In fantasy stories, how do the Big Bad Guys always get the massive armies of loyal followers fighting for them?

they wear a power tie

star wars: episode 2: attack of the jews

The clones were bred to be less independent thinking

Also its pretty obvious that droids are sentient.

star wars: episode 2: attack of the jews

Episode 3: Revenge of the Bris?

more money, more perks (from PILLAGE), promise of power, I presume.

The bad guys never spend enough on training courses.

Pay peanuts, you get monkeys

Somewhere in here, there's a contradiction.

This cliche also helps in stories where the good guys kill the Big Bad Guy, which is dramatic high point of the story, and then you don't have to worry about what happens to the thousands/millions of his minions, because apparently all of them they stop fighting or die the moment the Big Bad is dead. In real life the minions would probably go on fighting for days if not months after their leader is finished, some of them might never even find out the Big Bad is dead, or some new leader(s) might take the place of deceased one, but that never happens in fantasy stories, because it would ruin the dramatic arc where killing the Big Bad automatically saves the word. Like in Lord of the Rings, it seems all hostilities stop after Sauron dies, because apparently all the orcs and evil men and other followers of Sauron are mere puppets who cannot function at all once their master is gone. You'd think it takes the orcs who weren't there at big battle days or weeks to find out Sauron has died? In the movie they try to patch up things a bit by making Sauron's death cause a massive earthquake that kills most of the army at the Black Gate, but it's a pretty convenient earthquake since it only kills the bad guys, even though the army of the good guys is also there.

I asked this on the LOTR thread and got no serious answers but... do Orcs have genitals?

so, okay, Sauron (or Saruman, whatever) creates them through some combination of magic and science (orcs were originally elves, right?) and makes a whole bunch of them. afaik there's no orc women. so do orcs have genitals? It seems like it would make sense that they could do a little raping along with their pillaging and murdering or do some homo-bonding a la Roman centurions. On the other hand, having genitals and not reproducing is nonsensical.

Raping would have detracted from the pillaging and murdering, so Sauron had the foresight to create them genital free.

I asked this on the LOTR thread and got no serious answers but... do Orcs have genitals?

can't believe no one took this question seriously

I know!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=Myy&q=lotr+do+Orcs+have+genitals%3F&btnG=Search

google is not helping, either

Orcs have no genitals. One could consider their oft-mentioned acts of cannibalism a primordial attempt at satiating their psychosexual desires.

the real question is whether orcs have belly buttons

(obv no)

Dan how do you do this? I'm seriously embarrassed posting on threads with this screenname.

I feel like such a puritan now.

Dan/Alex slash orc dork porn.

really you should be more embarrassed at revealing your gender prejudices by assuming that orcs would have dicks instead of some other form of genital ;)

hahahaha quite honestly I stop paying attention to my screenname approximately 7 nanoseconds after changing it

Results 1 - 10 of about 187,000 for orc porn

i thought they just budded like amoeba

(also vadges are much less embarrassing than orc dicks)

Ladies and gentlemen, A Band of Orcs.

Greetings Humans, Allow me to introduce myself.

They call me Gruesom Grimp. I am the Chaos Pundit and Manager for A Band of Orcs. If you have not yet heard of A Band of Orcs, methinks that is due to the fact that their meteoric rise has not quite yet exploded into your consciousness. Allow me to remedy this...

Gogog Bloodthroat--Vocals and Power Presence
Cretos Filthgrinder--Filthy Leads and Crushin' Guitars
Hulg ElfR.I.P.per--Undead Guitars
Gronk!--Bass guitar & Shamanism
Oog Skullbasher--drums & other bangings
Lukacs--Agent of Chaos, Chronicler & Illustrator
You--the fans proselytising the wicked, carrying the war-banner into battle, and crushin' lame music everywhere

http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/63/l_3d0e4a3e887e43a9af088dd30a0d3282.jpg

You'd think it takes the orcs who weren't there at big battle days or weeks to find out Sauron has died?
the appendices to 'the lord of the rings' chronicle how kings aragorn and eomer get together periodically to go smoke out remaining bad guy strongholds. no naked orc pix though unfortunately

so, orcs can be dicks, but we still don't know if they have dicks

we need the lyrics to "Procreation (Of the Wicked)" -- that should answer all these questions.

