Annotated 28-9
The poor orcs’ time as slaves of the World’s Rebellion didn’t get a lot of attention in the story, for one very good reason: we didn’t want all the World’s Rebellion’s legitimate grievances and sympathetic characters to be overshadowed by this one gigantic nonhuman-rights violation. But it wouldn’t have felt right to make their shared culture sinless, either.
I suppose someone out there probably thought we were refighting the American Civil War (factories and more industry on one side, slavery and more romantic fervor on the other). Not our intent, and not a reading I’d enjoy. But I do think it’s important at times to suspend condemnation long enough to get inside the head of a character, even for the sort of beliefs you’d rightly banish from your social feed.
Which is to say, we’re asking you to look the other way about some of Goblaurence’s beliefs even as we hope you’ll like him for others. It would’ve been out of character for virtually any goblin at this point to be speaking out against slavery because orcs deserve freedom, and Goblaurence isn’t taking that stand. He’s not even arguing for merciful, kind slavemastering because basic decency should be a thing even in an unequal society. It’s the waste of resources that gets to him.
Yeah, the whole orc thing is definitely Not Good. If we were to extend the “frustrated IT guy” analogy from last time, the orcs aren’t coworkers, they’re equipment. Or whatever the IT word is for like. The computery stuff? OK now I’m just revealing how little I know I’ll stop now
before computers did the work, the people who did that work where called computers.
That does compute.
Orcish Resources?
Just give them a nickel every now and then and it’s called employment. Heck, give them a dollar, but ask two for food and living expenses and it’s just fair.
A great number of slaves were treated better than wprkers even today, but little is there bellyaching about that. Just about how my great grandmother had it tough, so I should get stuff free now. XD
Yes, slavery bad. Unless you take good care of your slaves. Then it’s pretty much the same as employment today. You just provide housing and food to them instead of paying them to do it themselves.
Well, you know, besides the fact that you’d get dragged across the ocean in a cargo hold with an absurdly high death rate, your children could literally be sold to someone across the country, your wife raped with no legal recompense, getting any sort of education was literally illegal, and the moment you try to leave you get hinted down and dragged back to your master — yeah, it was totally better.
*slow clap*
Why, yes. The bad examples are worse than the low income example you’re thinking of.
Now imagine the actual example mentioned and compare the slave who got to outright murder free people because his master wanted their vengeful spirit to guard their treasure the free man first had to seal in a wall while the slave supervised the process. Not to mention the slave ate, slept and lived way better than most of the people even back then. (Yes, this is a singular example and again doesn’t mean every slave ever had it made, good for you to notice)
And compare that to the poverished people who are free, but work in end of the line jobs that hardly pay their billls under a goverment that gives rat’s ass supporting them and explain why the notion of freedom is so great that it certainly keeps the cold away from skin and hunger away from stomach by the sheer notion of freedom alone.
‘Cose yeah. No-one was argueing that slavery wasn’t bad. All your examples did happen. Just because some slaves had it actually better, doesn’t mean many didn’t suffer for it.
But I do ask you to stop being ignorant and imagining that just because someone has freedom, that they’d be any better for it. Or that people didn’t even thrive while under slavery. ‘Cose those example are actually true as well.
Romans had whole school systems dependant on educated slaves. Was it the glorious life of a freeman? Heck no. Was it the abysmal life of a freeman? Not either.
> No-one was argueing that slavery wasn’t bad.
That is exactly what you did when you said, “Yes, slavery bad. Unless you take good care of your slaves. Then it’s pretty much the same as employment today.” If that wasn’t your point, you could’ve just stopped typing after the word “bad”.
Even the worst subsistence-level job today is better than slavery, because you have the ability to quit and get a different awful subsistence-level job from a different boss if you want, and Burger King doesn’t have the right to sell you to Wal-Mart.
I understand that you’re trying to make a point about society not doing enough for the working poor, which is absolutely true, but you’re doing it really badly and at this point you should probably just quit while you’re behind.
Nobody was making the strawman argument you’re arguing against. Also, no one is making personal attacks against you while you’re calling people ignorant and rudely slow clapping at them. We’re all aware that some enslaved people had material comforts and we’re very much aware that many workers today are exploited. They lack the effective freedom to walk away from their exploiters. None of that justifies saying someone thrived while being treated as prized livestock or a valued tool. Finally, no one is demanding free stuff because their grandparents were enslaved. They’re demanding and end to ongoing racism, more equitable distribution of opportunities and resources, and the basic respect due any human being. Please stop trolling.
