'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Dude claims Kleya hacked the geomangetic field and took out an army.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 197

Bah! There are a thousands things I want to say, but they’re all spoilers!

So, I’ll just keep quiet

52 Comments

I have never been more disappointed in Bandit as I am right now. EVER!

I was expecting an interesting reason why he didn’t kick out Bloody Mary. I mean, if he had said that he couldn’t allow Kleya to become the the new leader of the group or that he had plans for Mary to become a pawn for some villainous scheme, THAT would have been acceptable.

What the heck kinda lame reason is it to not boot her because it’s an “abuse” of the petition? The Bandit I know never cared about that. Hes got no problem with cheating (I still want to know how he took Kleya down to almost zero hit points in their first fight), lying to superiors or making AIs that drive people into suicidal depression. I’d say he was a liar except he and Dude seem to have a high level of trust in their relationship.

Acting like some sort of rule bound, paper pusher that is primarily concerned with maintaining proper order doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

He like the rules, don’t mean he need to be fair, truthful or even play by the rules himself, but he may just want to see everyone else working by the rules or something like that.

If you ignore his popular “persona,” the real person acts like this a lot. He’s an outlaw charmer in public, but privately:
He resists dramatic actions, was reluctant to miss his fight, was reluctant to hack during the finals, has now complained twice about people’s hacking misconceptions, and seems to be one of the last programmers left on the planet. Rules and order may mean a bit more to him.

Bandit is good at managing his persona, its true. you can point at any celebrity and see that such managing is how they stay popular and thus relevant in popular culture. but yeah his real personality doesn’t have to be much like his outward persona. I think we are seeing a bit of the real Bandit.

I am curious as to the theories that Bandit has tried to advance that Dude is obviously disregarding.

Eh, I don’t really agree with your interpretation ?a???? and I am indeed ignoring the public persona which clearly doesn’t show his true self.

-He was reluctant to miss the fight because if he had missed it, he would have lost and he doesn’t like losing.
-He was reluctant to hack, not out of any moral qualms, because of D. He was afraid hacking the program would get D after him and D can do a ton of damage to even the best hackers.
-There is no doubt that he’s skilled, takes pride in his work and wants SOME people to know what is and is NOT possible using hacking. So what? How does that make him a more rules and orderly? Any hacker that has survived through the purges didn’t make it by following the “rules”, they would have been forced to sneak around and do whatever it took to survive and come out on top.

you have a point, but keep in mind Bandit seems to have his own agenda and might have been changed for the better in the same way as Kleya by the End. he is lying to his superior about Kleya, so he might not trust those above him.

Wrong place at the wrong time comes to mind. So does Occam’s razor, “oops, my bad”, “that wasn’t supposed to happen”, “they had it coming”, and “not my fault god used dog as reality’s SUDO password.”

Question about the “nice” technique. Is it because she couldn’t level up to 10 before the death match? I assume she needed to put what stats she could into stamina. And just built a speacil that used her high stamina, so she had a chance of winning.
Another thing I’m wondering is what stats do what in this game? Guess I can figure that out later

hmm. id say they alter the characters ability so higher atk means more damage. higher def less damage so on and so forth much like any rpg now

The more we learn of Kleya, the more I think we’re going to see her god-like skills in action. Then we’ll see that she’s the biggest bada** in this comic.

oooooo, I wish we knew more about this. so she is a cyborg? what parts of her are artificial I wonder. and she is being blamed for alot. everytime a question gets answered it raises 20 more! >3<

She’s probably not a Cyborg. The Dude is probably exaggerating the stories.

agreeing with tim c on this one

point.

Well, I don’t know about hacking the geomagnetic field, but I’ve heard stories about Tesla and the Tunguska Event.

Which was almost definitely caused by a meteor strike. Nothing that Tesla had made functional at that time would’ve been able to cause anything like that.

Tesla had lost a few marbles when he was taking credit for that

haha, one theory of how it could of happened is that there was a massive discharge of build up eletrical energy. but yeah, there was no way for anyone to pump that much energy into the atmosphere at the time. and to what point would someone blow up a tundra wilderness? it was just some random act of the universe, whatever it was.

Wow. Kleya is a hardcore bada**. That’s one step above River. At least, I think that’s how the progression goes. Killing one person with your mind and an army with slashy implements adds together to killing an army with your mind. Have I got that right?

River? River who?

Dear Aneeka,

Could you sketch a few stills from that video feed? As a voting incentive. Quality may be low (damaged data stream?).
(Nice exercise for large scale scenes!)

It sounds awesome…

But that would ruin the surprise for how Kleya looks in Reality! I couldn’t do that! lol.

Rest assured, though, you’ll be seeing that particular scene in-story (and I hope my art skills will be cool enough by then to do it justice!)

That why I suggested making a sketch!
Leave the part with Kleya’s appearence blank, or put in a blob (he/she/it would be honored to fill in such a place).

Making a few rough sketches now will give you the oppertunity to test out camera angles and page layouts. It would also provide us with a unique sneak peak into your drawing process.

And when the story arrives at that point, you can change it anyway, learning from the experience.

What is there to loose?
It’s a challenge! I dare you!
It would be awesome.

(of course I’m just a random internet guy, feel free to ignore me )

Mmm….okay. I’ll do it

Don’t really have a lot of spare time this week or the next, but I’ll see what I can whip up!

Yes!

