Why didn't the elves figure out the Lord of Gifts was just Sauron in disguise?

The elves in Middle-Earth were the ones who didn't want to go back to Valinor in the first place, I don't think they were in touch.

>Aren't they supposed to have connections in the undying land?

They're exiles and forbidden to return, dipshit, so they just couldn't run a credit check on Annatar with the Valar back in Valinor.

>lotr-verse is a pnp game from another dimension
>eru is the dmpc
>the dark things that pop from nowhere are discarded dm ideas that seep into the world

she was one of the ainur who came after arda had been created, maybe called by morgoth himself.
there were other maiar and valar living or visiting middle earth.
An example is Melian, another is Tom Bombadil and Goldberry.
Ulmo occasionally appeared in rivers and guided people. Ossë and Uinen did the same.

It was reasonable of them to assume that he was a friendly maia or vala who wanted to help them. Also at that time elves were less suspicious because there was less treachery in the world and people were more friendly.

>Ungoliant
>An Ainur
Except for the fact that this is inconsistent with her status given in the Quenta Silmarillion, that nobody really knows where she came from or what she was.

Ungoliant is It.

>Tom Bombadil
>A maiar

Tolkien specifically shot this one down, and it is of course inconsistent with his statements of being around before the Enemy came from "Outside", since Morgoth was the first of the Ainur to make it to Arda.

nobody of the elves knows where she comes from, which is perfect sense with her being an ainur who came on her own and is not connected to other ainur, since elves don't know everythign and have to rely on what the valar tell them in regard to the world outside arda.

>Tolkien specifically shot this one down
did he specifically shot down him being a maia?
>his statements of being around before the Enemy came from "Outside"
no, he said that he REMEMBERS the time before the enemy came from outside, with is consistent with ani of the ainur, since they were shown the eart as it was by eru

>nobody of the elves knows where she comes from, which is perfect sense with her being an ainur who came on her own and is not connected to other ainur, since elves don't know everythign and have to rely on what the valar tell them in regard to the world outside arda.
Except that opens up a huge can of worms insofar as the other Valar seem to be willing to tell them things like where the Balrogs came from, or the other evil spirits that are vaguely aligned with Morgoth; at the very least, they don't get that kind of qualification.

>did he specifically shot down him being a maia?
Considering he says that Tom is essentially a mystery and not "solvable" by the 4 corners of the text, yes, that shoots down him being a Maia.

>no, he said that he REMEMBERS the time before the enemy came from outside, with is consistent with ani of the ainur, since they were shown the eart as it was by eru
No, that is not what he says.

portal.tolkienianos.pt/files/The_LotR_I.pdf (Page 87)

>When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless- before the Dark Lord came from Outside.

He "knew" it in a way that certainly seems to indicate personal presence, it's of a litany that starts with how he was here before the first river and the first trees.

They had access to the stones in Arnor that could communicate with the Valars.

They could have run a credit check.

considering earth was nothing but a floating ball of dirt before the ainur created everythere there must not be much to remember

not that guy but i remember at least big t said he was meant to be a mystery, so if you think you have him figured out you dont

Do you mean the palantir? They could communicate with each other but the Valar didn't have one.

>They had access to the stones in Arnor that could communicate with the Valars.

The Palantir>They had access to the stones in Arnor that could communicate with the Valars.

You're wrong again, douche nozzle.

None of the palantiri in Middle Earth could communicate with the Master Stone at Avallone and only the stone at Tower Hills could look west along the Straight Road.

There could be no credit check requests from the Exiles to Valinor and, as explained, there plenty of examples of Valar and Maiar donning a fana and "slumming" in Middle Earth for various reasons.

Because of that, Sauron/Annatar hinting that he was sent by Aule didn't seem outlandish. Sauron was even able to play the part better because he had once been a Maiar in service to Aule.

also just tossing it out there

he could also have been referring to outside of middle earth (so sauron), not outside of the world (melkor)

and like i said here the earth was literally nothing but some sort of floating matter before the gods descended and created literally everything but men and elves so what is there to remember and do before melkor shows up?

