‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 627

Not exactly the response she was hoping for.

49 Comments

While I’m slightly disappointed in the lack of a “heart-to-heart”… Jane came on WAYYY too strong. This was the only reaction possible. Kinda proud of Kat for saying goodbye instead of just running off.

But she doesn’t say “good-bye”, she just says “I’m logging out.”

“I’m logging out.” isn’t quite the same as expressing hopes that Jane is well in her absence. But I guess it’s less bad than some other responses Kat might have had.

What, won’t even help with the Special?

Normally, she would have to log out to do that anyway.

I mean, she wouldn’t, but she’s trying not to give away that she’s her.

However, this does leave it open to interpretation.

Right now Jane isn’t even interested in budging on killing citizen characters just cos. Fixing her special right now will be killing Dani.

Not unexpected though – it’s not often Kat responds with “I’ll have to think about it.”.

I mean, that IS a lot to take in all at once and Kat DOES have the social skills of a 4 year old.

And she flubs the landing! A beautiful performance by Jane ends on a discordant note. That’s going to cost her points, everyone!

Okay I laughed a bit, that was anticlimactic in a darkly funny way.

Kat completely can’t admit anything here. She has no idea what’s spying things are on this private server. While Jane is reviled for things she’s done within the Game, Kat is hated for her supposed role in the end of the world. This is probably the best result Jane could hope for. Kat didn’t deny or confirm her role.

Even though they’re in Sandra’s server, I suspect any and all spyware is Tenka’s. And, possibly, the Virus. At any rate it is probably not the case that Kleya is unsure on what levels of logging and spying are going on, I think she just can’t shut it down without alerting Tenka. She should be able to make it report good fake data, but that might need preparation.

At any rate, she doesn’t have an answer for Jane yet, she needs to think about this. I know I’d have to, and I’m pretty well-adjusted for being mal-adjusted, but in this case that wouldn’t get me any further than just saying “I’ll have to think about it. Goodbye for now.” Granted, one and a half step better than what Kleya achieves here, but like @Kin I’m pretty proud of her for getting any words at all out of her mouth before she logs out!

One thing I do wonder is if jane doesn’t just want the game down, but LiFE as well. by the way she’s been talking I don’t think she wants either one to be still running, as to her beeing on line means they aren’t working on trying to save the outsiders.

I’m pretty sure Kat doesn’t want to shut it down. one of her main goals was to use the game to prove to people she could be a good person. And in that same vein she agreed to help Dani stay alive by helping her stay in the game, so she can make enough money to continue not just to stay in life but to actually continue to live at all. Also that family Kat hangs out with when she’s not busy with other things. I think she’s also aware that the closet thing they got to normality right now is these games and they likely aren’t the only one. So if Jane is telling the truth and I see no reason she’s not. then in a Sense this is a catch 22 for Kat. Even if no one makes the connection between her and the “evil cyborg”, which if she did do something as big as jane is asking could cause people to do that, She still has other problems. If she does shut the game down, She will be seen as a villan to everyone who relied on the reasources granted to those who where playing the game. But on the other hand if she doesn’t shut it down she could verry well be seen as the villan by those outsiders like Jane who see her shutting down the game as the only way to get the people who are currently to busy playing the game to come out and save them. One thing that I have noticed about the way Jane talks about the people in the city she belives that they have a nice life outside the game and the only reason any city person is there is for fun. note how dismissive she is about killing the characters, like in her mind Jane didn’t actually hurt any of those people at all she just ended their fun early, to her since they where city people there’s not going to be any harm done to them being kicked out of the game so suddenly. Kat knows that may not have been the case for that group as she knows people who would die from the resulting problems that loosing active player status would cause. So hence Kat’s problem as things stand now she is going to have to hurt (aka be the villain) to someone, and quite possibly several people, irregardless of if she shuts the game down, or keeps playing, or does nothing at all. Not a good spot to be in.

Outstanding analysis & summation, thank you.

