if smaug fought for sauron, would sauron need to look for the ring at all'. first of all, what does smaug fighting for sauron even fucking mean. nobody knows what that would even SORT of look like.

I literally have no clue what this statement means. Not trying to attack you or anything I just genuinely don't get what you're saying.

Would smaug have deceived sauron and gone double-agent. what would saruman's role have been at that point? then you have to analyse the reason sauron wants the ring in the first place. then make a connection between that, and the consequences of a smaug- alliance, which is still very unclear what it would look like. would he win the war without saruman? I mean. I can go on forever. its just dumb. its too vague. its too meaningless. its too removed-from-context. its not even speculative.

You're focusing on one little tangential question op put in to clarify the meaning of his original question. You appear to be looking for an argument.

I also have to say that continually giving upvotes to questions like this will inevitable give rise to more similar questions.

Who defines what a bad question is? You? The community decides. If the community has seen fit to upvote it and discuss it civilly instead of throwing a childish, neckbeardy tantrum, well, tough luck.

I think this can become a bad trend for reddit and hope there are people like me who want reddit to become something more than stupid, meaningless questions that can never be answered. becuase then what are we doing here at all? even if we were just praising lotr. even if there was a post saying 'oh wow I loved this about lotr, and I want to share it with you'. at LEAST that does somthing by giving a different perspective. this post is literally MEANINGLESSSSSSS.

You're one of those self-styled "purists", aren't you? God I hate your sort.

Yes I've read the books once every year or two since I was about 14, but I don't have a problem with new fans, or even older ones, asking questions-any questions- about the material: in fact it's to be welcomed. What purpose are your rants serving?

and one more thing. you dont need to go through a cascade of logic. go through loops and holes to say something simple like 'I think smaug was just as powerful or more than the dragons that came before.' why do oyu need to ask . 'if sauron had smaug on his side, AND IF, his scale weakness was non-existant, would he be able to handle the forces of men?. WOULDNT THE SIMPLE QUESTION BE 'HOW STRONG WAS SMAUG'. oh wait. that's been discussed AT NAUSEUM. I guess you can never find enough ways to make a simple question EXTRA confusing.

Jesus christ, dude. You went batshit crazy over a non issue, now you're asking a question OP never asked, which is not really related to what OP was asking, and... Jesus.

Here's the thing- in the decades since they were written, the discussions centered on the books have pretty much dealt with everything that can ever come up. All we can do is ask speculative questions that are rehashes of what people have already asked. OP didn't ask about "power levels" (what is this, DragonballZ?). He asked a simple question of whether or not sauron could've won the war with smaug as an ally, and clarified his original question by asking if sauron would even need his ring. While you could argue the point that this all boils down to a question of how strong smaug is, that wasn't OP's original question- you've picked a clarifying question and arbitrarily made it the whole point of the discussion. You did that. You can answer whatever question you want in your own time. But when you start being judge, jury and executioner as to what is and isn't "allowed" and acting like a dick, you really are better off not participating in any sort of discussion- it's clear you dont have the ability to read something and understand what's being discussed.