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More old poll results!
Today: the best kings of Númenor excluding Elros. These are the results of two separate polls, one for the good kings (Vardamir to Ciryatan + also Palantir), one for the bad (the other 12).
Approval of the ruler / time:
The results are surprising to me. also, not many votes: 62 for the good bracket, 58 for the bad bracket.
More charts: the good (blue) and bad (red) in order of votes.
More very old poll results
"Which character would protest the most about the fandom underestimating them" + "Which character would protest the most about the fandom overestimating them"
Protesting being overestimated got 267 votes, underestimated 189. I appreciate the positivity in the fandom. :)
"Alas! Nobody appreciates me!"
Fefe [42 votes] wins over Morgoth [38]. Interesting.
But I'm not that special!
148 votes for Elrond. I agree. He would.
Re: Contents polls
Allergy warning: may contain cool hair.
Source polls: Námo; Manwë; Melkor|Morgoth; Mairon|Sauron; Finrod
Will I draw the results? Will I do something else interesting with the results? IDK. Maybe I will draw them holding lists of contents or whatever.
Interesting results:
Namo is equally happy about the thigs he can't share and sad about them (7 votes each). (Same as cloak and popcorn emoji). Also, he's most balanced, doesn't have a strong winning option.
Melkor contains mostly issues and getting punched. "Hatered and malice" is third on the list. Also, only the middle Silmaril got any votes (two). IDK how he was lefy with one... i guess the kinfi broke later.
Finrod has more kindness than philosophy (yes!), znd zero discretion, chill or harp. Also, a smaller percentage of cool hair than Námo. OK, hard to compete against a Vala.
Manwë is mostly birds, but also controversial decisions. More cool hair than Finrod, less than Námo.
Sauron got most votes on his poll. The magic is less important, important things are perfectionism and losing just as dramatic irony (or, to say it more, in-setting, hmm, fate) is going to hit him in the face.
Interestingly, the % of "have you considered not being a Dark Lord" content in both is similar: about 5%, which is the traditional margin of "impossible" both in D&D and statistics XD. sauron gets above the margin, Morgoth does not. Unsurprisingly. But still, they are closer than I would expect from the fandom. (Maybe if instead of "remorse?" I phrased it "Mairon did nothing wrong" or "babygirl" the % would be higher, but no, I don't regret my choice of poll options.).
[color coding: roughly looks/personality/activities but not for all, sometimes it's just "whatever seems to fit"]
Cultural/national background & Silm affiliations: results
140 votes. Thank you all!
The poll asked about natioanal identity (Russian / other postcommunist / other) and about whether you support the Valar, or Melkor, or are neutral on this. I was inspired to make it by the fact that there seems to be a big Russian pro-Melkor fandom. The fanart, the Black Book, things like that.
The results are almost statistically significant. Almost. :( There weren't enough people from Russia, I guess. But no, I will not cheat and go above 0.05.
Anyway, charts:
And normalized charts, to show how the percentages compare:
As I said, it's not statistically solid, but:
In every group, there are more pro-Valar people than neutral or pro-Melkor, but for "other" and "potcommunist" it's an absolute majority (60% and 63%), for Russian it's only 41%.
The Russian fandom has a significant amount of pro-Melkor. Sure, it is only 5 people who voted, but only one person voted "Melkor" in the "other postcommunist" group, and 6 people in the "other countries" group. Almost half of Melkorian votes are from Russia, despite the Russian population being about 1/8 of all the voters.
Even so, Melkor got less voted (globally) than the "bald" option.
Still, it's not science, just handwaving. :(
Also it is probably strongly influenced by my followers, who are, I assume, on the average pro-Valar.
Opinion on Feanáro & politics: results (tldr: none)
It looks like all those are independent variables. :( I am puzzled. Attitude towards private property is not relevant to Feanorism? Attitude towards obeying authorities is not relevant to Feanorism? So … it's only about personal vibing with the chartacter; about which takes and fics have you assimilated more; about things like that? Huh.
