‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 442

Colors by Audrey. Everything else is by me.

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75 Comments

So, how is eating a smoke demon not killing it?

Maybe it just seals it inside and kat can let it out later?

Did she kill it out did the plant eat it? It’s a fine distinction.

Demon not equal to a person (or natural), therefore exempt.

Maybe it’s not a living thing, but an attack? Absorb the attack, nullify any lasting effects (poison, slowed down, stunned, etc.), let the team do some damage, but prevent any kill-shots…

In many stories and games, healers are usually at odds with the undead and demons. So maybe she is actually expected to kill it in some way. Her duty is to protect life, which means destroying the not-alive things that endanger life.

If the plant isn’t a summoned minion but actually an enhanced (and controlled) plant which already existed by itself it probably counts as the plant killing the “demon”, not kat. (Games with pacifist rules/routes usually have exploits like these, no reason to think this would be an exception).
Could also be that the “demon” isn’t considered alive, therefore destroying it isn’t killing anything.
Who says it’s dead now anyway? Maybe she just trapped it.
Or maybe it was assimilated and converted to… energy? Mana?
Maybe assimilating doesn’t count as killing.
Maybe she also just forced it to takeover the plant which will revert to its natural state, therefore making the “demon” powerless and trapped inside a plant.

Usually, yes, but the wording for Erbana closes the easy loopholes.
The Erbana requirement does not state that the herbalist can’t kill anyone, -but that they not let anyone die near them.-
If they accidentally stumble into a battlefield during a war they might lose their entire percentage, even without being responsible for a single death.

The question at that point is in the definition of “anyone”, which in context of the game may imply only sentient creatures with a sense of personhood, or may imply only PCs, or may be defined in any number of ways… It doesn’t say she can’t let “anything” die…

I guess this falls under the heading of “you’d be surprised what you can live through.”

i think it is more like purification…

Oh my gosh what is that? Is that a special from another PC?

Go Kat! That sure will improve the ratings of your Erbana route.

I seeeee… first there’s a Mean Eater, then something Mean comes along and gets Eaten. O_O

Eatin dat meanness

Now we now what the “mean” stands for. It eats the evil. Great!

Panel 1: GRAAAAAAAAARRRFFLLLLE

Panel 2: *SHIMMER* [Shimmer is a sound effect, okay guys?]

Panel 3: SHLUUUUUUUUURP

Panel 1: SHHHHHHOOOOOOOM

The other two panels I agree completely with Fire Hazard.

All good sounds, but for panel 3: NYOM NYOM NYAM

I like it as a silent page.

I think maybe a “zzzZZZZZHHHH” for panel 2 and “SHOOOooomm…” for panel 3. Panel 1 may not need anything.
My intent is for it to sound kinda like a vacuum cleaner sucking it up.

Hoo, a sealing plant? Does it drain the sealed person/object of HP and allow it to be transferred to others?

nomnomnom!

*hummmmm* as the flower appears?
*Screeeeeeee!* from the cloud-thingy as it charges in?
*zhwommm* from the flower as it absorbs the mean and eats it?

I like that

I like it silent.

Om nom nom nom

Heh. I’m beginning to think Erbana might be less “Peace and Love” than I thought.
Unless that was an attack and not a wild animal.

Definitely an attack, since Kat has a special that avoids random animal attacks.

Interesting. What was that?

I imagine a series of magical girl bubbles/bells sounds for the flower and maybe a crescendo high keening for the bloody one. And when they collide I imagined the sound would be like those air guns with the quick burst of air and the high keening dies out or quickly ends as it is devoured.

I hope some of that makes sense. >.>

Great comic!

Tell it to the Plant!

I’m thinking:

Panel 1: (screech) or (Howl)

P2: Some sort of deep ohm or hum sound.

P3: (Screech is abruptly cut off) (Deep humming gets more intense)

More like a giant plant sized hoover sound with a nice jingle when finished…

Om nom nom, best special

I’m thinking “Hoooooowaaaaaaa.”

“Sluuuuurrrrp…. *belch*” followed by a satisfied smirk 😛

Good g-d, what was that thing? Another player’s special? Ooooh, maybe mean eater is like a special dispeller. It’s obviously not Jane, and Kat said beasts can’t attack them, so I guess it’s another player? They did seem worried about that, and I guess it IS a villain island.

Wait, where was THAT thing coming from?!
Actually, wait, what the h*** IS that thing?!
And just how awesome is Kat’s radar to not only know it was coming, but have time to swap out Specials to deal with it?

(Wait, is this first, or just has nothing else been approved yet? First time I’ve seen nothing there, anyway…)
(PS: Only “sound effect” I can think of is “Oh snap!” But I suck at sound effects. Maybe some kind of sucking noise for panel 3?)

…hm. This does not look like Jane.

Maybe this flower is a Special canceller?

A sound effect for the middle/last panel might be a sort of sucking sound.

Maybe a grinding noise for the flower eating the… it?

Why do I get the feeling that Kat’s special somehow removes the ability for an enemy to use specials? That may be an attack, or it may be a visual representation of what her special is doing.

In other news, awesome has a new definition.

I’m sure confuzzied. The Mean that got eaten seemed to have red eyes.

You managed to make the flower look angry somehow.

