WillBalls

Proton is certainly "cleaner" to use with Steam, but you don't have to use Steam to use proton. I'd recommend adding the executable to Steam as a non-Steam game for simplicity. Otherwise you can use Lutris or find a tutorial online to run that specific executable with proton outside of Steam

Both of those games are marked gold on protonDB, so you shouldn't have to use windows to run them if you want (although marvel rivals apparently needs SteamDeck=1 %command% in the launch options): https://www.protondb.com/app/3107230 https://www.protondb.com/app/2767030

There's dozens of us!

I've had to do very little tweaking overall to get most games working, with the one notable exception being dragons dogma 2. The solution was proton GE and a new .nix file with GPU tweaks and now I'm getting slightly better performance than the average windows experience.

I've always been taught that the accent is explicitly not to be treated as playing the note louder or stronger as whole, but rather to emphasize the beginning of the note by quieting the end of the note, i.e. treat the > as a note specific decrescendo

Judging from your tastes, I think you would enjoy dragons dogma 2. Be aware that the engine is rather... unoptimized, so there are performance slowdowns in towns and densely populated areas, but I've never dipped below 40fps on my rig which has slightly worse specs than yours. It can be a bit finicky to get working on Linux, depending on your distro. I'm on nixos and was experience graphics driver crashes pretty regularly until I swapped to amdvlk and swapping to the latest proton GE. Once you get the game working though, it's a lot of fun and definitely worth the hassle! I'd describe it as baldur's gate 3, but an action RPG instead of turn based, and therefore it feels much more free and open to me. You should also be aware that the game is pretty punishing. No save slots and rolling back is hard if you mess something up, and minor enemies can really ruin your day if you're not paying attention. It's probably one of the most "realistic" fantasy games I've ever played in that regard.

Better!

Mary Magdalene was a different person from Mary the mother of Jesus

I've had this same issue with a smart TV and you're suggestion was what fixed it

The balrogs were fire maia that were corrupted by Melkor into beings of fire cloaked in shadow. I interpret that to mean they're primarily beings of fire that "wear" shadow over themselves (which composes their wings)

That's a really interesting point. Ungoliant kind of exists outside the established power structure of the Ainur, considering she came from outside Arda, but was never mentioned as participating in the first music of the Ainur (there's no real established origin for Ungoliant, other than "evil spirit from outside the bounds of Arda"). No matter who you are, being called to fight "unknowable ancient Eldritch spider deity" is a pretty horrifying task, and Melkor was even known to have fear when facing much smaller enemies.

One interesting point is how much emphasis Tolkien puts on Ungoliant's powers being focused around darkness and "unlight". Balrogs, being spirits of fire, seem like a natural enemy to a creature of pure darkness, so that might have boosted their comparative power against Ungoliant despite their low numbers.

Another thing to consider is that Melkor was never known to show understanding or mercy to his servants who failed him. I would have to think that any balrog who failed to come to his aid would have been killed (or worse as you postulate) as soon as Morgoth was freed.

It's been a few years since I've read the foreword to the Silmarillion, but I'm glad I'm consistent with Christopher's analysis 😁

It's similar to searching for consistencies amongst any mythology, which is what Tolkien was attempting to create. Tales will always change over time, and they'll always shift focus to what the teller determines is important. As focuses of a society shift, so do the focuses of its related mythology. In this way, I think Tolkien did an excellent job creating a united mythos for England in all the different versions of his legendarium. As the tales evolved, consistencies emerged elements which were formerly key, were discarded, and internal references became more commonplace than external references (see Tolkien's influences from William Morris and Icelandic, Celtic, Germanic, and Anglo Saxon epics)