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In my opinion, Turin was more of a villian than Sauron.
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Hm... could you explain that a little bit more? Turin made some bad decisions and listened to some of the wrong people, but he was cursed, and generally I'd say he acted according to his best judgment. Sauron's goal was domination of Middle-earth. I'm having trouble balancing the scale in the other way.
I must say that Fëanor could possibly be my favorite character in the Sil, and is almost certainly my favorite Elf of all time. He really fascinates me as a character, even if he isn't exactly 'nice;' indeed, sometimes "you're an idiot" would best describe his actions. His whole story is rather tragic, and I can't say whether he ultimately brought about more bad or good. But that's the best part: like Ang said, Tolkien doesn't tell us characters are "good" or "bad;" the Reader (
) has a choice in that. Fëanor is a classic example of a basically good character whose faults and bad choices lead to his down-fall.
I've always rather liked Shagrat and Gorbag. Yes, they're Orcs, and yes, they're prone to the same, ah,
flaws that tend to run in the race (e.g. killing each other...), but in they're conversation we can see a more human side to them. What they really want is to get away from it all and set up a place from themselves with a few trusty lads. They don't want to fight this war; they feel no loyalty towards Sauron. It isn't hard for me to feel sympathetic for them. The initial human reaction is to say "Orcs=evil," but they aren't wholly so. They do have some more human qualities to them, and exploring these qualities is what makes Orkish characters interesting to RPG. It's what makes all baddies fun to RPG, in fact, is that they do have good traits. It seems like the tendency in many fantasy books is to paint the bad guy as all evil without redeeming qualities. But in Tolkien's books (and several others, I'm not generalizing the genre completely), the bad guys have depth and motives and good qualities. It's what makes Saruman or Grima more interesting to analyze than Aragorn or Faramir.
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Posted by Ang
I would prefer to call it another kind of power; power to create a crossroads but let us pick the path.
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Exactly. I love that image.