‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 379

Hey, he might have figured something out!

Referencing these pages:
We're...villains...
Lost Data

For the vote incentive, it's another re-script where the Dude gets to shine!

38 Comments

Ok, that’s a nice turn of events. Finally something is starting to clear up. 🙂

Also I have a question:
How do you feel about Saisuke? Since he had barely any screen time in all these years, I wondered if you’re having second thoughts about creating a potentially Sasuke-like character.

I’m a little confused. Are you asking if Saisuke is no longer going to be in the storyline (ie: retconned) or whether I’m going to be making another Saisuke-like character out of the current cast?

Sorry for the confusion. I was thinking, if he had played a major part in the story from the beginning, fans might have claimed you’d be trying to use a popular character from another media to gain popularity. So I wondered whether you
a) drew him, then realized this potential problem, had second thoughts about him (i.e. regretted creating him at all) and therefore left him out until now or
b) simply had other things in mind, e.g. because the story works better without him, at least until the group starts their Game.

I am also wondering about his future, but that would be asking for spoilers. 🙂

I’m… not sure Saisuke is all that Sasuke-like. You’re kinda suggesting that it’s a lot more derivative of a single source than I think it is.

Well, I based it mostly on the very similar name and him being the cool and mysterious guy who is being adored by most of the girls. And the info that he’s rumored to search for someone, too.

But I believe Aneeka that it’s a coincidence, because whenever you give a character a name that turns out to be similar to another one, odds are fairly high that a bunch of other significant characteristics match up as well. Being cool, silent, adored and in search for someone are broad characteristics, so there are other characters with those basic traits, too, because there aren’t all that many possibilities for basic traits. E.g. there is Yukito Kunisaki from Air.

“a popular character from another media” I assume you mean Sasuke from Naruto? I get that a lot even though Saisuke (my character) was conceived before I ever heard of Naruto. The similarity of names is simply a coincidence.

The answer is definitely not A, but not really B. So, C) he’s important but there’s a lot of set up that needs to be revealed before he can fully enter the scene and start his plot point. But I didn’t want to throw him at the reader later in the story and be like “Surprise! There’s this really famous person that you’ve never heard of until now!” so I try to drop mentions of him throughout the story so it’s not quite such a shock when he shows up.

Ah, that’s very interesting to know. Thanks for clearing it up for me! 🙂

Well, C) is exactly what I always thought, so I guess you´re handling it quite good!

This has happened to me (create a character or invent a situation and then find out that someone else did it) I hate especially if I created it before. But, I guess these things happen, and like you say, once someone decides to look for similarities, it’s very easy to find them.

Someone told me once that my art looked like a “bad Archie ripoff”. I thanked them and kept trying. I kind of liked the art in Archie anyway.

Turns out that the idea for a ninja called Sasuke that was best friends with his arch-rival didn’t spring fully formed from Kishimoto’s brow, either.

The story of Sarutobi Sasuke and Kirigakure Saizo has been around since at least the Meiji era, and the actual guy named Sasuke lived sometime around late sixteenth to early seventeenth century.

I kinda got the impression that Saisuke was one of Jake’s characters like the Bandit.

Where would he find the time to run both characters? Demands on a celebrity’s time are massive, so that wouldn’t leave nearly enough time to play a second avatar.

I just think that Saisuke’s vacation is well timed.

Although, a couple of things that I thought were hints at them being the same turned out to be hints about other things.

Ah, I was wondering if someone was going to be able to put it together. It seems pretty important for him to realize she was horrified at the thought of being in a villain group. I wonder if he’s going to get what is going on with her right, or more likely how far off from the truth he is going to be.

I was wondering that too. I’m also glad he’s still holding out some home that both she hasn’t gone insane and might not doing these stunts maliciously. even though everyone one else believes either or both is true of the “cyborg girl”

I do think the hospital bombing wasn’t her idea, especially that one. I do wonder just how much she was involved in it. it could be that that one was done by someone else and just used her as a convenient cover as she was already being seen as the resident super villain by then, so it wouldn’t take a whole lot of convincing to make people think that is what happened even if she had no actual involvement in it. And the perfect way to keep people from suspecting you did anything is to keep them busy looking at someone else. I mean during that time frame there had to be plenty of other hackers trying to do various things as well. And she and her group might just of been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right when the world wanted to do a witch hunt. So they and her epically could of gotten blamed for a lot of things she never did or even for launching attacks she was actively trying to prevent.

Think back to salem, the whole town ganged together to lynch the evil witches who they believed where using their powers to cause mayhem and even kill a few people. they actually did try and kill several people in what was basically a kangaroo court.
turns out what was really causing the unexplained events was a bunch of the grain used to make the food got infected so lots of people ended up with food poising some got it worse then others so there are those who where just hallucinating, those who had major cramps and those who’s problems got so bad they died. no one knew it was bad grain until well after the whole mess died down, so everyone was spooked and when a group started staying that they had proof that it these people where using witchcraft magic maliciously to cause all these unexplained problems. so being that people wanted to pin these events on something and those people implicated did not have a good enough alibi to convince people that they where not behind it so everyone went with that story and things got rather nasty for a bunch of people who did not actually do anything wrong, because everyone believed they did do something very wrong and wanted what they thought was justice to be served.

