Daily Entertainment: I fought the law...

[boston_bruiser]

Oh, shoot, almost forgot this.

Then again, you know what they say about almost.

My Citizen's Academy with the UCDPD wrapped up yesterday, so let's take a little - okay, a lot of inspiration from that.

Has your character ever had any run-ins with the law? If your character's world lacks proper law enforcement and a proper judicial system, substitute 'law' with 'most powerful in-world statelike entity'.

(^I had Half-Life on the mind when writing this, but it's a handy little clause.)

Comments

[ceitfianna]

Will is in an outlaw in his world and has faced the gallows for treason. He also tends to get in fights and is a thief.

Charles hasn't yet though he and Raven might have had some close moments of people noticing too much about them, then later he's going to hide from the government.

William has helped the law due to helping to transport Ben Wade and hasn't got into trouble with them yet. The fights he's been in aren't the sort that get him arrested but he has gotten in trouble at school for them.

Sameth is part of the law in his world as a member of the royal family but when he was in disguise during canon, he almost got arrested. He ended up stabbed, it wasn't a good day.

Moist is a conman and a thief who is constantly on the edge of being caught, he hasn't been for a number of years but it doesn't take much for that to change.

Demeter is a goddess and respects basic mortal laws but works off of her own.

Tumnus follows Narnian law but when the White Witch ruled he got into trouble with her secret police by not informing them that Lucy was in Narnia.

The Pirate King is a pirate and is always on the move away from the law.

[death_gone_mad]

You would think she Amascut is a law breaker, but she can barely skirt breaking her own promises. There is also a law prohibiting godly interference on the mortal plane, but while she is a goddess and she interferes all the time, the law doesn't apply to her or her family, supposedly because none of them are powerful enough to cause problems.

Oh, how that grates against her. And as a collective her family could be a threat to the other gods but the reason they aren't is because of her.

<spoilers>But Guthix, the creator and enforcer of that law, is dead as of the most recent canon as hir (to borrow Tux's use of the pronoun) big F you to the concept of being a god and being worshiped and organized religion in general</spoilers>

[innerbrat]

Ahahahahah.

Okay, um. Renee is an ex-cop. Dinah is a superhero whose Dad was an ex-cop. They both were too lawful to actually be cops in Gotham City.

Other than that?

Korra won't say it out loud, but sort of considers herself above the law. She's going to get in trouble soon, oh yes.

Mac is a leader of a group of street thieves. Mel is a thief. Will is a pirate. Marguerite is complicit in the smuggling of convicted criminals out of France.

Death stood up to the Auditors.

Teresa broke one rule and was sentenced to death. (Admittedly, that rule was "no killing people!" but still. Rules are for suckers.

Lawton was an assassin, was caught by Batman, was released on a work-release program in which he killed people for the American People and in return the chip in his head didn't blow his brains out.

So, um. Yes.

[camwyn]

Gordon has been acclaimed as Anticitizen One in two entirely separate continua*, one being his own and the other being the Marvel 1602 timeline's dystopian future under the rulership of the Purple Man president-for-life. (This is Millicanon based on his interactions with Sir Nicholas Fury and Rojhaz, aka General Steve "You couldn't just shoot me in the head? You had to put me in a time machine and send me into the past to get me out of the dystopian leader's way?" Rogers.) I suppose one could technically say any time he got in trouble as a kid counted as having run-ins with the law too, since I've Millicanoned that his mother was a family court judge.

Shephard has by and large kept his nose clean, but he had a lot of speeding tickets as a young man and once got in a certain amount of trouble for coming to a buddy's aid in a bar fight. Generally he's been pretty good at avoiding official prosecution and punishment, though.

Ray gets arrested in the first movie and only released when the mayor sends for the Ghostbusters.

Varric has by and large stayed out of trouble with Kirkwall's legal system. He is a smooth talker and is not always above bribing his way out if something goes wrong, and he has a lot of contacts. It helps.

Mordin either stays out of trouble with the law or operates at a level the law doesn't see. *gives Special Tasks Group a meaningful look*

Hektor is the son of the king of Troy. Law is what his father says it is.

Santo avoids trouble with the law. As a matter of fact, Santo is something in the way of unofficial law enforcement in his canon, depending on whether it's a secret agent movie, a monster movie, or something less easily classified. As Cracked.com put it: "At no point does Santo bother to track [the monsters who attacked him] -- being attacked by lunatics in costume is his actual job, and El Santo's righteous vengeance is such an established Mexican fact that the police never turn up. There's not even a scene of him telling them he'll deal with it, they just got the call, heard someone had a silver mask and took the day off."

