#of course they don't play sss because it is bad.

[burstfoot]

Haven't seen anyone thirstposting about Mama's "Rebel Girl" yet despite how desperate this fandom is for muscles. The only conclusion I can be led to is that no one knows she exists because they don't play SSS

[thelreads]

I read an interesting analysis on tvtropes about how we really don't get into the politics beyond the bare minimum--basically the only direct political question that is asked is "do they want a war right now y/n". But the interesting thing is, the question that is asked of characters to judge whether or not they are "good" (aka we can bare to see them not get punched) is "how do they treat children?"

Like, I think the best example of this is in the interview chapter: we have the one guy who is literally described as "(politically) conservative"--so closer to Donovan's party than not--but the one we want to punch is the asshole who made Anya cry, who's political party we don't know. We don't know where Frenchmaster stands on war, but he treats Anya + children kindly so we like him. Twilight can keep his cool when talking politics with Desmond, but the moment Desmond says shit about his own son, Twilight can't help but get in some jabs.

And it's not that only people who want peace love children. Yuri and Fiona each don't like Anya, but they are both technically on the side of peace (IM NOT SAYING THE SSS IS GOOD HERE, just that Yuri wants to protect Yor and so assumedly doesn't want war). I think, even if given the chance to, they wouldn't actually hurt Anya--Yuri and Fiona may lash out at Loid and Yor, respectively, but they don't make Anya cry.

But THEN we see that the question of "how do they treat children" STILL wraps around to becoming a political question. In the Doggie Crisis arc, we have Twilight's evil twin who explicitly wants war AND he is willing to kill children for it--in fact, he's willing to do it himself to START the war. Sure some members of his team make token protests to killing kids, but when they chips are down, they pull out a knife and prepare to get kid blood on their hands.

And it's like of course the war-hungry terrorists want to hurt children. Those two concepts are inextricable because war ALWAYS hurts children. Not just far off hypothetical children, it is YOUR children, the kids who play in YOUR neighborhood, your OWN COMMUNITY. And I think that's what makes spy x family's treatment of politics really stand out: we rarely see politics depicted as something explicitly interpersonal. The politics of people directly reflects how they treat the people in their community, especially those in the community who are weakest and need the most protection--children. We can't really tell who's good and who's bad just by their politics; we see how they are depicted treating children. And it just so happens that surprise surprise, the people who want to start a war treat children badly.

(also I hate that I can't remember Frenchmaster or Twilight's evil twins name but I remember your silly nicknames for them. But I can't even call them "silly" nicknames because I remember them better than their actual names don't I.)

It's a lovely thing about the grey morality of Spy x Family, those people, all of them, do things that are incredibly morally questionable, but we don't have doubts about who are the good and bad guys because of this important point, the answer to the "would they hurt a child" question.

Like you said, Yuri and Fiona might not like Anya, but when you stop to think about it their problems with her is her relationship with Twilight. They do strike me as the types that wouldn't hurt a child, at least not willingly. It's fascinating to see it boiled down to something that simple, because it shows that there's a lot of depth behind it.

[ideahat-universe]

Not my Orcs.

So Rings of Power is making the rounds and I have no interest in it.

Here's my Tier List.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: SSS

Ralph Bakshi's the Hobbit: A

Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings: B

Shadow of Mordor: C (We'll be speaking more about that one later).

Lord of the Rings Online: D (for DEAD)

Everything else F tier.

That includes Peter Jackson's Hobbit and it automatically includes Rings of Power as well as that PlayStation 2 game where you play as the non canon party that is trailing the fellowship.

I'm sorry, I don't make these rules.

We're not really talking about that show, it's not doing well. There's all sorts of Ghostbuster's 2016 style nonsense going on and I just don't have time for it. If Amazon wanted a hit they should have greenlit another season of Niko and the Sword of Light.

What we're talking about is Orcs and how people got screwed up on what Orcs are supposed to be and why.

I was watching Lindsey Ellis' review on Bright and learned some interesting things about the film that no one else who reviewed it cared to mention.

That made for a good review, up until a point. The problem I have with that review and the Bright film is that there are people creating a parallel where Blacks, presumably of any nationality are in some ways analogous to Orcs.

