Would she have beat Sauron?

Would she have beat Sauron?

Temporarily, then she would have effectively became Sauron.

Well, yeah, that's what she's saying. I was wondering whether she would have been able to actually do it.

Probably not. From what I understand Sauron is a on par with Balrogs and other lesser maiar.

Do you mean Sauron as in the entity whose existence is bound to the One Ring, or Sauron as the ruler of Mordor at the end of the Third Age?

Without the One Ring, she wouldn't be able to defeat either interpretation of Sauron. If she acquired the One Ring, she would have been able to effortlessly destroy Sauron's forces and put an end to the threat he posed. However, before she could ever destroy the One Ring, she would find herself bent to its will. She would use its power to force all of Middle Earth to obey and adore her as its dark, beautiful mistress.

Oh, so at this point Sauron was the ring's rather than the other way around.

Incorrect. Think of the Ring as Sauron's phylactery, if you're familiar with D&D. As long as the One Ring exists, Sauron's spirit is bound to Middle Earth. His power may ebb and flow but unless the One Ring is destroyed in the fires of Orodruin from whence it came, he will never cease to be.

It is his dark will that is bound to the One Ring, his evil that corrupts anyone that touches it. It empowers them, yes, but it also brings them to eventual ruin, as it did with Isildur and Gollum. Eventually, it would betray Galadriel and slip from her grasp at some point. Her rule would come to an end. Perhaps it would disappear, or perhaps it would pass between owners. Either way, eventually Sauron's spirit would regain power and seek out the One Ring once more. He is the only one that it will not betray, for its will is his own. He is the only one that it will not corrupt, for its evil is his own and there is no evil greater than his in the Third Age. Once reunited with the Ring of Power, the Dark Lord would be borderline unstoppable, just as he was at the end of the Second Age.

>Balrogs
Then if they gave the ring to one of them they could defeat Sauron!

Galadriel wouldn't just be another mortal putting on the ring. This is easily one of the most powerful creatures on middle earth. If anyone could have broken the One Ring to serve them, it's her, and she always had a gift of prophecy. I'd imagine she is right and if she'd taken up the ring they would have successfully gotten an Bright Queen destroying all freedom and dissent rather then the domination of the Dark Lord.

That said..

She did beat Sauron.

She gave the Fellowship exactly what it needed, when it needed it, and acted with grace and will to protect the free people of middle earth. Without her, and without her having the willpower to say no to someone trying to freely give her the One Ring, all would have been lost.

In the books Gandalf and Saruman talk about the ring -- rather than wanting to serve Sauron, Saruman wants to use the ring to kick his ass. See, Saruman was sent into Middle Earth specifically to study the tools of the enemy, but he was forbidden to use them. But he thinks he's got this ring business cracked, and wants Gandalf to fork it over so he can master it, pop down to Mordor, and end the threat.
Gandalf admits he could probably do it, but says that even if Saruman is strong enough to bend the ring to his will, it would still be there, whispering in his ear, and it wouldn't be too long before they had a new, even worse Dark Lord to deal with.

I imagine Galadriel would be much the same. She's certainly exceptional, and probably has enough willpower to make the ring her bitch. Sauron the shadow on the throne ain't shit in comparison, he put "the greater part of his power" in the ring. But the ring's power is largely around domination and control, and it's got a good chunk of Sauron in there to worm its way into your head, so it's not a good idea.
(If you're not strong enough, it's an even worse idea, since it will basically just make you take it home)

A subtext of the books is that one reason Sauron is so distracted by Aragorn's army (and thus misses the hobbits creeping around) is that he's likely very worried that this descendant of Numenor has the ring and has used it to rally this army, and will now use it to bend the orcs to his side, too.

Probably not.

Sauron was a bad motherfucker. Galadriel didn't really fight, she was more of a magician.

Not at all m8.

Gandalf took on like a hundred at the battle of Cairn Andros.

Maybe? One might have rampaged and destroyed Mordor and the rest of the middle earth with the Ring's power. It sort of comes down to how much of Melkor's 'fuck it kill everything' nature is inherited by the Ring.

>Gandalf took on like a hundred at the battle of Cairn Andros.
What? Cair Andros was between Orcs and Easterlings and Gondor dudes around the time of LotR.