That is a terrific summary, Kit. Brings up a LOT of issues. It’s not as simple as killing the game. While doing so might have long-term benefits, it’s like dropping an atomic bomb to end a war: the immediate effects are going to be major, horrid and long-remembered.

Is the game “sucking the life out of society” as Jane presents. Yes… real life historically so. Television, DVDs, computer games… ever hour spent at such things is a loss of personal growth and productivity in our society. Psychologists say we have never lived in an age with more communication and less social interaction. We are being warned of the “de-humanizing” of the non-face-time of the information age. LIFE and The Game are both ultimate manifestations of that. We saw this theme played to the max in the movie SURROGATES, in which everyone gave up their real life to play “The Game”.

Shutting The Game down is a partial solution, but it would have devastating effects on many people. Can’t withdraw from a major addition without serious pain (and possibly death). But turning LIFE and The Game into productive, beneficial things… such as example controlling a robot to dig people out of rubble, getting game points for helping to distribute food and medicines… turning it POSITIVE instead of a total waste of time… that might help.

Jane is desperate, so she’s seeking a desperate solution. Kat is idealistic so she’s seeking an impossible solution. The answer is most likely in the exact middle between the two.

I kind of thought she’d bring up how Danni needs the game to survive and that she needs Danni because she’s the only person she has.

Not her secret to share.

Nah, no way Kat would reveal her weakpoint right now, especially when it’s obvious that pointing out to Jane the one instance where she’s technically wrong would not help matters.

Given the emotional weight of what’s going on, I think best case scenario would be Kat goes off to think of it, then comes back with an offer like: no promises taking down the game, but otherwise will help with stuff on the condition Jane lays off Danni

I don’t think Kat could convince Jane that things would really be that bad for Dani. and plus even if she did well still got the trolley problem. I mean even if Jane did believe that killing the game would be a death sentence for Dani, she already believes that keeping the game running is a slow painful one for her loved ones. So you got your loved ones on one track, and the other is a friend from work. Even if you know they are a really good, and honest person, and you’d hate to loose either could you honestly say you’d not do everything you could to protect your loved ones? I’d feel bad having to chose and pulling the lever but if someone has to go it’s not going to be my loved ones If I can help it. I think Jane is thinking the same. so that fact on it’s own isn’t going to be enough to convince Jane that shutting down the game is a bad idea.

The point is not convincing Jane: the point is just explaining why Kat can’t agree.

Well, Kat *did* say that she thinks Jane is wrong with her assessment about the game ( http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-620/ ), and that some Citizens depend on the game to live ( http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-621/ ) — but Jane just ignored her, and ranted on, rather than engaging in any actual discussion…

Kat please please please read your messages

I just don’t get it. Jane needs the game to keep her & her kids alive, but she wants the game destroyed.
I understand that the kids avatars have been borked somehow, but I don’t recall it being said that they were actually dead, just that avatars can stay even after someone dies due to some kind of AI running the deceased players avatars.
Jane seems to be giving signals that the kids are dead, and that they’re alive, but the whole saving them heavily says they’re still alive.
Jane seems more confusing that millennium hand and shrimp.

Jane’s kids are alive in real life. However, her family and their group is cut off from help. Tenka and the citizens put all their energy into the game instead of trying to find and rescue outsiders. Jane wants the game destroyed so that the people in the cities will spend their efforts in rescuing the survivors – including her and her kids.

Yep that is what Jane wants. And it’s possible that those people in the city nearby Jane are much better off then even the people in most other cities. But Jane is so focused on her one goal I don’t think she’s realized it’s not going to be that simple, or even a remotely guaranteed thing even if getting everyone off the game was.

I don’t believe that Jane’s telling the truth about wanting to take down the Game. I see that as a conveniently unprovable justification for choosing the Morto path, now that she knows Kat well enough to realize that this is a serious demerit in her eyes. She can say she’s trying to take down the Game by eliminating all the Dead Ones, but probably she understands perfectly well that it wouldn’t work, TENka would just deploy some players to set up and re-level (if they can’t just cheat in) replacements to keep the Game populated with AI-controlled enemies.

