‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 359

Psst, Danni, you're supposed to be helping Kleya, not making it worse.

Happy 2015 everyone!!! Thanks to all who read my webcomic!

It's been five years since I made the New Year Resolution to buckle down and launch NAV. It's kind of surreal to see how far I've come since then. Here's what I had hoped for back in 2010:

Launch NAV (check!)
Find readers who would like my webcomic (check! And I've even met them at cons! You guys really exist. So cool!!)
Improve art skills to awesomeness!! (hmm...debatable I guess; how do you quantify awesomeness?! (note to self: make easier to achieve goals. lol) but they're definitely better than when I started, so almost check!)
Make a living off of it by year 3 (yeah... I was reaching for the stars on that one but hey, dreaming big is fun! And technically I reached it if living meant "surviving" which is super cool that I actually have readers willing to buy my story and support me. Thank you thank you!)

It's pretty cool to see how far I've come and I can't wait to see where I'll end up by the end of this year. I've got big plans, too, like getting a 3 month buffer (I'm at 2.5 months right now; Li.F.e. pages are sooooo much easier to do now), a Kickstarter in March/April for Volume 3, finishing my Chaos Gods series (it got sidelined during the overwhelming Reality section but I'm back on it!) and producing an illustrated hardcover version, and getting more novels drafted (I have way too many stories in my head; they need to get out!). I also would love to start drafting a possible Visual Novel featuring Annie and exploring L.i.F.e. but I may already have too much on my plate and not enough time for that. Sigh...

Still, I'm super happy I gathered the courage to start this webcomic. Thanks again to everyone who reads my comic, who views the ads, who shares NAV with others, who leaves comments, and who supports me via my AneekaChannel or by Patreon (just launched). Thanks so much for liking my story and coming back to read more. I'm so grateful to be able to share this story with people who love it!

Thank you so much again! And I hope you all have an amazing 2015!!

Oh, and I updated the vote incentive, inspired by panel 3 😀

56 Comments

I love the first panel.. Though it did scare me a little…

Happy New Year to you, Aneeka! And I wish you many more!! I hope your Christmas was also nice.

Nice page here, and I rather like the first panel. It fits the text very well.
You’re right about panel three looking good. I also like the transition of feeling between panels two and three, and again between panels four and five. Good job!

Christmas was great! Thanks for the well wishes and comments 😀

congrats on 5 years.

I like panel 1. The whole hacker vision thing is neat looking.

“•Improve art skills to awesomeness!! (hmm…debatable I guess; how do you quantify awesomeness?! ”

It’s hard to say. Art has improved a lot. Some of the reality stuff is pretty gorgeous. Important to not get too caught up as well though. Some people just can’t find a happy medium between good art and reasonable work progress.

“I’ve got big plans, too, like getting a 3 month buffer (I’m at 2.5 months ”

Wow, I had no idea you were that far ahead. Congrats on getting.. like 20 or so pages(?) ahead. It’s not an easy thing to manage. I’m sure you most have put in some long hours the last few months.

“Visual Novel featuring Annie and exploring L.i.F.e”

Nooo. Art for visual novels sucks. It’s so static looking. Getting those single poses with the face changing from time to time. I know that it can occasionally come up with interesting things but most of the time it’s so boring.

I personally think it looks better if you do it as an illustrated novel. Just write and have a picture or two per scene.

Art: Aw, thanks!
Buffer: Been working on it since October. Having no buffer through most of 2014 was waaaaay too stressful. I used to keep it at 6 weeks but Reality pages burn through that too fast. I’m hoping a 3 month buffer will last longer during another Reality section. Also, it gives me more freedom to focus on other stuff.
Visual Novel: I like how VNs allow for multiple endings and you can incorporate RPG elements into it which is what I’m hoping to do, so it shouldn’t be a straight up illustrated novel on a computer screen.

ooh, I can’t wait for that visual novel to come out that sounds like it would be great fun. And I would agree on the artwork it is quite good, and 5 years is on this is quite the achievement that you haven’t run out of plot or time before now.

Ha, no need to fear of running out of plot. We’ve barely tipped our toes into the main plot.

