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theVoiceofSauron
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Post Orcwives?
on: June 29, 2002 01:50
hmm...I think this may have come up before but it was never a whole thread so I thought I'd make one...I just saw FotR today for the 9th time and just to say that there has to be female Orcs, I definatly saw some today and if they weren't meant to be then pj screwed that up pretty bad...sheesh!...

also!...has anyone ever noticed that sometimes Lurtz has extreme feminin qualities...especially when he's about to put an arrow throught Boromir's head, he smiles like a flirty teen...what the? :dizzy:...and just the way he walks...it's like he's trying to be a fashion model...Haldir and Him/her would get along...Eighchy Mighchy!!!
elen.sil
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: June 29, 2002 07:25
Well, if you think about it, there could be orc wives, and there could not be. Because, orcs may need to reproduce or amybe Sauron does that by creating them or something? It's hard to say really.
And who's to say orcs arn't whatsitcalled... well, when they have no specific gender... they could be like that... *shrugs*
Elerrina
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: June 30, 2002 08:21
just to say that there has to be female Orcs, I definatly saw some today and if they weren't meant to be then pj screwed that up pretty bad...sheesh!... also!...has anyone ever noticed that sometimes Lurtz has extreme feminin qualities...especially when he's about to put an arrow throught Boromir's head, he smiles like a flirty teen...

It seems to me that Sauron and Saruman both "bred" orcs for the qualities they wanted; that would take females and the usual processes of animals multiplying. On the other hand (the) Lurtz or Lurtz's were born from the earth in some undisclosed process (which I would skip knowing about anyway ), we saw him being "born".

As far as Lurtz's smile when shooting Boromir, I would take it more as wolfish delight at being able to take poor Boromir out for good... face to face. :evil: :evil:
Nerwin_Artanis
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: June 30, 2002 08:29
Yup, there HAVE to be female orcs, as Tolkien plainly states that orcs reproduce after the fashion of all the children of Illuvitar.
So really, Saruman's little breeding Uruk's out of the earth thing in the movie shouldn't have been.
Happy_Hobbit
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: June 30, 2002 05:48
Oh I don't know about there being female Lurtz's for me there remains the possibility of them being hemaphrodite (as elen suggests)

The idea I have in the pits of my mind runs like this.

If they were hemaphrodites then they could breed at any time thus providing an endless supply of new lurtz's.

They could form the pools with body fluids like toads and frogs can ooze liquids.

They could then spawn in the pool and the fry would fight it out, the strongest growing to full maturity.

They would need no parental care.

They would start their life with killing and then continue in the same manner.

Only the strong would survive.



[Edited on 1/7/2002 by Happy_Hobbit]

[Edited on 1/7/2002 by Happy_Hobbit]
theVoiceofSauron
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: July 01, 2002 01:41
I'd like to interview an Orc, just to see what kind of fun, evil, cruel things they have on those black brains of thiers...hmm...I wonder...

I once read somewhere about how Humans are still basicly innocent, it's Orcs who create the bombs, and guns and weapons of mass destruction, even though we still use them...'twas the Orcs who created them...hmm...I wouldn't doubt it
Happy_Hobbit
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: July 01, 2002 04:47
Ah now then Orc are evil, yes indeed but their evil is of a basic sort methinks. Physical evil, rather than mental, they are the brutes of the world the thugs, they are the smashers, the thieves.

The Uruk Hai on the other hand have more intelligence, their brutality would I think be more like the drug pushers and torturers, they would invent weapons to bring pain and dispair, theirs are the bombs and mines.

The most truely evil are the most intelligent like Saruman and Sauron, their evil is the most trecherous, able to bend peoples minds, religious fanatics for example, who can rouse basically good people to a killing frenzy. Yet stand in the light without seemingly having blood on their hands.

[Edited on 1/7/2002 by Happy_Hobbit]
SomeStranger
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: July 01, 2002 07:15
Wonderful topic!

