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randomcommoner posted:Replaying the game dressed as a beat cop made the cutscenes pretty hilarious, too. Also gave you a taser.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:28
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FinalGamer posted:Yeah, Bully is pretty much my favourite open-world game ever in terms of its structure because of so much it allows the development of its protagonist naturally. Going out of your way to be a poo poo for no good reason at all, you WILL get you punished and the punishments turn more severe by increasingly worse "minigames" that are just downright dull as hell and you don't wanna do because it is slow and tedious, because that is your punishment. The best way to describe Jimmy Hopkins is "Does bad things, but not a bad guy." This is actually a good opportunity for me to describe the characters more, because it's so much better than how Watch_Dogs approached its morally gray and outright villainous characters. Virtually everyone Jimmy Hopkins abuses in the game is an rear end in a top hat of some kind, but most of them behave the way they do because of the difficulties in their own lives. Something extremely unusual for Bully is that every single character is unique. Yes, every one. While this does mean the population is a good deal smaller than it should look, it also means that every single character can be given unique motivations and a personality. Some are more fleshed out than others depending on their storyline importance, but there's no horde of generic schoolchildren to abuse. The Jocks, Greasers, and Bullies often have major insecurities and poor home environments (sometimes even abusive parents), and try to act tough and start fights to express their anger and gain control. The Nerds are so socially awkward that they can't get along with most other students, which they respond to by excluding others from their social circle and lashing out when pushed (their leader in particular is a megalomaniacal pervert who at one point takes advantage of some chaos to try and take over the gym in a bout of insanity). The Preps almost all come from old money (with at least one member being a from a new money family that tries to hide it, as the rest of the clique views it as shameful) and have been taught by their parents to view others as lesser, but they have hidden insecurities related to the expectations their families place on them and at least some of them are the products of inbreeding. Even the gangs out in town are somewhat sympathetic, as many members were either expelled from Bullworth Academy or too poor to get an education in the first place and express their jealousy by harassing students and eventually trying to sabotage stuff at the school. The teachers aren't much better for the most part. Mr. Galloway is very popular among students for his easygoing attitude and has a romance going on with the art teacher, but is a chronic alcoholic who even sneaks drinks during class. Coach Burton is a loudmouth rear end in a top hat and pervert who steals panties from the girls' dorm and got a teenage girl expelled when she tried to reveal that he sexually harassed her. Mr. Hattrick is a domineering prick who takes bribes from students in return for passing grades. Edna the lunch lady is the epitome of the word "disgusting" and date rapes the chemistry teacher. Jimmy himself comes from an extremely inattentive mother who drops him off before going on a year-long honeymoon with the latest in a long string of husbands, and it's suggested that his disrespect for authority (which got him expelled from several schools beforehand) stem from this. While he may have been fine in a more positive environment, Bullworth is incredibly hostile and suffers from very lax security and outright encouragement of bullying. While it suits a delinquent like Jimmy, it also presents him with an environment where breaking the law is pretty much the only way to survive until summer. He's actually intentionally made into the high school version of the typical GTA protagonist, basically a 14-year-old mercenary who helps out with other students' and teachers' drama and plots in return for cash. While he does hurt other people for a paycheck, he rarely does lasting damage unless they did something completely awful. In the instances where he finds out the kind of harm some of his actions did, he tries to make amends and maybe even help the victim get revenge on whoever hired Jimmy to hurt them in the first place. Gary is one of the few characters in the game who's pretty much irredeemable. He's a sociopath with narcissism and paranoia and self-admitted ADD, and even when on medication he's a manipulative rear end in a top hat who takes pleasure in hurting people who did little or nothing to deserve it. When he actually goes off his meds, he almost immediately turns megalomaniac and makes it his mission to not only kick the poo poo out of Jimmy, but also turn every clique in Bullworth against one another and even gets gangs and criminals from outside the school to do his bidding. All in the name of literally taking over a prep school. --------------- Now compare that to Watch_Dogs. There's plenty of bad guys in the game, but depth is at an all time low. Almost every villain in the game from Damien