musingmollusk:

This is your friendly reminder that in the original Lord of the Rings books the forces of Sauron were not the colonialist caricatures of indigenous societies that are portrayed in every single piece of media based on the books, but rather symbolized the effect of unchecked industrialization on war.

Tolkien came up with a lot of his ideas while he was fighting in World War I. Orcs aren’t barbarians with necklaces made from teeth and badly made spears. Orcs are barbed wire and the sound of a machine gun. Orcs are the idea of crouching in a muddy trench knowing that outside there are creations you can only begin to imagine that are coming freshly-made from an assembly line with the sole purpose of trying to kill you.