scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2pfc78.md

Demon, The Story of A Rational Sociopath

Post:

I've been reading through this webcomic, Demon, which is created by Jason Shiga, the same guy who drew Fleep (a rational webcomic) and Meanwhile (a brilliant choose-your-path story).

Jimmy develops the power to possess other people every time he dies and he uses this power to rescue his daughter from a nearly all-powerful military organization.

I'm wondering for those of us who has read it, is it rational? It definitely has clever problem solving, logical investigation, and social manipulation. But it seems more munchkiny than rational/rationalist. What do you think?

P.S. For further discussion, do you think Jimmy is a sociopath for using his abilities to achieve his goals at any cost?

Trigger warning : There is suicide, murder, some nudity (males only) and in chapter 5 (starting around page 130), a very disgusting method of suicide involving body fluids. It's not as bad as it sounds, since the art style doesn't make it look too life-like or vivid, but it's fairly gross. Only for that chapter does it get that bad though, the visuals for the rest of the comic is not as gruesome (even if it involves a higher body count).

Comments:

• u/Calsem:

  It's a good comic, but I find it hard to believe that Jimmy could consistently manage to escape the organization.  For example, in the latest chapter,  [](#s "why the heck does Denny get so close to Jimmy?  Why does Hunter not immediately shoot Denny with a tranq as soon as Denny turns?  Why does the SWAT team not have a safeword with Denny to make sure Denny is not possessed?" )
  

  • u/khafra:

    Yeah, their master/stranger protocols are clearly lacking.
    

  • u/None:

    I haven't actually read it yet, but 'tranqs' really don't work like that. I mean, that's why we have anesthesiologists and why they're highly paid -  because it's really hard to knock someone out without killing them. Just a small caveat though.
    

    • u/derefr:

      There aren't *too* many variables involved, though. It'd be reasonably easy to engineer, say, a tranq gun that figured out the BMI of whatever it was looking at, and dialed its darts to an appropriate shot.
      

      • u/None:

        Hmm, that's an idea. I don't know about easy, but it could be possible I guess. I think you would have to know metabolism and heart rate too though -  maybe you could use infrared cameras to figure out heart rate...
        

        • u/Superguy2876:

          heart rate is quite easy to figure out through video, [here](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/) is an algorithm made by MIT that can do just that. Using only the visual spectrum of light some skin probably needs to be showing though, maybe it could be altered to work on infrared regardless of clothing?
          

• u/alexanderwales:

  Like some of Shiga's other work, in a lot of ways it's about problem solving, or taking the exploration of an idea to its limits. And in that respect, I think that it would appeal to people who visit this subreddit.
  
  But even given Jimmy's complete disregard for human life, there are some problems with "because plot", namely with the organization tasked with bringing Jimmy in. I can forgive a lot of that, especially if I read in bursts instead of one page at a time, but it might bug some people, and it means that the story doesn't really stand up to too much scrutiny.
  
  Jimmy doesn't quite meet all the criteria for sociopathy, but it's not just that he's willing to do anything to achieve his goals - it's that he simply does not take other peoples' lives into consideration. Like, there's a scene in one of the recent panels where he murders a man rather than going through the trouble of walking five feet. There's absolutely no question that he's evil, he just happens to be the protagonist.
  

  • u/awesomeideas:

    The organization really doesn't seem to get the whole thing, unless there's some unknown and lengthy process to remove Jimmy from a person's body.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      I think they understand, they've just demonstrated some supreme incompetence in putting their plans into motion. What they want to do is get him in a position where he can't kill himself (or anyone else), presumably so that they can negotiate some kind of arrangement with him, though I have no idea what that would entail. I believe that there's quite a bit that we, the viewers, don't know about the organizations goals and purpose.
      
      Anyway, there was one big moment of failure right near the beginning when Jimmy was trapped (and bleeding out) in a cell. Hunter tells him that he's going to die there and possess the guy in the next cell. *And then Hunter leaves*. In fact, everyone leaves. Jimmy is all alone, with no one watching him. More importantly, the guy in the next cell over - the one that Jimmy is supposed to possess when he dies - *hasn't been tranquilized by the OSS*. It's a mistake that I can understand them making, but that was the moment that it became clear Jimmy wasn't going up against intellectual champions.
      
      So I enjoy the story, and I enjoy the puzzle aspects of it, but I don't look too closely, because the adversary is a little too incompetent.
      

      • u/psychothumbs:

        Yeah, not even leaving a video camera to keep watch? Really?
        

• u/MoralRelativity:

  > It's not as bad as it sounds, since the art style doesn't make it look too life-like or vivid, but it's fairly gross. Only for that chapter does it get that bad though, the rest only involves murder.
  
  Hmmm... one reading of what you wrote is that creating "bodily fluids" is worse than murder. Is that really what you mean?
  

  • u/jalapeno_dude:

    I'm not the OP, but: In terms of grossness/squick, absolutely, yes. The murders are no more gruesome (considerably less, actually, given the art) than, say, the Game of Thrones TV series. That is decidedly not true for this particular scene.
    

  • u/xamueljones:

    Ha, ha, ha, ha...
    You're right about that possible interpretation, but I can easily deal with reading about faceless NPCs being killed off in the background of the story. However, the artwork for the scene in question looks more gory than the scenes for all of the murders Jimmy commits. So even though murder is a worse action to commit, we certainly are more likely to read "The bullet went through his head." than a "His skull shattered as the grey matter of his brain oozed out of the bullet hole." Writers and drawers are rarely so vivid with gruesome scenes unless they are writing/drawing for that specific genre.
    

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