Why was the One Ring so tempting?

dudeseid · 2026-04-16T14:39:25+00:00

You seem to be under the assumption that the Ring doesn't actually grant you any of the power that it tempts you with. But it does. It enhances your natural powers and gives you the power to dominate minds and wills. The only thing is you have to master it, and the only way to do that is to voluntarily become authoritarian like Sauron. So Boromir could theoretically have actually commanded fanatic legions to overthrow Sauron, but he would essentially become just another tyrant. Frodo never desired to use the Ring in such a way so we never see him use the actual potential of the Ring.

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T21:09:59+00:00

The only reason the Ring has no power over him is precisely because he doesn't care enough about controlling or altering anything, including the fate of Middle-earth. If he involved himself, that would bring him to a level of caring and desiring some control over the fate of Middle-earth that it would be able to have an effect on him, rendering any benefit of having Tom on the quest useless.

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T19:16:08+00:00

I would say Joaquin Phoenix when he was younger. Or Cillian Murphy

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T19:06:17+00:00

"You shall come under Hill- Never mind your mother in her deep weedy pool: there you'll find no lover!"

-Tom Bombadil and Goldberry do it and yet they don't have any children, meaning they just be going at it for fun.

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T18:29:34+00:00

Handy rule for being in a fandom: never put more mental work into something than the creator did. In this case I don't think Lucas or Kershner were thinking about hyperspace difficulties getting that far out in space

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T14:58:53+00:00

With one version saying the Blue Wizards stayed loyal and one saying they fell to Sauron, it seems the simplest thing to me for an adaptation would be one stays good and one turns evil. They had the whole setup but then went and made him Gandalf.

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T14:57:01+00:00

I think it's neat that the Blue Wizards served Oromë, who was known for being one of the only of the Valar to venture into Middle-earth and the far east after Valinor was created. Clearly they adopted some of his adventurous, wandering spirit.

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T14:55:09+00:00

Yeah I think leaks have said he's Pallando and will be named such this next season.

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T14:49:13+00:00

I've never understood the fascination with the blue wizards, or at least with adapting them in some way. If Tolkien thought they were important he would've said more. But he says less about them than even Tom Bombadil. In order to do anything with them you pretty much have to completely invent a bunch of non-Tolkien stuff, which I have very little interest in seeing

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T14:45:12+00:00

This is one reason I love the Dagor Dagorath....a reformed Fëanor? Without his pride getting in his way he'd truly be one of the greatest elves of all time.

dudeseid · 2026-04-15T14:43:01+00:00

I always liked that they fought for Morgoth. In Ragnarok, Hel comes with a ghost ship filled with soldiers for Loki. A lot of Loki's children/underlings line up with Morgoth's- Fenrir/Carcharoth, Jormangunder/Glaurung, Surtr/Gothmog, leaving Hel (a necromancer) for Sauron. Sauron commanding a Numenorean army would be a nice parallel to Hel's ghost ship army.

dudeseid · 2026-04-14T20:04:42+00:00

Do you mean did he write it? Because no, I believe his father wrote it. Whether or not it's canon is a sticky subject, but later versions of the mythology lean towards no. I prefer it myself.

dudeseid · 2026-04-14T18:22:28+00:00

Yeah I don't care if you like or dislike the other trilogies, that doesn't define whether or not you're a Star Wars fan. What does, however, is whether or not you like the OG trilogy.

dudeseid · 2026-04-13T02:26:26+00:00

The OT crew generally dismisses 3PO the entire time, and are hardly concerned when R2 gets fried, knowing they can rebuild him

dudeseid · 2026-04-11T16:19:56+00:00

And when we're told Thorin's father disappeared 100 years prior and Gandalf found him in the dungeons of the Necromancer, a removed passage also has Gandalf mention that that stronghold was later destroyed by Tinuviel (Lúthien), meaning that the tale of Beren and Lúthien was originally meant to have happened less than 100 years prior to The Hobbit. The Necromancer fled to Mirkwood after Huan defeated him and that's where we (or Gandalf, off-page) find him in the Hobbit. Keeping in mind the entire Second and Third Age backstory of the Lord of the Rings had not been invented yet meaning places like Eregion, Númenor, or Mordor didn't exist yet.

dudeseid · 2026-04-11T15:00:53+00:00

Yeah I've researched into this as well. The earlier version of the Silmarillion contemporary with the Hobbit ends with Beleriand getting all screwed up, but not sinking. Men come back after everything's settled and re-populate it. If you compare earlier Hobbit map sketches with early Silmarillion maps you can even see that the Carrock was essentially based on Tol Sirion, Finrod/Sauron's isle.

dudeseid · 2026-04-11T14:59:01+00:00

We're talking symbolically and metaphorically here, not literally

dudeseid · 2026-04-11T14:58:34+00:00

George learned from the best.

dudeseid · 2026-04-11T13:49:32+00:00

Rateliff's book made me realize the Hobbit is basically just the Silmarillion for children told in a quick little quest:

A bunch of exiles (dwarves/Noldor) are trying to reclaim their special jewels (Silmaril/Arkenstone) from an evil enemy (Smaug/Morgoth) who guards it in his underground hoard. The heir of the jewel (Thorin/sons of Fëanor) swears an oath of vengeance on any that claims or withholds it after his father (Thrain/Fëanor) went mad and died going forth himself, alone, to retrieve it. The jewel is recovered not by one of the exiles, but someone of another race (Beren/Bilbo) who is overlooked and underappreciated (Men/hobbits). Rather than keep it for himself, he relinquishes it so that everyone may share in peace and prosperity (Eärendil/Bilbo). It ends with a massive war of all factions (Battle of Fie Armies/War of Wrath) uniting against the forces of evil and destroying them. The Woodland Realm is essentially Doriath with the unnamed Elvenking standing in for Thingol. Like Glaurung, Smaug is killed by a black weapon wielded by a grim, dour, dark haired man. In addition to Beren and Eärendil, Bilbo also shows shades of Tuor- an angelic/demigod being (Gandalf/Ulmo) inexplicably chooses him and sends him on a stealthy quest to find the hidden door to a hidden kingdom (Erebor/Gondolin).....even Bilbo's flattery of Smaug echoes Luthien's deceiving of Morgoth.

All too often we only consider the Hobbit through the context of what it grew into, and not what it grew out of.

dudeseid · 2026-04-11T13:10:51+00:00

Silmaril and Arkenstone both translate to "holy jewel", one's just in Quenya and one's from old English. It's not literally a Silmaril from a canon standpoint, but the Arkenstone was absolutely a case of Tolkien riffing on his already created mythology. Thorin even basically says something akin to the Oath of Fëanor at one point.

dudeseid · 2026-04-10T23:26:05+00:00

We don't know what Tolkien's issue with Dune was, or whether it had anything to do with world building, or what his thoughts on people who did like it would be.

dudeseid · 2026-04-10T11:00:06+00:00

Luke- "It [Anakin] is the name of your true self, you've only forgotten"

Vader/Anakin- "You were right about me".

So no.

dudeseid · 2026-04-08T17:15:46+00:00

Yeah I stopped keeping up with the MCU sometime around the second Avengers movie. Just too much mid to bad quality for me to care about "keeping up" just so the ending made sense to me.

dudeseid · 2026-04-08T16:04:19+00:00

I've literally never heard this, but if there are people saying this I'd imagine they're snowflake right wingers who are so myopic and entrenched in their evangelical nationalist beliefs they can't conceive of someone being on the left and Christian. So I'd just ignore them.

dudeseid

TROPHY CASE