Medic has never been in trouble with the law and left a record of it for anyone else to find, let's just put it like that.

And Ellen... mmmyeah. The Overseer didn't like her or her father, but she was never actually arrested in Vault 101. On the surface there's been no real law and no serious state-like entities around, for the most part. Alistair Tenpenny and Talon Company are just a private person hiring a mercenary company to be a bunch of jerks. On the other hand, the Enclave quickly decided that Ellen was a menace to their idea of society once they made their move on the purifier, and the menace quotient only continued to go up, to the point where they dispatched a special team of heavily drugged and radiation-protected soldiers directly into Vault 87 from a Vertibird in order to capture her alive for questioning. The destruction of Raven Rock resulted in her menace status being upgraded to the point where the survivors considered her the equivalent of Osama bin Laden (hey, she went unconscious and shackled into a continuity-of-government facility that had existed for two hundred years, and an hour later later she was running around in power armor with a plasma rifle in hand and the President was dead and the building had exploded- that's never a good sign). The survivors of the Enclave are too few and too scattered to be a statelike entity any more, but they're all pretty united in their assumption that she's the most dangerous thing on two feet and that they should probably find some way to get somebody to kill her, since they failed the job.


*The Combine have presences in multiple universes. To save myself a headache I am using the term 'continua' to describe the set of universes reachable from the Earth of the Half-Life and Portal games or from Xen or from the Combine Overworld.

[notinthebook]

WELL NOW.

Danny Williams is a fine upstanding officer of the law. He is the Good Cop, the one who's By the Book, especially in comparison to his insane psychopathic less subtle partner. However, there have been times when Danny's grasp of what's legal is loose at best -- or, rather, he knows what he's doing, and he's breaking the rules anyway.

(There have been hints that his past is less than perfectly clean, but thus far no actual incidents.)

Emma Swan may be a deputy now (and a sheriff soon), but she lived outside the law for years. She was a car thief (and a regular petty thief) and it's suggested she's spent a fair amount of time running from the law. Of course, she then flips it on its head and becomes the person other criminals run from, because parallels are fun.

Wolfwood obeys no laws whatsoever. His bounty might not rival Vash's, but I bet it would be pretty damn impressive, were people to figure out who he is.

Caspian never purposely broke an (unjust) law in his life. Of course, his opinion of what is just doesn't always match up with the actual law enforcement's.

Jack Twist is pretty under the radar, rules-wise. I'm sure he's broken a few, definitely drinking and driving, possibly a few other minor infractions, but nothing huge.

And, just in case: the Sundance Kid....

Well, yes.

I kind of run the spectrum, looks like.

[unglitched]

...BWAHAHAHAHA.

[newredshoes]

&REBELLION AGAINST THE CROWN;

[baptizemyself]

Run ins with the Law...

Hmmm...

Well there was the time when Helena's foster family were all arrested for being Mafia hitmen. The time she tried to spring her cousin from an Italian jail. The time she supported the corrupt police detective who seized power after the Gotham 'quake and ended up getting shot because of it. Then there was the time she was wanted for murdering her own cousin. There were many times when she outed corrupt cops working for the mafia. Then there was that time she had a one night stand with a cop (it was Nightwing - she didn't know he was a cop!) And now she's kinda sorta dating an ex-cop.

Of course that list doesn't include the time when she was a child when the cops were spying on her family because her dad was a Mafia Don.

Helena and the law is a complicated issue XD

[bjornwilde]

Thalia is a teen runaway. 'Nuff said?

Ben I am quite sure had many run-ins with the law while he was an active member of the Yancy Street gang and there have been times when the F4 weren't seen in the best view by New York's city government.

Val is a part of the ruling family of Latveria (in an alternate reality), she is, technically, the law.

Jess was being hunted by Norman Osborn while he was head of the reorganized S.H.I.E.L.D., can't get much more wanted by the law than that in the MU. Not to mention she was wanted as a cop killer in Madripoor during the Agent of SWORD series.

Hank has had no trouble with the law. I doubt he's ever even tried shoplifting.

Andrea is a representative of the Law, in a slightly off center way. Law enforcement is odd in her world. SHe has done illegal things but she understands the law enough to cover her tracks quite well.

[inlovewithwords]

Henry ahaha no (unless you count working against Regina).

