this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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Lord of the memes
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I'd expect Galadriel to be very much in the "The only good orc is a dead orc" camp. That's based purely on vibes, I don't recall anything about it in the LOTR books and I never could finish The Silmarillion.
All elves are in that camp, and within the bounds of LotR I think they're right? It's definitely a setting with objective, and cosmic, Good and Evil.
But also do Orcs have souls? If they do they should have the potential for good inside them. If not, how are they more than animals? Even JRR wasn't sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU8Rw3OWweA
I like this one.
Robert's great
That was awesome, thank you.
Yes, because each time an elf looks upon an orc, they see a mangled, corrupted version of themselves, with no hope of reversing the corruption.
like the french looking at england
Tolkien also wrote the orcs as pretty explicitly "always evil", at least in lord of the rings and the hobbit. He seemed to be conflicted about making an always-evil race, but that IS how it's written in those books.
On the other hand Tolkien was quite clear on that the story was told from the perspective of the protagonists. Not least through the strong insinuation that the in-universe book that Bilbo started, Frodo continued, and Sam finished, is if not the book we are reading, at least an important source for it.
Lord of the rings telling them as evil mostly shows that's how the fellowship saw them.
Pretty sure theres a letter or two where he wrote that orcs could be saved, should they turn from evil, but he also didn't know how any of them would ever know to do so.
Wasn't it because they didn't have any Will? Their entire drive to do anything was completely enslaved by whoever was controlling them: as long as they were controlled by an evil willpower they'd also be evil.
Yep, every last one of 'em.
Why Link to a fandom site, when you can link to the OG?
Because the OG's example picture wasn't nearly as relevant.
Fair enough, I try and avoid fandom sites as much as possible.
Also, a link to tvtropes should come with a warning - for the greater good.