‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 333

Referencing a bunch of scenes:

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She’s acting far too consistently to be insane. Try again, Jake.

That last panel has the look of a scene change or interruption. I’m just imagining the look on his face if the voice-controlled inventory system suddenly switches over and D (a.k.a. The Virus) announces: “Message from Mastermind to Jakey….” 😀

Except she’s not acting consistently from what he remembers her like. We’ve only seen her wanting to be good, but he remembers her as somebody who loved explosions, could assumedly have loved violence, and refused to lose no matter what. And now she’s being passive, avoiding hurting people, and has even lost fights. It’s a drastic change from who she was, not exactly consistent. Besides, Bloody Mary is insane, right? She’s certainly consistent, it seems.

I’m not at all convinced that Jane is insane. I suspect her whole act is a cover to obscure her identity in Reality. We’ve also never seen her L.i.F.e. persona. All we ever see is her staying in character for the Game.

Kleya’s actions as a child were consistent with one worldview, and her actions now are consistent with a different worldview. I think a big part of Jake’s hesitation in believing in the change is that he knows he wants to believe in that change.

Sanity is the ability to know and understand the norms of your culture. Thus you can be very sane but also be very unstable. That, I think, is how Jane is. Sane, but somehow not mentally stable.

Agreed. He is hoping she will “come back” in some way. Only way that can be is if she isn’t trying to destroy everything. So he is hoping the way she is acting now indicates she is trying to change for the better and not trying to trick them all.

Okay, so Jake was not a part of `that DM group’. He is such a good programmer and he had direct links to Kleya, which suggests that they would have tried to recruit him. If this is the case, then I why did he turn them down? Is he as much as a rule follower as has been suggested?

This also makes me wonder, did any other members of the DM group survive? If so, are they secretly trying to regroup? Is Saisuke its new temporary leader and is he searching for Kleya so that she can retake her rightful place as leader so that they can take over the world?

He’s a good, kind person, as far as I can tell. I doubt he would want anything to do with a group of murderers. I expect the only reason he’s protecting Kleya is because, deep down, he doesn’t believe she’s responsible for what happened. I’m not so sure she is, either. There have been a lot of things indicating she was responsible, and that she lead DM, but is there any proof that it’s actually true?

Good point. Well according to the TV shown on page 304, the leader of the hackers is Kleya. Now from personal experience whenever I recall a memory where I was falsely accused, I tend to think how could they say that; yet Kleya did not think anything like that. In fact she was using the memory to understand how her own action lead to the mess that she is in, suggesting that she must partially agree with what the man on the TV said.

Of course I am bordering on the limit on how much we can analyse a fictional character, so it is possible I could be wrong.

Also a good point. But remember that there are such things as internalized false confessions. And also that they’re more probable in highly stressful situations like, say, living through and being blamed for a technological apocalypse.

it is quite possible that she actually is responsible, but if she did cause it then I think it’s more of an accident that “snapped off” a virtual lynch pin causing some sort of cascade failure and try as she might she wasn’t able to stop or slow down the damage, people see her working on the things that are getting progressively worse and think she’s in there breaking things when in fact she could of been trying to fix them.

Consider she isn’t even a legal adult yet. So she was even younger when the events that lead up the The End. She may be pretty smart, but it seems to me she was also kinda sheltered. So I suspect she was the public face of DM, and someone who added alot to whatever their campaign was, but maybe not really making all the decisions. In summery, I suspect she was duped and found out too late. But like alot of people in such situations she blames herself.

It may be that someone else manipulated Kleya into causing all of that damage. She doesn’t seem to understand the difference between causing damage in the game and causing damage in real life. This points to the idea that while she was causing all that damage as the Deconstruct Me leader, she still thought she was playing the game. I don’t see that happening by accident and I strongly suspect that if that were the case, someone manipulated the computer systems so that she would do the damage and end up as the scapegoat.

Very good point! That could very well be how she could cause quite alot of havoc but not do so from the point of deliberate malice.

I guess as the previous page showed, he doesn’t really consider asking her a viable option.

I have to say, these last few pages have been visually awesome. Aneeka just keeps getting better. The lighting, the textures, the shading, the panel layout . . . And the story, oh G-d the story.

If I were Jake, I probably would have dropped the idea that Kat was HER by now. Luckily, I’m not. The plot would be considerably less intersting.

Wish? Did somebody say wish?

Just repeat after me!
Mecca Lecca hi, mecca hiney ho!

