Battle of the dorks

[the phantom]

For just over three and one half years, I have made multiple visits nearly every single day to a website that revolves around a fictional world (The Barrow-Downs is the site, of course).

I have actually driven over 600 miles to meet with a small group of other members.

I have interacted so much with other members over the years that I have almost as many inside jokes with friends that I've never met in person than I do with my friends in real life.

During games of Werewolf, I spent more time thinking about the game, pming my fellow wolves, and posting on the thread than I did anything else, including sleeping.

I've loved Middle Earth since my dad read me The Hobbit in kindergarten. Because of how prominent Middle Earth has been my entire life, I cannot possibly imagine dating, much less marrying, someone who isn't familiar with Tolkien's literature.

If that isn't dorky I don't know what is.

[Thinlómien]

Watching all the three extendeds in one day is a fool's job, but it was nice. I admit, in this battle my marathon is a bit loser...

[Lalwendë]

Hmmm, I only saw FotR once at the flicks, but I saw both the other films twice. I can't count how many times I've seen them at home, as putting the DVDs aside (and I have both versions of all the films, bought on days of release), they've all been on heavy rotation on Sky Movies so they often get chosen during channel hopping.

When I'd just read the books it was the early 80s and I must have been a strange kid. I had this kind of trinity of obsessions: Tolkien, pop music and politics. I had my best black overcoat (with batwing sleeves, retro fashionistas!) onto which I attempted to embroider the White Tree of Gondor, with little beads to represent the stars. My mother went ballistic. I also had one of those canvas army bags which you could draw on (and which mums always used to throw in the washing machine as soon as they could get their hands on them). Mine had all kinds of arcane scribbles on it such as: Frodo Lives!, Frankie Goes To Hollywood Are Cool, and Solidarnosc!. The graffitti also appeared on ring binders and the horrible green paper we had to cover our text books in. The JRRT logo was a strong design feature, as were Runes.

Not long after I read LotR, we were set a task to write a fantasy story for English. The poor teacher expected about 2 or 3 pages per week from each of us in our exercise books. From me she got one and a half exercise books' worth. With maps and family trees and colour illustrations. I've also still got the school exercise book into which I diligently copied all the poems from LotR, with use of all different colours of biro and everything.

My friends at one point acquired new names based on LotR. These were generally on the 'good guys' but if one of my mates had done something deeply stupid they used to get named 'Shelob' for a while. My parents, who had absorbed all the Tolkien babble at home, learned some of the words and if they saw a dark wood they'd say "ooh, look, it's Mirkwood!".

In our front room, there are alcoves on either side of the chimney breast which have floor to ceiling bookshelves built in - one side is entirely occupied with Tolkien material and there still is not the space for all the books to be shelved there. The 78 action figures are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the amount of 'stuff' that's been collected...

And there are whole new avenues of dorkitude still to be explored... I still want to turn a shed into a Hobbit Hole, for example.

Perhaps the dorkiest thing is that if someone wrote a book about being a Tolkien dork then I'd be first in line to buy it to see how I measured up.

[JennyHallu]

This is a very strange and unsettling feeling for me....normalcy! I read my paperback versions of the books so many times they fell apart, I got my brother, my sister, and my debate partner all hooked, and I know my name in both Quenya and Sindarin (but the Quenya sounds like some sort of pasta), and I don't have any notebooks but have sketches of my old RP characters or the movie characters smudging up the endpapers or the margins (and they're quite good, thanks)...but i'm still feeling rather normal.

[Meela]

I saw Fotr 10 times in the cinema, TTT 11 times, and Rotk 12 times. I obsessed over a fictional character named Denethor for four years... very crazy indeed. I actually acted out the movies using my action figures, and I still have plans to film it.

I was a dork once, in fact I am still probably, although more plain crazy than dork now. I've done a lot more, but there are so many little things that I can't really list them all.

[Thinlómien]

I tried to make a play script to our spring party at school when I was about eight years old... And yes you know, it was the Lord of the Rings! Now I can just imagine how long the play would have been... I got to Weathertop before I stopped. I still have the script somewhere.

[Valier]

Well the week the last film came out, my local paper had a huge LOTR spread in there everyday. I actually got all of them.
Also I'm still attempting to make my own 3dish map of M.E. that will hang on the wall.......it's slow going.
I guess this would make me a dork...Or is it just everyone else who doesn't do that type of stuff.