British might also be Tolkein Classic, where the orcs are just bald possibly-zombie Elves with lots of prison tats and scarring.
Tolkien classic would likely not involve many actual former elves (since they tend to get eliminated by attrition pretty darn quick), as there were two ways for more orcs to be born:
The mud pit thing they put in the movies, which was something only mentioned as happening in some of the earlier, less-known works, but thrown in the Peter Jackson movies as a way to explain how an orc army could be raised quickly without showing lots of women captives being raped on an industrial scale or some sort of torture and corruption factory.
Tolkien classic would likely not involve many actual former elves (since they tend to get eliminated by attrition pretty darn quick), as there were two ways for more orcs to be born:
The mud pit thing they put in the movies, which was something only mentioned as happening in some of the earlier, less-known works, but thrown in the Peter Jackson movies as a way to explain how an orc army could be raised quickly without showing lots of women captives being raped on an industrial scale or some sort of torture and corruption factory.
Weren't Middle-Earth's Orcs created due to corruption of Elves by Sauron?
Weren't Middle-Earth's Orcs created due to corruption of Elves by Sauron?
If you follow the link there, you'll see all the multiple ideas Tolkien had. However, as I said there, the corruption of elves part only happened within a limited period of time, and orcs suffer pretty massive attrition (they can't even keep from killing each other), so they needed other means of filling their ranks other than corrupting more of a long-dead subset of elves. Hence, they either had to breed (and again, all male, so that meant breeding with human or elven women... who wouldn't be willing, at least not in the numbers they need), or the mud pit thing they did in the movies, which came from an earlier version of Tolkien's works. (And the official Tolkien line was basically an implicit "orcs really do reproduce solely through rape", because the mud pit thing was basically scrubbed because it conflicted with the notion that only the creator deity could create new life.)
The "Orcs are Tolkien's Dark Elves" origin won't necessarily have to conflict with the other means of Orc-making. Those other methods sound like they could be later attempts to counteract the staggering death rate.
Also that wikipedia link says Tolkien confirmed the existence of female Dark ElvesOrcs, but through an unpublished letter.
The "Orcs are Tolkien's Dark Elves" origin won't necessarily have to conflict with the other means of Orc-making. Those other methods sound like they could be later attempts to counteract the staggering death rate.
Also that wikipedia link says Tolkien confirmed the existence of female Dark ElvesOrcs, but through an unpublished letter.
Yes, and he also confirmed that there were half a dozen mutually exclusive origins for the orcs in the first place through his writings, often ret-conning away previous stories.
Tolkien also had good reason not to ever admit that orcish women existed, or that there was any sort of culture to orcs beyond just being a bunch of "always hungry" ravening killers. He'd only have to grudgingly admit orc women exist just to avoid the obvious problem that he'd be basically admitting to having a whole race made of rape if he was pressed on it hard enough, but doesn't want to expand any further than that. If not, then Aragorn and all the armies of men butchering every orc they found wouldn't be quite so heroic anymore.
Exposition on Always Chaotic Evil
The thing about orcs was that they were Always Chaotic Evil. They are always unquestionably evil, so the noblest goody-good guy can murder every orc he sees without a second thought as to whether they actually deserve it or not, because every single one of them deserves it. If you ever wanted to talk with an orc or reason with them or include them in your kingdom, it just proves you're evil, too, because only evil people work with orcs. That keeps things nice and simple: Hobbits/elves/dwarves and some humans good, while orcs and humans that work with orcs bad. Having orcish women and children just complicates things with some people getting squeemish about the whole "murdering children just because you've been assured that they'll be jerks when they grow up" thing, much less any My Species Doth Protest Too Much, so they don't exist. Not having women and children and any kind of culture besides a band of permanent nomadic raiders that live purely off of murdering the innocent justifies genocide, because that's the whole point; killing one orc is good, killing ten orcs is better, genociding the whole orcish population is a saintly deed, because only by making an entire race Always Chaotic Evil can you justify mindless slaughter as always being a heroic deed.
Hence, they go with "grown in a puddle of mud, and they hop out as a full adult" in the movies, because being mud with evil magic on them puts them on the same level as zombies or robots, and perfectly acceptable targets for some genocide.
