Hi there, I'm Stephanie.

And I'm Lydia. Come along with us as we explore and learn about the world of Tolkien through deep dives on lore, characters, beat-a-lons, and laugh-a-lons. We are excited to have you as a new friend on this journey with us. Welcome to Speak Friend and Enter, a Lord of the Rings podcast. Hello, hello! Welcome back! It's been a minute, it feels so long, but you guys won't notice. I know. I'm really excited though for today's topic. We haven't done a deep dive conversation in a hot minute, but I think this one is perfectly timed. Oh yeah, you're right, because it's like Halloween-ish. Yes, it's Halloween-ish when we're recording this. Yes, exactly. And Rings of Power season two recently finished, and so I feel like this topic is just very timely. But yeah, really excited to discuss Orcs with you, Lydia. Yeah, just recently when they had all the Lord of the Rings in theaters, I went and saw them and it was amazing because some of them I haven't even seen in theaters.

And because of earlier childhood deprivations. So anyways, I go to the theaters and it was so good because huge screen, I'm assuming some kind of forte, and the Orcs just looked so good. 10 out of 10 for choosing practical effects. Those maybe stand-ups too. Hair, makeup, everything. I mean kudos to the people. Yeah, so.

Prosthetics who designed all that. It's incredible. Yeah, it's just so good.

I love it. Even though Orcs are not my favorite. I know, I know. But I think they're such a fascinating piece of Tolkien's world and we can kind of we'll dive into that.

Yeah. But they are kind of like obviously they're Sauron, there's Melkor we learned all about. But I feel like Orcs are like the stereotypical bad guy. But here's the best part is that yeah, so it's you got all these villains, these great evils, but they really need some grunts. And yeah, some grunts to really show what evil looks like because when you talk about Melkor and Sauron, it's like half the time later, maybe they're walking in the open. But half the time they look, they look lovely.

They put a lovely face on everything, you know. I saw a picture of Sauron the other day and I was like, Dane. And yeah, that was before he became disembodied. Just as an eyeball. Exactly.

So before that moment, he was pretty hot. And so now instead of having that and causing a moral conflict in the in the viewer or the or the reader, you really got to have some Orcs to teach the reader who they should they should side with. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because I'm in business school right now and we were talking about different companies that depend a lot on customer service, right? And how really your impression of a brand is the person that you interact with every day as you go into the store or as you have an experience, you know, at a certain company. And so I just I'm laughing thinking of the Orcs are the face of the brand, right? Like that's the that's the people you're interacting with when it comes to the Sauron or Melkor branding initiative.

Yeah, I love that. But OK, so I thought I would start out in a little bit of a scholarly way. And then I have a few different areas.

So I wanted to start with a little bit of some dictionary definition. Then I was going to go into origins. Breeding, which is a big thing. Lifespan and then motivations are some topics that I thought we could we could kind of dig into motivations and like potential and future of Orcs. OK, yeah, and feel free to just interrupt me as I go along. Yeah, I have a couple funny thoughts on Orcs, but we'll wait until we get later.

OK, I do think it's fun. When you say they're the stereotypical monster, I think that's really funny and interesting because later when I get my act together and I make a how has told an influence fantasy episode, that would be one of the major things. Everybody has an orc. We may not always call them orcs. We may call them something slightly different, but we all know that what we're looking at here is an orc. And it's very interesting to think about what was the stereotypical monster before orcs? I don't know the answer to that.

I'd be interested in knowing. And it's so funny because, OK, excellent. This starts off with kind of like my dictionary beginning. I was looking at like the origin of Orcs and JRL Tolkien, and he's the one who really popularized them in fantasy, right? And kind of like made them a strong, a strong character.

It also he helped write the Oxford English dictionary definition. And so for Orcs. That's so good. I love this idea of some dictionary guy. He's like, I heard this word. I don't really understand it. I better get to the author and have him write the definition.

Yeah. And so part of the definition is a devouring monster and ogre, a member of an imaginary race of subhuman creatures and human like form, but having ogreish features. And I was seeing something along the same lines of like people comparing them almost to like ogre or goblin like features. And I feel like with ogre and goblin, I have much more like distinctive stories like folk tales surrounding those that I feel like I've heard.

