Jabrosky
Banned
Fair enough, that makes sense.
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Orcs: Foundation or Cliche
- Thread starter FatCat
- Start date
Zero Angel
Auror
Wow, lots to reply to. I think a cease-fire is fine, although I can't help but chime in where I think it is needed. I'll try to word it diplomatically.
and the source article: The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum - 'Art and Soul
The discussion has been very informative though. Even though I've read these articles and web sites (or forms of them) before, it's always nice for a refresher. Thank you everyone!
India and China were pretty clearly borrowers of each other in a lot of things (I think Buddhism was mentioned as an example) so this does not have as much merit as you might like.
I'm not saying Wikipedia is the best source at all, but it is pretty informative, and here is what they have to say about the matter: Chinese guardian lions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and the source article: The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum - 'Art and Soul
I think the issue here is that their knowledge of lions was second-hand usually.
My understanding is that the earliest Chinese images of dragons resembled coiled snakes, but eventually became confused with crocodiles. As a marine reptile, it makes sense to give these guys fish scales, especially if earlier images had snake scales.
Would you call Jormungandr a dragon though? 'cuz I would.
The anthropologist in question was trying to explain why the Inuit had a reptilian dragon-like creature when they had no first-hand knowledge of dragons (going off of memories of old research here, may be mistaken). Just because something is a predator doesn't mean it has to be bad. I think if it wasn't for the serpent tempting Eve that European dragons would have developed to be good guys too. My personal theory is that it was the influence of Christianity that prevented them from being seen as anything other than a super-snake = devil.
And I'm trying to explain that it is not a problem except for to scholars that are obsessed with language. Dragon means something else now.
It faded out of literature? How did it fade out of literature? What thousand years are you referring to? It's in every King Arthur story that's been around for the last thousand years, so I am guessing not that thousand. Also on the Welsh flag or whatever. Not to mention the Naga of India and the sirrush etc in the Middle East. I don't think just because people stopped writing new myths means that it "faded out of literature for 1000 years". That would assume we don't have access to the old stuff and that the new stuff doesn't count.
So why would you then? Are you upset that Tolkien called them dragons? Or does Fafnir, who by your own admission is a European dragon, mean that you can draw that line? D&D dragons all like treasure and are intelligent, but they are not all evil. I think most people think of what has been done with dragons in the last seventy years when they think of dragons. At least in the literature sense. I grew up with D&D dragons. I'm fine with a wyvern being a type of dragon or even chimaera if someone wants to identify them as dragon or dragon-like or dragonkin. All I am saying is that today, not when Europeans first went over to China, but today, dragons are dragons. And all of the rest are types of dragons.
I'm pretty sure the original Greek translated as "snake" also. Again, I believe that there are very similar roots for dragons in any culture and I do not believe that it is just a language mistake. I will concede that maybe it is a language mistake, but it ended up being correct in the long run.
The discussion has been very informative though. Even though I've read these articles and web sites (or forms of them) before, it's always nice for a refresher. Thank you everyone!
Shockley
Maester
Indeed they were, but even the Chinese concept of Buddhism shows how difficult it was to get from China to India. The core of the point of Journey to the West is ‘Hey, this is a difficult journey that should not be undertaken lightly.’
Cultural borrowing or not, the concept of a lion would have been incredibly foreign to a Chinese peasant during the age of exploration.
I will gladly disagree with Wikipedia on quite a few points, both on this issue and others.
As was their knowledge of giraffes. Their giraffes are, however, almost perfect. I have trouble believing that they wouldn’t flourish a giraffe, but corrupted the lion so much that it becomes almost unrecognizable.
Being a fan of Chinese culture, it’s always been my impression of their art that realism was very important. You find very few animals that are stylized at all – let alone stylized beyond the point of easy recognition.
You have to go into the far ranges of Chinese domains to find crocodiles, and most of those lands were incredibly hostile to the Chinese. I’d say it’s substantially more likely for the average Chinese peasant in ancient times to be more familiar with a lion (which is already incredibly unlikely) than with a crocodile.
That said, there is a huge dispute over whether those early items are coiled snakes or not. That’s something I’ve seen time and time again on the Chinese history forums (all two of them) that I’ve frequented.
Absolutely. But would you call him a giant?
(That said, the Old Norse didn’t see him as a dragon per se. That was ‘dreki.’ Jormungandr was ‘ormr.’ Just a snake, as opposed to what Fafnir was.)
