Are Orcs the Heirs of Conan's Legacy?

Just browsed a shitload of Frazetta's work and it started to dawn on me...

Orcs seem like they are the heirs of Conan in popular fantasy. When I think of orcs in Warcraft, Half-Orcs in D&D, Pathfinder, etc. it made me realize that they fill the "cunning barbarian" trope that Conan established. Sure, you do occasionally have human barbarians in fantasy... but it seems like orcs are just more widespread. If you're playing 5e, Half-Orcs are THE race for barbarian.

If you play WoW, orcs have that classic Conan-inspired look that was pioneered by Frazetta. Blizzard even goes out of their way to get the best Frazetta-inspired artist on the market (Alex Horley) to draw their orcs. If you went up to your average Joe and asked him what he thought a typical barbarian in a typical fantasy world would look like, 9/10 times I'm sure he'd say a hulking, green orc with an axe in his hands.

What do you think? Am I completely off the mark here?

Also, if we could keep the grognard bitching to a minimum that'd be awesome. There are dozens of other threads you can bitch about "proper orcs" in. I just want to discuss the trend and the parallels between Conan.

I'll grant that the WC orcs in particular have the same broad noble savage concept as Conan . I think there are important differences though. Conan was a human, that makes him one of us. The Orcs and Half-Orcs you're referencing are, if not 'the other', then at least 'another'.

With orcs I think there's also always a suggestion of an essentially bestial side that you didn't really get with Conan. The Orcs in WC have demonic ties. Half-Orcs are just that - only half human, with full blood orcs being the good old 'always CE' killthugs that exist to be villains.

>Conan was a human, that makes him one of us.

I think you're putting too much emphasis on humanity.

Lots of people identify and relate with dwarves, elves, and even orcs/half-orcs, among other things. People don't really care as much about whether a character is human or not anymore.

Look at James Cameron's Avatar. The Na'vi weren't human and yet the world (our world/real life, that is) sympathized with them over the humans.

I just don't think people care as much about something having to be human anymore.

Sounds like otherkin-tier fantasizing to me. It doesn't really address the bestial side either.

>Sounds like otherkin-tier fantasizing to me.

How is pointing out real trends fantasizing?

Yes. You are off the mark and you need to read the Conan stories by R.E. Howard.

What am I wrong about, specifically?

Seconded.

Conan... is more complex than orc in modern fantasy, which all very derivative anyway. He was in some was REH's fantasy self, and then he was also very much a product of his time and its advances in the genre. You won't get the same racial attitudes in modern fantasy that you get in Conan. Nor will a mainstream company use the same "boyish treatment of women" -Moorcock, that he was known for. And there was, and here my love for Kull may be clouding my thinking, a certain mix of philosophy and violence... Conan wasn't "sick" like a lot of modern heroes (especially 90's heroes). He was closer to maturity than all of them, but not as close as he could have been.

And then you have the problem of derivative fantasy... even Moorcock said he can't tell what he created anymore. So much of it comes from the REH/HPL days and the 60's. We can't recapture the feelings they had, but we use the tropes, stringing them together to make stories that don't resonate with us, let alone with their inherent parts.

>sympathized with them over the humans.
Speak for yourself.

Most people who saw the movie did.

No. Orcs are monsters.

I know this is grognard bitching, but oh well.

>No. Orcs are monsters.

Not in all settings, user. In some settings, they are heroes/protagonists and fill the "Conan-esque barbarian people" niche.

In what settings? And don't say Warcraft, because Warcraft orcs spent the last expansion proving to everyone that they're a bunch of violent psychopaths naturally without any demonic influence.

That's Warcraft-orc-as-written-by-Kossak.

Not standard Warcraft Orcs.

