|
Aule created the dwarves, which gives him the best track record. 
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 20:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 10:44 |
|
|
euphronius posted:Galadriel could not wear her ring when Sauron had the One.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 20:46
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I believe the Noldor had been able to kill Balrogs through force of arms at times, Galadriel could totally have made Sauron eat the mat.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 20:53
|
|
|
Oracle posted:Yeah she could've taken him but not without risking putting herself up in his place because she'd have had to actively use her ring to do it. Passive use of the rings (e.g. keeping Lorien ageless) doesn't seem to trigger the 'Sauron gonna get you' condition but active use...
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 20:55
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I believe the Noldor had been able to kill Balrogs through force of arms at times, Galadriel could totally have made Sauron eat the mat. The Noldor in the third age are quite diminished. If you remember men ( exiled from Numenor though) and Noldor beat in combat Sauron with the Ring !!!! at the end of the second age. They did not have that power any more though.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 20:58
|
|
|
The whole point of the one ring was to control all other rings. Even though Sauron didn't make the Three, Celebrimbor made them with Saurons ideas and techniques. Sauron with the One would have overwhelmed Galadriel if she tried to use her Ring.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:01
|
|
|
euphronius posted:The whole point of the one ring was to control all other rings. Even though Sauron didn't make the Three, Celebrimbor made them with Saurons ideas and techniques. Sauron with the One would have overwhelmed Galadriel if she tried to use her Ring.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:06
|
|
|
Two things One: Huan was a Good Dog. (And also a Maia) Two: Sauron grew in power levels when Melkor was banished imho. I don't have a Jrrt cite for that tho.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:15
|
|
|
Lord Hydronium posted:Saruman was also one of Aule's. That guy did not have a good track record. He really doesn't, he almost got in serious trouble for the dwarves. Aule's problem is that he jumps in without thinking it through. And he's very proud. These things have translated to his Maiar apparently. And yes, balrogs are also corrupted Maiar. I think the deal is that they were not quite as powerful as Sauron so they became demons instead.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:42
|
|
|
HIJK posted:He really doesn't, he almost got in serious trouble for the dwarves. Aule's problem is that he jumps in without thinking it through. And he's very proud. These things have translated to his Maiar apparently. There also seems to have been a certain element of choice involved -- like the Balrogs are Maiar who all chose a certain particular physical form/manifestation (designed for combat?) and invested their power into that form.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 21:57
|
|
|
Balrogs were Aüle's as well. That guy had a TERRIBLE track record. I think the only other Maiar that are noted to have gone over to the dark side was Osse, and that was only temporary.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2015 23:47
|
|
|
Jewcoon posted:Balrogs were Aüle's as well. That guy had a TERRIBLE track record. I think the only other Maiar that are noted to have gone over to the dark side was Osse, and that was only temporary. Ungolient and maybe the first orcs. Probably not the orcs no one knows
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 01:24
|
|
|
Saruman was evil at the end too.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 01:26
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Two things Three: JRRT was pretty transparently a dog person, if Lost Tales is anything to go by.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 01:53
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Ungolient and maybe the first orcs. Probably not the orcs no one knows Fair enough. Ungoliant wasn't associated with a Vala though.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 02:24
|
|
|
Ungoliant comes from outside Middle Earth and was pure evil from the start.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 03:16
|
|
|
I thought pretty much all the vampires and balrogs and other stuff briefly mentioned are Maiar so there would have been hundreds or more originally.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 06:10
|
|
|
Lord Hydronium posted:Saruman was also one of Aule's. That guy did not have a good track record. Even down to the Miller.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 13:17
|
|
|
Runcible Cat posted:Like I've said before, Tolkien really didn't trust techie/mechanically minded types. What makes that funny was the fact that he was a signals officer. Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 14:08 on May 11, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 14:04
|
|
|
Hogge Wild posted:What makes that funny was the fact that he was a signals officer. And why he made a career out of that oh wait
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2015 18:34
|
|
|
Watching the second hobbit for the first time and it's a pretty decent movie if you take out everything related to elves That they made another entire movie about the battle of five armies is nuts And dwarves really don't believe in handrails do they
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2015 01:07
|
|
|
Cutting corners on safety features is consistent with the dwarves getting undone by their own greed. On the macro side there's your city being ruined by a dragon or balrog, on the micro side there's falling to your death because it was cheaper not to put up handrails. 