Lindsey makes her case that this idea is not only suitable but is rooted in Tolkien's works but the observation is skin deep (pun not intended).

The reality is that Orcs don't have anything in common with any nationality of Blacks.

Tolkien just used Orcs as canon fodder for lord Sauron. All the other races were either neutral and can't be tempted by his power or they had their own rings and are automatically opposed to Sauron.

The Orcs are no different than the Putty Patrollers from Power Rangers and I mean those guys specifically because the Orcs were made to serve Sauron, they didn't have a well established culture where they had civility and harmony amongst each other. There's no Orc women or Orc babies and Orcs that had to pay taxes who made their living making jewelry and fine tailored clothing.

No one made Black people (unless you believe in god or space aliens of course) so right out the gate if you want to compare blacks to the canon fodder version of the Orcs you're off to a bad start because blacks aren't spawned from the ether.

And I guess the other thing to note is that the Modern Orc is nothing like Orc Classic. Aside from Tolkien, Orcs were very standard opponents in D&D. I don't think this is the case anymore but at one point Orcs were aligned chaotic evil and the average DM had no interest in allowing creatures (or the player) to play outside of alignment.

But this wasn't personal in most cases. Orcs were part of an entire bestiary that Dungeon Masters used to present the players with as many different obstacles as possible because most campaigns were just dungeon crawlers or castle raids. Orcs fell into place when appropriate but it could have just as easily been kobolds or lizard people or goblins and of course the undead. It really depended on what the stats the DM was either told to do by the module or what he personally thought would present the best challenge to his players.

And it's really important to note that there is basically no plot or complex motivations in classic Dungeons and Dragons and invariably if you have drop in drop out, one day campaigns, or meat grinder (or Killer dungeon) campaigns you can't have plots or characterization and the expectation is that it's purely a test of your skill, luck, and raw stats.

In that scenario the dungeon master doesn't have time to humanize orcs, or slimes, or even the players. You just have to accept that every so often DnD is really just a board game.

So here's the reality of Orcs for a lot of people. People adore Orcs. The parallels between Orcs and black people ignore the fact that typically a non racist person judges people based on their individual actions (and if you don't have what it takes to judge a person on their merit as a singular entity you just don't have an existence worth acknowledging) and in fiction the writers who incorporate Orcs typically humanize them and dungeon masters and players like characterizing Orcs.

Lindsey (and Bright) tether interpretations of Orcs as characters to their origins as goons and it's reductive.

This is where we return to Shadow of Mordor. See that's a Lord of the Rings inspired game. Very much not canon BUT it shows how things have changed. Back then Orcs didn't mean much outside of the narrative as bad guys to fight, now Orcs have complex personalities and can be the cornerstones of narratives, being break out characters who develop and arc.

The whole point of Shadow or Mordor is that you get attached to the Orcs that you fight and form meaningful rivalries and long lasting friendships.

Warcraft is almost centered around Orcs fighting humans and look at how the narrative evolved for the Orcs.

Now, if you're like me. You want to know how many people play Horde in comparison to Alliance. Well um. I don't have solid numbers but apparently the difference is quite noticeable. People align themselves with the Horde quite often despite their origins and Orcs are the second most popular choice for Western players (with Blood Elves being the first).

The most popular race in Star Trek the Klingons are just Space Orcs.

Orks are number 7 (of 61) of the top favorite factions to play in Warhammer 40k

Orcs are a fully playable race in DnD.

Do we even need to talk about Orc fanart?

Or the Novels even?

Has the point been made? I think that the point has been made. Lastly and this is very important. The real life cultures of black people do not match up with Orcs either.

There's just no reason to make this comparison other than the fact that you are ignorant about Orcs and harbor a denigrating opinion of blacks.

Even if you want to have a conversation about racism in America what does the modern Orc have to do in that conversation other than remind the audience that the writer is filthy alliance scum?

I don't have anything else to say on this matter. I could have taken the more negative route. I could have jumped into the muck of it and made a more negative point to illustrate how bad negative observations are but we're trying to do something new, something that's better.

This is my meta modern take on post modernist observation of Orcs.

People love Orcs on a fundamental level and I don't care what happened to Orcs in the past. Today, Orcs are winners.

Those are my Orcs.