But orc really feels like something almost modern fantasy has. Interesting. Kind of taken on.

I don't know. There's a couple of things with odors that I know about, but I don't know them well enough to like speak to them. Odors have this like an enchantment about them. I think the original fairy tale is that they can sing to you and enchant you with their voices, which is very siren-esque. And the first time I read something like that, I was like, I don't know about that.

That's very weird. So I don't know the history of that particular myth or fairy tale. And I don't know much about goblins in myth or fairy tale. But yeah, it's obviously Tolton was inspired by both of these and brought them together into this new and interesting deformity. It was interesting that the definition points out that it is a devouring.

What was it called? A devouring beast? Monster. A devouring monster. Because we've talked a lot about how the two marks that Tolton uses for all his scenes that are evil are this fierce pride and then this hunger.

So you get two elements. And if you are, you know, I guess you would call this elevated evil. If you're a hot Sauron or a hot Melkor, you do a heaping of fierce pride. You do a super strong devouring hunter and you do not have any deformities until later. But they all eventually seemed to get those. And I guess when we're talking about like less like the base evil, like the grunts, you did the devouring hunter and the deformity right away. But we don't talk about like or pride, which is kind of interesting. I wonder if that's where you start getting like when you go from or to your Urtai, you do get a sense that the Urtai feel like they're better than the orcs.

And they do have this unity and pride about them. So I wonder if that's kind of like now you've got like the mid level tier, like the lieutenants. I don't know. I just this is a new theory for me.

I'll have to test it out. It's genuinely fascinating. And I think, you know, as we're kind of diving into origins and thinking about all of this, it really stood out to me as I was reading different things and pieces and and articles and I'll try to reference some of the articles and stuff that I looked at. That Tolkien started writing about orcs when he got home from the war right away.

1917, pretty pretty soon thereafter. And he kept writing about them and like their different origins and what they were like and if they could be redeemed, if they could not be redeemed to like the 1970 time period. Right. So he spent a long time dwelling on it and exploring it.

Yeah. And he had different. And I think this is what's going to be interesting for our discussion. Over time, he had different opinions about where they kind of rose from, how they how they were as a people or a species. I mean, I don't know if this is true, but I could definitely see him coming back from the war and World War One is just a special kind of horrible.

Oh, yeah. But I could definitely see him coming back from that kind of experience and thinking, especially with the way that orcs are like their story being that they are twisted elves. You can see like a connection maybe to what does war make of men?

Like, do we become this way because of the things we do in war? You know, I could see that. I don't know if that's true, but, you know, that's where my mind goes first. That's very interesting. Because I think we, man, did we talk about this or was I reading this where like the idea of the ring was kind of like the seductive idea of power and like coming back from the war.

It's like you see what power and pursuing power does to people or where they're willing to ruin the world in pursuit of it. Right. I could see that. I don't know. That's really interesting. I mean, I didn't realize that he wrote about them. I knew he was doing his role building forever, but I didn't realize that there was still more to say about the orcs when he started in 1917. And in 1971, he's like, no, I still got more, bro. I got more to say. So I'm interested in his evolution there.

That'll be interesting. Yes, it is. OK. So starting out with some origins and I read some articles on MSN about this and TV insider, but looking at origins. So what's really interesting is we know the origin story, which is in The Morillion, which is kind of the most official published source of his writings.

And it's the one idea that I think he kept coming back to in his writings. Over time, they were initially captured as elves and tortured and made into this thing. Yes, that they were by the slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved. And Melkor kind of bred this race.

And it says might be one of the vilest deeds of Melkor and the most hateful to Eluvatar. Yeah. Now, this is obviously a really intense origin, right? But what's fascinating is a couple of things. I think one of them is that this is not 100 percent confirmed.

It's kind of like written in the way of like, this is what we think. Yeah, we're not sure what Melkor did, but this is the assumption. This is what the elves tell of what he did. Yeah, like this is kind of the legend. So I'm on about it exactly. And so we really don't exactly know what happened with this twisting or this other things.

