# Orc City > Orc City is a 2025 remixable copypasta born when X users mocked indie author John A. Douglas's novel, turning his overwrought opening line 'Orc city smoldered' into endless parody posts. Orc City is a remixable joke format born from a backfired roast on X (Twitter) in July 2025. After indie fantasy author John A. Douglas criticized Hideo Kojima's character naming in Metal Gear Solid 2, users dug up the overwrought opening of Douglas's self-published novel *The Black Crown* and turned its "Orc city smoldered" prose into an endless stream of parody posts. The meme spread rapidly over the Fourth of July weekend, producing everything from photoshopped screencaps to fake historical headlines about life in Orc City. ## Origin On July 3, 2025, fantasy author John A. Douglas (@J0hnADouglas) posted a tweet mocking Hideo Kojima's villain design in Metal Gear Solid 2. Douglas wrote: "Whenever someone glazes Hideo Kojima, remember he once made a boss character that's a lardass in a bomb disposal suit riding around on rollerblades and sipping wine from a wine glass with a straw. His name? Fat Man. 'Genius.'" The post pulled in over 7 million views and 4,500 likes within two days[4]. Kojima fans bit back fast. X user @capybaroness quote-retweeted Douglas with a screenshot of the opening lines of his novel *The Black Crown*, captioning it "this is how this guy's book starts"[1]. The passage describes an orc city in ruin after a war, with lines like "The ground soaked in a knuckle's depth of blood and ash" and the elvish king's pronouncement about orcs being reviled. The quote-retweet exploded, pulling in over 15.4 million views and 6,100 retweets[1]. As the Aftermath put it, Douglas's criticism was already missing the point: people like Kojima precisely for the bizarre levity he injects into serious games, and "Fat Man" is clearly a reference to the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki[3]. Pop culture critic Razorfist also weighed in, pointing out how correct Douglas was about Metal Gear's naming conventions while showing another absurd Kojima character name, "Die Hard-man," as an example of the writing fans were defending[2]. - **Platform:** X (Twitter) - **Creator:** @capybaroness (viral post), John A. Douglas (source material author) - **Date:** 2025 ## Overview Orc City jokes revolve around the fictional setting from John A. Douglas's fantasy novel *The Black Crown*, which opens with a passage describing a smoldering orc city destroyed in war. The prose leans heavily on classic fantasy tropes: noble elves, savage orcs, knuckle-deep pools of blood and ash, and a haughty elvish king who declares, "There is nothing more reviled than the Orc." Users seized on the dramatic, self-serious tone and remixed it into absurd contexts, treating "Orc City" as if it were a real place with its own culture, history, and politics[1]. There's no fixed template. The meme takes the form of fake travel quotes, edited movie stills, historical parodies, satirical news headlines, and straight-up shitposts about orc life[4]. ## How It Spread The meme hit full stride over the Fourth of July weekend in 2025. On July 3, @drowsyluma posted an "I Think Coolsville Sucks" edit reading "I think Orc City sucks," earning over 25,000 likes in two days[4]. The same day, @GayOliveGarden riffed on a *Starship Troopers* line: "I'm from orc city and I say kill em all," which picked up 16,000 likes[4]. By July 4, the jokes were multiplying. @Awesomespen posted an edited image of Keanu Reeves quoting his *Cyberpunk 2077* line, reworked for Orc City: "In Orc City, you can be anyone, anything if your body can pay the price." That one pulled 121,000 views and 7,800 likes[4]. @NewEngOfficial posted an Anthony Bourdain advice parody with the text: "Once you've been to Orc City, you will never want to stop to beat the Elvish King to death with your bare hands," reaching 35,000 likes in a day[1]. On July 5, @hedgebrush posted "John Elf Kennedy shot in Dal'ath after promising to declassify documents on the Orc Wars" alongside a JFK photo edited with elf ears[1]. That same day, @paynushurts discovered the book's glossary, which contained in-universe racial slurs like "Orcpunched" and "Spear ear," adding more fuel. The glossary post earned over 5,000 likes[4]. Meanwhile, @Blood_0cean offered a broader critique: "Entire generations of fantasy authors, readers, and fans are permanently trapped in a mental prison where the only way to interact with and understand fantasy is in terms of elves and orcs." That tweet gathered 5,900 likes and turned the meme into a conversation about the genre's creative stagnation[5]. Douglas himself leaned into the joke fairly quickly, posting his own Orc City memes, which gave the whole thing a good-natured feel even as it spiraled further[2]. One user riffed on the rock anthem format: "We built Orc City! We built Orc City! We built Orc City with ROCKKK TROLLS"[2]. Author Hans Schantz half-jokingly speculated about "orc bot-farms" keeping the trend alive on X[2]. ## How to Use Orc City memes don't follow a single template. The common thread is treating "Orc City" and its lore (elves, orc wars, the elvish king) as if they're real and inserting them into existing meme formats, cultural references, or fake historical scenarios. Typical approaches include: 1. **Travel quote parodies** — Take a famous quote about a city or country and replace the location with Orc City. The Anthony Bourdain format is a popular vehicle. 