A Geek History of Time - Episode 36- The Evolution of Orcs

Episode Date: November 16, 2019

In this episode, Ed traces the development of Orcs from their origins in Tolkien’s work up through their current incarnation in World of Warcraft, and how they dropped one set of racial tropes for another. Damian makes a truly unfortunate pun about French Goblin-men and then a series of more unfortunate puns about mushrooms.

I said good day sir. You don't ever plan anything around the Eagles because the Eagles represent the grace of God. You heathen bastards. One of vanilla Nabish name. Well, you know, orcs are people too. I'm thinking of that one called they got taken out with one punch. So he's got a wall, a gole, a gole, and a wall. Every time you mention the Eagles, I think done Henley.

Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. This is a geek history of time.

Where we connect nursery to the real world. I'm Ed Blalock. I'm a middle school level world history teacher with one count at one section of English working here in northern California. I'm also the proud father of a 21 month old toddler with a wicked throwing arm. How about you? I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher with a slight dip into world history and we are doing whatever the hell I want, which means we're covering a lot of empires. Nice. And they're starting to get

asked the same questions over and over and over again. And they're starting to recognize that and they're starting to judge people like Mehmed the second and Salamon against people like Osaymehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehmehme my daughter is into, I think, the fifth book of Harry Potter. Nice. And I just let her know that I think Dumbledore is actually an even worse villain than Umbridge. So her name is Bent. I would go so far as to say he comes out being kind of an incompetent mentor figure. Okay.

I can see that argument. I'm still, I am not ready to go so far as to actually recognize him as a villain. I know I can guess where the argument comes from. Yeah, you don't regard to his decisions regarding Harry's living situation as a small child. Every summer. Circumstance, Circumstance of Abuse and all that stuff.

Yes. No, I see that. I get that. I understand that, but I'm still going to stop shy of saying villain. These are villain. That's fair. I am going to say, you know, the nature of magical gasses, the nature of mythic narrative. I think, you know, much as I've argued that Obi-Wan Kenobi got screwed out of his role. In the Star Wars stories, you know, who, you know, the first trilogy should have been his arc. Right.

And that got screwed up. Yeah. I'm gonna say that I think Dumbledore kind of gets boned by his role in a story that kind of requires the hero to have that kind of crappy childhood. I mean, you know, I'm not saying this. So as Neville Longbottom had an awful childhood. Yeah, you know, and-

And he could have been the other hero. He could have been the other guy. And so- But he at least wasn't made to live with abusive horrible people who quite frankly it might not have even been their fault. You know it could it true the whole the whole work works. He's a work of that. Yeah it's true. Which then actually leads to the argument that wherever Harry wound up his circumstances might have wound up being negative and unpleasant. Oh because if he was making them worse people than they already were, I mean admittedly everything,

all the canonical sources indicate to us that they were not great folks to begin with. True. But it's entirely possible the circumstances would have been negative anyway. That's a good point. That's a good point. That's a good point I had not thought about. And so, I mean, there's multiple sides to that argument. And I certainly understand where anybody comes from who would agree with you and would see him in a villainous light.

I just think, again, we're dealing with narrative structures, we're dealing with the heroes journey and applying our moral judgments. We need to take that into account when we do. Yeah, no, I would agree with that. She also really likes that it's entirely likely that Nagini was the snake that he met in the zoo. Mind blown. Mind blown. Yeah.

Had not ever considered, I'm gonna admit, had not ever considered that. Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm gonna have to come to terms with that now. Wow, all right. So he came into contact with his own, yeah. Yeah, wow. Yeah.

Okay. All right, so wow. Yeah. Okay. All right. So back. Yeah. So we'll have that mind melting moment. So speaking of narrative structures and moral judgments. Yes. Tell me, what do you think of orcs? Uh, a much maligned race. Okay. Yeah. I find it interesting that that's the first. Well, I take that you have on it. They always strike me as, I mean, they're big and they're vicious and and all that kind of stuff.

They always remind me of boxer from animal farm. That they are, they are the big one. So they're the big dumb one that gets sacrificed. Okay. They're gonna go on. Okay. And I, I don't know, I got a soft spot in my heart for Orcs because they seem more primitive.

They seem, and when I think of Orcs, I think of like, and maybe I'm not even calling the right things, the things from a work craft. Okay, yeah, Orcs. Okay, those are works, yeah. Big muscular, greased skin, tusks. Yeah, I think of those, I think of the, the, erstwhile parents of half-works.

Okay. Because you never see an actual work, you only see the half-works, you know, and I always- As player characters in D&D, you're largely correct. Yeah, largely, not entirely, largely. Yeah.

And there is also a sub-sector of them that are, because normally they're brutish of some sort, they're broots, but there is a sub-sector of them that are actually really, really smart and interested in very niche crafts work and stuff from central France, they're called de orcs. Nice, thank you. Nice, good job.

Thank you. Good job. So yeah, I got a soundsbar in my heart for it. If producer George were here, I would ask him for a timestamp because you didn't set a record with that one, but you're up there. That's a good competition for pole position right there with that time.

Good day, sir. Yes. All right, so that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Okay. And I find it interesting because it's an artifact of what it is I'm gonna be analyzing. What is I'm gonna be talking about? That your first take on them is sympathetic

in the way that it is. Yes. Because that's an artifact of recent, more woke gaming culture. Do you think that comes about because of the anti-hero focus of the mid-90s? I think. The book Grendel came out and suddenly you're synthesizing

with Grendel. I think there's something to that. Okay. Mostly I'm gonna look at the narrative, the way the narrative develops and we can, and we can bring kind of real world events and stuff into it as we're talking about it. But, orcs, you know them, you've probably murdered Hoboam. Yeah, like, all right, you know, the first thing is anytime you see an orc, anywhere in popular culture, they are either

a refutation or a response or an homage or a just straight up copy paste from Tolkien. Right, right. Okay. He started it. Yeah. He created the idea of what we see now as the platonic ideal of Orch. And he codified them as being brutish,

being cruel-natured, cowardly, unless their inn numbers are driven by unifying driving will. They are different. In Tolkien, remember, they are the servants of either Saruman, or Sauron, and either Sauraman, or Sauron. Right. And before Sauron, Morgoth, who are angelic, fallen angelic, being in all three cases, right worth noting, fallen angelic beings of great power and mystical wisdom Who are turning that power mystical wisdom to selfish or destructive or corrupt ends?

Who are the driving will behind the orkish? Okay forces so orks were kind of like what D&D goblins are now Yes, well, and it's and it's it's also Tolkien uses the words goblin and orks refer to the same genus of critter. In the Hobbit, they wind up in Goblin Town, after they fall through the crack and the cave and all that. That's Goblin Town. Those are the same kind of creatures as orcs that show up elsewhere. Okay. What's interesting to note is the word goblin and orc both get used in the hobbit.

Goblin gets used more in the hobbit orc gets used more later on in the Lord of the Rings. Okay. And Tolkien himself said, anytime you see the word goblin, it's essentially a translation into English of orc. Okay. So orcs have a dramatic amount of morphological variation because you have some little sneaky, you know, goblin-like orcs, and you have big, you know, big burly muscular, you know, uruks, which would be, you know, the bigger the urukai. Okay. You will taste man and flesh. You are my fighting urukai, are the big muscular, really scary ones. All right. And so he codified him as being universally ugly and bestial. Mm-hmm.

And they're almost always part of a horde. You really almost, unless there is a plot reason for it, you never encounter one orc. Oh, okay. Okay. There's always a platoon of them. Okay. You know, and Tolkien's orcs were emblematic of his ideas

of evil because of the nature of the fairy story he was telling. And because of his innate cosmological worldview in his own head, orcs were a part of his view of what evil looked like. They were made by Morgoth in the first age from elves that he had essentially kidnapped and broken and twisted and turned into soldiers. So they were essentially created by magically induced trauma by morgoth. Okay, so there's an analogy for somebody being broken and then

inflicting their brokenness on the rest of the world. Oh wow, okay. Which Tolkien probably didn't consciously think of, but it's there. Well, that's Roller I for you. Yeah, and yes, very much. Which he yes, very much which he's not doing, which he's not doing. Yeah, we've talked about that before, but he's totally doing. And one of the one of the things that that he keeps bringing up over and over and over and over and over and over, through out all of his writing is that evil cannot create anything.

