Orcs of New York

Harry Aspinwall, a Scottish actor living in Brooklyn, decided that he was tired of Human of New York’s human-centrism. So he created a Facebook page to celebrate an oft-derided subculture: Orcs of New York!

Aspinwall throws down a gauntlet on his page.

This project has been a labour of love, and it means the world to me that so many people have taken an interest and want to help raise awareness about a people so often maligned and misunderstood. For many years I’ve felt that orcish culture has a beauty that goes unappreciated and underrepresented in the mainstream media, even while orcish people make up an ever growing proportion of our city. It’s time they stood in the spotlight.

Aspinwall, like Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York, seems to have a knack for finding orcs who have their knobby claws on the pulse of life in the Big Apple. Or could it be that truly all orcs have complex universes within them, and they’re just waiting for a kind human with a camera to listen to their stories? Either way, he’s spotlighted one orc that needed to vent about a perennial topic: the gulf between children and their elders, who remember when times were harder:

This second-generation orc, like many children of immigrants, struggles with wanting a connection to his culture, and wanting to assimilate fully into a life in the United States.

And this orc actor thinks its time film and television looked beyond humans for their casting needs. After all, how will the next generation of orcs know that they can be anything they want to be, unless they have some good role models?

Pretty inspirational, right? But since we want to end on a really happy note, we love this orc who isn’t going to let the stressful pace of New York get him down!

You can find more information on Aspinwall’s project at Hypable, and be sure to check out more of Orcs of New York over on Facebook!