You are actually arguing that slavery wasn’t bad. You’re trying to claim on one hand that the terrible way the ultra-rich treats the working class nowadays is equivalent to slavery.
And while it’s terrible, it isn’t that way at all. A slave can’t own anything because they are just property. They can only gain education if their master decides it. They can’t marry.
Personal example time: I grew up in a family of poverty. Through education, I have elevated myself from the crummiest working jobs (Wal-Mart, fast food) to a middle-class job in healthcare (lab tech). I can own a car, a house, and have a wife. I can refuse work that is immoral or unethical. All of that would have been entirely impossible if I was a slave.
Given how you’re digging your heels in, I doubt you have the capacity to change your mind. But I urge you to educate yourself on how absolutely awful slavery is.
Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons
If you had told me I would start my day reading a defense of chattel slavery, I never would have believed you. “A great number of slaves were treated better than workers today.” You have some cites for that? I don’t disagree that wage slavery under our current system is no picnic, and life is hard for the poor and made harder by design, but an argument that being someone’s possession was often better than that is going to take a little more convincing here.
Often? Goodness, no. At times? No doubt. Heck, people commit crimes to get to spend time in jail instead of whatever alternative would be.
“A great number” is not still majority, no matter what Trump claims. And even minority can be huge. Just looking how many blacks we have everywhere. Even more than people who are actually more than tanned, ‘cose their granparent was black…
But yeah. I would not kid myself into thinking there never was a slave brought to America that didn’t get the better end of the stick than being eaten by their neighbour in Africa. Yes, very polarized thought, but that’s how world is these days. XD
Still. Slavery bad. Just had to add. XD
The fundamental flaw in your post is that “Y is worse than X” is not equivalent to “X is good.”
I got to say that’s more the flaw in some readers. Saying anything remotely positive about slavery and people jump en masse to:
“OMG!!! You support/love/wanttomarry slavery?! You monster!”
Without actually reading much about what’s written. Like for example that yeah, nowhere was it said that X is good. It’s even said that X is bad. Though being thd jabby mcjabbington that I am, I had to add that even then there are perks. But that’s kinda like heresy.
That’s because there is a long, long, *long* history of people saying the things you have, in explicit defense of chattel slavery. You are at best young and historically naive to think you can say such things without getting a reaction. It’s like entering a Holocaust discussion with “well, some Jews *were* criminals”.
Reaction? Definitely was waiting for that. There’s no denying the topic is volatile.
Expecting people to misread “There were well off slaves that had it better than some people today” as “I like slaves, I want slaves”?
Yeah. I guess I was a bit naive to think people might think for a moment what they’ve read instead of jumping to conclusions…
Granted, I do like to quote my friend for the following: “You’re really good at talking yourself out of trouble. Now if you only didn’t talk yourself into them in the first place.”
I’ll be the first to admit, I am a bit difficult person. But I am fun at parties. :D
“Cos yeah, no-one was arguing that slavery wasn’t bad.”
Yes, someone was when you posted “Slavery bad, unless …”? No unless. Yes, there are slaves that were not treated that bad, but that still makes owning people as property bad. Period!
Just because non-slaves may have an equal bad situation or even a worse one does not make slavery good.
So if you’re not white, you’re black? There’s no good sides to bad things and no bad can ever become of things that are generally good?
Like medication has never been abused or people’s good will in general used against other people? But I guess even lawenforcement is nowadays simply bad, with nothing good associated to it. Like no slave ever smiled because, yes, slavery still bad and I’d like you to point out where I said it was actually good.
You dumb down your discourse by omitting the verb – “slavery bad”, not “slavery is bad”. That comes off as a rhetorical device to imply that you’re only making that statement because it’s socially expected of you and you think it’s dumb, actually. If you’re really talking in good faith, it doesn’t help your argument that you’re talking in such a flippant manner.
Wannes did not mention skin color at all in his post. you’re the one to bring it up. And you’re implying that good things can come from slavery. You’re hiding it quite well, but your racism and white privilege is becoming more and more evident as your flounder to justify your horrific statements.