>Orcs fuck shit up in Warcraft 1
>Orcs fuck shit up in Warcraft 2
>Orcs have a temporary time not fucking shit up in Warcraft 3
>Orcs get right back to fucking shit up in WoW
>Orcs chill a bit in BC
>Orcs actually chill the fuck out a little (ha) in WOTLK
>Orcs fuck shit up in Cata
>Orcs fuck a colossal amount of shit up in MoP
>Orcs fuck shit up in WoD

3/9 isn't a good track record for 'standard'.

>In some settings, they are heroes/protagonists and fill the "Conan-esque barbarian people" niche.

Then they are no longer Orcs.

Imaginary races which exist in fiction exist to fulfill certain archetypes. Divorced from these foundations, they cease to be meaningful, because it's their nature which defines them above anything else, such as what they are called or what they look like. "Orcs" are, at their central essence, intended to be a reflection of mankind; possessed of all the vices of men, but devoid of any of man's potential virtues*. This is what makes them particularly compelling, and why they have endured as a fantasy staple. Their real terror isn't in the weapons they wield, but that they are an embodiment of what all men can potentially become. Orcs envisioned as something else have no purpose.

So in Warcraft for instance, the Orcs are actually Klingons. They might be called Orcs, and be green, and look nothing like Klingons... but they're Klingons. As another example, when someone says "Oh, in this setting there are Elves, but they are nothing like Elves anywhere else, instead they do ______" ...then they are not Elves, and any similarities are meaningless superficialities.

This is exactly the answer you specifically stated you didn't want to hear, and I apologize.
*They're allowed to be funny, sometimes.

The Elder Scrolls?

The orcs are considered "less civilized," and looked down on by most other races but they're really not that different from anyone else on Tamriel and very easily fill the Conan-esque noble barbarian role.

No, he's really not.
Conan's very human-ness is contrasted both in writing and verbally by Howard himself to his friends in one of his many, many correspondences we have copies off.

Being restrained by these foundations is just as great a mistake.

The orcs of Warcraft are one of the better implementations, provided you look back into Warcraft and Warcraft 2.

When I say "you're putting too much emphasis on humanity," I'm not talking about Conan the character. It's not about Conan in this context. Yes, Conan is a human but not all heroes/protagonists have to be humans for the audience to relate to them and want to play as them.

It's not so much "Orcs have become Conan" so much as it is "Orcs have found a new place in popular fantasy. Where once they were generic enemies, now they fill the niche that Conan left: that of strong, gruff barbarian peoples.

You do still see humans filling this role, but more often than not humans seem to trend more towards civilization while orcs maintain that frontier lifestyle that one would expect among classical barbarians such as Howard's Cimmerians or the real life tribes of Germania and Gaul.

Take pic related, for example. On the left you have a classic Germanic "barbarian," in the middle you have Conan THE Barbarian, and on the right you have a popular image of an orc. (I just went to Google images, typed orc, and grabbed this picture. [This picture was the second result and the only reason I didn't use the first one was because it was too small.])

The point I'm trying to illustrate here is that popular fantasy's perception of an orc isn't Peter Jackson's, but rather Blizzard's. Blizzard has molded their orcs directly after Conan the Barbarian (as admitted by they themselves whether or not you agree is irrelevant) and so it leads me to the idea that Orcs have inherited Conan the Barbarian's legacy in popular fantasy.

Forgot my picture.

>Orcs are actually Klingons

Star Trek is just 'The Last Alliance of Men, Dwarves and Elves (now featuring iceball-living antmen) in space, anyway. Three of the four Federation founders fall directly into the trope, as do the Romulans (Dark Elves), Klingons (Orcs), Ferengi (Goblins), etc.

I don't know shit about Star Trek, who are the dwarves in this case?

Actually; if you did pay attention, It was proving that Draenor was a very fucked up place if you were not a Draenei and the Draenei were a bunch of holier than thou cunts.

>If you're playing 5e, Half-Orcs are THE race for barbarian.
Mountain dwarves are better

>I decide what archetype popular fantasy races occupy
>races can never change over time in public perception
Always evil orcs are a dying breed. Give up pretending otheriwse