‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 724

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You’re a programmer, just make a fake Kat controlled by AI!
Movies have taught me that this won’t take more than a minute or two of typing to pull off.

Since the old guy made her avatar it really shouldn’t be that hard to just have someone use it at pretend 😛 But I doubt TENka would be ok with it

The avatar isn’t Kat’s user, which would have to be hacked. Kat’s paranoia means that she would have the most complex password possible. Hacking the password would be impossible. He could hack her account from within TENka, but that would put his job and, consequently, life at risk regardless of whether he got caught because… Then there’s the problem of hacking Kat’s account, knowing full-well that D still exists in TENka’s systems and is undoubtedly watching her account like a hawk, and hoping that D doesn’t react harshly and kill you for trying. If he used a fake user ID, protecting his job and ability to live in TENka’s safe habitat, D would probably kill the random user. If he used his own TENka account to hack, or D discovered he was behind the random user, D might still kill him because D’s interpretation of Kat’s requests might conclude that his life is less important than Kat’s safety. (User data contains IP addresses that can be used to determine where the user lives.)

It’d be tough to create an A.I. that could emulate Kat. She’s probably by far the best Erbana alive. The only A.I. that might have a chance is D… unless Kleya’s mother created an Erbana A.I. to protect her island.

I could see Bandit trying to convince D to play in place of Kat. D might actually go for it.

Aaand, “I’m here, no time for questions, let’s upload.”

Just as planned.

Though maybe not the most socially acceptable plan for avoiding a difficult topic.

Come on fraidy Kat, don’t be the villain again! Lives depend on you showing up! Nothing to lose by showing up, lose it all by not. At least crash the servers to delay…

Be great if Bandit could get D to “fetch”. 🙂

I do believe 3 people there are thinking “Way to go BANDIT!”

I don’t understand, what is happening if Kat doesn’t show up? The Game is over for them? This session is over? I thought Sandra was trying to find out if they could play minus one player? Why are they suddenly so serious? (Beside the fact that Danni is worried that Kat might be dead…)
Is Dude so upset because he doesn’t want to go back to his city in this moment of forever (if the Game is over)?

Thank you to any one who can answer any of those questions 🙂

I meant:
“Is Dude so upset because he doesn’t want to go back to his city in this moment OR forever (if the Game is over)?”

My guess is that the current session is going to be over, but Sandra is asking if the group can play a different session without Kat later if she still doesn’t show up.

It’s unclear what the Dude’s deal is, but most likely the others are suddenly serious because they feel bad for him but don’t know what’s going on and likely couldn’t do anything about it even if they did.

The session won’t start because they won’t be allowed to upload without all their party. They’re all serious about it because none of them get paid if they don’t play, and for some of them that impacts their chances of survival in Reality. Bandit and Dude are serious about it because Kat dropping out of their group impacts their secret plans. Sandra and Mary have similar but less clearly revealed plans.

That’s a bit different from their session being “over”. But not in any way that particularly favors them. Since the session won’t have started at all, it will reduce the number of recorded sessions available for public viewing, and thus limit opportunities for garnering popularity. It also bolsters the popularity of other groups that compete with them “head to head” for real time viewers, making them less competitive in the future.

For another group, it would also risk having TENka disqualify them for being a bunch of flakes, but TENka is pretty heavily invested in this group for ‘reasons’ (i.e. their various kooky plans to try and tame D). But most of them don’t know about all that.

I’m pretty sure the Game isn’t over for them, but I think something is going on with Dude that we haven’t been let in on yet. All Jane (and Danni) know is that he doesn’t want to go work in the fields. I think Jane’s expression in the last panel is kind of a “suck it up, buttercup.”
But Dude’s reaction seems more extreme than just not wanting to go to work, so I wonder if something is up with his “quadruple agenting” that if he goes back now, something bad will happen.

What we do know about The Dude’s city is that it is on the verge of failure. We don’t know exactly what that looks like but The Dude’s reality, the people around him are probably in a state of despair, chances are they are about to be wrecked by the Earth’s hostile climate when whatever is holding that back fails, and lacking in critical resources they might not be able to allow their citizensto wander around LiFE for paltry reasons.

Its speculation but easy to imagine given what we know and easy to imagine why The Dude would want to live out a carefree fantasy for a little longer, whether it is his game persona, or his Bandit’s buddy persona, or his espionage duty.

The Dude might be his city’s best hope for survival. If he excels in the game, he might be able to earn enough money to buy many of the crucial resources his city is lacking. And, his friendship with Bandit could also prove to be invaluable.

As a famous TENka programmer, and most likely a hacker, Bandit’s skills and access to resources might at least be able to stem the decline of The Dude’s city. If they got Kleya to help, they’d probably be able to turn things around. (Or, at least be able to give the people in The Dude’s city the resources they need, so they can turn things around, themselves)

If The Dude was forced to quit the game, and return to his city in failure, it would be a crushing blow to the city’s morale. Probably even worse than if his character was killed in The Game.

Back when TENka exiled that programmer to The Dude’s city it sounded like the whole place was screwed and it seemed like it wasn’t resources but the technical side of things, could be equipment failure maybe software corruption, stuff beyond Bandit’s skill level to sort out.

I might also be misremembering but was Bandit saying something to The Dude about Kat being the only one with the skill and expertise to fix it?

Wow; even Jane might be touched, a little. Love Danni’s expression.

I think Jane might be about to mouth off on how Citizen’s in cities have no right to complain about their privileged lives in front of Outsiders. Which will give us an interesting rebuttal from the citizens about how things are going wrong for them.

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 724