#really tho. i could ramble on forever abt all the different ideas tolkien had for orcs. none of them good | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

weepylucifer · 2 years

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Im just wondering and I'm no trying to use this as justification on why it should be ok for orcs to be always evil in lotr but how do you feel about making the elves Mongolian? Iirc the orcs were originally a racist caricature of Mongolian people but Tolkien also said orcs are tortured elves who turned evil, so wouldn't it make sense for the elves to be Mongolian coded?

Oh, my Tolkien post is going around again, huh?

I had several super long attempts at comprehensive answers here, but they a) were not comprehensive, and b) all brew down to "You can do whatever you want forever. Have fun!" and "Congrats, you're probably investing more thought in Tolkien's fantasy races right now than Tolkien did".

This is transformative fandom. You can do whatever you want forever. Have fun!

#answer'd #tolkien never thought super hard about the implications of racially coding anyone in his works #rejoice in the sweet sweet knowledge that by wondering about this you're better than him #really tho. i could ramble on forever abt all the different ideas tolkien had for orcs. none of them good #would tolkien have thought of the elves as white despite the orcs not being white? i assume so yes #do you have to? not at all no #like. the ''tormented elves'' theory is just one of many he had for orc origins #at one point he said they might be humans turned to evil!#at one point he said they might all be meat robots puppeted by morgoth #at one point he thought they might ALL be lesser maia in earthly form. like balrogs #why is only the tortured elves theory in the silmarillion? well i guess chris tolkien liked that one best?#or that was the one JRRT had written most on?#the silmarillion never got finished. we have to remember that.#there is a lot of material here that tolkien never managed to fine-tune. the origin of orcs among them #so i think we don't have to take it as ''this is in the silm so it's the only truth''#we can do a lot of picking and choosing what version we like best #the ''amrod died on the boat'' truthers know this #god idk it's 3 am i have covid and a headache

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