It takes a certain degree of humility and simplicity to wield the One Ring without falling to its allure and even then, it's only a matter of time. Frodo was only able to bear it for so long and even Sam felt its sway when he carried it, though he was hardly a ringbearer for long.

>In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!

Galadriel didn't need the gift of prophecy to know that like any other, she would have been corrupted by its evil and turned into a tyrant. A beautiful tyrant deserving of worship, but still a tyrant. Thankfully, she had a strong enough will to resist the temptation of accepting the Ring of Power. Had she gotten her hands on it, that would have been the end of Middle Earth.

>From what I understand Sauron is a on par with Balrogs and other lesser maiar.
The commander of the Balrogs was saurons subordinate, sauron was the strongest of the Maiar

>If the balrogs had some of saurons power they could beat sauron!

Considering there weren't even hundreds of balrogs and Gandalf and the balrogs are the same species more or less.... theres only like 8 balrogs or something

>theres only like 8 balrogs or something
Tolkien kept waffling between that and there being legions of them.

It amplifies one's abilities and one's ambitions and pride. Galadriel saw herself as the Queen in and Sam saw himself as not just a hero, but as a master gardener:
>Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dur. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be.

Give it to a Balrog and whatever destructive urges that Balrog has would simply be amplified, likely turning it into a fiery force of nature. It would lay waste to all of Middle Earth, until no life would be left to flourish.

>It amplifies one's abilities

It MIGHT do that. You have to remember the ring is not mindless. It houses a good chunk of Sauron inside it, and so it knows all Sauron knew about deception and manipulation. It will tell you whatever it thinks you want to hear, if that will get it what it wants. Seeing past the ring's lies is the tricky part.

The ring has Sauron's will and power. A huge amount of that is tainted and inherited from Melkor, so even as the clever part of him resist it Sauron, even at the height of his power and united with the ring, couldn't resist doing self destructive and pointlessly wasteful things.

That same part of his Will would match directly, instantly with a Balrog's very focused and powerful will to burn and kill everything.His will might not be strong enough to resist giving into that sort of nihilistic madness.

That's not a subtext at all. It's very plainly spelled out.

Lawful Good Galadriel a shit, gib Lawful Evil Galadriel.

I heard you guys wanted an alternate story where I took the Ring.

>t was part of the essential deceit of the Ring to fill minds with imaginations of supreme power. But this the Great had well considered and had rejected, as seen in Elrond's words at the Council. Galadriel's rejection of the temptation was founded upon previous thought and resolve. In any case Elrond ir Galadriel would have proceeded in the policy now adopted by Sauron: they would have built up an empire with great and absolutely subserviant generals and armies and engines of war, until they could challenge Sauron and destroy him by force. Confrontation of Sauron alone, unaided, self to self was not contemplated. One can imagine the scene in which Gandalf, say, was placed in such a position. It would be a delicate ballance. On one side the true allegiance of the Ring to Sauron; on the other superior strength because Sauron was not actually in possession, and perhaps aslo because he was weakened by long corrupetion and expendature of will in dominating inferiors. If Gandalf proved the victor, the result would have been for Sauron the same as the destruction of the Ring; for him it woudl have been destroyed, taken from him for ever. But the Ring and all its works would have endoured. It would have been the master in the end.
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien # 246 to Mrs. Eileen Elgar (Sept. 1963)

Argument's over, lads.

giv dark mommy gf

This. Galadriel had best waifu potential but she squandered it.

She was probably the only being left in Middle-earth that could've overpowered Sauron's influence on the Ring and won it from him. Then she'd storm (and probably literally) Barad-dur.

I want to cum inside Galadriel

I concur.

Magicians are the baddest motherfuckers in LotR.

>Melkor's 'fuck it kill everything' nature

Which didn't exist. He wanted to dominate everything, not kill everything. It's why he created so many evil creatures.

No. Gothmog was equal to Sauron. Both were Morgoth's highest ranking servants

Yes, but she wouldn't have been able to with the rings corruption. She would have struggled alone against the armies, though.

He wanted to kill everything that wasn't his, like in the beginning when he was just playing really loud music over everyone else's without caring about theirs.

No, he didn't. He wanted to own everything that wasn't his. That's why he tried to make the music revolve around him. That's why he tried to claim Arda as his own. That's why he stole the Silmarils. His whole goal was to dominate everyone else, not kill everyone else.

