‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 389

Bandit forgot to mention that to Dude...

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey from last update! If you (NAV audience) were in charge of this Group's popularity, this is where the standings would be:

4 pg 06

Poor Dude! He's never gonna make it in time! Haha.

And for the popularity of the favorite character, I'm extending the graph/results from this previous survey to come up with this updated one:

4 pg 06-1

And if you want to see the actual voting results, check out the vote incentive!

Thanks everyone! These results are very enlightening for me (especially the comments people leave) and it shall be fun to see how things change as we near the that ominous red line.

50 Comments

Hmm. I hadn’t realized that Dude didn’t know
about Kat doing Erbana before this strip.

Now I’m wondering if Dude’s reaction will make
Kat suspect that Dude knows/suspects her identity.

Yeah, I really want to see Kat’s reaction to Dude’s outburst now.

It may not go that far. Given that folks are acting like it should be obvious that Erbana is an unpopular route(or at least that is the impression I have gotten), Dude’s response could easily be interpreted as a ‘are you trying to tank your/our popularity? I can’t believe you!’ type of response.

Happy and innocent Kat is indeed cute :P. Kinda Scary, but cute :D.

and thanks for showing the reaction of the Dude 😀 it’s cool!

The colors match the primary colors of the avatars.

Pink = Kat
Blue = Danni
Green = Bandit
White = Jane
Brown = Dude

Ok, I might not like Dude/Brandon much as a person, but his lines just crack me up. 🙂

Danni’s graph line at least leveled off, maybe headed up a bit…. the angle of the floor makes it hard to be sure. Hopefully once they get into the Game, whatever Specials Kleya has created for her will draw in additional viewers.

This…is the most beautiful page I have ever seen. Thank you for making me laugh so much xD

I totally agree, this is probably by far my favorite page. The drawing styles, and the totally awesome rendition of Dude being mind blown. While Bandit’s all like, “told you so… wait, you okay?”

The picture of Kat destroying the world being equal to Kat super happy innocent, and surrounded by furry little happy things is cracking me up.

I love the contrast between the two images of Kat! =D

I think the second one is beautiful, almost want to use it for an avatar for something…. is that considered copyright infringement?

I love how the actual fans are so different from the story fans. Sadly, I don’t think Danni will ever be extremely popular, but hopefully she can get a solid group of loyal fans, nothing incredible but enough to get by.

Well, us readers obviously have a very different perspective on Danni than the game fans in the story 🙂

Still, I am somewhat surprised that Danni is *that* popular with the readers. I mean, she obviously gets a huge bonus from being an ally (friend?) of Kleya; and also from being depicted as a victim… But looking at her actual behaviour so far, she doesn’t seem to be a particularly nice person really, nor a very interesting one…

What does the red line signify? If it’s too spoilerific feel free to deny everything. I just don’t frequent the comment section often, so if you announced what it meant before I didn’t see it. And I don’t really feel like hunting around only to find what I’m going to assume is nothing.

I predict death of a character, but that’s just me.

It was mentioned on a previous page. The red line signifies the upcoming popularity check. If their popularity is not above the black horizontal line then they get cut from the team. Danni is in big trouble.
As for why it’s in the readers one I have no idea. maybe she didn’t have time to make a new graph background?

If the readers don’t like a character before we get to the red line, then game popularity doesn’t matter! That character will have an “accident…”

Nah, just kidding. But that would be cool.

As far as I can tell, the red line is just for consistency – letting us know the timeline of the popularity surveys – the one Aneeka references for the previous one is from just before the tutorial began. So it shows the change between them.

lol, I am curious how this dialog goes on. I mean, the Dude can’t just say the truth. But his reaction makes me wonder about how little he knows about her. Anyone who saw her battles could have anticipated the possibility of her doing Erbana. I mean that thing actually said “Be Nice!”. Does that mean he didn’t get to see or hear from her battles and Specials?

Btw: I am really curious about the Dude’s fighting style. I mean, obviously he is strong enough to be top 5, but to date he is the only one of whom I don’t know anything at all about his style (not counting Waterman).