to Lucky Quinn to Iraq is irredeemable and has bare hints to a Freudian excuse for their behavior at the most. None of them really have a good side and could never be realistically stopped without a prison cell or a bullet. The game makes sure to repeatedly bash the player over the head with "THIS MAN IS BAD, SEE?" by showing them the villains performing incredibly awful things like randomly beating an ally to death for no real reason or shooting other criminals for minor mistakes. When it's not shown, it's told. Crispin is never shown as being more than a jerk with a bad hat, so the game makes up for it by having all of the dialogue keep reminding Aiden that he's really a serial killing deviant with way too much money who deserves to die. Mooks like Blume security guards and gang members are almost universally given negative traits and background details in the profiler to make you feel less bad about killing them. It firmly removes much of the gray morality to make Aiden's killings more justifiable. Aiden himself is closer to Gary than Jimmy. His "help" that he gives to citizens usually consists of just killing criminals, even to the point of intentionally waiting until a person commits a murder before stopping them. This has no real benefit to the victim, as he's not actually doing anything to protect society if he makes sure that murderers get away with their crime before punishing them. It only serves to make him look better by letting the public see him swoop down and execute someone after they commit a crime. It's like the sociopathic version of Batman, publicly murdering criminals only after they do something so he can build up a reputation as a vigilante. When Aiden is doing something related to the plot of the game, he shows little to no remorse for acting like the villain. He often chooses murder as a first resort to most people problems, and anyone that he considers a criminal (who he doesn't need to blackmail or manipulate into being his pawn first) is basically fair game to shoot in the head with a .45. He fails to see the irony in stalking family members of his target or hurting those close to them in order to get closer to his revenge for his family member being killed. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 14, 2015 23:00
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So what you're saying is that a literal 14 year old bully is a better character than Aiden Pearce.
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Sep 14, 2015 23:12
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For those curious, none of that was hyperbole. Every single character in Bully has a name and motivation. Also vizer's LP of that was good, for those who want to see it in action but don't feel like picking it up. The fact that there aren't nameless/faceless NPCs to run over and not care about makes for a slightly more sparse environment but also much more interesting overall. Probably why it's my favorite open(ish) world game to date. HOOLY BOOLY posted:So what you're saying is that a literal 14 year old bully is a better character than Aiden Pearce. Also this.
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Sep 14, 2015 23:19
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:So what you're saying is that a literal 14 year old bully is a better character than Aiden Pearce. Sounds about right.
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Sep 14, 2015 23:26
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:So what you're saying is that a literal 14 year old bully is a better character than Aiden Pearce. The thing a lot of people didn't realize about the game is that despite the name, Jimmy's not a bully. He does criminal things mostly because he gets paid or he's getting revenge for something. The game makes it clear that Jimmy never attacks people smaller than himself (and hurting young kids or girls is a good way to get your face slammed to the pavement by a prefect or teacher), and even when he's getting paid to attack someone or break poo poo the victims often did something bad themselves to make others desire retribution. And like I said, there's a few times where Jimmy actually does hurt someone who didn't really deserve it or hurts them much worse than he should have and tries to make amends. The vast majority of people he gets into fights with are bigger and meaner than him, and they only listen to Jimmy if he proves that he's tougher than all of them. In fact, his speeches that he gives upon defeating a clique often involve him demanding that the clique in question stop bullying other students. Over the course of the game Jimmy manages to eventually unite much of the school and cut down on conflicts between the cliques, at least temporarily, and gets the ephebophile and bribe-taking teachers fired. What we can take away from this is that the guys who made loving Grand Theft Auto can make a game with well-rounded and likable characters who help other people, mostly do bad things because of personal conflicts and insecurities that they need help to solve, and recognize when they go too far and try to fix things up. Whereas Watch_Dogs has....none of that. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Sep 14, 2015 |
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Sep 14, 2015 23:32