Not with the Ring. The Ring wants to return to Sauron. It would use her to that end but betray her as soon as it was convenient.

Tolkien disagrees with you.

Tolkien also thought it was a good idea to introduce a major character just a few paragraphs before he kills Smaug, and from that point forward have that character be the most important one - to say nothing of the Arkhenstone, also introduced more than three-quarters through the book but from that point forward the most important thing in the book around which the whole plot turns.

Tolkien was a greater writer, but he wasn't a perfect one.

Plus he never got around to writing a decent Orc story, something I won't forgive him for. Shoulda' lived longer, or written it sooner instead of writing about friggin' Tom Bombadil.

Yeah Galadriel was just eye candy

>Thus, as ‘Morgoth’, when Melkor was confronted by the existence of other inhabitants of Arda, with other wills and intelligences, he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence, and his only notion of dealing with them was by physical force, or the fear of it. His sole ultimate object was their destruction [...] This was sheer nihilism, and negation its one ultimate object: Morgoth would no doubt, if he had been victorious, have ultimately destroyed even his own ‘creatures’, such as the Orcs, when they had served his sole purpose in using them: the destruction of Elves and Men. Melkor’s final impotence and despair lay in this: that whereas the Valar (and in their degree Elves and Men) could still love ‘Arda Marred’, that is Arda with a Melkor-ingredient, and could still heal this or that hurt, or produce from its very marring, from its state as it was, things beautiful and lovely, Melkor could do nothing with Arda, which was not from his own mind and was interwoven with the work and thoughts of others: even left alone he could only have gone raging on till all was leveled again into a formless chaos. And yet even so he would have been defeated, because it would still have ‘existed’, independent of his own mind, and a world in potential.

Melkor's original motive may have been ownership, but practically it manifested as nihilistic madness.

I for once welcome our new hot overlord.

Yes. Hell, Sauron was shit cared of even Aragorn challenging him with the Ring

>Plus he never got around to writing a decent Orc story, something I won't forgive him for. Shoulda' lived longer, or written it sooner instead of writing about friggin' Tom Bombadil.
Congratulations, you don't understand Tolkien's works at all. Stick to WoW.

>he doesn't know Tolkien himself regrets orcs being portrayed as inherently evil beings and that it went against his own religious and moral beliefs

Tolkien himself regretted portraying orcs as universally evil.

>They would be Morgoth’s greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad (I nearly wrote ’irredeemably bad’; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making - necessary to their actual existence - even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God’s and ultimately good.)

Right there, he writes that orcs are not irredeemably evil, only naturally inclined to it - but then so are Men, lest we forget that Tolkien was Catholic.

I feel the mythos of Middle-Earth would be richer if Tolkien, instead of writing The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, had instead written a short story about a good orc.

On an entirely related note, I really do hate Tom Bombadil.

read Tolkien's letters, 153 in particular

Yes, Sauron was pants-shittingly afraid of any powerful individual challenging him using the Ring, which is why he was blind to the idea of two fat midgets sneaking right under his nose with it.

Cate Blanchett looks so goddamned hot all Gothed up it's fucking ridiculous.

Isn't it mentioned in the epilogue bit of LotR after Saruman gets dealt with for real that a few orcs stick around the Shire and start helping with field work or something? I recall that being mentioned somewhere, but I forget if it's true. A short story about one of them would have been cool.

This aged badly

Your mom aged badly, but we all still bang her now and then.

Heyyyooo

good post, I didn't know that.

sam's vision shows his character

>I hate Tolkien didn't make a good book about goblins.
>like something edgy you know? I like goblins and orcs because I like rebelling against classics and they are edgy and makes me feel edgy.

I don't know. I've tried very, very hard to read The Lord of the Rings, but I could never make it through the second half of Fellowship. It's just so Goddamned dry and long. And also Tom Bombadil seriously saps my will to live.

Conversely I actually love The Hobbit (as much as I'll rant about Bard and the Arkhenstone not getting proper build-up for things that are going to be so important to the climax, it's still otherwise a great book), and have read it multiple times.