And that's part of why My Species Doth Protest Too Much exists in the first place: As soon as you start actually thinking about the Planet of the Hats for more than the length of a few chapters in a book or an episode or two of a syndicated television series, you wind up having to make some individuals instead of making a whole culture be a monolithic thing, and then you have to admit that not everyone who lived in Germany in the 1940s was a rabid Nazi that needed immediate killing, and you start to lose your black-and-white morality. Hence, you have all these comedy series with a Serious Orc and a Horny Elf or the inevitable disintegration of the good/evil morality of the Horde in Warcraft. As soon as there are individuals and some orcs that aren't Always Chaotic Evil, then murdering the Serious Orc because you didn't use Detect Evil before you swung your Holy Avenger at him makes you a horrific murderer, and saying it's fine because they're just orcs makes you an evil Knight Templar.
Yes, and he also confirmed that there were half a dozen mutually exclusive origins for the orcs in the first place through his writings, often ret-conning away previous stories.
Tolkien also had good reason not to ever admit that orcish women existed, or that there was any sort of culture to orcs beyond just being a bunch of "always hungry" ravening killers. He'd only have to grudgingly admit orc women exist just to avoid the obvious problem that he'd be basically admitting to having a whole race made of rape if he was pressed on it hard enough, but doesn't want to expand any further than that. If not, then Aragorn and all the armies of men butchering every orc they found wouldn't be quite so heroic anymore.
Exposition on Always Chaotic Evil
The thing about orcs was that they were Always Chaotic Evil. They are always unquestionably evil, so the noblest goody-good guy can murder every orc he sees without a second thought as to whether they actually deserve it or not, because every single one of them deserves it. If you ever wanted to talk with an orc or reason with them or include them in your kingdom, it just proves you're evil, too, because only evil people work with orcs. That keeps things nice and simple: Hobbits/elves/dwarves and some humans good, while orcs and humans that work with orcs bad. Having orcish women and children just complicates things with some people getting squeemish about the whole "murdering children just because you've been assured that they'll be jerks when they grow up" thing, much less any My Species Doth Protest Too Much, so they don't exist. Not having women and children and any kind of culture besides a band of permanent nomadic raiders that live purely off of murdering the innocent justifies genocide, because that's the whole point; killing one orc is good, killing ten orcs is better, genociding the whole orcish population is a saintly deed, because only by making an entire race Always Chaotic Evil can you justify mindless slaughter as always being a heroic deed.
Hence, they go with "grown in a puddle of mud, and they hop out as a full adult" in the movies, because being mud with evil magic on them puts them on the same level as zombies or robots, and perfectly acceptable targets for some genocide.
And that's part of why My Species Doth Protest Too Much exists in the first place: As soon as you start actually thinking about the Planet of the Hats for more than the length of a few chapters in a book or an episode or two of a syndicated television series, you wind up having to make some individuals instead of making a whole culture be a monolithic thing, and then you have to admit that not everyone who lived in Germany in the 1940s was a rabid Nazi that needed immediate killing, and you start to lose your black-and-white morality. Hence, you have all these comedy series with a Serious Orc and a Horny Elf or the inevitable disintegration of the good/evil morality of the Horde in Warcraft. As soon as there are individuals and some orcs that aren't Always Chaotic Evil, then murdering the Serious Orc because you didn't use Detect Evil before you swung your Holy Avenger at him makes you a horrific murderer, and saying it's fine because they're just orcs makes you an evil Knight Templar.
There is a solution to the dilemma I'm surprised he he never used - an "orc"/dark elf that isn't an unsympathetic servant of evil is considered just a badly scarred elf rather than still an orc, make the difference of political allegiance rather than racial or ethnic.
There is a solution to the dilemma I'm surprised he he never used - an "orc"/dark elf that isn't an unsympathetic servant of evil is considered just a badly scarred elf rather than still an orc, make the difference of political allegiance rather than racial or ethnic.
Then orcs become capable moral agents and are no longer intrinsically Evil, so wholesale slaughter of them (or even killing individuals beyond immediate exigencies of self defense) is now an ethics issue.
Yes, I know a lot of people in real life don't mind that much (those people have killed and pillaged our people, so it's okay to kill them, etc. etc.), but Tolkien cares a lot, which is why the heroes are constantly being merciful to Gollum, because unlike the orcs—Gollum is capable of moral agency. He has the potential to be redeemed, so the right thing to do once he's no longer an immediate threat is to spare him, even if he's more likely to come back and be a threat to you later on.
