#order of the stick

[canontypicalgoblins]

belkar has been much better recently but sometimes when elan gets really dumb you can see him holding back his 1 level of barbarian

#order of the stick #oots #ootsposting #elan the bard #elan oots #belkar bitterleaf #belkar oots

[thewebcomicsreview]

I'm hardly the first person to notice this, but good god webcomics are the least time-efficient possible way of telling a story, aren't they?

I've been trying to figure out a better method of telling a story so that I could finish it before I die of old age (or, perhaps more relevantly, before everyone loses interest). It seems like no one really wants to read prose on the internet, but also people don't really like a comic that takes a year to go anywhere.

The main bottleneck is dialogue. You can only get 2-3 lines in a standard comic panel, so even a short conversation of character texture can take several pages. It makes me wonder if the Single Panel With Text Beneath It style (like ForEach) isn't just the Objectively Correct™ way to tell a comic on the internet. It's very efficient on the art, you can include narration if that's your jam, and it's very easy to make it work on mobile. (Also the art being separate is a boon if you want to make marketing materials). But everyone will correctly call you a Homestuck rip off.

Though the other thing Homestuck did was make these sprites of the characters that could be used to crank out a bunch of panels for scenes where nothing visually interesting was happening. You don't really see that copied as much

Not openly, anyway. There's a stigma. I've thought about rebooting Legend of the Hare as a visual novel, where that kind of thing is arbitrarily more accepted, but it does start raising the question of why you're bothering with the visuals at all. I don't think the kind of person who makes webcomics is usually looking for an excuse to get out of drawing, even if it lets them increase their page output dramatically. Making sprites that don't look like absolute ass is also really hard. Homestuck sprites have a really specific janky charm to them that I've never really seen any other comic pull off.

And, yeah, you could always just use a simpler art style, like Order of the Stick does, but it's super hard to get anyone to read a webcomic with great art, let alone simple art designed to maintain a high page output. And, again, why are you making a comic if you don't want to draw, unless you just naturally happen to draw that way and be really fucking good at it like Rich Burlew is?

It seems like the only really good way to tell a story in a reasonable amount of time as a webcomic artist is to make enough money off it that you can work full time, and, um, that's not really feasible either.

I don't have an answer I like. I guess just kill yourself in the content mines working webcomics as a second job that doesn't pay you anything.

I don't have a conclusion, capitalism is a nightmare.

#Random Thots #ForEach #Homestuck #Order of the Stick #B^U

[grassknotts]

Felt inspired tonight lmao

#order of the stick #oots #the order of the stick #o chul #lien #xykon #oona #soon kim #girard draketooth #vaarsuvius #nale #haley starshine #celia #roy greenhilt #durkon thundershield #elan the bard

[iamthedukeofurl]

One interesting thing that can happen in long running media is that the general cultural background can shift under the work, recontextualizing it as it is being written. I'm specifically thinking of the Order of the Stick, a Dungeons and Dragons themed webcomic that started in 2003 with the titular party of adventurers going through a dungeon.

From left to right, we have Belkar Bitterleaf the halfling ranger, Vaarsuvius the Elf Wizard, Elan the Human Bard, Haley Starshine the Human Rogue, Durkon Thundershield the Dwarf Cleric, and Roy Greenhilt the Human Fighter. The comic takes place in a fantasy setting that knowingly runs off the rules of Dungeons and Dragons third edition. Characters talk about rolls and bonuses and intentionally take levels in various classes. At the start, the comic was a pretty basic gag comic about the D&D rules, basic fantasy/adventure tropes, ect.

In the 20 years the comic has been running, it has updated about 1300 times, not counting bonus strips exclusively made for the printed version, and several print (or PDF) only side and prequel stories. It has also dramatically grown from it's roots, the art has improved while keeping the same general aesthetic, and the gag-a-day comic has become a sweeping fantasy epic. The characters have grown beyond their initial bits (Belkar is a Murderhobo, Elan is stupid, Haley is greedy, ect), and it's genuinely up there as one of my favorite stories. But anyway, let's talk about Vaarsuvius. If you look at the above art, You'll notice that the characters tend to have three types of body shapes: Rectangles for Roy, Belkar, and Elan, feminine curves for Haley, and Robes for Vaarsuvius. This presentation is a pretty consistent signifier of gender and/or somebody wearing robes. Early on, part of Vaarsuvius's running gag became their ambiguous gender. At the time, it was a fairly common joke in fantasy to talk about how Elven men had androgynous or "Girly" appearances, so V was part of that. Instead of a singular pronoun, characters would generally just abbreviate Vaarsuvius's name as "V", and whenever the narrative would have naturally provided some indication of gender one way or another, V would resolve the situation without providing any such indication. For example, an early gag has the characters seeking out a set of modern style bathrooms in the dungeon. When they find them, V says that their "More Efficient elven biology" means they don't have to go yet, so they wait outside while the boys go into the Men's room and Haley waits in the inevitable long line at the women's. When Vaarsuvius reveals that they are married, they use the term "Spouse" to refer to their partner, when we see their children, the children are clearly adopted (V and their partner both have pale skin, their children have darker skin) and refer to Vaarsuvius as "Parent". Vaarsuvius themselves seems to have trouble identifying other people by gender. Characters outside the central cast might refer to Vaarsuvius as "He" or "She", but doing so was always shedding light on that character's perspective, rather than saying anything about Vaarsuvius. The assumption behind the gag is that Vaarsuvius must be either male or female, and the joke is that the narrative/Vaarsuvius themselves keeps finding ways to avoid "Revealing" their gender. Fan wikis and official books list Vaarsuvius's gender as "Ambigious" and on the forum there used to be a regular, multi-part thread dedicated to debatings Vaarsuvius's gender, even after the author declared that it would "never be revealed".

