‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 509&510

Colors by Audrey with edits and everything else by me.

I originally wanted this one to be page 500. Oh well.

Edit: Fixed a typo. Thanks to those who caught it!

Meet ups!

I will be in Ottawa, Canada at Dick's (1485 Merivale Rd, Nepean, ON K2E 5P3, Canada) on Saturday, July 30th @1pm

I'll also be in Montreal, Canada, at Yeh! (5037 Rue Sherbrooke O, Montréal, QC H4A 1S8, Canada) on Sat, July 30th @6pm

Boston is next week. Still working on the location but it will be around 4pm.

78 Comments

Page looks awesome!

Some of my random thoughts looking at the page:
Was this the same move as before?? The other one didn’t explode like this…
It looks like she (both Kat and Danni?) can respawn but she loses her esone.. conclusion: esones also function like extra lives? I wonder if the Dude is okay, if he isn’t Bandit just took out 3 of his teammates.. they should be calling him Bloody Bandit >.>

The other one was split into 2, so this either isn’t the same move or its destructive power is doubled.
Esones do act as extra lives and it is possible to have multiple esones. I don’t remember the page, but there was an esone tutorial shortly after they did the mission to determine alignments.

I went back and reread some pages and found this one:
http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-421/
It seems that esone placement matters as well since Kat told Danni to specifically hide the esone near her heart, maybe that allows it to have the secondary effect of absorbing one fatal attack. The text says “esone can absorb one hit. will dissolve after second hit” so I think this is the second hit we are seeing.

I wonder when Kat respawns if she’ll still have the chimera… maybe she can sick it on Bandit hah

No, it was blasted by one of the first of Bandit’s hits.

…well.

With a little help from Danny, Bandit’s plan worked?

Also, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeew. This is still not permanent.

Wait, so Danni still had her Esone after all? Was she lucky Herve’s attack didn’t hit it?

Also, why would everyone be mad at you? Because you spread 1 panel across 2 pages? XD
Heh, nah, I wasn’t mad, I just voiced an opinion and the majority of responses were in disagreement, anyway. Savor the scene for as long as you want. 🙂 I admit the scene looks like it requires splash pages.

I want to be like one of those future readers who get to read the whole scene at once. So, see you in a couple of weeks!

I’m not sure Danni did/does have her esone left, that was from Kat’s game overlay. I’m now worried Danni might have taken too many hits in the explosion and sacrificed herself for nothing…

That was definitely Danni, that first hit took Kat’s Esone

Or maybe not? It said “Esone Depleted No More Saves” on the last hit. I though that was a death, but maybe not?

I think Aneeka means Danni and Kat getting hurt in this after all >_<

Ah shoot there goes Kat’s 100%.

Does this mean if she had taken the hit head-on it would have been perma-death or was Danni’s save for naught?

Also that message is for both of them, right?

So he killed BOTH of them? Well, that won’t help his rankings whatsoever. And he might still lose to the other team.

You mean popularity rankings, right? He’s probably not going to lose to the other team, though Jane is still a factor…she’ll be kinda pissed now that it seems that Bandit was just kill-stealing instead of actually trying to keep the team together.

Nooooooo! Danni….

Wow.

If for “mad” you mean “in total awe”, yes we do.

I was going to be mad…
Untill I read that the NEXT death will be permanent. So this death isn’t. So I’m not mad, because this is just dramatic, nothing permanent 🙂

I know right. When I read the first part I was like O_O

But holy h***, was NOT expecting this, props to Aneeka for surprising the h*** out of me and keeping us guessing!

Did not expect that to happen. Bravo.

I adore that Kat’s attitude hasn’t really changed, she just doesn’t have the killer focus needed to time her hacking in surprising moments of stress, either because of Danni distracting her or flashbacks. It’s very sneaky! Without intending to be sneaky.

Should Easones be Esones, or is that a really weird plural form?

Surprised they’ve actually ‘died’ though. Pleasantly surprised to have not seen that coming.

Bandit you just ball of a**.

Can people leave a team after joining? I kind of want Kat and Danni to head off at this point.

Screw that noise.

I suspect that extra ‘a’ in the Esone second text box isn’t supposed to be there….

Yeah, I don’t see most viewers wanting to keep this team. Definitely a big petition drive situation. It kinda crosses the line between “interesting group dynamic” and “why the hell are those guys even allowed in the game anymore?”

Then again, given how much more destructive this attack was than the last one, Bandit might be a tree now. And in that case viewers might still want to see Kat and Danni dealing with just Jane. The interesting hidden dynamic there is that Jane has IRL reasons not to push to the absolute limit against Kat.