It's not like I haven't read doorstopper books before; I'm working my way through Tom Clancy's bibliography right now, for example (it's funny how you can spot the exact book where he goes off his rocker: Debt of Honor). But Lord of the Rings is just a chore to read. I feel like the 1200 pages it is could have probably been cut down to 700-900 without really losing anything.

>Authorial Intent is inconsequential, Reader's Interpretation is all that matters.
People like you should be filmed being boiled in fry vats and run over by tractors while having the footage mailed to your families.

bait

Read The Death of the Author

Okay, what's the name of this "good boys like bad girls" dark Galadriel fetish?

It's just having a thing for bad girls, most guys have one.

Whats this from

>Some drooling retard on the internet knows better what Lord of the Rings is about then the man who wrote it

I did read the Death of the Author. It's arrogant and pretentious, and used to justify the self-importance of literary scholars for way too long.

Never once did I suggest anything about edge, and wanting more development for his least-developed race isn't asking for much. Orcs are already, clearly shown to not be mindless. They have a concept of loyalty and loss and tribal bonds (according to Fellowship, "orcs will often pursue foes for many leagues into the plain, if they have a fallen captain to avenge."). Shagrat and Gorbag clearly have a sense of camaraderie between each other and a longing for the "good old days" where they didn't have cruel masters bossing them around and could just do their own thing.

And of course Tolkien wrote in his own letters that there MUST be Orcish women and Orcish farmers tending fields in Mordor and elsewhere, we just don't see them for the same reason we don't see Dwarf women or farmers, they don't fit into the narrative of Lord of the Rings

The point being that we have these little glimpses here and there to the idea that there's more to Orcs than what we're generally shown or what Men, Elves, Dwarves, or Hobbits generally see of them, and it's tantalizing and something I'd have liked to see. Hell, even a story that still has orcs as generally evil but at least expands upon them a bit would have been welcome. Even just something like a quick little story of a Goblin in Goblin-Town immediately before Thorin's group showed up and his typical day.

Make it something for kids, even. "And then Grok went and got breakfast, which was always a nasty ordeal since it involved hunting rats and fish in the dark warrens outside Goblin-Town. Goblins generally liked the dark, but Grok had heard stories from other Goblins of something in the dark that hunted Goblins, something unnatural that coughed and went 'gollum, gollum' before it fell upon a hapless Goblin, who would never be seen again."

And then Grok, like, gets lost but manages to find his way home. Has a brief run-in with Bilbo who points him in the right direction or something. That's not edgy, that's anti-edge.

LOved her performance in the role, but I wish the goddess of death would haave displayed a wider array of powers than summoning knives..

Actually kinda expected her to play the part of Death in Indfinity War...

Well I mean knives cause death and she does have some necromancy powers with that weird flame.

I honestly just want Loki to have ice powers without the Casket.

I hope Lady Death is just a skeleton in a cloak, standing around being spooky for two movies while Thanos is trying to impress her.

A question that's more in the air is could boromir have beaten sauron?

It has been stated in the novels that should Galadriel ever face Sauron 1v1 on the doorstep of Lothlorien, her seat of power, she'd flatly lose.

Jackson honestly wanked her to godly proportions in the films and nerfed Gandalf up the ass.

Do you fags ever get tired of being BTFO

Lord of the Rings is more of a classic epic than a regular book, while The Hobbit is a children's novel. Both are good. If you want to get used to reading 'heavy' books like LoTR, try reading more accessible literature first. It's mostly a matter of getting used to it. Go over to Veeky Forums for recommendations.
Personally, I read LoTR when I was 16. I read the original language version, and my English wasn't quite as good as it is now. When I have the time, I really should read it again, because I missed so many details and intricacies the first time.

>BTFO

In what way? I just got here.

Death of the Author is just a way for people to put words in the mouth of dead men and convince themselves that they aren't just making things up to suit their fancy.

>Shoulda' lived longer, or written it sooner instead of writing about friggin' Tom Bombadil.
Holy shit if you don't like BASED TOM you are a massive pleb.

Thor 3.

You just demonstrated you have no clue what the essay is about. What you're describing doesn't even make logical sense. If you're completely disregarding the author's intent, how are you "putting words in the mouths of dead men by never bringing up the author at all"?

If anything, it only speaks to how completely unfamiliar you are with literary analysis if you think the only way to approach a work is to somehow see it from the lens of what the author meant by it.