EEEEE YES I HOPED FOR THAT
yesyesyes so much stuff ahead!!!

Yes that is good, I’ve seen more then a few series that hat a lot of plot potential die off due to running out of plot ideas. but I can see by the way things have been going that you do have a nice master plan that we all get to enjoy.

Indeed good news! =D

Too many of my favourite webcomics have recently said they’re nearing the end or at least well over halfway. =(

Aneeka, thank YOU for sharing this story with us!

Sadly she’s right. People say it all the time, and it is b.s. Most people want you to be someone else, who they want you to be, not yourself. On the other hand you can’t try to be a different person for everybody, just won’t work. So, screw ’em. Be who you want to be, do what you think is right, and don’t worry about what other people want.

Of course if you decide that being you is being an a-hole, well that has consequences as well.

yea I’ve been told that plenty of times, one of the least useful things ever. I certainly get there are times that a person can over-think what needs to be done and mess things up. but really those times are way more rare then the use of that phrase is. Thing is it’s almost always said by someone who was stuck with you long enough to get used to your quarks and started to like you kinda by default. but it does nothing to help when your trying to go out and meet people as you still are left with no idea of how to convince anyone who isn’t stuck with you that it’s worth putting out the effort to get to know you.

as for the “Psst, Danni, you’re supposed to be helping Kleya, not making it worse.”

I do believe she is actually helping, you know the phrase “misery loves company” and that’s what’s going on here, dani’s admission that she’s not doing any better at making people like her then Kleya is despite her honestly tying is going to help, at least they know they got someone who they don’t have to always pretend they know what they are doing around, as they both know they don’t. And that can be very powerful thing.

I agree too, at least with the basic idea: Most people won’t like you just for being yourself. And being who they want you to be, will get those people to like you after all, if you pretend really well.

But the problem is, the point of saying “be yourself” is that there is a good reason it is still what you should do: what you need to do, for long term happiness, is find people who do like you when you’re being yourself, at a sustainable level of effort to restrain your worst impulses. Because if you don’t, what you end up with is people who like what you are pretending to be, which is great at first (“people like me, finally!”) but ends up miserable, as either you end up living in fear they’ll discover the truth, or losing everyone when they find out you aren’t what you were pretending (hint: it’s a form of betrayal).

So, even though most people probably won’t like you when you are being yourself, you still have to be yourself and keep searching for those few people who will like you for yourself; the people who you really want to be kind to, if you’re a mean person; the people who find your weird habits endearing instead of annoying; the people who think it’s cool that you are repenting the mass destruction you wrought; the few who don’t care at all about whatever makes you hard to like Then when you find them, you’ll be able to have happiness that isn’t a lie.

I get where your coming from on that. It is impossible to put out complete lies about yourself as they will eventually be reviled or at least the stress that they will at some point be will drive you insane. Neither one is worth it.
Still it doesn’t help when your in a big crowd of people, don’t know a single one or have any Idea on how to meet anyone there. especially hard when you see others who are able to fit right in to almost any crowd and they are being themselves. You know this because you know them well heck they where the ones you where asking for advice from works great for them. so your back at square 1

Good post, DanaA.

Visual Novel sounds really nice. Do you mean something that looks like all those dating games that are floating around the internet? Like Seasons of the Sakura, but without adult stuff of course, but maybe with some choices for the player, stuff to buy and different endings? I’d prefer it to be more than a pure novel like Fate/Stay Night, even if there are just some minor choices.

Ha, there wouldn’t be any “dating game” to it, but I’d definitely like it to have some RPG elements to it plus different endings. The idea is you have to find ways to get Annie food to keep her alive, explore L.i.F.e., make friends/enemies, and help her to not mentally digress back to a blob (yep, I’d like one of the bad endings to be where she goes delusional and thinks she’s a blob again :D).

Ooh, sounds fun! What program will you use?

I’m eying Ren’Py since it seems the most versatile. I have yet to start working with it, though, so it might change.

Well, I hate to be this guy, but in panel one you’ve got it as unlikeable, and in panel two it’s written as unlikable. *shrugs* Also: can’t wait to read book 3 of the chaos gods series!