Anyway, going back to the start, it's 2023, and something shifted at some point, both in the comic and in the general cultural background. The jokes about V's gender kind of fell off, not just because the gag got played out, but because the basic assumption behind it simply doesn't work anymore. Everybody knows that Nonbinary people exist. There's no point in the comic where Vaarsuvius switches from being "Ambigiously Gendered" to Nonbinary, in fact, the entire comic reads just fine if you read Vaarsuvius as male or female and just not caring enough to clarify their gender to anybody and at some point other characters just stop thinking about it. But it's interesting to see how a character trait that was once included in even the most basic character descriptions (Varsuvius: Elven Wizard. Arrogant, Intelligent. Ambigiously gendered) just kind of got washed away by a rising tide of cultural nuance towards gender. Also go read OOTS, it's pretty great.

#order of the stick #oots #webcomics #long running media #posts that have been swimming in my head until I let them out

[saturniade]

"these two gemstones" duo <3

#mwah mwah. my fave friends forever (fff) #oots #order of the stick #doods #yoo my post

[airinyourtires]

belkar, or as i like to call him,

#order of the stick #belkar bitterleaf #dungeon meshi

[trainwreckgenerator]

guess who still cares a lot about a bunch of stick figures in the year 2023. hi its me i care hello

#oots #order of the stick #greetings to the like 3 other order of the stick fans in the 16-24 demographic. how are we doing #my art #fuck you im tagging all their names. #roy greenhilt #haley starshine #belkar bitterleaf #vaarsuvius #elan oots #durkon thundershield

[cosmicsodacan-art]

I keep forgetting to post this! So here it is, before I forget again! Tsukiko!!!

#I believe in women’s wrongs #this is literally from several months ago lol #I’ve got another piece I’ve drawn since then that needs to go up here too #art by me #fan art #digital art #order of the stick #the order of the stick #tsukiko #Tsukiko oots #oots #team evil oots #team evil #giant in the playground #idk what else to tag. uh. #if you’ve read this far I hope you have a nice day

[inbarfink]

So although Order of the Stick is explicitly textually not an actual D&D game with actual players, it’s pretty cool how well Belkar’s character arc work not just as your usual ‘asshole character learns to care’ story but also mirrors the narrative of an asshole troll player learning to play the game seriously.

Like, while the whole Order kinda plays on standard D&D Class Stereotypes on some level, Belkar was always the one who played more into a Player Archetype than a Character Archetype. Maybe because that Player Archetype is often defined as lacking an interest in serious Roleplaying.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to play a tabletop RPG just for dice-throwing and violence. The problem with That Kind Player is more when they attach themselves to a group that is otherwise interested in character and plot - and rather than finding some sort of compromise with the rest of the group or just looking for a new one more amicable to random violence - they keep hanging around while expressing just a total disinterest in the plot.

And caring for really nothing but scoring as many kills as possible, even if it gets in the way of the group’s general strategy...

And/or the DM trying to tell a compelling narrative...

And sometimes just being disruptive and causing conflict for the lols.

Also, Belkar has, like, objectively the worst build in the entire Order and he started out with no understanding of his Class outside the Two-Weapon Fighting. He really does act just like the One Guy who really wanted to play a double-wielding character because it’s badass, saw it’s a Free Ranger Feat and refused to read any of the other features or flavor text of the class.

So when he befriends Mr. Scruffy, it’s not just the ‘Mean Character Warms His Heart to a Cute Animal’ trope - it’s also figuratively about a player learning how to actually play and roleplay his Class and use other class features that are not directly related to just Stab the Enemies and They Fall Down.

