Funny enough - the same friend of mine who originally recommended Pratchett's books to me years ago has just recently recommended Sanderson :)

They were created by Morgoth, but how and from why was in flux for a long time, and Tolkien died before he really settled on the "right" version of it. The version with tortured and transformed elves is the one kept in the published Silmarillion because it was the latest one, and even so it's there with a caveat "some say that..."

Tolkien was profoundly opposed to and disgusted with racism and other such nazi notions, which is why he had major problem with settling on the "right" nature for the disposable yet necessary cannon fodder for the Big Evil of his legendarium. At some points I think there's even been hints of almost sci-fi like machines or robots. The descriptions of dragons in the early version of the fall on Gondolin certainly suggest machines. The "tranformed elves" is probably the best he came up with for orcs, since it doesn't make them a separate race all evil by nature. And dragons... well, dragons are just too cool the way they are to mess with it :D

No.way. The same is true for me! Well, if have to be honest then there's a chance that in my case he was the 2nd person to recommend me Pratchett, but I can't remember for sure. Not sure what that says about Sanderson's work :)

That's very interesting. I wonder if his struggle was really for those reasons? Perhaps it was more philosophical instead? I only wonder because: I don't have enough of an encyclopedic knowledge of fantasy themes, but it seems that a lot of (tangible) evil is just corrupted good in media. From Sageras, to the orcs, to Melkor, to many of the Chaos factions in Warhammer, to Darth Vader, and I don't know however many more. It's almost as if it strains belief to have something that is both tangible(eg human-like) and completely evil by nature. Ungoliant by contrast is something completely alien, as would be an army of soulless robots. Off the top of my head, the only completely "evil" things that I can think of (to the extent that no-one would feel any remorse in destroying it in its respective universe) are completely alien/impersonal constructs like the chaos demons in Warhammer, the C'tan, the Nexcrons, Ungoliant, xenomorphs, that horrible creature in Steven King's Desperation (ashamedly the only one of his books I've read), and Lovecraftian monsters.

The conundrum Tolkien found himself in starts to make sense then the more I think of it. He could've solved the issue of cannon fodder by making the enemy's foot soldiers a bunch of impersonal monsters, but then that might've made their threat too abstract in the books to be effective. Or perhaps not :\ Thinking of 40K a Tyranid invasion of Terra would be terrifying if someone were to write a good book on it. Perhaps specifically wanted a tangible evil?
Honestly, this just confuses me :P It's definitely an interesting thing to think about. Probably there is some interesting articles on this already that tries to address this in some depth.

and yes, dragons are cool :) Though one of his iirc is just absurdly massive. Forgot which one. Ancalagon according to google.

I think it must be at least partially that. He is on record stating, among other things

">in response to someone's assesment that Middle-earth corresponds spiritually to Nordic Europe<
Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories."

and
"I have in this War a burning private grudge – which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler [...] Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light"

so it's clear he cared about the issue a lot.

It just wouldn't work, as he surely realised early on - there's too much in the books that relies on the orcs, however despicable they are, having free will and personalities, often contrasting ones. There can be in-fighting, they can get drunk, be negligent etc. Most importantly, they have to be able to feel fear - the corrupting nature of fear, and of using fear as means of control, is one of the most important themes in Tolkien's books. It's crucial that Melkor's minions be not mindless automatons, but living beings enslaved through fear.

Yep, Ancalagon the Black. Though I think his size is usually exaggerated by artists. In the book, though surely he is huge, I don't think his size is ever exactly given, and the idea of him being so humongous comes from the line that describes him destroying mountains as he fell, but I think that could imply more about the force of the impact than his sheer size (he was fighting gods after all). Anyway, at that point everything needed to be dialed up to 11, the battle had to be big enough to destroy a continent and explain why the Valar would never again personally go to war in the mortal lands (sending disguised agents like the wizards instead).

I wonder, what will be next....wait...Chocolate will be banned.

As with most things there's clearly a lot more nuance involved and I'm already out of my depth :) It would expect at least based on those quotes that he was (to some extent) mirroring the europe situation but struggled with how evil to make the 'ground forces'. Which comes back to what you said initially.

If nothing else the depth to which these things can be explored/researched is weirdly comforting. Perhaps because it makes it easier to suspend disbelief when visiting the setting in books, films and games. Which I imagine will be the ultimate reason why the backlash will be strong if someone other than Tolkien (of course) messes with his tales in any fundamental way. In the same way that the prequel trilogy and Disney's continuation of SW faced backlash (even though in the former the change in direction was by the creator himself weirdly enough)

Jumping on the bandwagon now will net you free popularity points. Why not take advantage of that?

But really, games conforming to politics and devs listening to a bunch of crybabies on social media is getting kind of annoying lately.

Ah, I see, I see... so you're saying nature itself and the fabric of space and time is the true evil! *The Lawful Good Undead Lich grabs a skull staff in its skeletal hands and heads off on a crusade against the evil forces of nature and reality.*

Why are you guys calling them undead liches? It's not like there's another kind. It's as bad ad when people say "logical sense".

This message was brought to you by The Department of Redundancy Department.

My god did I just wake up in another dimension or something...

Oh my f***ing god are they f***ing serious?

Can the left please stop putting P.C politics in games FMFS!

This is an onion article right, Right?

Hoo, boy...

In [CURRENT YEAR], not a day goes by where I don't thank my maker for being old enough to have lived through a time when 1933-1945 was considered nazi. The goalposts have shifted since then and nowadays the 1970s are considered nazi.

Because "progress"...

You let that sink in.

Alas, not that unlikely. There are some who will claim that chocolate is an exemple of cultural appropriation, ergo baaad... Besides, given that xocolātl was associated with human sacrifices, cocoa trees are arguably evil and should be burned down in an effort to, err... bring peace on Earth.
By the way, do you really live in Kara-Tur? ;)

It's weird that they can't differentiate their fictional universe from reality. Really the problem is in the nomenclature they used being wrong to begin with. In most cases the available races aren't really interrelated races so much as being humanoid species. Saying an Orc and an Elf are different races of the same species seems like calling a Gorilla and a human different races of the same species.

That being said, I'm not super familiar with the lore behind the races in DnD.

Oh, it will come as even now down here all sorts of idiotic things are happening and that's just with the name changes to long known and established favourite food products.

What do i need to sink in? that my grandparents managed to survive being hold hostage in japanese camps during the 2d world war? That that whole freakin war is remembered as a posterboy for gender equality as well as race equality

don't ho me boy

and think a bit the next time