Haha, so I did! But google has failed me and won’t tell me which one is the correct version. Anyone else know?

Unlikable and unlikeable are both accepted spellings. ‘Unlikable’ is more consistent with the english rule set, so some say it naturally ‘looks better’. I suggest using it.

Also-In panel one, I think you mean utterly, not utterably.
The first means ‘completely’ or ‘to the last part’.
Both use the root word ‘utter’ which can be an adjective or a verb. Adjective form means the above, verb means ‘to make sound’ or more commonly used as ‘to speak’. In this case you want the adjective. Utterly. Utterably would suggest ‘possible to utter/say’ rather than ‘completely’ or ‘to the last part’.

Love the comic!
Oh, and all you guys SHE HAS A PATREON ACCOUNT NOW! =)
T~

Oh, thanks! And I did mean utterly, d’oh! They’ve all been fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out!

Keep up the great work!
Have you considered doing a Patreon?
I think you definitely should 🙂

Haha, apparently I didn’t make it obvious enough? I just launched one. Now you can tell everyone that I have one.

Whaaaaaaat?
You’re not evil! Just look at the title! It is clearly called “NOT A villain.”
And if you’re not a villain you can’t be evil!

People can be evil in small ways, like antiheroes. Someone could seem evil, but still be one of the ‘good guys’, or vice versa. Plus there’s a lot of perspective that goes into it. Kleya was basically brainwashed into thinking she’s evil, and can’t let it go, but if she’s so worried about it, she’s not evil or a villain. Villains are almost always unrepentant, and the ones that reform usually weren’t evil in the first place. Evil people don’t care about others, which Kleya does. She’s neither evil nor a villain, but it’s possible to be evil and a villain or evil and not a villain or any other possible permutation. and don’t even get me started on undercover agents…

Kleya has a very childlike idea of what good and evil is. She thinks heroes make things better and villians make them worse and the world won’t let good people do bad things or vice versa. Never said directly but if you look back over all of Kleya’s reactions you realize that line of thought is how she thinks. Part of what is stressing her out is she is continuing to run into the real world where that isn’t true and doesn’t recognize why that is.

On the upside she is showing she actually has alot of moral fiber. Downside is she is trying to deal with a large personality flaw(her anger) as well as past negitive training by herself. We have already seen the result. She can’t figure out how to retrain herself fast enough to not screw up in major ways. Maybe this is where the friendship with Danni will come in and do Kleya some good. Help keep her from tipping over the edge and doing something she regrets.

I believe I have commented this before, but you have reached a great deal with NAV. Because of a whole lot of reasons, this is by far my favorite webcomic. So, my thanks to that day, 5 years ago, on which you made your new years resolution. And thank you, for keeping to this project.

Aw, thanks. That means the world to me 😳

It’s unlikely Kleya will ever openly say something to the effect of “Oh, by the way, I was the leader of Deconstruct.me, I killed my mum and am widely suspected to have caused The Ending” – but as here, she’ll probably give vague hints to various different people, and IFF (if and only if) they collaborated could they get close to determining who she was “before”.

I expect Danni might say something to the effect of having to play to people’s expectations of you (at least to a certain extent, and in public) – which while sound advice for many, won’t exactly be music to Kleya’s ears.

Meanwhile, even if her abilities were known, there’s not much Kleya can do about Danni’s Reality situation other than giving her intensive Game coaching and possibly arranging a meeting with Sandra (probably on Sandra’s server to minimise the chances of third parties listening in) to see if their Game sponsor has any bright ideas (other than staying in The Game as long as possible!)

On the other hand, it may be possible for Kleya to use her skills for good by eventually arranging to perform software maintenance for Sandra’s city remotely (surely there have got to be some people left in the world who know how to set up a secure VPN?) – but that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.

Back to Danni, and while the University is where she last went to dance when she thought her (Reality) time was up, her language suggests that this visit was more to get away from the crowds and have a dance before a (hopefully temporary) disconnection from LiFe (although given the attitudes of her City, every disconnection may turn out to be the final one since they’re very eager to pull the plug).

