I’ve always thought that the “invisibility” aspect of the ring was that it shifted the wearer into the shadow realm. The Nine were invisible without their cloaks, but were visible when the ring was worn. It also made the wearer more visible to Sauron, iirc.
Yup, this is how I think about it: the ring takes your existing point on the scale from the seen/unseen world and inverts it.
So it works out as so:
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Mortal beings without the ring: 100% seen, 0% unseen
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Mortal beings with the ring: 0% seen, 100% unseen
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Immortal beings without the ring: 50% seen, 50% unseen
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Immortal beings with the ring: 50% seen, 50% unseen
For immortals, it doesn’t render them invisible because if you “flip” their position, it still basically stays the same.
It’s one power the ring posses. I think Galadriel implied that, with training, Frodo would be able to turn that automatic function off, and access more powers. But the process of learning to use it would inherently corrupt whoever attempted it. I always took it to mean that the ring gathered power from the Unseen world, and so someone with no presence there and without the ability to manipulate it would be inherently dragged in, but it’s not a core aspect or intended design, and nullifying that would not be a hindrance to using it. It’s just a bug turned feature for folks that want to remain unseen.
