History Webcomic / NotAVillain

''[[http://www.navcomic.com/ Not a Villain]]'' is a {{webcomic}} by Creator/AneekaRichins. It tells the story of Kleya Smith, who is attempting to reform her hacker ways in a virtual world where hackers are executed on-spot.

* EverythingIsOnline: Appears to be played at least partially straight. For instance hackers were able to take over robots (both military and civilian) and remote-controlled cars during the Deconstruct Me hacker attacks in the backstory; proper software development principles would avoid either option being online to avoid issues like hacking. We don't get to see modern-day post-collapse world outside of L.I.F.E often so it's hard to say how accurate this is now.

* CharacterAlignment[[invoked]]: The Game only partially plays this straight. It has it's own [[UnconventionalAlignment unique alignments]], but they are broken into hero and villain roles. With [[ChronicHeroSyndrome Kesti]], [[ActualPacifist Erbana]], and [[GottaCatchThemAll Cardista]] as hero alignments and [[KillThemAll Morto]], [[PersonOfMassDestruction Demoli]], and [[MoreThanMindControl Mani]] as villains. [[invoked]]
** Also interesting is that the allignments don't exactly correlate with good or evil. While Erbana is usually going to be heroic and Demoli and Morto usually villianous the other three are less obvious. Cardista seems more TrueNeutral then good or evil, Kesti could still do morally questionable quests, and Mani could easily be played in a morally good way, if one [[MindOverManners doesn't abuse]] some of it's more [[MoreThanMindControl questionable]] abilities.

* RPGsEqualCombat: [[ZigZaggingTrope played with]]. On the one hand the alignment system doesn't appear to presume combat, with the [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath Mani]] and [[ActualPacifist Erbana]] alignments both representing play styles that seem counter to combat, and the [[ChronicHeroSyndrome Kesti]] and [[GottaCatchThemAll Cardista]] alignments not requiring combat. In fact killing things appears to give alignment points to [[KillThemAll Morto]] so anyone wishing to stay a hero or maintain high alignment in another path may have to avoid excessive killing. However, despite this all we ever see of The Game seems to be combat, with specials all being combat-related, characters discussing combat strength of roles, winning access to The Game done through winning in the combat arena, and no one seeming to consider the ActualPacifist play style viable.

* UnconventionalAlignment: The alignment system in the Game allows for 6 alignments, 3 hero and 3 villain. The heroes are [[ChronicHeroSyndrome kesti]], who performs quests given to them, [[ActualPacifist Erbana]], who heal and prevent harm of *anyone* around them, and [[GottaCatchThemAll cardista]], who collect and (somehow) use cards in the game. Villains are [[KillThemAll morto]], who kills everyone around them, [[PersonOfMassDestruction Demoli]], who destroy everything, not just people, around them, and [[MoreThanMindControl mani]], which manipulate others into doing what they want.

* KillEmAll: The morto alignment appears to be gained by killing everything and everyone around you, and in fact leaving a battle without killing something lowers the rating.

* DaddysLittleVillain: Well, more precisely, Daddy's Little Hacker. Kleya's relationship with her father as a child had shades of this. Her father wasn't a CardCarryingVillain as is standard of the trope, and obviously Kleya want's everyone to know she is [[TitleDrop not a villain]]. However, Kleya's dad seem to have praised and encourage her hacking skill without any question of ethical use of it or concern about abuse; leading to Kleya's view on hacking to be similar to how DaddysLittleVillain views other forms of villainy.

* DynamicCharacter: Kleya is trying to be one. She's a SoreLoser who would rather cheat than lose, but she's trying to change this so she won't get caught -- and possibly out of guilt over her past actions.