Really, all Danni has to say here is, “for what it’s worth, I like you.” (As much as she likes anyone, I think.) If Kleya really wants to push the point, she could ask, “What if I used to be a hacker?” We already know Danni hates hackers. She could have a fine noble moment and say, “well, as long as you don’t do it anymore…”

Which actually won’t help that much, because Kleya is still hacking….

I’m sure whatever Aneeka has written will be more interesting. 🙂

I like the idea of a VN for Annie. And I think your art has improved tremendously. As for not making a living at it… this isn’t a good economy for artists (or anyone else). 🙁

It’s hard to make a living at webcomics in the first place. Kind of like aspiring to be a famous actor: many people want it, but few get it. But hey, it’s always worth trying 😀

There are deaths and then there are deaths. There are the big deaths of the body…but what of the little deaths of the spirit? Sometimes you gotta know when chasing the dream is worth the pain even if you fail. Hats off to you for chasing the dream Aneeka. May you continue to shine bright so the rest of us can remember to try to match your light.

Re: be yourself.

There doesn’t actually exist any single “yourself” you can be for everyone. Human communication is flawed, so we don’t really communicate with selves. We communicate with personas. And it’s not possible to have a single persona to use with everyone, although of course the fewer changes you have to make from person to person, the less stressful it is.
But really, the art of communication is all about constructing a suitable persona for a specific situation. Danni just sucks at that (like me), but Kleya’s problem is not with communication, it’s with her not knowing /what/ to communicate. I’d say she’s pretty good at communicating being kind and supportive. It’s just that she doesn’t believe in her own persona.

But hey! If you pretend to be something long enough, you actually become that something. It works with confidence, it’s going to work with kindness/being a hero. Just being willing and able to put an effort to project that persona qualifies you to be one!

Very true. People change based both on what others do as well as what they themselves do. So even if someone isn’t the person they want to be…if they resolve to not reinforce the negitive and continue to practice the positive then eventually they will find that they have changed and so have how people act towards them.

True for most people, I guess. I myself seem to be unable to create such a persona, unless I’m straight out roleplaying. And I have met quite a few people who are the same. (hint: I met all of them in situations directly related to our similarities… except one, now that I think about it, but it’s not quite a coincidence that I met him either.)

Really? Do you really talk to your parents, your teachers and your friends in the same words? With same vocabulary, sentence structure and information relayed? Would you tell your parents what you tell your friends and your teachers what you tell your parents?
You might not be able to consciously construct personas for specific custom purposes, but you sure as h*** have several for different social situations already!

Yes, I really talk the same way to everyone I know. There is a difference with people I don’t know, though, who I avoid to talk to – completely opposite to how I treat my poor friends…

And who get’s to hear what is just a simple list of secrets.

There have been comments from uninitiated that I don’t speak to my teachers or family in the expected way.

I guess you don’t know many not-so-normal persons? There are ALL sorts of people, ALL sorts of brains. If you can imagine it, it’s not strange enough. There is someone even stranger out there.

Go watch Rain Man, that is a start, and a good movie. 🙂

I have one thing about what I say that I adjust to the situation and the people, come to think of it: a sliding scale of what matters and what jokes are appropriate. I have met several people who lack that flexibility, though.

I’ll second that!

Kleya’s basic problem is that she let whatever she did eat her life to the extent that she believes it fills the entirety of her character. In a sense, she has fulfilled the goal of that organization she led, and deconstructed herself. Maybe she needs to lead another organization called “Build Me” or something like that…

Well, you are right on one front. Her permission is what lead to her being this person she doesn’t like. On the other I suspect other people who she really should have been able to trust had a big hand in molding her into that person. So it is not entirely her fault if this person she detests is the person other people were trying to create. But we will see. Just keep in mind Kleya is actually fairly young still. Not even a legal adult if I am thinking right.

Her permission for what? If I’m getting what was going on right and it was her father pushing her and directing her and eventually abandoning her, he didn’t exactly ask her permission for meddling in her life. Same with literally any situation of “self-interested adults taking advantage of a gifted teenager” – and Kleya is absolutely still a teenager, pretty naive at that. It’s not fair to assign her blame for this situation as a whole, regardless of how much blame she shoulders for individual events.