The Dwarves should've allied with Sauron. Sauron did nothing wrong. Morgoth did nothing wrong. Dwarves would have liked Sauron.

Elves are gay.

the dorfs are backstabbing jews so how can they betray their friends if they are allied with sauron from the start? checkmate.

warhammer dorfs are best dorfs

>Watcher in the Water
>Ungoliant
>Tom Bombadil

These may seem rather unrelated, but they have one thing in common.

big if true

it's not even that. The valar may have had many reasons to not have revealed it.
Or maybe the other elves knew who she was, and it's only the Noldor who ignored it because Aule didn't think it important enough to tell them.

And, most important of all, the assumption that the valar, for whateer reason, didn't tell the Noldor specifically what Ainu she was an when she came is far more reasonable than assuming that there is another creature, totally unrelated to the rest of creation, and that Tolkien has never mentioned in any of his writing in his life.
WHich makes no sense really, because he styled the LoTR world after christian ythology and he spent his whole life adjusting it and trying to make it fit.
>Considering he says that Tom is essentially a mystery and not "solvable" by the 4 corners of the text

that's ont what he said at all. He said he is an enigma. An enigma is somethign that has a solution but you must work it out carefully.
Tolkien was a liguist and he was very careful in how he chose his words. You must be equall careful when reading his words.

My personal opinion is that Bombadil is supposed to be kind of the World-Spirit, Gaia sorta thing. Is he emergent then, a property of the world that has gestalt coalesced since the dawning and therefore would not have been in the lore of the Valar? Or was he a creation alongside them, at the same time, but so apart in the mind of Eru that he would have slipped beneath the notice of the Ainur? Dunno, but I think he's mostly a Gaia figure, just self-limits even more than God does.

the ainur sang, the eru created a vision of what they had sang, and it was arda, perfect, and they saw all of the history of arda and all that they had sang, then he physically created it.
Which is why the valar and maiar are limited in their actions, because they can only repeat what they alread sang. It's why Gandalf has foreknowledge, and why he had to phisically become a Man and diminish himself to have freedom to act in Middle Earth.

whats your point exactly? it was still a ball of nothing with some elves and men in holes in the ground until they went down and starting making shit

>and only the stone at Tower Hills could look west along the Straight Road.
Yeah that's the one they were supposed to use.

Furthermore:
>Ungoliant
Not so much a thing, an entity, as what not-a-thing actually looks like if it were to be given a look-likeness. The presence of nothingness. Still created by God, but not necessarily in the sense of active creation like one would form a bowl out of clay. More like how the potter, when forming a bowl, has also made a void in the middle of the bowl as a by-product of just what the shape of a bowl is.
>Watchers and the foul things at the roots of the world
Beasts and beings created like most everything else, just their presence being outside of the scope of what is usually presented that they are mysteries. The domains and dominions of the khans of Rhun, the Avari realms and every dwarf-hold but the Longbeards are like this too (for the most part), they exist just fine being outside of the scope of the story and its points of view.

>Old Tom Bombadil. Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure so disliked by fans of the book that few object to his absence from all adaptations of the story. And yet, there is another way of looking at Bombadil, based only on what appears in the book itself, that paints a very different picture of this figure of fun.

>What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is fat and jolly and smiles all the time. He is friendly and gregarious and always ready to help travellers in distress.

>Except that none of that can possibly be true.

>Consider: By his own account (and by Elrond’s surprisingly sketchy knowledge) Bombadil has lived in the Old Forest since before the hobbits came to the Shire. Since before Elrond was born. Since the earliest days of the First Age.

>And yet no hobbit has ever heard of him.

