‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 655

This eats at her a lot.

Thanks to everyone who has left a review on my fantasy novels, in particular the first one, The Wanted Child. It's been awesome to read them. Thanks!

27 Comments

The emotions on this whole page are on point and I love everyone. >.>

I want Bandit to ask Danni permission to give her a hug!

Lol Danni would be like no

you nailed it. ten inches deep.

Just a *tiny* bit not in the best position, Bandit.

I think he’s finally put some of the obvious clues together!
Ok, obvious to us readers, and flat out spelled out in some cases, isn’t the same for those in the situation. Even so, he’s definitely no Sherlock.

Actually, I think that overall, Bandit is very astute and able to recognize many things that others don’t. In this situation, a large part of him not figuring things out sooner is because his attention is almost completely diverted by Kleya. He is obsessed with her, and with trying to shield her from others who are obsessed with her death, and so he isn’t noticing things that he should otherwise notice.

If we could see a compilation of only bandit pages where he’s within earshot of Danni, we might get a better sense of the information he has available to him, which was pretty limited to begin with.

I think with the question he finally asked in the last pannel, not to mention how he’s been interacting with her since she got to this room. I think it’s pretty clear what information he has on people is rather limited. now he might have access to more information if he tried, but I think mightycleric is right in that he’s been to distracted with trying to find / protect Kleya to dig into details that aren’t directly related to his main goal. I think him not realizing the unintended consequences of his attempt to setup means to reduce the strain on the way over booked waiting list for the game is proof of that. The idea being that those two would make sure that only who would take the chance seriously and not just waste it get into the trials. But not seeing that the way he set them up didn’t just provide deterrent to those who might be lazy or otherwise take the situation to lightly, but also straight up torment and bully those who are very serious but also desperate. Because he didn’t dig into the details of who all where playing and what the “girls” where up to; he just put his “fix” in place and went back to his main objective.
But when it does come to things that are related to that he is quite astute with how well he’s been able to handle, convince, bluff many people and events that where getting a bit to close to discovering/hurting Kleya. Even the scene where he blew her up follows this pattern. As he was taking into account several details he was noticing about how other key members in TEKNA where acting and talking about the events they where watching unfold and acted biased on that and what he remembered her being like last time they met. He didn’t really spend any time trying to determine if her view points have shifted any, which I think would of helped him not come off as such a jerk in that scenario. Still he only needed to know that she isn’t maliciously causing harm. As even before she wasn’t doing the crazy stuff to hurt other people. She was doing stuff to glorify herself and not paying attention to the fallout of her actions and that’s what was getting her into trouble. He didn’t think he needed anymore, and I think for the most part wouldn’t of had much of a chance anyways.

Love this comic 🙂

Oh, *now* he figures it out?

Eesh.

looks like he called it

Whaddaya know? Bandit got a clue.

Bandit still doesn’t quite understand. As a matter of fact, neither do I, completely. I know that Danni is in a bad situation in her City, (namely, that she NEEDS the Game for some reason) but I don’t know what that situation is. Are her legs crushed in the real world? That seems like the most obvious theory. A dancer with no legs, who can now only dance in a computer game, seems to be the case. But I don’t know for sure, because her specific reason for needing the Game has never been mentioned. I’d like to hear the full story.

More specifically she is paralyzed in the real world so without the game or any VR she is just a vegetable taking up space. Despite being famous before the world fell apart her current value is less than zero. No way to work or help and just using precious resources with no input value, if Danni doesn’t place in the game she has no value at all to anyone so they city will dump her like garbage.

It’s easy to miss but they has already been explained out between Danni and Kat earlier rin the comics.

And by “dump her like garbage,” they apparently mean “disconnect her from whatever life-sustaining resources she’s using and allow her to die, probably pretty quickly.” It’s not just money, or resources on the line for Danni; it’s her very life.

She’s not using “sacrifice” as hyperbole.

The only thing that has been keeping her going this long is that her parents have been trying to work as hard as the 5-6 people the city thinks it could support if they disconnected Danni, and the work they owe the city too, so they’ve been trying to do 8 people’s work in the fields, reduce their own expenses, etc.

She needs the Game to earn money, because citizens aren’t allowed to earn money in LiFe. Hope that helps. 🙂

@panel 6: Yes, Captain obvious.
@panel 5: I think the emotion came across just fine, assuming that it was the one you wanted to convey. Was it despair plus being about to cry?

Don’t worry. You nailed it.

To be completely fair to bandit, he had absolutely no way of knowing anything about Danni’s situation. She’s told little bits of it to Kleya but that’s it.

Everyone who knows about her condition was told, including us. Bandit barely knows her, so of course he didn’t know, its not really being fair to act like hes an oblivious idiot.

Don’t fret…the moment I saw that panel, I felt the pain, her anguish, her conflicted thoughts racing through her mind causing her physical pain atop her moral dilemma ;-;
I’m right there with her…

There is a bit of a fatal flaw in the “sacrifice one to save many” argument. If you KEEP sacrificing ONE, you eventually end up sacrificing MANY. And if that ONE had the potential to save MANY, well … there goes that route.

And yet, that doesn’t really matter if you don’t get far enough along for them TO save “many”.

Example: not enough food to make it to next year’s harvest. If you don’t do something about that soon, EVERYONE starves.

It doesn’t matter if someone has POTENTIAL to do something awesome 2 years from now. If some people aren’t removed from the eating pool, EVERYBODY dies, and that “potential” is just as dead.

Certainly, over time, you DO sacrifice “many” for a few to live in some cases… the difference is that, in many of those cases, the only other option is for EVERYONE to die.

While I don’t blame her for thinking that, Danni isn’t a hypocrite. She legit needs to be in the Game because her situation seems to be a mater of life or death. There are probably several citizens who need to be players in the Game to survive along with the outsiders.

Citizens like Bandit and Dude though don’t need the Game to survive. For them it is manly a fame and fortune thing or a need to fully escape from reality. They are the main problem regarding the long waiting list and limited spots for playing the game. Disqualifying anyone who is in secure standing with their city from qualifying for the Game should help reduce the waiting list.

Mind you since we don’t know how many cities are like Bandit’s, such a solution might only remove a small percentage of people.

Ow! My poor feels… they took the brunt of this page.

It’s been rather obvious from he previous actions, but having it restated here in this way is just brutal.

Bandit really should count his blessings, for how well he has it.

YOU NAILED THE EMOTION IN PANEL FIVE

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 655