Well, holy crap… he was looking to kill everyone in a giant explosion that would definitely take out the tree? How is he not a tree by now? Is he a tree right now? I don’t think Danni is dead, but she’s definitely lost her Esone too. There were signs that she was just on the last legs of her life. The 100% is gone too, now, I bet, seeing as Danni died.

The dude is probably fine though.

Btw, side note Aneeka, you spelled it “Easone” in the second dialogue box”.

They’re both transparent, and Danni got hit by the other Demoli attack earlier, that hit her Esone. That’s why Kat took the first hit herself, because Danni didn’t have any saves left.

Actually, as it was explained, the Esone can “absorb” the first hit but will be dissolved on the second. It also counts as an extra life, dissolving if you die but you get to live for a bit longer.

So I think Danni is still in the game, just without an Esone, same as Kat.

But I also think that these faux deaths still count as deaths in terms of Erbana percentage. Not her own, I don’t think, but certainly Danni’s. I also doubt that an esone will help if you’re turned into a tree. Bandit should be a tree.

Yes on Danni being in the same state as Kat (dead with one respawn).

Losing Erbana points…that seems less certain. Kat was the one actually targeted by the attack, given game physics, that might mean she counts as having died ‘before’ Danni. I can’t see how a dead player can count as having anyone else die ‘in range’, that’d basically be like having a logged out player dinged for other players dying ‘around’ her.

Even if they count as dying simultaneously, still questionable whether it counts. Erbana’s can’t let anyone perish in a certain range, but both the phrasing and ethical implication presumes that a situation where the player was too dead to do anything about it doesn’t count.

It’s probably rendered moot. Kat can’t actually need the perfect 100% in gameplay terms, that would make a very bad game design, and Kleya designed this game (which is officially the best game evah). She needs it because she’s got a bit of a perfectionism hangup, which I totally get (actually, most my family probably gets this, we would always play video games that way). But she switched from never taking damage, she’ll just have to switch to some other ‘perfect’ measure. At this point it seems likely she’ll decide to be perfect by never letting Danni die again or something like that.

She’s definitely NOT going to decide to be perfectly nice to Bandit, unless he’s a tree…in which case ‘nice’ might well have a devious twist to it.

So trying to figure out– is that message for Danni or Kat or both?

Well… it’s the thought that counts.

Always throw your fireballs in groups of at least two^

Thinking about this team from the perspective of the viewers…

Literally the first thing Jane did when the team joined the game was try to kill her teammates, who immediately fled; then the team (sans Jane) is ambushed, which Kat foils in a hyper-competent manner… Only to immediately turn on her own teammate for reasons that I doubt the viewers sympathize with; then Kat goes on to pretty much solo an entire enemy team, only for the Bandit to turn on the team as well, killing one of them.

I wonder how this all affects their ratings? I imagine they come across like a bunch of really skilled players (plus Dude) who are all afflicted with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. That seems like something which would attract a lot of viewers, but I could also see how it might frustrate some, or come across as a gimmick when taken to this degree. I also wonder how it might affect viewer retention once they stop crossing each other constantly…

Pardon my memory, but where/when did Kat turn on her team mates? I mean, if you call trying to stop them from outright killing “turning on” someone, then I guess that fits, but even then…. Did I forget something?

Well, the other team had openly attacked them; Bandit was merely retaliating. With no real explanation of her actions, Kat attacked him and left him helpless. With him having broken free before the fight ended and having attempted to kill Kat afterwards, the viewers have no real way of knowing how far Kat would have taken things – was she just giving Bandit a metaphorical “time-out”? Was she going to do some sort of weird Esona thing to ensure he “be nice”? Was she going to attempt some form of extortion?

We know what Kat had planned, but all the viewers saw was an already strange player taking a rather extreme response towards a team member, while they were already dealing with a hostile team who had them outnumbered and seemed to be stronger. Without knowing what she had planned, it could very well have been interpreted in such terms.

I would assume that most people who watch the game have at least a working knowledge of the basics of each alignment, even though Erbana is less common. As such, they would know that it would hurt her alignment for somebody to die, and that she’d already incapacitated them, quite handily.

As such, Bandit’s actions would be the more inexplicable, since she simply incapacitated him, temporarily and without harming him, and he is putting his entire team at serious risk of permanent death. It is one thing to try to keep a high rating, but another to try to kill your teammates to do so.

