Input Junkie

Here's a sketch for a story-- I might never write the whole thing, but I think the idea is good enough that I don't want to lose it completely. As usual with such things, this idea is free to a good home if you write it up. Credit is appreciated but not demanded.

For some time, I've thought that the Ring in LOTR is an interesting viewpoint character-- it tried so hard, it waited so long, it came so close to succeeding, but it failed.

Recently, I've been exposed to enough idealism that I came up with a more complex version.

Suppose that being away from Sauron causes the Ring to have its own take on things. In particular, being in contact with Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam is quite a different world than Sauron's point of view.

I think the turning point would be when Sam is tempted with a garden the size of a continent. The Ring doesn't understand anything benevolent, it's just amplifying what Sam wants, but then the Ring is in contact with Sam's love of a proportionate garden that he takes care of himself. It's nothing like Mordor's wasteland.

We can assume slow erosion of the Ring's similarity to Sauron from decades in the Shire, even though it didn't make a huge obvious change.

Here's the part where I need to reread LOTR, which is on the to-do list anyway.

When Frodo puts on the Ring at the Cracks of Doom, the Ring is horrified. Gollum was addicted, of course, but the Ring adds a push so that Gollum is able to take the Ring (saving Frodo, who the Ring is sympathetic to, but not enough to save his finger) and fall into the lava.

And in the real world, lava fertilizes the soil, like a less intense version of the dirt from Lothlorien.