Fantasy Tropes/Cliches that Annoy You

[BRC]

First, as a writer, if my entire story takes place in a scale and scope that only exposes the characters to a single orcish culture out of many, and that particular orcish culture encourages its members to be brutal, merciless, domineering, etc, and take whatever they want from anyone who can't stop them, especially those non-orcs over there who are all weak and soft and inferior because they're not orcs (ironically, this is a racist orcish culture), then I do not have any reason or responsibility within that story to include some other orcs who are different. That's another story, somewhere else, and/or with a different scale and scope.

Second -- and this is where I turn some against me I'm sure -- a culture can be evil. There are evil cultures that encourage evil actions and produce evil people, in real life as much as in fiction.

I already adressed your second point, so I'll focus on the first.


I'll allow it to be acceptable within the context of a short story, but the more you present the world as fully realized without putting some ink towards contradicting the idea that some people (Orcs) are inheriently evil, the more culpable you are as the author.

Worldbuilding, especially as its done by D&D monster manuals, starts with a specific role (Orcish Raiders), and then builds the entirety of orcish culture and society around producing evil raiders. Orcs are a single-purpose monoculture built around producing acceptable targets for heroes to murder. They then present this to be the culture of all orcs in the world.



Also, something can be narratively consistent, perfectly logical, and still be bad writing.