Okay. It can only destroy it. It can only destroy it or twist or corrupt. Right. Or change. Right. And so it can, yes, very yes. Yes, excellent. And so tied in with that also, they obeyed more powerful orcs

or their leaders out of fear orcs don't have Tolkienian orcs don't have honor they don't have a sense of this is my leader and I'm gonna follow him because he's my leader and I love him and I respect him no it's because he's bigger than me and I'm more afraid of him than I am of anybody else. So how is this different than the English conception of the hunt? Gonna get to that.

Ah. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, or the Roman conception of the German. Yeah. Yeah. Tolkien's works were sexless. They spawned in pits. Wow.

This is part of how they were twisted and broken by Morgoth. They're, okay. They're, they're male-ness female. And this was taken away from them. 15 pits. This is part of how they were twisted and broken by Morgoth. They're, their, their, their maillainous femaleness was taken away from them. Although because he's a Victorian, they default to male, even though, right, right, right. Genderless equals default male, right.

Because Victorian and, and again, they are inherently broken and evil. There is never any such thing as a kind orc. Okay. There's never any such thing as an orc with benevolence in their heart because it has been crushed out of the, it was crushed out of the first of them. And every one of them that came after carried that same damage. Okay. Okay. Now Tolkien took his ideas for what an orc looked like and kind of the word orc from earlier Fulcleric sources. Orcus was the name for Pluto, for Hades, God of the Underworld, which is a pit. Yes. And orc, in Old English borrowed from Orkus, was a word for any number of malevolent,

ogreish kind of dark spirits. Okay. You see it in various poems and legends and fairy tales and all this kind of stuff in Old English. And Tolkien's novelty was in taking this word that was dark spirit, Bugaboo, Goblin in the night and applying it to a very specific race

of created shock troopers for his Dark Lord, Sauron. He needed a fairy story army of ogres and minions, twisted Goblin-ish minions, and so it works and Gobins were his narrative solution. Okay. Okay. Again, getting back to talking about roles and narratives. So you need stormtroopers.

You need stormtroopers. Faceless, faithful. Yeah, faceless, faceless minions. Yeah. I already mentioned Orcs and goblins are the same thing in Tolkien. And so through Tolkien, this concept entered the lexicon. Okay.

Every work ever after this is somehow a response or a development or an evolution from it can help, but get away from the progenitor. Yeah, yeah. No, we got to talk about the unfortunate Victorian racism. Okay, okay. He describes his works as being, and I quote, squat broad, flat nose, salo skinned with wide mouths

and slant eyes. Okay. D.co that from Victorian English stereotypes, what do you get? Uh, well, you get whatever it's said, you'd would have called orientalism, but without the fetishization and the good stuff. Yeah, yellow carol. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, that peril. Yeah. Yeah. That quote, because this is taken from a letter he wrote to a writer friend, that quote ends with, quote, degraded and repulsive versions of the parentheses to Europeans and close parants, least lovely Mongol types. Horde. Horde, yellow peril. Right. You know, we talked about it talking about Buccarajers,

you know. Right. So yeah, we have to deal with that. And again, you already looped ahead a little bit and brought up ideas of the Hun. Cause the real world, oh, also he describes it as being malicious and crafty. Oh, lie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that's a negative death thing. Thank you, devils. Yeah. And so subconsciously, again, because he wasn't doing it, but he was

totally doing it, drawing on his experiences of war when he wrote Lord of the Rings. And in World War One, all of the propaganda from the allied and made extensive use of hun when describing German central powers. Grabbing a blonde white lady in my dress, looking like a gorilla. Looking beastial, looking monster. Medicing eyes, Medicineries, medicine beauty looking eyes

slanted well, and there's I mean the the history of the quote Hun in Europe and stop me if I'm stepping on your Thunder here, but the history of the Hun in Europe was such a boogie man because of invasions of Attila all the way up to the gates of Rome invasions of Attila all the way up to the gates of Rome Hungry is called such because the Huns to the point where the idea of Asian is not so much Chinese as it is

Eastern European yeah, like there's there's a lot of of just like really baked in Racism to to the various European cultures. Oh yeah. Yeah. About Asians. Yeah. No, the Huns were an aegiatic tribe who wound up settling in large part in Central Eastern, Eastern Central Europe. And the propaganda images play up all of that, you know, preconceived already existing racial bias. Yeah. And so when forming the basis for his faceless minions of evil, there's no way that wasn't somewhere in his subconscious. Tolkien probably wouldn't have advocated the idea that Asians were somehow inherently evil or that they weren't human, but at the same time exaggerated versions of those kinds of features where he went when he created a race of

monstrous cannibalistic marauders. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, in American movies, if you want a guy to be a bad guy and he's wealthy, he's gonna have a British accent. Yeah. Like that's part of our lexicon when it comes to movies, you know. Yeah. Yeah, because our innate reverse-classism makes that a thing. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So that is where the whole trope gets solidified.

Yes. where the whole trope gets solidified. This is Tolkien as Lord of the Rings. And now I'm gonna jump forward from the fifties with the publication of the Lord of the Rings. I'm gonna jump forward to the seventies. Okay. In 74, the very genesis of Dungeons and Dragons orcs appeared as one of the earliest humanoid monster types. Oh, cool. That there was okay. It was right there

in in the actually in the DMG Which was published before the monster manual it had an appendix in it that had stats so you could Have monsters until until the monster manual got published right And then the monster manual got published and you had more detail added to all that. And like Tolkien, orcs are invariably chaotic evil. They are cowardly accepted numbers. Right. They are not very bright,

which Tolkien's goblins and orcs were not thinkers, but they were cunning. which Tolkien's goblins and orcs were not thinkers, but they were cunning. Okay. Geigax's orcs are stupid. Okay. Okay. So they will be forever minions of... They're always gonna be minions farmers.

And orc is never gonna be the truly the big bad. And orc, Chieft the truly the big bad and orc Chieftain might be kind of a dragon okay you know he might be like a secondary antagonist okay but the main antagonist the dark lord isn't gonna be an orc right okay that's just still part of the paradigm and interestingly Guy Gax's orcs I don't know if this was GuyGaxe's idea or what, but his Orcs started out literally pig-faced. If you look at the illustration in the original Monster Manual, and it describes them as

having a pig-like snout. Yeah. In the verbal description, it talks about having a pig-like snout, which is a departure from Tolkien's description. Tolkien said they were flat faced with sharp ogres teeth and all that kind of stuff. Sure. But now they actually have a specific animalistic feature being added to the description. That's interesting. I'm curious to what descriptions were rolling around

about people of Asian descent at that time. Because I remember when America was at war with prior to America getting into the war with Japan, the Chinese were considered low class and all kinds of things. And they basically just flipped the names when we were at war. They put out a coloring book to tell the difference between a Chinese person and a Japanese person for the Department of Defense. And the way that they did that, they overemphasized certain futures. Yeah. To the point of yeah. Paracuture. Yeah. Yeah. So it would be interesting to find that out. That's that isn't I wasn't able to get into that level of looking at it. But just in the same way that Tolkien created the monster

be a shock trooper for his evil, very sorry army, guy gags and harness and treated them exactly the same way. There are monsters to be fought and beaten. They are storm troopers. There are faceless minions that you heroically wait in to fight off and deal with. And part of this is because at the very beginning, D&D existed in a weird kind of a moral vacuum. Okay. Like, you know, I don't know what your earliest, specifically, dungeons and dragons' experience was. But the way the modules got written,

there was a dungeon, and whatever flimsy reason there was, whatever flimsy excuse there was, you were gonna go into the dungeon, you were gonna kill monsters, you were gonna get loot, you were gonna come out, and that was the whole point. And there wasn't introspection or analysis of representational issues. There was not, like there wasn't even, it was like there always chaotic evil.

And so there's orcs in this ruin and you got to kill the orcs because the orcs are evil. Well okay, stop wait, what makes the orcs evil? Like what are they doing that's out there? Why are we going and killing all of them? Right. And you know, later on, and from the beginning, if you had a good enough DM, it would be, well, you know, they've gone down into the village and they've raided,

they've killed a bunch of people and carried people off a slave, you gotta go rescue people, whatever. But the way it was presented, if you didn't put in the additional effort, it was just, well, they're evil. Okay. So, since they're evil, you can go kill them with moral impunity because this is all happening in a universe where there is a metaphysical definition of good and evil, good as on

one side, evil is on the other side, that duality has a mystical, physical kind of impact on the world. You know, and so you can get away with it. So Orcs remained always Catech evil, and that was just it. Sure. Now at the same time, though, when the AD&D players' handbook came out, they introduced the ability to play a half-orc character. So orcs are always catacoeevil, but you can play a half-orc. You'd be a little less... Who can be kind of anti-heroic? Right. And you have a built-in dark backstory because as a half-orc, well how exactly does a half-work, well, how exactly does a half-work wind up coming into the world?

