‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 612

Memory Lane:

Owing Mina

Owing Danni

Not so heroic

Decorating an apartment also means others can see what you like and don't like.

I'm about to head off for the promised Southern Tour. These are my stops so far:

San Antonio, TX: The Smokehouse (3306 Roland Rd, San Antonio, TX 78210) at 5pm on Friday, Oct 6th.

Austin, TX: Yo So Cool (1201 Barbara Jordan Blvd #1290, Austin, TX 78723) at 8:30pm on Friday, Oct 6th

College Station, TX (Sat, Oct 7, around 9am; place TBA)

Houston, TX: Pizzitola's Bar-B-Cue (1703 Shepherd Dr, Houston, TX 77007) at noon (12pm) on Saturday, Oct 7th.

Baton Rouge, LA: Sonny's BBQ (12475 Florida Blvd, Baton Rouge, LA 70815) at 7pm on Saturday, Oct 7th

Tallahassee, FL: Kool Beanz (921 Thomasville Rd, Tallahassee, FL 32303) at 6pm on Monday, Oct 9th.

Ft Lauderdale, FL: Moe's Southwest Grill (2400 W Commercial Blvd, Tamarac, FL 33309) at noon (12pm) on Saturday, Oct 14th.

Orlando, FL: Yogurtown Cafe (1499 E Osceola Pkwy, Kissimmee, FL 34744) at 7pm on Saturday, Oct 14th (date and time change)

Jackonsville, FL (Sat, Oct 21 in the evening)

Raleigh, NC (Mon, Oct 23 in the evening)

Charlotte, NC (Tues, Oct 24 in the evening)

Atlanta, GA (Wed, Oct 25 in the evening)

Nashville, TN (Thurs, Oct 26 in the evening)

Little Rock, AR (Fri, Oct 27 in the evening)

Dallas, TX (Sat, Oct 28 around noon)

Oklahoma City, OK (Sat, Oct 28 in the evening)

Albuquerque, NM (Mon, Oct 30 in the evening)

I'm re-opening an old survey regarding this trip. If you're near these cities (or would like to add one that is enroute), please fill this out below. I'll send out a reminder email a day or so before the scheduled meet up. Thanks!
Survey over

44 Comments

She won’t be heroic enough until she is OVER 9000! 😉

Admit it, you did the setup for this joke on purpose, Aneeka!

It is also the exact amount to pay back both of them double.

It is exactly double the two amounts she borrowed. 100% interest.

*facepalm* Of course, you can’t escape memes. Pity I didn’t think of it first.

Memes are everywhere. ^^
It’s indeed a _bigger_ problem that everything in her room can be _logged_:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fQGPZTECYs

I didn’t see that it’s exactly twice the amount she owes them, I only saw the meme. 😀 Though afair Danni might insist that they’re even for getting a Special, even though it wasn’t one that could defeat Kat.

My subconscious would like to claim it totally was aware of this joke the whole time.

And here I am going “But it’s 8000, even if the numbers weren’t the point.” Meme of translation error… XD

Okay, my first time for commenting here (is a universal internet lurker).

YES YES YES.

I don’t know where I obtained it, but I have a deep and abiding fear of decorating for fear of -anyone- finding out what I like or don’t like…for anything less than my explicitly telling them so.

What is wrong with me?

(No, I have not *destroyed society through any sort of near-genocidal means.)

*Recently

Could be you’re just a very private person. Could be a phobia. But since you see it as a problem and want to work past it, try this:
1. Find a wall decoration (picture, rug, poster, etc) you really like and buy it.
2. Hang up your decoration.
3. Tell your best friend this fear you have and ask them to help you.
4. If anyone comments on your decoration, ask them how much they like it. -10 for hate it and can barely hold themselves back from ripping it off the wall. +10 for loving it and plan to go buy one just like it for themselves.
4. Wait until several dozen people have seen your decoration.
5. Realize that NONE of them actually gave your decoration a horrible score.
6. Repeat steps #1 and #2 as many times as you can until the fear comes back. Then repeat steps #3, #4 and #5.

Repeat step #6 until your house is decorated. Consider keeping a diary/journal on what people say about your decorating style. Should you ever have someone who says negative things about your taste, you can look back in your journal to remind yourself that haters are in the minority.

Seems like a good plan of action.