The snake in the garden of Eden is just one of many western depictions of evil lizards/snakes/reptiles/dragons. Fafnir and Nidhogg are traditional evil dragons within the European tradition and predate Christianity. If you identify Jormungandr as such, he fits the description as well. Cetus might also fit the pure definition, though there could be debate on that.
I would say it’s much more likely that the depiction of Lucifer in Revelation as a dragon is influenced by Classical traditions, not the other way around.
I would gladly count myself among the language-obsessed scholars.
First off, I specified western literature so I’m just going to ignore the Naga and anything going on east of (for the lack of a better divider) Ankara.
Secondly, the most recent work that you reference (King Arthur, and I’m going with the most recent writing down before the advent of modern literature (So Malory)) is roughly seven hundred years old. I stand by my thousand year statement.
I think you misunderstand. I was saying that Tolkien picked up the old tradition of the European dragon and made it popular again. There’s no need to draw a line.
I wasn’t saying that it was a language mistake. I was saying that the Welsh concept of a dragon and the Greek concept of a dragon could very well be related due to A) the words being cognates (draig/drakon) and (B) both languages having their roots in the same mother tongue. I was arguing that there is a distinctly European concept of a dragon, not that it was an ‘accident.’
Zero Angel
Auror
I thought Naga counted along with the west since it is "Indo-European", but OK.
Mallory wasn't the last to write King Arthur stories, he just collected and made everything relatively cohesive at the time of his writing. And it was 600 years ago, which is 400 years different than 1000. And the Faerie Queen was 1590, so only 420 years ago. Again, what about the fact that we still had access to all of the myths--just because there wasn't anything "new" being published doesn't mean that we didn't find dragons interesting.
I did misunderstand. I thought you were saying that there was no relationship between Tolkien and European dragons.
Also, I was going back to the Chinese thing when I said that the Greek word was snake. Maybe the European people were wrong to call "lung" a "dragon" at the time, but I believe that was the most right choice they could have picked, because I do believe they have the same origins, they just developed differently.
Mallory wasn't the last to write King Arthur stories, he just collected and made everything relatively cohesive at the time of his writing. And it was 600 years ago, which is 400 years different than 1000. And the Faerie Queen was 1590, so only 420 years ago. Again, what about the fact that we still had access to all of the myths--just because there wasn't anything "new" being published doesn't mean that we didn't find dragons interesting.
I did misunderstand. I thought you were saying that there was no relationship between Tolkien and European dragons.
Also, I was going back to the Chinese thing when I said that the Greek word was snake. Maybe the European people were wrong to call "lung" a "dragon" at the time, but I believe that was the most right choice they could have picked, because I do believe they have the same origins, they just developed differently.
Ireth
Myth Weaver
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Chinese dragons aquatic, not fire-breathers? A "Chinese fireball" seems a bit of an oxymoron. Disney did something similar with Mushu in Mulan -- he was clearly a Chinese dragon as far as his body shape was concerned, but he also breathed fire. Whether or not these are a deliberate case of making the dragons "not too foreign" or an honest mistake isn't entirely clear.
Mindfire
Istar
The dragons in Avatar breathe fire. They're the patrons of pretending after all. The creators of the show have done their research, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are firebreathing dragons in eastern lore, but they're just not the norm.
Also, 800th post!!! :-D
Zero Angel
Auror
Hahaha. I didn't even notice that -_- You could make an argument that dragons are portrayed with a flaming pearl sometimes, so this influenced them, but it was probably just an Americanization (or westernization, if you will). The same thing happened to Godzilla when he came to America. The original had a radiation death breath, but when he came over here we painted him green and gave him a fire breath.
A
Astner
Guest
Eastern dragons aren't as element-bound as their western equivalents.
坐龙 pronounced Zuo Long is played with a fireball (the sun) which was the explanation for sunrise and sunset. This was before any historical records of Western influence.
Shockley
Maester
Let me ask, how early is your record of Zuo Long? I ask, because it's difficult to get an exact date for when west and east first meet. There are three possible points marking the introductions of western and far eastern culture:
1. The surrender, in 321 BCE, of Taxila to Alexander the Great. Taxila is important because it was an important center of trade, learning and religion. Kautilya was educated there, the Mahabharata was probably composed there, Mahayana Buddhism was created there, and it was the intersection of three major trade routes (two of which, if I'm not mistaken, go into China). The city of Sirkap, which became the seat of the Indo-Greek kingdom of Bactria, was on the opposite side of a river.
2. My favorite possibility involves the defeated Roman legions after the Battle of Carrhae in 54 BCE. Ten thousand Romans were confirmed as being taken prisoner, then released several years later. In 36 BCE, a Chinese historian recounts a 'fish-scale unit' that fought as mercenaries at the Battle of Zhizhi. Based on this, there is a pseudo-legitimate (and extremely unlikely) theory that this fish-scale unit might well have been a Roman legion released from Parthia.