Whether or not anyone would know that, Sandra told Paddy to publicize it, so certainly all their group’s viewers know.

And Bandit TOLD Kat, “then nicely stop me.” Which makes her entangle move a hilarious direct response to Bandit’s express imperative. In case anyone didn’t quite get it, Dude asked her what she was doing and she explained “He wasn’t going to be nice.”

THEN she ‘nicely’ (or at least non-lethally) incapacitates the entire opposing group with a little help from Dude and Danni.

And then, Bandit goes nuts and starts trying to kill anything he can, including his own team, AFTER the other group has clearly been completely neutralized. So basically anyone who was still unclear on why Kat might have decided to stop Bandit from ‘not being nice’ has a pretty clear answer as to what she was trying to stop him from doing…basically slaughtering people for no real reason.

Sure, there are going to be some viewers who take Bandit’s side and claim that killing everything in sight including half his own team after the opposing team has already clearly been defeated is valid because Erbana’s are dumb and shouldn’t be in the game, let alone winning. But he’s competing with Bloody MaryJane’s fan base on that, and they probably view it as kill stealing.

So, they all get two lives? In that case, this can only be good for their team ratings, because now there’s skin in the game. That makes them interesting. I’d think every team would find a way to make this happen as soon as possible.

How many people would watch the Tour de France if all the riders had training wheels and rode mopeds? That’s how I’d feel about a team with all their “extra lives” intact.

Similarly, maybe Kat’s 100% won’t be affected, since no one was really killed.

No, that death probably still counted. At least, that’s what Bandit was counting on and what Kat was afraid of. And if you remember, both of them know the Game mechanics perfectly well.

If Kat’s 100% survived, then it’s because she died too, thus being removed from the area for the purpose of calculating whether she allowed anyone to die inside her range (whatever that is).

What they don’t have now is Esones, and those are kinda necessary for Kat’s style of play. She can still do minor tricks with plants, but she doesn’t have access to specials. But for Danni that’s a pretty small handicap, all things considered.

The tree was definitely hit, too. Notice the bark peeling away in the lower left corner. So not only did Bandit kill two of his teammates (maybe three since we don’t know the location of Dude), he causes environmental damage. So one encounter in and Bandit is probably a tree, Kat and Danni are dead… Jane is AWOL and Dude is possibly dead.

I’m sure if the game viewers voted on who would be the last team member standing, Jane would NOT have gotten picked…

Jane would’ve been picked for the bet – if only because it’s what happened last time.

Haha, yea, but probably for different reasons.

Bandit still had a save on his Esone, probably.

Jane could still kill him, but for now he’s probably okay, and I doubt Bandit will continue attacking his own team until after mopping up the other team.

Oh – this works like a normal difficulty game. You have both “lives” AND “game overs”. Now that I know Bandit simply wanted to take a “life” from Kat… I’m not nearly as mad.

And now I’m anticipating The Dude’s special!

Good job, Bandit. Her 100% is down the tubes, so it’s a start. After this, start long-term planning on how to throw those b**tards who want to kill her off her tail. Keep that silly and overconfident hacker alive, she deserves a chance at redemption. Can’t have that if she’s dead or stuck in a box fixing everyone’s problems for them like a slave.

Hey, maybe her 100% aren’t down the drain after all.
I mean, maybe she is allowed to die herself.
And while she is dead others may die around her.
If she died before danni everything might be fine 😉

Yeah, I’d tend to imagine that anyone who dies while you are dead counts as being outside of your range.

Clever! I didn’t consider order of operations might mean she maintains her 100%. I’m also curious if her own death counts. Though I’d like to think Bandit thought that far ahead, but who knows.

This is actually the best result I can think of – no hacking, gets tenka off her trail, she’s not permadead. And she gets to be even more BFFs with Danni 😀

…wasn’t dude in that tree?

okay so what the h*** is bandits problem?? how do you explain that move to sponsors or fans?? my teammate was singlehandedly winning the fight for us so i blew her and my other teammate up?? this was all so stupid and the plan made zero sense. i really hope kat slaps the crap out of him. like a lot. and kicks him in the balls a bit

In reality, there will likely be some weird viewers that like his tactics. Remember, the only real detail we know about Demoli’s is that they make “everything go boom”- there is every possibility that he will still have plenty of fans, just the warped ones that enjoy backstabbing. In real life there are people that watch Aladdin to cheer for Jafar, that hope Little Red becomes dog-food, etc. (Horror movies are a classic example). Some people just enjoy betrayal/evil people doing evil things. (Example: My best friend cheers for Jigsaw in Saw, and refuses to watch the show on the parts where the victim escapes… she’s a little odd)

