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Orcs are big goblins who can fight

This brings up an important question actually. The word “orc” has a diverse etymology. Just skimming the Wikipedia page:

Old English glossaries record the word orc corresponding with Latin Orcus (deity of the Underworld), and synonymous with þyrs/ðyrs “ogre” … as well as “hell devil”.

The lexicography has been complicated by the Bosworth-Toller dictionary’s conjecture that orcneas devolved from the form *orcen possibly meaning “(?) a sea-monster,” possibly related to Icelandic: orkn (örkn).[10][11]

The Oxford English Dictionary refers to orke, used in 1656 in a way that is reminiscent of giants and ogres. It is presumed that ‘orke’/‘ogre’ came into English via continental fairy-tales

So it would seem that historically the name “orc” relates to more of a demonic or giant-like/ogre-like creature, or maybe even an aquatic one. As far as I can tell, Tolkien was the first to use the word to describe a goblinoid.

In World of Warcraft, the other “big influencer” when it comes to contemporary orcs, they trace their lineage back to a stone giant called Grond, calling back to the Latin and 1656 Oxford English Dictionary interpretations.

So my question is… how popular is the idea that orcs are goblinoids really?

#ask #orc week #the lich speaks #language #orc #axenhammer #send me stuff!

hey do you like sharks?

depends on your definition of “like”? I don’t exactly like them, I’m more genuinely scared. But also fascinated, and definitely think they should be protected

why

#tw sharks #demon fish by juliet eilperin is a great book covering their history #and how they're being hunted #axenhammer

why don't you like game of thrones?

Mainly it’s boring as hell. I’ve never stopped a book after reading one page before, but the first GoT novel did absolutely nothing to grab me whatsoever. To put that in perspective, a friend lent me the first Twilight book and I got at least two chapters in. Twilight, with it’s utterly horrible writing and flat as a board main character was more entertaining to me than GoT. Jack Ketchum once said that the point of the opening sentence is to get the reader to read the opening paragraph, and the point of the opening paragraph is to get the reader to read the first page, and the point of the first page is to get the reader to read the next, and so on and so forth. Martin completely failed at that with me.

Secondly, it’s nihilistic garbage. There isn’t a single redeemable character in the entire series, and if there is someone with an ounce of true virtue within them, they’re punished for it so horribly it makes me wonder if GRRM is the reincarnation of some Spanish Inquisitor. Evil and selfishness are rewarded all the time, and that kind of crap just doesn’t appeal to me now that I know precisely how played out all that is. Not just played out, but actively detrimental to society. I’d never censor it, but I would encourage people to read actually good fantasy literature instead, like Conan, Solomon Kane, Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser, Lord of the Rings, and The Amber Chronicles. Martin is a fart in the wind, and in 40 years barely anyone will remember his bloated, edgy boi dark fantasy.

Thirdly, it’s bloated. There isn’t a single reason for those books to be as long as they are, and he’s guaranteed that I’ll never touch that series again, because I’m not ever going to invest hundreds of hours of my life in a fantasy story again. You could probably cut those books individually by 2/3′s and still have a tight, good story, but I haven’t read them so I don’t know precisely how much bloat is there, I just know it is. I’ve read enough 800 page books to understand that if a book gets to that length, at the very least a third of it could’ve been cut with nothing actually lost. Concise, well told stories with a proper economy of language are infinitely better than something that goes on for 200 pages where nothing happens.

Fourth, I dislike Martin as a professional writer. What I mean by that is he’s living the dream. His book was traditionally published, pushed everywhere, he’s got a tv show out of it, millions of fans, and he’s a fat, indecisive slob that’s going to die before he finishes the series. This isn’t even going to be a Terry Pratchett situation, where he wrote like fucking 40 books in his universe and then copped a case of Alzheimer’s when he was an old man and quietly passed away before he could write all the stories he wanted to. He’s going to keep waffling on the last few books in the series until the only thing the traditional publishers are going to be able to do is just replace him with someone who’ll actually get the damn job done via his notes after he buys a farm. This will result in the final two or so books being even more lackluster than they would be if Martin had written them, and the series will be a huge disappointment to the fans who’ve stuck with it for god knows what reason. Maybe they’re masochists, I dunno.

Fifth, Martin is actively engaged in gutting the legacy of the pulps with his friend Gardner Dozois, releasing anthologies like that sword and sorcery one or Old Venus that are pale imitations of writers who were far better than anyone actually involved in those travesties wearing the pulps like a fucking skin suit from Silence of the Lambs and giving people a false impression of what those books actually were. I cannot stand this shit, and I wish he would stop, but I guess he needs other projects to work on while he’s not writing his legacy series that made him famous.

I basically see Martin as the physical manifestation of every single thing wrong with fantasy literature nowadays, and I’m looking forward to the day when GoT goes the way of the dodo. Which it eventually will, as the people running the publishing show right now are apart of the Cult of the New, the Constant Year Zero crowd, so once Martin stops being of use to them, they’ll toss him away like a used jizz rag. It’s sad, but that’s the way those people work. Apparently, like Stephen King, his short fiction is way better than his novels, but I’m not going to find out for myself because the novels left me so unimpressed that I’ve got better things to put in my head than Martin.

#axenhammer