Clearly, there must have been an assault committed for you to even exist. Right. Because evil and ugly and, you know, by definition, that's what Nork is. Right. You know, so you have built-in dark backstory so you know anti-hero point number one and your class limitations this is important okay now nobody who wasn't human could be a paladin okay paladin had to be a human right you had to be a human couldn't be a half elf couldn't be an elf couldn't be a gnome dwarf nothing right so the fact that a half-work couldn't be a half-elf, couldn't be an elf, couldn't be an Elmdorf, nothing of that. So the fact of the half-work couldn't be a paladin, that was not a big deal. But a half-work

couldn't be a ranger either. And a ranger had to be good aligned. Okay. Okay. However, as a half-work, you could multi-class as a fighter thief or a fighter assassin. Okay. And by the way, if you chose to be an assassin, you had to have evil in your alignment somewhere. And if you were playing a thief,

the PHB clearly stated that you probably lean toward neutral rather than good. Okay. Not always. But they said, if you're a good align thief, you're gonna have to be like neutral good. Okay, not always. Right. If you're a good align thief, you're going to have to be like neutral good. You know, you're more likely to be like true neutral or chaotic neutral. If you're not evil because, you know, thief. And then when understruck canna came out and introduced the barbarian class, as a half ororc, you can be a barbarian, but

barbarians had to be chaotic aligned. Right. So you're either automatically chaotic if you're a barbarian or you're not, and you are not allowed to be part of a class that requires a good alignment as a half work. It's a lot of. It's a lot of baggage. Now, non-human races had a lot of class restrictions just in general. The warves couldn't be wizards. Elves had a couple of elves, elves got away with a lot, but elves had level restrictions and everything they can do. Halflings had a couple of, Elves got away with a lot, but Elves had level restrictions and everything we can do. Halflings had a bunch of class restrictions.

I don't think you could be a halfling cleric, for example. Right. You know, the only way you could, like, I want to choose whatever class I want to do is I'm going to be human. And I can do anything I want to, which was kind of the main selling point of humanity, was their versatile, they do everything. Right. And then as a half work, your stat line in AD&D,

was you got plus one to strength. Right. And you got minus one to charisma. This is an AD&D. AD&D. Okay. First addition, AD&D. Okay.

Now it's interesting to note, you've got a plus one to strength because powerful. 80. Okay. First edition, 80 and 80. Okay. Now, it's interesting to note, you've got a plus one to strength because powerful. Right. Minus one to charisma. Presumably because ugly. Right. But in the description for your charisma stat in the player's handbook, it specifically said this isn't about physical appearance.

But it was totally about physical appearance, but it was totally about physical appearance. And then when an arthrochana came out and they introduced, now we have cumulinous, which is physical appearance, as a half-orc, you suffered essentially a double penalty, because cumulinous wound up being tied to charisma. Uh-huh. If you had a high charisma, you got a bonus, you had a low charisma, you got a penalty. Right. So as a half-orc, you got a minus one to your charisma.

And then on top of whatever that did, you then had like a minus one or a minus two to your company. Just because you're ugly. Just because you're muggly. So we're still coming from this place of an orc's bad, orc's always bad, half-orcs, not as bad right and and and they're still carrying you know all all this kind of automatic moral baggage based on this background they're not bad they're just yeah they're just well

played thank you now you know what else is well played? Well, a good time for an ad. Oh, yeah. In the middle of our show. I think we should do that. I think we should do. Let's do it. And see what we can find out.

We can pitch. That we're willing to pitch. Let's do it. Hey, Geek Nation. It's Damien. And Ed. And we're here to pitch a book at you. It's from a good friend of mine and a good friend of the show, Bishop O'Connell.

The books are the American Fairytale trilogy, The Stolen, The Forgotten, The Return. If you're a fan of urban fantasy, you're going to love these. If you're a fan of Celtic folklore, you're going to love these. Even more, they're very well researched in terms of the stories and everything that they tie into. And he's a very good guy. And like I said, a good friend in the show. So go out, pick him up, read him, I really want to buy stuff. Yeah, well, you know, I kind of want to buy stuff a lot all the time anyway, but those ads make me want to do that just that much more and buy that specific stuff.

Yeah, that's, you know, it's targeted wanting to buy stuff now as opposed to just the general acquisitiveness that I suffer as being part of late stage capitalism. And having grown up in like mid-late stage capitalism. So, uh... When you have the optimism of purchasing power. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, back when, you know, I thought I'd, you know, be a homeowner by this phrase of my life. I got depressing for me real fast. Wow, yeah.

But, uh, so we're talking about Orch. Back to that. Thank you. Because that was after after that, you know, existential moment. So anyway, we have the introduction of the idea that hey, you can you can play this character who's kind of an orc, but not really. Right. Because your part work, you're never really gonna be a good guy. The best you can be is kind of an anti-hero. You know, and you're never gonna be seen as a good guy either. You're not gonna be perceived as a good guy either. So you're always gonna have to deal with other people's shit.

Yeah. Like you are the permanent underclass, which feeds into the anti-hero trope, which feeds into I was born in orphan. I was born in orphan. I was, you know, my mother was victimized by my father. I was, you know. Now, what addition did Halforx come out in again? Oh, it's first addition in the NBA. That's first step.

Oh, yeah. No, it's in the first addition players handbook, in the players handbook. And, you know, again, it's plus one strength minus one charisma. So you're gonna do a really good job as a fighter. Okay. When the barbarian class comes out, half works was like, that was the thing.

Half barbarian, right. That was the deal. Yeah. And that has remained a deal like up through today, but all of the baggage surrounding it has changed. Sure. Because it's no longer, well, you know, you're a monstrous barbarian now.

Oh, okay. Well, we'll talk about how the counter-attack has changed. That's the whole point of what we're talking about. But through the 80s and into the 90s, the tropes stayed orcs are all chaotic evil. Like always chaotic evil all the time. Orcs not half orcs. Orcs not half orcs.

Okay, half orcs, if you're a half orcs, there's enough not work in you that you can be neutral evil or chaotic neutral, but you're never still not, you know, and it wasn't like hard and fast you can't have. Can you squeak in the good or no? Well, there was never a specific rule saying your alignment is never going to be, is never going to end in G, but the overall context was always that if you're playing this character, you're not choosing this race to play a good guy.

Right. If you want to play a good guy, be human or an L for something like that, because they are the good races. If you want to be a stodgy good guy, be a dwarf. So it's just again, Gary Guy Gary guy gags being from the Midwest yeah, it just I you know and as much as I hate to always but We always seem to like authorial 10. Yeah, coming back around. Yeah, okay that's yeah, okay, but also I mean we're literally talking about race Yes, so we should probably talk about race so if you want to be good I mean, we're literally talking about race. Yes. So we should probably talk about race.

So if you want to be good, be a human. Yeah. If you want to be good, be an elf, which is kind of like a British human. If you want to be good, be a dwarf, and that's kind of like a borderlander human, a scotsman human. Yeah.

So one of the lesser good ones. Yeah. If you want to hold on. Hold on. Uh-huh. Orlando human, a scotsman human. Yeah, so one of the lesser good ones If you want to hold on If you if you want to be a dwarf, you're gonna face second-hand citizenship One of that I'm sorry Yeah, luckily none of that existed in the Midwest as a concept for any race So we can just totally move on from there Great migration has nothing to do with any of that. Going straight through there.

We're just gonna cruise right on by. Cool. Yeah, yeah. My great rate passed that as it were. Were they have more service? Were they used as some sort of proto-servant class or indentured servitude class? Not officially.

Yeah, not any official kind of material. At least it's not that on the notes. No, no, no. No. So through the 80s and into the 90s, like I said, orcs are still monsters. It's always a category. But what we see at that point is we start seeing people trying to find a way to explain that. So Tolkien created works at these are my storm troopers. These are going to be the disposable minions of evil. The Huns. Well, yeah, no, and we mentioned that talking about propaganda that was undoubtedly in the back of his head while I was coming up with all this stuff. But he didn't mean to do it. But it wasn't conscious, but it was there.

