6 replies to this topic

[truepurple]

The arc starting in chapter 22, postulates that selfishness and greed, are strength, and compassion is a weakness. That slavery makes you stronger.

 

Lets start with the apprentices speech which never got a rebuttal (this would be that rebuttal) The base premise of her argument is that being a slave will either kill you or make you "stronger", and being "stronger" will help you survive in the desert better-perhaps even a necessity, so selling little kids off to slavery to be potentially raped etc is actually doing them a favor.

 

What strength would you get from being a slave:

 

Physical strength? You can't get muscle mass if your barely fed or watered, and most slaves in that environment would not be. Any Constitutional gains could just as easily be made outside of slavery. Besides, physical strength alone would not be enough as shown in the comic.  Also severe physical damage can make you weaker for life physically too.

 

Mental strength?  Contrary to popular opinion, that which does not kill you, can actually make you weaker long term, mentally anyway. And years as a slave can put in a dependent subservient mentality where one does not think for themselves (and if it doesn't, torture is often used to make it so) so you would have no chance of survival outside of being enslaved, and DP himself said that slavery can be a fate worse then death. 

 

Besides which, what makes them think that most slaves would have a chance to escape or buy their way out of slavery? 

 

So in in all probability, 99% of these slaves would be made weaker, and be slaves for life, if in all probability they weren't killed as a slave while they were still young.

 

Now lets look at DesertPunk himself, his strength comes from skill. intelligence, boldness, as well as knowledge. Nothing that most slaves could pick up. His greedy self interest has been his weakness, whether that be for women or money, even in this comic where the author clearly favors DPs type of shallow selfishness, and despite his skill and intelligence, these things have come back to hurt him sometimes. He even lost a awesome place due to his greediness (which he somehow managed to blame on something else) if he hadn't been so hell bent on raping her, or otherwise getting sex out of her, and instead just have forgiven her and let her go on her way, or even recruited her, considering she was only acting exactly as DP said was reasonable anyway, he would not have lost his fabulous (and wealthy) secret hideout, and might have gained a powerful allie.

 

Now that martial arts guy did essentially suffer for his compassion and lack of selfishness. But lets keep in mind that the author was against him, as the author is god in a story, it's kind of hard to win if god is against you  Part of how the author god was against him,was in how he showed a lack of reasoning. These kids keep on running off, he never questions this. A mob is chasing after two little girls who presumably have no slavery status, he never bothers asking them why, nor does anyone in this crowd shout "stop thief" or whatever. And how ever much he appreciates DP saving his life, it didn't really make sense for him to allow himself to be sold off as a slave, he can't protect anyone that way.

 

Even that the girls called trouble to themselves when they already had a supporter didn't really make sense, if two kids have a regular source of food and water AKA money, why would they jeopardize this? (plus they were shown to have liked him) And why would they go with him in the first place if he lacked even the necessary water to make it to town? They want to to steal extra, not go after marks that don't even leave em enough to survive a single trip, leave them in the red zone and near death.  Also if most people in the desert "by necessity" lacked compassion, then a sympathy con wouldn't make much sense since they would lack people to take the bait. Also they portrayed them as being notably far from town, so they would not meet up with many people in the first place, and in the open desert without equipment, they stand a chance of simply dying before anybody else came along, much-less someone compassionate. It would also have to be someone who hasn't already heard of them and it seems they already had a bit of a reputation.  Presumably many would be like DP and try to sell them as slaves, especially considering the nearest town seemed to be the slaving town.  Maybe it would instead be the slaving con, they trick people into enslaving them, then pick the ropes or otherwise escape the bondage, which would have made DP their victim.

 

Now DP talks about what made the desert, postulating that this disaster (of which I have not read any details on) that created this wasteland situation, were created by "weak" AKA compassionate people banding together. Well any scenario like that is pretty absurd, most every man made disaster that has been or is in the making, has been brewed in a environment where selfish people with weapons and/or power have greedily hungered for more or otherwise selfishly lived, it would be pretty hard for the author to dream up a situation where compassion caused a wasteland, which is probably why no details were given. 

 

On the other hand, DP helped a guy bring up dangerous war technology in the form of a super soldier. It was greedy self interest causing the makings of a disaster there.

 

Eh, this total self interest is the the only proper way, and compassion is weakness, is a stupid poorly done theme that has appeared in this chapter, and skipping head, apparently latter on too. I give up on reading this

Edited by truepurple, 18 July 2013 - 11:51 AM.

[Archmage Lezard]

You clearly aren't used to dark, post apocalyptic themes then. That's fine, but you should understand - compared to a lot of post-apoc main characters, Sunabozu is a fucking saint.

[Reven]

@true purple, this manga follows the survival of the fittest rule to the extreme which is pretty much normal in a post apocalyptic story genre,

 

The reason why the characters believe being a slave would make you stronger is because they follow the rule that the strong survives and the weak perishes, but this also serves as an excuse for them to be selfish and is probably not meant to be taken literally.

 

The Desert punk himself is a shining representation of how the general population lives in the desert, either being exploited or being the ones exploiting others, any of the suggestions that you have mentioned about how he could have avoided in losing his wealth and hidden locations wouldn't have worked since Junko would still come back to bite his ass anyway since she's just as ruthless as he is.

 

The martial arts guy was already mentioned to have been raised within the Oasis government which meant that he was living in another society that had its own rules, unlike in the desert which almost had little to none whatsoever. It's not too surprising to see that character being very naive and impulsive since they look at life as black and white.

 

I do agree on your assessment about how those two kids procure food from absolute strangers in the middle of the desert since that ranges from them being either extremely lucky or having a guardian angel watching over them.

 

The apocalyptic scenario that caused the great desert was described by the main character in a very simplified (and perhaps biased) fashion, he associated compassion with the ones responsible for causing the Apocalypse since the society that they have been living in would have looked like paradise to those who are currently living in the desert. The lack of details about the cataclysm just shows how bad it actually was, and in my opinion, it works just as well since a long time had passed since that event. 

[truepurple]

Well  compare to http://vatoto.com/comic/_/comics/alice-in-hell-r6978 which is pretty much the same setting, but the MCs (and other people in the world) have such completely polar world views.  And as mentioned before, the author backs up DPs world views in a rather direct fashion.

Edited by truepurple, 12 September 2013 - 05:12 AM.

[Reven]

Thanks for the recommendation, I enjoyed reading it but I feel that the story needed more chapters, cause at the moment, it feels like they only introduced the characters world views but have yet to develop them further.

BTW, I think you should change the title of this thread as just a discussion board, cause the problem you have with DP doesn't seem to relate with the main topic of this thread.

[truepurple]

I think you should change the title of this thread as just a discussion board, cause the problem you have with DP doesn't seem to relate with the main topic of this thread.

 

The problem I have with DP is the main topic of this thread, so I am not sure what discrepancy you are talking about.

[Reven]

at first, your argument about the author's notion of strength was relevant from the beginning, but as you discussed further past the part about the martial art character, it seemed to have changed to a different discussion altogether. I guess the posts about portraying the character's world views kind of threw me off.