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Keep in mind there's nothing wrong with crafting a villain who has no deeper motivation or hidden nuance. In fact that's sometimes the most effective thing you can do, to set a villain apart from the lesser ones as someone who, no, really doesn't have a reason beyond the inflicting of suffering upon innocents and his own gain. But the point is you do that in CONTRAST to the rest of your characters. If Quinn was a mob boss from a time long gone who was struggling to adjust to the fact that Chicago has now come and passed him by on all points, that he wants to make the city, in his mind, great again. Then you have motivation for your old man mob boss. If Iraq was doing what he did because the system isn't kind, and it's what he has to do to make life better for himself and the people under him. you have motivation for your gang leader that isn't just being a greedy sociopath. Even Damien who actually does have an excuse (He was crippled and wants revenge.) never has a moment of humanity to make you feel like the guy is more than just your opponent who we're fighting because Aiden makes things more difficult for himself. Except for his introduction where he snapped over being crippled, he doesn't seem to have many problems, and he can still walk. The short of it is all 3 are irredeemable assholes and there's no contrast or reason to think this was intentional. Because Aiden isn't a paragon of justice or anything. Aiden is in it for his own greedy, selfish reasons. He doesn't give a gently caress about the city, he will calmly lie and kill for his own benefit. He is a monster of a person, even ignoring all the things you can choose to do as part of an open world game, only taking the Story Missions into account. He's stacking up the bodies a mile high with no remorse. Which is honestly why sociopath Jordi is so refreshing. We know Jordi's motivation, money. We know he enjoys his job, or at least sees no problem with killing for money. He approaches his work with a fun sense of humor. So why like the Psychopath? Because while not sympathetic, he's the only character in the game who seems to be enjoying himself, and you can honestly believe that if Jordi says, "It's just business." Then it's just business. More interesting is he isn't a villain, he's a protagonist (I guess? He aids the protagonist.) and having the unrepentant killer be on the players side is sort of quirky and interesting. Especially since unlike some people, Jordi seems to be DOING poo poo when he isn't on-screen. What's Clara doing? Sitting in the Batcave playing Oracle? What's Jordi doing? Probably killing someone because he got contracted out by a Russian princess and while we're doing our poo poo with the Auction he's having a gun duel with a spaniard. And occasionally looking after that guy we haven't seen since the first loving cutscene. In short. You can have complete monsters as characters, but they're only interesting when you have not-monsters to contrast them to.
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Sep 15, 2015 01:52
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Iraq WAS the most acceptable character and probably still is so the game had to forcefully make us think he was bad by him suddenly beating a guy to death, despite the fact that, out of all the assholes we've had, he's the one most redeemable in the fact he is actually trying to make the city better for his own people, the impoverished many.HOOLY BOOLY posted:So what you're saying is that a literal 14 year old bully is a better character than Aiden Pearce. Jimmy Hopkins does petty crimes towards actual jerks worse than him. Aiden Pearce is a murderous sociopathic thief desperately trying to use his dead niece as a human shield to his own morality. In fact that is the absolute worst thing of all is that for himself he shamelessly flaunts his dead niece's memory constantly as an excuse to commit worse acts upon people and EVEN THOUGH HE HAS REALISED IT'S PUTTING HIS OTHER LIVING FAMILY MEMBERS IN DANGER he still REFUSES to just accept it was his fault for getting involved in bad poo poo and just move on. He would actually rather risk his entire family's death to avenge his daughterniece than to live freely and be thankful for still having family. THAT is what's wrong with Aiden Pearce.
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Sep 15, 2015 03:24
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Most of the GTA protagonists are more redeemable than Pierce. Because for the most part they know they're bad people.
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Sep 15, 2015 03:34
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Also, Bully is a game that acknowledges that Jimmy is a prick sometimes and repeatedly has the game call him out on it. He never truly becomes a golden boy, but he starts to realize more and more often "poo poo, things ain't right and these people don't deserve this" and sets out to fix problems, both ones that he caused and ones from other people. More than once he even saves lives at great risk to his own, a pretty big thing to put on the shoulders of a boy whose voice just stopped cracking. He also gets his behavior called out by his peers even more than the adults do, and he tends to listen more often when a fellow student points out his flaws.
