#arwen does polls

[adhd-merlin]

💕valentine's day poll!💕

[Video under the cut for reference]

[lenin-it-to-win-it]

I saw a poll from like a million years ago about who in the fellowship had the most sexual experience pre-quest and I had to give my hot takes, so here they are, least to most

9. Frodo: Frodo came dead last in the poll with 0.5% of the vote and I completely agree, known poetry virgin Frodo Baggins has never fucked or sucked in his life. He DOES know what sex is, but only because he accidentally discovered Bilbo's secret stash of freaky elvenporn. the only person who thinks frodo has ever gotten laid is sam, who is incapable of realizing that not everyone is as cock-throttlingly erect for frodo as he is at all times

8. Pippin: the asexual friend who's constantly making horny jokes

7. Sam: could've been absolutely slangin it back in the shire, but he's a good catholic who's waiting until hobbit-marriage

6. Boromir: would've gotten laid more often if he didn't insist on taking women home to meet his father when things started getting serious (also he shoots his shot with aragorn one time but it goes nowhere because he's bewitched by elfussy, so he spends the rest of his life denying his bisexuality, also limiting sex opportunities)

5. Merry: brandybucks brandyFUCK, you know he was out there slutting it up, probably having sex in boats like some kind of freak

4. Legolas: Putting him higher than Merry solely because he's lived about a thousand times longer. proportionate to lifespan, I don't think he fucks as much, but just by the numbers, any given elf has probably fucked out of boredom more often than the horniest hobbit fucks in their life

3. Gimli: a chad among dwarves, gets more cooch than he knows what to do with, dicks down on the daily, the only reason he isn't mid-orgy 24/7 is because he's busy with noble courtly duties

2. Aragorn: this man fucks like a wild dog and I will not hear otherwise, have you ever had dick so good you gave up immortality for it??? yeah, didn't think so. he has laid pipe in every square inch of rivendell multiple times, not to mention many furious woodland fuckfests (with arwen, with his grizzled old ranger buddies, sometimes at the same time. she matches his freak)

Gandalf: he fucks on a level no mortal and only a select few number of immortals can possibly even begin to comprehend. he had sex with the balrog probably too

[sillylotrpolls]

(Unnecessarily complicated reason for poll below poll)

So, a prominent character in the Silmarillion is Lúthien. She is the precious only daughter of a powerful elf king and a demi-goddess, and she's very beautiful and good at dancing and sings like a bird and is 100% Tolkien's insert character for his wife (awww). She is also called Tinúviel, which means Nightingale.

Later, when Aragorn first meets Arwen, he calls her Tinúviel in reference to a famous song about Lúthien's beauty and grace. Arwen is all, lol, fun fact, that's my great-great-grandma you're talking about, makes sense. (She kindly does not mention that Lúthien is also Aragorn's ancestor if you go back far enough.) So if you haven't read the Silm (sensible of you), you can just picture Arwen when answering this poll.

Now, hypothetically, someone might be trying to write a fanfiction in which Legolas is compared to Lúthien for assorted reasons (mostly because it's funny). But this potential author is not really up on birds, particularly song birds, and so they are uncertain what the best/funniest bird comparison for Legolas would be. This possible author might desire the wisdom of tumblr on the topic, but prefer to keep things hypothetical, because heaven forbid they commit to creating anything.

I assume you understand.

tl;dr If Gimli came upon Legolas in the woods and had to compare him to a bird, what would be the most appropriate bird for him to choose? Bonus points if Thranduil is highly offended or gratified by the choice.

PS: Any Tolkien scholars in the audience want to weigh in on whether Jirt was at all influenced by the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale The Nightingale? Since I have recently learned just how much of LotR is referential I keep wondering about these things.

[mistergandalf]

ULTIMATE TOLKIEN BLORBO: ROUND TWO (SECOND CHANCE BRACKET) IS COMPLETE!

Here’s who won:

Aragorn vs. Elladan & Elrohir

Gimli vs. Morgoth/Melkor

Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck vs. Bard the Bowman

Finrod Felagund vs. Celegorm

Boromir vs. Kíli

Fíli vs. Celebrimbor

Éomer vs. Galadriel

Fingon vs. Arwen Undómiel

You’ve cut me deep, tumblr… you’ve cut me deep. My personal blorbo (Fíli) got beaten immediately by an elf in BOTH brackets. Y’all need to appreciate Dwarves more because they rule. Even Legolas knew that.

Anyway, I’ll stop being insufferable. Moving along.