And that’s even assuming that Jane has a hope in h*** of taking out enough of the really big fry to even matter. She certainly ran away from that “more of a Morto job” on Guelia Isola fast enough.

No, Jane is working with Sandra to recruit Kat, as part of their anti-TENka plan (which probably isn’t stupider than some of what Dr. Grace suggests doing).

Her extreme anti-Citizen grudge is also a pose, she gets along fine with Sandra and Paddy. She’s covering for her anti-TENka alignment. I’m not saying that she doesn’t have Survival problems, or that she doesn’t need her Special fixed. Or that she feels particularly bad about TPKing her old group. But she isn’t being completely on the level here.

I’m not sure she’d feel the need to justify her alignment, unless there *is* an actual reason behind it other than “I just like playing Morto”…

While I’m not sure she’s entirely honest about the whole thing, I don’t see a strong reason to assume her “Dead Ones” explanation is a total fabrication, either…

Jane doesn’t need The Game. She’s an outsider — she could just “work” in L.i.F.e.. Clearly she must have other reasons to want to be in. (Whether her reason is really “I want to destroy it”, remains to be seen…)

Also, I’m not sure where you got the idea about Jane’s kids’ avatars? I don’t remember anything like that ever having come up…

Well, I should probably qualify that a bit: Jane doesn’t strictly need The Game to stay alive at all — though apparently she does think that it might improve her chances to get imported into a city, thus improving her situation?…

At the same time, she thinks (or at least claims to think) that destroying The Game would improve the situation for Outsiders in general. So I guess the idea is that as long as The Game exists, it’s better to be in; but it would be even better if it didn’t exist?…

Hmmm. It seems as though “Kleya” should know this since she is the one who designed the game. Maybe it’s an artifact that she left in purposely. Or maybe it’s a bug where she forgot to deallocate memory. Of course, that memory leak would cause them to limit the number of players, and constantly be having to add more servers. Which is what they do, IIRC.

No, TENka limits access to the Game because it’s simply too addictive, if they let everyone play it, then too many people wouldn’t ever leave. That’s why they went to the trouble of making L.i.F.e., which is less sophisticated in every way but must have cost them more because they had to make it after the Ending.

They need to have the virtual reality to lower the resource cost of keeping people alive (people use less metabolic energy and physical space in VR, both of which must be at a high premium due to environmental damage), they need people to still function outside of VR to grow food and do maintenance work (or scavenge, if they’re Outsiders).

I don’t buy that there’s a major technical problem with the Game. Kat could have fixed it anyway, with the access D gives her.

Of course, TENka lies about why they have to limit access to the Game. I guess “it’s too fun for you” would be a pretty hard pill to get everyone to swallow.

Too many people joining The Game (instead of staying in L.i.F.e. and just watching The Game) wouldn’t be a problem, if TENka just increased the costs, so people would still have to work to be able afford it. (Like now they have to work to afford *watching* it.) There must be other reasons for limiting access.

I think maybe you’re not understanding what I mean when I say that the Game is addictive.

Basically, Kleya saw past Danni and Mina’s facade of not needing her help.

It’s not really a surprise if she see’s Jane’s act for what it is.

But that doesn’t mean she’s decided not to help her. All we can infer from this is that Kat is keeping in mind that she can’t admit that she has already seen all the code for Jane’s special and could fix it without logging out.

I think that there is at least one more line to go before Kat finishes logging out. It could be her saying “I’ll see what I can do” or Jane blowing her act, or something else entirely. My guess is that Kat has basically decided not just to fix Jane’s special, but to upgrade it so it works even better, like making it so that when the dolls are killed they push Jane’s anger stats up and give her bonus Morto points or something (maybe even link in a backlash damage to the attacker, like with “Nice”). But the deal is that it won’t deal fatal blows, the dolls will stop when the enemy gives up, or whatever. Or it won’t work on Danni for some reason.