And so they're still fulfilling that role, but now, well, wait a minute, how does that actually work? Because, you know, in the real world, even the Huns weren't disposable minions of evil. So like, let's explain how do we get disposable minions of evil? What, what, how do you wind up getting a monolithic? They're always bad guys. Right. Situation.

And there's, I wish I could find it. It's out of print, and I couldn't find it anywhere online. But in Space Gamer magazine, which was published by Steve Jackson Games, Oh wow. Back in the 1980s, and you know, Dragon magazine, it was T.S.R. vehicle. It was everything in there was about T.S. TSR games. It was Dungeons and Dragons or Right top secret or the Marvel superheroes came Which is also TSM which is TSM but yeah gag a maggot so

No gag a maggot would be the DC game. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, okay. Good point. Yeah, true All right granted, but so anyway TSM was was vehicle, or Dragon was a vehicle for strictly TSR. Space Gamer was published by Steve Jackson Games, but at that point, Steve Jackson Games was a small enough outfit that like, no man, we're gonna write about everything. We're gonna write about D&D, we're gonna write about tabletop games occasionally. When we have the material, we're gonna talk about car wars and other Steve Jackson stuff sure sure But you know, whatever you got we're gonna do a traveler Traveler 2300, you know, right and so Steve Jackson himself wrote an article for space gamer magazine

Okay, that was the ecology of the work Wow, okay, and it was an attempt to try to explain. Okay okay look here's how it is that this that this could work Rationally like like like we're gonna we're gonna try to we're gonna try to world build around this because Tolkien Did a lot of world building but it didn't exactly explain how this functions and this is a tent pole of this world Anyway, so now we have to explain Yeah, like like everybody has works in their games. They always show up and they're always tribal and they're always, you know, they're always marauders and like, how does that happen?

Well, let me ask you, just for a second. So what year did this article come out in this magazine? I don't recall the specific year, but as I remember its early 80s, we're talking like somewhere, I wanna say it somewhere between 82 to 84. Wow, so it's way far back. So it's yeah, yeah.

Okay. And so he tried to explain the trip scientifically and the explanation came up with was okay, so we're gonna operate under the assumption that Orcs are a created race, they were one way or another, they were somehow, they didn't arise organically, they were somehow created by some evil force, because that's the background. And the thing is, when you are going to create a race that is going to be your disposable shock troopers,

you want them to mature really fast, you want them to reproduce really rapidly. And so those are going to be, one of the big and powerful and obedient and you don't necessarily want to be very smart. They're an XP factory for leveling up. Yeah, well, they're an XP for player characters. They're an XP factory for leveling up. For the bad guy, whoever it is that created them, it was, I need an army that I can send hordes of them out and then replace them almost as fast. And not have rebellions crop up.

Yeah, not have rebellions crop up. Yeah, not having rise up. And so they have to have an ingrained kind of lack of concern for their own lives or other lives. And so anyway, it was this attempt to try to retcon a rational explanation for the always chaotic evil trope as it applied to works. Now just real quick, you said it's probably somewhere in between what, 81 and 84?

Probably. If I'm, yeah. So I'm thinking about the Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe it's late is 86. Okay, I'm thinking about the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. As you should, yes. As we all should. And the basic bad guys that they ended up fighting most of the time

were bully walks, not orcs. Yeah. And I just kind of think it's interesting. Toad people. Yeah. I think it's kind of interesting that... I had forgotten there was bully wugs, but yeah. Yeah.

It's just interesting to me that like orcs are a staple, a go-to. Yeah. And yet the cartoon named for it. Well, I'll tell you why. Uh-huh. Uh, because in the published materials that you're going to use at home to play your game, we can get away with using Orcs as a term and we've made our Orcs look different enough and whatever that will satisfy the Paul Zantz company who owned all of the intellectual property rights

to the Tolkien estate. But if we try to make a TV show and have works on the screen, you know the lawyers are going to be on the phone right away, you know, with a season deceased and we want, you know, if you want to keep doing this, we want money. So Bullywug were monstrous enough and also always catacletal. And they filled the role well enough, but they didn't have the legal baggage that using the word orcs.

Right. There was the threat of that showing up. Is that why orcs got started getting spelled differently? Uh, well you're thinking of Warhammer 40K with orcs who had spelled with a K. Yeah, then maybe not. I'm gonna get to them in a minute. Okay.

But that was not really the reason. Okay. And I'll explain that when I get to them. Cool. So, so the remagining was they had this high birth rate and because of the high birth rate and the fact that, you know, they have to be fed, they had an innate tendency toward cannibalism. If they weren't eating you, they had an innate tendency toward cannibalism. If they weren't eating you, they were eating each other.

Wow. So, still always catacoeval, but now there's kind of a, somebody came up with a rationalization for it. Right. And I point this out not so much because everybody took that and ran with it, but that same kind of thinking influenced, like, well, we have to come up with an explanation

of who the hell they are. Like, you know, we can't just leave them as the cipher. We got to, we got to pick them up and figure out, you know, how this works. And this also was where we start seeing more detail given to the tribal society of works. The Dungeons, the Monster Manual in Dungeons and Dragons said, they organized themselves into tribes with names like the pierced eye and the broken skull. This kind of stuff. That was it. They banned together for marauding purposes, and they have these tribes and all that stuff. And in Dungeons and Dragons, part of their always catacletal evil

was explained in official published stuff. When Dede's demigods came out, and the orcish pantheon was described, grunched the one eye, which by the way, the wounded God. Well, yeah, well, one-eye, I have saueron, we're still not getting too far away from their roots, but Grumsch is this warrior God

and the genesis of the orcs in that myth and this was this was related as being the myth that orcish shaman's taught to their children their pups whatever you want to call them by the way so now we're introducing the idea that there are shaman's right shaman in orcish culture we're now introducing the idea that they they have an oral tradition and they are introducing this oral tradition to their young. So these are now concepts that like, well, you know, if you start building that in, it's really world, all of the gods of all the different races got together and they chose where it was that their people were going to settle. And the elves took the, you know, Coral and Larithian, the god of the elves, took the forests and Moradine, the father of the dwarves, took the depths of the mountains and humans took first the plains and

then said, but, you know, we're gonna travel everywhere. Right, we're rats. And then Grouch showed up last, and all of the good places were taken. So he got this swamp. And so, and well, no, and so he thrust his spear down into the badlands and said, here will my people be? And he threw his spear down into the swamps and the bogs and said, here my people will be.

We will live in all the places that nobody else wants because you've taken everything else from us. Wow. And we will take everything from you. Wow. And so there's this built-in inferiority complex and there's this built-in, everybody stole everything from us and we're gonna get even.

And that's the reason that they are always cataclyveled, they're always mirroreders, they're always coming to get civilization because they're envious, they're disruptive. And so, well, okay, so I'm remembering order of the stick and, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. And the hob goblins and, yeah, and all that.

And it's very similar. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. And he's, he's laying putting the shit out of it. Well, no, no, yeah, no, yeah. And so, there's still not really, there like putting the shit out of well, no, oh, yeah, no, yeah, and and so There's still not really you're still in a real explanation of how it is exactly that orcs are able to support the kind of large population But they always have you know, it's like anytime anybody's writing an adventure novel

You see all the predators show up in the jungle and it's like how they have this many predators in a jungle Where and she's where what like yeah, that's a good Like, there's too many wolves and not enough like gazelle. Like, you know, that's not how the balance works. And, you know, orcs are never described as farming. They're, you know, and so like, how do you, how do they feed themselves? Like, how do they maintain these, like, oh my god, we gotta be scared. Because the orcs are coming in there this horror. They don't have domesticated animals.

Like, yeah, right. I mean, I mean, they raid and they loot, but you can only raid and loot so much. Yeah. Without actually conquering, and that's not the way they're portrayed. Right, and the threat that they're gonna come out of the, it's yellow peril, it's the threat that, oh my God, they're gonna come out of the mountains

and destroy us. It's Viking peril, too, though. Yeah, well, yeah. On some levels, like, because physically, they're that big and they're this and they're that. Yeah, and they're imposing and terrifying. But they're never setting up Dublin. Yeah, no.

