The West Culturally Appropriated our Russian Orcs!!! I don't understand the cultural wars controversy going on with the D&D. Weren't orcs/goblins traditionally the allegory for the historic Golden Horde and then the Russia, which inherited the Horde traditions?
Tolkien himself mentioned Mongols as the prototype. So traditional orcs have mongol fur hats and the collectivist culture with human wave attacks, practiced by Tsarists in WW1 and USSR in WW2 (for which LoTR is an obvious allegory). That is indeed racist, and goblins had yellowish skin in Tolkien and D&D because of it (Games Workshop and Blizzard made them green to avoid controversy). But somebody had to be extra dumb to associate orcs with Mexicans or Africans, who are not even part of the medieval European history, and in Faerun live on a far away continent of Maztica, as usual humans.
It seems some left-wing activists are just trying to get offended at something that isn't there. TLDR: Mordor is Russia, not Africa or Mexico or Martians. And obviously both Russia and China, being large and influential powers (not persecuted minorities), are interested at shifting attention to Africans and Mexicans, and therefore as part of funding their BLM and Latino activists, they push for redefining the historic European orcs. Forget about Mr.Putin/Mr.Stalin/Mr.Genghis Khan/Mr Xi - the real Sauron is in Mexico!!!
Absolute stupid, since orcs were never slaves. They are proud honorable warriors, who were impossible too enslave. In fact, it is the orcs who hold slaves and eat humans like cattle (read exploitation). Orcs are also organized nomadic barbarians, having no land of their own, while Mexicans and Africans always had their own lands, and were either smaller hunters-gatherers tribes or larger city states. It all feels like Nightmare Before Christmas, where Skellingron tried to appropriate Christmas, without understanding the context. And most American has not enough self awareness to understand how stupid they look by doing that.
TL;DR: Americans shamelessly stole our Russian orcs. I'm starting to despise America.
Context: My grandfather, a soviet golden star hero, looks like a literal orc, who in WW2 sustained multiple injuries, including to his head, and continued the human wave attack like nothing happened.

Current Mood:
annoyed