Escaping the watchful Eye of Sauron is only one of many reasons to move to New York.
"Orcs of New York," a Facebook page parodying the popular photo blog "Humans of New York," presents the fictional stories of those Dark Lord henchmen that chose to leave the dusty, pitted plain of Gorgoroth for the skyscraper-dotted landscape of the city.
The page's author, filmmaker and actor Harry Aspinwall, takes the classic J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy trilogy "Lord of the Rings" as his source material, photoshopping Tolkien's characters into familiar city settings. (Hey, if director Peter Jackson can make $2.9 billion off the books' appeal at the box office, why shouldn't Aspinwall take advantage of it?)
The spin-off, launched late last month, has 5,000 likes so far, a tiny fraction of HONY's 15 million likes.
But the orcs of New York have the same concerns as most Big Apple transplants and their families:
"My kids never believe me when I tell them how different things were when I was their age. I was the only orc in my class," reads one tongue-cheek caption.
"I moved here a few years ago, to be an actor, like everyone else. When I was growing up you never saw orcish faces on billboards...The media never taught us to think that we're beautiful," reads another.
Of course, it wouldn't be a true slice of orc life in NYC without neighborhood name-checks.
"I was born and raised in the Bronx. I don't really feel much connection with Mordor. It's hard, my parents don't talk about it much," one orc says.
"I moved to Chelsea in the 90s...I didn't know anyone. For the first year, it was completely overwhelming...Then I started thinking about how I grew up in Gorgoroth under the flaming eye of Barad-Dur, and if I can get through that I can probably do just about anything."