Apparently most of you have much less bleed between opinions IRL and opinions on who is right in a work of fiction than I do. Which is good to learn. Even if I have to look at another flopped experiment.
Also, next time I do a political compass poll, I need to split it around a point somewhere in lib-left square.
Anyway, have some stats:
Numenor on its own: results
The clear consensus is that without Sauron's bad influence, Numenor would collapse from internal struggles, maybe managing to conquer the whole Middle Earth before, maybe not (votes split in half). the third most popular option is them trying to invade Valinor anyway (maybe after conquering everything else?)
I like how we all don't trust the Numenoreans. Which is very fact-based tbh.
Without Sauron, they would…
Be fine and nice: 3 votes.
Try to conquer ME, defeated by Elves: 13 votes.
Conquer ME, collapse from internal struggles: 19 votes.
Collapse from internal struggles before they can conquer ME: 18 votes.
Some other uMaia would mess up Numenor in one way or another: 2 votes.
Try to invade Valinor without external inspiration: 13 votes.
Start a war with the Teleri, get wrecked by Ossë and Uinen: 2 votes.
Start a war in ME, get wrecked by other slightly disobedient Ainu(r)*: 3 votes.
Invent something big and blow the whole island up / make it unhabitable: 6 votes.
Other: 1 vote.
If you were a Maia — results
So, who would you want to work for?
First: it turns out that I haven't explained the doublepoll idea clearly. About 50 people (estimate) picked one Vala from each poll instead of picking a Vala from one and voting "the other poll" on the other, as was my intention.
Second: nobody wants to be a Maia of tulkas or Nessa, despite the free alcohol.
Third: Most polls about anything positive (but not about looks) are dominated by Ulmo, Nienna, Aule and Namo. Ulmo does a lot of things, Nienna is the one who taught Gandalf, Aule made the Dwarves and sort of taught Feanor… but I wonder what made Namo so popular. Best fanart? (Not counting mot-a-Vala guy) best lines? (of all the Valar)
I should make a "why do you like Namo" poll.
Everlasting Darkness — poll results
From this and that.
"Where did Feanor got the idea of Everlasting Darkness from?" got 75 voters, "What is the Everlasting Darkness?" got 260. Which is an interesting difference because the questions are rather similar, and the polls ran simultanously. Yet the other one proved much more interesting.
Charts:
Thoughts:
Everlasting Darkness is the Void sweeps (147 votes, 56.5%, majority), with much more votes (78% of those 147) adding "but it is not outer space". Interestingly, in my "where was Morgoth thrown into and how" poll on @morgoth-into-the-void-week, 70.6% voters say he was thrown out of space and time (so, the void ≠ space), and 28.3% equates the coid with some area of (normal, physical) space. Which is a pretty similar proportion, and that is nice, because it means that you are consistent in your voting :)
The second winning option is "nobody knows".
Also, 26 votes for Everlasting Darkness not being true (at least mostly), 170 for it being real and rather precise, 21 for vegue options, 10 for a custom answer. (TBH, I may be misinterpreting some of the votes here, the options were sometimes fuzzy.)
As to how Feanor learned about it, there is no clear winner. "Directly from Melkor" (did they even talk this much?) + "it is an originally elven concept" are tied on the first place, with "indirectly from Melkor" just a stap behind them.
If I were to create a HC matching the poll, I would say Melkor told Fenor and other Elves about the Void, but the name "Everlasting Darkness" was something present in their culture from the beginning (because they're focused on stars etc) and those two concepts merged into one.
In the first poll, there were 33.3% (25 votes) for the concept coming from Melkor. In the second poll, only 1.9% (5 votes) for "Melkor made it up", so apparently he spoke about it but didn't make it up. He was at least partially telling the truth. This happens sometimes.
Detailed votes:
