Yes, Orcs Are Evil (And That's a Good Thing)

I want to write about Orcs lmao. Mostly Tolkien Orcs because I don't follow Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer or whateverthefuck. But the idea can apply to any of them. Here's the idea:

It's OKAY for a race to be evil.

Yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes yikes YIIIIIKES! Not a good look!!!!

Don't care, because it's true. Tolkien's orcs were 100% evil, there's just no getting around it.

Orcs were created from Elves that Melkor corrupted. What does "corruption" mean? It means he fucked them up, and turned them from serene, joyous people to cruel hate-filled freaks. What does Evil mean if not that? It means nothing.

If you want to pretend that Good and Evil aren't objective, if you want to be like Anakin after he just slaughtered a group of children and say "W-w-w-well in MYYYYYY MIND, the JEDI are evil!!" you can. But no-one actually believes that Good and Evil are subjective. People who say that are merely speaking about people's perception of Good and Evil. Fantastic. I don't care.

I've heard an idea that Tolkien wasn't satisfied with his treatment of Orcs. That's fine. I can *imagine* some kind of situation where Orcs had become separated from their dark masters and over long periods of time naturally became less evil. But a) that's just fanfiction and b) it doesn't matter one way or the other.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War tried to humanize Orcs and it just felt revolting. A certain Orc captain is even voiced by a soyboy "comedian" and he questions why you'd want to kill Orcs and suggests that ACHSHUALLY you're the bad guy. Yeah man, wow, really makes me stop and think. This race of monsters was created solely to destroy everything good and beautiful in the world, but maybe I'm actually the bad guy because gosh, I kill them in self-defense, and killing's always wrong even though "wrong" doesn't really exist!! Brilliant.

Anyway, the opposition to the fact that Orcs are evil is because it's "racist".

I think it's great that you're so anti-racist that you're willing to defend fictional monsters directly hand-crafted by the fucking devil, but it's not moving to me. EVERYTHING Melkor ever did was born from his Pride and his hate. Melkor's works were ENTIRELY the corruption of Goodness and Beauty. You don't get to tell me "Maybe that's not so bad!" Orcs being evil was literally the POINT OF THEIR EXISTENCE.

Am I missing anything?

Oh, here's one: the schmucks who say "Good vs. Evil is BOOORING!! *I* prefer stories with NUANCE!" are fucking liars who 1000% call people they don't like Nazis on Twitter. Every last fucking one of them.

Everyone believes in and appreciates Good vs. Evil, we just do it in different ways. My idea of Good is stuff like "being honest" and other people's idea of Good is "pretending that Good doesn't actually exist so I can protect black people from racists and act like a hero on social media." I'm so fucking unmoved you can't even imagine it. I'd have to meet up with you in real life and spend the entire day with you to express how fucking little I care about people acting like moral bigshots for what basically amounts to repeating "it's bad to be rude" over and over again. Wow you've blown me the fuck away. Don't be mean to people? I never would have thought of that. Thank goodness I had YOU to let me know.

I think that's it. Fictional races can be evil. They're fictional. Just because mean people might use them to represent real-life people doesn't mean YOU have to as well in opposition. If you think that helps anyone, you're out of your mind. Here's an idea: stop playing catch-up with your enemy. Or stop creating enemies for yourself entirely. Or just fucking die, I don't care. I don't care.

Orcs are evil. Have a great night.