goshdarnspam | all the kingdoms for a poll

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all the kingdoms for a poll

GREETINGS BATS AND BITCHES
THIS IS OLESIA
IN CAPSLOCK
IN SPAM

HI

I'M HERE TO SOLICIT YOUR HELP IN SOME GOOD OLD FASHIONED PEER-PRESSURE
OF THE "APP THIS, YOU ALREADY MADE THE ACCOUNT
"AND COVERED SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS OF HISTORY FOR THE BACKGROUND, MY GOD,
"AND ALSO THERE WOULD BE LULZ" VARIETY.

You see, I have this friend. This friend is *~*seriously considering*~* applying for a certain villain from a very popular book-and-film franchise. I sincerely doubt there is a member of this game that has not at least heard of this franchise. But no matter how often I (or the various other members of her team of friends) assure her that this is totally the kind of villain C&C would want around and plot with, she's worried that we are a band of filthy liars. Usually we are, but that's not the point. As such, I'm coming to you with a very short poll so I can prove to her once and for all that she really needs to stop doubting my brilliant schemes and settle in to go through with this already.

Good?
Good.
Go, please:

[Poll #1607411]

Thank you for your time.

And yes said character is listed on the reserves page if you're really interested.

also if you are bored, let's all go hang out in goddamnbatchat for the hell of it.

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idk maybe this is just the book purist in me speaking, but I never saw the Ring has having a will, it was Sauron's will.

(and oh my god if we had a Sauron OMG OMG SO COOL)

but, whatever. I never saw the movies.

A Sauron would be an excellent addition

He would indeed. Talk about your villain that doesn't need any kind of setup to want to destroy the world, he'd just go and do it. Mmmm that's a tasty tempting thought....

This. It's an instrument of Sauron's will, created by him for the express purpose of fucking shit up. Sauron, yes. Ring, no.

That would be like me apping the Millennium Puzzle and insisting that it had a will and a voice because the Items are drawn to one another. They're that way because they were created for the purpose of being together, not because they're friends. I think the justification would have to be incredibly well-crafted to justify the app itself, much less accepting it. If she can make it work, that will astound me, but it would take an enormous amount of work and persuasion.

Sorry to be a poopoohead about everything.

Personally, being nowhere near as familiar with the canon as either side of the interpretation, I can't with any authority fall on one side or the other; however, if she can manage to make a believable argument with canon evidence to support it, I'm going to do my best to encourage her to get there.

I'm um. Doing book canon if I do apply, I have read the books, not just watched the movies, though personally I always thought that the books do a better job at showing it has a will and motivation than the movies just because even with 12 hours of film you just can't get dat done so well as with like 1400 pages or however long the edition you have is my gosh lotr WHY ARE YOU SO LONG.

And that's just the one series/book but w/e!

Still, due to the fact that (in the books!) the Ring is said over and over again to have corrupted/betrayed/influenced/wanted things, either when Sauron was a) so mostly dead that this seems unlikely or b) completely unaware of the Ring's presence or c) completely unaware of the Ring's location, which seems unlikely if he was actively controlling it (wouldn't that knowledge of where it was and what it was doing, after all?) or d) all of the above I personally feel that the Ring was granted a will and sentience by the events of its creation, which makes sense. Kinda figure that there's only so much power and bad emotions you can stuff into one tiny little band of gold before it starts becoming aware, because this is magic~ involved.

ANYWAY POINT IS that Tolkien knew his stuff. He was not some novice writer who didn't know the language. If he'd meant "Sauron manipulated the Ring through their connection to kill Isildur" I imagine he would have said so, rather than flipping it so it's "The Ring betrayed Isildur". Tolkien tends to say what he meant, which is one of the reasons the books are so long. Because he's saying what he meant and explaining everything in METICULOUS DETAIL.

And also, just going back to the above, if Sauron was manipulating the thing the whole time, he would sorta. Know it still existed and stuff. So there would be none of this suddenly finding out and going /GASP and sending out the ringwraiths.

Edited 2010-08-19 10:06 (UTC)

So, by that extension, could you also app the Sennen Ring? It's been shown to have a will of its own, moving on its own, choosing it's wielder (and sucking the lives out of those it deemed unworthy to wear it). If you go by CapMon continuity, it even abandoned someone it had let wear it and rolled away when it looked like things were going sour.

There's a difference between something having a will and something being a character.

Except, correct me if I'm mistaken, but hasn't that been said to be the spirit of the M. Ring controlling it in canon? If not it's been heavily implied, and I'm pretty sure that unless I've missed something the Ring has never acted independently of the Spirit. And in that case it already has been apped, yes, just as 'The Spirit of the M. Ring/Dark Bakura' not 'The M. Ring'. Not so in this case. In this case we have lines that explicitly state some pretty firm things in canon.

"The Ring betrayed Isildur" is the only direct quote that I know is a direct quote that I can think of right now, but if all y'all really want I can go dig up my physical copy of the book, rather than just the books on tape, and slog through for a bunch of similar quotes.

But see, that line alone is very telling.