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2015 07:54
|
|
|
Speaking of falling to your death, I can't decide if Gollum prat-falling with The Ring into Mount Doom is dumb, brilliant or hilarious. Since Sauron was espying the whole thing, I like to think he reacted the same way Richard Sherman did to the interception at the end of the Superbowl.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2015 15:11
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:Speaking of falling to your death, I can't decide if Gollum prat-falling with The Ring into Mount Doom is dumb, brilliant or hilarious. Thank you for the mental image. That's totally how I'll imagine it from now on too.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2015 15:56
|
|
Oracle posted:Yeah she could've taken him but not without risking putting herself up in his place because she'd have had to actively use her ring to do it. Passive use of the rings (e.g. keeping Lorien ageless) doesn't seem to trigger the 'Sauron gonna get you' condition but active use... Galadriel could, going by Tolkien's later thoughts on her, have wiped the floor with Sauron in a duel, as she was a greater warrior than Feanor and his equal in everything else except technology. But Tolkien's world isn't one where one-man or one-woman armies can happen. She would have to have an army that could go through all his orcs and wraiths and trolls and worse things (she only sings down Dol Guldur after Sauron dies and his servants are freed from his psychic domination), and that just doesn't exist in western Middle-Earth by the time he reappears. Assembling one would, in the end, require psychic domination through the One (or the Nine). Which would drat her completely and allow her imperialistic urges to shine through. Nenya doesn't appear to have any real offensive use, but its power probably underlies Lothlorien's cloaks and defenses. The issue with using the One is not that it magically corrupts you into becoming a tyrant. What it does is form a compulsion in your mind to hold onto it, and inform you of its power when it's fully active. The corruption comes from its passive ability to draw the powers of evil (this is speculation but fairly likely given texts like Disaster of the Gladden Fields) and from the knowledge that you could use its power to noble ends. Sam and Faramir manage to avoid corruption by refusing to do so. Isildur also refused it, but too late to save himself (arguably the same thing is repeated by his distant nephew Boromir). Frodo's failure comes when he uses the Ring to enslave Gollum, especially the second time he does so. Bombadil, according to Tolkien, has a purely scientific mind that has no interest in power and so the Ring can't even tempt him. Gandalf lays out why he can't be trusted with the ring in two separate passages, one indirectly, and Galadriel's exact reasoning is laid out in Unfinished Tales and the material published in HOME XII. I think that basically covers everyone besides Saruman, whose motivations beyond the ones he lays out are fairly difficult to discern.
|
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2015 05:07
|
|
|
My understanding of Saruman's motives in coveting the ring is that he is closest to the enemy in method of thought. That, I think, is the ordering of things into strict hierarchy and clever interactions of devices/processes in perfect order and symmetry. Which is what the one ring does, "One ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them." So, Saruman's motivation is probably exactly what Sauron (and Morgoths) were. The Earth was made imperfectly and they wish to order it and 're-create it' according to their understanding.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2015 13:22
|
|
|
Here's the best way to show LOTR: a tv series that's almost an anthology. As in, you'd have an episode showing the progression of the main characters once every three episodes or so, but in between you'd show all the things that were happening on the fringes, in self contained hour-long stories. The destruction of the Ring happens and then there's all these explosions, but next episode is just a very subdued standalone hour about a viewpoint slave toiling in the fields of Nurn, showing his journey from capture to eventual freedom after Sauron's destruction. A series that paints a very large picture of Middle-Earth very slowly, is what I'm trying to say.
|
|
#
?