Do keep in mind that there is nothing actually wrong with anyone, if something is true for even a single person in all of human history then it is both a natural thing and a human thing. And if it isn’t dangerous then there is no hurry, maybe not even a need at all, to deal with whatever it is. So just relax and deal with it at whatever pace comes naturally.

I have a few questions that may have arisen from too much attention. How is pay calculated? Is it hourly, salary, or commission based? 9000 seems a little to rounded, a little too perfect. Maybe I’m just paying too much attention.

as fixated as they are on popularity scores, I’d bet the scores factor in somehow. After that….??

Well, I would consider that some form of commission.

As amazing as Aneeka is at world-building, I bet she didn’t build up an entire economy in her head to explain where this number came from.. I wouldn’t be surprised if she decided that the winner gets 10,000, and second place gets 9,000, third gets 8,000, etc.

It’s a little more complicated than that.

Game earnings work similar to how our world’s tv networks work. Game managers then divvy it out to their players as well as taking a cut themselves. The pay is not always evenly distributed.

Wow. Somehow I thought Sandra was just being as generous as she has always been with Kleya and that Sandra’s profits would start coming in in the long run. Now that I realized that Sandra actually made a profit from that herself, 9000 looks stunning. 9000 for 10 minutes tops of gameplay sounds like literally the whole world must’ve watched it and literally everyone who could afford it must’ve watched the paid high-quality channel or must’ve thrown some money at them via other means.

Looks like all those Bandit ads paid off in the end, but not just for Tenka. 🙂

So that would be a form of commission based on popularity? Or am I totally off base…

Whatever meme was used here, it went right over my head. The only reference I can think of to “9000” is Hal-9000 and ISO-9000. Can someone fill us not-all-that-tuned-in folks to the tune-in? Tyty. : )

The hero has to be over 9000:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsDDXSmGJZA

Tyty for that link. Now I understand.
And am (inwardly) proud I didn’t get that meme. Also that I’ve never seen a single episode of Dragonball Z. Ever. 😀
Because well… Doctor Who, Star Trek, The Flash, Stranger Things…

You’re welcome.

I watched it when Germany had literally nothing better to offer in regards to afternoon Anime (there were e.g. Pokémon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, Beyblade, Pretty Cure and Sailor Moon). 🙂 I watched e.g. Noir, Escaflowne and Hellsing at night, too, but they aired only once a week. DB and DBZ were fun when they weren’t dragging the battles out, but after the Frieza saga it lost its tension.

The DBZ abridged parody is awesome, though! Those guys are so creative.

Follow-up:
“This is working.” Has she never heard of avoiding invoking Murphy’s Law?

Opinion: She doesn’t decorate her apartment because she knows it’s not real. To her it’s nothing more than cyberspace. Decorating that apartment would have no more meaning to her than hanging up a painting inside the game. If it doesn’t score points, it’s of no value. Putting up a virtual painting and virtual furniture (which she doesn’t need) while people in RL are dying daily would seem to her… silly.

But she’s obviously still a kid and not in touch with reality if she thinks that any game accomplishment no matter how great, is going to change people’s opinion of her. That’s just as virtual and just as useless. If they learn her real identity they will hate her regardless. Their opinions are already formed, the damage already done. Even if she were able to find a way to reverse the effects of her prior actions… there are still millions who will never forgive what she did.

It would seem she’d have to pull a miracle out of her had for her future to be anything but anonymous for the rest of her life. If she wants a better future she needs to concentrate on wiping out all traces of her identity and move on, trying to do good instead of being self-centered. But being still young, she doesn’t understand that. She’s trying to change the past. The past can’t be changed… and there are always consequences to be faced.

We don’t know if she actually DID anything. It’s been implied that she did things, but it’s also been heavily hinted at that she was framed. Or at least that things were skewed to look bad. Like the Hakido making her a Cyborg.
Also she’s been blamed for things that are impossible. Like Hacking the geo-magnetosphere.

Whit it may be true she is innocent and was merely blamed as the most obvious scapegoat. The opinions are formed and there are a lot of people who won’t change thier minds even under the face of hard facts. If she innocent, and only actually guilty of being scary, convincing people of that and clearing her name will take a whole heck of a lot of work. Even if she is somehow clears her name, she will still be scary and lots of people will want to end her for her capabilities and potential becasue she is ‘dangerious’.

