#clear winner

[gleesongtournament]

[sillylotrpolls]

I'm both unsurprised and surprised at the winner here. Unsuprised because of course "never read the Silm" was always going to win. However, I am surprised it only got as high as 32.5%. If you extrapolated that data without regard to the self-selection bias inherent to silly tumblr LotR polls, it would mean that in a group of 100 people, 68 would be able to correctly identify at least three times Fëanor looked hubris in the eye and said "bet."

Interestingly, in a previous poll about why people haven't read the Silmarillion, "I've read it" got 30.4%. This suggests that there is a certain number of people who will skip voting in any poll that doesn't apply to them even if given an explicit button to click. However, it also suggests that it's still a good idea to have that button, because in each poll that option got over 1,000 votes.

In second place (and therefore first place for people who did/will read the Silm) is "I liked the movies" (16.7%). This makes perfect sense; LotR fandom exploded in 2001 when we all first got a look at Elijah Wood's baby blue eyes. Right behind it, however, is "I enjoy reading mythology and histories" with 15.4%. And you know what? This is probably the best reason to read the Silm; you've got all the context for why it's written in the way it is and can appreciate both Tolkien's references and where he was truly original. I salute you, myth-lovers.

Then, in fourth ("third") is probably the highest placing yet for the "other" option (14.8%). And unlike every other poll where I include "other," this time y'all really did go into detail in the notes. <3 Related question: why were so many of you 11 when you first tried to read Tolkien?

A few other miscellaneous observations:

Some of you really, really want to be clear that you read the books BEFORE you saw the movies.

Although there were a lot of stories about how y'all first encountered the Sillmarillion and took it into your hearts, most of you preferred to use a dozen+ tags to tell the story instead of writing a comment. As a LiveJournal veteran, this preference continues to puzzle me.

Apparently "Found it at the library..." was confusing. This option was meant to imply "I read the Silm first, you mean there's a sequel called Lord of the Rings all about Mairon/Sauron?!" but I had trouble with the 80-character limit.

"Fanart appreciation" (4.4%) beat out "bullied by friends" (1.6%) almost 3:1, illustrating that it's easier to motivate people with treats than shame.

No one ever gets the lion joke. :(

[tainebot01]

Saying farewell to the fanon names, in my own special way…

[krazieka2]

I've played the Fire Emblem Husbando Dating Simulator Games

[naffeclipse]

I love that two people tagged me in this ALDSFJAF

it’s mothman’s birthday everyone say happy birthday mothman 🥳🎉

[ckret2]

rock paper scissors time, here's how this is gonna work: you win if you vote for the option that beats the option that gets the MOST votes. you lose if you vote for the option that the most people choose.

[whereispearlescentmoon]

If you have ever used the phrase “Scott gave Pearl her win in Double Life” or “Scott let Pearl win” or “Scott also won” or anything that implied Scott had anything to do with Pearl winning Double Life other than blowing himself up I have probably blocked you if I saw it and I’m not sorry. Pearl killed the last two soulmate pairs who weren’t her and Scott. She eliminated the last competitors. He gave her nothing, she won completely on her own merit.

Yeah he blew himself up, but like, she was going to kill him anyways? She was better geared and had a wolf army? I know people probably don’t mean it a way to invalidate her win, but the idea that her “gave her” or “let her” win is complete BS that discredits Pearl’s actual skill. She won by herself fair and square.

[16th-of-a-twigg]

🧚‍♀️💧

Ko-Fi

[14dayswithyou]

Quick question !! For those who have mobile notifications turned on for this side blog, how many notifications do you typically receive per hour?

From what I've been told, most followers have been receiving individual notifications for every single post I make, which can get annoying over time — especially considering how I (usually) publish 3 posts per hour. Because of this, I'm considering switching the queue to one post per hour instead.

Pros: less annoying notification pings lmao Cons: it would take longer for the queue to finish (though you'd still get the same amount of posts)

So, with that being said...

[social-cocoon]

Squid Game S2 spoilers

I think it was really interesting that the start of the season we see Gi-hun sort of running a tiny version of the Games. I saw the whole search as him, a wealthy man, offering less fortunate people money if they played a game with a big payout to the person or team who won. And the game was another children's game: hide and seek. He even had his own control room - his car with all the gadgets in it to monitor the "players". The main differences are that he wasn't purposefully sending them to their deaths over the money, they would all be paid so long as they participated, and the intent wasn't to exploit them.