And so much of his character arc is about the realization that he doesn’t really know himself. It is a character arc from an in-universe person but it also parallels a narrative of someone who is learning how to engage with his character for the first time and almost, like, retconning more connection between Belkar and his non-combat class features as the metaphorical Player becomes more invested in using them.

And it’s just… pretty interesting, in a stage where OOTS is really moving away from meta-D&D jokes - that the most meta-D&D part of the comic is the pretty-serious character arc of one of the main party members

And, I dunno…

#order of the stick #belkar #belkar bitterleaf

[andromeda3116]

going back and rereading order of the stick from the beginning, and like. god, the first 250 comics or so are just. not good. they don't fully suck, but they are so generic. and so early-2000s. but once you get to azure city and start to get the lore, it's like.... okay. we might be onto something here. and then the battle for azure city starts and it's like... shit, we're definitely onto something here.

and then you get to don't split the party, and while it's got its weak points, you hit the soul splice arc with v, and it's like. holy fuck this is good. how the fuck. this was a gag-a-day comic strip about a dnd adventure, how did it come to this? the fact that that arc is all about how one of the good guys descends into madness -- using characteristics that were originally one-off jokes -- and ultimately ends up committing the most Evil act in the entire story, and it's completely in-character, and then has them reach the very bottom, hit their "what you are in the dark" moment, and go back, thus seeding the possibility of their redemption --

shit.

and then it only gets better from there. everything past don't split the party is phenomenal storytelling, world-building, and characterization, and we're coming up on the final battle, and i'm just like -- there are several shoes that are still waiting to drop, and i legitimately cannot tell how this is going to end. i mean, the oracle said that elan would have a happy ending, which means that the world isn't going to be destroyed, and he wouldn't be happy if he, haley, or roy died, so probably at least those three are going to make it, but beyond that...?

this started off as a mediocre early-aughts dnd-based stick-figure comic and turned into a legitimately incredible fantasy tale

shit, and this isn't even starting on redcloak, especially if you read the prequel story, start of darkness. like, he is the poster-child for the sunk-costs fallacy, but at this point, what will it take to convince him to turn on xykon? he loathes the lich, is using him for his own purposes, but he truly believes that he needs xykon to accomplish his goals. but the good guys need him to turn on xykon! they need him to join them, or else all of this is for nothing!

i feel weird recommending it to people because it's like. the first 250 or so comics are mediocre at best, but you can't skip them. early on, there's a lot of casual sexism and a lot of casual homophobia, as was normal at the time this was published. it starts off simplistic, making a lot of cheap dnd jokes. it doesn't start to get impressive until the army shows up at azure city around strip 415, but after that, it will start to blow your fucking socks off.

but you can't skip the first 400 strips! you have to read it from the start! and you'll read them going "is this really what you're recommending?" and i'm like YES!!!!!! just wait for it! the payoff is so fucking worth it!!!

#order of the stick #it gets so amazing y'all! #some parts of the writing will stop you in your tracks and make you stare at the wall #it starts off so rough but *god* does it get fantastic

[tiger-manya]

I really want to recommend oots to more people. However, a lot of my friends are professional artists, so it sounds kinda insane, like "Hey, there's this old webcomic that breaks many rules of layout and composition (the things you went to school for), but I promise it's really good. The best thing about it is all that text in a language you aren't fluent in. Please read all 1300+ episodes. It gets especially interesting after the ~200 mark. No, you can't skip anything. Yes, it's still ongoing. Listen, you'll surely love this. You're a fan of dnd and enjoy reading all those fantasy webtoons — this is perfect for your tastes. Here is the website. No, it doesn't have a mobile version. No, I also have no idea how all that 3.5 stuff used to work. So... are you sold on it yet? What if I annoy you every time we meet?"

#oots #order of the stick

[canontypicalgoblins]

this is quite possibly the worst one i have made yet

#order of the stick #oots #elan the bard #tarquin #tarquin oots #elan oots #ootsposting

[razmerry]

things that make me remember order of the stick is an ancient powerful monument of a webcomic

#razpost #order of the stick #minecraft #you mean this isn't just the stick figure sillies that me and 5 other tumblr people love.....

[mbg159]

after writing an essay on the paladin of all time, i had to make this joke

#miko miyazaki #order of the stick #oots #poor little meow meow #paladin #dungeons & dragons #d&d #the order of the stick

[lutentime]

every time i get to this fucking arc

#oots #vaarsuvius #sketchbook #order of the stick

[washed-up-wurmcoil]

Vaarsuvius and Marcille would absolutely despise each other until they saw each others spell lists, then they'd be besties.

#Order of the Stick #Dungeon Meshi #Vaarsuvius #Marcille Donato