Kat’s first move in this fight was to incapacitate him. Demoli and Erbana are directly at odds with each other as far as keeping their alignment goes. His explanation can be just ‘I want to get to actually do stuff’

but he actually killed her

actually there not demoli as far as we know is just excessive destruction it does not require killing morto on the other hand does require killing
so morto and erbana are directly at odds

example kat could get all the orphans out of the orphanage and then bandit could burn it down.
no deaths and excessive destruction both keep high alignment

But think about it. Wanton destruction can be done two ways- with lethal OR non lethal results. From some viewers perspectives, it would be totally in character. Arsonists are a classic example.

I really want him to be a tree. I want him to have been so focused on hurting her, that he trapped himself as a tree, and would have to make a new character to get back in the game (if he can).

i would enjoy this greatly

Okay, after reading the comments and the page, I feel the need to say what the page shows, as there seems to be some confusion.

Kat is dead, as in DEAD, Permi-dead, no longer in the game. The first hit from bandit destroyed her esone, the second killed her.

Danni is not dead. The hit that killed Kat destroyed Danni’s esone, so the next blow to reduce her to or below 0hp will result in permi-death.

That is why Aneeka is saying we will be mad at her, because she killed Kat in the game, and Danni won’t have Kat there to protect her anymore, so she will be easy pray for Jane when she shows back up.

Respectfully, I think you’re 100% wrong. Look at the wording on page 502:
http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-502/

“Esone Hit!
No More Saves.
20% Health!”

Now compare that to the text in this comic:

“HP Depleted!
You lose an Esone!
You have died!”

“You have 0 Esones left.
Next Death will be permanent.”

It sounds to me like the first hit she took (on page 502) brought her down to 20% life. It very clearly doesn’t say anything about her dying, nor does it say anything about losing an Esone. This hit clearly says “You lose an Esone! You have died!”. The closest thing the hit on page 502 says is “No more saves”, which I don’t think means what you think it means.

Unless you are Aneeka, I don’t recommend stating your interpretation of the comic as fact. What you have, and what I have, are opinions and interpretations, and until proven one way or another by future comics or from Aneeka herself, that’s all we have.

Yea, I’ll have to go back into the archives and look at the esone tutorial page but it seems that esones can take a hit to prevent a one hit KO and if you end up dying after, you lose one. From what I remember both Danni’s and Kat’s esones were “hit” when they took the demoli attacks (Herb and Bandit’s first one) and this one just finished them off causing them to lose the esone but they are not permadead.

Sorry if it esones were already explained before.. I just really like talking about them haha. I think they are a really neat concept.

Well this is an awkward situation at best.

You’ll have fans who enjoy the whole boomfest, but probably lose more to the fact that this entire fight (while somewhat unique) is ultimately watching teenagers bicker over things as they turn on each other in dramatic fashion. Of course, without knowing the fanbase in their world, it is quite possible that this whole stunt has all but made matters worse.

As this is the very first time the team has been shown, all it has done is self-implode. While a few fans will stick to their guns, if this is anything like real life, losing and self-fighting doesn’t draw in a crowd, only reduce it. Jane was a wildcard, but unless bandit has a history of TK-ing his teammates in the first round, Tenka could easily get MORE interested in the afterfects of the fight. Why did he do it? What did this girl do to really get him to be that jealous of being beaten earlier on? If he’s going to be such a poor sport, why sponsor him?

Best case scenario, they ignore this and go for ratings. Logical scenario: He gets some of the spotlight off of Kat’s “fluke” score, but winds up getting a lot more on him instead. Worst case scenario: They watch him and Kat like hawks, knowing that she’s extremely good, and he is acting out of “character” and start investigating why….

Bandit has got a villain alignment, and Kat’s job as an Erbana would be to stop anything he’s doing. Unlike DnD, you don’t get a ‘for the greater good’ loophole of teaming up with villains here, it’s either Kat’s score or the Mortos’ and Demolis’ scores.

Nothing here is out of character.

It is still out of character to try to kill teammates, even as a villain, as evidenced by the dislike/fear showed to Jane and how people think she got booted from the game for killing teammates.

No, no, no. See, most Groups are actually formed by players deciding to be together. It’s unusual for teammates to kill each other because they have no reason to.

This Group was thrown together unwillingly by the Game Trials. The entire reason Kat got thrust into spotlight is her rivalry with Bandit, remember? Their shtick is that they ended up with an Erbana, a Morto and a Demoli in the same group, all three determined to keep their alignment.

