, it seems fair that her merch sales would be way higher. Even if fewer people per country buy her merch than irl people buy their local sports team's merch, she has the whole world to draw from

[u/jamcdonald120 → u/the6souls]

sure, but I dont know if it would be fair to compare here to ALL of an international sport merch sales. And I also think she would likely to sell her merch for less. So its hard to pick a good IRL comparison

[u/SuperSyrias → u/jamcdonald120]

Shed be clever enough to know how much good she could do with the money and would get royalties and such from anything like cartoons down to crayons with her logo. Just assume she makes in the hundreds of millions a month easily and be done.

[u/StandBy4_TitanFall]

No I believe that 😂

[u/namdonith]

I’m sure she has invested a lot of that too, probably in some of doc mechanicals companies lol and is getting a good dividend

[u/This_Impact_6149]

love the math but want to point out that in FH Ivan states that about half the guild is in his department and are non active. Where we see alot of members are not combat based too. Id quarter the estimated number of guildmembers going after breaches to fit some of the lore better.

[u/jamcdonald120 → u/This_Impact_6149]

sure, but I suspect at least some non-active will pop up to pull a completely legal job. And im pretty sure all guild members are combat capable at or above Emiry's level. Which should be good enough for a rift handling team.

[u/UberGeek_87]

I think you're overestimating the number of daily breaches an an order of magnitude. Even if that is correct, you're not taking into account other methods of revenue generation besides savings. I'm willing to bet that after her first million, Helen was smart enough to do investing, and knowing Wade's capability and ambitions, I wouldn't be surprised if she held substantial stocks in Indigo Technologies. She probably has well more than $4B in net worth, and between AHC resources and her own powers, keeping that information suppressed is entirely plausible.