>The guise in which Bombadil appears to Frodo and his companions is much like a hobbit writ large. He loves food and songs and nonsense rhymes and drink and company. Any hobbit who saw such a person would tell tales of him. Any hobbit who was rescued by Tom would sing songs about him and tell everyone else. Yet Merry – who knows all the history of Buckland and has ventured into the Old Forest many times – has never heard of Tom Bombadil. Frodo and Sam – avid readers of old Bilbo’s lore – have no idea that any such being exists, until he appears to them. All the hobbits of the Shire think of the Old Forest as a place of horror – not as the abode of a jolly fat man who is surprisingly generous with his food.

>If Bombadil has indeed lived in the Old Forest all this time – in a house less than twenty miles from Buckland – then it stands to reason that he has never appeared to a single hobbit traveller before, and has certainly never rescued one from death. In the 1400 years since the Shire was settled.

>What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is not what he seems.

km-515.livejournal.com/1042.html

it actually think its pretty clear that bombadil is a psychopath who doesnt give a shit about mortal life. hes just totally checked out from the concerns of others on middle earth

also good catch about not being what he seems, did you also discover that water is wet?

my point is that eru showed ards, complete, all of its history, to the ainur before actualy making it.
The aiinur are bound to the actions they already sang and saw in the vision.
All the ainur remember arda before morgoth came.
he not supposed ot be any of those things because they don't exist in tolkien's world. He was a devout christian and his universe is supposed to be reflect the christian faith told with the form of nordic myths.
eru is god, aunir are the angels, morgoth is lucifer, and so on. There is no place for a world spirit. It has no equivalent in christianity.
And furthermore bombadil is not that important in the grand scheme of things. A wolrld spirit would have a gread philosophical and theological meaning, and tolkien would have reflected upon it. But he never did, which means that the existence of bombadil fits perfectly with everything else that has been revealed. And the same goes for Ungoliant.

In fact the importance of bombadil according to tolkien is in showing that the batle for the ring isn't some sort of ultimate battle, but an earthly conflict and there are things that go beyond it.
Sam has a glimpse of it too while in mordor.

What was sauron's tax policy?

While that's an excellent essay about Bombadil, the writer forgot that Bombadil visits Farmer Maggot regularly.

Which makes things even more odd because Maggot, his family, and his hired hands apparently don't talk about Bombadil to other hobbits!>More like how the potter, when forming a bowl, has also made a void in the middle of the bowl as a by-product of just what the shape of a bowl is.

That's a wonderful analogy which is completely wasted on the average Veeky Forums user and most of the posters in this thread.

>And yet no hobbit has ever heard of him.
that is false, as tom frequently visited the hobbit farm on the edge of the forest, and the hobbit hae old rhymes about him

did frodo and sam violate the NAP?

>That's a wonderful analogy which is completely wasted on the average Veeky Forums user and most of the posters in this thread.

its typical tryhard shit that fills up half of the elder scrolls threads. i blame kirkbride

Why does this fag draws Sauron like a huge fuckboy?

>its typical tryhard shit

See what I mean?

Because he is one?

He is not!

Sauron is a proud and noble maiar!

What is Sauron supposed to look like actually?

its literally the standard way to describe all the "wound in the world" type monsters in sci-fi and fantasy but whatever impresses you user

There's a reason standards exist, there are only so many different ways to describe any given discrete thing. That goes even moreso for things that, by definition, aren't discrete things.

W E W

>literally

People would pay more attention to you if you didn't write like a "standard" Millennial and I write that "unironically".

Of course it's standard description, faggot, but that user was the first in this thread to use it.

I think a lot of the problem people have with Tom Bombadil is that he is deliberately presented as a mystery. He doesn't fit neatly into our categories of good and evil. It's fun to speculate about who or what he might be, but I don't think even Tolkien knew. And honestly, I think you've strayed very far from what he intended or what is supportable in the text with this guess.

prefer this depiction......

....To this one. Though to be fair this Sauron feels kinda Starscreem like.

so basically sauron is overcompensating for his twink phase when he was younger?

Don't think it's just a phase good sir and or madam.
(Source: Shadow of Mordor)

>did he specifically shot down him being a maia
Yes, why do you act so arrogant when you don't know what you're talking about and make mistakes and really stupid assumptions left and right?

