Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Looks like dads not going to be happy with his son. That is a hard thing to do, throw away all your dreams like that. Shows more guts than just killing someone.

There of course is an evil option that doesn't involve killing her. Otherwise this orc will really look like a wimp especially given the drow propaganda that had started to appear at the school.

I'm enjoying this opportunity to see Ain more fleshed out!

Killing someone you don't know and in the heat of battle when they are trying to kill you is quite different to murdering a helpless friend. Even an Orc may baulk over the difference. Or at least a more sensitive Orc, some of the brutes would probably hack up anybody or anything.

The father may be annoyed as to him this is just another prisoner, and killing prisoners is an Orc tradition. We've seen plenty of Orcs and Drow killing each other so far without either side expressing regret or sympathy for the despatched.

This little story also depends on how you view Orcs. As people not too dissimilar to humans, or alien monsters. The Orcs of Tolkien or Warhammer would butcher a captive, even one they knew, without a moment's hesitation. Those creatures have no concept of friendship or empathy, and scarcely any regard for their own lives, let alone anyone else's.

[quote="hs5ias"]The Orcs of Tolkien or Warhammer would butcher a captive, even one they knew, without a moment's hesitation. Those creatures have no concept of friendship or empathy, and scarcely any regard for their own lives, let alone anyone else's.[/quote]

then I am very happy that YAFGC is NOT Tolken. That boy was wrong in the head, not to say he didn't write some darn good adventures, but The Great War knocked some crystals in that skull of his out of alignment.

Actually, if you read the real world into Tolkien, Orcs are the Wehrmacht, with the Uruk-Hai filling the role of the Waffen-SS.

Anyway, these are BK's orcs, and no others need apply.

Actually, orcs are chaotic evil. That means that killing prisoners should be pleasure for them (though, as I have stated in another thread, this isn't a way of becoming a warrior). The fact that Ain refuses to kill a member of enemy community (okay, he is not as aggressive as other orcs, but still chaotic and an orc) could mean either that drow propaganda was really successful or that there is a hidden, pretty important reason not to kill the specific person. Maybe she is a relative of Sittica, say, her mother?

Yeah... despite having made some clear gags about it early on in YAFGC, one shouldn't take the whole "D&D Alignment" thing too seriously in my stories. I'm writing stories about people and cultures, not game-stat adversaries.

Ain *was* indeed raised in a family and culture where he was taught that to kill was a joy and a duty and that a killer of others is the first best destiny of an Orc.

But he's been hanging out with NON-Orcs and has seen other points of view. Admittedly also somewhat evil ones, but others nontheless. He no longer sees Drow, Gnolls and Gelatinous Cubes as "Orc Enemies"[as he shouted as a kid] but as people. Friends.

Keep in mind also that Yapp's first appearance was when he was getting into trouble as school for being good. And being also charismatic, he's been having an effect on his best friends.

I learned first hand how your attitude towards a group can change when you actually start hanging out and befriending members of that group.

The funny thing is, sometimes you do hang out with members of the other group, love them as friends but still do not change your views. I have one or two friends who still consider homosexuality somehow wrong despite the fact that one third of our gang is either gay or bi, and they love these people gay and bi people dearly. They would not harm anyone of course but still the mindset was not erased by love or friendship.

The other funny thing is how many humans who found themselves in Ain's place in civil wars ended up plunging that blade/firing that bullet.

That's called situational conformity. Humans are really good at it, which is why we keep doing stupid stuff just because someone tells us to.

Humans are also "pack" animals. Being really on your own can suck - a lot. I like to think of myself as a free thinker, but if it meant suddenly having to learn to live a life completely separated from any sort of support system, I'd settle for feeling guilty about what I'd done later.

The "nice" think about the situation that Ain finds himself in is that it's got a decent chance of working out for him. Not 100%, but worth putting a couple of bucks on.

Personally, I would liked to have seen Ain take a different tack with this situation - I suspect that if he'd been clever about it, he could have managed to split the baby. (But he might manage it anyway -- we'll see what happens.)

Sometimes I can be dull witted. It didn't sink in the first time I saw it that the Drow female he's seeing himself killing in the second to last panel isn't the teacher, it's Sittica. I originally read it that he couldn't handle the idea of killing the teacher to get the accolades pictured above that panel. It's the whole path he's rejecting because it will lead him to turn on his friends. I could definitely see that from any one of the kids, evil aside.

Maybe there is a nice cave near Gren and Bob fit for a shared flat and soon filled with five outcasts?

I also haven't noticed that; but now I understand Ain's motivation. I don't think that killing the teacher would imminently lead to confrontation with his friends; after all, this isn't the first interracial conflict in the mountain and drow themselves usually don't hesitate too much when given a possibility to murder or torture a member of own race, even a former friend. But, apparently, Ain really thinks so, and his reaction is definitely noble in intents.
On the other hand, by sparing enemy lives just because of his personal friendship, he betrays his own race, because drow generally aren't too sentimental.

Defining anyone with the proper skin tone and ear shape as an "enemy" takes things a bit far, doesn't it?

Not to mention it violates one of the basic tenets of the strip, namely "people is people." Once you get into "they're all the same, and all must be destroyed," you're really walking away from that idea.

The same with the idea that Ain "betrays his own race" by sparing someone who hasn't done him any harm, and hasn't been shown to be a combatant. Orcs are nasty, brutish and (in some games) short, but that doesn't mean that it's an offense against Orcdom to refrain from blameful slaughter. Did Glon betray his Orcish half by not razing the village where they picked of Goria and Jone to the ground?