Are you kidding me?! Your art’s gotten a lot better especially the heads which have more consistancy and in general your proportions are better, your lines less shaky, and poses more varied. Five more years this comic may look completely different and that’s half the fun of reading it!

Is that first panel what Kleya imagines she looks like or what Danni is seeing? Either way tis frightening.

It’s symbolic of what Kleya fears who she really is. Glad to hear its frightening!

I was wondering what your goal would be after “get enough buffer that Reality scenes don’t eat it up”. Specifically if “update THREE times a week” would be on that list. ^_^

But then I realized that “upgrade the art more” is probably gonna be your next…. 10 goals or so. Heck, there is even a built-in excuse to upgrade the LiFe art! (World stabilizes/improves enough to upgrade the servers) And really, ONCE a week is by far the common update schedule for webcomics. I know a bunch that update 2x a week. Another bunch that update 3x a week and… only two that update more often then that.

StandStillStaySilent updates 5x a week and SchlockMercinary updates an incredible EVERY DAY!!! (Its also pretty much the only web comic that does)

It would be AMAZING to pull of 3x a week, but that’s not really feasible right now unless I suddenly make a living at this. Currently, like you guessed, the goal is to improve my art. I have big ideas for the Game and I want to be less limited in my art abilities 😀 So practice, practice, practice!

I can think of a handful of comics that update every day – Precocious, Irregular Webcomic (back when it was still active), Cyanide and Happiness, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal – but those are all usually shorter comics (like what you would find in a newspaper). Most full-page comics like this one update once a week, if that, so this comic actually produces more content per week than many other comics. I can’t think of any other full-page comic that updates twice a week, especially not reliably.

Looking through my list of webcomics, the Looking for Group set of comics updates 4 times a week with full-page and once with a strip (although you can tell, because the storytelling has dropped off in quality of late). Gaia does the same schedule as this comic. Our Little Adventure updates every few days, so twice a week is a reasonable estimate. QC and Will Save World for Gold update daily on weekdays, but the latter is a pixel comic, which helps speed things up. Last Nerds on Earth and Mystic Revolution both update twice a week, but the first one is young and the second one isn’t reliable due to frequent con breaks. Misfile and 6 Gun Mage together produce 8x per week, but are in black and white. Darths and Droids is three times a week, but that’s written by a team and is a screencap comic besides.

So… out of basically 50 webcomics, only 20% compete, and (once all caveats are accounted for) I would say only QC actually has a strictly “better” update schedule, so to speak. So… congratulations on being a twice-a-week full-page comic, seeing as that is reasonably uncommon. 3x a week would be an excellent long-term goal, of course, but clearly even this is an accomplishment.

I read El Goonish Shive, and it updates daily. But it’s also been running for like 10 years already, so it’s not really a fair comparison. And remembering the length of QC, neither is it. For a relatively new webcomic, NAV goes really good!

You’re about one of six websites I actually let past my popup blocker, so I support you that much at least.

And I agree with Kris, your art has gotten a lot better.

Yay! Thanks! Ad revenue funds my own ads so I can spread the NAV goodness 😀

I have to say, I love your webcomic. I just found it and it is awesome. The characters are likable, the plot is interesting, and the artwork really lets the expressions get through. I love panel 1 by the way. I also read your two books. Happy 2015!

Aw, thanks! I’m curious: Did you find my webcomic first and then my books or the other way around?

A person is the sum of their parts. We have an instinctual impulsive part, which is necessary for when we do not have enough time to think a situation through; and we have a reasoning part for directing the main course of our lives.

Sadly when Kleya says that she is a monster, she is only referring to her impulsive part, the part that she calls her deep down; she is not seeing the big picture, that there is a part of her that wants to be good, that regrets her past actions. She needs to recognise her good side and keep working on making it more dominant – yeah hard in practice but still a worthy target.

What matters is not what we did in the past but what we do in the future. Yes sure the past is an indication of the future but with Help we can change.

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 359