Kid talks

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?
  
  Maia he
  
  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 the bee!

"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.
  
  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?
  
  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.
  
  This is a really interesting part of the Red Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
- I SEEN IT!!
- Perfect casting, too

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.
- The second age ended with the ending of the war of the last alliance, so Gandalf did arrive later, but not "long after"
  
  I assume you forgot a "not" after the "but". I just looked it up though, Gandalf left Valinor for Middle Earth around 1000 T.A. I don't know about you, but I'd consider that "long after" the War of the Last Alliance.
- I thought the way it was worded, it was still technically the second age?
- This does raise the question "Does your age count when you're in Valinor?"
  Because it's literally the undying lands. Are we really going to pull rank between two functionally ageless beings? Seems petty.
  
  It's not about rank or age. It's about who's been present at the last battle of the War of the Last Alliance. Also, at the time of the depicted scene Elrond never was in Valinor, so at this point in time Gandalf definitely easier Elrond's senior by orders of magnitude.

Hey Gandalf, fuck off. Were you literally there 3,000 years ago? Or are you just going "You're younger than me, so you know fuckall"?
Fuckin boomer
- Gandalf: I was there in spirit!
- That's my take.
  Bro I was alive during Rodney King riots.
  Doesn't mean my opinion is more valid than someone actually there.

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
- The books mention nothing about their memories at all. just them arriving to middle earth and being given names by the elves and other races.

I mean, sure he was alive. But he wasn't physically there.

Christian Earth: 6000 years old
Middle Earth: 30,000 years old
Middle Earth wins again
- Jesus vs Gandalf power scalers go!!!
  
  Modern depictions of Jesus are correct because after the crucifixion Jesus came back as Jesus the White.
  
  ItsTheSamePicture.jpg

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?
- Inner earth and outer earth.
  
  Front earth and back earth
  
  No
- Yes. It's the inner goo of the earth cube.
- Beginning-earth and End-earth
  Guess where we are
- Hamburger earth or hotdog earth?
- Or? And!

I didn't understand this so I looked it up.
https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Maiar
Pretty cool.
- 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.
  
  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
  
  To be fair, the istari were diminished Maiar who weren't allowed to use their full power, and Sauron was a full Maia with no qualms about flexing his true strength.
  Had Manwë been given the license to send just Eönwë, then Sauron would've been rekt in a year tops
  
  But in the end, the task was successful, so everyone did what they were supposed to... Right?
  
  Do we know that the Istari who go east were just chilling? I thought they were trying to rally men in the east to fight Sauron. They might even have fought some of his troops in the far off east during the Battle of the Black Gate? Or were those just fan theories and never actually confirmed?

Maiar is the plural