May 14, 2015 08:44
|
|
|
That only works if the side episodes keep in step with the overall arc of the story - if they don't all climax at the same time it's counterproductive. The example you gave is a recipe for audience whiplash. Why do I care about this guy at all? His stakes are nonexistent - either he dies or fails or whatever, in which case I don't care because I just met him (and way more important things are happening that I'm being kept from), or he survives and is freed by events totally outside his control (boring), which I already knew would happen. Yawn. It would make slightly more sense to intercut all these stories together, so the stakes/tension can rise somewhat together, and then pay off all at once. That basically describes the novels/films as they are. Adding so many NPC stories that their collective screentime is 2x that of the people moving the plot forward doesn't seem like the best idea, but if you were determined to make a thirty hour series or something I guess that'd be one way to do it. edit: The guy-in-a-field idea for a story isn't terrible on its own, but it's like a random Star Wars EU novel about Boba Fett or something. Fine on its own, as it tangentially intersects the "main" story. Perhaps even interesting and good. But that's because it's on its own, you don't consume it while the Death Star trench run is paused in the background. Prolonged Panorama fucked around with this message at 05:48 on May 15, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 15, 2015 05:41
|
|
|
I'm in the home stretch of my re-read. I've discovered there are parts that I flat out mis-remember, and not because of the movie either. One question I've had is that it says that the rebuild gate to Minas Trinith was inlaid with mithril. But isn't Moria the only source of mithril in Middle Earth? So does that mean the dwarves go back to Moria again?  On a related note, did I read it wrong or do Galadriel and company go through Moria after parting from the returning Hobbits? It was my impression that Moria was right up there with Minas Morgul as locations still to stay the gently caress away from even in the Fourth Age.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2015 19:35
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:One question I've had is that it says that the rebuild gate to Minas Trinith was inlaid with mithril. But isn't Moria the only source of mithril in Middle Earth? So does that mean the dwarves go back to Moria again? They could have easily have reserves of mithril, mined in ages past.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2015 19:49
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:On a related note, did I read it wrong or do Galadriel and company go through Moria after parting from the returning Hobbits? It was my impression that Moria was right up there with Minas Morgul as locations still to stay the gently caress away from even in the Fourth Age. No, they go over Caradhras. It is a bit confusing because the text says they're near Moria, and then immediately drops the names "Redhorn Gate" and "Dimrill Stair" rather than saying "Redhorn Pass" or "pass of Caradhras" - and of course the West-gate of Moria (an actual physical gate) was a memorable plot point and they spend some time in Moria going up and down stairs. quote:So they passed into Eregion, and at last a fair morning dawned, shimmering above gleaming mists; and looking from their camp on a low hill the travellers saw away in the east the Sun catching three peaks that thrust up into the sky through floating clouds: Caradhras, Celebdil, and Fanuidhol. They were near to the Gates of Moria.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2015 21:52
|
|
|
Nycticeius posted:They could have easily have reserves of mithril, mined in ages past.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2015 22:39
|
|
|
I am rereading Sil and Ungolient is def just a Maia. Also the scene when Feanor slams the door in Melkors face is probably my favorite ever.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2015 23:01
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I think they also say the dwarves finally move back into Moria, possibly on a permanent basis (which explains why we don't see Dwarves any more) because the balrog is dead and the goblins and orcs are in disarray. Given that Gandalf said that there are even worse things lurking in the chasm he fell into, I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't last either.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 22:34
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:Given that Gandalf said that there are even worse things lurking in the chasm he fell into, I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't last either. Those were far far below where the Dwarves were.
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 23:00
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:Given that Gandalf said that there are even worse things lurking in the chasm he fell into, I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't last either. Is this one of those ambiguous references or do we have a reasonable idea of what these 'worse' things were?
|
|
#
?
May 19, 2015 23:26
|
|
|
Nothing.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2015 01:03
|
|
|
I'd heard that Tolkien had actually read some Lovecraft, but that's probably total crap.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2015 02:00
|
|
|
Ape Gone Insane posted:Is this one of those ambiguous references or do we have a reasonable idea of what these 'worse' things were? He uses the word "nameless" and refuses to describe them. It's very Lovecraftian.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2015 03:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 10:44 |
|
|
He doesn't say they're worse he just says that there are nameless things in the depths of the earth that not even Sauron knows of. That means some algae or fish for all we know. Though he did say that they bored tunnels down there.
|
|
#
?
May 20, 2015 04:51
|
|