As to being out of touch with reality. She was never fully in touch to begin with I do not think, and why she never realized the full ramifications of what she had done to her suit and its potential capabilities. (Which scared everyone). After the dissaster, I think she has been in reletive isolation so even more out of touch.

Oddly enough, I don’t do much to decorate my physical home, because… I guess it’s not as real as the world in my head? I dunno, I just don’t think about that stuff much. I remember it has mattered to me in the past. (Maybe it’s just that I’m in the middle of a disseration….)

In truth I don’t intentionally decorate my home either. But that doesn’t negate the fact that I have no room on a wall even to hang a poster. I dunno, stuff just somehow winds up there. It must be evolution (that’s how they claim everything else got here. Makes about as much sense.)
“Oh look! That poster just evolved on my wall! Oh look, that guitar (along with guitar hanger) just evolved on my wall!” Yup yup yup, MUST be what happened!

(So rare I get to make a comment and snark at the “scientific” community at the same time. Fun fun fun.)

But back to the novel– I’d have to guess her apartment is nothing more than a drop-by zone to accomplish specific tasks, and it “containing” things has zero relevance to her.

She can’t ever reveal her meatspace identity, yes, but that doesn’t prevent her from creating a new one not connecting to it. Kleya Smith is real in the minds of actual live people who know her, and she’s not a bad person in there (particularly once she pays back the loans lol). It’s what people know about you, how they see you, and not the means of communication over which this happens, that matters.

I did not make the connection between her earnings and her power level. I did not even notice that it was 2x her owed.

I figured she’d probably give around 25-50% interest, and keep the rest for her own expenses — having to pay for that space after the first month, I think it was?

Plus whatever else is done in LiFe.

Why is it not LifE?

Considering everything going on, I think it should be LIfE. ; )

About the capitalization, I asked this once a long time ago and Aneeka said it looked cooler or something like that.

I am slightly off-course, unless you plan a detour through Bordeaux, France xD

Who wants to bet she gets a $6000 fee for sleeping in the library again?

Haha, I don’t think that’s going to happen again, but I’m not taking a bet for the duration of the whole rest of the comic, because I expect it to last for another 40 years or so.

I kind of want her to decorate the room nicely for herself, in a way her utilitarian reality isn’t. Get herself some teddies, a nice plush couch perhaps…

I know she won’t, she doesn’t think she deserves nice things right now, but that is all the more reason why I want her to have them. 🙁

I agree with this comment.
So long as she finds a style she actually likes to be in, I really want her to at some point find it applied to ‘her’ virtual apartment.
If Kleya Smith can be heroic, Kleya Smith also deserves good things <3

(I still can't get over how much I dislike this name. In Russian it sounds basically like 'gluing' and I don't want a character associated with glue visually… my brain works weird with names)

I’m impressed with how much things have improved since those references. I also have a question brought up by them. Mina mentioned buying food with the money, but how does that work exactly. Her family seems to be stuck under a building.

Probably like how when miners get trapped the first thing done is dig a supply shaft. Also provides ventilation. Which would mean food/water/etc. could be delivered, even if they can’t get out at this time.

Your art style for even L.I.F.E. alone is improving! Love what you did with the eyes in panel 3, even thought you’ve probably done stuff like it before. It strangely reminds me of some different anime/manga styles I’ve seen!

Keep on going!

aww, sweetie! she’s starting to feel good about herself

Kleya: “See, D, we can make those numbers big the human way.”
D: “Still prefer bitshift.”

It’d probably be easier to adjust a single bit than to shift the whole number, but I appreciate your comment greatly.

I just had a semi-random thought:
Why are the ribbon-twins from the beginning of the story bullies? Making people depressed in an already unstable world seems counterproductive, because happy people are peaceful people. So why didn’t Bandit program them to be honorable fighters, like Master Splinter from the Ninja Turtles?
Does Tenka hope to drive people into suicide so they have fewer mouths to feed and thus raise the chance of survival for everyone else? Is that what they did to Danni’s partner? 🙁 Makes me wonder if they were honest about Dude’s city failing and being beyond repair.

Iiiiiiiii forgot that Brandon has “back-breaking fields” to work on, so letting that city die on purpose would be stupid.

Unless it’s for the outsiders who have more time in L.i.F.e. (I would still prefer it to be capitalized “L.i.f.E.” Maybe there could be a rebranding that changes it.)

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 612