He had a thing for Melian too, remember?
I wonder if originally Sauron was a Maia of Makar. Always fixating on unavailable women, he’d probably have tried to hit on Measse…
I stand corrected. Looks like I need to read the Silmarillion again.
I do, however, stand by the rest of my post; Sauron and Saruman were just as wantonly destructive as the Balrog of Moria, just on a bigger scale.
Patriarchal society, sexual repression, dead white male author, beards on dwarves, orc reproduction, lembas baking, missing entwives, homoerotic overtones, blah blah blah. What available women were there? He’s a Nice Guy.
Disagree entirely.
Melkor wanted to rule. You cannot rule what is left after destruction. Destruction is entropy in action. Melkor is not the equivalent of, say, a “Destroyer” which wants to devour all the world. In Melkor’s perfect world, things are ordered according to his desires. The fact that he’s willing to destroy what anyone ELSE builds up, if he feels it is needed in order to accomplish his goals simply is part of what makes him evil (the end justifies the means).
Sauron was just Melkor light. Notice how Sauron builds plenty of things: Barad Dur, Dol Guldur, etc. Nor does he destroy what he conquers, but rather rehabilitates it and puts it to good use: Minas Morgul, Cirith Ungol, the Charcarost (sp?), etc.
Saruman is most certainly not a destroyer. Indeed, he’s most clearly someone who is Lawful Evil. He’s convinced his way is the way to save Middle-Earth from Sauron. He doesn’t see why the very useful tools of orcs, wargs, etc. should be avoided, because they seem to him quite effective. And while he will tear down a forest to power his mills, his forges, he does so not to pour out some destructive effluvium, but rather to build and make things. Of course, no one wants what he’s making, which is a bit of a problem for him. 
Charcoalroast? Ohhh! You mean Carcharoth, the wolf that ate Beren’s Silmaril (not to mention his hand).
Come to think of it, Charcoalroast isn’t far off, is it.
What’s so evil about Shelob? I mean, she’s just a big spider that eats prey. What was she to do? Go vegetarian?
The only reason Shelob gets a bad rap and the little grey arachnid in the cobwebs in the corner of my garden doesn’t is that the latter isn’t big enough, and isn’t in the right place or time, to have the misfortune to (quite reasonably) consider the Hero of an epic tale to be suitable as lunch.
Shelob was not a spider at all. In fact, she was probably something very similar in spirit to Gandalf or Saruman. She was a descendant of Ungoliant, a creature almost as powerful as Morgoth.*
In any case, Shelob was not an unintelligent thing and greatly preferred intelligent meat - orcs, men, and so forth. She was not an animal.
*Strictly speaking, Ungoliant was more on the level of Gandalf, but in her infinite hunger devoured the light of the Two Trees. Thereafter she increased greatly in power, to the point where Morgoth did not want to fight her alone. She presumably passed some of that along to her brood. It’s also not exactly clear what she was originally, except that she served Morgoth and then turned on him, not that it did her any good in the end. She either eventually ate herself, or was killed by Earendil.
No, I meant Carchost and Narchost, the Towers of the Teeth. 
What would Carcharoth have had to do with anything regarding building??? 
Some of my antecedents were probably right bastards as well. What did she actually do in the LotR besides try to get something to eat?
(Goes back and reads the first post) Ah. Didn’t notice they were all referring to structures. I was going with the “raised him from a pup and fed him foul meats so e grew up big and nasty” meme as rehabilitation (of a sort). Carry on.
Saruman gets my vote.
Even after the One Ring has been destroyed and Sauron has fallen, Saruman still tries to spoil things for others by ruining the Shire.
It’s not just what she did, it’s what she was. In Shelob’s relatively brief appearance, the narrator uses words such as “malice,” “wicked” and “cruel” several times, and the overall depiction is of a truly loathsome and malevolent monster. (Much of this is lost in the film, where she’s simply a giant spider with a stinger.)
You could say the narrator is unreliable, but then that opens the question of how villainous Sauron, Saruman, etc. “really” were.
Not buying it. In Tolkein’s day, even more than now, it was common to say that sort of thing about sharks, crocodiles, snakes.
No, because they deliberately do things just for the sake of being complete assholes, and with total self knowledge. We can assess what they do whether Tolkein tells us they are wicked, cruel etc or not.