Not A Villain: Hackers and Postapocalypse

[Liliet]

An awesome comic that begins here. An interesting and original (no, really) setting, a flawed but good at heart (tm) main character, lots of secondary characters that are all well-realised and easy to sympathise with, and an intriguing plotline that seems to be about uncovering the events of the past as well as leading on to the uncertain future.


Does anyone other than me like it? ^^

[Winds]

In question to your question: Yes.


I do find it interesting to follow a character who is not necessarily a good person, but is forcing herself to be heroic by sheer force of will.

[Brance_a_Lot]

I like it a lot, I feel like the characters are all very flawed and interesting. The alt-reality is pretty realistic, the concepts anyways and how people would act. Nothing like a good distraction to keep away the apocalypse!

It's just a great read, plus I would recommend her ebook, very interesting character concepts and world concepts.

[Liliet]

I really like the postapocalypse world that does NOT rely on scavenging and did NOT lose all tech. I mean, they even help the Outsiders, and I don't remember a single other postapocalypse work where those trapped away from the others would be considered members of the same community.

And... did Kleya (or whatever her Reality name is) cause apocalypse? Or was that her D without her consent?

[Winds]

I'm guessing...neither.

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What we know of what happened is clearly and explicitly something about Earth's magnetic field. Everyone sensible we've seen seems to agree that's not something you affect with hacking.

My guess is that Kleya's (or D's) major villainous act is something that exacerbated what was happening already.

Hmm. Maybe something to do with why the Outsiders were hit so much harder? And from that assumption, why the 'Insiders' are so fastidious about helping them?

[Liliet]

I'm guessing...neither.

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What we know of what happened is clearly and explicitly something about Earth's magnetic field. Everyone sensible we've seen seems to agree that's not something you affect with hacking.

My guess is that Kleya's (or D's) major villainous act is something that exacerbated what was happening already.

Hmm. Maybe something to do with why the Outsiders were hit so much harder? And from that assumption, why the 'Insiders' are so fastidious about helping them?

I'm pretty sure that the Citizens substantially help only those who earned it. And the rest get their food and free L.i.F.e access because CITIZENS ARE PEOPLE. Humanity didn't turn Evil overnight.

Whatever it was that Kleya did or was trying to do, it was pretty bad. And the question is, did she _actually_ decide to do that (kill everyone?) or was that her dragon taking a bit too much initiative?


Also, I really like how her redemption arc (because, let's be honest, that's exactly what's happening) is being handled. She still has relapses in her old habits, but she has reversed her lifestyle 180. Pink, yellow, no explosions, no weapons and being NICE. To the point of being crazy in the other direction.

That's... that seems to be the only way her redemption might actually work. It's her complete rejection of everything she's been before and at the same time difficulties with losing on purpose that actually makes me forgive her even before I know the details of what it was that happened.

[keybounce]

Bump. (Hey, I searched! And I got better than a 9)

I just found this comic. I have binged 384 episodes, and am just starting book/episode/volume 4.

Enjoyable.

EDIT #1: And now begins a major edit chain of questions :-).

First, #396 http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-396/ -- Am I reading this correctly? Kleya/Kat's dad was annoying/teasing her mother/his wife with this special, and Kleya is reacting to memories of her parents?

Edit #2 (more than an hour later ... trying hard not to double post): http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-455/ -- we see what a carnymancer looks like in this system :-)

[keybounce]

So on a re-read, I came across this:
http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-338/

It is describing the actions and spiking of the "virus".

And the timestamps of virus activity corresponds to "hacker-view" / "D's actions".

So the Virus is either her AI ("D") or her own code-view ability?

The comment that it reacts to anything related to her mother implies that it is D, acting even when Kleya isn't around.

[keybounce]

So if you did not know, there is a "play the tutorial as a text adventure", available at http://navcomic.com/nav-tutorial/

How accurate is it?

... (stuff went off the top of screen)
> help
The intepreter understands a few commands.
Some examples are: "look at <>", "grab <>", "talk to <>", "pick up <>", "ask for <>", "ask about <>", "give help to <>", "throw <>", "attack <>", "hit <>", and "command <>".
Commands to move around are: left, right, up, down, forward, backward.
"health" will display how much health points you have and "inventory" will show you what you are carrying.
"drop <>" will drop some inventory items and "pick up <>" will pick up dropped items.
> look at glow
Final Paradise does not understand that command. Type "help" for a list of a few possible commands.
> get glow
Final Paradise does not understand that command. Type "help" for a list of a few possible commands.
> look at watery glow
You hear a scream coming from the village
Final Paradise does not understand that command. Type "help" for a list of a few possible commands.

