orcika-of-the-night

[orcika-of-the-night]

😂 be autistic today 👍

[orcika-of-the-night]

OCtober day 21

Every OC needs a rival, someone they want to take down, or who wants to take them down

Current character description below

Our OC is a silver dragon with purple eyes, who works as a weaver, does giant bonsai for fun, and has a good relationship with their parents. They can breath capsaicin solution, as well as shapeshifting, though in other forms their hair is silver and they remain short, fat, and muscly, just as they are in dragon form (an average dragon being over 200 feet long), with a mascy-femme presentation. They are aroace, and don’t think much about gods, despite living the remnants of a fallen fantasy steppe civilisation that once ruled the world, alongside their pet mimic.

[orcika-of-the-night]

We know you were on accutane. Stop lying

not that it would matter if I had, and not that it's any of your business, but I have in fact never taken accutane.

This is a useful teaching moment though, because what you're doing is a well-studied phenomenon in digital media called 'policing fake femininity.' It's a thing people do to women in the public eye, a specific kind of criticism centred around accusations of being inauthentic, fake, or having cheated in some way. Often it's men doing the policing but women do it to each other a lot too, there are whole websites dedicated to it in fact. Often those criticisms centre around our appearances, as yours did here.

It's sometimes a response to perceived inequality, of which there is plenty! Women in the public eye - myself included - do benefit from a lot of privilege. I've always been quite open about that. People who engage in that kind of public bullying often tell themselves that because of the privilege (or perceived privilege) of their targets the fake femininity policing is socially justified, or the fault of the target. But it doesn't really do anything to correct the structural problems that give rise to that inequality.

In their paper "Policing Fake Femininity," scholars Brooke Duffy, Kate Miltner, and Amanda Wahlstedt say,

“The solution to the structural concerns associated with capitalist patriarchy is not, we contend, to label individual influencers “stupid famewhores” and disparage their mental health in ways that invoke the spectre of hysteria (e.g., “batsh*t crazy,” “delusional,” and “lunatic”). As Chemaly [Rage Becomes Her, 2018] argues, it is necessary that girls and women express their anger, but such a directive “is not an endorsement of unbridled rage, or permission to deliver a swift roundhouse kick to the face of anyone who upsets you, or to regularly fill the spaces you live and work in with hostility and discomfort.” While venting anger at these influencers and their purportedly questionable choices may provide some form of much-needed catharsis, such gender-coded vitriol amplifies the rampant misogyny and toxicity that women already face in online environments.”

If you'd like to know more, I recommend:

Steve Cross & Jo Littler, “Celebrity and schadenfreude: The cultural economy of fame in freefall,” in Cultural Studies

Brooke Duffy, Kate Miltner, & Amanda Wahlstedt, “Policing “fake” femininity: Authenticity, accountability, and influencer anti-fandom,” in New Media & Society

[orcika-of-the-night]

Well, they did one years ago, but this is from this friday's trope talk

idk if you use tiktok but I thought you'd love this!

my continuing scheme to make everybody's pets love me is a resounding success

[orcika-of-the-night]

How are you feeling about Hank Green (allegedly) accidentally asking you to do him on Twitter in front of god and everybody?

I'm bisexual which means I'm attracted to every woman and about three men, two thirds of whom are later found to be women

[orcika-of-the-night]

This implies that session one covers enough time that the first half-elf could be carried to term, campaign really starts off with a tight pace

PC: Do half-elves exist in this setting?

GM: No, but I fully expect you to change that by the end of session one

[orcika-of-the-night]

The spirit called "Hearth-Vigil", from the board game Spirit Island. A spaniel rather than a borzoi, but close enough (also hooves)

heavenhounds, the opposite of hellhounds. think "biblically accurate borzoi"

­Be thou not afraid, for I am a very good boy...

[orcika-of-the-night]

Isn't the horror one basically every other Scooby-Doo episode?

Bullshit villain plans by genre

Fantasy: Fuck it, this whole "manipulate adventurers into doing my bidding" sounds hard. I'm just ordering the cursed artefact that will let me dominate all life through Wizard Amazon. Sure, I'll agree to next day shipping. I'm evil.

Post-apocalypse: Villain who wants to destroy the world sad at having missed chance, trying to rebuild the world so they can destroy it a second time.