Nobody will mind if this project stretches over several weeks (or longer). I hope you regard it as the ‘fun drawing experiment & reader interaction’ I hope it will be.

Yay!

This is gonna be cool.

Oh dear. The geomagnetic field? I was so sure a hacker couldn’t cause a solar flare… But (wild speculation) if Kleya’s mom was working on some heavy-duty scientific research involving the earth’s magnetic field, and Kleya got into that, yeah, that could look like a solar flare (and possibly an earthquake, as well).

Or, Brandon could be paranoid and just blaming Kleya for everything that went wrong with the world….

I have to agree with the Bandit *FACEPALM*. Kat may have caused (or may have had some involvement with, at least I think) some of the destruction brought about by Deconstruct Me, but the Dude may have listened to one (thousand?) too many rumours…

So… does this mean that telekinesia exists? And cyborgs? Or it this just some sort of paranoid rumour?

Additionally, if something happened to Earth’s geomagnetic field (which I would agree with Brandon is impossible to hack, as it’s generated by forces within the planet’s core), that would explain the atmospheric issues, or at least why it’s not safe outside the living quarters, since without the magnetic field, the solar wind would have direct access to the atmosphere… Ozone layer would likely be gone, making sunlight a radiation hazard, and Earth would start “hemorraghing” its atmosphere into the space, due to the effects of the solar wind. (It is thought that this is how Mars lost most of its original atmosphere.)

Interesting, to say the least.

Anything can be hacked with a large enough edged
instrument:), the trick would be getting it into place
without destroying it.

I find it interesting that the words “hacker” and “hacking”
are so commonplace, even among those who qualify for the
former, for more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_definition_controversy#Hacker_definition_controversy

I don’t think there is real-world TK. But Kleya may have implants that make the Kido unit (mentioned a few pages back) unnecessary for her, which would make her a cyborg from a technical point of view. If she did “take out an entire army” it was probably by hacking their equipment or hacking some installation that she used to attack them.

On hacking the geomagnetic sphere… In David Brin’s novel, *Earth*, a micro black hole is discovered in the Earth’s core, and by manipulating it with gravitational lasers, many effects are possible. Naturally, the system to do so gets hacked.

hahaha, fun. so either Kleya did find a way or someone else did and pinned it on her?

And the Dude becomes the Douche.

also Bandits look in panel 4. thats the you idiot look i love that look.

I ask myself how mutch is truth and how mutch just Dude paranoia, anyway I’m really curious >.<

Dear Aneeka,
I’ve been reading this comic since, about, comic 93? I think?
Anyway, I read a lot of webcomics.
And I’d like you to know that this comic is tied for first as my favorite, and it’s tied with Gunnerkrigg Court.

GC is one of the webcomics that I look up to and try to emulate. To be considered equal to it…
I am not worthy, but thanks! It totally made my day!

It’s true! When I think webcomics, my mind starts here, and I begin wondering on the world in it, before my mind starts thinking on a zombie apocolypse or some other random stuff that comes to mind.

I wounder if the writer has ever read the ‘Blue Adept’ series by Piers Anthony. This story has a number of thematic similarities.

The only similarity I can see is the popularity of the Game, but the whole structure and purpose of the games in the two stories are completely different. Danni’s situation about needing to stay in the Game to be allowed to stay in her City is highly unusual, and as far as we can tell, there is no winning condition that would secure her place there. If she were the main character, I might see more of a parallel, but she’s a side character, and the main themes of the plot have more to do with Kleya’s past actions and attempts to make up for them. The Game is really kind of a distraction for Kleya. She thinks it will make people like her, and that will make her a “hero,” when the best way to make up for her past actions would be to find a way to help keep people alive by fixing the broken software systems in the Cities. I suppose Stile has some world-saving of his own to do, but he doesn’t have the villainous past to overcome, and popularity has very little to do with his challenges.

The writer has not read that series. But she’ll put it on her ‘to read’ list!

The author is Piers Anthony. The series is ok. Anthony’s ideas sometimes exceed his writing skill, but he’s a popular author, and his books are usually fun to read.

I do recommend David Brin’s book Earth, although the way hacking is described is a little goofy. Actually, that goes for programming in general. But the book is a good read. Lots of interesting ideas, engaging characters, etc.

Quick, somebody make an Akira joke.

So we finally get to hear more about the real world.

a whiney god being walks into a bar?

Tooold ya guys Kleya precipitated the end of the world…

It makes this journey of redemption all the more dramatic!

Oh, the bandit doesn’t believe it… huhm, I’m not sure then, but I think she was involved.

The dude’s got a point there…

Just popping in to say that the first panel looks like the Dude is proposing to the Bandit. And that I’m surprised that you didn’t make a vote incentive about that.

Haha. It never crossed my mind! Plus, I’ve been too busy/stressed to focus long enough on vote incentives. Sniff.

Hacking the Geomagnetic field? Maybe not, but in space tests of nuclear weapons, there were major changes to the van allen belts and the geomagnetic field, that caused major communication and power disturbances. So in theory it could be done if a hacker took control of a missile and blew it up in the right spot.

When they say “geomagnetic field,” are they talking about they Schumann resonance? Because i can only think of one person, fictional or otherwise, who managed to hack in to the Schumann resonance, and if this story is going in the same direction as that one, then I’m going to need some aspirin.

Not A Villain – A Webcomic

A webcomic about a reformed hacker in a virtual Reality.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 197