Btw2: Do you already have something in mind for the “Ha!” Special or are you going to make it up when the time comes?

Yes, it say “Be nice”… and hammer you in the head for good.

What he knows is that Kat is the mad hacker who ended the world and unleshed the mechas that almost killed him. Also Kat’s public behavior has been not so pacifist if you think about it.

Yes, it was a one-hit K.O., maybe two-hits, but I think she used the least amount of hits possible to defeat her opponents. Her matches were likely the least brutal ones, at least as far as her opponents were concerned, since she did take a couple of hits.
Her pacifist fighting style could’ve broken Dude’s brain, because of his memories, but I expected him to be less surprised of her by now. But it’s ok, I am curious how he’ll talk his way out of this. I don’t think “Miss Dude” is going to let it go easily.

Smart enough to be top 5. Smart enough to know when not to fight and still be top 5. Smart enough to keep my “fighting” style a secret (especially to the girl who destroyed the world). One does not win by taking queens and pieces, but by a checkmate!

A few nights ago I actually dreamt that he’d have to fight Kat and he summoned an illusion of that Catgirl Paddy made for her, but he still lost in a goofy/clumsy way to her which I can’t quite remember.

I already thought of him as a trickster what with his card route in the tutorial, and I think illusions would be a nice addition to these abilities, so I kinda expect him to have them.

Totally LOVE the panel of Kat with the animals. It is so… Disney! Too much cuteness… I’m melting…

PS. Is it possible to get the cute Kat picture as a wallpaper? Or at least as a single picture, e.g. in the vote incentive?

Yeah, the Dude is definitely one of my favourites just for the comedic factor. It’s too bad he’s not more popular among the fans.

I’m with Danni on this one. You’d think a culture that survived annihilation in a global war would be more willing to see someone try a more pacifist approach. Stupid bloodthirsty people 😛 Plus Kat looked pretty cool riding that dog monster.

This is really bending my suspension of disbelief. A rare route is interesting in itself, and Kat is working on a very distinct character. Danni only has her ballet moves as a quirk, but Kat has got to get at least some of a fanbase that likes specifically her for things that make her unique. Her pacifism being one of them.
I get that there’s more conflict in the story if the pacifist route makes her lose in popularity, but… I just find it really hard to see /why/

Most of what Kat did in the tutorial was collect herbs. The only time she had any form of action was when she lassoed the beast. That doesn’t sound entertaining. It is probably a rare route because it is so boring.

A real life example would be Doubleagent from World of Warcraft. He was a pandaren that never left the starting zone and slowly reached level 90. No one really cared about him until he reached certain milestones.

Maybe few people can stay pure Erbana because of the monotony of it (peaceful and plants, no fighting) and so even few people make it to the cool parts of Erbana (if it even has any cool parts). So the fans could just be thinking that she’s probably going to change at some point so why care about her now. I would hope that over time, as she brings out the cool parts of Erbana (I really hope there are cool parts) that fans will start to like her. Just like people liked Doubleagent when he got close to reaching level 90.

The thing is that fans didn’t see Kat acting like a pacifist ever.

Kat first caught fan’s attention headbutting Bandit from behind straight to the floor. She stormed through the tournament one-hit crushing everybody including her own partner. She got fight the skilled Bandit two times and defeated him both, even literally kicking his head and slapping his face. She got fight the scary Bloody Mary and stood her ground in an epic battle. She has shown awesome fighting skills. In public she has been grumpy almost all the time. She got mad and scorned the fans not once but two times.

From fans’ point of view all that looks far from pacifist which made Erbana way unexpected and disappointing.

Actually, apart from Kat’s “fans” wanting to see her lose her temper all the time, the problem I see with both Kat and Bandit is that their performances were too perfect. If Bandit is going to go the Demoli route, he needs to add in some maniacal laughter or pompous threats. Crashing islands by themselves aren’t going to hold the fans for long.

