Suppose Sauron had won

But it ended exactly how he wanted it to end, how would he have picked wrong?

Yeah, and Saron didn't win. Ergo, Sauron can't win. If he won it would be wrong.

I think he's saying that if Sauron had won, it would only be because Eru had decided so, and thus could not be wrong.

But if Sauron had won, it would have meant that Sauron couldn't lose because losing would mean that he was wrong.

If Sauron had won, we would have a highly industrialized society build on progress and logic

entire Mirkwood would fuel the fires and in 100 years the first Orc would walk on the moon perhaps

No more Oppressive knife ear shadow government stopping all attempt at tech progress and there would be good infrastructure imagine highways of well made paved roads stretching from the far est of Rhun to the sea in the west connecting it making it the silk road of Middle Earth.

All unified under one religion of Melkor and peach at last

Then They could wage the final war on Valinor and perish like dust in the wind because uhhh no i don't like this sound

I know what you're thinking.
I know that you know what I'm thinking.
I know that you know that I know what you're thinking.
I know that you know that I know that you know what I'm thinking.

If Sauron won, then Illuvatar would still win. Wtf the point of the 1st song is to prove Illuvatar's greatness where he can create the self destruction of his own works that corrupts his creations (the Balrogs, Sauron, Morgoth)which do nothing but prove the original beauty of his mind.

The Auinur are reflections of Illuvatar, Melkor included. Seriously, the whole of Eru is 100% centered around Illuvatar. Even when Melkor was trying to fuck shit up, he didn't attack Illuvatar, he attacked the other Ainur because he was jealous.

I think we're getting too deep into it, m8.

...

Welcome to Christian Theology and the problem of Predestination

If Sauron had won, he would have destroyed all the orcs. He depised them, but recognized their usefulness.
He wanted a world of order, of perfection (o what he considered like that)

*blocks your path*

Add to it a weird mix of mono- and polytheism and you get a huge mess.

He would turn the Shire into a brutalist commieblock crack hood.
Just what happened with england.

...

Thats probably true but with who was he going to kill the orcs off with? All of humanity would basically be destroyed

>All of humanity would basically be destroyed
Plenty of humans served Sauron and a lot more would have joined him by then.

Look around you. This is Sauron's world.

Look around. You're in it.

Detroit

I'm almost 100% certain the world isn't ruled by an immortal fallen angel.

This, Eru intervened when Frodo failed to destroy the ring. That's something they don't show in the movies, Frodo failed 100% and the only reason Gollum fell was he slipped, which was as blatant providence as you could get.

Eru had been following the fellowship since Day 1, He was there on the Plains of Golgotha and he was there in the very fires of Mt. Doom.

He'd have turned everything into an industrial nightmare, then he'd get his head kicked in by Tom Bombadil when he tried to take the Old Forest.

Exactly. The orcs need guidance, a will to drive them forward. Without that, they fall in disarray and are easy to pick.

That's the main reason Sauron wanted to destroy the elves and the numenoreans, because he knew they would have never knelt before him, and he resented that

Literally impossible because everything that happened was determined with erus song

Have you heard the theory, first posited in Morgoth's Ring, that the Orcs are not even truly living things at all? They supposedly exist as meat-robots, a sort of philosophical zombie twisted into humanoid form by Morgoth and programmed by the vile will of whatever Dark Lord controls them at that time.

this made me laugh

A pretty shit theory, considering there are orcs in places like Goblin Town that have no outer master and still function.

that doesnt really make sense given what happens after the one ring is destroyed

>Orcs running on auto-pilot

Haven't read it. It is one of Christopher Tolkien books, right?

>thinks anyone runs on anything other than auto-pilot

Do not think of an elephant. See?

Easy, walrus.
Whenever someone says this, I think of Walruses, unless it's walrus, then I think of two.

Then it still forces you to think of an animal. All you've done is put an extra step in the same process, purely because you've encountered it before.

>Could that power be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not. I think that in the end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First; and then Night will come.

detroit lacks any spiny cathedrals of human sacrifice and melkor worship, and no infernal war making infrastructure to speak of. Sauron would not tolerate it.

How would it look any different?

You might be interested in this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_(role-playing_game)

Modern world is the emergent result of 100,000,000 shortsighted little sociopaths each pulling in their own direction. A world designed by a ruthless, omnipotent central intelligence would be far more uniform and orderly.

>when you realize they're all so shortsighted because they never live to see the consequences of their actions

After all, why should you care what happens to people who won't be born until decades or centuries after your death?

They don't even know what Bombadil is, so any guesses they make to his power compared to Sauron is just that: a guess.

Whereas we know that he can make the Ring disappear, it has no control over him at all, and he can just sing dead spirits into oblivion. We know that he is "Eldest" and "Master", so no one is more powerful than him in his domain. We know that Goldberry answers Frodo just saying "He is".