If it was just selves, if it was men, if it was like there's so much that could potentially go on here. So that's one idea for the origin, which is in the Somerilian. It sounds like in like the very early period of his writing, he originally I am looking at this, it says. And his in the book of Lost Tales, it talks about this or creation being made out of like heat and slime.

And their hearts were of granite. And I think that's like an earlier version and it much more in my head kind of associates with like ogres and trolls. You know what I mean?

Where it's like. And it's very it's like the symbolic mythology, right? This is like, yeah, this is the symbolism of their creation. I actually really love that because I immediately love to powerpuff girls. They're made of like sugar and everything nice.

And then he actively jumps ingredient X. Oh, my gosh. There's so many funny memes. I guess about writers where they're like, here I am writing my little cute romance. And I add this character and that character and oh, God, no, not the A.X. You've dumped all the A.X. in. We're in the wrong genre now.

Stuff like that. I think it's very funny. Anyways, I immediately went over there, which is terrible and no good. But that's a really interesting mythology, because like you said, it does feel like the ties of the little closer to trolls. It's a little bit more symbolic feeling, right? I like that.

That's a nice touch. But I will say at the beginning of the writing process, there's no I just haven't been through that that part of the brainstorming. It's like you have one thought one day, you think, yes, I'm brilliant. I'm so genius. And then the next day you look at it like, wow, that was the stupidest thing I've ever written.

No plot will be able to congeal onto those bones. And I think that's what's so interesting about this. OK, so these are kind of a couple of different ways that people have viewed orcs in Tolkien's writing, right? Is kind of they were created from a being twisted or they were kind of from the from the earth. We see the earth component and Lord of the Rings, like Soromon creating the or a Kai. When he pulls them out of the earth, covered in spline.

He pulls them out of the earth, exactly like dark magic and earth, basically. But this is the thing that I thought was so interesting. And I kind of was getting this idea from this channel, Tolkien Untangled, and like looking at a couple of other things. But the concept is do orcs have a soul or a fair and the thought process is if they what was that second word you said?

Oh, I think what Tolkien called a soul is a fair F E A. Huh, cool. And basically, is there something inside there that a Lusitar is going to redeem or take back over? Yes, exactly.

That's a good question. And so with the one theory of like they were created from one of the children of Louis of a Lusitar, right? Then they have some kind of piece of a soul, right? That's like twisted and molded. If it's something like they were from the earth, you know, there was, I think, a quote that I saw that Tolkien kind of thought that the beasts in the world and like the trees and the earth, they didn't have a soul.

The only things that had a soul were the children of a Lusitar. Sure. Right. So that was going to be my next question is like, who gets souls in this world?

Yeah. So if it's just children of a Lusitar and they were made out of slime and they were based. So if they're it's question of, are they children of a Lusitar twisted or are they beasts? Or are they not?

Yeah. And so that so thinking about their creation actually has this really interesting question because that really plays into a decent number of things. It plays into the question of like, how much agency do they have? It plays into the question of what's their purpose or can they be redeemed? So there's a whole lot. I love the concept of these two origins because they actually have a lot of meaning. Behind them, depending on what you kind of move forward with and believe.

Do this might be too too early to ask those children's notes have anything about this redemption? Because that I just yes. Okay. I have a quote. I was going to talk about it later. Okay. We can do it later because I looked at it and I think the way he writes Lord of the Reans is so here is evil at its purest. Yes.

Here is good at its purest. So it is slightly hard for me to think and he would want to redeem the orchid at some point. I don't know. I don't know why I think that. Well, I was it was fascinating.

I was listening to that YouTube channel I mentioned earlier, Tolkien Untangled. And I thought there was a really interesting point about plot the conflict between plot and theme. And so this person's concept was, you know, the plot of having orks be this kind of soulless evil. Makes a lot of sense because then you have your heroes and it's very simple. Yeah, they're like, they're doing the right thing by kind of fighting this evil. And you don't really have this morality question being called into play. And you also it helps a little bit with theme as well because when you have things like orks, you get just like the sheer mass quantities of them.

You did that sensation of how evil really is overpoweringly. Yes. Numerous, et cetera. We're just the little the few remaining heroes left in the world, the few good people.

You really did that good is limited and few and evil is many. So yeah, it becomes part of the theme eventually, I'm sure. And what was their theme that they were talking about?