What facade do you mean? Both Mina (for her singing gigs) and Danni (for entering The Game) explicitly asked for Kleya’s help?…

Making the dolls “nice” would be sneaky indeed — though somehow I don’t think Jane would agree to this 🙂

Danni and Mina both asked for Kleya’s help, but they don’t beg and they try to hide how desperately they need her.

Jane can pout about having “nice” dolls all she wants, if the choice is between nice dolls and no dolls, her agreement is not necessary.

Can we ask ourselves what Sandra wants from all this? And is Paddy involved?

Sandra wants the power a skilled programmer can give her. Paddy is probably involved to some level if just a “yes dear” help.

But motivations. What’s her goal?

Sandra’s a player in the anti-TENka movement. We don’t know how significant a player, but probably not especially because she’s open about it. We know that hackers still exist and one tried to cheat to get into the Game, we know that suspicion about TENka is fairly common, though apparently still a minority view (Asa reigns in her rant because it could hurt her group’s popularity).

The goal is probably to find out what TENka is hiding and use that to blackmail them into doing a better job…or possibly to reveal their crimes and demand justice.

We know that cities need programmers to repair important infrastructure.

I’d like to comment on how good the imagry has been for this section, contrasting jane and kat. Watching their eyes as Kat responds with defensive anger and then shame while Jane rants and breaks down really demonstrates how much character growth kat still needs.
I especially like panel 2 on this page as Jane looks physically much larger and more imposing than Kat even from her position on the ground, but it’s ‘pinky’ kat that has all the power in this exchange, but no self-awareness of how disdainful her words are.
On the speculation front, Kat should really get used to everyone wondering just which famous game player from the past (dead one) she is. Her gameplay is just far too uber for people to believe she’s some undiscovered phenom. That mystery of her past identity will be great for their group’s popularity but a huge

Well, she’s ahead of that curve by playing as Erbana and by managing to get killed and lose her only Esone (along with the person she was very obviously trying to save) in her first Game session.

It will be interesting if Kat can negotiate a way to make Jane switch alignment too. For instance, she could recode Jane’s Special to work even better than before…but be Kesti optimized and Erbana friendly. For instance, it won’t work unless someone is standing in the way of an assigned quest, and the dolls won’t deal fatal damage unless attacked. In exchange, they do backlash damage to anyone that hits them as well as their multiplying trick, and maybe do something clever with the emotion stats. Or any number of other clever strategies for basically forcing Jane to change alignment if she wants to really use her Special.

If Kat is clearly a “support caster” type with a pair of highly competent strikers working as a close-knit team, then it would be really hard for anyone to guess her true identity. Of course, if the group had worked with rather than against her from the start, it would be even harder, cause nobody would have seen her basically soloing an entire opposing group.

Oh, but she didn’t quite “solo” it: Danni helped her by “barking” one of the opponents 😉

Dude also helped (sorta). But really, neither of them helped as much as Bandit hurt by making her use up a binding plant and then making her double it.

Oh, and then freaking out and trying to kill everyone else in sight.

While I understand what Jane is saying and why, and am liking her character more and more… am I missing something. I thought killing the game was what brought about world catastrophe in the first place. Or was it something else Kat did which brought that about?

The Ending refers to a sequence of events. The truth is unclear, however the popular story circulated by TENka goes something like, “She became a cyborg, then modified her Hakido to be able to hack into everything, then she hacked all the bots to ‘kill all humans’, and the geomagnetic field to kill everything else.”

While providing instant access to the Game was the original purpose of the Hakido, none of the major events of the Ending really had anything to do with the Game, it was just why TENka was trying to make an implanted version of their neural interface and part of why she had such a thing about winning.

The Game probably never even went off-line, given that Dead Ones are a thing and Jane asserts them to be a significant reason for people to keep the Game running.

So Jane knows that Kat can hack, and can destroy the game. She knows that Kat wants to be nice. Does she know who Kat is? Or just a well-skilled hacker?

Well, wanting to be “nice” is something Kat announced publicly; and it’s also generally known that Kat can work specials. Does Jane know anything beyond that? There is somewhat of an implication that she might — but if she does, she was careful not to say so explicitly…

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 627