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He let him think he had escaped, essentially.
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Mar 24, 2015 23:29
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I just finished with The Two Towers, and the conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag (who are probably my favorite minor characters in the book) confirms that. I want to say that the final chapter of TTT is as incredible as I remember it being the first time I read it.
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Mar 24, 2015 23:50
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SirPhoebos posted:I just finished with The Two Towers, and the conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag (who are probably my favorite minor characters in the book) confirms that. Those are my favorite minor characters in The Two Towers as well, good taste. It's a reoccurring theme in Tolkien's works that evil attempts to manipulate and repurpose before it kills. Sauron <-> Saruman -> Radagast/The White Council Sauron -> Shelob Sauron/Shelob -> Gollum Gollum -> Frodo/Sam The Ring -> (Everyone sans Tom?)
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Mar 25, 2015 00:27
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Pong Daddy posted:You can go even farther back and ask who was Ungoliants mate? We don't even know where Ungoliant came from or what she was(Maia? Goldberry-like "spirit"?). She was able to intimidate Morgoth, though. What if Shelob wore the one ring. I read somewhere some post on some place said that as she wasn't sentient (whatever that really means, I guess) the ring would do nothing on her. I'm assuming Ungoliant could communicate and was sentient. so why not Shelob. Shelob with the one ring would be interesting.
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Mar 25, 2015 07:18
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Singing songs including the word "Attercop" immediately becomes punishable by death?
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Mar 25, 2015 11:28
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Shelob was sentient and also magical. Probably would have been a dark spider form lord.
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Mar 25, 2015 12:39
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euphronius posted:Shelob was sentient and also magical. Probably would have been a dark spider form lord.
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Mar 25, 2015 18:00
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Nessus posted:She didn't seem terribly clever or thoughtful Well, neither are most people.
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Mar 25, 2015 20:53
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Didn't MERPS have the "you trip on an imaginary turtle and are confused" fumble? That alone should make it all canon.
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Mar 25, 2015 21:52
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UoI posted:Well, neither are most people.
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Mar 25, 2015 21:55
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You should reread it. Her evil is intentional, magical and powerful and described so explicitly.
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Mar 26, 2015 01:58
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Nessus posted:She didn't seem terribly clever or thoughtful so I figure it would've been more like Ungoliant II: Daughter of Ungoliant: This Time It's Personal It's fairly consistent theme in Tolkien that evil is dumb and shortsighted. See: Sauron, Morgoth, Bill Ferny, etc.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:30
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No. Evil's main essential characteristic is the desire to control and create.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:49
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euphronius posted:No. Evil's main essential characteristic is the desire to control and create. Yes but also what heiermosntomsyalloy said is true.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:50
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Sauron isnt dumb or shortsighted at all. His downfall was that he could not conceive that Frodo wanted to destroy the Ring. AND HE WAS RIGHT. Frodo did not want to destroy the Ring in the end. It was dumb luck or the will of Illuvatar at the end.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:53
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Let me rephrase: dumb but in that they lack Faith, which operates as a cosmological law, because the author is Catholic.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:57
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I don't follow.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:00
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Morgoth, Sauron etc. all knowingly oppose the will of Eru. That's a bad move because Eru exists and all things redounding to his glory in the long run is a fundamental law of the universe. Sooner or later, Sauron would have fallen; Gollum was just the mechanism. So even if saury was right in the short term and Frodo couldn't destroy the ring, he was wrong in the long term because the ring would eventually be destroyed, sure as gravity. Aaarg my phone autocorrect s Frodo?.wtf Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 03:03
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Oh yeah I agree with that yeah. They were doomed to their doom.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:06
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Like I was interpreting your use of short sighted to be in the context of the lives of men, not like the scope of Arda.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:10
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euphronius posted:Like I was interpreting your use of short sighted to be in the context of the lives of men, not like the scope of Arda. Well yeah, but that's the timescale that beings like Sauron and Ungoliant and Morgoth etc would be thinking on if they weren't dumb :P
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Mar 26, 2015 03:21
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euphronius posted:Like I was interpreting your use of short sighted to be in the context of the lives of men, not like the scope of Arda. Well, Sauron assumed that they'd try to use the Ring against him, rather than hand it to a hobbit on a suicide mission, so he was still shortsighted in that regard. You could also make an argument that his whole shtick on Numenor was pretty shortsighted, depending on what you view his main goals to be.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:21
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Well he never thought someone would destroy the ring and he was right. If Gollum wasn't there to fall into the fire, Sauron wins. Also there was clever misdirection by Aragorn to use the unwitting Hobbit palantir reveal to their advantage. Sauron was never dumb. Shortsighted I guess in the sense that evil cannot win in a universe with "god".