Yeah. And so their theme was they feel like and I think we feel the same way having like read through some of the Somerillian already. Is that Tolkien had this ultimate belief that all things will play together for good. And so Aluvatar also kind of says that when Melkor sings his song at the beginning of the creation, like it's like, no matter what you do, we've talked about that a lot. You're right.

And that's the one thing that holds me out as like, oh, maybe he would redeem them. Yeah. Very last. Right. Yeah. And so that's what I think is so interesting where it's like, I don't know, I think if they do have a soul or a part of the soul, that's definitely going to be something that would fit that theme of like, they're going to be able to play into something good.

Right. I mean, I guess if I think it through, I would want it to happen. You would want to have that soul and that kind of like redemption.

I would want to see an orc not be an orc. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. But like, eventually, like later, like this, this feels like a. After the end of times sort of situation, right? Where all the battles have been fought and we're just wrapping things up and then it's like, oh, and now we can pull the orcs back to their humanity. Yeah.

Essentially, or Elvenanity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's funny because as we were talking so we can kind of circle back to like the long term vision that we have of the orcs. But as we were talking, we kind of brought up a brought up a couple of things. So one of them, I think we were chatting about or we mentioned like the lifespan of an orc. And so this is where. But it's interesting because we're kind of seeing them fall between when it comes to Tolkien's writings between a man's lifespan because they're not living as long as elves, right?

Sure. And an elves lifespan where there are some orcs that kind of are this long have this longevity piece. Are there any orcs that we are aware of that have natural life spans? I feel like every orc that we meet is they have a lifespan, but you wouldn't know because it gets caught off by somebody in the fellowship. They get cut off so young. Yeah. But I think the thought process is that they don't live as long as elves.

Because of bread twisting. But I think I read somewhere it could be comparable to maybe like a Numenorean man or a Westeros man like Aragorn where they live longer than a man. That's a long time though. That could explain how you miss a single orc in a battle.

You come back 20 years later and there's millions of them in the mountains. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

And so that kind of goes into like, wow, so many. How do they breed? I've never considered their lifespan before and I would have said, oh, it's short. But that actually made more sense. Yeah.

But also thinking about that, that means hypothetically because they have a shorter lifespan than elves, they might maybe they were bred in with other things like men. Sure. I don't know if other people know this character, but in Lord of the Rings, the movie, in the Return of the King, there's this one that kind of has like a pinky pig face. Oh yeah. I know you're talking about.

And so I don't know. Not saying he's like. He's half pig.

He has a pinky pig face because yeah, his ancestor was a pinky. But it's like, it's interesting to me to think about. But you're not saying it. Maybe. I don't know.

I don't know. But yeah, I know this is very interesting. Here's a concept. If we're going to talk about some like fantasy inspiration, Robert Jordan's Will Time has Trollux, which are of course orcs. Just a different word for orcs. And he does it specifically say that in his there is essentially a mad scientist bad guy who creates them and it is a mix of beast and man and unspeedable evil and all this stuff.

All this compilation. So he does make it a little bit more explicit in his and I'm sure based off the assumption. Yeah, this is for sure what Tolton meant when he made orcs. He's like, yeah, this seems like pretty legit. Pretty similar. Yeah.

That sounds about right. Okay. And so as we're thinking about this, I had a couple of quotes.

Yeah. I thought were interesting that I found this one's from Morgoth's Ring. And it said, basically, all those and has in little parentheses, elves that came into the hands of Melkor were by slow arts and cruelty and wickedness corrupted enslaved. That's the Melkor breed, the hideous race of or or core and envy and mockery of the elves of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes for the or core had life and multiplied after the manner of the children of a Louis Vuittar. And so this is a quote from Morgoth's Ring, like I said, by Tolton, but then he actually did add a little note because he was constantly revising himself and he said, uh, alteration, they are not like elves, right? And so this is where you kind of see him playing back and forth.

With the idea of like, are these creatures kind of like reproducing similar to the children of Louis Vuittar or is this something completely different? And he never quite clears that up. So we don't know for certain.

