Well, that escalated quickly. For the record, I am entirely aware that the Boss has a default gender in SR1. I just ignore it because in SR2 you can be female and nobody mentions that you've had a gender change, which you think they'd notice, so, 'male only' in SR1 is due to limitations of the game engine and not necessarily the actual in-game storyline or the authors' intent.I referred to the Boss as male because he was male in the first Saints Row, but how would you know...
After she specifically asked you not to, and made it plain that she was really sensitive about it. Respect goes both ways in a friendship -- if you don't respect someone, you get the same lack of respect back. This is... remarkably similar to how the Boss treats people, so, give them points for not being a hypocrite when Kinzie acts the same way towards them.
Again, there is more about interpersonal relationships than 'who can kill who'. Seriously, orcs have more sophisticated pack dynamics than this. You're making the Saints sound like a collection of brain-dead animals.
I do, and rule #1 of those forums generally tends to be 'Discard obvious outliers if they are single data points that just don't fit jibe with the rest of the body of work', aka 'the Spider-Man vs. Firelord rule'. And rule #2 is 'for purposes of deciding who'd win a fight, ignore all in-character behavior', aka the 'bloodlust' rule.
Of course, rule #2 is exactly what we're not doing here, because we're ultimately discussing "is it in-character for the Boss to accept being punched in the face by Kinzie without then immediately killing her". So, starting out with the assumption 'let's ignore all in-character behavior' is paradoxical here, as what we're arguing about in the first place is characterization.
So, why didn't the Boss kill Kinzie when she punched him? The answer is "the Boss will demonstrably put up with a lot of shit from their crew so long as they stay a) loyal b) good at their jobs and c) don't disobey direct orders during crunch time." They don't have to be respectful and salute, they just have to do their jobs. As long as they do that, the Boss doesn't really care what else they do.
There's also that the Boss has a ridiculously high pain tolerance and doesn't really cry just because someone hit him.
There's also that Kinzie uses violence as foreplay. *g*
But really, the Boss sees the world in two categories of people -- Saints and Everybody Else. People in category #2 don't get upside the Boss' face without retribution. People in category #1, on the other hand, get tons of slack, and always have. Kinzie's a Saint, so, the Boss putting up with her without violence hardly surprises me. The Boss is nowhere near so insecure that he can't handle a little talking back from their inner circle without losing it.
So, could the Boss kill Kinzie? Um, yeah. That goes without saying. Would the Boss kill Kinzie? Not for anything she's done so far -- she'd have to betray the Saints all Dex style to get put on a death list.
I can't even tell for sure what your argument is anymore, but as near as I can guess its 'the only reason the Boss has to not kill Kinzie is if he didn't think he could take her, which is stupid'. While the Boss certainly thinks he could take her -- and unless the fight is occurring at a distance of like 1000 miles away, be entirely right -- the second half of that assumption is sillypants. The Boss is nowhere near that horrible re: impulse control. Frig, Johnny Gat isn't that bad at impulse control, and Johnny's lack of impulse control is literally a legend in Hell itself.