Lois got accused of a murder she didn't commit. She proved her innocence with Chloe and Clark's help and a supersave on the side (well, duh).

Tavi, unsurprisingly, has major tl;dr. Summary: pfffft ahahaha yes, always loyal and helpful--but often oversteps into technical treason.

Longer version: At fifteen, he helps block treason. At seventeen, he inadvertently gets his best friend (Max) tossed in prison and then breaks him out with help from a cat burglar (Kitai). Also, he gets Max to stand in for Gaius and claim Kitai is an ambassador. Arguably all this skirts/technically is treason. On the other hand, it's to save Gaius' life and he gets permission (some retroactively), so it's swept under the rug. Later, he'll be arrested on technically accurate but spurious treason charges and while being so break an enemy leader out of prison (treason). Dealing with the Actual Traitors lets him manipulate the law and his grandfather into exonerating him. And then he's in charge.

...yeah. um. He's damned lucky he's totally loyal, an official spy, Gaius' favored protégé, and sekritly crown prince, because Complicated. But then, Tavi.

[herr_bookman]

Well, sure! At first. Pretty soon their movements grew predictable enough that whatever passes for enforcement couldn't catch him if they tried--it's difficult to track someone who knows you patrol by the town square's fountain at exactly 10:04pm every day.

[gavin62truck]

Tommy has been arrested at least twice in canon. I'm trying to think if there were more, but these are the instances I remember: once for a drunken tirade against vendors selling 9/11 souvenirs which involved him taking a piss on said souvenirs; the other time for almost drowning his daughter in a baptizing basin full of liquor, but he turned himself in and it's a long story anyway. Charges against him have always either been dropped or never filed. There certainly have been more incidents where he should have gotten arrested (kidnapping his kids, various forms of assault...Tommy is such a GREAT GUY), but as far as I know these were the only times he was ever in handcuffs onscreen. Given Tommy's track record, I'm sure there might have been a few more times offscreen or pre-canon. But he has brothers in the NYPD, so he rarely sees the consequences.

His relationship with cops in general is a tumultuous one to begin with. He has punched an on-duty cop in the face. He has punched an off-duty cop in the throat. He has led cops on a car chase through Manhattan. He has an ongoing rivalry with a particular cop, with whom he almost never fails to get into a fight during FDNY vs. NYPD hockey matches. Really, the shit he gets away with is ridiculous.

Lou is a shining example of a model citizen-- okay not really. He's done a few questionable things, but not anything that required police involvement. Except almost that one time when a cop called him a fattie. Do not do that.

[kd7sov]

Felix... it's a little complicated. He got on the bad side of a mayor in his travels, after which he cleaned out said mayor's treasury. But no one has ever actually tried to arrest him, though he's technically exiled from his hometown.

Fluttershy: not as such. She had a bit of a freak-out a while back when she half-accidentally stole the Princess' pet phoenix, but nothing bad actually came of that.

Kain and Cranky: no.

[minkhollow]

Cata and Sam are contract killers. I think it goes without saying that they have, Mizzamir's various interferences in their lives aside.

Claudia hacked into a government database and kidnapped a federal agent! She's basically only not in jail because Artie likes her. Essentially.

Apollo is a god; he makes the rules.

Imp... not as himself, I'd say, but music with rocks in it has a way of blurring the lines. In any case, he's never been arrested.

Regulus leaves that sort of activity to Bella, thank you very much.

Red technically is in prime position for it, especially once she takes Snow's side outright. It's a combination of luck and tearing out throats that she hasn't been dragged into Her Majesty's dungeon.
(Ruby: No, she just dresses provocatively.)

[12goingon113]

Aang was arrested once for murder, put on trial, and then given community service. Which was good, because if he'd been boiled in oil, like the town had originally sentenced him to, he wouldn't have been there to protect everyone from the Rough Rhinos.
THANKS A HEAP, KYOSHI.

Raph was once arrested during Tim Hunter's bachelor party. That was pretty much his only run in with the law, mostly because mutant turtles aren't exactly covered by due process.

OH! And then he was held captive and vivisected by Wizards because non-humans have no rights.

I've lost count of the number of times he was arrested in Bar and tossed in Baby.

Mike's legal transgressions are mostly bar related, and I think they involve him going willingly to the cells for nudity.

Splinter has never been caught.
Well...there was that one time, but he was nearly dying. And the guys who caught him put him in a stasis tube, and not a cell.