Seems you understand what happens when people start to panic. They stop being an organized group of individuals and start being a mob and the mob says destroy anything that is perceived as a threat, regardless of whether it is or isn’t. Mobs don’t have morality or the ability to reason. Mobs are just the will to survive taken to a horrible level.

I definitely look forward to seeing just how much extra mileage you get out of panel 2.

Especially since, IIRC, you used it as part of a voting incentive earlier.

whelp, hashing ideas and theories out with a co-worker helps get new insight into a situation yet again…it’s always good to have someone you trust to talk to so the secret stays safe…ish. in a digital world there’s no telling how secure something really is…except her location…she is the absolute best at security so nobody can sneak up on her.

It’s not so much that she is good at security, rather she has a pet AI that is constantly watching EVERYTHING and can change anything that can hurt her. Hmmm. I wonder if D knows about this conversation.

Link to this comic from previous ones is nonfunctional.
also, time to see what Bandit does with what he’s figured out. I wonder if he’ll try to make the group a hero group or just start poking Kat about morality in general…

The last panel turned out well too. And kudos to him for finally noticing.

Funny, that’s not actually what she asked to D to do. However, D would have been well aware of how upset she was about those results….

I had the impression that Kleya’s command to D had to do with undoing damage she’d just done to her “fans” in L.i.F.e. Losing the Tutorial results was just a convenient side effect of D’s usual broad interpretation and wide action. I suppose Kleya might have given D an additional command about the trial results, after the crash….

I think D acted on his own, wanting to help Kleya. Her only actual commands were “stop me” and “stop what I did”.

Yeah, I agree that it if the data wasn’t just the victim of D’s widespread purge that it was likely an action undertaken by D to appease Kleya without her consent. But more likely is that D, who Kleya has noted tends to overreact, just choose the easiest way to solve the problem. Need to stop a series of troublesome commands, making sure they don’t reach their destination or spread otherwise? Purge all new data.

Yeah, people called it. Really interesting if Kat did this on purpose or this was D’s initiative or an accident… and really interesting what Jake can or can’t figure out correctly.

So that’s where did that panel come from.

Heh. Time to figure out Kat’s wish and change alignment, eh, Jake? 😀

So, if Danni and The Bandit change alignment, I wonder how Bloody Jane (sic) is going to take this.

I forgot for a second that The Dude was Hero alignment (Via Cardista), so I was picturing The Bandit telling The Dude to go Hero alignment and The Dude being all “No, I’m not making Bloody Jane angry over this!”.

Now that I remembered that he already is Hero alignment, I’m picturing The Dude being severely conflicted over whether to go Villain alignment or not (“On one hand, I don’t want to anger the Cyborg Girl, on the other hand, I don’t wan’t Bloody Jane to get angry either…I can’t win, either way!”).

I was just thinking… If Kleya has a neural HID, and D is somehow connected to it, doesn’t this mean that stray thoughts might have really dangerous side effects? It doesn’t seem like she is completely in control og D at all times, but it seems to appear when she is agitated

Definitely not a good idea to have someone with a superiority complex and a quick temper to have a neural link to the entire world’s networks and a pet AI that can do almost anything possible.

“It doesn’t seem like she is completely in control of D at all times”
My thoughts too.

It seems D has purposefully destroyed the Bandit’s game data so he has the chance to choose a good path, just like Kat is trying to get the dancer to switch.

I love the Dude rescript…

Just read it, and I’m actually surprised – given that he petitioned to get Bloody Mary off the team, he *might’ve* chosen a Hero alignment…though he might have decided to spite Kleya as a result of her not removing Bloody Mary from the team. That feels unlikely though, so I’m totally calling him out on it and agreeing with The Dude – dude just wants to take out the competition with regards to Kleya. :p

I find society in this comic to be hypocritical, hating “hackers” as the villains who destroyed the world, but adoring gamers with villainous characteristics. and the way that everyone has spent TWO YEARS with the same mindset regarding Kleya. If she had wanted to destroy humanity, she would have done so by now. Its always frustrates me to see this in the things that I read, but it makes for great and realistic dramatic suspense. I often wonder while reading this if they’ll figure out that it was an accident of some kind, or just a consequence of certain seemingly unrelated actions; how did the world end? was it just the result of what happens when power is too tempting to ignore? So many unanswered questions! it’s what keeps me coming back, everytime. Ms. Richins, keep doing that voodooing that you are doing so well.

I haven’t reread this in a long time, but I think they don’t know she’s still alive.
(“they” being the general population and even most people in TENKA.)

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 379