* CharacterAlignment: The Game only partially plays this straight. It has it's own [[UnconventionalAlignment unique alignments]], but they are broken into hero and villain roles. With [[ChronicHeroSyndrome Kesti]], [[ActualPacifist Erbana]], and [[GottaCatchThemAll Cardista]] as hero alignments and [[KillThemAll Morto]], [[PersonOfMassDestruction Demoli]], and [[MoreThanMindControl Mani]] as villains. [[invoked]]
** Also interesting is that the allignments don't exactly correlate with good or evil. While Erbana is usually going to be heroid and Demoli and Morto usually villianous the other three are less obvious. Cardista seems more TrueNeutral then good or evil, Kesti could still do morally questionable quests, and Mani could easily be played in a morally good way, if one [[MindOverManners doesn't abuse]] some of it's more [[MoreThanMindControl questionable]] abilities.

* AdultFear: Imagine being [[spoiler:Danni]]'s parents. Reality has deemed their daughter "useless", and they've been working themselves to death to try and put off that decision. And it all ends up being useless because their city officials decide that she's not going to be successful in L.i.F.e. or The Game.

---> '''Keyla's Father:''' Who's the greatest girl in the world?

--> '''Keyla's Father:''' Who's the smartest person alive?

* AdultFear: Imagine being [[spoiler:Danni]]'s parents. Reality has deemed their daughter "useless", and they've been working themselves to death to try and put off that decision. And it all ends up being useless, because their city officials decide that she's not going to be successful in L.i.F.e. or The Game.
* AfterTheEnd: Some unspecified catastrophe called "The Ending" has destroyed civilization except for a few surviving Cities. [[spoiler:Kleya is implied to have hacked most of the world's military robots and AI controlled cars in an attempt to kill everyone. But what ''really'' did a number on the world was whatever messed up the Earth's geomagnetic field and caused massive volcanic eruptions. No one is sure how it happened, but one popular theory posited by The Dude is that Kleya somehow found a way to hack it. In spite of Jake's insistence, the fact that the Earth's geomagnetic field isn't computer controlled convinces no one else otherwise.]]

** In fact, the differences in art style even between two characters sharing panel space can be observed here and there. More wealthy [=LiFe=] players have more detailed avatars and clothes, where as poorer players are much more basic and flat looking. You can tell that Mae is spoiled by her family, for instance, because her avatar's hair is brighter, skin is less matte, and clothes' actually have color. The differences become even more startling when you compare the largely ignored by the developers [=LiFe=] to The Game.

** Though it should be noted that they are technically forced to do any quest, regardless of it's content, to keep the alignment. Thus they could just as easily be forced to kick puppies or burn down an orphanage if that was the quest offered to them.

* EverythingIsOnline: Appears to be played at least partially straight. For instance hackers were able to take over robots (both military and civilian) and remote controlled cars during the Deconstruct Me hacker attacks in the backstory; proper software development principles would avoid either option being online to avoid issues like hacking. We don't get to see modern day post-collapse world outside of L.I.F.E often so it's hard to say how accurate this is now.
** When people discuss their fear of hacking they seem to believe this trope is in affect, but they also believe a hacker can turn off their minds or [[http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-197/ hack the world's magnetic field]]. Suffice to say they public tends to be rather computer illiterate and may be exaggerating what a hacker can actually access online.

* ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation: Kleya's 'hacker vision' is this, or perhaps the inverse of it. When she is viewing code or information as a hacker can she sees a sort of wire frame overlay on top of the 3d graphics, making her hacker vision actually less impressive then the graphical representation it overlays. However, it still provides a very graphical way of viewing data, and she is even seen interacting with the overlay to 'hack' something on occasion. Compared to the command line interfaces most hackers use it still seems pretty fancy.

* HackerCave: when we see Kleya in the real-world her home seems a pretty good post-apocalyptic variant of a hacker cave. It is small, but filled with multiple ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation monitors.

* LastLousyPoint: The alignment's in The Game seem quite prone to this. 100% alignment to a path can unlock some unique and presumably powerful specials, making a 100% alignment theoretically tempting for players. However, to maintain 100% in a given alignment one needs a 0% in any other alignment, which is hard to manage when such basic actions such as killing anything, talking someone into something, doing anything another person asks of you, or picking up a card being enough to gain points in an alignment. Furthermore, a user must maintain some stiff restrictions to not lose alignment points, such as never running from a fight, always doing *anything* someone else asks you to be, or not allowing anything near you to die, even if others are trying to kill it. This all combines to make keeping a 100% alignment nearly impossible.
* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Specials, which act something like magic, are generally treated as a big deal in The Game. Multiple characters have referred to the inability to beat specials written by a programmer, and nearly every fight shown in The Game was resolved by a special and/or was decided by two specials competing against each other. The implications seems to be that no matter one's skill with regular fighting without magic like specials they just can't compete; and those with the ability to create new specials outpace those without them.

