Orcs and the "gamefication" of Middle Earth

[westwaller]

...but it wouldn't fall off if it was on the other side...

I don't know about the way it was done or not in the distant past but from a practical point of view, the arrow tends to swing around from the string as you raise the bow to draw if it is not on the other side of the bow.

But these is Orcses, so maybe its different? I think its more likely that they've been put together a bit too quickly and it is possible to put the arrow on the other side. The sculptor knows his onions when it comes to these sort of things from what I know...

[westwaller]

Thank you for that explanation Sereverian 

[Coenus Scaldingus]

From my understanding (and limited practical experience), the main determinant for the side the arrow's on is the method of drawing and releasing the string. If using the typical draw with 2-3 fingers on your right hand (one over, 1-2 under the arrow), releasing the string will twist it to your right, pulling the nocked arrow to the right as well. As such, it's far easier to have the arrow to the left of the bow, as it is like to fall of on the right side (it can be braced with your thumb, but shooting over the knuckles is more practical and sturdy). When using a thumb-ring to draw the bowstring (typical in Eastern horse archery), you instead twist the bowstring to your left on release, thus making placement of the arrow on the right side of the bow more practical (basically without exception, as you have no method of easily bracing the arrow with a finger there). I can also imagine nocking arrows on horseback to be easier when moving the arrow towards rather than over the bow (as you would when placing them left of the bow), but having no experience with mounted archery this is pure theory!

If one were to give a bow and arrow to an unexperienced archer, I think some will be perfectly happy to adapt and shoot over the thumb, but I imagine most would opt to shoot over the knuckles, especially as one naturally has the bow slightly tilted to the right, allowing the arrow to rest on the left side.

[Nord]

They are not shit. But I do have a problem with multipose miniatures. It is very hard to hide that stuck-on look of the arms with makeup.

Agree with this. They are not bad, but neither are they wow, must buy. Middling. The joins on some of the figures look a bit awkward - sticking out spear arms look weird. The horned helmets don't work for me, but easy to cut off. The lips look really big and flabby on some, suspect this is down to the paint job.

All in all, not a bad effort for plastic figures, but I think there are better around. Depending on scale, they might make it into my Mordor army as heavier armed black orcs.

I just wish they could make the step up and make good rather than average figures - it's eminently possible as shown by the Perry twins, victrix and some of the fireforge offerings. It's not down to technology, it's the posing and sculpting that make or break the deal.

[westwaller]

I'm afraid you have a point, Nord. I'm putting it down to a rush job putting them together for release, which seems to happen with other companies releases too... (that and being too sparing with the plastic glue around the arm joints)

If there are some nice metals and the same deal(s) as there were for the dwarves in the preorder, I'm still in. However I can't help feeling a tad disappointed too.

[Schrumpfkopf]

I've seen better pictures, and I am really impressed with the quality of this set.The sculpting is crisp and flawless, the set offers a good variety, and the character of the miniatures alone and as a group is what I imagine as being orcish.

Lovely lovely stuff.

[area23]

What a great thread! I didn't notice last year.
Nice to see other people obsessively trying to figure out how JRRT would imagine them.

Really glad to see it confirmed that these Oathmark goblins are really meant to be Tolkien orcs. It was rather obvious from when I first saw them but I didn't expect so much effort and dedication behind it.

Another important factor to consider is the fact the whole LotR was largely based in many ways on sagas and early anglo saxon literature.
From Beowulf to the Hervor Saga, the descriptions of people or creatures are largely absent, leaving it much to the imagination for instance what Grendel looked like.

In the dark ages most men probably had beards, but there's no mention of it at all. Just because things aren't said doesn't mean it didn't happen. Dwarfs have notable beards worth describing but that doesn't mean goblins don't have any facial hair.

[nicknorthstar]

Indeed, there's no reason Orcs can't have beards.
There's a definite impression that they don't from JRRT. The journey of Merry and Pippin with the Orcs gives you the idea they are hairy, but not bearded. Unshaven, unwashed, working class oiks indeed. In earlier works, Tolkien talks about their long filthy hair, but not beards.
There's something fine and noble about beards in Middle-Earth, the owners of them are proud of them, very un-Orc like. There's the long ignored Bearded Elf as well, Cirdan.

[Hobgoblin]

Indeed, there's no reason Orcs can't have beards.
There's a definite impression that they don't from JRRT. The journey of Merry and Pippin with the Orcs gives you the idea they are hairy, but not bearded. Unshaven, unwashed, working class oiks indeed. In earlier works, Tolkien talks about their long filthy hair, but not beards.

Yes, that is the impression, I reckon, although it doesn't rest on a great deal. There is, somewhere in some version of the Silmarillion, a bit where a (petty?) dwarf is identified as not an orc because of his beard. But then it would be a dwarf's beard, which seems to be quite a thing (waist-length or whatever).

