Favored Class Shirts from The Order of the Stick

Felt inspired tonight lmao

Happy 20th Birthday to my favorite webcomic!!!

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

Works That Mention Birds Being Dinosaurs Where You Wouldn’t Expect It to Come Up

Feel free to reblog with any examples that you know of!

Note that my own selection follows these two requirements:

The work must explicitly use the wording that “birds are dinosaurs” (or an approximate equivalent), not only that “birds are descended from dinosaurs” or similar.

The work is not primarily intended to teach or reference topics in the natural sciences. xkcd and Dinosaur Train are great, but they don’t qualify under this requirement. (More general educational works that don’t specialize in science might count, however.)

Anansi Boys (2005) by Neil Gaiman:

“Birds,” Spider said, “are the last of the dinosaurs. Tiny velociraptors with wings. Devouring defenseless wiggly things and, and nuts, and fish, and, and other birds. They get the early worms. And have you ever watched a chicken eat? They may look innocent, but birds are, well, they’re vicious.”

The Order of the Stick, “Bird Brained” (2011):

Sesame Street, “When Dinosaurs Walked Sesame Street” (2016):

Doraemon, “雪と恐竜” (2017):

(I haven’t found English subtitles for this episode, so you’ll have to take my word for it.)

Over the Hedge for December 1, 2019:

I still think about this every "redemption arc" discourse

Saving the world shouldn't really count as atoning for misdeeds as you kinda live on it, but its an important first maintenance step

2023.12.02

The early comics aren't bad people going back are just going in to it expecting a completely different kind of comic because you're used to the newer stuff, it's perfectly fine, a little dated in parts, but people keep talking about casual misogyny and homophobia when you could like count the amount of jokes that I think falls under it on one hand, like yeah some stuff is dated, but for a webcomic in the early 2000's? It was always more on the progressive side. Dismissing it as cheap dnd jokes is also just a bit eeeh to me? Like yeah some jokes are a bit cheap, but screaming "I GOT A FOUR" in a failed stealth check is still comedy gold to me honestly.

Plus the fact the story exists within a self aware dnd comic parody is like? a major plot point? like yeah the characterizations and plots get really good over time and start out a bit mediocre but if you aren't here for cheesy dnd jokes then i dont really think you'd fully enjoy even the later stuff? Hell, Redcloak who is often said to be one of the best characters doesn't work nearly as good if you don't have that background of knowing that goblins are the common generic dnd enemy.

It always feels weird to me to just dismiss the early stuff, maybe it's just nostalgia as I very literally grew up along side the comic (i have fond memories of being like 10 when blood runs in the family came out and being super excited) but I really think people give the wrong impression with the first hundred few pages. It's not perfect by any means, but at worst it gets nothing more then an eye roll from me and it perfectly sets up the early dynamic of the group.

The webcomic The Order of the Stick is a marvel for avoiding the flanderization of the main cast for two decades. I think this is because the the main cast starts out as one dimensional caricatures of their respective archetypes. Because of this they had a lot more avenues and opportunities for character growth and STILL haven't stagnated or relapsed after, again, two decades. Whereas characters that enter a story with a good amount of character depth are more prone to coming down with flanderization.

I'm really talking about this trope like it's a disease aren't I?

Hell, it's the only peice of media I can think of that actually reversed a case flanderization. I am talking about the case of Belkar Bitterleaf. Belkar is the sole evil member of the Order of the Stick. He's kept in line by Roy the leader of the party but despite this he still manages to cause trouble. While everyone else is slowly developing their characters, he stays the same and becomes a little one note. But at one point the party is split and Roy isn't around to keep him in check. He ends up activating a curse that was placed on him and proceeds to nearly vomit himself to death. But during this Belkar has a trippy vision quest guided by a hallucination of one of the very few people that earned his respect; a crafty politician that played an entire order of paladins for fools. An hallucination that proceeds to tell him how to stay in the game without truly changing themselves.

This is such a brilliant solution to reversing flanderization. A solution that maybe only a meta, fourth wall breaking dnd comic can do. Pretend to have character growth so the people around you don't kill you.

Funny thing about faking it though is that sometimes you make it without knowing it. In the process of faking character growth he is unknowingly undergoing ACTUAL character growth. Makes it all the more funny when he himself says this much later on.

Dead on like a punch to the nose.

The Saga of Lead Sheeting

HI OOTS FANS I hope u guys love him as much as I do >:D

— 90% of being a rogue is finding obscure workarounds to prevent unlikely outcomes. — What's the other 10%? — Unlikely outcomes.

Rich Burlew, The Order of the Stick #1284: "Thus all the dodging"

If you’ve seen the Barbie trailer you know that someone had to

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

my continuing OOTS brainworms and obsession with the Worst Paladin led me to commission this lovely thing from @bewarethewarp. go follow her twitter! she has commissions open!

i can kinda see where xykon is coming from sometimes because redcloak is a bit of a debbie downer