Hey Gandalf, fuck off. We’re you literally there 3,000 years ago? Or are you just going “You’re younger than me, so you know fuckall”?
Fuckin boomer
Doesn’t matter. While that amazon shitshow tells a different story, Gandalf (as Radagast and Saruman) only arrived in the third age, long after the War of the Last Alliance. Gandalf might be infinitely older than Elrond yet wasn’t there.
Small nerd gripe. Maia is the singular form of Maiar. “I am a Maia,” or “I am one of the Maiar” get you there
Maia who?
This is fun because Maija is a very common name for women in Finland. Not this generation particularly but it’s like the Finnish equivalent of Mary or something to the generation that was born around 30’s-40’s. For some reason it was exploding in popularity from the the 1900’s (as in the oughts, not the century) to 1930 in Finland. And seeing how Tolkien definitely took influence from Finnish, I wonder if there might be an actual connection.
edit I changed the example name from Jennifer to Mary as I realised “Mary Poppins” is translated as “Maija Poppanen” in Finnish
Maia he
Maia ha ha
something-something Núma Númenor
God, I love this community.
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Oh lawdy-lawd, I never realised Maija Mehiläinen is nationalist propaganda as well.
That’s the Finnish name for it, works a lot better, I think.
Sulevi Riukulehto suggested that the book may have carried a political message. This view depicts the beehive as a well-organised militarist society and Maya as an ideal citizen. Elements of nationalism also appear when Maya gets angry at a grasshopper for failing to distinguish between bees and wasps (whom she calls “a useless gang of bandits” [Räubergeschlecht] that have no “home or faith” [Heimat und Glauben]) and at a insulting fly, whom Maya threatens to teach “respect for bees” and with her stinger. Riukulehto interprets this to mean that respect is based on the threat of violence. Collectivism versus individualism is also a theme. Maya’s independence and departure from the beehive is seen as reproachable, but it is atoned by her warning of the hornets’ attack. This show of loyalty restores her position in the society. In the hornet attack part of the story, the bees’ will to defend the hive and the heroic deaths of bee officers are glorified, often in overtly militarist tones.
Am I wrong or do the wizards not remember their lives before they were sent to middle earth?
I don’t think the original books ever told anything about it.
Iirc the books themselves didn’t say, but Tolkien’s letters say something to the effect of the Istari only having vague memories of their time as Maia, with the exception of things that they were explicitly meant to remember, e.g. Olórin’s memories of being sent back after his physical death while fighting Durin’s Bane.
They know that they are, in our parlance, embodied angels or minor gods, but they don’t remember a ton of where they came from
Do the balrogs have the same memory issues?
That’s a very good question, and one that I don’t know the answer to. I would guess no, as the point of the Istari losing their memories was to make them more like the people they were sent to save; it’s not something about being embodied that made them lose their bodyless memories, it was part of their mission. The balrogs had no such mission
it’s not something about being embodied that made them lose their bodyless memories
Isn’t it though? I get that Tolkien may have specified that the Istari not having their memories aided in them being more like the people they were sent to save, but…
Perhaps it is a property of being a body that you can not have the properties that the spirits do. A body is a finite.
IIRC having watched a lot of Nerd of the Rings and whatnot, a lot of the depictions of Balrogs have them as sort of fiery angels instead of the gory beasts we have in the Peter Jackson movies. Now if Balrogs are a sort of angelic but demonic things, then I’d go with your assumption, but if they were the Peter Jackson beast-like, then I think mine could work. In the sense that if being embodied means you just can’t retain all the knowledge you have in the spirit realm and the body affects your spirit as well, then having that sort of raging demonic beasts would make sense as even if they were higher beings while disembodied, while being embodied they’d just feel the rage and fury of the body and wouldn’t recall anything about being a Maia before eventually being disembodied again.
That was probably very incoherent. It was influenced by the thoughts I had when I used to do a lot of nitrous.
“Well I read in a book that I was there. I can’t actually remember more than a few hundred years back.”
Ashildr from Doctor Who was brilliant.
I’m wondering now, how our little brains would adapt to living like for thousands of years. Would we really start forgetting things that are waaaay back?
I’ve already forgotten most of my childhood and I’m only around 30. So I’d assume, yes.
That’s… that’s not normal.
Thats usually trauma suppressing memories, sorry mate,
Nah, it’s just shitty memory. I have had quite the happy childhood, actually.
