They could have fitted the whole ring / tape / mouse assembly into a small paper bag Aragorn could have kept it in his jacket and fed it little bits of lembas on the way how lovely x
Sam did bear the weight of the ring, its hard to convey in the movie but the book makes it clear. Sam just had an iron will.
AND he hadn’t already been carrying the ring the whole fucking way like Frodo did!
It’s both an iron will and a life goal that isn’t really susceptible to corruption. The ring takes the thing you want most and connects itself to that in your mind, twisting your goals to accomplish what it wants.
I’m not really certain what value being temporarily invisible has when all you want to do is garden. Hell, I don’t even think a giant army or conquering the whole world would help either. Just means a more overwhelming garden, which defeats the point.
I mean that’s the reason Hobbits in general can withstand the Ring longer than any other race of Middle Earth. They just want a quiet life without any fuss and that’s pretty much the opposite of what the Ring can promise them.
Ring: I can make you rich!
Hobbit: Eh, than my cousins will pester me all day.
Ring: I can make you strong!
Hobbit: What for? I have an ox for that.
Ring: I can make you king of all!
Hobbit: That’s even worse than rich!
Ring: Exasperated sigh
Ring: Fine! I can give you third breakfast!
But I’m busy eating elevenses right now! Maybe we can have third breakfast tomorrow?
He was really just sick and fucking tired of the Lembas bread that much.
Really the whole story of Sam could be boiled down to drive of a man who really wanted to get back to a life of a good women and great food.
Great food = potatoes
Mushrooms, really.
Humble but great
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Needed more pipeweed to get through it.
Sam is the main character in the book
So instead of sending Sam, the whole Shire should have taken the trio together and just passed the ring back and forth amongst like 10 people?
All you have to do is read the first book to realize why that wouldn’t work.
Sir this is a
Wendy’smeme subHard to tell when its not funny.
no it’s cause Sam was a fucking saint
This is my headcanon and I cannot be convinced otherwise.
Yeah sam is the true king imo 👑
I mean, I haven’t read the books in a while now, but iirc they make this pretty damn clear
He really was, though. Both Frodo and Bilbo carried the weight better than any other had before them, but they were still negatively impacted by it. But not Sam. Truly a goldenhearted being.
I thought Sam did put on the ring in the books.
It also affected Boromir just being around it.
Didn’t Smeagol kill a friend just to have it before even wearing it?
Yes. Basically, Sam was practically only one in the Fellowship who could resist the temptations of The Ring, because he had really simple desires.
I dunno… he didn’t have it for very long in the films, then hesitated when Frodo asked for it back. He resisted the ring, but it still affected him a little bit.
It was more a concern for Frodo as Frodo was desperatefor the ring at the time.
In the book it shows you how the ring attempted to corrupt him and he kind of went “meh” at it.
How did the ring attempt to corrupt ol’ Samwise?
Here’s my answer from the last time this came up (which might as well have been yesterday from how often people unfairly lionize Sam and shit on Frodo):
“As he stood there, even though the Ring was not on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, and vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor…”
"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… He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. "
“In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”
Sam was tempted, and if he possessed the ring long enough he would have been overcome like any other, but his Hobbit-sense saved him in that one small moment, when he had held the ring but a short while.
We can read the same words and take something different from them. That reads to me like he was able to pretty easily dismiss the temptation. Maybe he would’ve been tempted like Boromir was, maybe he would’ve had the resolve of Frodo, maybe he could’ve held it for much longer like Bilbo.
His Hobbit-sense saved him there. The only one who can tell us with certainly where it lies in relation to Frodo is no longer able to.
It would eventually corrupt anyone… except Tom Bombadil.