Sci-fi: Even the alien invaders aren't sure why they're invading earth rather then just mining asteroids, but they're too stuck in the sunk cost fallacy to leave now.

Horror: Tax evasion but spoooooky

Cyberpunk: Guy who wants to stop the megacorporations and has a fully ethical plan to do so, then remembered what genre they were in so quickly added five wildly immoral parts for no reason.

Superhero: Dr Devastation and his Doom Legions plotting to take over the world via a several decade gradual erosion of civil liberties and government regulation.

Comfy: Gonna brutally torture everyone to death but, you know, a low-stakes pastoral way.

Urban Fantasy: Learn the spell "summon gun" and use that to take all the other wizard's stuff by shooting them in the fucking face.

Espionage: Look, just pick any random news story and go with that one.

[orcika-of-the-night]

What I've been thinking about regarding the whole "hurt people hurt people" concept: did anyone ever write a zombie apocalypse type story where it's clearly an allegory for this? I mean, the people who become zombies are undeniably victims, but they are also the ones who perpetuate the harm afterwards. I think it would work well. Or maybe it would become iffy and problematic very quickly. Either/or

I've been reading some stuff on punitive justice, and it made something click for me that I've observed a lot online but haven't been able to put into words before.

When someone does something wrong, that's bad, and the damage it does needs to be repaired while the person needs to try to do better in future to minimize repeating harm. We learn it in preschool - say sorry, don't do it again. If they keep at it, remove them from the situation where they can do the harm until they prove they're responsible enough to go back in.

So if it turns out someone DIDN'T do anything wrong, that should be a relief! There's no damage to fix, no internal errors to correct. Less work for everybody, literally no harm done. False alarm, all good.

The thing I've observed is, lots of people want them to have done something wrong. There's almost disappointment when it turns out there's no harm done. And I think that's because of this general undercurrent of punitive justice as morally righteous and desirable: someone does something wrong, you get to punish them. Turns out they're innocent? That's disappointing. Find another reason you get to punish them, or find another bad person you get to punish. But at the core of it is that desire to punish someone. Someone you can hurt in a way that makes you a better person for hurting them.

This particular brand of almost cannibalistic pseudo-justice is super common in tumblr, one of the most ostensibly liberal spaces on the internet; I see more borderline savagery in online discourse here than in the actually toxic parts of the internet that are just openly cruel for cruelty's sake. It's always thrown me for a loop, and has frankly also hurt me, because on the rare occasions I get personally dogpiled, it only actually stings when it makes me worry that I've legitimately hurt someone. If I did something wrong, or more realistically when I inevitably do something wrong, that would make it good and right for people to give me shit about it every day until I'm dead.

The thing that clicked for me most recently was this bit in Ijeoma Oluo's Be A Revolution:

Punitive justice is specifically, uniquely appealing to people who have suffered injustices. Of course it's the Tumblr zeitgeist. Everyone here is a marginalized person failed by at least one system. Punishing someone for perceived injustice is how someone the system has deemed worthless proves their value in blood, even if the person being punished hasn't harmed you directly - even if they haven't harmed anyone. "Righteous" anger isn't about the target in these cases, it's about the inflicter. This is how much my pain is worth.

And that kind of violent validation is so alluring and so very dangerous. It seeks an outlet, wearing the justification of justice. Who's in reach? Who's an acceptable target this week? What's a good reason to use?

Is there anything they could do that would make me stop?

[orcika-of-the-night]

A mimic book, but the all the pictures and words in the pages are just the mimics current thoughts over and over again.

Trying really hard to think "book things" with little knowledge of the book's actual contents

Surprisingly thoughtful philosophical statements that abruptly get replaced with "HUNGY"

Doubts about whether the Roper on floor 3 likes them or not

Weirdly intense fan opinions on the bard's traveling show

Trying to remember that word, you know the one, dammit, it's on the tip of its page.

Just musical notation of elevator music

[orcika-of-the-night]

I just want to know where and how the penguins from Madagascar factor into this, because they definitely are

The Emperor Penguins finally decide to live up to their name and build an empire with the goal of taking over Antarctica. However, the rest of the penguins aren't giving up without a fight. The King Kingdom, the Macaroni Monastery, the Adelie Army, the Chinstrap Clan and the Gentoo Guild, together with the turncoat Emperor general Sir Waddles Flipperflap, all band together to challenge the Emperor Empire's path of conquest to stand in their way and defend their homeland.

yes where can i buy this please?