We have finally eliminated some of our beloved blorbos! You have decided as a collective that the following characters simply aren’t blorbo enough:

Elladan & Elrohir

Morgoth/Melkor

Bard the Bowman

Celegorm

Kíli

Fíli

Galadriel

Fingon

Say goodbye, everyone. Who will get eliminated next? (EXTREMELY looking forward to Finrod vs. Sauron. Hoping that at least on tumblr, the right person can emerge victorious.)

Don’t forget that Round Three on the primary bracket is going on now! Round Three (Second Chance Bracket) will start at 12PM EDT (GMT -4), and as those polls begin, the primary bracket will be closing.

And now, for some analytics…

Who got the most votes?

Merry destroyed all the competition with 1,567 votes. Gimli also broke a thousand votes, totaling 1,133.

On the losing side, my beloved Fíli managed to get 705 votes, over twice what the next loser had. I’ll take that as a consolation prize.

Who got the least votes?

Elladan & Elrohir once again are left by the wayside with only 102 votes. Poor boys. We still love them. As does their father. However, they are not quite alone; Morgoth, Bard, and Celegorm also failed to break 200 votes.

On the winning side, Éomer squeaked out a victory with only 371 votes. But he won!!!

Which races were the most contentious?

The most contentious race was Fíli vs. Celebrimbor. Celebrimbor won by 3%. I will say no more about that because my Dwarf-loving heart is broken.

Éomer vs. Galadriel was pretty close, as well, but it wasn’t quite as tight as the other polls have been. Éomer won by 6.4%, making it the least close “close race” so far.

Which races were the least contentious?

Poor Bard the Bowman stood no chance against Merry, unfortunately, garnering only 10.3% of the vote. Sorry, buddy. Morgoth faced a similar fate against Gimli, with only 12.3% of you voting for him. (u ok? Blink twice if you need help.)

I have more questions!

So do I. I’ll be over here holding Dwarves if you need me. Ask box is open!

Until next time!

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Favourite Female Tolkien Character Poll - Round 1, Match 44

Rosie Cotton

Marries Sam, and they move into Bag End.

A quote from the unpublished Epilogue (in HoME Vol. 9, Sauron Defeated):

Master Samwise stood at the door and looked away eastward. He drew Mistress Rose to him, amd set his arm about her.

“March the twenty-fifth!” he said. “This day seventeen years ago, Rose wife, I didn’t think I should ever see thee again. But I kept on hoping.”

“I never hoped at all, Sam,” she said, “not until that very day; and then suddenly I did. About noon it was, and I felt so glad that I began singing. And mother said: ‘Quiet, lass! There’s ruffians about.’ And I said: ‘Let them come! Their time will soon be over. Sam’s coming back.’ And you came.”

“I did,” said Sam. “To the most belovedest place in all the world. To my Rose and my garden.”

Rose in Elvish is Beril. If you wanted to know.

Elanor Gamgee

Sam’s eldest daughter, named after the little golden sun-star flower in Lothlórien.

In the unpublished Epilogue, where she is 15 years old, basically says ‘RIP Arwen but I’m different’.

“And when you’re tired, you will go, Sam-dad. You will go to the Havens with the Elves. Then I shall go with you. I shall not part with you, like Arwen did with Elrond.”

Wants to see elves, and does become a maid of honour to Arwen that summer. When she’s 21 years old, she and her parents visit Gondor for a year. When Sam departs over the Sea - at which time Elanor is 61, and her eldest son, named Elfstan, is 28 - he entrusts her with the Red Book of Westmarch.

[sticky-institute]

Travel Diary: Zinefest Christchurch, by Bryce Galloway

I used to go to all of New Zealand’s annual zinefests, but now that there’s six of them (!?!?) I only go to my hometown zinefests - Hamilton/Wellington, and one other, in strict rotation. I’m weird like that, just ask my friends.

Last time I was here (2013) I was in a lonely hotel on the edge of Cathedral Square, telling the assembled locals to go zine, cos it was one of the best cultural vehicles for a city lacking infrastructure. Christchurch (Ōtautahi) was post-quake. Christchurch is still post-quake, just a little less so.

This time round I’m staying with friend, artist, musician and Content Manager at inde radio station RDU - Gemma Syme. I slept on Gemma’s coach, until drunken friends and flatmates woke me with their banter and late-night fry-up. I listened to the drunken Pakeha boys try and argue their iwi (tribal) status with the Māori girls. What, with the sleeping bag over my head, I totally missed that one of the boys in question was friend and zinester Spencer Hall. Once they’d left I got up and checked they’d turned the oven off. Those, “don’t drink and fry” ads, ya know?