We don't know for certain. That's interesting to me because I look at this and I think surely after going through all the effort of making the first two or three, Melkor would make sure that they were, I don't know what they call this in genetics, but instead of being like a lighter and being neutered or sterile, surely you would make sure it's the other way around. So you don't have to work so hard to get more. Yeah, for sure.

It seems like the practical thing to do. It seems, yeah, it definitely does. So I think, honestly, it seems like there's some kind of, um, I don't know, natural breeding piece, but there's never a firm confirmation of does this happen by magic? Does this happen just purely? Yes. Like, do they just see merge from the mud and slime?

Emerge from the mud. Or do they? So it's interesting because rings of power specifically shows like a family with female orcs and male orcs and a child orc. Yes.

And season two. They're taking a stance. They're taking a stance.

And so they do that because they want to add, I think, I think a little bit more, you know, discussion and color. Yeah, some gray area. And, um, so I think that's what's really interesting is we technically don't know exactly what Tolkien was thinking. And I don't think even Tolkien had a firm and firm stance. Maybe it took him from 1917 to 1971.

He just threw up his hands and says, well, they'll never know because I don't know. Yeah. Exactly.

I just had a thought about Saruman, you know, when he is making the Urichai. Um, I guess we are seeing on screen or on the page. However, you may see it. Um, we're seeing him kind of get his, I don't know what to call it. It's like his apprenticeship in evil, right?

Because he is doing what Melkor and Sauron did before him. Yeah. Right. I'm sure Sauron made all kinds of scary creatures and Melkor made the orcs and he is taking Orc and I think it was Goblin, right? And he's crossing them to make something spooky.

So it's just really interesting to see him. Like every bad guy at some point seems to come to the conclusion, you know what? There just aren't enough baddie monsters in this world. I need to make my own special one. I need to know how can it be after all this time that you don't have all the bad monsters at hand that you need?

How do they always, it's just such a funny, like evil genius syndrome that they feel. The ones that I have aren't good enough. I need my own.

I need to make it myself. I think it's so interesting because this plays into, we've had this discussion about Melkor before, how he always craved being able to create. Yes.

You said I wonder, we're seeing Sauron on with the same. Maybe, maybe, but it's funny because they never go about it in like a very giving or thoughtful way. They go about it in like a very possessive, I'm going to bend you to my will.

Kind of, kind of approach and what's interesting as you like read about. So going with the concept of Melkor kind of creating this species based off of a child of a Louis Vuitton base, right? With a soul, you have something that then becomes so twisted that we even question if they have their own sense of morality, if they have their own sense of agency, right? We don't, we don't even know if they can choose for themselves.

We don't know. The only thing we've seen them choose is evil. So, exactly. Yeah.

It's essentially not a choice at that point. Yeah. And so it's like they've been so, they've been taken so far from the point of origin that it does, it feels something completely different. And it actually made me think about the context of that quote where it said this was the greatest kind of like sin against a Louis Vuitton. Is it made me wonder if part of that was like, you've taken something, right? Which had life, which had agency, which had this ability to appreciate the world and make its own choices and do all this stuff. And you've taken from it, right?

Now it's just your minion. And it made me wonder if that was part of the, that description. That quote is actually really interesting that this is, you know, the greatest evil in the eyes of a Louis Vuitton. Because it makes me wonder, very similar. Is it, is the sin, the fact that you've taken something that had a soul and you've made it irredeemable? Like it still retains the soul, but now it's so evil that it wouldn't go back to Louis Vuitton or fulfill his will in any way.

Do you know what I mean? Like that almost persuades me that they have souls because if they didn't have souls, if it was just, you know, you tortured three elves and now all the other orcs that remain are soulless things. Is that as bad as if they all have souls and you've messed them up? I don't think so. So I'm down with orcs having souls.

I'll have to think that through. OK, well, I also found another quote that I thought maybe I should share because I think it's super interesting. Apparently this is from and we're diving deep into random little tidbits here. This is from a letter of JRR Tolkien, the letter 153. So it's just a random writing. Can you imagine if you don't famous and like your random notes and scribbles got scrutinized?

Oh my gosh, I would be so embarrassed. So much random crap. Oh my gosh, I'm having people delete my computer.