I don’t find myself reminiscing a lot and in the rare cases I do, there are quite some gaps. Even in more recent times. If I really try to dig, maybe it comes back, but I assume it’s “use it or lose it”.
Yeah, I have shitty memory too… Sometimes my friends talk about something we did 15-20 years ago and half the time it unlocks a memory, the other half I can’t recall at all
Yeah, that’s it normal, hence why they remember and you don’t dude… you don’t think that’s not strange? That multiple friends recall events easily and you don’t…?
That still ain’t normal dude. You’re supposed to be able to recall memories from any point of your life…
You actually can’t. Human memory is really quite terrible. Most of your older memories are likely distorted by other people telling you about them, or even just the natural decay that occurs whenever you recall a memory.
That is just factually incorrect And what people lie to themselves to make them feel better. Humans are great at recollection, why would you claim otherwise…?
The age 0-3 is the only time you should have zero recollection, anything else is something you should talk to neurologist or psychologist about, but sure lie to make yourself feel better I guess…?
So, what’s your point? Other people might have a lot more boring childhood anecdotes to tell, but it’s not like I’m suffering in any kind. I still remember people or useful skill - the stuff I do use.
As an added benefit of growing up quite poor, I probably just had less unique experiences I actually could recall. Like, I’ve been on three travel vacations overall. Kinda like those COVID years blurred together for most people.
It wasnt specified what was meant by childhood. The further back you go the less you remember. I remember a lot more about 6-10 grade than 1-6 grade.
You should still be able to recall specific events at all portions of your life, it’s abnormal not to, but you can defend it and ignore potentially life limiting issues if you want.
Being able to remember everything from your past is extremely rare.
You realize normal is somewhere in the middle…? Between remembering nothing and everything…?
I never said everything, and remembering nothing isn’t normal.
I think you have a life limiting issue.
Yes and no, probably. You will remember important bits and will reconstruct/imagine other things just like you do now. Even with our short lifes not all the things you “remember” actually happened.
You would forget most everything. Even big events would become fuzzy. Do you remember what you had for lunch on this date when you were 5?
It’s Friday. Rectangle pizza
A breadtangle of pizza
Is that just regular pizza with rectangles on it?
This one never had lunch at a public school in the 80s/90s…
Also a common thing at mine, oranges cut to a size where you could put them in your mouth to wear like a boxing mouth guard. Called them orange smiles…
“The Man from Earth”
Such a gem of a movie
This is a really interesting part of the Red Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
I SEEN IT!!
Perfect casting, too
I mean, sure he was alive. But he wasn’t physically there.
Is Middle-earth juxtaposed between Top-earth and Bottom-earth or Right-earth and Left-earth?
The serious answer is it’s juxtaposed with East and West. West being the Undying Lands of Valinor, and East being the much less well-explored Land of the Sun.
What’s north and south?
More Middle-earth. South is Harad, and north is Forodwaith. Both of which are regions of Middle-earth.
Inner earth and outer earth.
No
Front earth and back earth
Beginning-earth and End-earth
Guess where we are
Yes. It’s the inner goo of the earth cube.
Hamburger earth or hotdog earth?
Or? And!
So there were five godlike beings sent to fight Sauron. Only one of them did his job.
I need to reword it.
You are the big cool powerful god. One of your servants, a minor much less powerful god does bad things to the world. So you send five your other servants just as powerful as the bad one to deal with him.
A lot of time passes. Three of those spend their time chilling. One joins the bad one. The last one turns out too weak. Who solves the problem? Four hobbits.
You really should reconsider your politics after that.
But in the end, the task was successful, so everyone did what they were supposed to… Right?
Nice try, Saruman.
Isn’t much of the power of the Maiar in diplomacy and setting events in motion? Gandalf was as much of an interloper and manipulator as he was anything else, and his hiring Bilbo as a thief was the penultimate piece of his mission, as inadvertent as I’m not entirely sure it was. Right? No, really, I’m kinda asking, I don’t know for sure.
Wait till you learn about Melkor! He’s a Vala, or one of the Valar, which is a higher order than the Maiar, and was basically super-Sauron from the before times
And he was scared of Ungoliant, and we don’t know what she is, besides nasty, and hungry, and shaped like a huge spider (well, spiders are shaped like her, probably).
(He also got his foot almost cut off by an elf in single combat and walked with a limp ever after — well, at least until he got his hands and feet cut off by the rest of the Valar, I suppose —, but elves were mighty back then.)
Maiar is the plural
