Letters Never Sent

[vulgarweed]

Dear Tolkien Society,

I have combed all the Letters and HoME notes for this and have yet to find a definitive answer to this question; if it's in there and I missed it, please forgive me. During a sexual encounter, would the penis of the penetrator or fellatee disappear upon entering an orifice of someone wearing the One Ring? (Assuming this person is neither Sauron nor Tom Bombadil)

Sincerely,

V, who needs to know Because of Reasons, and when I tried to contact the Professor over the Ouija board, he hung up on me.

~~~

Dear Christopher Tolkien....

NOPE. You guys will have better answers anyway.




[Poll #1906920]



This is the kind of question that keeps me up at night. Perhaps I should look at my life choices.

*looks*

Yup, they're fine!

Comments

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

My initial instinct was that since clothes etc disappear as well, I'd say that in the case of ring-invisibility, anything ...inserted into the ring-wearer would disappear, too, seeing as the ring works as a sort of cloaking device. If the invisibility was induced by some other means that make the wearer translucent instead, the cock in question would remain visible.

However, someone above rightly mentioned that the ring actually works differently from both variants, seeing as the wearer is actually (partially?) transported to a... close parallel dimension? Layer of reality? Which would argue in favour of cock-visibility, but mostly makes me wonder whether successful fellatio/fucking would even work at all unless you happen to be blowing, say a Nazgûl (unf, yes), which exists in both spheres simultaneously. On the other hand, things in both realities can be touched/manipulated, so maybe it would still work. But then, the transportation to the other place can't be entirely responsible for the invisibility, or that too wouldn't be complete, so additional cloaking would have to occur (I think we can rule out transparency), so that we're back to invisible cock?

Tl;dr: I have no fucking clue. XD Really good question, though!

And yep, your life-choices look flawless from where I'm standing. :D

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem is the inconsistency of Tolkien's own writing about the Ring - in The Hobbit, when he didn't yet know the ring was The Ring, it seems very handwavey "it's magic" just like you'd expect in a children's book. The deeper explanations came later.

I think enough of the wearer remains in this dimension that sex would definitely be possible. They're still physically present - they can eat (and steal food, keys, gold cups, etc.), they can be hurt or killed (or knocked unconscious for a whole battle) or hurt or kill someone or something else, they still make sounds and give off scent (that a dragon can smell even if he can't identify it). I don't really see any problems with having sex, assuming one's partner can cope with the sheer weirdness.

I think in the case of Nazgûl-blowing, it's probably better not to have a Ring - maybe you don't want to be able to see what you're doing.