>Bilbo obsessively cataloged the lore of elves at the end of the Third Age
>this means the universe is small
Are you retarded,OP?

That's not a fucking source, and that you think it is makes my blood boil from nerd-rage.

>WHich makes no sense really, because he styled the LoTR world after christian ythology
Lol
Anglo saxon + norse does not equal christian, do you even know what he did for a living and studied?
Also, he said bombadil was a representation of the english countryside and refused to think or comment further on his origin except to shoot down all the dumb theories and yours isn't new.

>Letter 142
>The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

Religious and Catholic doesn't equal just Catholic, user and trying to explain everything through something like that is such a pathetic beginner's mistake that I expect more, even from a shitposter.
Especially since the quoted part admits that it happened unconsciously at first, so he probably just noticed later how big stuff fitted and revised the religious part.
Meanwhile you act like not only everything was intended like that but also hs to be read through that scope.
F+, focus less on one detail and bring me your revised essay with more attention to the bigger picture next week.

>Religious and Catholic doesn't equal just Catholic
But...it does? I'll admit that there's a lot of Germanic and Nordic influence, but you act like it's only those myths that counted when he straight up stated that the end product is consciously revised to fit his Catholic belief.

I know senpai :^)

Easy answer:
They knew. They didn't care.

Dey wanted dem sweet gibmedats.
Free power and deal with the consequences later!
Or never.
Just like our PCs and people with money in real life.

You're forgetting that he created it before that.
Sure, he can make some aspects fit better, but his world was created over years, decades even and your obsession with reading it from a christian point of view simply doesn't work with everything, probably not even that much of it, broad strokes aside because there's just too much.
You're dismissed for the day, good night and don't forget your homework.

Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

How does the fact that gandalf had to throw down burning pinecones at the doggos instead of just shooting fireballs play into the christian perspective, user?

God ain't gonna come down with some supernatural power to help you, you gotta use mundane shit to solve your problems.

I went to a catholic private school, I'm on the right end of the political spectrum and I don't deny the existence of God >:^)
But nice try, user. There's more to the world than faith and certainly more to a fictional world as this post so eloquently demonstrates My teeth are brushed, so I will retire for the night. Good night.

How does that scene play into the Nordic/Germanic perspective, user?

Sauron is a pretty sneaky guy. Read that as "unnaturally deceitful".

The Whole White Council didn't get he returned to Dol Guldur. With badass Noldors and two Maia. He maxxed out social deception magic.

Had a laff

Why would it? Nobody was arguing thst everything comes down to religion except the guy who made the quote, for all you and i know every other poster in this thread is perfectly sane and doesn't try to interpret a huge literary work through the lense of one ideology

I'm a bit surprised. Usually it takes that kind of rabid idiocy that you see in hardcore Marxists to look at proof positive against you in the face and declare that it means your position is right because of REASONS, REASONS that cannot be articulated, but can be declared with utmost fervency.

>another is Tom Bombadil
Tom, much like Ungoliant, doesn't have an actual origin. We're pretty sure he's not an Ainu, however.

You shouldn't use more than 30 words a sentence.

Wow, somebody's angry.

The lord of the rings, and the hobbit are Tolkiens modern construction of a mythic/fokloric tale that "survived" through the centuries. And in in his own writings, he discusses the old myths like beowulf, in which there are odd references or statements about seemingly unrelated events/characters.

These are the myths of other cultures seeping into the tale. So as for ungoliant and jolly bombadill, they are simply the mythic and relatively distant characters that must be mentioned because of their prominence, but have lost their meaning because we don't know the original stories that featured them.

>Anglo saxon + norse does not equal christian
Anglo-Saxon does, actually. Not to mention the world is explicitly set up to have one God who together with his angels (who are explicitly not gods in the pagan sense) sang the world into existence but one of them rebelled and fell from grace and became the ultimate adversary of life and good. Which mythology does that remind you of?