I see nobody from Christchurch Zinefest 2013 at the 2017 event. This must be a completely new local zine spasm. However, Christchurch’s ongoing love of the risograph and the influence of designer/art school lecturer Luke Wood are still present, extended by Jane Maloney’s riso press (M/K Press Ltd) and her pre-Zinefest riso-zine workshops.

Christchurch Art Centre are providing this space by virtue of the fact that they have a zinester in their ranks - Louise Sutherland. Otherwise, Alice Bush is the primary organizer of this year’s event.

Louise’s zines precede her. She be the author of the wonderful Coaster Frenzy, here today for just “$1 or swaps”. Alice and I gush our respective roller coaster stories at the Coaster Frenzy author. Alice has the world’s highest rollercoaster under her belt. I have the world’s highest vertical-drop rollercoaster under mine, which is surprising, I HATE heights. I launch into the Dead Kennedy’s rollercoaster disaster anthem Funland at the Beach, and later kick myself for the inappropriateness of that song in the context of post-quake Christchurch!!!

Louise says she feels privileged to have been part of the Christchurch rebuild, “It’s a moment in history. How many of those do we get to share.” Louise contends that Christchurch art and music have benefitted from the quakes; that a formerly closed scene, full of hierarchies, is now open to all players. That’s very ziney. It’s a sentiment echoed in issue two of the riso music journal Cheap Thrills (at Zinefest with editor - Erin Kimber). In the opening article - On the Value of Music - Matt Scobie writes, “I believe these events allowed or encouraged us to break free of the shackles of competitive individualism driven by exchange values and start acknowledging the importance of seeing the Ōtautahi music community as a synergetic whole…”

Hey, there’s Cameron from riso design journal Strips Club. His Strips Club collaborator’s moved to Berlin. Maybe there won’t be another volume of Strips Club. “Awe, do a White Fungus.” I encourage. “Berlin/Chch to their Taiwan/Wellington. Interview White Fungus’s Hanson brothers.” We talk politics, voting patterns, Winston Peters, the “king-maker” in post-election New Zealand. Cameron tells me about the massive Justice Building, that cynically opened for election season photo ops with members of the incumbent National party, closing again for ongoing construction as soon as the polling booths were shut.

I do the stall-holder circuit, it probably takes about an hour to get a reasonable handle on the qualities of the various zines on offer. All the zinesters are doing the same thing; doing the whole circuit before deciding how to spend their budget of $5, $10, or $20. I spend every cent that I make in sales of my own zine - Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People. I get all zinesters to sign their work.

There are approximately 20 stall-holders here according to Alice: Asian exchange students have written about racism against their own, David Merritt has his foldout poetry housed in upcycled books and banana box linings, there’s a zine from the Christchurch Women’s Centre, Spencer’s pop-up comics and satirical propaganda commands (Spencer also passes round a folded piece of paper for a comics jam on fictitious FX pedals), there are other inde comics, second hand books, witch zines, potion zines, stickers, handmade jewelry, cassettes, CD-zines, creative writing, sci fi stories, photo zines, travel zines, cat zines, music zines, even a zine about zines.

I sell more zines when I’m not on my stall than when I am there!?!? I’m not surprised, zine shopping is a potentially self-consciousness experience in the extreme. Where else do you examine someone’s art while they examine your face for signs of enjoyment, waiting for you to decide whether their art’s good enough to purchase. Imagine being installed next to your own gallery painting, with your hand out!? But that’s also the best thing about zinefest, you meet ALL the artists.

Bleeeurh! A bit tired and hungover now. Need coffee. The worst busker in the world sits in her wheelchair outside Bunsen Café warbling some churchy dirges over karaoke backing. Too good to be full-o-character, too bad to forgive her genre of choice.

My zinefest neighbor is a scrapbooker from the US, so I’m compelled to ask her if she thinks the scrapbooker kits one finds in art/stationary shops are a rip. Thankfully, she does. She appears to be afloat in NZ, not knowing if her art school back in the US will be restructured out of existence or not. Is looking to find an arts program in New Zealand.  

Cameron of Strip Club packs up early. Bastard! Makes a huge hole in the wee zinefest presence/footprint.

I’m just not acclimatized to this Christchurch cold. They’ve put the Wellington guy in exactly the wrong place, by the draughty doorway. Locals chit chat in tee shirts while I hug myself, jacket zipped, hat pulled tight!?!?

I’m encouraging Louie of Dunedin Zinefest and Alice of Christchurch to get committees of helpers. They’re both currently running their zinefests solo!?!?