Well, no, because they're not, it's still the assumption is they're not smart enough, they're not sophisticated enough, or whatever, they're just, they're constitutionally, they're not civilized, they're not constitutionally, capable of focusing enough to think of trading to get what they want. They're just gonna take everything because that's the way they are.

So, Steve Jackson, right, he writes this. He writes that article. It's quite of at the same time that this created. I mean, it's part of the evolution of the trope within the genre. So I'm just trying to figure where Steve Jackson from. Texas. So fucking price. God damn it. God damn it. I wish he was not so on the nose. So he's from Texas and just north of him is several Oklahoma reservations. Yeah, for these people that

the room is Oklahoma just can't be civilized. Yeah. Well, yeah. Six tribes. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah, you know, I had just south of him. I had actually made that connection. Yeah, just south of him or the Apache. Yeah. Just to throw like no, but okay, where, where since it is kind of on the nose when you realize it, yeah, again, pattern on the wallpaper. Yep. It is in general.

Yep. So, but over time, we're seeing a trend toward orcs being less monsters. More noble savage if you want. Well, well, we're not there yet. Okay. We're working that way, well we're not there yet okay we're working that way but we're not there yet What we do is because there's no nobility involved in Jackson's description. They are they are not noble They are they are still violent psychotic murderous all that with shamans now with well D&D was the one who there was

T.S.R. said their shamans tell the story right but they're they're becoming less monsters and more monstrous human weights. That is a difference. So you've got them in boarding schools and they all graduated from Duke. I'm sorry, did that come out out loud? I'm really not sorry. So in this point, I want to mention, because you already kind of brought up the change in spelling. Yes. This is also the time at which we start seeing orcs with a K, being more fleshed out in 40K.

Okay. We're him or 40,000. Now of course, we're him or 40,000 is basically fantasy in space. Right. So the L-DAR are space elves. Right. Space marines are night in space right so the L.D.R. are space elves right space marines are night in space Mm-hmm and space orcs are exactly what it says on the 10 their space orce and so to differentiate them from the orcs of where hammer

Fantasy battle or in 40k is always spelled with a K Okay, just because that's the way they did it where he were fantasy battle, or in 40K is always spelled with a K. Okay. Just because that's the way they did it. And they are in 40K, they are violent, they're British, they are huge, and they are fungoid. They're mushrooms. They're mushrooms. They're giant, sentient, toothed mushrooms

with a murder complex. Now, just real quick, if anybody's interested, we already did an episode on Warhammer 40K. If you go back in the archives to episode four and I believe five, there's a two-part episode comparing fatturism to Warhammer 40K. Yeah, or it's talking about how it influenced it. Yeah, so you Definitely owe it to yourself to go back and listen to that and then when you're done come back to these Back going back to here and we can talk about fun go it works. So

What what the writers and and you know every time I think about this and for whatever reason when when when the you know It's one of those things that like every so often You know like think about stuff for the podcast, whatever. And this kind of idea, this particular idea like hits me all over again. And every time I realize it, I kind of have to chuckle and be like, those guys were actually a lot smarter than they wanted anybody to pick up on.

Because the thing is, they came up with, because it's science fiction, they had the freedom to come up with a science fiction explanation to a fantasy problem. Oh yeah, which is. Which is. Which is. Which is.

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Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which is. Which Right. So an orc boy, which is their grunt, you know, stomach trooper warrior, is somewhere in the middle of the orc food chain. Okay. Toward the top, but but at the bottom are actual, you know, mushroom looking fungi. Uh-huh. And then there are more animal-like fungi because they're all fungi. They're fungi. Okay, yeah. And, you know, next on the chain are, oh my god, I've forgotten it, squigs. Sorry, I had a brain fart. Squigs are like, they're depending on the species of squig.

They might be the size of a purse dog all the way up to the size of a rhinoceros. But they are like orcs only, they don't have enough rain power to be self-aware, conscious they're orcish animals. Okay. So there are orcs whose whole job is to be squig herds. Like in 40K, you can have a squig herd on the battlefield.

And he will send his battle squigs forward in a, in a, in a, in a, roiling, snorting, you know, a failing, a failing, a failing, a failing, a gigantic big teeth to, to attack the enemy. And he stands behind him with a big crooked stick and you know poke some pods them on Yeah, and and so but they they have this whole ecology Interestingly goblins are part of that ecology. Okay, grots are just little

A sub species of work that is smaller and run to your and cowardly and so forth Do they have some sort of like scald class as well? Some sort of like bardic? No, but they have weird boys. And weird boys, I assume, are sick. Weird boys are psychics. Right, okay. And the whole species, it should be noted,

all of Orcdom is just a little bit psychic. And the thing is, a weird boy channels all of a psychic power. So when a bunch of works really get excited, yeah, he breaks it right. All of that energy gets sensed and directed by the weird boy. And if he's not careful enough,

it literally causes him to explode. Right, you told me in the, yeah, so far, you could pull that. And so when, when, so the works, there are still very warlike and they're bringing war to people yes Yes, they are okay. Yeah, and they're and they're and they're whole They're they're whole everything is based on we never lose We never lose and they just

Or because we win because because we go places and we fight and we win and when we win we win and when the other guys beat us We retreat and then we come back and we fight him again and we never lose You see what I'm saying yeah orcs don't lose right you know and and so they are depicted as being maniacal single-minded in like, but it's comedic, and there are species of idiot savants. And there's savants is fighting. Well, like the average, the average grunt orc is, really big, carries a big crude sword,

a big crude gun, and he's just a shock trooper. But within their species, every one in a thousand is a mechboy. And he grows up from a little mushroomling and suddenly realizes he wants to start bolting stuff together. And he just knows how to build starships. I mean, they're crude.

But it waxed together with fake. So that they can then get on the starship and bring war elsewhere. So Portabella. Yeah, oh nice. I'm not even angry. That's that good. Yeah.

And do they bring their civilization with them? What counts as their civilization? Their stuff, their material culture. They only have two gods, 4K, Gork and Mork. Gork is a cunning but brutal. And Mork is brutal but cunning. Oh Jesus.

I assume they have huge attitude problems and they don't know. Yeah, so there's no shittaki amongst them. Yeah, I'm back. That one pisses me off. That one hurts. And so they're a bunch of jabbering, cockney accent and murderous football hooligans. That's their whole character. Right. And they are monsters. Like they are, they're literally monstrous aliens, but remember the universe they're inhabiting

so they can't really call them evil. Right. Because they inhabit a universe where demons literally want to devour and enslave everything. And then if you really want terrifying aliens, you have the tyrannids who literally want to eat everyone. Uh-huh. Like, not even like Har Harannids who literally wanna eat everyone. Like, you know, not even like,

har har har, I'm gonna eat ya, but no, we are the hive and we're just gonna devour it. You know, so like, the orcs are kind of the happy fluffy bunny slippers villain. If you wanna call it that, they're not sure. I mean, nobody's really a villain because everybody's kind of a villain. They're an antagonist, don't you?

They're an antagonist, and people who play orcs, I'm just going to say this as a 40k player. People who really get into playing orcs are some of the most fun people to play the game with because their whole army has built in chaotic stuff. And it's like I have built a well-oiled machine of an army. This is how all my units are supposed to fit together. They, I have all the synergy figured out and they can have a random die roll completely fuck. Everything they want to do.

And they will laugh about it. Because that's what the army is. And yeah, one of my best friends is a dedicated orc player has been forever. And his army is always fun to play against Mm-hmm and and yeah, they're they're who? So they're they're monstrous in a darkly cartoonish kind of way, but now they're not evil

Because nobody and everybody at the same time is kind of evil in 40k and that's the way that is. Now, a little bit later, moving the timeline forward, we then have shadow run. Comes out in 1989. Okay. Presented works as a subspecies of human. How familiar are you with the universe of shadow run? Corporations run everything, there's fantasy,

but in a modern setting. Okay, well postmodern. It's cyberpunk with magic spells and magical races. Okay. So it's, imagine, have you read William Gibson? No. Okay. Yeah. But you know the I said like blade runner. Yes. I think a blade runner aesthetic. Right. With cybernetics and the net, but then throw wizard spells and that kind of stuff. Okay. And Ork's trolls all over the place. You could have a dragon fighting a helicopter. Precisely.