Well, I'm beginning to have all kinds of correlations to life with orks and all. But about orks, I'd like to know what their mentality was luke - they were evil more because of instinct, than of intellegent beliefs, methinks. Did the elven soul remain when they were hanged, or did it dissaqpear. I'd like to imagine that orcs have a soul, that has been tortured and twisted - and that's wrhere the evil lies. Ugh, this is confusing. :cry:
PotbellyHairyfoot
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 24, 2002 04:59
Maybe , much like the female dwarves, the orcwives looked so much like the male orcs that they were diificult to tell from them.
It seems clear that orcs could breed on their own as the Misty Mountain orcs and the Moria orcs seemed kind of removed from the direct influence of mordor yet kept their populations up.
Or orcwive could have been just kept at home " barefoot and pregnant ' to keep the population strong as orcs seemed to be killed often by both their enemies and their associates and would need a high reproductive rate.
PervyOrcFancier
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 24, 2002 06:45
Orcs would have a high death rate, since all the orcs wander about in armies getting killed..((poor things)) so I would imagine that there is infact Orc females: probally not as feminin as some races, but they probally exist..
I also imagine most orcs to look the same when you compare both genders, female might be smaller...but alot of them have similar faces....((I too have also noticed in FotR that some of the orcs did look like women, i'm not surprized))

and it is written that orcs do reproduce in the same fashion as the 'children of illuvatar'.

and there are many places where Orcs dwell: like mordor or the MistyMountains..it depends alot on where they live and what they do...
Orcs do kill and eat eachother, and constantly have feuds....and being killed by elves and humans and other enemies wouldnt help either: so they would have a high reproductive rate.



I bet Orc children are absolutely adorible!!
BelleBayard
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 24, 2002 09:53
I don't know whether Tolkien addressed it actually or not. However, if you're talking about the movies, the people chosen to play the orcs were both male and female. Now as to question of how they bred... I suppose it could go any number of ways. Could be the hermaphrodite thing (a little of both sexes) although those usually tend to be sterile naturally. Or they could do the amphibian thing (hence the mud pit sequence). Or they could reproduce the usual bipedal way.

As for their intelligence, I must agree that the regular orcs tended to be more the brutish, physical sort, while the Uruk-Hai were more intelligent. Correlations to people in this world are altogether too apt and sometimes scary.

Orcs = thugs, muggers, rapists, strong arms for gangsters, the unwashed violent

Uruk-Hai = drug and weapon smugglers, black marketeers, pirates (yes, we still have them), terrorists

Saruman/Sauron = Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein (any power hungry leader who cares more for his power grid than those who follow him)

So are there orcwives? Another unanswerable question other than speculation.



[Edited on 8/24/2002 by BelleBayard]
PervyOrcFancier
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 24, 2002 11:08
the movie is incorrect about the Uruk-hai emerging from mud pods in the caverns of isengard.
Spidey
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 24, 2002 08:38
Yeah when Lurtz was going for the final arrow,he did some sorta hand gesture and it seemed very queer but you gotta remember they're orcs not humans,so we think they're strange and they think we're strange.
Scothia
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 26, 2002 09:17
The very un-Tolkienly portrayal of Uruk-Hai being spawned from the mud in the film reminded me of the story in the Book of Genesis in the Bible, where God makes man out of the earth. Perhaps PJ was going for a kind of perversion of this, having Saruman use a similar device for his most unholy creation.
PervyOrcFancier
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 27, 2002 07:37
I wouldn't know, I have never read the bible, and I dont intend to.

and I think PJ either wanted to make the birth or 'un-earthing' of the uruk-hai more visually interesting...((to make them seem unatural and evil)) or he didn't want to film Orcs actually *giving* birth to them...which IS more visually interesting...

atleast to me...
PotbellyHairyfoot
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 29, 2002 11:29
I think i've got the orcwives thing figured out. Orcwives look really great in the dark and men start to find them attractive. However in the light they revert to there normal selves - much like the affect on the princess in "Shrek".
i know from my youth when i used to drink that I often would meet beautiful elf ladies in bars towards last call and in the mornings I often found myself accompanying an orc. ( no sexism here - that same thing happens to females- they meet an elf-lord at last call and he turns into an orc at sunup)
PervyOrcFancier
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 29, 2002 11:41
I would enjoy being accompanied by an orc-man ~_^
BondageOrc
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: August 29, 2002 11:46
The very un-Tolkienly portrayal of Uruk-Hai being spawned from the mud in the film reminded me of the story in the Book of Genesis in the Bible, where God makes man out of the earth. Perhaps PJ was going for a kind of perversion of this, having Saruman use a similar device for his most unholy creation.


Huh...interesting. I think LOTR contains aspects of Christian/religious symbolism, so perhaps PJ was expanding on it. So it makes sense that he would have Saruman, in essence, playing God...
PotbellyHairyfoot
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 19, 2002 03:53
In reality- the existence or non-existence of orcwives is rather peripheral to the film.-
It is shown that Uruk-Hai were matured in a muddy artificial womb but that says nothing about where or how they were conceived or how the other races of orcs keep their numbers up.
PervyOrcFancier
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 21, 2002 05:06
yes, they really did not give us any information on how they were conceived..
personally, I think it was impossible.. how can any being be grown from the ground like somesort of maggot? was it a seed? was it placed there for magical reasons?