In Kat’s case, she needs to work on striking virtuous poses or quoting poetry or something. Just solving the puzzles the Erbana way isn’t interesting in itself. She needs to look conflicted or resolute or enigmatic or something. Then again, arguments with her teammates in-Game will likely draw some attention….

Jane has the right idea – the weird little rhymes keep you wondering what she’s going to do next, even though the viewers can expect she’ll kill everything in sight. She really has “creepy” to the max.

Danni can pull this off if she manages to improve her “graceful” look — she knew that back when she and Kleya were practicing for the trials. It’s all about style. “Ballerina elegantly kicks butt” has some marketing potential– she just needs more info about how to play the parts of the Game that weren’t (apparently) in the practice areas.

(Dude is comic relief. If he just keeps running around screaming and surviving, he’ll probably be fine.)

“You’d think a culture that survived annihilation in a global war would be more willing to see someone try a more pacifist approach.”

I agreed with you at first, but then I realized that nothing that we have seen about this society is Erbana level pacifism. Hacking is a capital offence and everyone seems happy with that. Maybe the fans saw Kat taming that feindi in the same way that they see trying to reform a hacker; maybe seeing Bandit defeat all of the feindi in one go struck a cord with their actions towards potential hackers. (I believe that there is a place for capital punishment, but this society appears to misuse it).

There was no global war, just a massive amount of people falling victim to a hacker group (and possibly natural occurring disasters); and now they are keen on quickly eliminating any threat.

It should be noted that Kat actually got only somewhat of a dip in popularity, not a major drop. It’s not like “boo, boooring, go away!”; more like “OK, doesn’t *quite* live up to the recent hype”…

Innocent Kat reminds me of the cat girl Paddy once designed for her.

Yes, Dude, Kat did Erbana.

I think the “try to get her to change” plan is a go?

Kat for Best Disney Princess

Cute?

I can honestly say that I’ve never felt more unsettled looking at Kleya then I am now. Even more so then that ‘as a child’ sketch back when the book 1 kickstarter was going.

Her smile looks unnatural, I tell ya, completely unnatural.

There is no possible way I can accept her as a Disney princess, my mind rebels.

I feel with Danni’s line *behind* the entire group, she should have been looking around trying to find it, heh.

I want that duality image as a desktop pattern.

Way to blow it dude. She is smart and she knows you and Bandit are smart.

Now you don’t know if she knows that you know about her identity.
Crud, you don’t even know is she know that you know that she knows that you know.

Dude. I know.

Something just came to my mind:
Maybe Kleya is going to be accused of weaponizing Erbana. She wins by using pacifist specials and I can’t imagine her doing nothing but picking flowers, especially when her friends are in trouble. So I expect that some people will accuse her of ruining the only peaceful alignment out there. Since she is such a monster who caused the apocalypse, of course she’s going to try to take that last haven away from the people as well.

I got that idea when I thought about Erfworld’s Olive Branch, who was being accused of weaponizing Hippiemancy, e.g. by drugging her enemies. That makes me wonder if Kat is going to try something like that, too, what with all her emotion-related attacks. 🙂

Don’t chase that poor defenseless girl down that dark hallway! She is evil – EEEVVIILL.
Be nice will get youuu.

And they never heard of him again.

Maybe her next special makes characters permanently unusable. ^^

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!:’)
Dude’s line broke me

In The Dude’s first vision of Kat/Kleya, it looks like she’s holding two halves of the earth in her hands. Yes, I call that a destructive view.

She is actually tearing it in half.

So when Sandra said that their popularity stats were negatively affected, she does not mean that they decreased; but rather she means they did not increase as they should have.

Also Bandit’s expression of “shut up now please” is classic. Also having never seen Kat pulled such a happy face – it kind of takes a while to get used to!

That one with Kat and the animals is so cute! Aagh,I’m such a girly

Calling it now – that panel or a Kleya-Reality-equivalent is part of the epilogue of the webcomic (Presumably years down the road) as a brick joke of a book end of sorts.

Heh , maybe That would be pretty comical

That is Fluttershy!

It took me a while to figure out Violent Kat was holding a mini Earth in her hands (that she was tearing apart).

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 389