2. **Fake headlines** — Write satirical news or historical headlines involving Orc City politics, wars, or culture (the JFK/elf ears edit is a prime example). 3. **Existing meme templates** — Drop Orc City references into Starship Troopers, Cyberpunk, Coolsville, or any format that involves places or conflict. 4. **Direct text posts** — Write dramatic, overwrought prose in the style of Douglas's opening, applied to mundane situations. 5. **Glossary/worldbuilding parodies** — Invent absurd fantasy slang in the style of the book's "Orcpunched" glossary entries. ## Cultural Impact Beyond the laughs, Orc City sparked a real discussion about fantasy writing's reliance on Tolkien and D&D archetypes. Critics used the moment to ask why so many modern fantasy authors still default to elves-vs-orcs conflicts dressed up in new vocabulary[1]. "Why is it always orcs and elves?" became a common refrain, and even casual readers started questioning whether the genre needed fresher building blocks[1]. The Aftermath framed the meme as a throwback to the kind of spontaneous, low-stakes internet humor that made early Twitter fun. Writer Gita Jackson compared Orc City to older internet moments like the "Doom Bathroom" and the "Zybourne Clock," calling it "good, old fashioned, low stakes bullying" rooted in a difference of opinion about video games rather than a culture war flashpoint[3]. Douglas's novel *The Black Crown* saw a spike in attention, and the Fandom Pulse noted he might "accidentally have a best seller on his hands" thanks to the viral exposure[2]. The book, which features a half-orc protagonist, had mostly positive Amazon reviews before the meme wave hit[2]. ## Fun Facts - Douglas's original Fat Man tweet wasn't even wrong. Fat Man is indeed a rollerblading bomb disposal expert who sips wine through a straw. The issue was that Kojima fans consider that absurdity a feature, not a flaw[3]. - The @capybaroness response post outperformed Douglas's original by more than double in raw views, hitting 15.4 million[1]. - Douglas embraced the meme instead of fighting it, posting his own Orc City jokes and gaining followers in the process[2]. - The elvish king's line "There is nothing more reviled than the Orc" became a standalone copypasta, applied to everything from workplace drama to sports rivalries[5]. - The Aftermath's Gita Jackson used the meme as a vehicle to eulogize old Twitter culture, calling Orc City one of the last great spontaneous joke cascades on the platform[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Orc City? Orc City is a meme based on the opening passage of John A. Douglas's fantasy novel *The Black Crown*, which describes a destroyed orc city after a war between orcs and elves. Users turned the dramatic prose into an endless series of jokes and parody posts[1]. ### Where did Orc City come from? It originated on X (Twitter) on July 3, 2025, when @capybaroness responded to Douglas's criticism of Hideo Kojima by posting the overwrought opening of Douglas's own book[4]. ### What does Orc City mean? When someone references "Orc City," they're usually making fun of generic, Tolkien-derivative fantasy writing, or they're playing along with the joke by treating the fictional Orc City as a real place with history, culture, and politics[1]. ### How do you use Orc City? Take any existing meme format, famous quote, or cultural reference and insert Orc City, the elvish king, or orc war lore into it. There's no fixed template, just the shared fictional setting[4]. ### Is Orc City still popular? The meme peaked during the Fourth of July weekend in 2025 and saw massive engagement across X, with individual posts reaching tens of thousands of likes. It still gets referenced in fantasy writing discussions[2]. ### Who is John A. Douglas? He's an indie fantasy author who self-published *The Black Crown*. His tweet criticizing Hideo Kojima's character naming backfired when users found his own writing to be derivative and overwrought[2]. ### Why did the Hideo Kojima tweet go viral? Douglas mocked the Metal Gear Solid 2 villain "Fat Man" as lazy writing. Kojima fans pointed out that the name references the Nagasaki nuclear bomb and that the absurdity is intentional, then countered by mocking Douglas's own prose[3]. ### What is "The Black Crown"? It's Douglas's self-published fantasy novel featuring a half-orc protagonist. The book had mostly positive Amazon reviews before the meme attention, but its opening passage and glossary (containing terms like "Orcpunched" and "Spear ear") became primary meme material[2]. ### Who started the Orc City meme? X user @capybaroness kicked it off by quote-retweeting Douglas with a screenshot of his book's opening lines, captioned "this is how this guy's book starts." The post earned over 15.4 million views[1]. ### What was the glossary controversy? On July 5, @paynushurts found a section of *The Black Crown*'s glossary that defined in-universe racial slurs for the fantasy races, including "Orcpunched" and "Spear ear," which added another layer of mockery to the meme[4]. ## References 1. [Orc city meme explained: A failed Kojima roast turns viral takedown]() 2. [Fantasy Author John A. Douglas Becomes A Meme With "Orc City" Going Mega-Viral On X]() 3. [What Is ‘Orc City’? The Orc Meme, Explained – Crypto Pulpit]() 4. [Orc City - Know Your Meme]() 5. [Orc City is A Twitter Meme Of Yesteryear - Aftermath]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/orc-city Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library