Yes. And I think there's a published module in which something like that actually happens. It's not a helicopter, it's a jet fighter. Okay. So, um, the explanation that Shadow Run has for the existence of magical races is all of them are subspecies of human. There is an event that takes place in the shadow run timeline sometime in like 1997, 1998, I'm trying to remember, where all of a sudden there's a generation of children who are suddenly born with pointed ears or tusks or you know, squat they're they're born of human

right but they are different but it's all the races from the it's all the races from the judges and at the same time that's going on some children who are entering into puberty undergo transformation okay and and the conceit of it is that it's the beginning of the Mayan fourth world So it wasn't actually It was the end of the Mayan calendar whenever it was 2012. Yeah That the end of the Mayan calendar was the shift into the next age 2012 makes more sense to most most things where it's like it's an apocalyptic thing is usually about a generation to two generations out Yeah before the catalyzing event happens. So yeah. So

So anyway, they're their orcs are they are they are humans who are different. They they're essentially humans with a genetic condition Mm-hmm. You know like the line from the Avengers some you've got a condition And they are their stat line is they're a little slow. Okay. And they're really tough. Okay. And they're a little bit stronger than ordinary humans, than human baseline, but they're not like, you know,

cartoonishly strong, but they are really tough. Okay. And they're not, they're, they're, they're a little bit slower on the uptake than you're as a baseline than the average baseline human. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. little bit slower on the uptake than you're as a baseline. Right. So we still have that baggage going on. And in Shadowrun, like in 40k, everything is morally gray. And in more hammer 40k, it's because even the good guys are fascists. Right. In, in Shadowrun, it's because if you're a player character, in Shadowrun, you are a criminal a criminal right like the way you make You're living is you

Steel stuff from the megalithic corporations. They're running everything right like for a living That's what you do, you know, you come from probably a gang background or you know, whatever So everybody's morally gray so orcs being morally gray So in some way kind of it kind of normalizes. It normalizes, yes, does. And so then at almost the same time, a couple of years later, Earth Dawn comes out also from FASTA. And in that game, orcs are presented as just being another race of fantastical humanoids.

There is nothing said about them being brutish, there is nothing said about them being more violent than anybody else or anything else. They are stronger. They're I they're they're described as being you know big and bulky not and not very pretty, you know, right? But they are just another player character race. They're they are they are given the same level of kind of, this is what Orkish culture looks like. This is what Orkish operates as a society. And so now that normalization thing, Fasa, basically really committed to the idea, you know what, we're gonna normalize this. It's gonna be a thing. So at this point, the racial coding from Tolkien

is mostly gone, not completely, but it's mostly gone, which is good. The pig face thing with Guy Gax, again, talking about lawyers. I wonder how much of that was, I really don't wanna have this kinda anti-Asian, hun, racial stuff gone. Or if it was just, I need to make sure that Zance's lawyers don't jump on me.

So I'm gonna make my works look different if it was some combination of the two. Given at that time, I can almost guarantee you it was option B, not option A. Yeah, I really, I am loads to give Gary Geigak's credit for very much of anything on a moral level. Really? He garnered a reputation that may be unfair, but a lot of the stories that I've heard about him from people who had the occasion to meet him at cons and do that kind of stuff was that he was kind of an arrogant jerk.

And so it's a prejudice I carry against the man even though I never met him, so that's know, I, so that's the thing. No, I mean, I think Lyndon Johnson was a prick. I never met Lyndon Johnson. Yeah. But I know plenty of stories of him being a prick. So there you go. So yeah.

So we can give him an A for impact on a C- for motivation. I like it. You know, I like it. Or A for motivation and then C- for conduct. Yeah. Could have been like, you know, there's any number of ways along the way that someone could fall off a path too. That's true.

But yeah, and not talking specifically in this case about the label of the racial stuff for Marx and D&D. So 40K works are class coded though, because again, they're football hooligans. And so that's a whole different kind of baggage. Right. Because that's British baggage. And we live in a society. We have class distinctions, but it's not ingrained in the same way. It doesn't present in the same way. It's not overt in the same way that it is in Britain.

Now, I am going to say that the game designers themselves came from middle class or slightly lower middle class backgrounds. And so this is not necessarily punching down. Right. I perceive it as punching sideways. Sure. So we can kind of say whether that's, you know, problematic or not. Now, in the real world,

there's not really a single event or movement that I can tie into this. Okay. But overall in the 80s and 90s, the dominant culture started to shift toward really kind of almost as if for the first time really seeing people of color and LGBTQ people and showing representation of them in media.

You said in the early 90s. In 80s and 90s. It was slow, it was token-ish, but it's still more than it was there. Yeah, but it started to happen. Middle America got introduced to the hostables. This is like the one real, concrete specific example I could think of that the hostables were

an African-American family. The parents were both highly educated professionals. She was a lawyer, he was a pediatrician. And they had a whole bunch of clean, college bound, clean cut kits. Yeah. The black middle class had existed for generations, sure.

But a whole giant chunk of white America hadn't ever seen them portrayed. Right. And when I say a giant chunk, I mean the majority right of white America had not ever seen them portrayed in that light. And so this is, this is, got the closest thing.

A really big example. Yeah. It's the one concrete one that I could think of. But overall, there was kind of a growing understanding. I mean, you know, you remember us as kids, yeah, kind of being encouraged all the time to be recognizing that, hey, there are people who are different and we should respect people

who are different and we should value them for being different. Right. And that was the lesson we were, we were being taught. Right. Whereas 10 years prior, it was melting pot. Yeah. It was the Jefferson's blending with white culture instead of the Huckstables being themselves.

Very. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a really good point. Yeah. Right. So overall, there was a growing understanding of what stereotypes were. Uh-huh. Like that was something we kind of got explicitly taught.

Like, this is a stereotype. Right. Not all of these people are like this. You know, this, this is a cartoon picture of these people that is not, that doesn't show that they're individuals. And, and so this is the very beginning of people starting to push back against those. And so in 1994. Now I would also point out that during this time

that you've been talking about, you've had Republicans in the White House. Yes. The whole time, until 92. Okay, yeah. Through the 80s. yeah through through the eighties like yeah when when or when orcs show up as a Separate ecology. It's under a Republican administration Now I don't think that there's a task force conservative also that reignite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but

Yeah, yeah, and in both well you were talking about Steve Jackson Ork with a K. Right. Yeah, oh, I'm on Steve Jackson. Yeah, okay So on both sides of the pond you have the orc ecology developing at a time when The people who were in power had a vested interest in ignoring All the non-human and elf characters. Okay. For what we were talking about. Yeah.

And now it's... And during that time, there was all kinds of abrasion and abutment up against those like ceilings that were placed on it, and they start to come out. Like you said, the Hux Like you said, the Hux Like you said, the Hux Like you said, the Hux They get they they they show up in the 80s. Yeah, yeah. And you start to see movements toward that kind of stuff and not just in these little fringe things like in soap or something like that. You start to see more representation.

So now you're about to break it wide open in 94. Yeah. Which is right at the time when contract of America comes in. And the legislature switches to the right. Oh, wow. And the conservative party is still in power in the 90s. Yeah. But thatchers out.

There's someone else. Yes. Because I think she's out in 91. I might be off by a little. Oh, what was his name? It wasn't Tony. I remember't Tony wasn't Tony Blair because he came in with labor He was labor. Yeah, anybody who comes in new labor. Yeah neoliberal. Yeah, centrist. He was Britain's Clinton Yeah, which they come in right around the same time. Yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna steal the middle from from Right, we're gonna steal the middle from the right and

from from we're gonna try and regulate right we're gonna we're gonna steal the middle from the right and and thus shift the left right word yeah yeah yeah so 94 yes warcraft warcraft comes out Blizzard software releases oh yes warcraft or send humans which was real-time strategy game yes orcs were invaders from another world They were coming into the world through a portal from from another from another dimension another another plane They had bright green skin. Mm-hmm Noes lists they they they yeah, yeah, tusks large tusks and and like 40k orks

heavily heavily heavily bulky muscle ridiculously muscle. Yes, they had come through portal to raid and conquer But they had their own society Mm-hmm Which was portrayed as having been corrupted by demonic influence Okay, they're still violent barbaric expansionistic and warlike. They're still a note of them having been corrupted. Uh-huh.

