I don’t think gorillas go to war, but chimps do

Well shit, does that end the theorising? So did Morgoth have a body or not whilst in that fight you were describing?

Yeah when I googled it it was lots of opinions and this is from looking at 20 years of wear on them.

So they’re at least somewhat equal, I would say. Some might argue better. Some would not.

But definitely did make me feel alright about the prospect of having to replace a tooth or several.

Well, the pure power wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t concentrated enough to destroy the hröa their enemies was using to influence the Seen, I guess. Like they’d have first destroy their enemies physical being to be able to influence their incorporeal being?

And to do that, you’d want to focus your power, so you’d need a “lens” of sorts, meaning you’d use a body to fight the enemy?

Oh wait no, Morgoth didn’t have a physical body in that fight? Uh, I’d probably do well to read the Silmarillion again lol.

Well, I guess, but… you could argue that Zionists are mostly seen to be purely Jewish due to the nature of the movement.

Oh I haven’t heard of French Maias, but I did know Sweden has Maja, that’s probably where it came to Finnish from, I’d wager. Yeah, Wikipedia says the Scandic equivalent is Maja, yeah. It’s a deviation on “Mary” as I suspected from Mary Poppins.

Huh, you do get what I mean. Have you ever imbibed any illicit substances, or just good narratives? (I’m hoping the answer is “both”, but I don’t judge.)

However, a hröa can also focus and direct the energies innate to a fëa, which could make the being more powerfu

That’s a very good point.

I don’t think there’s any evidence that a Maiar with a hröa is weaker than a Maia without a hröa.

I don’t think “weaker”. I just think limited until the body burns up and their full might is revealed, sort of. Like if they had to fight another maia, that is. Like a huge bodybuilder in a weird costume that limits their actions, but if you actually started a fight with them, they’d just punch you “for real” and the cardboard of their costume wouldn’t be in the way, it’d just tear off while they’re punching you through the costume.

I would say that without a hröa, the fëa can’t be “focused” and is therefore weaker (from the wiki (no source provided):

I get your point, but I think it’s more about the sort of fight that’s going on. Like if you have a lense, it’s not gonna make the light source more powerful, but it can focus it into a neater beam, making it more powerful in that spot, but then that focusing would mean that there’s less light going around “the room” in general. Like a beam of light that’s as powerful as an orb of light would burn your eyes if directed at you, but also, would be less blinding than an orb of light if directed away from you. So in that sense, the hröa being able to focus power would be a positive and a negative, depending on the type of environment/enemy you’re facing.

Not just significant, I’m pretty sure the loss in value is some sort of a record, for real.

I wouldn’t say “restricts”, as much as “limits”. I do have a difference in mind for what I mean by that, but I understand just using cursive probably isn’t enough to communicate it.

May I ask what texts are you referring to that actually touch on this? I’m not implying disagreement or that I’ve read them, I definitely haven’t, my depth basically goes to the depth of ‘I read most of Silmarillion as a teenager’. I’m curious because I might be inclined to read them if I see them.

dissipate into nothing (Sauron after the destruction of the one ring

Tell me if I’m wrong, and I probably am, but isn’t this because Sauron poured so much of his essence (fëa I suppose) into the ring that after it was destroyed, he lost so much of his power as to not be able to exist anymore and thus dissipated into nothing? So before he did that, if his body was destroyed, he was able to hang on, but after the Ring was destroyed, he wasn’t powerful enough and thus “truly” died.

But yeah I don’t see anything contradicting my thoughts in that paragraph of yours. I’m just saying that for the while that any Maia inhabits a body, they’re less powerful than they are when disembodied, although I don’t know if then we also have to consider where that power can be applied to, as in the Seen and the Unseen.

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.

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.

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

You’re entirely right.

But see if the political view is only held by members or a certain religious group (even if not all members of said religion accept said political thought), it’s easy to conflate it, so that you can ban anyone opposing said political thought based on “they’re discriminating against me because of my religion”.

Fuck twitch.

In practice it lead to mega rich foreigners buying up all the water rights in Australia and preventing anyone from using them which created artificial scarcity and drove up prices. These mega rich foreigners then sold Australians their own water back to them at exorbitant prices.

Oh hey I’ve seen this movie

Also, moving your ears and your head.

And we can also slightly move our ears a tiny amount, but I’m sure even that does increase accuracy.

And they can even do that in sync with thousands (and even millions) of other small birds.

Just earlier today I was googling whether even tooth implants are actually better than the natural alternative.

I didn’t find a definitive answer.

Also masturbation might be a challenge in that scenario.

Probably because the watchers like man-on-man action.