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

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.

THIS is Frankfort on the Main, November 1960. I am taking a look at the 9 p.m. performance in a little suburban cinema. The seats are hard and uncomfortable. My knees are crammed painfully against the wall of what the woman in the ticket office calls 'the V.I.P. Box'. From under the door cold gusts of mist blow into the hall. UGH! Those two lovers clamped together in the corner of my "box". They are devouring each other with the cannibalistic Salivation of mating frogs. And their moans! Ugh and Ugh again.

But I stay on.

On the screen is a thriller drama about the last war. It is all booming guns, marching steel helmets, Secret Service, and bombs. Yes, this is Frankfort, November 1960. And this, presumably, is what the German public wants. Or what the film producers think it wants.

The German Wehrmacht, it seems, was fighting two enemies during the last war, the allies and the Nazi Party. Brave young heroes from the Army, the Kriegsmarine, and the Luftwaffe, are constantly shooting it out with the Gestapo and the SS. It is just like listening to one of those speeches of old man Adenauer, when he is talking about the Eichmann affair. The Germans were all against Hitler-all except a small Nazi minority. The rest were victims of Hitler and Himmler, just like the Jews and the Poles.

http://www.seftondelmer.co.uk/1.htm

I am ashamed, but I actually checked wikipedia and apparently orcs do reproduce, there are probably female orcs off-screen, and there's some stuff about orc/human crossbreeding, but Tolkien thankfully didn't confirm how that works.

Didn't Sauron have some level of mind control or even direct control of those in his service? I seem to remember all of the orcs under his control kind of scattering and being generally useless after his destruction. So, mind control is a big one for the thread question, along with promises of money, power, etc.

I'm pretty sure the people screaming about "death panels" in the US right now are working for some sort of force for ungood or at least chaos, so it just goes to show that misinformation and passion about "alternative viewpoints" are a good rallying cause, too.

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

After having finished playing The Shadow of War, this question still bugs me, because all the orcs in Mordor you see in the game are without exception male, or at least male-presenting. Where do new orcs come from, canonically?

Dropped off by the storc, presumably.

Suspend disbelief, embrace sorcery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVgVB3qsySQ

in the LOTR films I think you see orcs being 'forged' in a way?

Have definitely never encountered that euphemism before.

xp, yeah Saruman's super-orcs are birthed out of weird rubbery mudsacs in the earth iirc. Lord only knows what Saruman did to make those though...

Evidently the LotR films did this to avoid some awkward conversations with children.

In Morgoth's Ring, Tolkien states that Saruman did interbreed orcs and men, resulting in "Man-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile." However, the relationship of the Uruk-hai, as well as half-orcs and "goblin-men", to these creatures is not made explicit.

Either there's a whole lot of raping going on, or a whole lot of interracial fetishes going on.

sauron has just straight up humans fighting for him also tho? and like they're "from the east" and in the movie look like a combination of a samurai and a bedouin. problematic

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