Monday, August 13, 2018

Status 2018-08-13

I wrote about 600 words yesterday, and broke 71,000 words. Still behind schedule, but starting to catch up.

On an unrelated note, I was thinking about goblins recently. In The Hand of Tyr, they feature as a fairly basic monster and menace to civilized peoples, though they are not a great threat at this time. But historically, they were an existential threat to the early human empire of Shandollëa and the various colonies of Elefdar throughout the West.

In Tolkien's The Hobbit, they are one of the main groups of antagonists. And if I recall correctly, orcs are not mentioned in The Hobbit at all. There is a good reason for that: orcs are actually goblins. The word orc is Elvish (the Sindarin dialect), and was their name for the creatures that Men called goblins.

Does it matter? Not really, I just thought it was interesting. And if you prefer, as a reader, you can think of my goblins as orcs. Given the contemporary understanding of goblin (small, kinda of cute in a psychotic way, and only marginally dangerous) vs. orc (human-sized or slightly bigger, ferocious, very dangerous and cruel), it would be more accurate to imagine my goblins as orcs anyway.

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