Things that have me fucking feral currently: the fact that TROP has given Sauron at least one Kind To Animals moment every single season. And in the books. And in the movies.
S1: He trips Adar's fleeing horse, rather than killing it, even though he very much does have a javelin in his hand at the time. The horse goes down hard, but we're deliberately shown a shot of it getting up and walking away, uninjured. And this isn't because they're reluctant to show animal injury, because Elrond's horse takes a horrible one that made me cry in S2.
S2: The Warg Incident. And like, while the movies were a bit more ambiguous about the Orc-Warg power dynamic (Azog, for example, is clearly shown being affectionate towards his white warg, while Saruman's warg-riders in TT are neither particularly kind nor particularly cruel to their mounts), TROP seems to take the stance that the wargs are unpredictable and aggressive even around their Orc handlers - when a warg is set loose on Arondir during his escape attempt, the Orcs seem to withdraw until it is dealt with, and the wargs are shown to be caged and chained even in the Orc encampments (contrasting the movies, where they are able to free-roam). The warg shut in with Sauron is visibly calmed by him talking to it, and it takes the bone from him as gently as a pet dog. And although we only see the one interaction between them, it isn't the only one they have: Sauron gets close enough to remove the warg's collar and chain before he leaves Adar's camp (which means he was within biting distance, and the warg chose not to), and plotted with it to kill off Waldreg. That wasn't a Wrong Place, Wrong Time death: that thing was laying in wait for him.
And now S3: He's giving a The Creature from Iron Lung scritches. It nudges his hand with its nose when he stops like a dog who isn't done being petted yet. It makes no attempt to move away from him and shows no fear behaviours. He probably yeets unruly Orcs off the balcony for that thing to catch in the world's most fucked up game of fetch.
And then there's LOTR. There are two throwaway quotes about Sauron and animals from that - one from the books, one from the movies. We know that:
Books: Sauron canonically refers to Shelob, the colossal half-demon spider, as "his cat". He sends her prisoners to eat, and doesn't mind her chowing down on the odd Orc. This could be excused as him just recognising that having her guarding Cirith Ungol is a valuable defence against intruders, except for the fact that he specifically has it reported back to him whether she enjoyed playing with the food he sent her. It's giving "Hey, while you're petsitting, can you send me a photo of my cat playing? I miss her."
Movies: Gandalf tells the Hobbits that "the enemy has many spies in his service. Birds...beasts..." while they're still in the Shire. Which is a pretty colossal sphere of influence for a guy who a) lives on the other side of the continent and b) hasn't left home in person in centuries. While it could be argued that Sauron could coerce or threaten animals into doing as he tells them, we also know that he tends to opt for diplomacy first and war second, and it would be very difficult for him to threaten some random fox living outside Hobbiton. Animals have a different mindset to people; they live in the moment, have simple desires, and don't really conceptualise abstract "something bad might happen someday sometime in the future" fear and anxiety the way people do. Shire-dwelling wildlife, who live in a time and place of relative safety and abundance, have everything they need and would likely be hard to threaten or intimidate into service in that way. So it's more likely, based on how Sauron generally operates, that they're spying for him because he's done something to win them over - made himself seem a friend.
Anyway just absolutely losing my shit over them going full "Sauron likes and is good with animals" like lmao Aulë who, that is Yavanna's kid