Things are indeed bad in the modern day for the typical low-income wage earner, which is a vast majority of the population and probably most of us can count ourselves among that number. Nobody will argue with that.
But *you* are purposely downplaying the strife endured by slaves, using the argument of ‘well, IF you treated the slaves well, then it wasn’t so bad!’ But…
– Slaves were property, and you could do anything you wanted to a slave you owned at any time essentially.
– Slaves were not, in fact, generally treated well. They were slaves. Even the select few slaves allowed to work indoors might find themselves sexually abused. Kind treatment was NOT the norm, and…
– …even if a slave WAS treated ‘kindly,’ that is only in comparison to, say, a poorly treated slave, and only from the perspective of the slave-owners. (Unsurprisingly, it’s easier to justify being someone’s master if you consider yourself their ‘benevolent master.’)
– The shelter of a slave is NOT comparable to the apartments or homes that poor income people can have with all the amenities we have.
I could go on for a while longer, but I’d like to move on to a new point. You said, and I quote: “but little is there bellyaching about that. Just about how my great grandmother had it tough, so I should get stuff free now.”
So, I believe what you’re trying to do is poke fun at the desire for government acts to take actions to socially compensate those whose ancestors were enslaved, such as by offering more free education opportunities / allowing more scholarships for them, that sort of thing. In answer, I say this:
The average poor white person has property they have inherited from their ancestors. My parents, for instance, have an antique china cabinet, a really well made chest of drawers, a fancy gun cabinet, and other pieces of old furniture and items as well as their house and its other contents which my siblings and I will inherit when they die. Someone whose parents have nothing, however, will inherit nothing, and will have much more to worry about having to procure for themselves. So, someone who is descended from slaves is several generations behind someone who is NOT descended from slaves in accrued general wealth, wealth measured in the form of furniture, silverware, housing, and other such things that they might be able to inherit, alleviating their needs. And even if they DON’T inherit, someone descended from a family that owns things probably will have an easier time affording niceties than someone who did not.
When people ask for reparations for slavery, they are asking only to be brought to par with the rest of America in terms of opportunity. Remember, even after slavery was abolished there were still Jim Crow laws preventing black people from getting ahead financially or socially, and even when black communities DID experience success and prosperity they were actively targeted and attacked. (Tulsa, Oklahoma; 1921. Greenwood District, a wealthy black community, is literally burned to the ground in what is now called a race massacre. Look it up if you don’t believe me.)
Quite simply? You are spreading misinformation, very harmful misinformation, and I’d like you to reconsider your stances and provide evidence next time you make a claim like this.
A well constructed argument and for that at least, I thank you. But I do apologize that “spreading misinformation” is kinda interesting when even you take quite a bit out of my comment and put words in my mouth as well.
As I pointed out to another commenter, I’m not talking even about “typical low-income wage earner”. Even those people got it relatively made, despite how poor even they are, to people who still work for a rice cup a day, as the joke goes. There just are people who go hungry even modern day pretty much everywhere to whom that joke isn’t even funny.
I’m also not talking solely on matter of slaves=black people. Slavery is far older a concept and it’s not that “good thing it’s gone now”, ‘cose it’s still a thing today.
And pointing a counterpoint to “all slaves bad, no-one happy” with pointing out that there indeed have been, even in America, quite well off slaves is not “downplaying the strife”. It’s pointing out a thing that happened. If you wish to read that as “well, you clearly support slavery then”, it’s you making the judgement on my behalf, not me. I do not support slavery. In any of its forms, be it chattel slavery, pawnship, military slavery or any other.
The same as if a black cloth has white spots, I’m not denying the cloth being black by pointing out the spots.
-Yes, they were property.
And like many a event have shown people who are not property nowadays get just as beaten, jailed and done with pretty much what several governments want, the mild cases being the treatment of rioters in USA and Belarus to outright people having absolutely no rights if so wanted like North Korea, Russia, Niger to spot a couple.
-They indeed were not generally treated well. And it definitely was not norm. If you read that from my comments, I think you should read them again, ‘cose I said there have been slaves that had it better than even your average joe today, let alone compared to the downtrodden. Not to mention your whole comment reeks of “no slave ever had anything good with IFs, WASs and such. But nowhere was I implying that good treatment of any slave anywhere was a norm.
