Survivor: The Second Age

[Diamond18]

Originally Posted by She of the fiery feet

He may be powerful, but he doesn't make that great a use of that power. Let's try accompanying it with some intelligence next time, shall we?

Exactly!

Originally Posted by He of the glowing eyes

Sauron was most certainly not bested by a trio of halflings. He was defeated by divine intervention- he was bested by Eru. Sauron had grown so powerful and his Ring plot was so perfect (no one could willfully destroy it) that God himself had to step in on several occasions to ensure his defeat. If that's not greatness I don't know what is.

Actually, that's a matter of opinion. One can point to many times when Sauron could have got his ring back but didn't, simply because he was too unimaginative to think that anyone would try to sneak in his back door and melt his ring in Mount Doom. Smacks of stupidity. If he'd never turned his eye away from Mt. Doom, they would never even have gotten to the point where Gollum bites of Frodo's finger and acidentally falls in the lava. And you can't really say that Gollum tripped over the finger of Eru, it could just be one of those lovely lucky coincedences authors like to use. Regardless, though, the characters of LotR had plenty to do with besting Sauron, plenty, and you won't convince me that they had noting at all to do with it and Eru just did everything. Piffles! What a pointless story it would be, then. Why didn't Eru just zap Sauron with lightening if he cared so much?

However, all of this is rather beside the point, I'll vote Sauron off for the same reasons I'd vote Hitler off -- sure, they both were pretty good at being depraved, and "almost succeeded" in the end -- but I am under no compulsion to respect them for it. And I certainly have no desire to reward them for it.