This hasn’t happened before, yes, it’s unusual, but in their situation it’s -not- out of character for any of them.

Actually, based on the game trials, it is a regular occurrence for a player to be grouped with a bunch of strangers. This group happens to have more strangers added at a time than other groups, but it is very regular for teams to be formed with players that are not at all familiar with the rest of their team.

Despite this, killing of your teammates is still rare enough that when somebody kills multiple team members, the viewers think that is why the person was banned from the game.

I do remember the Game Trials, and what caused Kat to initially gain popularity. However, boiling it all down to her competing against Bandit, and not on the fact that she is able to design specials easily, is a serious error. Remember, the fans wanted to watch her design specials. That is one of the reasons they initially became her fans. Her facing Bandit caused people to notice her skills, but it wasn’t her fighting against Bandit, so much as the skills it takes to do so, that really made people like her.

Bandit has stated that them playing off of each other could boost ratings, but that was said on a private server, and not stated to the general public. As such, the public wouldn’t know that was “their shtick” other than knowing that team killing (and “being banned for it”) is Jane’s “shtick”.

As such, from the audience’s perspective, this would, still, be an out of character move for somebody like Bandit. This is even more so, since Jane lost popularity for killing teammates, and Bandit has been all about being as popular as possible. Not to mention, if he had just gone after the Erbana, it would be one thing, but he went after Danni, whose alignment lines up with his just fine.

That’s an interesting point, but as a Demoli Bandit probably can’t efficiently go after one specific person, they would seem to specialize in area-effect attacks and indiscriminate destruction.

That said, there is an entire group of clearly hostile players to eliminate, and while Bandit’s initial opening of also targeting Danni (and Dude) to attempt to prevent Kat from blocking his attack made sense to him, it probably didn’t make sense to most of his viewers (who were probably expecting him to be able to handle Kat without resorting to indiscriminate violence…or at least try).

Remember, the fans didn’t get to see Bandit’s failed attempts at Taming of the Shrew on the private server, but they will have been expecting those, since that (really obnoxious) aspect of his character design was highlighted far more than his alignment choice in the publicity generated before the game trials.

Since D&D was brought up, here’s the counterpoint: If demons and devils are both evil, then why is there a distinction?

Bandit, while so far seen as a rather explosive guy, has had some sort of logis to his attacks; He is more towards a “lawful” bent, from his dealing with jane to his use of children in the tutorial and others. Unlike Jane who deals with the “chaotic” nature of things.

And backstabbing in the middle of the fight, with little to no provocation seen by the viewers, is somewhat counter to his persona’s typical actions seen on screen. However “justified” his actions may be in his head, if you are a watcher who isn’t seeing the thought patterns. The Bandit is liked because in spite of his villainy, he’s calm, calculated, and snarky. None of which has been shown in his backstabbing. Instead of calculation, his face is all but emotion; he shows some line of thought, but more for short term gain (by eliminating a teammate) than long term deduction (doing it after she’s weakened by the fight against the others). Instead of snarky one liners during combat, he’s genuinely being quiet and trying to do anything but.

So “Evil” isn’t the issue I was somewhat piqued by.

I believe that the narrative purpose in D&D is to subvert the implication of a simple “good vs. evil” morality system, thus having multiple kinds of competing evil forces as well as both good and evil gods and different heavens for chaotic, lawful, and neutral alignments (where that is applied).

So in that sense, the objection makes sense. Yes, Bandit’s attacks on Kat and Danni are clearly ‘evil’, and Demoli is a villain alignment, but while Bandit is using Demoli attacks nothing else about this strategy would seem in-character to his fans.

From a narrative viewpoint, it might be best for Jake if Bandit ends up as a tree, because then he only has to explain this nonsense to his bosses, mainly Dr. Grace. And the explanation is simply “I was still suspicious of Kat and her motives for playing Erbana, so I decided to make sure.” Which works because Jake knows perfectly well that what’shername DEFINITELY would have hacked in that situation by pure REFLEX, the puzzling thing is how he ever managed to convince himself that she wouldn’t.

Given that the person who stopped Kat from hacking was Danni, by simply being genuinely nice to her, and Jake had zero idea that was going to happen, I’m not giving him mastermind cred for the outcome going in his favor. He’s more like Jimmy Olsen almost dying while trying to snap an impressive photo. Yeah it works out, just not thanks to him.

Obvious Quest Goal: Get new esones!