>Death of the Author is just a way for people to erase the words dead men and convince themselves that they aren't just making things up to suit their fancy.
There, now you can't be a fucking pedant about it.

I'm sure you have never actually read anything to do with actual literary criticism, but to put it in a Veeky Forums context, picture the Monster Girl Encyclopedia threads.

The author of that shitshow insists that people seeing grimdark in his porn setting is the result of western misintepretation. Whatever he may say about it doesn't change that many parts of his setting are really fucked up. So should you turn your brain off and stop thinking critically just because the angle you are exploring likely doesn't line up with the original intention behind the text?

When I was 6 I was given an unabridged copy of Treasure Island, and basically leaned to read by reading that book over and over again. There's plenty of books that I'll read more than once, but Treasure Island is the one that as soon as I finish reading I will immediately turn back to the first page to read again.

Point being that the language isn't the problem, it's the prose. Just something about it makes it incredibly difficult for me to get into. I've read Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and managed to make it through that, but I can't manage the same with LotR. I don't know what it is.

Look, I've never read this Death of the Author essay or whatever it is. All I know is that Tolkien stated in one of his letters and in plain English that Orcs are not irredeemably evil and then explained why, so from that I gather that Tolkien did not intend for Orcs to be irredeemably evil, even if some people would prefer them that way for God knows what reason.

I'm not normally one to guess at authorial intent, but here I don't have to guess: Tolkien made his views on the matter plain as day to anyone who cared to read them.

??? Gothmog was one of Sauron's lieutenants.

No? That never happens.

Gothmog's was Melkor's Lieutenant not Saurons. They were pretty much equals, with Gothmog being the more brutal, rather than the kunnin that is Sauron.

This. Authors are often unaware of what they're actually doing. Stuff boils up from their subconscious and pours out onto the page, and not everyone is super self aware, authors included. Ray Bradbury used to insist that Fahrenheit 411 has nothing to do with censorship, when anyone who's not so close to the story can see how it resonates with notions of censorship pretty clearly.

Except it doesn't matter what the author said, it's about what's presented in the work. Tolkien also said that the ring isn't a metaphor for the atomic bomb, but you will clearly see that it's the most crusts clear allegory for it.

Face it, Tolkien's words don't mean anything when you apply yourself critically

By that logic, if I apply myself critically to your post, I can see that you're clearly someone who doesn't like to be wrong even when it's very clear that he is, and so will jump through hoops to try and show that he was right all along if only looked at from the correct point of view.

Sound about right?

Nice false flag there, boys. Those are the two most common talking points when used by you plebians to uplift Authorial Intent.

The ring is not a metaphor for the atomic bomb

>I have no argument and I must shitpost

If they're such commonly used points, surely you must have had time to come up with a better rebuttal than just "durr faelsflag u allway say dat"

it is if you deconstruct the story framing it within that metaphor

Then find someone who can write a fluff-friendly version of Shadow of Mordor.

No such thing.

> Wrong ideas are true if you're stupid
According to an epistemological foundation that is itself dumb.

> But it's MY truth and you can't make me believe it no matter the observable facts!
That's how we get Trump voters.

>She would use its power to force all of Middle Earth to obey and adore her as its dark, beautiful mistress.

on the other hand death of the author has been abused to hell and back by people who want to use a popular work of fiction to justify their (sometimes insane) beliefs
see pretty much every holy war ever

Also true.

This, it was not even fucking right.
The entire movie was spent with her slinking and sashaying around as much as possible..
There is seriously not enoug GOOD fap material with goth girls, especially since most of them can't do it right.

This is something I give a lot of credit to the 'Shadow of ___' games for. Orcs are given personalities and you get glimpses into a culture centered on bringing 'order' to the world, where that order is being dictated by Sauron. The brutal behavior of the orcs is inherited from their dark master, and not just something they do uncontrollably.

Think of it like this, the knife is one of the oldest if not the oldest weapon/tool mankind has made. Ultimately it's just the developed concept of the sharpened rock, and no other man made weapon has killed as many people as the knife, and the competition isn't likely to catch up anytime soon. Urg the caveman had a knife, and modern soldiers even with all the shit they have, fall back on their knives when they're desperate enough.

So knives might very well have some significance to the personification of death.

...