Okay. But they're getting credit for having had a civilization before as their own thing before that happened. Okay. Then, still sticking with warcraft. By the time of warcraft III in 2002, the background of the orcs and the other creatures of the Horde, the trolls and all of them had been changed. There had kind of been introductions and sort of retcons. Now they had been slaves of the burning

Legion, a demonic faction that had pushed them into acting as a slave army. Okay. Okay. They'd been defeated and forced into camps by the humans and the elves of Azeroth. Okay. So they were forced into invading the world that was inhabited by humans and elves, humans and elves defeated them and then shipped them off to prisoner of War Camps and reservations. Ah. Okay. And by the time of Warcraft III, they now wanted their freedom and individual orc protagonists

represented different factions within Orcdom. Yes. Some of which wanted to find a way to cooperate with humanity and like look, we need to build peace between all of our people. Right. And some of which were like, you know, screw all of them, burn it all down. Right.

Kind of thing. Which even though they were painted as villains, you could understand based on where they were coming from. Dude, if I was in their position, I'd want to burn it all down too. Right. So we're looking at the definitely chaotic. They definitely wanted to destroy humans, but... They've got a point. They got a reason.

Yep. Okay. Warcraft works now are carrying all of those noble savage troops. Yes. Okay. They were, they're an honorable warrior race. They were tribal with all kind of barbarian trappings, taken from a bunch of different sources, kind of, kind of, if it's tribal, we're gonna slap it on an orc and see how it fits.

Right. And they had been enslaved, then imprisoned, there were always heavy kind of anti-hero vibes, and they were rough and violent, but they were justified, like I was saying. And so now we also see, for the first time female orcs as characters start showing up. And now we start getting problematic again in a way, because female orcs look a lot more human-like than male orcs do. They still have tusks, but they're smaller. They're not nearly as heavily muscled.

Their proportions are almost the same as the proportions of any other female character in Warcraft, which means exaggerated wasp wastes, big hips, big boobs. And so we're looking at male gaze being a thing. And there's a little bit, I don't know if by the time I was writing this, I was looking for it. But, you know, there's the fetishization of women of color in previous media going back forever. Asian women being exoticized and made foreign, you know, Latin and Hispanic women, same kind of, you know, any woman who was not a white woman carried all of these tropes that were the exotic foreign woman, you know, Fennartal, Indian princess, like, you know,

and, you know, positive stereotypes are better than negative ones. They are, and that's really good. But they're still, yeah, but they're still stereotypes. Also true. And the still winds of echoing real life kind of racial biases. Warcraft managed to turn orcs all the way into heroic figures, but unfortunately, they still couldn't get away

with saddling them with tropes. Fetishizing them. Fetishizing them, and saddling them with tropes fetishizing them. fetishizing them and saddling with tropes to go along with that. And so now it's Native Americans and Aboriginal people rather than central plateau of Asia. Right. People, tribes. And so now coming around to kind of the ending of my thesis here, you know, the upside of all of this is there's a greater depth of characterization that we see. Of course,

you know, there's a trend in gaming as a whole, as the medium has matured, as all of the media that are involved in it have matured. We've moved toward there being more nuance and a greater ability to create depth and work with depth and individual characters and those kind of things. And it represents the growth of representation in tabletop RPG culture. There was a great piece that I read a couple of weeks before I started writing

my notes for this that I really had to think really hard about because my initial my initial thesis was gonna be different than what it is now. Isn't that fun when you get 90% done and then that 10% just like oh man I really like, oh man, I really gotta think about that. And I, they ask, oh, you know. Right. And it was, and I have to go hunt it down and find it so we can put it in the credits for the episode because right now I can't remember the title or who it was and I was putting my notes.

I was rushing to get this ready to go to air. But it was a great multi-part piece about the racism inherent in orcs and the woman who wrote the piece who was who is a Person of color wrote about how the experience she had dealing with Playing a half-orc character and having a white male DM with playing a half-work character. Having a white male DM make remarks

about, well, you know, these are orcs orcs and they're never good guys and you can't ever negotiate with them. Really came across to her as, I'm sorry, that's like, she really felt racism coming off of that. And, I mean, the guy running the game probably didn't think. Not as slightest, he's dealing with orcs. Yeah, he's dealing with orcs.

They're a made up fictional hit. But like, they're othered. From, but they're othered. And from the point of view of somebody who has to deal with that shit as background noise on a daily basis, it's like, oh, I came here to escape. Yeah, I came here to get away from that.

And like, you know, well, and there's an implication of these are, these are the bad works. You're one of the good ones. You're one of the good ones. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah.

The only thing you could add to that to make it worse for someone to be like, and, you know, orcare is just really rough in course, but we really like half-work hair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's some grossness going on there. Yeah. And then that gets again back to the portrayal of female works in way too many sources like across gaming media now. Sure. Whether tabletop,

you know, publishing stuff or video games or whatever. or whatever, it's similar to the way women or portrayed of all races through those media, it needs a lot of work. But yeah, it's the same fetishization, it's the same exoticism, it's the same baggage. And so, you know, the upside of all of this is that, you know, we're seeing maturity in these story lines and by taking away the idea that works are inherently evil and they have no society and they have no culture worth speaking of and all that that goes along with them just being a monster. That is in a way for anybody who's coming from a background other than always being the dominant culture in the room, that opens a door, that is in a way a form of broadening representation. And so it's very powerful in that context.

And so those are the remarkable kind of upsides of this movement of this trend with these particular constructs. Now I am going to touch on the stuff that was my original, that off my lawn kind of thesis, which is I have a real problem with, and this isn't just about it works, but this is in general the level to which moral grain is moral ambiguity, everybody has a point, and we have to see, what is it that made him Moral ambiguity, everybody has a point.

And we have to see, what is it that made him a villain? Is this, has become this thing? And this really crystallized for me, seeing the ads for the Joker. Okay. Is like, okay, why do we need to see? I mean, the Joker is a protean force of chaos. Like, in the comics, they've come up with multiple potential,

this might be his backstory, backstories for. Right, right. And there's one of them that's kind of considered to be mostly canonical. But up until that was written, he didn't need a backstory. Right. You know, his role was, he was the anti-batman. It was, you know, and that was,

and in another episode, we're gonna talk about, I'm gonna talk about, I'm gonna rant about superheroes as mythic figures. Sure. And in a mythic context, the monster doesn't have a backstory other than, they were here before the gods, and they were thrown into tarterists. And that's like all you need to know, like they eat babies, like what?

And there's not a lot of nuance to that. There's not a lot of depth to that. But we crave stories in which we have a monster. We crave stories in which we have a monster. We craved stories in which we have a hero who stands up between those of us who don't have the strength to do it and the monster. Right. And you can't empathize with a Nazi. Right. Like you he will not let you reason with him. Right. He doesn't care, Nazis don't care about reasoning with you. The only reason they say, well, I just want to have an argument, is to get you into a place

where they can browbeat you to the point where you can't argue anymore, and then they're going to kill you and your family. Right. They're going to push you out of the public square. Right. By using your rationality and your empathy against you. Yeah. Um, you know, and, and so with all of the stuff that we're having to deal with in the world today,

when we're seeing actual fucking Nazis walking down the street. Yes. I kind of want to come to the gaming table and I kind of want to kill some works. You know, and I recognize that that's me, as me coming with all of my particular background on my kind of particular baggage and all that kind of stuff. And kind of what that article that I wish I could remember

the title for, that I'm really genuinely gonna have to look up now. What that kind of made clear to me was, that's where I'm coming from on this. And there's a whole other flip side to what I'm talking about. And it made me have to really think about it harder than I had been, because this was mostly gonna be me, sitting you know, sitting on my porch telling all the kids to get off my fucking lawn. Right. You know, but, you know, I think there is a place in our fantasy world, collectively, individually, whatever, for having monsters to fight.

And I am frustrated somewhat by the way the urge to want to humanize monsters has sometimes gotten really close to glorifying them. And that bugs me on a really primal level. It like, seeing the trailers for the Joker movie actually made me actively angry. Okay. Because he's a mass murderer. Right.