Bumi has to have SOME kind of criminal record. Or at very least has been arrested by the Republic City Police Department. He just has to. I'm also sure he's seen the inside of a United Forces Brig at some point.

He's far too scrappy to have a squeaky clean record. Though...I'm sure his father, mother, and siblings have done their best to expunge as many of his transgressions as possible.
(Seriously, try to impart onto him the superiority of benders. If you're lucky you'll only get chi-blocked.)

The Loompas were arrested for Behavior Unbecoming of a Loompa when we first met them.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

(Seriously, try to impart onto him the superiority of benders. If you're lucky you'll only get chi-blocked.)

Why am I thinking of Buzz "Fists of Fury" Aldrin and his reaction to the fake-moon-landing idiot...

[12goingon113]

Because of accuracy?!

[1nv1nc1ble]

Mark hasn't had any problems with law enforcement/government agencies. Yet.

[aberration]

Elle has done a lot of illegal things, but has never been in trouble with the law, because she's been extensively trained to avoid law enforcement, and used to have the Company's resources behind her. Even now, the issues she does have aren't really with law enforcement per se. She has, however, gotten in trouble with Milliways security.

The only run-ins with the law Asami has had so far have been a few traffic violations.

Leslie has been arrested twice, once basically because she started yelling at a cop (and then she and the cop ended up dating because yelling!Leslie is adorable), and once because she got into a fight with another woman and wouldn't apologize and ended up spending the night in the very nice Eagleton jail. Leslie tends to more often be on the side of the law ("cool people make the rules, they don't break them!"), and the Pawnee police are generally fond of her.

There is law enforcement in the Land of the Dead, but in true noir fashion it's pretty corrupt and sketchy. Manny's vaguely on the run from the authorities for a lot of the game, and is actually part of a resistance movement, but the "authorities" at a certain point really means a crime boss. He also has to deal with local police at one point, which mostly means paying them off.

Marceline kind of is one of the most powerful, state-like entities in her world. It seems she can pretty much do what she wants. The only entities more powerful seem to possibly be her father and the Litch, and quasi-divine beings like the Cosmic Owl and Prismo. She's had trouble with her father, but that's really more demon family issues.

Katara actually has a tendency to get in trouble with the law/authority a lot, whether it's purposefully getting herself arrested to infiltrate a prison or taking on the sexist waterbending master. Or the time she came up with a scheme to trick the police and falsely claim a reward. Or the time she stole from those pirates. And obviously just doing things the Fire Nation didn't like. But for being the straight-laced one, Katara managed get in trouble with authority a lot.

[abitofawildman]

I got it from you, Mom.
I totally got it from you.

[thenewblack]

Um. The arrest, booking, etc. was staged for purposes of intelligence gathering.


(Why can I even give an answer like that?)

[jjprobert]

Bean does not exist. Seriously. When people actually trace it in canon, his actual legal status is that he had no right to be born. Then he was destroyed, and the man who had brought him into the world, was tried and found guilty of perverting the course of justice, by means of destruction of the evidence. So, legally, Bean has no right to be born, and was destroyed to pervert the course of justice. Of course, the fact that he's up and walking and talking, kind of puts paid to that idea. Since then, no, he's had no run ins with the Law. This is mainly because when officers come downtown where the street kids live, they tend to be aiming to simply clear the streets of them. So, you know, all the kids runs away from them, even if they've done nothing wrong. Bean has never been caught.

Alfred, no. He's often been enforcing the law (or some form of government, anyway) so when he has done something technically illegal (like, I don't know, burning down a rainforest), they've been willing to look the other way.

Max: No.

Jack hasn't been in trouble with the law. Mainly because his father made it clear what he'd get coming to him if he did, when he was younger. Of course, he's branched out a bit since then, but he still stays within the law.

Later in canon, well... Run ins with the law, no. But that's generally because the law have been taken off the chase, and the army are dealing with it...

Erik: Law: no. SHIELD, well: there was that time they took all his student's experimental apparatus and the time he asked for a man who'd made a mockery of SHIELD's fighters, was given a condition of release, and ignored it. Of course, he's never actually been arrested. Or, indeed, done anything illegal (except maybe that last, but SHIELD didn't seem that bothered about it after everything else that happened).

[silveraspen]

Captain Jack Sparrow? In trouble with the law?


... you know, I can't actually stop laughing long enough at the very thought to give details in response to the question. But I think we all know the truth of that one, savvy?

