#<500 votes

[sillylotrpolls]

I'm kind of surprised that "Hobbits are short men" won with 28.3% of the vote. I expected that option to do either very poorly, because I usually assume the "actually..." answers will do poorly, or else to do extremely well because it's the closest to canon. 28% is not either of those extremes. Huh.

I'm also quite surprised "New Zealand" took second with 20.6%. The "crack" answers usually don't do that well when multiple serious(-ish) choices are present. And it handily beat "Narnia," which garnered 7.2% and 6th place, even though there is an entire book devoted to how great the Narnia afterlife is.

Actually, you know what, this whole poll surprised me. I really don't know what I was expecting. And really, do I need to have expectations for every poll I put out there? Surely not. Will this keep me from trying to guess which options will "sweep" in the future? Also not.

I did really like the suggestion by @fromthemouthofkings, @notagiraffe, and a few others that hobbits are Yavanna's "children" and thus go to her halls/gardens, with a convenient path leading next-door to her husband Aule's halls and the dwarves. I've read quite a bit of post-death fanfic that focuses on the whole "woe, we are doomed to separate afterlives, how can we possibly overcome the capricious will of the gods?" thing (which is a super-canon type of plot, btw, see: Lúthien and Beren) and I'm frankly kind of over it.

I think my big takeaway here is that afterlife!fanfic could use a bit of a shakeup, and there are a lot of fun and intriguing ways to go about that. I hope I see some when next I'm browsing Ao3 to get my dopamine fix at 2 am.

After all, wouldn't it be fun to see Yavanna be all "So.... if Ilu and Manwe aren't going to bother to properly manage Middle-earth, and my hubby won't stop bragging about how great his dwarves are, what's to stop me from making my own species of little short guys?" So fun, right? Please do drop a link if someone's already written it. :D

(Context below poll)

Tolkien is very specific about what happens to some of his fantastical species after they die, but not all.

Naturally, he goes into the most detail about the elves, and elven post-death circumstances are a pretty big plot point in the Silmarillion.

Paraphrasing from Tolkein Gateway:

Death was unnatural for Elves; Ilúvatar [omnipotent god] intended for an Elf's spirit and body to remain united forever, but this design was disrupted by evils of Melkor [Sauron's boss]. Should an Elf die, its spirit would be summoned to the Halls of Mandos [god of dead]. Elves could refuse the summons, but this would suggest that they were tainted. Elves who went to the Halls were typically given the opportunity to be reincarnated after a while into a body identical to the one that died (unless the elf was very bad). An elven spirit could also choose to remain disembodied.

By the time of the Third Age (when Lord of the Rings takes place), elves could only reincarnate in Valinor (where Frodo sails off to at the end of RotK) and could not return to Middle-earth after doing so.

Dwarves also have a cool afterlife, as expanded on in the famous fanwork Sansûkh. Paraphrased from Tolkien Gateway:

The Dwarves held to a promise that Ilúvatar [omnipotent god] would hallow them and adopt them as his Children. After death Aulë [smithing god who made the dwarves] cared for them, gathering them to the Halls of Mandos with the other Children of Ilúvatar, though in halls set apart. After the Last Battle they will work alongside Aulë in the remaking of the world.

Men, on the other hand, were given the "Gift of Men." Again paraphrasing Tolkien Gateway:

After Men died, their spirits were gathered in the Halls of Mandos, and then departed for a destination unknown even to the gods. Whereas all other beings, including the gods themselves, were bound to the world and its fate, the Gift freed Men from this destiny, allowing them to shape their own lives as they wished.

Most Men, for some reason (the elves blamed Morgoth), did not see this as a very good gift.

So where does this leave hobbits? Tolkien's books don't say, though he did write a letter one time saying that hobbits are basically just short Men. However, it is also the case that he shoehorned in The Hobbit to fit with his Silmarillion world (thus giving us the Lord of the Rings trilogy), so if you want to disregard this bit of ephemera you are completely within your rights to do so.

[cirrus-grey]

[aromantisk-fagforening]

How many languages do you know at least little bit of?

Remake of an older poll (link here)

Like last time I am using a strict definition of language and a loose definition of being able to speak/knowing the language.

Details:

Sign languages count, conlangs count, super similar languages only counts one & dialects of the same language usually won't count (unless you can make multiple sentences in both that someone who only spoke the other couldn't understand), for Norwegian being able to write both bokmål & nynorsk only counts as one

You need to know more than 30 words and be able to construct at least one sentence for it to count. it has to be at least one of the following: writing/signing/speaking/whistling, it doesn't have to be multiple.

(and for people with "sampling bias" concerns, this is not supposed to represent society as a whole)

Poll:

It's super cool if you put the languages in tags

@aromantisk-fagforening

[hoofpeet]

[lesbianralzarek]

ive got a theory and want to test it against how the fandom at large talks about them

[celestial-artisan]

Velvette: So, you're telling me, when you think of Alastor your chest gets tight and your face gets hot, and you think that means you're angry? Vox: Yes. Velvette: Do you feel like that when you're mad at me? Vox: No. Velvette: Do you feel like that when you're mad at literally anyone else? Vox: No. Velvette: So what you're feeling about Alastor isn't anger. It's most likely... Vox: *game show jingling* Loathing! Velvette: Velvette: *walks away*

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

Pls reblog for larger sample size as this data is of VITAL importance

[batfambrainrotbeloved]

VERY LATE BUT HERE IT IS!!

