Are Orcs That Bad?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Then again, one of the main things I enjoy about Tolkien is his ability to create an illusion that this once happened, that his myths are a part of out own history here on earth, not just something he made up about Elves and Dragons. Completely righteous good guys fighting amoral irredeemable enemies is to me more unrealistic than magic, Elves and Dragons and therefore I have no real problem with the slaughter of Orcs (after all, as you said, it's them or you really).
And they are real nasty critters too, torturing for sport like Boro88said.

This is true. It would be a terribly boring read if we just had an uber-prig of an Aragorn killing Orcs. However, what I mean is not that they should be 100% Good Guys killing complete Bad Guys, but as davem suggested in his Fantasy thread, maybe seeing some of the gore involved in battle, and some of the fallout, would make these images of slaughter somehow more important.