Kib shudders.

I feel like people should resolve in principle to, if they can figure out how he's manipulating them, not permit themselves to be so manipulated. But saying that is one thing and going to Lórien and asking his aid is quite another.

Yeah. Adding mental tampering on top of mental tampering is not a really straightforward question.

And I don't think I can go to Lórien and say 'if something was done to me, reverse it'.

Not part of the skillset?

Not - sure how he'd react to knowing I didn't want help if it wasn't tampering-related. At a minimum he'd keep a closer eye on me.

What a lovely incentive system the Valar have set up. 'Hey, you know that evil guy who could maybe tamper with minds, let's make sure seeking help with disentangling that is really unappealing'.

The Valar do not think in terms of incentives. I am not sure they - recognize or can comprehend a distinction between desire and intent and action at all, really; they're fundamentally very very alien to us.

Incentives are such a useful way to think I barely know how I'd model anybody without having them in mind.

The best way to model the Valar is as having - actions that are in character for them and actions that are out of character for them, and no stakes will get them to take an out of character action, or change what sorts of actions are in character, and they all have different characters and for some of them things like 'preferring to minimize loss of life' are in character but not all of them.

If what's in character for him is 'torture people for fun' and 'orchestrate the destruction of everything he touches' then he cannot be deterred from that. If what's in character for him is something more like 'experiment and discover things' or 'break things that others make' then maybe he can be deterred from manifestations of that which involve torturing people and destroying things, unless 'don't respond to deterrence' is a trait of his, like it is one of Manwë's.

Who's been trying to deter Manwë from things?

No one; why bother? Manwë's the King of the Valar, and has been explained variously as 'incapable of comprehending evil' - that is, committed to interpreting everyone as doing badly at fulfilling Eru's will - or as 'incapable of planning around other peoples' reactions to his actions being anything other than how they'd react were they maximally virtuous'.

These sound like they will impair his effectiveness as a king. Like. A lot.

Valinor is pretty nice considering the magnitude of its leaderships' limitations.

I guess that happens when scarcity and death aren't factors.

See you then.

He sees him then. It's a nice dinner.

Mm, dinner. "The food here's really good. Different but good."

"Perhaps we'll open a restaurant in your city, learn from each other."

"That'd be interesting. Not a big moneymaker though, restaurants have really narrow profit margins and I don't think you could completely change that by getting all your ingredients free."

"Would it be disruptive if we served the food for free, like it is here in Tirion? So no one went hungry?"

"There are places that do that but they're usually charitable or eccentric. I guess you could fit 'eccentric', albeit differently than a church or someone trying to advocate that everybody eat lots of potatoes because they really like potatoes would be."