-And yes, most slave had very poor shelters, if shelter at all.
Makes no doubt the many a homeless warm thinking that come the winter. And no, pointing that out isn’t saying “oh, you mean all slaves lived in luxury?”
Also it’s delightful that you mention antique china cabinet, well made chest of drawers, a fancy gun cabinet and such for “average poor white person”. Also letting one to believe that being able to inherit something from parents helps when a person is making their career (unless you go about murdering them at early age, but…). But I do agree that having people who can pay you things is VERY helpful in getting ahead. But it’s not the only thing that makes one successful. We have poor white, yellow and red people too (not to mention various shades of brown, but those usually fall in with the black). There’s people who become successful too and had no help when they got to where-ever it is they are. Also again I feel the need to remind that this is not a thing only in America.
But yes. In many a country, you get a lot more opportunities for looking the part rather than having any ability to play the part (and again not only when it comes to black people, mind).
So sure we should force institutions to take people who are less qualified. I’ve heard that that very popular with educated black people too. Especially when they get to hear that they too are in their current state only thanks to handouts, downplaying the fact that they in question actually worked for the stipend and the job. Granted, one of them said her name might have played a bit to her getting the job, but unless the interviewer was blind, they did see she was black at least by then. She’s also pissed that nowadays no-one is willing to say anything to her in fear that they “anger the black one”…
And all this instead of actually working on the matter why people would need a “get job free” -card instead of being able to get one on their own. Yes, it’s a whole lot harder. That’s why we have the easy way of “you must have X-amount, no matter where you got them”.
Still. Yes. Things like Tulsa did happen (although I have yet to hear any other example of such, if you have a second one, I’d like to have a read on that too). And I’m wholly against those kinds of events too. Like these days people trashing businesses out of racial hate (and don’t even try claiming they are all done by “people who want to rile up opposites” [though some of them are, no doubt]) or people running around scaring whites because “they’re the racists” (had two separate cases where people I’ve known been bullied by “people of colour” and had their black friends/neighbors coming to their rescue [and I don’t even know that many people from states])…
I mean, it’s no murder or arson, but I’m not so sure how far we are from those either.
But quite simply?
Slavery was and is bad. People doing slave business are mostly trash and scums. But there have been slaves who lived what could to any length of interpretation be called a “good life”. And that’s no misinformation.
Also there are people today who are for all intents and purposes “free” and they suffer.
Theses facts don’t make slavery good. But there’s no denying that for strange few (and multiplied through history “a great number” really isn’t that big of stretch to say about them) that didn’t have it so bad either under slavery. STILL. Doesn’t make slavery good.
And when it comes to reparations, their intent is definitely good. Though I still doubt I’ll ever go to Russia or Sweden to demand “my fare share” of opportunities they’ve no doubt denied my ancestors. But I’m in no illusion that even those have been abused over time. And that giving people easier pass just based on their skin wasn’t just another form of racism (but it’s “positive” racism).
Still. You bring a good amount of points and if my text really leaves people believing I’m just here to slave people, it’s good those are brought up. Leave it to people to read my comment and think “slavery must be good, ‘cose this one guy in the internet said so”… >->
“And pointing a counterpoint to “all slaves bad, no-one happy” with pointing out that there indeed have been, even in America, quite well off slaves is not “downplaying the strife”.”
Yes it is, actually.
You don’t get to redefine terms to suit your message, no matter how smart you think you are.
While I’m on your side in this… there are a LOT of people that seem to think you can redefine terms to suit your message in the world. There are entire political movements built on that kind of thing.
I don’t for one moment think that it is attempted (and frequently, as you point out). But that’s why I think it’s important to push back and correct when it is attempted.
That should have read I don’t think it is *not* attempted. Sorry, just woke up, brain still sludgy…
It’s a false equivalency. A worker can leave a bad job (legally speaking, barring contracts). A slave can’t leave a bad owner (legally, there were some that managed to succesffully escape to “freedom” regardless).
The most important distinction however is the “value” of materiality or “safety” versus freedom. Many have found freedom worth dying for (the ultimate refutation of materiality). Others have not. Some have decided to make their slavery a willing service, removing the burden by altering their approach to the task. Some found slavery (chattel or otherwise) preferable to their percieved alternatives.