I think there are a couple of things that support the idea of orcs not having much in the way of beards, and one reasonable counter-argument. First, there's that slightly uncomfortable bit from Tolkien's 1958 letter where he describes orcs as looking like "degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types". Now, I think it's fairly obvious that Tolkien had one particular (Turco-)Mongol people in mind here: the Huns. Given his interest in the Goths and Gothic, Tolkien would have been familiar with this passage from Ammianus Marcellinus:

"The people called Huns, barely mentioned in ancient records, live beyond the sea of Azof, on the border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a race savage beyond all parallel. At the very moment of birth the cheeks of their infant children are deeply marked by an iron, in order that the hair instead of growing at the proper season on their faces, may be hindered by the scars; accordingly the Huns grow up without beards, and without any beauty. They all have closely knit and strong limbs and plump necks; they are of great size, and low legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or the stout figures which are hewn out in a rude manner with an ax on the posts at the end of bridges.

They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, and are so hardy that they neither require fire nor well flavored food, but live on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the backs of their horses."

And its echo in Jordanes:

"They made their foes flee in horror because their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had, if I may call it so, a sort of shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather than eyes. Their hardihood is evident in their wild appearance, and they are beings who are cruel to their children on the very day they are born. For they cut the cheeks of the males with a sword, so that before they receive the nourishment of milk they must learn to endure wounds. Hence they grow old beardless and their young men are without comeliness, because a face furrowed by the sword spoils by its scars the natural beauty of a beard. They are short in stature, quick in bodily movement, alert horsemen, broad shouldered, ready in the use of bow and arrow, and have firm-set necks which are ever erect in pride. Though they live in the form of men, they have the cruelty of wild beasts."

The scarring story is thought to be a misinterpretation of Hunnic funerary rites, with the beardlessness actually being a description of the sparse facial hair common among men of Far and Central Asian origin. But there's no doubt that Tolkien was familiar with these descriptions, which echo his descriptions of orcs in various places and possibly show the 1958 passage in a somewhat better light. The Rohirrim are very similar to the Goths in many ways, and the Huns were the terror of the Goths, so the orcish raids on Rohan have a sort of historical antecedent. So, if orcs are in some way fantastical Huns, then light or absent beards might be assumed.

Now, the second point flips all that on its head. Lots of people have read racist stereotyping into descriptions of orcs, but it's very clear that they talk like British soldiers. That parallel is reinforced by Tolkien's letters (he refers to his son among his fellow servicemen as "a hobbit among the Uruk-hai"). While the likes of Snaga have working-class British speech patterns, the captains (e.g. Ugluk) are actually rather well-spoken ("You'll get bed and breakfast all right: more than you can stomach!") - demonic versions of British officers). But all of them are like British soldiers - and they have military organisation, including numbers. In this regard, orcs aren't "the other" but "us". Now, British soldiers would be expected to be clean-shaven (with moustaches allowed for higher ranks). So I don't think it's a huge stretch to see Tolkien picturing orcs as clean-shaven, at least at the start of a campaign. Vicious and cruel though they may be, orcs are soldiers, not "savages".

Now the counterargument: Tolkien said that his goblins were closely based on George MacDonald's:

"They [Orcs] are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in."

Now, MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin was originally illustrated by MacDonald's friend Arthur Hughes. His goblins looked like this:



And in the popular 1920s edition, Jesse Wilcox depicted the goblins like this:



Tolkien would have known these illustrations - Hughes' at the very least and probably Wilcox's too.

So, while I agree with Nick, you could make a case both ways.  

[area23]

Ha, interesting you're quoting Jordanes in this context. I wrote a blogpost just about that recently:

http://area-23.blogspot.it/2017/12/i-smell-man-flesh.html

I only forgot to mention Ammianus Marcellinus (adding right now!).

I completely agree re: orcs with beards. What I meant was that Tolkien decribing his creatures little as possible seems to have been a choice. Not only as a matter of style but apparently he was trying to continue a literary tradition.

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Ha, interesting you're quoting Jordanes in this context. I wrote a blogpost just about that recently:

http://area-23.blogspot.it/2017/12/i-smell-man-flesh.html

I only forgot to mention Ammianus Marcellinus (adding right now!).

I completely agree re: orcs with beards. What I meant was that Tolkien decribing his creatures little as possible seems to have been a choice. Not only as a matter of style but apparently he was trying to continue a literary tradition.

Where he does describe something he is often inconsistent.  Carcharoth the wolf was too big to fit in a lair at Angband, but could lie hidden when being hunted by Beren and Thingol; Huan is able to fight the wolf, and although Huan was large, I never got the impression that he was huge.  Likewise, there is the endless debate of whether Balrogs truly had wings or whether the shadow cast by it merely looked like wings.  As you say, it is a matter of style and fits the literary tradition of of Norse myths etc.