She’s not insane, she could do way worse way more often, and there is reason behind all of her reactions so far. She may of temporally snapped before when she was put under a whole ton of pressure that could of been a result of being in the group and events that where unfolding at the time, which caused her to react in a way she wouldn’t of if she wasn’t under so much pressure and that one stress induced mistake broke off the lynch pin in a chain reaction she couldn’t stop.. I can so relate to the situation where your always being told it’s good to learn and expand and be chivalrous. So you strive to do them all because it feels good to be pushing your limit, and to get the cheers and think your helping out others. but doing so blindly really can make you appear to be overly ambitious and want to take things from other people who see you as a threat not because you’ve been saying you want their things or position or anything else of theirs for that matter. you could be perfectly happy where you are and trying to tell other people that. but if your to good to, helpful, to involved they won’t believe you instead they will want to get rid of you before you take over as to them that is your goal, despite what your real goal actually is to them your goal is to take over their spot, their privilege, their spotlight and they can’t let you succeed at that goal so they attack first though to them it’s not the first move you already threatened them when you got to be good enough to that you might be able to grab at their spot if you wanted it and you gotta want it as much as they do right? then you being blindsided by their attack because your focus was not on them but on improving things for yourself and others you then respond to their attack best you can and it all goes downhill from there and you didn’t have to do a single thing wrong or have any ill intent all all…..

I think her reaction to the crowd jeering her about not wanting to play the villain role and her reaction to it, then her reaction to how she reacted means she’s not doing these things to be evil, it’s more like a porcupine shooting quills or skunk shooting musk they aren’t doing it maliciously they are simply defending themselves.

That man on the TV accusing Kleya-remember that man looked awfully like her dad, and we were speculating then that she has been framed. She can’t stand him now. She feels betrayed. He betrayed her mom somehow, and her mom is dead. He’s looking for Kleya now. It says something very healthy about Kleya that after everything she still wants to rejoin people instead of sitting by herself hating everybody, which, believe me, people, it is too easy to do for a lot less reason.

Yep. Even if she did do that and was truly – “She wants to never do that again” is enough for me to forgive her and cheer for her.
*whispers vriska serket vriska serket vriska serket*
*not that i suggest kleya is like her but they have the wish for redemption thing in common*
*tho kleya seems to be a lot better at it, she started where vriska is only recently hinting to want to get*

Here’s my 2p worth of speculation…

We don’t know what the purpose of Deconstruct Me was – maybe they were an anti-authoritarian hacker group. However, given the mechas were largely responsible for the carnage, maybe Deconstruct Me hacked into their control system and something went wrong. Very wrong. However, before they could attempt to reverse the damage, the earth’s geomagnetic field went haywire, which would probably have screwed up control radio signals, and (possibly due to the hacking) the mechas didn’t shut down in the absence of orders. As Kleya was the leader of Deconstruct Me and was probably assumed to be one of the world’s top IT people (remember, the VR I/O interface she wears was heavily customised by her), she naturally got the blame. It’s quite likely it was one of the mechas that killed her mother, rather than Kleya deliberately setting out to murder her. It’s evident Kleya has a lot of affection for her mother (in-game colour scheme, the Kido model her computer system presents as the device user-agent, the route she took in the qualifying round).

Jake’s extremely unlikely to get any straight answers about Kleya’s past if he talks to her, but he may be able to glean some vague clues if he asks her about her current playing style. I think he’s fairly open-minded about her – just as her current playing style doesn’t tally with the Kleya he once knew, the state propaganda about her involvement in the carnage (and killing her mother) doesn’t either. He wants to hear Kleya’s version of events and make up his own mind – but of course for various reasons he can’t come out and ask her directly.

The geomagnetic field is not capable of confusing any other technology than a compass, no more so than it can be hacked. If it was eliminated, which seems to be impossible, the solar wind might make wireless communication (radio signals of varying variety) perform a bit worse but I think even that effect would be negligible. We are able to communicate by radio links throughout the solar system, and as far as I know it’s not even especially challenging.

Have we considered that the rampaging mechas and cars and what not, as well as the hacker hunts, may have preceded the supervolcanoes and whatever made up “The Ending” by a fair bit? Seeing as they never did catch Kleya, even if the natural disaster came a year after the hacker hunts they could still blame it on her.

I love the last panel! Well done.

So apparently being nice = insane >:l he doesn’t even once consider that she might have changed or at least be trying to

I’m upset that he doesnt underst and that they got it all mesed up, based on what I read… she had nothing to do with the actual war-like stuff… did they not even investigate? like… at all?

It would be pretty hard to investigate someone in a world that basically just had undergone an appocalypse. Even after it ended, if you notice, the cities are struggling to provide for themselves, which would definitely increase the odds that they would just blame a radical group, rather than investigating. Having a definite person to hate would also allow the cities some leeway in providing for their citizens, ie saying you are using resources to find Kleya when you actually just don’t have them. This is what I believe at least.

I find it rather telling that the one thing he doesn’t consider is her trying to be a hero.

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 333