Which is equally funny, because he’d have no reason to keep it from Sauron, except kneejerk comedic denial when someone tries to wrong him. The forces of Mordor could rain death upon his woods, and he’d somehow catch hellfire in his chimney and make an especially strong pot of tea. Sauron himself, re-embodied, could swing that ox-sized mace at his door, and howl impotently as each strike bounces off and becomes a knock-knock joke. And then one day, some orc siege captain (who’d slowly gone from digging trenches to tending the carrot patch) would remark on what a fine piece of jewelry Tom wore, and he’d just hand it over and skip away.
Also arguably the ring was having a big effect on him the entire time. The entire journey sam hates Smegal, which he sees as what Frodo is becoming carrying the ring. Smegal was a walking personification of the fear sam had for Frodo. That fear was turned into hate by the ring slowly corrupting Sam’s love for his master into a weakness for the ring to leverage. He absolutely was not immune to its power.
I forget the exact wording, but the Ring essentially showed Sam visions of being some sort of a supreme gardener king. Sam dismissed that as fucking stupid, because he just wants a simple garden.
The animated films had a segment of when Sam had the ring and was going to rescue Frodo, and it tempted him that he could use its power to set the world right. I kind of wish Peter Jackson would’ve done something similar.
Sam Bombadil
The mouse definitely would have escaped and ran straight to Sauron.
Yep. This particular configuration only works because of Sam’s devotion to Frodo.
We need more configurations.
That, or Boromir would FUCK THAT MOUSE UP and take the ring for himself
The ring can obviously influence people around the ringbearer and not just the ringbearer themselves, as seen by Boromir and Faramir being tempted by it and Smeagle killing his friend for it.
Hobbits are just very good natured and resistant to the evil influence of the ring, especially Sam it seems
Now I’m picturing Boromir cornering the mouse, drawing his sword, and stating “thou hast squeaked thy last squeak” as the mouse runs back and forth in the corner, trying to escape.
It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing. Such a little thing.
Okay but what about all the fish that swam in the river the ring was in all this time
Sam just had the strength to resist the ring.
He didn’t crave for power, but only for food and peace.
You mean PO-TAY-TOES?
Boil 'em, mash 'em, put 'em in a stew!
Or hobbit poontang
Sam had hobbit pussy eager at the ring of a bell if he’d have wanted, he wasn’t lacking.
Yes, but through that mouse, the ring would wield a power too squeak and scratch to imagine.
Mouse would escape the tape and stick its head through the ring. Then you have an invisible mouse to rule them all to deal with. The whole of Middle Earth would be absolutely overrun with mice
Consider this: Frodo is the mouse
Yup. As a maiar, this is basically what Gandalf did.
This is a maiar?
Tolkien stated that “Maia is the name of the Kin of the Valar, but especially of those of lesser power than the 9 great rulers”. In the Valaquenta, Tolkien wrote that the Maiar are “spirits whose being also began before the world, of the same order as the Valar but of less degree”.
Basically the same thing Sauron was before he made the rings and corrupted himself for power.
So Gandalf did a maiar?
He did the maiar mash! It was a middle earth smash!
I’m sure an invisible mouse with an evil, human-level intelligence in its head and a total commitment to do the latter’s bidding would have gone much better than what happened
the ring isnt conscious though, so i dont know what you mean
Doesn’t the ring sort of connect the subject to Sauron or something? On a Plot level, I thought that was the whole point (thematically, the sheer power is the real reason, of course).
Nope. Sauron isn’t even aware of when someone wears the ring. The ring basically only has a handful of effects:
- (Slightly) bends fate to favor Sauron’s interests (e.g.: bouncing in a particularly fateful direction, shining in a particularly noticeable way at a specific moment). This is basically the only thing it can do without an owner.
- (Slowly) amplifies the wearer’s worst personality traits (e.g.: greed, powerlust, paranoia, hatred). The ring has enough agency over which traits it brings out to subtly favor Sauron’s interests, though this varies by individual and the extent of exposure.
- Grants the owner wraith-like powers such as: invisibility, unnaturally long lifespan, and understanding of black speech.