As a celebration for 500 followers (now 665 jesus christ) im doing a ONE SHOT fic-since this is in celebration of my followers YOU get to pick which fic gets made (though if your pick doesnt win, some might be reused for a future milstone!!)

Related links!!

Drakes Spoiled Brat (my main fic)

Dick & Jason inspo

Bruce mentor post

Anyways now for the rambling

Seriously thank you all so so much- I started this summer already bored out of my mind being out of classes and away from home. But then I got into this fandom. I dont even remember HOW I got into it really- but I had never watched any of the series or anything.

The most experience I had w/ Batman was my grandpas figurine collection and the comics he would let me read as a kid though I never really understood what was going on.

But I learned through fanfiction first and foremost- i picked up on wtf the tower scene was, who was "Oracle" and Ra, and everyone else- and as I wanted to learn more I got into the series and comics themselves.

Ive been writing for years but never considered my stuff GOOD- I could put together a story but I struggled to connect you know?

Drakes spoiled brat?? I had never even heard of the trash count thing it was apparently based on- I stopped reading webtoon as soon as they started locking old finished series, let alone Manhwa.

But I went "Oh that sounds funny-" and the intro?? The champagne glass thing was actually written for a completely DIFFERENT one shot- but I reused it and just went ham. Now im almost 60k in with at least 100k more to go- and on top of that its something im PROUD to have written

I would have been thrilled having just a handful of people who read my shit- but for the outpouring love an support, seriously means the world so thank you <33

[buglaur]

she's live

now you can see what everyones height is in my head because i refuse to download height sliders. look at ass <3

[rookflower]

me sorting through the survey results for the "least favourite warrior cats character" question while being a onestar enjoyer

[sillylotrpolls]

I should really stop polling questions that have answers I don't actually like. XD What does it matter if X% of people agree with me if some percentage don't?

...That was meant as a joke, but actually, if you think about it, it's kinda deep, isn't it? Like, if you're running a poll, don't you need to prepare yourself for the possibility of any of the available options getting more votes than you'd expect/like? And even if you try to leave out an option you don't like, tumblr will come together to inundate your activity feed with tags and comments asking about the missing choice.

But if we only ask questions where we're okay with any of the answers, are those questions actually meaningful? I don't know; I only got a B in philosophy in college.

....On the bright side, I did get to read this excellent sentence by @captainkirkscleavage in the replies:

I forgot to apply the Harkness test - if we replace "bestiality" with "monsterfucking" in my previous comment, I would say the potential for messy (in terms of in-world context) questions stands

And amusingly, there were these tags by @even-the-sparrow:

#i feel like arwen/aragorn and legolas/gimli are in a different classification than gandalf/balrog#maybe because they're humanoids?#gandalf/balrog would be interspecies no matter what

Which are best contrasted with these tags by @thedaughterofkings:

#I guess the least convincing case for different species is actually gandalf and the balrog#because they are both from beyond Middle Earth's concepts of species

Sometimes I remember that time I was intensely weirded out by seeing a Gimleaf fanfic tagged "interspecies," and when that sort of thing happens I wonder if it bothers other people too or if it's just me.

[causenessus]

COLD KISSES POLL PART 2 LET'S GO PLEASE PUT UP WITH ME I'M SORRY

i once again call upon my very very rad and cool ice skater readers and the general public everyone's opinion matters !!!! i have new song choices (thank u @eggyrocks & @kitnootkat <3)

[tomorrowusa]

Donald Trump has not been able to come up with a nickname for Kamala Harris. None of the lame-ass ones he's tried so far have gotten any traction.

On August 5th/6th the major stock markets experienced a minor correction. There was a temporary fall but in the past 10 days they have largely recovered. As stock market indices continue to edge up, the attempt by Weird Donald to portray the blip from early August as a "crash" looks increasingly pathetic.

So if you're searching for the BIGGEST market crash of the past five years, look no further than the one that resulted from Trump's botched early response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020. It's the Grand Canyon of market activity from the period. By comparison, you need to squint to notice the early August 2024 temporary dip.

^^^ The markets are now roughly 25% higher than when Trump left office in disgrace.

Speaking of crashes on the markets, Trump's misnamed Truth Social stock which is traded at NASDAQ has not been doing especially well.

Truth Social (officially DJT:NASDAQ on markets) has dropped about $55 a share since April. SAD!

[silver-survey]

Your favorite FIAT car among these 4 icons

500:

600:

Panda:

Punto:

[bloodydeanwinchester]

and when i say "typical" and "good" i mean what is the average for you to get written when you aren't having like an off day or something. not what you write on your best day...just like a normal day.

also do you consider yourself to be a fast or slow writer???

[sandymybeloved]

waking up this morning to see the exit poll over-predicted for the tories and reform, amazing, wonderful, thrilled