‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 410

Colors by Jemma. Everything else by me.

This may be traumatic if you suffer from allergies yourself.

56 Comments

Ha! Called it! That flower had magical (Read: Pollen) powers! Now Mary is gonna be forced to sneeze for a while. Truly a debilitating status effect.

They thought Erbana was the pacifist route, turns out you just have to be more creative with your attacks.

This reminds me of something the doctor from doctor who would do. Dunno why.

Maybe because it’s nonviolent but greatly and amusingly effective? Seems like the Doctor

Yep sounds about right.

Only a temporary solution unless of course Jane is going to get stuck on a sneezing loop.

This was my thought too – does she just get everyone to sneeze forever unless they do what she says?

On the other hand, that’s a lot of pollen explosions if that’s the plan, so I’m sure Kleya’s fine with that.

Temporary status affliction, yes. But it also killed the mood pretty thoroughly. XD

It is hard to go from sneezing to killing convincingly, if you are a RPer, and Mary is definitely one of those.

ACHOO ACHOO ACHOO! *sniffle*. Time to die, wormmm — mmm — ACHOO!

I think I just gleaned the ultimate horror of the Erbana route…

Sneezing your brains out… in tiny tiny pieces…

Looks like Bloody Mary might have some alergies.

I wonder if this is a special or just particularly irritating pollen.

Hayfever’s a b***, ain’t it?

Hehe, I’m so gonna love watching Kat play the Game. #Katfans

Despite what current players and watchers of the Game might think, the Erbana route is actually…*dons sunglasses*…nothing to sneeze at. YEEEEAAAAAAAHHH!

You win. Hands down. Period. No bones about it. That quote was just…*dons sunglasses*…On The Nose.

Here’s looking achoo, kid.

That is genius and hilarious
everyone was expecting something epic and its sneezes

DISRESPECTED!

Well if this isn’t attracting any views then I have no Idea what would be.

Woo! I love this comic! Found it a couple weeks back, just read through the whole thing tonight. It is original, I adore it. I especially love the three different settings.

Triggered.

Even the best fighters are powerless before… allergies.

Something so simple, and yet so effective.

Well played, miss, well played. 🙂

Yay status effects 😀

(incidentally, Grass type is my favorite in Pokemon ^^)

A “Sneeze” debuff! (“Stern?t?ti?”?) So powerful!

That’s “Sternutatio”.

An effective way to defuse the situation, and keeps to the Erbana’s strict pacifism rules 🙂

Really? Because to a person with allergies this would look like a violent assault At least, I would guess so as I don’t have allergies myself.

The Erbana rules state she can’t have anything in her surrounding perish. So unless this sneeze attack is gunna kill Mary… nope!

Zarylo is right while this will certainly distract Mary and it’s probably not going to kill her and it gives her time to save dani so thus its the perfect thing for her to do.

i think maybe the comedy value of erbana will be what carries these two through audience votes, Kat will just have to vary the methods enough to keep from getting boring

Oh man, this had me cracking up. After her use of plants in the tutorial, I think we were all expecting some kind of magical flower power. Instead, she just sneezes. That’s horrible, but so funny.

The smile just as she’s doing it is crucial to the erbana appeal.

LOL!

This is hilarious, after all of last page’s comments about “Magic flowers!”

Well, that was unexpected, I wonder what the other plants in this area do? Does one make you cry uncontrollably, while another temporarily blinds you? That’d be interesting to say the least, though I’m not sure it would be in keeping with the Erbana way

sure it would be, since the effects are temporary she’s not causing any lasting harm to her enemies and the distraction gives her enough time to get herself and the good guys out of harms way.

Looking rather evil there.

Exactly! Looks like Kat still loves to win above everything else – only now this time she’s playing the saviour too!

I see that as more smug than evil.

the background and eye shade makes that little smug smile an evil look.

I guess when you’re not allowed to let people get hurt you really just have to vent your emotions by dropping the disrespect.

Quick! Grab her her weapon and throw it as far as you can!

And considering the reduced gravity, that weapon will go a long way.

Love the creativity Kat is showing, but I have to say that the positioning was a little confusing at first because of the breaking of the 180 degree rule – suddenly we’ve jumped to the other side of the action then back to the first side when we see them running away. (sorry if this comes off as whining, I love the comic!)

Honestly, I think how Kat pretty much instantly defused the situation AND showed Bloody Mary up will probably be good for her popularity.

While yes, people do love violence, it can be surprising how popular moves that instantly show up a well-known, violent opponent can be with viewers. Especially if it’s not something they’ve seen before.

As an announcer would say:

“And Bloody Mary and Danni both come out swinging! Look out folks, looks like party unity is already in question for the group folks! Danni gets the first blow, but it looks like Mary already has her knocked back and on the ropes. Look out girl! You’re in trou- what’s this?

[*crowd goes wild*]

The fight is OVER. Kat comes in from the sideline and shows both combatants what an Erbana can do! Mary’s lost all momentum from that stun, and it doesn’t look like she’s going to be recovering any time soon! Boom! That’s what an Erbana can do folks!”

Especially given that Kat’s initial appeal to her fans was because of showing up Bandit. Those are people who LOVE them some good underdog-style utter humiliation of unsuspecting opponent.

Status moves are WICKED. I want to play this game more and more with each new detail revealed )=

So, is it a quality of the flower that it causes this reaction in all characters or did Kleya/Kat somehow find out that Bloody Mary has allergies? Or did she modify the flower with Erbana powers so that it would definitely cause the reaction?
Not everyone is allergic to the same things, after all: I don’t react to pollen at all while my mother reacts to just about everything airborne (she’s even been rendered bedridden by lilac trees in full bloom).

Remember that this is a virtual world that they are in. No physical maladies are transfered to it, which makes it possible for Danni to have something resembling life. The powers of the flower and any other plants that Kleya/Kat makes use of are determined by their in-game properties.

It seems the nature of my question may not have come through clearly in my shorter post, so here’s a wall of text giving context to each part of the question:
Mary is also the game character and not the player, whose name we do not know (could be Mary as well, but we don’t know), so what I was referring to was not an allergy that the player might have irl but a condition of the game character: in some games you can take flaws in order to gain a bonus, so Mary’s player could have given her a pollen allergy in order to get some bonus to be a better Morto while never expecting to have to deal with anyone who could exploit such a weakness. In which case, how did Kleya &/or Kat find out?
On the other hand, if allergies are not an in-game factor, it could be an obscure fact that these particular flowers will always cause a character to suffer a sneezing fit if they get in the face but it usually only is an issue for someone who falls face-first into the flowers ’cause nobody would think to use a flower as a weapon since no one plays Erbana (until now). In which case, it would be a quality of the flower which anyone could exploit if they bothered to find out.
Or, if neither allergies nor always-sneeze flowers are the explanation, Erbana players have abilities focused on plants which have not yet been fully detailed: we really don’t know just what all Kat can do with plants, combat-wise. In which case, could she have modified the flower to cause the sneezing fit in the short amount of time she had it before using it against Mary?
So in summary: was Kat exploiting a flaw of the Mary character, exploiting a quality of the flower, or utilizing her Erbana abilities?

Pretty sure it’s the quality of the flower, as is vaguely standard-ish for RPGs.
I don’t think there are any Erbana-specific abilities. It’s an alignment, not a character class. Everyone gets the same abilities, the question is how they use them.
Kat exploits her detailed knowledge of game mechanics and knowing exactly what every plant does.