Ooooh. Now I’m thinking that Kat might give any single obvious thing to do to Danni as a quest. “Quest from player Kat: don’t die in this fight” “Quest from player Kat: give me that plant over there” “Quest from player Kat: find a new Esone” “Quest from player Kat: answer player Dude’s question”

like tutorials in video games that often go in quest form!

This prooobably won’t give her any XP, but it might help nudge her alignment in the needed way!

I admire your ability to move the story forward while keeping the characters true to themselves. You’ve established that Kat will go to almost any length to win, and while that’s slowly changing, it’s too early in her development to completely give that up. Jake still is doing what he thinks is right and isn’t holding back because the plot demands that Kat not be figured out yet. Having him make a bold move like killing Kat is both interesting and in tune with what we’ve learned of him. I like that you stopped Kat from revealing herself without forcing Kat to develop as a character too early by making what developments she’s made still save her through Danni. I like that the relationship she’s painstakingly built, one that we can assume she wouldn’t have bothered with previously, is what ends up protecting her here. It feels realistic and in line with the characters’ motivations, and also serves as a very important point/payoff for Kat, even if she doesn’t see it that way. Thank you!

So what I’m wondering is, what happens to Esones when the user is killed? Do the depleted Esones drop like treasure? The other team’s Kesti earlier said “Your Esone is so min-uh?” I think he meant he would get her Esone by killing her.

So are depleted Esones still useful, or do they need to be recharged or something, or are they just standard treasure (like gems or something)?

So does the monster Kat was controlling, despawn, run away, attack the person that attacked it’s master, or revert to uncontrolled monster status?

I honestly don’t think Bandit expected Kat to jump in front and they (2 or 3) to die. The lion she was on would save one target, and she didn’t have anything to save the other. He expected another (hacker) fix, if anything, not a martyr one. (which is probably more erbana points anyway… dying martyrs get miracles in many belief systems)

He expected her not to be able to save both, and LOSE, lose erbana points not her life. He really cn’t fathom thatbeing a hero is now a greater obsession than winning alone.

I’ve said this a dozen times, but Bandit is going to have his work cut out for him explaining his actions to both his team and his fans. He just turned traitor on them for no apparent reason. Nobody can read his thoughts, and while he can rationalize it all he wants in terms of ‘protecting her from discovery by Dr. Grace, et. all’, that’s not exactly a point he can bring up in public.

Looking back on it, it seems we take for granted that Bandit’s actions will be seen as strange by the viewers and that people will think its weird he is targetting part of their group…

But if you remember the beginning of the fight, Kat incapacitated him. Not only that but she incapacitated him to save the other team. It could very easily be argued that his attacks on her are justified as she is working at cross-purposes to him/them and initiated the hostilities against him when she incapacitated him.

I honestly think this is an important moment for Kleya! Like, she was clearly equating getting the right score with doing the right thing. And that would be very bad, considering her obsessive tendencies. This way she can develop a more complex understanding of what it means to be a hero, which she sorely needs.

I wouldn’t be too sure that Kleya doesn’t understand the difference between crafting a public appearance and actually being good…her ‘big bad’ is the person who denounced her as a monster and was believed because he was “a hero”. I’m basically certain that Deconstruct Me wasn’t a real group led by Kleya, and I’m almost certain that Tenka knew that perfectly well. I imagine Kleya can figure out that this means that “the hero” deliberately lied about her to destroy her credibility and incidentally (or perhaps as an intended result?) caused the deaths of most of the world’s competent programmers…in a society completely dependent on technology, especially after the geo-magnetic field became disrupted.

Okay, so basically I’m saying that Kleya DOES understand the difference between a public image and actual morality. What isn’t clear is what exactly she wants to do with her new public image. My guess is that she was able to get proof that someone in Tenka (probably the “Him” who is so obsessed with eliminating her) was the actual culprit behind the “hacker” attacks, which were actually carried out by people with authorized access, not hackers. But she needs to create a public persona to present that evidence that will seem credible in the eyes of the Citizens and Outsiders dependent on Tenka for survival. And this is her idea of how to craft it.

She knows that she can’t use her real skills to just help people, because those currently in authority will start breaking everything to stop her ‘hacking’, making everyone worse off, and blaming her for it. She can’t exactly just move into a City and work there, that means letting them identify her physically. So constructing a persona in LIfe and the Game are her only options for reaching people and gaining enough credibility to not be dismissed.

But it remains in question whether she actually has anything she needs people to believe, or just needs people to believe in her.

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 509&510