Smashers with a sledgehammer. No, I never owned a phone. Like I just all the scenes I just hide my straps and scribbles. You don't want to know what was on them. That's so funny. It makes me think of like the song in Hamilton, who's Hamilton's wife? And she's like burning all their letters because they're like, they're never going to know. They're never going to know my thoughts and feelings.

Funny, funny. I can resonate with that to some degree. But what he says. What is written?

This is letter 153. Exactly. He was much more eloquent writer. So I feel I feel better for him than I was for myself. But so he says orcs would be in parentheses, milk or his greatest sins, abuses of his highest privilege and would be creatures begotten of sin and naturally bad.

And then he put in quotations, he said, I nearly wrote irredeemably bad, but that would be going too far because by accepting or tolerating their making necessary to their actual existence, even orcs would become part of the world, which in some way would subject them to illuvitars. Good. Right. At some point, because a little bit, our has to redeem the world at large. Exactly. So at some point they've got to tie in and work with him. Very interesting.

I cannot imagine how he would do it. Yeah. And so. So unless Tolten has written that, I think we're lucky that are forever.

Yeah, no, I just think it's really fascinating. There is a quote, I think this was from the Lord of the Rings book when at the end of the return of the king when Soran is fallen and the orcs kind of don't know what to do with themselves. You get the sense like they've also almost come out of this like this hypnosis where they're just like running around in mayhem.

They're not driven by something above them anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was watching that YouTube channel and it kind of asked an interesting idea of like, could you put an orc through therapy? Could you like take a single orc and slowly kind of detwist and pull them out of their environment, pull them out of their environment, help their their traumatized brain.

It was more than one way to act. It would probably take if possible, it would take to the elephant therapist. Oh, my gosh. A long life to dedicate to it.

A long life. Yeah. I don't know that would be impossible.

I don't know. See, I'm torn on two fronts. I do think Tolten has a lot of themes of redemption. And I think that's a heavy.

I think it's near and dear to his heart. So I am with that in mind. I think, yes, of course, you could theorize an orc. But I also think that he had a relatively strict view of good and evil because we don't have. I think we discussed this a little while ago, but like, we don't have morally gray characters as close as we did as Faramere.

Or golem. And even he kind of chooses the bad at the end. Yeah. But like Faramere is the only person who has like that soliloquy about what does this little Easterling think he's doing in this army?

Like he has he has those moments where he's philosophizing over certain topics and how the enemy might have some good in them. So yeah, golem and Faramere are where that theme is most. And I just I don't know. I don't know if there's room for orcs in that in that divide between here is good and here is evil. Yeah, I think. I think with the information that I have so far, let's assume like Milkor and Soran were not in the picture. Sure.

No one's manipulating them. Right. Sure. Let's say they're cut loose.

Yeah. They're cut loose. I think there's been so much done to them in terms of like how they were developed, how they were treated, how they were trained over generations of time.

I don't know if their culture and like how their default setting of interacting with each other would change without some outside intervention. Oh, yeah. It's for sure not going to change by itself. Yeah, exactly. Of just like them living their life. So I think it would be something like potentially so if they have a soul kind of like my last little my last little setup question is, does that mean what what happens to them when they die after they die? Yeah.

And do they receive any redemption or restorative? I mean, components that I think that there's got to be some kind of appetite in heaven, right? Because no elf is going to want to die and go to Elvin Valhalla and see an orc hanging out there.

He's like, why did I even come here in the halls of Mando's? Right. Isn't that? Halls of Mando's for the elves. Men we don't know. We don't know. Right. Because they have the different gift. Yeah, they have the gift of the death.

Yeah. So I don't know, because I cannot imagine the elves in the halls of Mando's would want to look down the drinking table and see lirts. I, you know, and that's the thing where I'm like, they speak so much about the Valar with like the the goddess of heat or like the lady of healing and mercy and all of this stuff. I think it would take some, I guess I'm picturing it. It would take a Valar. There would take some, yeah, intervention into twisting their soul at some point. But yeah, I don't know. Have they really spoken that much about like a judgment time period?

I feel like we haven't really. I mean, you would know more than me, but I had that. I don't have any sense about Tolten having written any kind of judgment. Yeah. And to his, I don't know. It's the afterlife. Yeah, which is really interesting because he's super Catholic, right? I believe so.