Still others find slavery perfectly acceptable as long as it is never applied to themselves and find justifications for it: “it’s better than their own life at least” without considering their will in the matter…
And that’s why slavery is bad. Not because of how the body is treated, whether it’s wellfed and treated well or abused and starved (though the latter is also bad, and not just because of the loss of “efficiency”). But because it subjugates the will of the slave and removes the freedom of choice. Employment, in and of itself, even at the low end, does not do that… else it is slavery by another name anyway (if not chattel slavery specifically… after all, there are many different kinds of slavery).
What interwoven stream of shit have I just read and why does it exist?
hm I am going to google I am typing in sealioning. ah a match
1: You try to quit a shitty job at Amazon to spend more time with family, you get shown the door. You try to quit your shitty slavery “position” (to see if you can work out if your family is still alive) … see if you notice the difference. Not sure about you but free will (and freedom in general) is a pretty important thing where I’m from.
2: Free stuff? Who’s asking for that? I mean, except from everybody ever because what else is the job of shareholders, and aren’t they all glowing examples of capitalism? Some people just want the cops to stop beating them up or worse, based on suspicion of offenses which wouldn’t even get a hedge fund manager more than half a raised eyebrow. It’s a little crazy that anyone has to even ask for that, let alone having to ask for it for decades.
Y’know I had multiple misreads of what was going on here. Initially it somehow didn’t register that the orcs were still going the same direction, me reading the situation as an act of defiance on their part, which was rather dumb on my part given the dialogue, but in my defense they are *drawn* moving the opposite direction, which was why, with that misconception in place, I thought the tent had shifted positions, as in the previous page it was in the background and now it’s in the foreground. Once I saw Goblaurence’s table rock thing stuff clicked in this regard.
The only thing that remains a mystery is how the orcs can be behind the three noisy boys both at the original angle and when the whole scene is turned 180 degrees. Maybe there’s two lines and one of the whippersnappers was failing to address his.
I think they are taking a shortcut. One can still see the tracks of their previous path in the foreground.
Also, more subtle details, their posture has changed from last page, and each one is carrying two rocks now.
Or the line of orcs simply moved behind the taskmasters while they were arguing with Goblaurence. Double benefit of avoiding a conflict between taskmasters and being out of their eyesight and thus extending the effectiveness and length of Goblaurence distracting them.
Also if Goblaurence is right and they really are investing in a future of being whipped less, then getting out of the way of the arguing taskmasters and getting the work done would indeed be an investment in exactly that.
That’s more likely, yeah. We’ll probably never really know now, and it would’ve been hard to effectively communicate the motivation behind their actions without effectively giving away the punchline, such as it is.
Up until now the goblins have had generic mafiosa accents, but Gobularence speaks with a cockney one
Oh yes. He’s the only character about whose voice and accent I have absolutely no doubts. Sometimes when I read him it slips into midlands territory but that’s my fault. He’s really south London. Low rough voice, a bit shouty. He’s been smoking for ages, and you can hear it. I can almost smell it, too.
Yeah, the only problem I have with the insert tweet there, is that literally everything about the fantasy genre is regressive and can be interpreted as problematic, when not looked at in the context it’s applied. One of the most common occurrences in the stories featuring orcs, is murder, next is probably thievery? Then you have the whole promotion of monarchies, and feudalism, and animal cruelty, and various forms of intolerance, and well you get it.
But in the context of the narratives, and the medium, none of those things are actually problematic, they are just tools used in story telling. People aren’t suffering because of the depiction of orcs (though that depiction may trigger reactions to issues that are actually harming people, and that can cause suffering) and because of that I have trouble feeling this sudden reaction to the “issue of orcs” as anything but pointless virtue signalling and/or an oversimplification of the concepts fantasy archetypes play with.
Orcs inborn evil, their inability, or struggle to rise above what instincts drive them, is what separates them from humans. And through that they are an exploration of the man/monster, the thing we fear we all are, and that all humans must reckon with. They take the fear we have, and they, like all monsters, literalize it. What if there were a people who were like us, but had the hearts of wolves?