Spencer tells me to check out his story about NZ alt rock legend Bruce Russel being the alter-ego of NZ alt rock legend Martin Phillips, as printed in his Lyttelton Rotten Radio zine.

It’s nearly 5 PM. I pack up and make short work of my farewells so that I can catch a bus to the airport and relax knowing I’m in the right place for my flight back to Wellington.

Back home and checking the best of my haul:

Cheap Thrills Issue 2 - an elegant risographed volume of NZ music past and present

Wandering Wolves is a gorgeous riso, the very first zine of Prabha Mallya, made at one of the workshops leading up to zinefest. Poetic mix of tagged animal narrative, poetry, illustration, photo and collage.

Field Notes from The Crescent City – July 2017 “It’s a very efficient and sensible method of burial that ensures you can never ever escape your family, even in death.”

Louise Sutherland’s holiday snaps and memories of New Orleans (including its cemeteries), well enough written and photographed to transcend any photo album limitations

A Most Elusive Species – by Louise Sutherland’s brother Robert. Photo essay of seemingly empty zoo enclosures. A subtle variety to the picture-by-picture approach creating a rewarding sense of narrative.

Burn Out is a pun. Yes, there are cars, but the scars are not the result of spinning tyres but of the sun’s rays peeling the paint off that once proud finish - by Robert Sutherland.

The cutest wee Untitled zine that pitches it’s teensiness against clipped horror narratives from Greek myth.

Cuss Weird cussing birds. Inexplicable.

OX OX OX... a CDR economically clothed in a folded A3. Rockabilly are the first chords, with hints of Ramones and Stooges. Next song is quite different, same vocal stylings but over “Dunedin Sound” meets Fall repetition. In the zine, we’re regaled with some pretty compelling “um and ah” misadventures from the band’s singer. Now they play a kiwified Joy Division cover. Sweeet!

Strawberry Stories runs some loopy narrative logic, or lack thereof. And some nice red spot-colour on the strawberry coloured one, though s/he’s not actually a strawberry eh, s/he’s like a person with a tree growing outta their head!?!?

A Zine Fanzine Beautifully designed and laid out riso about zines. Tightened up my own understanding about the provenance of zines, though changes to conjecture when talking about post internet zines.

Misc - Excellent poems by Arwen Miriama Sommer. “Snow is built of feathers and birds are built of trees”

All About the Sex* The Christchurch Women’s Centre decide to distribute their newsletter at zinefest, so it’s a zine now. An intro to the Woman’s Centre and their weekly discussion forum, plus an intro to the Red Tent movement and editorial about aging women’s identity.

Rotten Radio Zine - Spencer Hall’s good at writing original meandering comedy nonsense about music and culture.

[sillylotrpolls]

Result post tags

I'm still working on this list and updating the tags on past results posts (currently up to October 2023!). But with tumblr announcing the new search options today, it seemed like a good time to get a proper list published, even if incomplete. Hope you enjoy browsing some past silly polls. :)

Note: not all results posts have all applicable tags, as I am only human. Original poll posts may have some of these tags, but usually the tags are only on the results post to avoid duplication.

To combine tags, see the new tumblr search options.

Type of results (not mutually exclusive) #mixed results #even results #clear winner #rare 0% option #exact tie

Number of results #<100 votes #<500 votes #<1000 votes #1000+ votes

Poll genres #choose a favorite #how does ME work? #quiz time #what if? #what would you do? #which of these is the most/least...? Specific poll types #follow up poll #has a follow-up poll #one-day wonder #one on one

Poll topics #adaptation #demographics #fanfiction #merchandise #linguistics #musical #not funny #sex #shipping #the silmarillion #too many names Analysis #author gets creative in results #author is judgy in the results #long results post #poll craft explained #free fanfic inspiration #read the comments #link to more reading in results #text excerpt #video

Source of poll idea #based on a meme #based on a song #it came from tumblr

Pairings #bagginshield #galrog #gimleaf

Races #dwarves #eagles #elves #ents #hobbits #men #orcs

Characters Note: characters are usually tagged only if there was something particular about that character in the results or if they were the poll's primary focus.

If you don't see a character here, you can still try using this URL to see if they're tagged anywhere: https://www.tumblr.com/sillylotrpolls/tagged/[NAME HERE] #aragorn #bill the pony #boromir #gandalf #gimli #legolas #merry #pippin #sam #the fellowship

#arwen #elrond #feanor #galadriel #thranduil

#bilbo #eowyn #faramir #thorin #tom bombadil

#gollum #sauron