Like he is, and from the synopsis I've read of the movie, Yeah. He is, he turns into a psychotic killer. He turns into the Joker. Right. And you need to remember that the Joker in the comics is the guy who intentionally shoots Barbara Gordon in a way to permanently

maim her rather than killing her. I mean, it's not just Matt's murder, it's torture and mental destruction, mental degradation. And the Jack Nicholson Joker literally gases a city full of people. Yeah. Why do we need to take that character and like empathize with the stuff that he went through to turn him into that? Like what? No. Like he has gone to me. At that point, he's gone too far beyond the pale for me to be comfortable empathizing with that. Well, and in that particular version version he started off as a bad person

It wasn't dropping into that that of chemicals that made him a bad guy He was part of organized crime prior to that. He was a psychotic 15-year-old who'd murdered someone's parents. Yes Like he operated outside of the idea of having a conscience. Yeah, he was a sociopath from get go Yeah, right in that version in that He was a psycho from the jump. They, I mean, he was cool because he was Jack Nicholson. He was cool because he was cool because he was Zany, but at the end of the day, he did not start off as a sympathetic character to begin with.

Yeah. And I don't think he's a sympathetic character in this new one because he's an open-mic comic and you can't see sympathetic with... So... Yeah, Shifty, the book cover. because he's an open-mic comic and you can't see sympathetic with... So... Yeah, shifty, the bunch of them. But... Okay, well, I'm gonna let you finish, but I have some pushback for you on this.

Okay, well that's pretty much it. Okay, I've shot my... I think that you're throwing the baby out with a bath water when it comes to works. I completely get, in this day and age especially, you want to kill some bad guys. I completely get that. But the orcs themselves have evolved partly because they started off as victimized peoples. They started off as elves that were corrupted or that were kidnapped and brutalized and brutalized and so

they turned it into something. Automatically a sympathy built in with that. Okay. And as it goes on that sympathy keeps staying there. It's the through line through the whole thing. So when you said they wrote about the ecology of orcs there is a constant strain of okay well here's what they do here's and and do, here's, and I love the use of word humanizing because I do wanna bring it back to race. In the same way that one of the things

that shifted white people during the civil rights movement to say that civil rights is not an upset of the system and that it's actually a do thing was that several black civil rights leaders started acting in a way that was seen as wasp and therefore relatable. You had, you know, they went through several different women before they actually challenged the bus segregation. Yeah, Rosa Parks was, she was, was bill chosen because yeah, and bless her for it. Yeah. But when you still an act of monumental courage, when you whitenize the experience, suddenly white people can get on board with it and not see it as other and you said humanize

and humans are clearly the white people of the fantasy world. Elves are the better white people. Like it's mostly a white thing. It really is. And only recently have different authors and different game designers been representative of other peoples, of people of color. People who had previously been other people who had been left out. But the orcs have always, as per what we just went through in the last hour or so,

the orcs have always been a group that has not been treated fairly. Yeah. Therefore, I think it is, I'm not gonna say it is responsible, but I think it is. Reductive? Reductive to compare them, to say, hey look, we have literal Nazis walking down the streets. We absolutely do.

Killing orcs isn't gonna help you escape that reality. Killing orcs is really throwing the baby out with the bath water. Like saying, I don't want my orcs to be humanized. They've always been somewhat on that line. Find another race to kill. One that's not had so much ink spilled on it to humanize it, to make it a sympathetic group. Because there are plenty of others out there.

There are, you know, there are plenty of bugs. Yeah, that too. But even then, like I think attacking the Dumber races is not nearly as satisfying in this day and age as attacking the fanatic races. Okay. Attacking the fanatical groups and what I've seen in the games that I play is it's less and less about. And so this gray area, I'm with you. I think bad guys should be absolute on a lot of levels.

But the bad guys that are absolute on a lot of levels tend to be bad guys who are making choices to do evil, not just I was born that way. Okay. And so that would be my pushback, is that you're throwing the orc pups out with the orc bath water. Okay. And I see what you're saying. And that's, and that's, that's, I like that. I can work with that. I also, I guess my issue is, I don't so much necessarily want to have it be like okay. No look It's gonna be specifically the orcs and we're gonna be right, but but it's I want to I want to come to the table And I want to have I want to have a clear moral yes Conflict where I can be the good guy fighting against the bad guys. Yes, I not have anybody from my own side

Come at me and be like no No, we got to give them a space to debate right right no, I get that I get that like no Yeah, no, I'm sorry. They're take only literally eating babies take on we you know take on the beholders then there you go You know xenophobic yep racist yep so racist that like two different beholders will tell each other You're not a true beholder I'm trying to tell one another like like they're proud boys and you know, Gavin Guinness Boy's the three percent. Yeah, you know, you just root for an injury. Yeah You know on top of that like you know beholders are are way more powerful and their hoarders of wealth and all these kinds of things

And you know they have a more gold when you defeat things. And, you know, they have a... So you get more gold when you defeat them. Yeah, oh, that's you, and XB. But also, you know, I mean, the orcs, their God was left out. He was literally shown the back door of the God Diner. Yeah, that's not their fault, man. You know? Yeah, no.

Yeah, so, yes, definitely. Find another race. There are plenty of their revel and their evilness instead of just, this is the lot we've been given. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'd say we should say. So, yeah.

So, any other final takeaway from that? No, I think I spent my powder on that one. I really, I loved that I got to see the evolution of Orcs because I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Orcs. I always have it, and I don't know why. And I never liked playing Half-Work, but I always liked having a character cozy up to one, as a buddy.

I'm sure that... I always wanted to have that friend of color, huh? Yeah, I was going to say, I'm sure that I wanted to have that friend of color. Yeah, I'm sure that that speaks a good deal About you know my privilege and my inability to see it. Yeah, I think that there is there probably is something about that That I'm not comfortable with yet and need to think on but I appreciate you showing it to me But no, I've always I've always, you know why I like the works? Because they're the proletariat. That's why.

And I always, always out there, toiling and bleeding from, you know, some guy in the back, you know, never shows his face. That's what it is. So. That, that, see, that makes sense to me. You can see that. Yeah.

So there we go. That's, that's everything I've got for this. So I'm going to recommend a book. Oh, okay. I bought this for a former in law years ago. Okay. At the time he was an in law. All right. So I hope he ever read it. I don't know. He loved fantasy books. But there's an author named Stan Nichols and Nichols with two Ls. Okay. And he wrote a book called Orcs. Oh yeah. And here's just like the back splash page kind of thing. It says, look at me, look at the orc. There's fear and hatred in your eyes.

To you I'm a monster, a skulker in the shadows, a fiend to scare your children with. A creature to be hunted down and slaughtered like a beast in the fields. It is time you pay heed to the beast and see the beast in yourself. I have your fear, but I have earned your respect. Here my story, fill the flow of blood and be thankful. Thankful that it was me, not you who bore the sword. Thankful to the orcs. Thankful to the orcs, born to fight, destined to win peace for all. This book will forever change the way you feel about works. And there are several that came afterwards.

There's Orcs, there's Orcs in Fernow, he even wrote one called, oh, he didn't write it, somebody else wrote a book called Dwarves, there's Orcs in Blood, Orcs, Army of Shadows. There's a whole bunch, Orcs Tales of Marassadantia. There's a lot of ink being spilled about Orcs by this particular author, Stan Tickles. And just to give you an idea is to how long ago this book was written and how long ago I

bought this for this now current outlaw of mine. I bought it at borders. Borders, yeah. Wow. So yeah. Alright. Anyway, so that would be my recommendation. Okay.

Do you have anything on social media? I, I'm sorry. I'm social media. Well, you can find me at eHBlaylock on Twitter and you can find both of us at Geek History Time on the Twitters. Yes. Where can they find you on the Twitters?

I'm at duh Harmony on the Twitters. Okay. And I actually just want to throw in a real quick plug because I think this will release in time. Okay. There's an all teacher edition version of capital punishment. Oh, right.

That we're putting on November 1st. That sounds like a lot of fun. Wait. I'm in that. You are in that. Oh dear God. I've jumped you in finally. How did you get all my puns to infected you?

Oh. You will be competing in a pun tournament against another teacher for the right to go on to the championship round against another teacher for the right to go on against myself and my partner Dan Humberger Daniel Humberger in the boss battle of capital punishment $10 for a ticket find us us on Facebook, capital puns, capital punishment, and follow us, link, subscribe, all that kind of stuff, and then come on out to the show and cheer Ed on, because he's going to need it. I'm blorded, am I going to need it? Good God. And come out, because I'd like to make money on this and pay him, and also feed my kids

meat this month. Hey, there you go. Yeah. Sounds like a goal. And so, on behalf of Geek History of Time, I'm Ed Blaylock. I'm Damien Harmon. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.