So while fumbling around, trying to get a command to work, time is passing and I missed the time factor :-).

[keybounce]

Has anyone given any thought to what our heroine has been doing since the Ending?

It has been, as I understand it, two years. Two years ago, there was a 3-some of hackers taking over military equipment and automated cars; followed by a 1-2 punch of magnetic pole reversal and a super volcano (probably yellowstone, not sure it was clarified or not). Kleya (... do we even know her real reality name?) has been in LiFe for 36 days under this name/personna. When things did not go her way in the game, her first reaction was to reset and start over -- so presumably this is NOT her first LiFe personna, and the idea of an outsider not showing up for a week, so presumed dead is apparently normal.

So what has she been doing for 2 years, given that we can only tell about 36 days?

To clarify: 36 days as of strip 1, where she gets a napping violation.

[Leewei]

So on a re-read, I came across this:
http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-338/

It is describing the actions and spiking of the "virus".

And the timestamps of virus activity corresponds to "hacker-view" / "D's actions".

So the Virus is either her AI ("D") or her own code-view ability?

The comment that it reacts to anything related to her mother implies that it is D, acting even when Kleya isn't around.

I agree with the Virus being D. I'm thinking D is what caused the cars, robots, and so on to go berserk. It isn't yet clear why it happened, but Kleya was almost certainly its creator. I'm wondering at this point what the role of her father is in all of this. I get the impression he's alive, possibly running one of the cities.

The supervolcano and magnetic poles are interesting to me. Loss of the magnetosphere would eventually cause the Earth's atmosphere to erode due to the solar wind. This process would take enormous amounts of time, though. Loading the atmosphere with toxic ash, sulfur, and other harsh chemicals would make the atmosphere unbreathable. Loss of the magnetosphere would greatly increase exposure to high energy radiation. The fact that both events happened simultaneously (from a geological perspective) greatly implies that at least one such event was engineered.

[keybounce]

Actually, I found a Q&A session (series of comics) including one with D giving some answers. Kleya did NOT write D; she did, apparently, improve/enhance it.

http://navcomic.com/qa-sessions/december-break-02/

[keybounce]

New comic
http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-555/

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Will Danni go through into an unknown place with no revives? Will the party be split? Will she be alone with low popularity, or in a deadly spot with a "team" and low popularity? Can she kick her way to a safety dance? :-)

[Dragonus45]

I used to follow this a lot way back, but right around the very first time we saw her log out my laptop died and I never got around to reading it again.

[5a Violista]

Bump. (Hey, I searched! And I got better than a 9)

((Psst! Bumping an old thread is against the rules: thread necromancy. It would've been better to just create a new thread on the topic and possibly link back to this one))

Anyway, I love this comic. I've been following it since way back almost the beginning. It's a fun story with several different layers, but i especially like how it's essentially a redemption story. The main character is trying to be a good person. Her definition of "good" changes and has changed in the past and doesn't perfectly match with what the audience sees as "good", and I think this really makes the story better and sets up some interesting internal conflicts. (For example, when she was going to help Danni one time, helping Danni is obviously something someone would do for a friend, or a good thing; however it comes into conflict with her goal to be seen as a popular hero (which is her definition of "good").

Danni is a really fun character, too.

BlooJane is probably my favorite character, though. She's really interesting with lots of hidden depth that she hides in order to help her family survive.

[keybounce]

((Psst! Bumping an old thread is against the rules: thread necromancy. It would've been better to just create a new thread on the topic and possibly link back to this one))

Sigh. Different forums, different rules. If anything, "one thread per comic until it hits 50 pages" seemed to be the rules. I'm sorry, would a moderator like to split this thread so the old stuff can go back to being lost? :-)

On the subject of Bloody Mary, I mean, Jane, err, Mary Jane, err, Bloody Mary Jane -- that's it. On the subject of Bloody Mary Jane Watson, if she keeps on playing "I must kill" on the same team as our Hero protagonist's "I must prevent kills", will we wind up with a toon-style failure to kill?