The thought isn't going anywhere, I just think it's pretty neat

[carveredlunds]

heavy is the head that wears the cunty little bob (inspired by this incredible text post by @overthegardenwirtt)

[sillylotrpolls]

Move over, "did you know that when Viggo kicked the helmet, he broke two toes??", and make way for "did you know that Tolkien had beef with Lewis over Santa??" I was hoping some people would get the reference; I didn't think everyone would. :O

Speaking of references, allow me to break down each one:

"Aragorn decides not to be king" and "Frodo casually throws the ring in the fire" were choices that not just undermined but completely reversed major character themes in the original story.

"Santa" was, of course, a reference to Tolkien's noted complaints that Lewis was mixing mythologies without (seeming) rhyme or reason in Narnia.

"Galrog" is both a callback and me wanting to include a shipping option without getting into "ship wars." Original drafts of this poll (yes, drafts; also, shoutout to @jicklet and my non-tumblring brother for their continued patience as I run ideas by them) included options like "Aragorn and Arwen break up" and "Merry and Pippin divorce their wives to live in polyamorous bliss with Eowyn and Faramir" before I decided they not only weren't fun, they'd probably overshadow the other choices. (I try to balance options, though it obviously doesn't always work.)

"Esperanto" was intended mean that all of Tolkien's carefully crafted languages that he deliberately intertwined with mythologies would be replaced with a single language with no mythology to it. (Perhaps I should have used "converts" instead of "teaches"? Sometimes the 80-character limit for poll options is is very... limiting.) Anyway, outside of Middle-earth Tolkien was quite enthusiastic about Esperanto.

"Elvish divorce court" was, like Galrog, me sidestepping shipping wars while still including an option for things to maybe not be perfect monogamous harmony. According to Tolkien, all elves are virgins when they get married because sex is marriage, literally. And, uh, some other details that you honestly probably don't want to know.

"Tax policies of Minas Tirith" was a reference to George RR Martin, who "criticised The Lord of the Rings for the over-simplification of the themes that it deals with." I thought this would get a chuckle from at least a few people who got the reference. I was clearly wrong.

"The Shire industrializes" was, obviously, about how the Shire represents basically the perfect pastoral life to Tolkien, and changing it would make him sad. :(

Incidentally, this option had a commanding lead until Fairy Anon Godmother posted their breakdown advocating for Santa.

"Complex polyamorous relationships" is a callback to Elodie's post on how the Shire population remains stable despite its obvious prosperity.

"Eärendil on the Enterprise" referred to the notion that hey, isn't his boat basically a spaceship? My aforementioned brother assured me that it was known Tolkien hated this interpretation, but can I find a source when I duckduckgo it? No. :(

"Gimli's cousins" is a two-for-one deal. Disney's Snow White came out just a few months after The Hobbit, and Tolkien and Lewis went to see it together. Both strongly disliked the portrayal of the dwarfs (note, not "dwarves"), to put it mildly. Tolkien went on to strongly dislike Disney for the rest of his life. To bolster the joke, Happy (the dwarf everyone forgets anyway) was replaced with Senshi from Delicious in Dungeon, as he had just recently been voted cousin to Gimli in another poll. I have no idea how Tolkien would feel about that series; might be a good poll for the future...

"Boromir lives" was an option I honestly wanted to see more discussion of. Previous polling on the topic was convincing that Boromir had to die for the narrative, so this was along the lines of the above Aragorn and Frodo options. However, it's also a whole ~thing~ in fandom (don't get me wrong, I love Emily B. Martin's Boromir Lives AU series), so I thought it would generate some interesting comments. However, it was completely overshadowed by Santa and trees. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Finally, there were some comments about a lamppost in Middle-earth, and let me tell you, I am absolutely kicking myself for not including that as an option just to see who advocated for it. I've got a poll going for it now in a separate reblog of this post if you'd like to participate in that one. I didn't put the poll in this post because, well, this was already quite long enough.

An option featuring a change of literally any kind to Lúthien not included as presumably even the mere suggestion would be catastrophic, overloading energy grids worldwide and resulting in months-long blackouts.

[semisolidmind]

Catnap and Dogday fight over being on Y/n's lap whenever they sit down in the cabin. You can't change my mind... Also, my compliments to the chef *Takes a chomp outta some art on the way out*

yep. though i don't think y/n would sit through it. they'd probably just get up and go do something else if the toys were going to fight over lap privileges. besides, dogday has the advantage because he actually gets to stay in the house. catnap has to wait for y/n to leave and get far enough out of the dog's reach so that he can snag them for cuddles.

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Click for more pictures

Chiyo (@since-times-long-forgotten)

Inception cat

[a-caterpillars-world]

The Chariot and his entourage

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