A Children’s Guide to Arkerra 4 (Annotated)
Jokes about nursery rhymes and internet forums aside, we clearly had only a vague idea of trolls-in-general at this point and even less of an idea how gnolls would develop over the course of the series. But the commentary about orcs is pretty forward-looking, not only of us but of this children’s scroll author, who seems to have an eye toward hoped-for future “relations” as well as current ones.
It’s a pretty big stretch that Harky is rendered in this scroll instead of just some rando troll, but maybe Ardaic has had those spy drawings of him for a while. (Hmmm, so what is Harky’s “first appearance?” Is it the last page of the chapter where we saw a drawing of his face, the first time we see him in the flesh, or right here, where we see him rendered from top to toe just as the Peacemakers are?)
I always wondered, did you ever come to regret how you portrayed the orcs in the comic?
With orcs being frequently used as a metaphor for the condition of african slaves under colonial europe (either the reality of it or the colonial myth of the noble savage in need of “gentle guidance”), and particularly in wow, which guilded age obviously references quite a lot,
it always seemed a bit regrettabe to me that you portrayed them as (from the very limited amount of them we do see in the comic) pretty much completely subservient, passive even when it comes to their liberation, and if not necessarily unintelligent, completely mute?
I’m not saying the comic is pro-slavery of course. From the first encounter with the orcs and troll slavers it pretty clearly condemns it, and that stance only become stronger with the mama bear story. But while orcs are said to be more intelligent than laypeople think (e.g. in goblaurence’s introduction), they’re still portayed, to the very end, as passive, mute and waiting to be liberated by those who will fight for them, while most of the main cast treats their (hopefully temporary) enslavement as a necessary evil.
I dunno, man, I guess it just never sit well with me, the way they’re portrayed in the comic. =/
Same.
What I love most about Guilded Age is how it turns fantasy-game stereotypes on their heads by letting us see the people behind ’em. The couple places where it ran with them have always made me pretty uncomfortable. Hard to get everything right in any big story of course, but the orcs were… painful.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Phil worried about this: he’s very thoughtful about both fantasy races and real-life social issues. Me, I don’t have many regrets about it. From fairly early on, we were working with the idea that some of Guilded Age‘s races would have mental abilities beyond the human race’s (gnomes, winter and sky elves, goblins to a degree) and some would have more limited mental capacity (land sharks, many avians, orcs). We could’ve introduced Orc Frederick Douglass in the last few chapters and put him on Penk’s council– “We could always talk, you just couldn’t listen,” he’d say in sign language– but that would strike me as pretty deus ex, and it would diminish the idea of “non-human races” to make orcs just green, tusked Africans. I’m more interested in the message that civil rights aren’t just for people who can pass a Mensa test.
However, I did regret that the story drifted away from the issue of orc rights for as long as it did, which was one reason it got so much emphasis in Chapter 50.
Unrelated, but similar : http://existentialcomics.com/comic/175
Once Fanon starts, it finally makes sense.
I’d assumed that Ardaic’s spy had just drawn Harky as some kind of generic troll, since ‘all trolls look the same, anyway’.
What a useless spy. He should be fired.
Kinda bummed by the lack of notable orc characters in this story.
Feel like this needs to be addressed if there is ever a sequel or spin-off.
In a way, the change means that the trolls are take the place of orcs in the Standard Fantasy Humanoids scheme, with the land sharks taking the troll spot.