* LovableCoward: The Dude's a popular character despite his apparent uselessness, because he's constantly running, hiding and cowering behind the rest of his team. The fact that his cards allow him to use his cowardice as a LuckManipulationMechanic is just gravy.

* MoreThanMindControl: High level Mani abilities seem to allow a number of effects to control or force enemies actions.

* NiceCharacterMeanActor: Kleya Smith is dedicated to role-playing a hero. In the comic's real life, she was [[DaddysLittleVillain raised to to take pride in her hacking regardless of who it hurt]], is believed to be a mass murderer and clearly has not entirely reformed.

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler: The Dude]] manages to take on a whole team of adversaries single handedly despite having never actually demonstrated any combat skills previously. While plenty of fans are [[IKnewIt not surprised]] that he had more capability then demonstrated previously they are less pleased to be teased about that fact without seeing what he did or how he managed it.

** These aliases can be important plot points. Figuring out Kat's alias in [=LiFe=] was an early plot point, and her real world identity is a driving question for many people. Other's identities and aliases have also played small roles, such as Danni revealing who she was to an old fan, Bloody Mary creating of a new alias, and not knowing if an individual works for Tenka or is an NPC due to their alias.

* OurGraphicsWillSuckInTheFuture: It seems that fully 3d believable worlds are creatable, so graphics don't *have* to suck. However, bandwidth limits, or even limits on graphics a poor person can buy in [=L.i.F.e.=] can sometimes result in less impressive graphics anyways. D's graphics are also pretty minimal for such a world bending AI, but considering the artistic skills of his' creator perhaps we should be more impressed he doesn't look worse.

* PersonOfMassDestruction: Specifics have yet to be revealed yet, but it appears the Demoli alignment requires not just killing, but destroying everything around them.

* PlugNPlayTechnology: Subverted. Maintaining, upgrading, and migrating existing technology is apparently a very real and important issue; mainly due to the lack of qualified individuals after the the Hacker Hunts.
** In a minor example, when Kleya needs to modify the interface she was emulating/spoofing to appear to be more advanced she asks her AI to hunt down the files, but explicitly says she will work with them later. Apparently even emulating different interfaces to a hacker prodigy with a super advanced AI isn't as simple as plug in new interface and playing; but requires real programing to wrap the communication protocols.

* RPGsEqualCombat: [[ZigZaggingTrope played with]]. On the one hand the alignment system doesn't appear to presume combat, with the [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath Mani]] and [[ActualPacifist Erbana]] alignments both representing play styles that seem counter to combat, and the [[ChronicHeroSyndrome Kesti]] and [[GottaCatchThemAll Cardista]] alignments not requiring combat. In fact killing things appears to give alignment points to [[KillThemAll Morto]] so anyone wishing to stay a hero or maintain high alignment in another path may have to avoid excessive killing. However, despite this all we ever see of The Game seems to be combat, with specials all being combat related, characters discussing combat strength of roles, winning access to The Game done through winning in combat arena, and no one seeming to consider the ActualPacifist play style viable.

* SetAMookToKillAMook: It appears that players with a high [[MoreThanMindControl Mani alignment]] have the ability to make a player 'turn against' their party. The specifics of how this is handled with player controlled characters, including how difficult it is to do and general level of [[GameBreaker game breaking]] it may be, is not yet known.

* [[SlowLoadingInternetImage Slow Loading Internet Reality]]: On many occasions it's shown to take time and resources to load a new enviroment or interface in the VR like [=LiFe=] or the Game. This has even failed on a few occasions. Though the issue seems to be less technology, and more limited resources allocated to maintaining the systems in a Post Apocalyptic world that can't afford to maintain everything.