This maybe might come in handy:
http://writtensound.com/index.php?term=a_z

It’s an onomatopoeia dictionary! Maybe not as organized as you might like but there’s a lot of stuff there that might be helpful?

My recommendations:
Panel 1: Foom!
Panel 2: gsssshhHHHHaa!
Panel 3: SHhhhhoon or Fwish! *cracklecracklecrackle* (for the magical fireworks aura) Woosh would also work.

Hopefully that helps?

Sweet. I’m liking that crackle idea for panels 2 and 3.

I have to second other’s thoughts. It looks to me like a special was just eaten. I had suggested earlier it may not be an attack special, I should have followed up on what the most logical non-attack would be. Defending against specials is a great defensive ability, sense specials seem to be overly powerful to the point of game breaking in this game. In fact it’s *too* powerful by itself. I wonder if it will block her allies specials as well. That would help make it less game breaking, while protecting her erbana status. plus I can totally see Dude being the one to discover that. With the big deal he makes about needing his specials I assume he fights exclusively with them, so he would be the first to use one; and the best comedy relief character to overreact to discovering it won’t work; plus it would further hold off the reveal on how powerful he is when his specials work (I’m betting he is actually nastily powerful with specials).

I like where that’s going, but I’m thinking that it more likely just cancels a single special.

Well… I distinctly remember a “no random attacks” line from earlier (I took that to be no random encounters), which would seem to imply this is something else.

I don’t think that this was a random attack.
In the previous page before last, Kat notices a group of Esones and then something else as well. They had just been discussing how it was unlikely to find Esones in that area because it had been picked over so much. This may be a NON-random attack that is tied to the group of Esones at that location.

Not sure why you say it was a group of Esones… looks more to me like she noticed someone spying on them from a set of bushes…

What did I miss?

I actually think silence fits it. It’s a plant, they aren’t known to be noisy. Just a soft eerie rustling maybe.

Similar to Dagda; Shhluuurp!

Wha
How
But
No random attacks?..

Loads of reasons, two being:

1. Scripted attack, or something similar, like moving mobs and such.
2. It’s a player special.

Also, silent is fine. Sounds will ruin it. And sound effects don’t actually need to neccessarily be written in letters if there is an another way to imply them.

I wonder two things right now.

1. If D clued Kleya in to that attack, or if we just saw his perspective to switch out “Ha!” for “Mean Eater.”
2. If that was Jane.

Non nom nom!
Munch munch munch!

Urp!

Excuse me.

Well! It looks like that mean eater has a mean appetite!

the first sound that came to my mind, was the sound of a flushing toilet, or the sound of a sucking train-toilet, for panel 3 that is. But, no idea how to write this sound down…

I could see that.

Personally I like it the way it is. I don’t think it really needs sound effects.

When the plant is eating the mean, Omn <3 Nom nom nom <3 nom, but a lot of them really tiny in a curly script with lots and lots of cute hearts. Since she has someone else designing her graphics…

I’m loving that.

A good sound effect might be “nom” or “slurp”

Ok, I guess this is Jane who just doesn’t know when to quit. I expect that her Morto points went up all the way to 100% when she killed the squirrels, thus unlocking this Special. Otherwise (i.e. if killing squirrels doesn’t raise her stat) I’d expect her to lose all of her alignment quickly if she sticks around Kat.

Also at some point the people watching Kat have to realize that her reflexes are WAY too fast. That just *has* to backfire at some point.

As for the sounds: I read through the comments and my favorites are
panel 2: SCREEEEE (but I’d want to have that sound mean that the plant is screeching at the monster like a harpy)
panel 3: shlurrrrp would be realistic, but nom nom nom would be fun.
In panel 1, a whooosh would be just fine. Or a growl maybe.

You could have sound effects from both sides battling it out and have the “demon’s” sound effects get engulfed by Mean Eater’s sound effects.

Here’s what I thinks:
A hint 2 pages ago indicates this might be a “Chaos Mist”. As such, it wouldn’t be a living thing, but an element that seeks out living things… basically animated mean-ness. It only has a “face” because it’s a game… and most games give such things a recognizable form for the sake of the players. As an Erbana, Kat is required to protect life around her, meaning she would stop the Chaos Mist any way she can. The flower being a “Mean Eater” would absorb the mist, use it as nutrient and flourish, which would also be a score for an Erbana.

Or if the Chaos Mist is a type of creature… it could be that all the flower eats is the “mean”… leaving the Mist itself unharmed and considerably nicer. Could be a bit of both. Speculating is such fun, eh? 😀

What I’m wondering is when the other players will start wondering how she knew the thing was coming. “Hey Kat, how did you know that thing was coming?” “Yeah Kat, how did you know that thing was coming?” “Uh… I didn’t, I was just looking at my pretty flower?”

Actually, Snoots, Chaos Mists, is what the group was floating through in the tutorial.

SFX: SHLLLLOOOOORRP *gulp*

😀 yummy~

I’m surprised. So many comments and no one suggested “Feed me Seymour!”

The late lord Partchettgave a discription of what he thought the sound of light would be if it made one, prehaps the opesid of that?

For sounds:
Panel 1 screams of the damned following along behind it (‘Dark Holy’ from final fantasy tactics for reference)
Panel 2 teeth coming out and gnashing.
Panel 3 one very large chomp.

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 442