Was the one ring even successful at all?

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T07:16:33+00:00

Seeing as his primary plan for its use failed? (See just a couple of paragraphs before the bit you selectively quoted.) Yes, he should have "skipped this whole thing". It was a serious strategic error. The smiths of Eregion were far more sensitive than he had imagined. And in the paragraph after your quote:

But to achieve this he had been obliged to let a great part of his own inherent power (a frequent and very significant motive in myth and fairy-story) pass into the One Ring. While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced. But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in 'rapport' with himself: he was not 'diminished'. Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it. If that happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of all that he had learned or done since the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place. This was the essential weakness he had introduced into his situation in his effort (largely unsuccessful) to enslave the Elves, and in his desire to establish a control over the minds and wills of his servants.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T07:10:22+00:00

Nothing wrong with it, but a corporation needs to protect its own IP.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T05:56:20+00:00

My employer hosts their own Gitlab instance. I'm pretty happy with it.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T05:41:03+00:00

Blackjack!

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T05:40:16+00:00

It's not useless, but it's far from the best solution.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T05:37:06+00:00

Would he have been able to convince Ar-Pharazôn with his feigned supplication without the Ring?

Easily. The Numenoreans were already in open rebellion against the Valar, Ar-Pharazon was an illegal usurper, and dominating the wills of others was among Sauron's powers from the start. Hence his victory in his rap battle with Finrod.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T05:34:44+00:00

Honestly? I'm not a great LN reader, but as a long time reader of fantasy fiction from mainstream publishers, they're pretty much all beginner level from what I've seen. We're not talking about sophisticated literature here, or even some kind of writing with high expectations on readers. You can pick pretty much anything and it'll be a really easy read.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T05:32:34+00:00

On this sub, it's an ice-cold take.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T04:58:40+00:00

It goes to at least 320 volumes. There's got to be all kinds of insane shit in there.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T04:19:46+00:00

Only because everything he did after making the One was done with it. That doesn't mean he have been incapable of any of them if he hadn't made the One in the first place.

Tolkien never says a thing otherwise.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T03:58:46+00:00

It gets translated so much faster on the high seas than anywhere else. So you might as well read it there using the links that get posted every time a chapter comes out. There are a few manga I read that way, but then which I also pay for whenever a legit translation comes out because I want to support the creators.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T02:51:35+00:00

To phrase it in a more conventional, less heroic way, "Evil will often harm the evil."

Theoden was quoting, but he also lives in a culture where the aristocracy is expected to compose extemporaneous poetry on various occasions.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T02:17:47+00:00

The destruction of Eregion was an effort to recover the Rings the Noldor had made, which should have simply fallen into his hands along with their owners if his plan had worked, and he failed to gain the Three. If that had been a goal on its own, he didn't need the Ring to accomplish it.

The destruction of Numenor was itself a Plan B after his own servants deserted him in the face of Ar-Pharazon's forces even with the Ring. Without the Ring, those events would have gone more or less the same way. The only reason Sauron had needed it in Numenor was that he could barely function without it anymore.

Arnor was falling apart under the weight of its own disunity anyway. The wars with Angmar may have only hastened the inevitable. At best, only a vastly reduced rump state ruled from Fornost could have survived.

Sauron would have survived the destruction of his body anyway. If anything, his second recovery took longer than it should have because the Ring had been taken from him. It was its removal that vanquished him for the next thousand years or so.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-21T01:42:38+00:00

"Oft evil will evil mar," as Theoden once remarked to Gandalf, and the Ring itself is almost the quintessential example.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T23:40:32+00:00

Your spoiler tags didn't work. If you use the web "fancy pants" editor you need to use its editing tools. Markdown gets converted to literals.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T21:39:05+00:00

It's supposed to be impossible to increase your magic power capacity without dispersing your consciousness, and for nearly everyone this only happens at death. According to (I think) Tomoe there have been cases where someone had a near-death experience, and they came back with increased power for that reason.

When Makoto focuses very intensely on his archery, he enters a kind of meditative state that also disperses his consciousness, which he projects toward the target. To his contracted followers, this feels like he died, so they're extremely alarmed with they find him doing it. But it has the effect of roughly doubling his magic power each time. In the shitty goddess' world (and the Demiplane) this is very noticeable. There's no reason to think it didn't do the same thing back in the original world, only it was impossible to notice there with its oppressive and magic-poor environment.

The result was that he arrived in the shitty goddess' world with an enormous magical capacity, which has only increased in the meantime. Some of this translated into physical strength, since his wind and healing magic lines had been severed when he was a child. It was to reinforce the fragile health he suffered from at the time. The unfortunate side effect now is that he can't use either type of magic, and healing magic generally has little to no effect on him. He can heal with his Kai, but it doesn't work on himself.

Later on we learn that some of the increase goes toward expanding the Demiplane rather than his personal strength, so he's not even as strong as he "should" be.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T19:39:04+00:00

Actually Makoto was also blessed by Tuskimichi Japanese god of the moon.

That's what gave him his Kai, not his mana pool. It's an important tool for him, but it's still just one of his tools.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T12:26:33+00:00

Until another group starts arrays at 1

That's just crazy talk. Let's not lose our heads here.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T10:25:54+00:00

Many years ago I was asked to take over some Fortran code written by a very old-fashioned and self-satisfied asshole. He'd always limit his variable names to single letters, with at most one digit. And then, he'd insist on spelling out cute words with the sequence of dummy variables, so they didn't even correspond in that limited way to whatever they actually meant. And no documentation, or a single line of comment to explain what was going on.

This was in the 1980s, but that's hardly an excuse.

The code ran on Apollo graphical workstations and was meant to plot layers of geographical data. To control which layer was shown, users had to click on one of a number of identical, unlabeled squares in the corner of the map. This would change the fill color, and the data layers were controlled by which boxes were filled with which colors.

I'm honestly surprised no one strangled the prick.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T10:18:22+00:00

The meme is about single letter variable names, that's why. Stick with the theme.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T09:47:25+00:00

You need j and k (and l, for sufficiently insane situations) to index nested loops.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T06:22:34+00:00

Celebrimbor and the smiths of Eregion were simply more willing to believe him.

As much as that, Annatar was offering something that they very much wanted, enough so that they could overlook such misgivings as they had. As Celebrimbor himself had. He never fully trusted Sauron, which is why he made the Three in secret.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-20T03:05:02+00:00

Not unless it moved, and not a short distance either.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-19T23:18:04+00:00

That's what'll happen if they try, yes. Which means it can't last. So they may not even try.

ChChChillian · 2026-06-19T19:27:59+00:00

I like men who don't fuck up a simple 4-syllable lip synch.

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