[orcika-of-the-night]

omg, the first big news I actually learn about first from a Destiel meme, I'm 100% a real tumblrina now

[orcika-of-the-night]

Hi Pencil! Now I'm curious about your cutting critique of late stage capitalist power structures of goblins... :D

So!

Goblins are inherently communist, but unfortunately, sometimes a goblin ends up inventing capitalism, typically after accessing the human internet (goblins have very good VPNs). Because goblins don't know what capitalism is, they typically just assume the goblin boss wants the means of production for prank related reasons. This rapidly leads to a small number of goblins having complete control of cool bug production.

Now, this leads to an issue because goblins will quickly become boring nerds if deprived of cool bugs, so now you get the "always evil" goblins from the Monster Manual. They're now forced to stab wizards in exchange for small jars of cool bugs (wizards can, of course, produce their own cool bugs, so the goblin monopoly wants them gone. The rest of the adventuring party is collateral damage).

Luckily, this situation rarely lasts. As mentioned, all Goblins are inherently communist. Over the course of a few generations, they collectively and spontaneously write the entirety of Das Captial word for word, usually on various turtles and suchlike. They then read it, realize what's going on, and eat the rich. This happened recently, hence the current era of happy goblins running around with cool bugs.

Alas, goblins have short memory and all the turtles will wander away into the swamp, so soon they forget what capitalism is and let another goblin borrow the means of production "just for a minute", continuing the cycle. It's very sad.

Remember, if you're a goblin and a goblin with a monocle asks to have a monopoly of force "for a few minutes, for vibes reasons", eat them. They won't give it back.

-Pencil

[orcika-of-the-night]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who, if somehow roped into this role, would exclusively yell stuff like "PI!" "MODIFIED HEISENBERG CONSTANT!" "AVOGADRO'S NUMBER PLUS THREE!" "APPLE!"

dice that just sits there and displays random number

no whimsy no fun

­

[orcika-of-the-night]

Have you ever gone on a date and a girl thought you were cis and you had to be like actually I’m trans? Like it seems like a double standard it’s not like cis people start off flirting with “hey I’m cis” but it just seems like it could risk dangerous situations (maybe less so with queer women than with men) if someone was like surprised.

So hilariously enough that did happen to me once and she responded by telling me she was too and had been stealth for seven years and was debating whether or not to tell me - it was a wild coincidence lol, neither of us had any idea about the other

[orcika-of-the-night]

if you told vin diesel fast and the furious you were gay he'd be like "Some people like driving stick…some people like driving automatic…what matters is you cross the finish line.." and then he'd rev up a dodge challenger and drive through a building and kill 16 people

[orcika-of-the-night]

Okay, let's try this...

Optimisation and Flight?! I don't want to play frickin Flight Simulator!

Technically though in my language names are the other way around...

Fight and Orgasm! Much better, I'll take that one

I'm Graham and Bonding - Paper

(plaintext under cut)

Slender Jesus is here to assign you an RPG

First Name

A-Apathy

B-Bleeding

C-Chaos

D-Dungeons

E-Elephants

F-Fight

G-Graham

H-Heaven

I-Infants

J-Jokesters

K-Kings

L-Lasers

M-Mutants

N-Nutrition

O-Optimisation

P-Pride

Q-Queens

R-Rabbits

S-Sense

T-Teens

U-Umpires

V-Vampires

W-Wizards

X-Xrays

Y-You

Z-Zest

and

Last Name

A-Apoplexy

B-Bonding

C-Crying

D-Dragons

E-Emus

F-Flight

G-Gary

H-Hell

I-Invalids

J-Jugglers

K-Kayaks

L-Lemurs

M-Masterminds

N-Napping

O-Orgasm

P-Prejudice

Q-Queers

R-Riches

S-Sensibility

T-Texting

U-UXAS DESTROYER OF ALL

V-Velociraptors

W-Wetlands

X-Xylophones

Y-Yetis

Z-Zing