'Not A Villain' Webcomic - The crowd reacts to Kleya's decision.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 307

The crowd speaks!

51 Comments

Ooh…I don’t think this will end well…

Well, they did like her better when angry… XD

Definitely a case of getting what you asked for.

Just hope it doesn’t blow her cover.

Oh can’t wait to see what happens next. Hope it be awesome.

Aand Broken Teeth and Dad are the same person. Should have seen that one coming. Also, am I right in thinking Kleya is about to lose even more fans in the next page? Sandra definitely won’t be happy…

Lose some, gain some. I’m pretty sure there is a target audience for a pacifist route, and given that it’s both unpopular AND the hardest, they will all be Kleya’s (=

It’s true… they have the same tattoo in the arm! Now, guessing, is her father lying to cover himself or what?

Yeah, I’m very much sure that he’s trying to cover something there. As much as Kleya feels guilty about what happened, she also seems confused as to what started it, so I’m pretty sure Dad set her up.

Everyone who works at Tenka has that tattoo. Aneeka, am I right?

Sorry, that is not correct.

…and then she kills everyone, again!

I’m really loving how these pages have begun to show us an insight into Kleyo’s past and how she became a villain in the first place. And why she hates the idea of being popular as a villain.

She was encouraged to test the limits of her intelligence heedless of other people and their rules and wellbeing, and while striving towards that greatness, became a monster. As such, she has a look of great horror/despair in the first panel, essentially reliving that same push towards becoming a villain.

I look forward to the next strip to see what Kleya says, will she be mad and speak her mind, of will she try a softer approach?

I think the became a monster thing was incidental. She was trying to achieve a goal and there were unforeseen consequences. Of course we don’t know why there were such. She doesn’t and this story is being told from her perspective more or less. I think what we will find is there were things she was unaware of happening that made it all come about.

Pity them all if she Does decide to go evil sided again.

If Kleya is lucky, either Danni followed her out of the Game or Mina will show up to help get her out of there. But she’s probably not that lucky.

I wonder if there’s any way to make Dad seem sympathetic or likable to the readers after this, or even acceptable? He seems nearly as two-dimensional as Kleya’s sense of “good” and “bad” (not a coincidence, I suspect).

Idk, amoral villains can have their charm. I mean, Bandit programmed NPCs to destroy new players, is proud of it and you see how lots of readers love him. And it does seem like there are lots of greater things in play here. Doing that to his own daughter is what makes us hate him, but is that really enough to say he’s two-dimensional?

I wouldn’t want to personally play lame routes like ‘Erbana’, but I would like to see someone else do it. If she’s the only player doing it, she practically has a monopoly on the entire market.

Sandra just has to see the marketing opp here. Even if things won’t end well for Kleya.

Erbana is a cool route. Not power hungry.
Harder to code — going to have some compensation for the effort.

It seems to depend on how it’s played. If it’s tailored towards technical pacifism, the Kleya’s Specials are going to be quite useful.

“Lame”? Roping and riding the fendi was pretty awesome. Like Druids, that approach can be impressive. Control nature and the very world around you. Laugh at those who try and fail to alter it.

Agreed… a pacifist approach requires a lot of brainwork since most MMO’s are basically ‘see thing = kill thing and take its stuff’. So you need to get creative with problem solving, and I personally find someone using their wits to overcome an obstacle to be more entertaining than someone smashing it with a club,

TLDR: Clever tactics can make something more interesting to watch.

I personally LOVE this comic, but there is too many classic villian-turn-hero books out there. I hope she turns evil agein 🙂 I love dramatic stuff.

Good and evil are in the eyes of the beholder. If you’d like to see something where the heroes are the bad guys and the villains save the world, I’d recommend the book Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward, if you can find it.

Haters gonna hate.

Are you kidding? Since when have the good guys been praised from day one? It’s way more fun to see Kleya suffer for doing what she feels is the right thing.
Because if that gal wants to be a hero, she better pay up for being a villain.

Good and Evil aren’t necessarily the same as “Hero” and “Villain”

There are people who believe themselves to be the Hero in their own world view, but they are cast as the Villain by those who simply don’t share that world view (take the political system in just about every country as a clean example.)

Many TV shows have to use short-hand tropes for villains because we do not have time to explore the backstory. Only the Hero gets a backstory. Take for example the “Kim Possible” cartoon. We have some very clearly labeled Hero’s and Villains, but the villains are hardly competent (the only competent villain is Shego, the “henchman” to Dr.Drakken.) Then you have a TV show like “Lost Girl” or “Continuum” (both are Canadian shows) where the Villain roles are put out front right at the beginning, but nobody is clearly defined as good or evil. In the case of Continuum, the Hero is working for Law enforcement to prevent changes in the timeline… which depending on your point of view, is actually the Villain role of one who is interfering with the past.

In the case of NAV, the only short-hand villain is Bloody Mary. Everyone else does not have a clear agenda and may simply have taken the easiest route (or in the case of Danni, stumbled through it) they were familiar with. Only Kleya actually went out of her way to take the most pacifist route.