"(also vadges are much less embarrassing than orc dicks)"

Esp. when they are worked up.

yes, I believe quite a few of them were originally named Richard xxp

Lukacs?

see, it's SCAKUL backwards...

we need the lyrics to "Procreation (Of the Wicked)"

Well here's them performing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly-3XUahobY

Oh goodie, individual band member bios:

http://abandoforcs.com/Fear_the_Orcs____.php

Gogog hails from the Gore-Stained Axe Tribe of orcs. He has killed over 300 worthy and unworthy opponents, including 50 elves. His pastimes include breaking bones, pillaging villages, watching things burn, slapping around the slaves and watching monster trucks crush smaller cars. He prefers fist-fighting to weapons, but uses a two-handed axe in war, when necessary. His moniker comes from the fact that he once took an elf's arrow to the throat. He got better and now screams his way to superior Rock God Status.

orcs: british soccer hooligans
uruk-hai: cockney factory workers
hobbits: irish belle and sebastian fans
elves: swedish royalty
dwarves: vikings
"men": british middle class
wild men: canadians?

wild men: canadians?

real answer is a bit more racisty methinks

He never did like the Scots.

Wizards: dudes with degrees in ancient literature

"Like in Lord of the Rings, it seems all hostilities stop after Sauron dies, because apparently all the orcs and evil men and other followers of Sauron are mere puppets who cannot function at all once their master is gone. You'd think it takes the orcs who weren't there at big battle days or weeks to find out Sauron has died?"

Wasn't there a whole part of ROTK (the book) where the Hobbits come home and have to mop up a bunch of orcs who hadn't gotten the memo yet?

Sorta but they were Saruman's henchmen.

and but so anyway

http://marvel.com/universe3zx/images/3/31/Taskmaster_Head.jpg

'taskmaster_head.jpg'?

"If we were orcs, wouldn’t we, at a racial level, imagine ourselves to look like elves?”

Actually not seeing any real-world shortage of Big Bad Guys with armies of loyal followers, y'know?

but it's the FEW, the proud...

http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/mp/2tGxgrg9q1Hc.jpg

Wait, if orcs don't have genitals, how does Sauron come up with new orcs to replace the dead ones?

don't they just grow out of the ground or something? They did in the film.

that said, I think the Orcs do have genitals, but not for procreation.

Yeah, Saruman's orcs are artificially created somehow, but it's never said how Sauron's orcs procreate. The implication seems to be that Saruman has found a new way to create orcs, and it's not something Sauron has done before. IIRC, in Silmarillion it's established that orcs were originally elves that Morgoth corrupted, but it doesn't seem like there enough elves left in Middle-Earth for all the orcs to have that origin, and it's not even clear whether Sauron can corrupt them like his master did. So it seems they must breed in one way or another. And even interbreeding between orcs and humans is a thing, that doesn't explain the seeming lack of female orcs... Are all biologically born orcs male, somehow?

Female orcs stay in the hovel and bring up the kiddie orcs, while the big bad orc-husbands go out and get themselves killed for Sauron. That's why you don't see them. Tolkien was pretty old-school, don't forget. Maybe there's an orc middle-class of teachers, scribes etc that run it all from back in "the east" and are resented by the arrow fodder orcs that have to go out to Mordor or wherever.

rejected story orcs

how does this happen irl also

When a Saruman and a mud puddle love each other very much

this doesn't happen irl because orcs don't exist u oaf

is that a reference to something itt cause i haven't bothered reading it

I’ve never read it but I bet The Last Ringbearer has a take on this.

that sounds kinda great tbh

It’s free to read online in English if you google!

Grudging respect for the language and anti-capitalism/industrialism, but Tolkien is such a racist colonialist anti-miscegenation mess.

royalist and sexist should probably be in there too.

idk, I think Eowyn killing the witch-king makes up for a lot on the gender front imo.

it's definitely the most "fuck YEAH" moment in the film adaptation (with extra castration imagery)

but there's no arguing about all the "swarthy" = evil language and the royal bloodline crap

Most Brit fantasy seems to do the true blood trope - see CS Lewis, JK Rowling and even Philip Pullman.

Moorcock otoh