Reviewer: Ancient Relic Signed
Date: November 03 2021
Title: Chapter 14: Broken Escape
Who knows, if she was to inherit her parents wealth she could get even bigger... But we will see haha.
That will depend on a key detail: who actually owns the family's money?
1) We've established that, until you're 21, your size is based on your family's money*. This means that Casey could be very big with her own money or her parents' money.
2) How much money do Susan and Michael have in their own rights? Do they each have enough money to be big by themselves, or is Susan big based on Michael's money? We know from the last scene that Michael has a lot of money that Susan doesn't have access to.
So who owns the money, and who inherits should Michael's missing persons case go cold, will determine whether Casey keeps her existing size, or gains a few feet.
*This would make for a weird situation in universities for the undergraduates. You'd have a lot of people suddenly losing a lot of height in their final year. You'd also have a situation where the Master's and PhD students on $15-20k stipends, and postdocs making $30-40k, are working on research projects like science apprentices under the supervision of a professor who makes $100-150k, or more if they do consulting.
Author's Response: Ok so, that initial comment was not really based on much but you've brought up some interesting points.
The way I imagine it is that couples can decide on a size that is half of both their net worth's combined, so someone poor could be elevated by someone wealthier if that wealthier person was willing to take a hit to their size. Although, couples can also decide to keep their sizes separate. Susan and Michael were the former, so it's safe to say that they are both wealthy enough to be big, however due to Michael's personal wealth that he has not shared with Susan it's safe to assume that he has probably helped increase her height through an agreement. Both parents own their own money, but who gets Michael's personal sum really depends.
This is a very interesting thought, would it affect the amount of people going into these lines of work knowing that they'd have a miserable time towards the back end of their degree? I guess the silver lining is if you finish your med degree you're gonna be quite well off after, I imagine that people doing such lucrative degrees would have some backing from wealthy families and whatnot too though. I like this idea though, could be the basis of a sequel or future story within this world, would lead to some interesting dynamics.
Thank you for your reviews though, you always make me think about my worldbuilding on a more realistic level, I appreciate it!