Bombadil is a mother-fucking uber-spirit. Sauron, in his little, limited, already weakened form would get his shit slapped to the sound of a merry tune.

>tfw we live in the world where Sauron won

...

You assume that Bombadil's power translates into ability to slap Sauron's shit.

Midnight was so cool.

...

I dunno, when Sam enters Mordor following the Orcs that captured Frodo he hears them talking and it seems they have individual personnalities.

Supreme Power eventually winning due to being supremely powerful does not imply that every single event on the way there were part of its plan, especially if it's pulling its punches for whatever reason (for example, because we'd get caught in the crossfire or because it wants to give the inferior power a chance to surrender). Even a hopelessly outclassed power bound to lose can still put up a fight and win a few battles on its way out.

A lot of Christian Theology mainly serves to demonstrate that infinity and transcendence are actually extremely hard concepts to wrap your head around (and in the latter case, by definition impossible). And it doesn't help that the subject matter tends to be emotionally significant to the theologians.

>The Valar would just clean house after Manwe took notice and cared for the plight of Middle Earth.

The Valar gave up stewardship of Arda during Akallabeth.

But Eru could change the song before it became real. He actually thought it's a nice addition to it.

Just like they did after the fall of the trees.

Morgoth didn't create, he corrupted. And as good as he was at that, to extinguish the Eä given spark within the elves he was torturing to make something akin to Aulë's dwarves? Yeah, not happening. The story of those dwarves also show us the shortcomings of even a valar's consciousness when trying to run a bunch of puppets.

Bombadil could certainly slap Sauron's shit. But even if he chose not to, Sauron would still become his bitch.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZZouiWmzWoY

The orc would be first to space, like dogs or monkeys, but the fist to step on the moon would be one of the so called evil men.

Actually, wasn't he actually kinda furious about the discord, and make the song real/manifest/whatever to teach Melkor a lesson about who's in charge?
There's a reason the Ring was carried by hobbits and not, say, Aragorn. Frodo and Sam are Eru's middle fingers being pushed right into Sauron's Eye. And Gollum is- let's not go there.

But this is how it happened in the movie as well

Not that weird. One of the first (if not the first) monotheisms was pretty much like that.

you seem to have mistaken the name of the universe, Ea, with the name of god, Eru. Iluvatar is just an elvish title for him

Nah, in the movie, Gollum and Frodo both slip because they are fighting over the Ring. In the book, Gollum is doing a happy dance and slips.

Personally, I think the movie version is better.

Gorgoroth. "Golgotha" is from another fantasy series.

>"Golgotha" is from another fantasy series.
You da real MVP

To use an overused term, Bombadil's role in LotR is entirely "meta". He doesn't fit into the setting's mythos because he never was meant to fit into the setting's mythos.

First, Bombadil started out as a bit of "fan service". He's a doll Tolkien's kiddies had and flushed down the shitter. In using Bombadil, Tolkien was giving his children a "shout out", something only they would understand. It was the literary equivalent of Carol Burnett tugging her earlobe at the end of every show.

Second, because he already had Bombadil in the story for other reasons, Tolkien used the character to "dope slap" the reader. Bombadil and the events surrounding him are a cue to the reader that some serious shit is going down.

Imagine someone in the 50s and 60s reading "Fellowship" for the first time. There are no movies and the trilogy hasn't been part of popular culture for decades. They read about some little people, a wizard, a ring that makes you invisible, and other bits. There's a walk through what might as well be the West Country, a meeting with some Elves, and a few scary men on black horses. All in all nothing you hadn't seen in fairy stories for decades.

Then Bombadil shows up.

There's a fucking tree trying to swallow people whole, mind control, and a barrow wight about to make a human sacrifice. What has been a hike through the familiar West country suddenly becomes a perilous journey through a very weird and dangerous land.

Bombadil's a cue to the reader that the Shire is then exception, not the rule, and that some seriously weird and important shit is going to be happening from here on out. Bombadil is meta. He signals a thematic change and thus is "outside" of the story's setting.

What you did there, I see it.

Yes but if Sauron ever gained control of Arda and posted a threat to Valinor then they'd probably change their minds.

OP, have you ever seen Detroit...

Yup my bad . Fucks sake even after 3 re reads of the Silmarillion I still call middle earth eru instead of Arda.

Sauron could never threaten Valinor as it was closed to Arda as a direct result of Akallabeth. Only the elves are the only ones able to reach there, having been given amnesty following the War of Wrath. A privilege extended to Frodo, Bilbo, Sam, and Gimli. Likely given their status as a result of being Elf-friends, and their deeds.

Actually Tolkien wrote something about this, sort of related anyway. He was trying to convince the readers that lotr was not based on world war 2. For if it was, Saruman would have taken the ring and become the new dark lord

Actually Saruman made his own Ring of Power, but it was incomplete. The story goes that he would find the needed lore in the remnants of suaron's lands and forge his own master ring

is this in the book or in the lore?