Are they a stand in for Black people, they can be (though in honesty they more aptly fit the archetype of the “viking” right down to the fur, big axes, tusks, and often horned hats, which of course vikings are not believed to have actually worn, but which instantly bring them to mind. Watch a show like The Last Kingdom, and tell me the common perceptions of vikings are not just orcs in human form.) but they can be any “other” they are the barbarian who will sack Rome. Or rather they are the embodiment of the fear of those people, and thus stand in stark contrast to the reality. I feel the best place to explore those concepts is in fantasy, where we know these are not real people, these are not real examples, and these races (perhaps the only time the term is actually used with any accuracy except when talking about earlier and now extinct siblings of humanity) are constructs born out of “what if?” for whom there is no real human analogy, outside of concepts and misconceptions.
I think losing sight of the inhuman and alien nature of these fictional constructs as a distillation of an aspect of humanity, is reductionist, and in it’s own way racist (in that in indulges in the same belief that it criticizes, and takes the ideas of racism on board and treats them as legitimate by doing so, at least in my view), and homogenizing, and takes the nuance of the concept of other races and reduces them to humans in make up.
Racism is a foolish and wrongheaded concept, and the fact that there are no orcs is why. People are full of awfulness, and yet even the worst of us, is still not an orc. Because that creature that cannot change, that is made of hate, it doesn’t actually exist. We do.
Anyways, this has been my Ted talk.
Thanks for that talk :)
I mostly agree. For me, too, Orks in AD&D were one of very few groups which we could just attack and decimate with gusto without having to make sure we’re not accidentally beating up the wrong people, since our DM loved to put us in situations where things weren’t as they seemed, and the “bad guys” weren’t actually that bad upon closer inspection.
That said: I don’t think it’s entirely healthy to have them, or at least not to have too much of them, because stories do shape perception, and if the stories you read/watch/inhabit while growing up all contain these humanoid guilt-free punchbags, some part of you will be looking for someone or something to fill that role IRL.
I mean, of some author did Orks the way Mary Shelley did Frankenstein(‘s monster), I guess you could make a modern story out of it which I wouldn’t object to in the slightest. But that’s not what’s happening. Orks are just nice to have on hand if you need 1-dimensional disposable foes and want to sidestep the fact that 1-dimensional disposable foes do not (and can not) exist.
Similar thing with those old stories of usurpers and rightful heirs to thrones. So some boy grows up in a monastery somewhere and learns he’s the rightful king but his father was killed by the current ruler. Why is that “rightful”? And why don’t the women get to do anything beyond scheming, conspiring or being rescued? Of course that’s the way of old stories, who themselves are unaware of the issues they’d present if they tried happening today. So of course I can’t blame them, nor the people involved in them, nor their authors, because most of them didn’t know any better!
But stories shape perception, so I think it’s probably a good idea to watch your diet and add some perspective.
Yeah, slavery is bad, but genocide is even worse, so who are you gonna root for, Gastonia?
I see your random avatar is well chosen to fit your comment.
An open letter to some of the commenters above – you know who you are:
Fiction is what you read. Bias is your perspective influencing how you read it. Context is history influencing your perspective, and influencing the relative importance of fiction that *both* are by degrees contemporary with.
Your willingness to entangle these phenomena in your worldview determines your implicit reading of “how bad” the content of fiction is – and society has an impact on said willingness, thereby also on your reading and interpretation of fiction. (Not to mention, nunnya have perfect information, so ya can’t really be guaranteed to have the most accurate worldview anyway.)
I think the important takeaway here is that fiction will continue to exist whether or not you make connections between it and everything that exists alongside it and outside of it. Just like history.
And how you react to it and conduct yourself because of it (or in spite of it) makes you more worthy of criticism than the fiction itself. Because you’re contributing to history; all fiction is merely a landmark along the road, a weather event in the climate, compared to your constant presence in and travel through it.
Basically, if you’re handwringing about fantasy effectively moralizing racism – or more precisely, about that being a problem that other people have with it – your concern for the integrity of literary criticism (or whatever two-bit angry philosophizing you might adopt as a cause for inordinate outrage – pants-on-head stupid comparisons between slavery and wage labor, that don’t even discussing the concept of implicit social contracts and the process of the legitimate violation thereof, perhaps?) is greater than and outsized compared to your concern for the well-being of the average person and the society that may or may not be harming their ability to subsist and thrive in it.
tl;dr, if that’s the kind of hill you’re figuratively willing to die on, please try caring more about actual people and problems instead.