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Mar 26, 2015 03:25
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I would say that both dark lords lacked in wisdom what they had in raw intellect, yes. I always wondered what they thought their end game with Eru was - they both knew the true measure of their innate power to that of Eru surely? Side note - rereading the Moria chapters today and several thoughts came into my mind. 1) When Gandalf confronts the Balrog and reveals that he is a "...servant of the secret fire, wielder of the flame of Anor." are these both references to Eru's light from which all creation comes, or is the second a reference to his hidden ring of fire? If the ring, why on earth would he tell the Balrog he has it? 2) Anyone care to settle the size dispute of the Balrog? I have heard it said that he was not much larger than a man but it is described as "man shaped, but greater" so I have always imagined it similar to what Jackson envisioned.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:33
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2) probably about 12 feet tall. NO WINGS. 1) He is identifying himself as a servant and paladin of Valinor and Illuvatar, Anor being a poetic name for Valinor, secret flame being a reference to the power of creation. Or he is saying straight out he has a ring of power. It is ambiguous.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:37
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Thunder Moose posted:I would say that both dark lords lacked in wisdom what they had in raw intellect, yes. I always wondered what they thought their end game with Eru was - they both knew the true measure of their innate power to that of Eru surely? The first question, yeah, I think Gandalf is referring to the Secret Fire of Eru, i.e., the primal divine spark. "Anor" is the sun, so the Flame of the Sun would be the Light of the Sun, i.e., the Light of the Trees, the divine light of the Valar. Gandalf is saying he is a servant of God and a wielder of the power of the Angels. Udun is Morgoth's fortress in the first age, I think? So the Balrog weilds flame of a kind too, but the wrong kind. Second question is probably the most arguable and debatable question in all of Tolkiana and I've gone back and forth. Right now I think the Balrog himself was man-sized, so not like Jackson's balrog at all, but surrounded by an aura of shadow and flame that stretched out winglike to huge size, sortof like a William Blake engraving where the central figure is just surrounded by HUGE AURA and the aura is so present as to be visible and corporeal. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 03:38
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In the versions of the fall of Gondolin, where there are like 100s of Balrogs, they are described as being like twice as big as an elf. And of course a balrog does not have wings and cannot fly and PJ is dumb and fat.
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Mar 26, 2015 03:44
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euphronius posted:Well he never thought someone would destroy the ring and he was right. Eh, I don't want to turn this into a boring quotefest, but Tolkien specifically says "in that situation" because Sam could have tossed the Ring in if he had had it and with nothing else changed. So could Faramir. The issue is that Frodo used the Ring to force Gollum to submit, which is why he wasn't able to do it- he refused to reject the Ring completely. Of course, in order for Sam to get to the point of having the Ring in his hand at Orodruin, he would have had to do or experience things that would have broken his ability to resist it, and the same for Faramir. Sauron is shortsighted in that unless his only goal in going to Numenor was to troll the Valar, he hosed up really bad there. Granted, you could argue that by choosing the path of dominion rather than service he condemned himself to increasingly evil acts, and you could even suggest that as late as the making of the lesser rings he hadn't completed his fall. It's an interesting interpretation, but not one you're likely to see too much of. Hieronymous Alloy posted:The first question, yeah, I think Gandalf is referring to the Secret Fire of Eru, i.e., the primal divine spark. "Anor" is the sun, so the Flame of the Sun would be the Light of the Sun, i.e., the Light of the Trees, the divine light of the Valar. Gandalf is saying he is a servant of God and a wielder of the power of the Angels. Udun is Morgoth's fortress in the first age, I think? So the Balrog weilds flame of a kind too, but the wrong kind. Udun is "hell" according to the map, and Sindarin dictionaries offer nothing but the possibility it means "evil-west". If we go by the Encyclopedia of Arda's claim that it's the Sindarin form of Q Utumno, Q dictionaries tell us that tumna means "deep, low-lying" and u- is a negative prefix. So I guess it means "evil deep", but the Q dictionaries claim that Angamandu "Iron-prison" is the translation of English "hell". Of course, iron is associated with torment and suffering in Q, so I guess Angamandu would be understood as a literal translation of hell as a place of suffering, with Utumno being hell-as-an-evil-place-underground.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:00
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Second question is probably the most arguable and debatable question in all of Tolkiana and I've gone back and forth. Right now I think the Balrog himself was man-sized, so not like Jackson's balrog at all, but surrounded by an aura of shadow and flame that stretched out winglike to huge size, sortof like a William Blake engraving where the central figure is just surrounded by HUGE AURA and the aura is so present as to be visible and corporeal. Close. You've got the size right but surprisingly enough it's not the wings that Balrogs don't have. What they lack is a body, they are otherwise completely and utterly wing. The real debate is whether or not they're two wings or just one.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:04
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Effectronica posted:
Right, but it's also an alternate name for Utumno, Morgoth's fortress *before* the first age (I had to go look that up: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Utumno). Which adds another layer of meaning: Gandal's pointing out to the Balrog that his flame has already lost; the Balrog is a creature of Utumno and Utumno was overthrown before the dawn of time (literally).
