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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7265145" data-attributes="member: 4937">Your objections are a bit of a mixed bag.  In some cases I think you make a strong argument, and in some cases I think you make a very weak one.This is an example of a weak one.  The image of green skinned, pig-face, tusked orcs has to come from somewhere.  It's quite true that such an image is not true to the Tolkien text, but not being true to the Tolkien text is not sufficient to prove that the appearance - much less the idea of orcs - is not derived from Tolkien.  This might seem counter-intuitive, but derivation must include the possibility of misunderstandings and mistranslations.  To argue otherwise would be to argue that Dracula wasn't inspired by legends about vampires, because vampires weren't associated with bats but with moths.  But, if we have evidence a prominent author misunderstands a Romanian word for 'moth' as 'bat', then we can certainly - aside from any the other abundant evidence - conclude that Dracula is intended to be a vampire.  In this case, if we can show that people were illustrating Tolkien's orcs in a way that might be described as 'pig faced' or with 'green skin' prior to the appearance of the illustrations in D&D, or if we can show some miscommunication led to the artist thinking 'pig faced' was an appropriate illustration given the art direction, then it is still derived from Tolkien.  We just have to make note of this new innovation or evolution when it occurred as the source of this new idea not found in Tolkien.Again, you are actually right here, but for the wrong reasons.  The appearance of giant spiders in mythology, pulp fiction, or on the Leng plateau doesn't mean that the giant spiders in D&D weren't derived from Tolkien.   They still could have been, but - if they were specifically lifted from Tolkien - we'd expect that they would have certain features found in Tolkien that aren't found in other source material.   If for example, the original D&D giant spider could talk in its own language, hated to be called 'attercap', and had sleep inducing poison - then we could probably conclude quite safely that Tolkien had been the inspiration for D&D's giant spider.   However, as far as I know, it has none of these features, so its much more likely that the giant spider had a more generic source, or multiple sources, or some source other than Tolkien specifically.  Proving which one would go beyond the scope of this exercise.Yes, but in this case, we can conclude that Tolkien is the source of the Giant Eagle entry in the Monster Manual for exactly the same reasons we cannot assume that Tolkien is the source of the giant spider entry.   The Giant Eagle entry simply has too many features that are evocative of Tolkien, and is distinguished too much from other sorts of giant birds, to simply represent a generic giant bird of mythology.   Indeed, the very fact that Tolkien's eagles share features with Zeus's eagles, that are not found in D&D's eagles, but D&D's eagles share features with Tolkien's eagles that aren't features of Zeus's eagle is very strong evidence that D&D's eagles are lifted directly from Tolkien and not an older source.Yes, but that doesn't mean that D&D's worgs are lifted directly from Norse mythology.  If we observe features specific to D&D's worgs that are found in Tolkien but not found in the Norse mythology, then we should assume that the worgs were lifted from Tolkien.And so on and so forth.  Just because some example exists that is older than Tolkien does not mean we can rule out Tolkien as the source.</blockquote>

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