Yeah. So yeah, I'm kind of interested if we don't find the judgment at some point, I'll be interested in why. Yeah, yeah, because we know they're, well, we know that the world, you know, come comes to an end and there's kind of like conclusion, but I don't necessarily know if I heard about like a particular judgment of souls. Yeah, I don't. I don't think so either. Because that is an interesting thing not to have in a religion or in a mythology.

I guess in a religious mythology. I had a really funny thought when I was thinking about Orch's is slightly off topic, slightly on and off topic. But I feel like every monster goes through this like over familiarization, loss of power level rights. You get vampires when Dracula is like first release and they're super scary and obviously hideous and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you get to Twilight and, you know, they slowly become more charming and more interesting and more seductive and etc. etc. And then you do try it, right?

Yeah, personable. And now I just look at how we're discussing Orch's and I think, oh, no. Oh, no, we are contributing to something very rough here because you got really bad ugly mean Orch's. And my understanding is that Orch romance is a thing. I have not read it, but that is my understanding. And I was remembering that I was thinking about this.

Anyways, I was thinking about it. I thought it's so funny that Orch's did to have their their romance books. Their moment in the sun.

Yeah, their moment in the sun. But you're never going to see a goblin romance book because Orch's are big and hunky, right? You can make an orc hunky. You're never going to be a goblin like the male protagonist of our romance. Yeah, you know, it's too funny.

It's two foot on a good day. Yeah, I wonder if I feel like when I think of goblin, I think of like the little creatures that I see maybe in like Harry Potter and sorcerers, so I'm kind of counting their money. Yes, I just goblins are never going to have this romantic redemption arc.

Just for goblins. Never say never, Lydia. You never know. Don't let people do it.

Anyways, I was thinking about that. I was remembering some very bad cover I'd seen probably on the Internet. I don't think I've seen them in real life.

That's amazing. But yeah, it was definitely like a greenish man with incisors. I thought this is an orc, is it? Well, I mean, it looks very different from the Lord of the Rings version. I feel like I'd be terrified of that one.

They definitely have the light watered it down a little bit. But it was super funny. That is. Well, that's all I had in regards to like orc preparation. Yeah, I don't know if you have any other thoughts, but I think just in terms of this is a little bit more about like what is the orc's purpose in the story?

We kind of discussed some of this, but yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot of in Lord of the Rings. Some of this occurs in fantasy in general. This definitely occurs, but there's a lot of the hero needs monsters to level up a dance. Right.

You did this a ton of wheel time. We're like, oh, no, the very first scene where he's attacked by one single orc creature, terrifying. We spend five chapters on it. Later on, they're just like blasting them away. And I'm like, yes, this feels appropriate.

This is the training montage I needed. I need an enemy that is dehumanized in some way. So I don't care that they die. I need them to have huge quantities of them and for them to rush you like Zergs. And then later, when my hero is all souped up on power, I'm going to have him blow them apart. So there's an element of this is part of like one of the universal fantasies, right?

It's like your your your hero goes from just the little boy who can't fight anything to amazing at combat. Defending. Yeah. And exactly. And in exactly that context of the protector, the defender, there's this horrible devouring evil that is going to kill all your villages.

You need to defend it instant. And it's hard to have that sort of arc for your main hero when you don't have the horrible devouring evil. So yeah, it's just it's the hero needs the orc almost as much as the orc needs a hero. Yeah, it is. It is fascinating. I think this circles back perfectly to the beginning of what we were chatting about where it's just like the face of the evil, right? You have to have something that's there that you're seeing on like more of a day to day regular basis. That is the interaction that you have with this this bigger moral or evil problem that's facing your. Yeah. Your characters and your universe. Yeah. Well, cool. And that is the orc.

Yeah, I think that's it on the orc. Do not read those romances. Don't support orc propaganda.

Yeah, I will say or a chi way more handsome than orc. So I think you're not Rod. You're not Rod. If you had to fit. Yes. Yes. Don't pick. Don't pick. Well, thank you so much for joining us guys. I think that's all we had for today, but love chatting and we'll catch you next time. That's time.