..really makes you wonder..
Rivka
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 21, 2002 05:41
I seem to recall that in the books, the Urak-hai were just another race of Orcs from farther East that had sprung up over the past few centuries. PJ's little mud-men routine was just bizarre -- I guess he did it to show how evil Saruman was.

I wonder...could the different breeds of Orc reproduce with each other?
"We have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 22, 2002 12:52
perhaps like dogs- you could get mongral breeds of orc!

i think PJ did the whole mud man thing to 1. keep things PG
2. keep the timescale- imagine having baby orcs, it would mean that they had to grow before they could be an army and by the time that happened the ring would have already been at mount doom- using PJ's timescale

PervyOrcFancier
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 22, 2002 04:35
keep things PG


aww... I wanted to see the Orcs give birth! (ok, not up close.. but atleast somewhere.. or the mention of it..)

*facefaults* PJ's timescale is way to quick, if only it was more like the book.. it would have made alot more sense with a slower timescale
truebizotic
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 23, 2002 03:51
that's an interesting thought.....orc mutts! Lurtz seemed more of a sinister sadist than a flirty orc.....and I don't even want to THINK about how orcs reproduce......all PJ really tells us in the movie is that saruman crossbred orcs and goblinmen? to form the uruk-hai. And that lurtz birth scene took 10 HOURS of makeup...
BoromirsBabe
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 23, 2002 06:55
LOL! I couldn't stop laughing while reading this...hahahA HA!
Welp, I think the whole "mud men" thing was wierd. I guess I can say is, it wasn't boring...thought provoking stuff...heh
Salmakia
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: January 22, 2003 10:31
Tolkien made it very clear in The Silmarillion, orcs multiplied after the manner of the children of Ilúvatar, and we know the children of Ilúvatar are no hermaphodites.
Also, in the Hobbit there is Bolg _son of_ Azog, and Gollum had just eaten a goblin imp before he met Bilbo.

So there are female-orcs in the books, the movie is another matter. But even if we do see Lurtz coming out of mud, it didn't have to be the way they breed (and uh, how could it be?) Saruman has crossed orcs with men and floating the results in some kid of magical mud is just some form of finishing them.

[Edited on 23/1/2003 by Salmakia]

[Edited on 25/1/2003 by Salmakia]
Lollypop
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: January 22, 2003 11:16
I seem to recall that in the books, the Urak-hai were just another race of Orcs from farther East that had sprung up over the past few centuries. PJ's little mud-men routine was just bizarre -- I guess he did it to show how evil Saruman was.

I wonder...could the different breeds of Orc reproduce with each other?


I thought Uruk-Hai was more like a military rank - or maybe a caste - than an actual race. If I remember correctly, Uruks were the warrior orcs... and at the bottom of the caste system were the weakest orcs, snaga or slaves.

But I'm no orc-expert; those who know more, I'd love to get some extra information!
theniece
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: October 07, 2003 12:17
Orcs would have a high death rate, since all the orcs wander about in armies getting killed


Yeah, I would agree to that. But then there would definitely have to be A LOT of females to reproduce at the same rate..
And if they reproduce any other way, just maybe Saruman found a way, it would probably sound more realistic. I mean, how did he manage to have so many Uruk-hai's so quickly??
Well, female orcs dont sound wrong though.
Minyaana
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: November 20, 2003 09:05
Do you realy think?

If orcs were elven, tortured in a hiduous cruelty, like it realy was... then I don't think these creatures are searching for any pleasure in their lives. They're broken to the bone inside and are only searching for killing and destroying.

to make baby-orcs these creatures must have sex, and that's a thing people do for emotional reasons, orcs don't have such emotions (I'm not saying they dont have emotions, but not emotions like these!!!)
Legolin
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: November 26, 2003 05:19
to make baby-orcs these creatures must have sex, and that's a thing people do for emotional reasons, orcs don't have such emotions (I'm not saying they dont have emotions, but not emotions like these!!!)


In response to this I would have to say the sex is not only for emotional use as humans, and we elves do it. It is for the continuation of the species, therefore mindless orcs could be ordered to reproduce with no real desire... who would be attracted to an orc anyway?

