One of Tolkien’s letters describes orcs as“squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.”
And I was thinking about, 1.) Look at the legs on these Mongolian wrestlers all decked out for a major national wrestling festival, and also 2.) how Tolkien’s racist description wasn’t enough, and orcs have been depicted as more and more grotesque over time. Canonically orcs more or less just look like humans, but that’s not “other” enough so they keep getting turned in to more and more bizarre looking monsters.
Either way, this is what i’m thinking about when i’m laid up with the 'rona. If y’all like wrestling or buff men in tiny pants check out Mongolian wrestling. From what I understand it’s a hugely popular sport there and has been for like a thousand years.
Fuck.
I already saw Tolkien as a problematic favorite where I acknowledge the
from the author, but this is worse than what I already knew bout him.
I may as well post this comic in tribute to our orc comrades and their class struggle against the bourgeoisie of Rivendell.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/175
Afaik this is about as bad as he ever gets. Like, credit to the guy, his orcs aren’t actually a racial stereotype of anyone, they’re more a metaphor for industrial warfare. LotR has it’s issues; Monarchism, Hobbits as utopian yeomen farmers, all kinds of stuff, but it’s much less egregious than the stories that inspired it and the stories it inspired. Like it’s smack in the middle between Conan and Warcraft, with Conan being straight up Klan levels of racist, and then you’ve got Warcraft’s traditional depiction of trolls as Jamaican stereotypes, native american minotaurs, whatever their orcs are supposed to be.
Games Workshop did weirdly good by making their orcs British soccer hooligans.
They also made their flavor of ontologically evil elves into pasty nordic vikings.
rare Br*tish win
The Druchii aren’t really Nordic at all, that would be the Norscans/Norseman. If anything the Druchii are like if a canadian mining company gave out the CIA torture guide as part of the employee handbook.
Yeh, dat wuz a gud plan, and dat’s why I’m a proppa git for me orky boyz.
I have never seen anything Warhammer 40K related that wasn’t improved by putting more focus on the Orkz.
Though admittedly on the very few occasions I touch WH40K anything, I tend to go Imperial Guard. I’m an incurable sucker for stories about ordinary people fighting through terrible situations
I remember GW did a scenario pitting a planet’s Imperial Guard against a Space Marine chapter, but they fucked it up by going with the most boring possible motivation of “the planet’s population has been mind-controlled including its Imperial Guard, so the Space Marines have to save the day” rather than one of the countless understandable reasons an element of the Guard would mutiny.
Games Workshop has increasingly leaned into making what was once a Thatcher
-era satire of all things Thatcher into a “these space fascists are actually good guys and you should admire and look up to them” pandering effort to sell more Spehs Mehreens to chuddy enthusiasts.
As a consequence, the setting is in places ponderously tryhard and pretentious and up its own ass, and Da Orkz is a proppa pressa valve to dat muckin’ about.
I know Tolkien always said his stories werent an allegorical, LotR is still a story about dark forces amassing in the east, coming to destroy the fairskinned blond haired
fascistsgood guysI really struggled watching rings of power because i was instantly rooting for, Adar and his band of merry friends (with chosen names, struggling for national liberation)
I started reading the Russian middle earth story from the orcs perspective (i cant recall the name), and i was really enjoying it until i got distracted
sorry I’m rambling, hope youre feeling better Frank