Sauron was not working for or with Isildur, so it was impossible for Sauron to betray him. Attack or cripple or whatever you like, but betrayal where two parties are not in alliance in one way or another just don't happen. The Ring was supposedly working for Isildur as you know, Isildur currently owned it. However, if the Ring had merely fallen of his finger, that could hardly be called a betrayal. In order to be able to betray a thing, you must understand the concept of loyalty and be able to act in the opposite manner.

There have been times where the Ring moves when YB is surprised by it, and it's moved while YB was defeated [especially in the anime.] It's never been said anywhere in canon that YB is the one controlling the Ring at all times. It reacts with out his prompting quite a few times. [again, especially in the anime] Going back to the manga, before Thief King even makes his entrance, while Mahaado has the Ring, it reacts to Thief King approaching, as does the Toque/Necklace. Almost all the Items have been shown to react with out prompting in different places (the Puzzle added in the search for Jounouchi when he was dueling Kotsuzuka, the Rod showed Kaiba and YYuugi a vision during their duel in the Battle City finals, the Torque goes off all the time.)

See, I don't consider that line very telling at all because of how commonly it's said that an inanimate object or force of nature betrayed someone by malfunctioning. Heck, every other day I comment how Spellcheck's betrayed me. Something failing at a critical juncture can be very easily seen as a betrayal.

True, but not in the 'choosing the user/moving distance without being carried/etc' sort of way. The Millennium Ring, you must remember, was designed specifically to react to multiple things in canon. Those pointer things are there for a reason. And, at the same time, when it did things like the spikes buried themselves in Bakura's chest, that was the spirit of the Ring controlling it so that it behaved in a way separate to the purpose for which it had been made.

All of the items have been shown to be reactionary, yes, but that is how they were designed to act. The Ring, on the other hand, was designed mostly for one thing. To rule the other Rings of Power. It is not designed to be reactionary, and yet for some reason it still is. If ABSOLUTELY nothing else, it grows heavier and lighter, as well as larger and smaller, apparently in response to specific events. (It also has those letters that appear and vanish but as that has a specific stimuli - fire - I'm not counting that.)

And all right, I'll go dig up my omnibus volume. Though I might also say that it is said to abandon Gollum. Over and over in the relatively short amount of time that it's by itself words that are normally applied to self-willed objects are applied to it, and after a while it becomes highly suggestive. Years and years before I began roleplaying, before even the hint of anything like this idea had entered my head, when I first read LotR I was convinced that the Ring was sentient, and it's certainly a powerful force in it's own right. Most specifically, when Frodo either curses Gollum or prophecies at the end of RotK I was, and remain, convinced that the being speaking was not Frodo, but rather the Ring using him as an avatar.

Also, out of curiosity, have you ever read it? The book I mean, from end to end.

IDK I still don't necessarily interpret the Ring's will to being sentient. It never actually says anything, so it doesn't really have a voice, even if it does behave willfully as a result of Sauron's power being in it. Everything it does is solely intended to get itself back to Mordor, Gandalf says as much in "Shadows of the Past." It isn't a character in and of itself. But only the mods can really rule whether there's enough canon evidence to review the app and interpret it that way, I really have no say.

It's kind of ironic that the best comparison I can make is to a canon so few people here know - it's like the True Runes in Suikoden. They have a will, but they aren't characters, so I couldn't have apped the True Lightning Rune and even for the sake of the plot I didn't need to create a character journal for it. The only Rune that is a character is the Night Rune, it turned itself into the Star Dragon Sword which does talk and has a rather snarky personality. But hey, no one knows Suikoden except like three people in the game so alas. Or, I suppose another apt comparison is to Horcruxes in Harry Potter - they had a portion of Voldemort's soul in them, and yet he couldn't just sense where they were either.

It may just be a matter of interpretation, but like I say, I never watched the movies beyond halfway through Fellowship (ahaha I sorta walked out) because I'm a sad, sorry book purist. So I can't say whether Jackson put in visual/audio cues that made the Ring more like a character than like a plot device. If that's his interpretation of the story, I can see why it would swing that way.

I suppose you could argue for visual cues being added, but imo mostly that was 'ALSO IT'S EVIL' not 'ALSO IT THINKS.'

I read the books before I ever saw the movies and was struck with the impression that the Ring was sentient when I first read the books. I'm sorry you walked out of the movies. With a few rareish exceptions (hate what they did to Faramir, for example) I think they did a very good job converting the book to a movie. Still, I can understand that. I myself loathe the Harry Potter movies down to the very center of my being.

out of curiosity, have you gotten to the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales yet? They're cumbersome, but not as bad as Lost Tales and the other collections of author's notes and first drafts.

I know the story but have not finished reading the book yet. I've tried, but only the once, which means I'm up for a retry soon. I mean, it took me 17 false starts before I finally managed to make it through book 1 of the fellowship, after which I went to with no real problems. And given that I was I think 8 when I first tried reading the fellowship, it's maybe no surprise that I didn't exactly make it through.

Ah. I see. Then, the dry and cumbersome backstories in the Silmarillion are right out. Even I'm willing to admit, as much as I love Tolkien, the Sil is OMG HARD and somewhat inaccessible.

Give me The Hobbit any day

/cuddles her copy

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