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Mar 26, 2015 04:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Right, but it's also an alternate name for Utumno, Morgoth's fortress *before* the first age (I had to go look that up: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Utumno). Yeah, I'm speculating on what Utumno means.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:06
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You are all making great posts and I dont disagree! Except for Balrog wing guy. gently caress that poo poo
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Mar 26, 2015 04:07
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euphronius posted:You are all making great posts and I dont disagree! Balrogs have at least two wings because they're referred to in plural, and if you have two wings, they must attach to a body, otherwise yeah, they'd be all one megawing Also a mono-wing wouldn't be in the shape of a man side note: I've been reading a lot of Tolkien lately and I find it's seriously shaping my thought in a more philosophically Catholic direction Like, I'm not suddenly believing in Jesus or a big imaginary skyfriend or anything, but fallen flawed world, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass against us, "Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me" ? All starting to creep into my worldview! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 04:08
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Balrogs have at least two wings because they're referred to in plural, and if you have two wings, they must attach to a body, otherwise yeah, they'd be all one megawing quote:"But I am still at a loss for one thing," Lestrade declared. "How on earth did the man think to escape from the grounds? The area is completely sealed off, and the army would have kept it up for a year, if need be, on the express instructions of the War Office."
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Mar 26, 2015 04:12
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The shadow of the Moria balrog is poeticlly described as wings. thats it. In no other description of Balrogs do they have wings. If they had wings why did they need to ride dragons over mountains to get to Gondalin.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:13
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euphronius posted:The shadow of the Moria balrog is poeticlly described as wings. thats it. In no other description of Balrogs do they have wings. If they had wings why did they need to ride dragons over mountains to get to Gondalin. Gondolin's surface-to-air missiles.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:15
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euphronius posted:The shadow of the Moria balrog is poeticlly described as wings. thats it. In no other description of Balrogs do they have wings. If they had wings why did they need to ride dragons over mountains to get to Gondalin. Maybe Balrogs are mere gliders -- it only makes sense, how much lift can a wing of shadow and flame generate? Dragons, of course, fly via lighter than air methods and thus don't have the same problems gaining altitude.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:17
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Thunder Moose posted:I would say that both dark lords lacked in wisdom what they had in raw intellect, yes. I always wondered what they thought their end game with Eru was - they both knew the true measure of their innate power to that of Eru surely? Balrogs are a man and a half. If you look carefully at the scene in fellowship it's actually pretty much a man and a half tall. I mean, it's hunched over but that's how they always are so its ok.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:45
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Here's the thing: balrogs are huge and scary. If one of them that lives in a cave decides he wants to have wings, who is gonna tell him he can't? You? That's what I thought. I like that there is such a strong theological element to Tolkien's fiction. An awful lot of really rewarding and nuanced religious thought might fade from the public consciousness as secularism becomes the order of the day, so expressing it so rigorously in popular art is a good way to preserve it.
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Mar 26, 2015 04:58
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Right, but it's also an alternate name for Utumno, Morgoth's fortress *before* the first age (I had to go look that up: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Utumno). He's basically saying, hey Balrog, 1995 called they want their threads back Real documented evidence of Balrog wings: 
concerned mom fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 08:22
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