- Grants Sauron (or an equally skilled warlock) immense infuence over the owners of the other rings, including mind reading and partial control.
tl;dr: The ring exists as a tool to control the other wearers and is functionally useless to Sauron when he’s not wearing it. The other properties of the ring basically amount to a contingency plan… though it’s not actually well established just how intentional vs. accidental some of these auxiliary effects were.
Just a passerby who could give less fucks about the series but I am really into what you’re talking about. Please, tell me more.
I’d love to… but unfortunately that’s more-or-less the extent of what Tolkien has ever written about the One Ring. Tolkien was ultimately writing about Sauron (i.e.: the lord of the rings) and the evil miasma besetting Middle Earth which the lord personally embodied. Viewed through that perspective, the ring is merely a storytelling tool for imposing Sauron’s shadow upon our heroes without compromising his dramatic weight as the big bad.
With that being said, the One Ring became foundational in shaping the modern incarnation of what TV Tropes has dubbed the “Artifact of Doom”, though I’m more partial to the OSP classification of “Cursed Artifact” which focuses more on specifically malevolent & varyingly sentient magical artifacts (e.g.: the Monkey’s Paw, the Picture of Dorian Gray, Nightblood, Gonne, SCP-055). One of the curses (heh) of this particular trope is that it’s quite hard to stake the dramatic weight of a full narrative upon them, since they tend to lose their mystique as the audience gets more familiar – this works very well for short stories, though!
The concept of “fate warping” power, on the other hand, has caught on significantly less in western fantasy. This is actually kind of odd by historical standards because we can see similar explorations of the concept in both eastern and western mythology (e.g.: the (Chinese) Red Thread of Fate vs. the (Greek) Thread of Human Fate). It’s actually a bit of an unexplained mystery as to why the theme only fell out of favor in the western traditions!
Weeb that I am, I would be remiss not to mention the intricate mechanical and thematic power of fate in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – specifically in the context of Araki’s (fantastically bizzare) commentaries on justice, power, truth, and inequality which take center stage in parts 4-6. One of my favorite stories of all-time is the weighty JoJo Part 5 epilogue – “Sleeping Slaves” – because it makes such an eloquent and powerful statement about the roles of fate & heroic self-determination in the preceding story.
Thanks for breaking down why I got into it.
the ring definitely has it’s own influence on its subject
And thus the first ‘cranium rat’ was born, except this one can go invisible too.
Was magic ring ever explained on a technical level? I thought all we know is it wants to be with sauron and it makes angels shit themselves.
For all we know putting it on a mouse gives everyone mouse nightmares and make them worship the mouse as mouse king before they take it straight to sauron.
Do you not have the Official Middle Earth Technical Manual?
I’ve got the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s factory service manual.
The OEMOMEFSM.
But that mouse would have become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
And would sing 🎵 HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY! 🎵
Mighty mouse. Faster than a bullet and stronger than a locomotive.
This would create quite an evil mouse. I imagine the risk here is that the mouse would break free and run away with the ring and bring it to Sauron.
Edit: Someone already beat me to it.
the mouse would break free and run away
You need legs to run away
it would take the cookie, and you know what happens when you give a mouse a cookie
Also good luck finding an invisible mouse.
*affected
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Its easier too carry a depressed mouse than a depressed halfman
I’m going to need to see the numbers.
The mouse would have chewed through the pocket and run away as soon as it could
Or possibly climb the nearest thing to get eaten by a bird, kinda like what Frodo did with the nazgul.
Frodo ate a Nazgûl?
They’re surprisingly low calorie.
They should have laid a long garden hose all the way to mt doom and pushed the ring though it with a bicycle pump
You joke but the disregard for physics in the lord of the rings trilogy was astounding; giving an item to another person is a free action, thus if you create a line of people all the way to mt doom, you can pass the ring all the way from the shire to mt doom in six seconds at the speed of light; heck if the last person in the line just throws the ring at the eye of Sauron it would be like a kinetic weapon with the destructive force of the deathstar.