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Sep 15, 2015 03:56
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Night10194 posted:The most Wei Shen of all problem solving. wouldn't that be jumping out of a car onto another car, then knocking the driver out onto a pile of swordfish heads you're passing by
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Sep 15, 2015 03:57
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Manatee Cannon posted:wouldn't that be jumping out of a car onto another car, then knocking the driver out onto a pile of swordfish heads you're passing by I thought that was driving along the sidewalk, hitting pedestrians with your open door?
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Sep 15, 2015 04:08
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Manatee Cannon posted:wouldn't that be jumping out of a car onto another car, then knocking the driver out onto a pile of swordfish heads you're passing by Only if you explode the first car as you jump out of it. (Oh, another thing! Wei Shen actually likes his friends! I mean, people can come up to him in the street, go "Hey, Wei. I need a favor." and he'll just nod and do it, because he's a cool guy. Meanwhile, Aiden won't even drop off some bodies in the middle of a shootout he was already planning.)
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Sep 15, 2015 04:10
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I have not seen many open world games that make effective use of a cemetery outside of cutscenes/missions as Bully has done. You see a girl you personally know is bent over a grave and crying her eyes out. No prompts, no talking, just something private that happens in a chaotic world.
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Sep 15, 2015 06:08
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So the guy that wrote Bully, Jacob Krarup, also happened to write Sleeping Dogs. Go figure. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0469869/ And one of the Sleeping Dogs writer wrote a Dead Rising movie and a Dead Rising TV series  SelenicMartian posted:Year of the Snake also gives you riot gear and tear gas grenades, but the enemies are smart and wear gas masks. Then you realize direct headshots with grenades are a viable option. Croccers fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 07:38
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I can't even say how glad I am to check in, only to see a bunch of big effortposts about how good Bully is. God do I still hope that one of these days we'll get a sequel, maybe another cool R* game like it. As fun as messing around online with it was, a lot of GTA V's story stuff just wore me out regardless of how self-aware the awful protagonists were, so I'd really like another overall cool guy protag in a R* game at some point. Also MONITOR_MAMMALS is such a massive waste of effort, flaming mess of a story, but at least Chip and Ironicus make it an entertaining mess, you're pretty good dudes. 
Yardbomb fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 08:13
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Read the WATCH_DOGS LP thread to learn about all kinds of good games that are not WATCH_DOGS!
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Sep 15, 2015 12:01
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MonsieurChoc posted:Read the WATCH_DOGS LP thread to learn about all kinds of good games that are not WATCH_DOGS!
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Sep 15, 2015 13:55
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FinalGamer posted:He would actually rather risk his entire family's death to avenge his daughterniece than to live freely and be thankful for still having family. ... And if you're actually interested in seeing that kind of story, but done much more competently, go ahead and look for "I Saw the Devil" on Netflix.
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Sep 15, 2015 14:45
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MonsieurChoc posted:Read the WATCH_DOGS LP thread to learn about all kinds of good games that are not WATCH_DOGS! 
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Sep 15, 2015 16:28
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Croccers posted:So the guy that wrote Bully, Jacob Krarup, also happened to write Sleeping Dogs. Go figure.
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Sep 15, 2015 17:12
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Random Hajile posted:... And if you're actually interested in seeing that kind of story, but done much more competently, go ahead and look for "I Saw the Devil" on Netflix. I'd also recommend Blue Ruin on Netflix for a good deconstruction of revenge movies. Long story short, it's about a homeless man who finds out that the guy who killed his parents is being released from prison. He sets out to murder him in revenge, only to discover that not only does he not have a clue how to actually kill people (though he's definitely crafty and determined), but his plot inevitably results in further escalation of the conflict that results in more death and destruction than he ever could have imagined. It's actually highly realistic in many senses, like showing the actual results of an untrained person attempting action hero self-surgery and meeting up with a gun nut who's actually not really stereotypical at all and is so disturbing close to something like a Reddit gun board guy that I initially thought that he was actually one of those guys just making up all of his lines on the spot (turns out he played Buzz in Home Alone, go figure).
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Sep 15, 2015 17:15
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Random Hajile posted:... And if you're actually interested in seeing that kind of story, but done much more competently, go ahead and look for "I Saw the Devil" on Netflix. So good. So so good.