I can draw an analogy to one MMO game I’ve played. Mabinogi. At some point during the main storyline you can go “dark.” The storyline is somewhat muddled in the fact that you can become a paladin, or go dark knight, the latter is more powerful under certain situations so most of the players kinda just do it without a second thought. I’m one of the few players who opted not to, because that’s not my character. I don’t want to be “dark side.” Later in the game’s storyline this comes back during a “become a god” storyline. (Where you can only be aligned with Morrigan or Neamhain.)

Depending how you read between the lines, you were always the villain by virtue of opposing the gods.

Totally unrelated, but something about the characters. I think they should put a picture of their reality faces next to the life ones.

Like in the character page, but in-universe? That could make sense, but people aren’t going to look their best while living in a post-apocalyptic world, so I’m not sure many people would like that. It would also kinda defeat the whole purpose of the story, since Kleya would be recognized on the spot.

True

RL-grade graphics would also take a lot of computing power and bandwidth. And both can be very costly, it seems.

We should start an (in world) petition to demand Kat be a villain.

Well, knowing her, her specials are going to be the most bad**s thing anyone watching has seen…
…and none of them are going to be attack effects.

I will be a pacifist and kill everyone who doesn’t like it!

Oh wait…

Well, she could always put her opponents to Sleep. That’s always a pacifist thing. Too bad for them if they had to flap their wings to stay afloat though…

I kinda feel bad for Kleya. She’s trying so hard to not be a villain, but everyone pushing her to be one isn’t helping. 🙁 I think this is an interesting story. But I honestly don’t think I want to see Kleya as a villain, overused concept or not. Something happened before that made her a villain; at this point we don’t know what exactly it is. All we know is that it has something to do with hackers, it was very devastating, and it possibly lead to her mother’s death.

All we have are facts and hints. I’d like to see where it goes or if it’s even possible for Kleya to redeem herself, despite her efforts. Keep up the great work! ^^

We also don’t know if she was a villain in the first place, or if she just was cast into the role of one without her knowledge and acceptance.

I saw this coming. Every vocal person on the internet thinks they know better than everyone else and everything should be done their way. It wouldn’t be a problem except they somehow manage to make themselves louder and appear more numerous than they actually are.

“He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule.”
also from Beyond Good and Evil.

Oh-oh. First time I notice that Daddy and TV-guy have the same tattoo on the arm. Probably the same person? Is that what she meant with wanting her dad back? Back from “you’re a monster” to “you’re my great daughter”? And wonder if her dad is Dr. Grace…

I don’t think Dr.Grace would be her dad because bandit did mention that he had a son, but no daughter. And besides Kat never mentioned a brother either, and I doubt Grace would hunt his own daughter.

Maybe it’s time for Kleya to find an alternative public portal, or fake her own private one?

Whatever, hopefully she’ll stick to her guns and prove that she can take the heroic path, regardless of what the crowds think. After all, it’s likely at least part of the reason she took the Erbana route (apart from being mum’s favourite) is that it’s not very exciting, so fewer people would likely want to watch her and therefore take notes of her tactics / strategies – so both being more anonymous and minimising the chances of her using tactics / strategies that would connect her to her previous life.

I still think it would be useful for her to mention to her game group in private (i.e. on Sandra’s server) something to the effect of she did some (unspecified!) things in her past she regrets, and wants to dissociate herself from villany.

Once back in the game, she could also enhance her credentials by mentoring Danni – perhaps even they could be an Erbana pair? 🙂

But Danni was already cast as Morto, wasn’t she?

Yeah, but the alignment can change. As for mentioning her dark past, I still don’t get if she recognized Bandit or not, but even if she didn’t, mentioning she has a dark past to a known TENka employee would get her right in their radars, which wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do.

OK, so maybe it wouldn’t be wise for Kleya to say she has a dark past, but finding some excuse / lie for why she’s so desperate to be a hero / so afraid of being regarded as a villain might be useful…

Well that’d be fairly easy: say that she was an aspiring computer programmer who got caught in the anti-hacking riots/purges. This is why she is alone in a Miracle area, and is so very spooked at the idea of joining a City that she reacts almost violently to suggestions that she Immigrate.

It has the advantage of being (mostly) true.

Eh. If anything, this will be a great contrast when you think about it. On a team with Mary. A total pacifist. The internal conflict between her trying to steer stuff away from kill everything, and mary and the rest being all “lets kill everything” will be hilarious to watch.

Also, I would think it was more interesting to watch than “yeay, we’re so good, let’s do good deeds only!” gameplay. Then again, LiFe seems to be populated mainly by 12-14-yo airhead girls, counting the comments seen so far.

Personally, I’d rather watch someone go through the pacifist route. I mean, her 100% Erbana root shows how creative you’d have to be to not inflict harm. Whereas I’d love to watch an epic fight of skill, I’d at the same time love to see a person end a fight using wits. Unfortunately, pacifists get boiled down into people who talk others in to submission.

Also, I’m really kinda hoping, though she may not want it to happen, that at some point she snaps and says “You want a villain? I’ll show you a villain!” Of course, something tragic would have to happen and would cause her to realize her mistakes all over again.

Perfect song for Kleya: Viva La Vida!

Also, I notice a lot of you are saying that since Kleya got 100% percent and Erbana, that means she was completely Erbana in her actions. I think they are unrelated, judging by how the Dude was complaining about his score, and since it was less than 50%. But hey, I might be wrong.

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 307