Not a villain 1.01 somebody had a thread about it?

[halfeye]

I am not a moderator.

Sigh. Different forums, different rules.

Tell me about it (please don't).

If anything, "one thread per comic until it hits 50 pages" seemed to be the rules.

Also, no thread necromancy, no morally justified, no religion and no politics. I probably missed a few. Spaces required after quotes is different too, but it may be usual.

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?

I'm about year or too into the comic and haven't yet done an archive crawl, so it's all spoilers to me, sort of.

[keybounce]

I found the comic, and did an archive trawl in ... 2 days? 3 days? Then went over to the forums to see what people were saying about it.

It's good. Finish the catch up.

Now, new comic:

Spoiler

Show

Into the portal!

[keybounce]

Update for the 17th: http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-557/

Is that desert rain?

[keybounce]

Update for the 20th: http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-558/

4 out of 5 party members recommend staying together.

[Douglas]

Heh, and Danni displays (privately) blatant favoritism. Identical advice, even phrased practically the same, just with different words and different sources, and she thanks one while telling the other off.

Can't say I blame her too much, though. Kleya has been a lot more generally friendly to her than Bandit has.

[5a Violista]

That favoritism makes a lot of sense:
She sees Kleya as her socially-awkward-but-dependable friend in unfortunate circumstances. She likes her, especially because they helped each other get into the Game, and was willing to risk her chance of ever playing, so Danni had the chance as well. Plus, Kleya codes for her. Danni would have been taken off life support without Kleya, and Kleya still stood up for her (risking her fans' favor) when they were mocking Danni later for getting in while Waterman didn't.

She sees Bandit as that smooth-talking suck-up who always gets his way. She dislikes him, because in her experience he's arrogant, gets everything he has ever wanted, and he created bots that literally tried quasi-torturing them, bullied her and her friends, and made fun of her old friend for dying and rigging the matches to favor The Bandit; and besides that, he uses his fanbase to unfairly punish others, uses his workplace to force others to forfeit, and is too smug for his own good.

Or, in other words, Danni sees Kleya as a caring friend; she sees The Bandit as an opportunistic bully. She doesn't have the benefit of seeing either Kleya's or The Bandit's personalities behind-the-scenes in the real life, like the readers of the comic can, so she can't see the struggle Kleya goes through to be kind, or the fact that The Bandit is mostly a mask for a guy who is at the very least helpful to others.

[Ibrinar]

I don't think Kleya struggling to be kind would matter (her identity though…) She might be a bit more tolerant of Bandit I guess, but much of why we are more positive towards him than her is that we as readers don't particularly care about the things you have listed not because we know something that would not make you dislike him for them. He has a purpose for acting like that but it isn't some kind of greater good purpose that overrides it, so being a jerk because you decided on that as your public persona probably doesn't change much for people it is directed towards.

[keybounce]

New page: http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-559/

More Bandit and Dude versus Kat helping Danni.

... And of course, the "I must kill" is no where near the "no you won't".

[keybounce]

New page: http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-560/

So Bloody Mary Jane Watson is still there. And as leader, she has access to out-of-game info.

[halfeye]

New page: http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-560/

So Bloody Mary Jane Watson is still there. And as leader, she has access to out-of-game info.

That's a little distressing. They could do with someone more involved with the group as comms co-ordinator.

[keybounce]

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-562/

So Kat is perfectly happy to let Jane be guard while everyone is logged out.

[Alandra]

If she didn't know what Jane had done, why not? Also, it probably wasn't as random as everyone seems to think it was. Either it was part of the secret plan she seems to have or she had problems with her old group. If they only argued in whispers then nobody even had to know that they had problems with each other. And she had to make a new character because of it. I don't think she'd do it again to this group, not without having a really good reason for it.

[Douglas]

Wasn't it mentioned somewhere that Jane killing her group was not against the rules and she actually was forced to restart for some other reason? I wonder what that other reason was.

[5a Violista]

It was mentioned and I assumed the reason was “TENka was mad at her for foiling their plans and wanted to punish her without seeming vindictive“

Remember, Bloody Mary‘s team was losing popularity, and TENka was planing on kicking them out and straight-up replacing them with a team of TENka employees. I believe Bloody Mary (and Sandra?) figured the only way to prevent a complete entertainment monopoly was to have the team kicked out due to permadeath instead of low popularity, as a permadeath situation would require opening tryouts to anyone, instead of just replacing them with an employee team full of specifically-trained team led by Bandit, with The Dude and three other TENka City citizens on the team.

So, I think the motivation of Bloody Mary and Sandra was to keep Outsiders and citizens of less-popular players in The Game, as a constant reminder to TENka that other cities still need help and programmers.

[keybounce]

What if it was "Kill them all, or we kill your children"?

[Alandra]

I think Sandra and Bloody Mary want more than just remind TENka that the other cities need programmers - it's not like TENka seems to care what other cities want.
Also, there is definitely something bad going on with TENka. They have much too much power, not only over the game and Kat seems to have a serious grudge against them. I think someone in TENka tricked Kat into doing whatever caused this apocalypse, probably the one who is looking for Kat, possibly her father. (She seems to have a grudge against her father, she doesn't mention him, and while most people think that he is dead, the only thing that indicates this is the fact that the doesn't play his character in the game anymore and an AI took it over.)

[keybounce]

You mean, maybe the unnamed "He" at the top of Tenka is her dad?

---

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-565/

So the arguing over who should be on watch continues. Apparently, only the two from Tenka qualify, and neither one wants to do it.

Also: Kat is still annoyed at Jakey :-).

[keybounce]

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-566/

I like how the comments mention that Kat is being a cat-herder here.

[Lord Torath]

I like how the comments mention that Kat Danni is being a cat-herder here.

Fixed that for you.

Kat's been watching out for Danni all along, warning her about altered gravity, keeping Jane at bay (although Jane seems to realize there's something odd about Kat as well).

So, regarding Saisuke: any theories as to who he is in real life? Do you think he's someone we've met? Someone we've heard of? Or someone completely unknown to us at this point?

It's been fun to watch Aneeka's art improve. I started reading at the truck-dodging stage. She's come a long way since then.

[keybounce]

Keep in mind that the truck dodging was supposed to be low-quality, cheap graphics :-)

[Lord Torath]

Oh, definitely. But if you look at her early L.i.F.e. work, compared to her later L.i.F.e. pages, you can see a real difference.

[keybounce]

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-568/

So we are seeing Kat prepare with sand, because she doesn't have a bag of holding anymore. Not sure that "sand in your eye" will be effective or not.

[keybounce]

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-569/

Pockets don't count :-).

[keybounce]

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-570/

So while a fireball is out, what can sand do?

[Douglas]

Temporarily blind someone, I'd guess.

[keybounce]

Bad/pun reference: Kleya wants to be nice, right?

Toy story: "We toys see everything. So play nice".

Just tossing this out ... it's not like her big mecha toys went out of control last time, right?

[Lord Torath]

New comic is up. Aneeka's mouse-over-text mentions falling sand. Anyone see any falling sand?

[Spojaz]

Kat is using the sand as she logs out in the last panel.

[Lord Torath]

Okay, I see it now. I missed that as shading somehow.

[keybounce]

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/pause-2/

A second sketch comic, with updates to resume friday.