3. By the Three Kingdoms era (220-280 CE) was a regular occurrence, so much that it only receives slight reference in the historical annals. The first recorded direct contact between Roman and Chinese officials was in 166 CE
1. The surrender, in 321 BCE, of Taxila to Alexander the Great. Taxila is important because it was an important center of trade, learning and religion. Kautilya was educated there, the Mahabharata was probably composed there, Mahayana Buddhism was created there, and it was the intersection of three major trade routes (two of which, if I'm not mistaken, go into China). The city of Sirkap, which became the seat of the Indo-Greek kingdom of Bactria, was on the opposite side of a river.
2. My favorite possibility involves the defeated Roman legions after the Battle of Carrhae in 54 BCE. Ten thousand Romans were confirmed as being taken prisoner, then released several years later. In 36 BCE, a Chinese historian recounts a 'fish-scale unit' that fought as mercenaries at the Battle of Zhizhi. Based on this, there is a pseudo-legitimate (and extremely unlikely) theory that this fish-scale unit might well have been a Roman legion released from Parthia.
3. By the Three Kingdoms era (220-280 CE) was a regular occurrence, so much that it only receives slight reference in the historical annals. The first recorded direct contact between Roman and Chinese officials was in 166 CE
A
Astner
Guest
The segment was what I can recall from what was brought up in high school during religion class. I can't seem to find any reliable sources online to indicate the history of the dragon.
Vinegar Tom
Acolyte
If I may for one moment ignore the peculiarly intense debate over whether two different kinds of made-up animal are actually the same made-up animal and return to the original topic, there are two very good reasons never, ever to use Orcs. Firstly, fantasy is supposed to be a genre in which absolutely anything is permitted. Endlessly ripping off tropes invented over half a century ago by Tolkein is like writing sci-fi in which a square-jawed hero in a fish-bowl helmet flies to Mars in his rocketship and saves a screaming lady in a space bikini from a bug-eyed monster with his raygun.
If the author can't even be bothered to think up a race of monsters that aren't exactly the same as the ones that appeared in the most famous novel ever written in the genre, how imaginative is the rest of the book likely to be? It's probably mass-produced generic fodder aimed at lazy readers who just want to graze on the same book with very slight variations over and over and over again. And if it isn't, that's what it looks like before you even open it, let alone buy it.
The other problem with Orcs is that they're cannon-fodder and absolutely nothing else. They were literally created by magic to be monstrous creatures of pure evil. I forget whether this detail in the movie is true to the book, but they don't even breed, so there are no women, children, or non-combatants. Every single Orc is an evil adult male warrior it's OK to kill on sight, so if you're fighting Orcs, there's no moral conflict about the good guys committing genocide, any more than people trying to stamp out malaria would worry about spraying the entire swamp with insecticide rather than building tiny little POW camps for any mosquitos who happened to be pacifists. They might as well be Daleks, zombies, or any other 100% evil race who are clearly different from the good guys and have absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.
Well, that's fine if you just want to tell a biff-bang-pow! story of how the really cool hero and his multiracial gang of exotic buddies win endless swordfights with vast expendable hordes of ugly baddies, until eventually the necromancer in the Dark Tower gets killed and everyone lives happily ever after. But don't expect to win any awards for originality. Also, you're probably writing the novel of your current D&D campaign, and that's never a good idea.
But if you're trying to tell a story with any kind of moral complexity, or withy well-developed characters who aren't just Conan the Unstoppable Killing Machine with a different hat on, entire races who all have exactly the same one-dimensional personality are not a good way to go - and that includes Elves, Dwarves, and just about every alien race ever featured on Star Trek (though even there, Klingons, who are basically Space Orcs, have been allowed to become almost as one-and-a-half-dimensional as Vulcans).
Also, the argument that evil races which deserve to be wiped out are automatically those who are the ugliest compared to your people (in your opinion, though probably not theirs), or are in any way clearly identifiable on sight as being at least 99% likely to be evil because of their DNA, is very dodgy indeed - ever heard of a guy called Hitler?
If the author can't even be bothered to think up a race of monsters that aren't exactly the same as the ones that appeared in the most famous novel ever written in the genre, how imaginative is the rest of the book likely to be? It's probably mass-produced generic fodder aimed at lazy readers who just want to graze on the same book with very slight variations over and over and over again. And if it isn't, that's what it looks like before you even open it, let alone buy it.