[bcgphoenix]

Traditionally, Gaeta's been a very straight-laced kind of guy who hates breaking the rules, but he did end up in the brig once for stabbing Baltar in the neck with a pen.

And then there's, um. Well. *eyes him nervously* Check back with me again in a couple weeks.

[wanderlustlover]

Edward could care less about human your laws, except as a subject to watch and debate over the cross of his century. He cares even less about the Volturi's wishes after Carlisle's past and his own future. The Cullen's have a massively rigid sort of moral code, especially for being self-admitted monsters, but they also flout a lot of everything else.

Using Alice's powers to be insanely wealthy, using Edward's to keep ahead of anyone figuring out anything about them. Etc.

Marian and Peeta both are insanely moral, upstanding people, who have huge, defined beliefs about the treatment of people. But in the line-up, they are both rebels and vigilante's of the current system of their world. If Marian chooses to buck the system from a young start, and Peeta had to be thrown in a shark tank before he decided he needed to make a choice.

Snow was born and raised into The Right, before it was crushed and stolen from her by her Step Mother. Before she was labeled a traitor, hunted, and sent to be killed and/or captured, either one, for a long time before even knowing why she was reviled so. She's, also, the person, who no matter what you take from her, no matter how many people you kill, she chooses The Right still.

She may carry weapons and not allow you to attack her family, but she always chooses forgiveness, compassion, love, another last chance. Actual fairytale disney princess is actual, yo.

Jean and Jo who I, almost, never lump together, this really may be the first time, are another pair who are on the rails outside your rules. The both live by most of the rules of the US, but they, also, have several places they bend those rules. Both of them "For the Greater Good." Whether this is saving you from monsters...or well, still, saving you from monsters. Literal and figurative. Both. These two fall more under 'spirit of the law' than 'letter of the law.'

And, because I can't live through a day without sharing my Hawaii Five-0 Feels, lets start here:

Hawaii Five-0 : The Five-0 Task Force Oath Vid

Steve is, depending on who you listen to, a one decade or two decade, SEAL. The third in a generation of Navy men and upstanding Officer's of the law. He believes in The Spirit of the Law and The Letter of the Law. He, also, happens to be very good at breaking every rule he doesn't think applies to him, above and beyond the free-reign immunity and means that some Governor gave him, and another didn't really take away.

There a lot that I blame on "the vagueness and latin" of how certain Amendments are hand-waved in the line of duty for a SEAL. Along with his "Mission Style" willing to do anything, bear anything, to bring people to justice, put families back together and keep his team/people in one piece. (Which is something he doesn't expect an iota of the same in return from any of those three groups.)




Amusingly, I seem to have a thing for strongly moraled people who more than not end up on the other side of the current Cultural Right and Law.

[ceitfianna]

Spirit of the law is a wonderful phrase and captures a number of mine very well. I'm now imagining conversations Jean and Charles have had about the law and what it says, what it means and what it actually means for them. Since honesty and openness is such a part of how they both work yet they move as you said in a different place than parts of the law.

[withherhands]

*looks at Jack*

...ahahahahaha. Do you want this by season or by magnitude? I think it's an item on the 24 drinking game that Jack is pursued by his own law enforcement or faces disciplinary action of some kind.

[thesupersmeller]

Michael Westen is sort of... his own law right now. Before being burned he worked for the government as was give an extremely relaxed set of rules to live by. Pretty much whatever it takes to get the job done. *snort* In canon he's pursued by intelligence agencies in more than one country, the FBI, CIA, every branch of the greater Miami-Dade county law enforcement, ATF... BUT HE'S A GOOD GUY. REALLY.

Burton Guster and Henry Spencer work for the Santa Barbra PD, Gus as part of Psych private detective agency as a freelancer and Henry as their liaison with said freelancers. The only trouble they've gotten into is related to Shawn. :p

[hey35andholding]

Clementine: is the freaking MAN in her world, yet still has been arrested repeatedly. Her BOYFRIEND has been arrested repeatedly. She has done jail time, and she don't curr.


Dixie: Has robbed some banks and is basically a conwoman in her verse. But is in love with a lawman, so ends up a white hat in the end.


Juliet: Is, again, the woman, and is so squeaky clean that the closest she's gotten to trouble would be beating up a girl for stealing her nail polish.

Pinkie: Had to prove she was the Real Pinkie by watching paint dry as a punishment for cloning herself. Otherwise, is a Good Girl and a proper embodiment of the element of laughter.