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Sep 15, 2015 18:42
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I accidentally refreshed the page during the 'stoat' scene, and I figured "Aw, nothing'll happen in the last 90 seconds." So for a little while I thought Iraq was a cool dude who liked to have laughs with friends. 
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Sep 15, 2015 19:16
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HitTheTargets posted:I accidentally refreshed the page during the 'stoat' scene, and I figured "Aw, nothing'll happen in the last 90 seconds."
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Sep 15, 2015 19:24
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chitoryu12 posted:I'd also recommend Blue Ruin on Netflix for a good deconstruction of revenge movies. Sounds kind of like Hamlet in that respect.
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Sep 15, 2015 19:31
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Sounds kind of like Hamlet in that respect. It sounds like it at first, but it throws in one unexpected turn: the revenge murder happens successfully at the 20 minute mark and the rest of the movie is about dealing with the criminal redneck family going after the protagonist and his sister to further the cycle of revenge.
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Sep 15, 2015 22:02
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Croccers posted:So the guy that wrote Bully, Jacob Krarup, also happened to write Sleeping Dogs. Go figure. I can see that. wei and jimmy are pretty similar morality wise and they are both great characters.
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Sep 15, 2015 23:14
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I can see that. wei and jimmy are pretty similar morality wise and they are both great characters. Now I want a Wei Shen and Jimmy Hopkins buddy movie. One's a loose-cannon cop, the other is a private-school legend. They're going to kick the poo poo out of crime.
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Sep 17, 2015 03:22
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Quiet Python posted:Now I want a Wei Shen and Jimmy Hopkins buddy movie. Mkay, you bastards. I spent money I didn't have on Bully: Scholarship Edition. Don't make me regret it.
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Sep 17, 2015 04:18
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I'm gonna argue that Jimmy is actually a bully in Bully, but only because he wants to get to class on time. ( i have warped to class so many times by punching kids in the face)
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Sep 17, 2015 06:52
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That is the only way to get to class. So many quests to do and you run out of time.
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Sep 18, 2015 15:18
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What I like is that the game makes vehicles like go-karts and mopeds as exciting as they were back when you were that young. Babby's first motorized vehicle.
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Sep 18, 2015 16:13
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truthdb driving up on you had me nearly dying from laughter. holy poo poo, that was amazing. poor d-trip guy  at least his brother livesalso, this is my first post in this topic but i've been following along for awhile. excellent work as always, C&I! as a Chicagoan myself, i'm especially a fan of all the Chicago commentary, so keep that up!
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Sep 18, 2015 16:21
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What's a bailiff that makes 35k a year doing in a super secret high end fetish club? I mean even someone that makes 75k would be stretching their budget. I have never been less immersed by a game it's almost incredible.
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Sep 19, 2015 00:18
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TheModernAmerican posted:What's a bailiff that makes 35k a year doing in a super secret high end fetish club? I mean even someone that makes 75k would be stretching their budget. I have never been less immersed by a game it's almost incredible. I was more wondering how he's able to keep his job with a restraining order. Don't government jobs like that require a clean criminal record? Does a restraining order not count as a criminal record?
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Sep 19, 2015 00:35
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RatHat posted:I was more wondering how he's able to keep his job with a restraining order. Don't government jobs like that require a clean criminal record? Does a restraining order not count as a criminal record? 
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Sep 19, 2015 00:57
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Well that's true, I'm in Canada so the law might be different in the US.
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Sep 19, 2015 00:58
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RatHat posted:Well that's true, I'm in Canada so the law might be different in the US. Ubi's been banking on that too.
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Sep 19, 2015 01:03
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RatHat posted:I was more wondering how he's able to keep his job with a restraining order. Don't government jobs like that require a clean criminal record? Does a restraining order not count as a criminal record? I mean, technically it wouldn't, would it? Iirc restraining orders are handled in a civil court case, not a criminal one, unless it's passed down by a judge as part of sentencing for a criminal conviction or something.
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Sep 19, 2015 01:25
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