The other problem with Orcs is that they're cannon-fodder and absolutely nothing else. They were literally created by magic to be monstrous creatures of pure evil. I forget whether this detail in the movie is true to the book, but they don't even breed, so there are no women, children, or non-combatants. Every single Orc is an evil adult male warrior it's OK to kill on sight, so if you're fighting Orcs, there's no moral conflict about the good guys committing genocide, any more than people trying to stamp out malaria would worry about spraying the entire swamp with insecticide rather than building tiny little POW camps for any mosquitos who happened to be pacifists. They might as well be Daleks, zombies, or any other 100% evil race who are clearly different from the good guys and have absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.
Well, that's fine if you just want to tell a biff-bang-pow! story of how the really cool hero and his multiracial gang of exotic buddies win endless swordfights with vast expendable hordes of ugly baddies, until eventually the necromancer in the Dark Tower gets killed and everyone lives happily ever after. But don't expect to win any awards for originality. Also, you're probably writing the novel of your current D&D campaign, and that's never a good idea.
But if you're trying to tell a story with any kind of moral complexity, or withy well-developed characters who aren't just Conan the Unstoppable Killing Machine with a different hat on, entire races who all have exactly the same one-dimensional personality are not a good way to go - and that includes Elves, Dwarves, and just about every alien race ever featured on Star Trek (though even there, Klingons, who are basically Space Orcs, have been allowed to become almost as one-and-a-half-dimensional as Vulcans).
Also, the argument that evil races which deserve to be wiped out are automatically those who are the ugliest compared to your people (in your opinion, though probably not theirs), or are in any way clearly identifiable on sight as being at least 99% likely to be evil because of their DNA, is very dodgy indeed - ever heard of a guy called Hitler?
A
Astner
Guest
I thoroughly disagree. I think your view is one-dimensional, both in the sense of representing the orc and the value of said term.
As I mentioned earlier, orc is just a label with certain connotations to it that can be used as an advantage. You're not uncreative for deciding to use this label, just as you're not uncreative for using the labels dragon or gorgon. The creative input depends solely on what effort you put into designing your orcs. If you have interesting ideas regarding their origin, biology, and other miscellaneous aspects that make your orcs unique and more interesting than any other equivalent on the market then you've displayed great creativity designing them.
Coming up with names for species just for the sake of being original has nothing to do with creativity. It's the role of the species that's important and in which the creativity should be invested, not the name. People take comfort in the orc because they know of them, it's not like the karaak which will be read and then forgotten among the other fifty-eight newly invented terms.
Furthermore, I can see that you're not familiar with orcs from the Warhammer setting by calling them all "cannon-fodder and absolutely nothing else" which certainly doesn't apply.
As I mentioned earlier, orc is just a label with certain connotations to it that can be used as an advantage. You're not uncreative for deciding to use this label, just as you're not uncreative for using the labels dragon or gorgon. The creative input depends solely on what effort you put into designing your orcs. If you have interesting ideas regarding their origin, biology, and other miscellaneous aspects that make your orcs unique and more interesting than any other equivalent on the market then you've displayed great creativity designing them.
Coming up with names for species just for the sake of being original has nothing to do with creativity. It's the role of the species that's important and in which the creativity should be invested, not the name. People take comfort in the orc because they know of them, it's not like the karaak which will be read and then forgotten among the other fifty-eight newly invented terms.
Furthermore, I can see that you're not familiar with orcs from the Warhammer setting by calling them all "cannon-fodder and absolutely nothing else" which certainly doesn't apply.
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Vinegar Tom:
There is some inherent contradiction in the idea that Fantasy is a genre where absolutely anything is permitted, but at the same time you can never, ever use orcs.
Also, as Astner notes the idea of orc as one-dimensional cannon fodder is one-dimensional thinking in an of itself, and it also reflects a more limited familiarity with the genre. There are fantasy books out there with orcs in them, where orcs are not this way at all.
I don't find your reasons for an absolute prohibition on orcs compelling because they demonstrate an inaccurately one-sided and shallow view of what an author can do orcs. They are certainly by no means required in a fantasy story, but if an author wishes to include them the story can still be done well and can still be complex. You are hampered by your own limited thinking.
There is some inherent contradiction in the idea that Fantasy is a genre where absolutely anything is permitted, but at the same time you can never, ever use orcs.
Also, as Astner notes the idea of orc as one-dimensional cannon fodder is one-dimensional thinking in an of itself, and it also reflects a more limited familiarity with the genre. There are fantasy books out there with orcs in them, where orcs are not this way at all.