The thing is that something existing outside of creation unknown to the Creator is something that kind of requires an explanation from a Christian perspective whereas burning pine cones don't. You're being dense on purpose here by equivocating the two.

>Why didn't the elves figure out the Lord of Gifts was just Sauron in disguise?
Gee, I don't know, maybe someone who is dubbed "the great deciever" was good at decieving others?

Faggot

This is the point where you realize someone isn't worth talking to.
Reminds me of an user, in a thread civilly discussing different opinions and preferences in gaming, comes in screaming about people being "milquetoast" because they used phrases such as "I feel" and "I believe".
In a thread all about personal opinion where there was expressly no correct path to be applied. It basically killed the thread because no one wanted to respond to someone who either was a complete shithead who believed that if you weren't lobbing yourself as the truest, you were being weak, or some twat who just wanted to ruin a decent thread.
That's you, you absolute cunt.

>The Dwarves should've allied with Sauron.
The dwarves *did* ally with sauron. just not those of durin's folk.

>Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure disliked by fans of the book
[citation needed]
I liked him.>Yet Merry – who knows all the history of Buckland and has ventured into the Old Forest many times never heard of him
he's still a milkdrinker in hobbit terms. he also didn't know shit about tons of other stuff, and neither did any of the other hobbits.
>I think a lot of the problem people have with Tom Bombadil is that he is deliberately presented as a mystery
this.
>He doesn't fit neatly into our categories of good and evil
Eeeh, well, he is kind of all good. Not the "step back, I'll sort it out" kind of good (just like gandalf didn't do ALL the work for the peoples of ME) but generally helpful, and he's the type of "even if all goes to shit, I'll manage just fine" of strong. He doesn't have to resque everyone and sort out all the others problems, because he's above it all.

Because this fag is a she and a dirty fujoshi in addition

I still find those drawings kind of adorable and funny

no homo

And those stones were special gifts of the elves at Eressea to numenore. The stones' origin was unknown; gandalf speculates it might have been made by feanor himself.

So the elves didn't appear able to manufacture them, and in any event they didn't reach middle Earth until long after Sauron was revealed.

Gil-galad literally told all the elves of the realm that Annatar (Sauron in disguise) was not to be trusted. But still the elves of Eregion trusted him. GG. RIPerrino.

Ugh, you dumb nigger. Ungoliant was a by-product of the hatred and will of Morgoth as he fought with the Ainur to craft the world. He created her, but did not create her. And she grew to incredible power because Morgoth fed her the trees of light and all the jewels of the Noldor.

Gil-Galad's grandpa and Celebrimbor's grandpa didn't get along, and the two noteworthy second age elven cities broke up roughly along those lines

Yeah, but did Celebrimdor have a bad-ass song like this?
youtube.com/watch?v=HUPFwrmgLvQ

No, in fact I doubt even Eru created her, she spawned fro. the remaining shadows fo the creation

No, he had a spike shoved up his ass and was used as a standard and trophy by Sauron's orcs as they marched on Fingolfin's city

I always thought that Tom was essentially a manifestation of the Flame of Arda.

its more like he has an in-universe toon force due to being from a different genre of material within middle earth's literature. He's a peacetime story from the vicinity of Bree, as opposed to nearly everyone else being caught in a numenorean war epic. His struggles against old man Willow can no more effect the War of the Ring than can Sauron or Angmar's interlopers unseat Tom, but the relative power levels are conserved when they intersect, thus the stuff with the ring.

Sauron doesn't really have descriptions about what he usually looked like, apart from one passing, where he is described as "fair", I think, so it's a reasonable interpretation to think that his preferred form, and when he was Annatar, was a beautiful man.
I don't condone the fujoshit though.

What about Phob's depiction?

As I said, it's perfectly fine in my opinion to depict Sauron being beautiful, somewhat androgynous even, even when he's already corrupted by Melkor.
I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with Phobs' art-style, I'm just not into the fujoshi gay stuff she likes to draw.

Gee user, why wasn't the most powerful sorcerer in the world immediately found out?