Orcs

I understand concerns with necromancy - it's generally considered to be a terribly evil magic, and everyone brought back in this way hates it and wants to die (in most stories, anyway). There are very few stories where a necromancer is also a good person. I can't think of any, anyway.

I knew I was forgetting one example! Some people would consider what Jesus did to Lazarus to technically be a form of necromancy. I think that that is almost as unfair as referring to Jesus' own resurrection as 'zombie Jesus', but the point being, there is one story where it's apparently right and good to bring someone back from the dead....but note that Lazarus gets to go on with his life as a normal human being, and is not an undead slave or anything.

But yeah, in general, necromancy is bad, and fiddling around with people's souls and their eternal fates is not a good thing.
 
Or...when done *correctly*, it's resurrection, and the person enjoys a very wholesome version of life.

The counterfeit is necromancy, where the spirit is shoved into an unwilling body and forced to obey the will of the master who pulled that trick off, making the entire experience extremely unpleasant and evil :p
 
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Or...when done *correctly*, it's resurrection, and the person enjoys a very wholesome version of life.

The counterfeit is necromancy, where the spirit is shoved into an unwilling body and forced to obey the will of the master who pulled that trick off, making the entire experience extremely unpleasant and evil :p
Also, the one resurrected maintains his free will; the spirit raised by necromancy, at the very least, has had their will compromised and dominated.
 
It's the same difference as when Jesus says, 'Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you,' versus when Lestat says 'Drink from me and live forever.' Some very important strings attached in that second case....
 
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It's just a matter of perspective whether you consider the differences to be such that the sames don't apply, if you see what I mean.
 
Sorry for throwing in really short and underdeveloped statements earlier... This is a somewhat more elaborate version of how I see things:

We have basically three alternatives.
Alternative 1: Show everything in the orc creation process. I don't think anyone wants this, right? It risks being revolting, and risks being something JRR wouldn't have chosen. So, we don't go there.
Alternative 2: Skip the process and don't give any hints. We seem to have come to a point where we give hints? We do seem to agree that we want to show that captured elves are used in the process somehow. So this alternative does not seem available either.
Alternative 3: Don't show but hint. This seems to be the alternative we've chosen.

Taking this alternative, we need to show the guilt of Morgoth without showing what he does.

This can be done, by doing the following:
a) Sauron must fail. His methods can succeed in other ways and in other areas, but not in creating orcs. He can create werewolves or ghosts or golems or whatever - anything but orcs.
b) Sauron has to be somewhere else when the orcs are created. He can't be a suspect. If he's meddled with the elven captives, he'll be a suspect if he's around when they're made into orcs or give birth to orcs or whatever happens. So he has to be given a job outside of Angband. Put him in a tower, send him into the East, I don't know. Give him an alibi.
c) Morgoth must clearly use a different method than Sauron. We have to see him reject Sauron's method. Even if we don't see the method he chooses, we will know.

So I see a scene where Morgoth discovers Sauron's workshop and mocks Sauron for his petty necromancy and sends him on a mission. He then turns to the captives saying 'Well, what am I going to do with you?' And then we cut. Next episode - not earlier and preferably later (but I don't see us pushing it very far), we have orcs.
 
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That all works fairly well, mechanically. I don't like that we haven't really done much with the elf captives up to this point, though, if we're going to have a scene this explicit. We're going to need to have a look at Season 2 and make sure we've given them enough time.
 
Not that I think anyone has been unclear on *why* it is important to have the orcs be totally corrupt and evil creatures, but I think this comic illustrates quite clearly what charges could be made against the elves if the orcs were just...just another people of Middle Earth like the Men or the Dwarves:

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/175
 
So, I've been fruitlessly snooping around the forum a bit in what I consider "stuff from before my time" and I was wondering - is there a discussion specifically regarding "What Do Orcs Look Like?" that I just can't find, or is it a new topic?

(I can't decide what I like for that, so I was hoping there was some pre-existing chat to help frame my thoughts.)
 
So what do we think - is here the place for that chat, or would it be better in Costumes, or Sets and Props, or even Casting? I kinda like having philosophy of orcs in a separate place from physiology of orcs, if you know what I mean. Haha.
 
I would post a thread about appearances in the Costume forum, if you're ready to discuss that.
 
Most of what I have to discuss is that I can't decide - it's been sort of at the front of my brain for a couple of days and I haven't managed a conclusion. I'll see if I can put something together outlining the shape of the choices and factors, and put it in Costumes.
 
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