I don't find your reasons for an absolute prohibition on orcs compelling because they demonstrate an inaccurately one-sided and shallow view of what an author can do orcs. They are certainly by no means required in a fantasy story, but if an author wishes to include them the story can still be done well and can still be complex. You are hampered by your own limited thinking.
Ireth
Myth Weaver
The book states outright that the orcs "breed after the fashion of Men and Elves", so yes, there are presumably orc women and children out there somewhere. And in the movie Saruman is said to have "crossed orcs with goblin-men", so that implies a kind of breeding as well -- maybe he rounded up she-orcs for that purpose, but we don't ever see them. Just because something is not present in a work doesn't man they're absent from the world. Look at The Hobbit -- not a single woman in sight other than Bilbo's relative Lobelia, but there are obviously women in Middle-earth, as the LOTR books and histories clearly show.
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Mindfire
Istar
I have a 100% evil race whose members all appear flawlessly beautiful. Do I get a cookie?
Jabrosky
Banned
I do think the scariest and most effective villains (or at least the most influential) are those who can portray themselves as good, so I'll give you the cookie. What kind would you like? I'm a big Oreo man myself.I have a 100% evil race whose members all appear flawlessly beautiful. Do I get a cookie?
Mindfire
Istar
I too have a liking for Oreos. ^_^
Shockley
Maester
To the topic I never really addressed, now that we're back on subject:
While Tolkien was the first to use the term 'Orc' as a synonym for 'Goblin,' he didn't devise the word 'Orc' or create its meaning as a bad guy. It comes to us from Anglo-Saxon, meaning 'Demon.' The term even occurs in the Beowulf text, being used to describe Grendel. This has even earlier Latin roots, but I've made my background for the point I'm about to make: Tolkien created very little - nine times out of ten, he was just modernizing legends and myth to fit a modern audience. So in that sense, and knowing the background of the term, I'm alright with the use of orcs in the same way I'm alright with the use of elves and dwarves.
One of my all-time favorite things in fantasy is the depiction of the orc in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. There are orcs in this world (and dwarves and elves and gnomes, too) but the world is going through an industrial revolution. So the orcs, when encountered, tend to be factory workers and the under-class of the industrial revolution. They are perfectly capable of being intelligent (one of the better-spoken characters is an orc), but lack that intelligence due to the absence of schools and civil freedoms. I loved that.
While Tolkien was the first to use the term 'Orc' as a synonym for 'Goblin,' he didn't devise the word 'Orc' or create its meaning as a bad guy. It comes to us from Anglo-Saxon, meaning 'Demon.' The term even occurs in the Beowulf text, being used to describe Grendel. This has even earlier Latin roots, but I've made my background for the point I'm about to make: Tolkien created very little - nine times out of ten, he was just modernizing legends and myth to fit a modern audience. So in that sense, and knowing the background of the term, I'm alright with the use of orcs in the same way I'm alright with the use of elves and dwarves.
One of my all-time favorite things in fantasy is the depiction of the orc in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. There are orcs in this world (and dwarves and elves and gnomes, too) but the world is going through an industrial revolution. So the orcs, when encountered, tend to be factory workers and the under-class of the industrial revolution. They are perfectly capable of being intelligent (one of the better-spoken characters is an orc), but lack that intelligence due to the absence of schools and civil freedoms. I loved that.
Zero Angel
Auror
Dude, we've been off that for a while, although it was an interesting conversation
And it was clear that we were discussing the languages and the myths and the real-world, right? You know, information that people might want to know if they were writing stories with either version of the myth...Shouldn't most other species appear ugly to your species? I mean, we're kinda' genetically programmed for one thing here...it's procreation if that wasn't clear.
Man, I gotta' start checking the forums more -_- you ninja me with alarming frequently.
The orcs don't just breed after that fashion, in one of his creation stories (he contradicts himself sometimes unfortunately) they are "fallen" elves. Although it is implied that they are able to magically create them at some points, I am not sure if this is an assumed implication or if it is intentional as it has been years since I've researched Tolkien.
YES! ...but you have to give it to yourself. That cool?I have a 100% evil race whose members all appear flawlessly beautiful. Do I get a cookie?
Of course, you are still going with the idea that we can have 100% evil races...
Fried oreos are absurdly good.
Great job! I agree with everything you said here. ~sigh~ I've missed agreeing with you.
...Nothing new to add to all of the quotes I just replied to. Just throwing my change in there with the rest.
I happen to be in possession of a time machine. I simply read your responses, then travel back to just moments before you post and...voila! Instant ninja.