My take on the whole mud pit sence was that is was reminisent of the Sabbt ritual in the Vampire rpg. Let me explain, a normal happy-go-lucky vampire was buried in a pit of mud and left there, he either died or clawed his way six feet up. When he emerged all vestige of humanity was gone and he was nothing more than one angry bad dude.

Let's tie that into Saruman's pit. Let's say that orcs when born, spawned, whatever... have some vestige of elf left in them or at least some sense of good, for while appearances can be passed on, no amount of torture can change the internal nature of an offspring.

The young orcs are then taken to the pit, buried, and left, the weak die and the strong claw their way out... mindless killing machines. Listen closely during the scene where Lurtz emerges, you can hear the most pathetic wimpering and cries... obviously this pit is not a fun place to be.
mallow
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: November 27, 2003 10:42
I like the idea of Saruman playing God and creating the Uruks it might not be in the books but it is a good way to show how evil Saruman has become bringing something so evil into creation, its good for the films to get that across.

And i think the orc wives are open to interpretation maybe even tolkein was unsure of how they reproduce at such a rate, it is one of lifes great mysteries, i guess we will have to be content with not knowing, altho it does make a very interesting topic of conversation
Eowyn22
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: March 17, 2004 02:58
First of all,Orcs were created from Elves.Many of them were possibly made from she-elves.

Second of all, I think Saruman wasn't really "breeding" uruk-hai.I think he was shaping them until he got what he wanted.

And about Lurtz's smile,it was more of a "Haha you're dead!" smile,like this --> :evil:.
ladylirenel
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: March 17, 2004 04:48
Interesting topic. I never really thought about it much, though it did come to my mind from time to time. I have my own little "theory"about orcs became orcs from elves, because it never made sense to me how d female elves could become female orcs and still genetically have little orc babies instead of little elf babies. Actually, it was more me rambling on really late at night (early in the morning) having had way too much sugar. Here's the link, hope it works since I've never done that before. http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1529634
Casterino
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: March 19, 2004 01:28
Interesting and a very ammusing theory ladylirenel!
If I may quote a bit;

Morgoth was a genetic engineer! He took an elf, used advanced technology, or "magic", to rearrange the genetic code of the elves.

It's a really good assumption I think. Assuming that every living thing in Middle Earth and Valinor has a scientific founding (whether the elves, wizards, majar etc call in DNA or not it still exists because of everything is living and therefore must have it) and that magic in its basic form is the corruption and manipulation of the elements and nature itself, then Morgoth would simply have used advanced magic to restructure the DNA of the elves, in an attempt to make them evil.

Now, if we assume the elves are perfection, then corrupting them through their minds to make them evil may and most probably would have corrupted the physical DNA transforming them into the twisted creatures they are now...the orcs, because you can't perfect perfection, you'll probably just ruin it...and going back to the subject of female orcs, perhaps he was able to manipulate the chronosoms (I know I've spelt it wrong) of the elves he corrupted doing away with the need to have female and male orcs and at the same time making them hermaphrodites. I'm not a scientist, but my fiancee is and I've heard her ramble on enough about science to know the male chronosom has just one bit missing that makes it different to the female (or maybe it's the other way round)...

...but what I'm saying is if with powerful magic Morgoth could corrupt the elves on every genetic level (intentionally or not), then who's to say he did away with the physical need to sexual reproduce...or made them able to assexually reproduce on their own (like flowers do)...and that's why there's no female orcs specifically because orcs are both male and female.

...of course it could be that he corrputed the elves so much that the female ones look as ugly and disfigured as the male ones and that's why we don't know if they exist because we can't tell the difference...and there's a lot of female creatures, insetcs etc (and think of Ungoliant and Shelob in Middle Earth) that are more vicious then their male species...and in that case we may have seen hundreds in the LOTR films...just take a look at the most vicious in battle

(By the way I don't mean that to sound sexist in any way!)


[Edited on 19/3/2004 by Casterino]
cirdaneth
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Post RE: Orcwives?
on: March 05, 2007 12:55
I think Casterino has made a lot of good points here.

Another possibility is that because elves maintain their physical being (hroa) by an act of will and memory by the spirit (faea) Morgoth could have corrupted their memories of what they should be so that their bodies and behaviour changed beyond all recognition. He might also have chemically corrupted mortals into goblins. Mandos would have one heck of a job healing and "decontaminating" the souls of such creatures when they were slain. Remember too that Morgoth fed them on the flesh of their own kind.

As for the females. I have always thought that they were simply kept like herds of cows, on orc-baby farms. The weak, the infertile and surplus girl babies would probably be eaten. Utter abomination.
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