Audio of me presenting this to my English club linked here.
Transcription of the audio file below! I presented it to a group of people who weren't familiar with the Silmarillion, so I did a little bit of explaining y'all won't need.
I'm presenting on a project I've been doing for the past… two years? It's called “Who’s That Silmarillion Character: A study of the iconography of the fanart of the Silmarillion fandom”.
Welcome to nerd-central!
*scattered giggles*
*Next Slide*
So, the point of this whole thing is, the Silmarillion fandom – which, for those who don't know is the, kind of, history book of the Lord of the Rings – it's full of talented artists. Like, professional-level crazy-talented. And, most of the Silmarillion characters, because there's so many of them, have never had any kind of visual adaptation. However, a lot of the Silmarillion fans will recognize the characters in the art at the drop of a hat.
And I wanted to know – first of all, if that was really true, like, based on hard data – and, if so, how and why. So I made a blog about it, y’know, as you do.
*Next Slide*
For my methodology: that is a list of all of the characters I made polls for – there are 93 of them. That's a very long screenshot.
So, step one: create a list of all of the possibly recognizable characters. I did have to expand it a few times, because the Silmarillion fandom has people who are even nerdier than I am! I love to see it.
And then, step two, track down art pieces of each character that are recognizable to me for whatever reason, and not based off an adaptation, which for some characters, was kinda difficult.
And then, ask the artist for permission to use it – repeat as needed. There was a few artists who didn't want their art posted without their names, which, that's totally fair.
Step four, create a poll with the unlabeled art piece.
Step five, include the correct character, as well as several possible “decoys” who share as many similar traits as possible.
And then publish the results, while tagging the artist, making special note of what caused a character to be guessed correctly and what caused confusion.
And then repeat steps one through six 92 times.
And, in order to randomize it, I separated- I alphabetized the characters, numbered them, and then chose one from each set of ten, and just kinda cycled through that until I was out of characters.
*Next Slide*
So, my findings!
Overall, the Silmarillion fandom has an unnerving uniformity; like, it was kinda creepy. The total average was 70.1 over all 93 characters. Of those 93, only two did not win their poll, which is wild to me.
So, in order to really dive into this, I tried to separate the characters in as many ways as possible. So, in the first little bubble on the left there, I split it into male and female and there's a slight discrepancy, but not much; which is also very impressive, considering Tolkien writes a lot more about his male characters.
And then, I split it up by species. Those are all pretty uniform. The mannish characters did have a higher recognition rate, which was interesting – still don't know why. But the maiarin characters were particularly interesting to me, because I split them up into the Valar – which is like the Greek gods of Middle Earth – and then the lesser maiar, which are everyone else. And I thought, for sure, those'll have totally different numbers. Nope! They are less than three percent off.
The hair color was actually a little more split apart. So, the dark haired and silver haired characters were pretty- pretty normal. The redheaded characters were super high on the list, they did very well, which makes sense because – first of all, there's only five of them as opposed to, like 49 dark haired characters – and one of the redhead characters was voted most recognizable and one of the other redhead characters is one of only two elves with a beard, so, fairly recognizable!
And then, the blond characters… We'll get to those in a minute ‘cause there was some “statistical nonsensery” going on there.
*Next Slide*
However, there were two exceptions that, quote-on-quote, “failed” their polls. But, when it comes to research, things going differently than you expect isn't necessarily “failure”. It can teach you so much, because those two characters failed for the exact same reason; and that reason is that they share a lot of iconography with much more popular characters.
So, the Saruman art I did- since I was going for something that didn't have an adaptation, I didn't go with the easily-recognizable movie version. I went with before he got sent to Middle Earth. Which means he was mistaken for Sauron, because they have a very similar background. They worked under the same master. They're both associated with fire and the forge- so that was interesting.
And Curufin, that character, he shares one of his names with both his father, Fëanor, and his son, Celebrimbor; and both of those characters are much more popular and well-known, and well-loved. Curufin kinda just gets left behind.
And also, both of those don't really have any iconography that's unique to them. It's just- there's a lot of overlap that combine to make them [recognizable]. And, I knew it was shared iconography specifically that threw off the polls because there were a lot of characters that I had barely heard of, or hadn't heard of at all, that absolutely crushed their polls. It was crazy!
*Next Slide*
And then *giggle* now we come back to the blonds. I made a meme about it.
The Arafinwians are five characters, Arafinwë and his children, and pretty much their main recognizable character trait is that they're blond. Galadriel is one of these. She's also the only female one.
The average score for that family was 59.94 – I remind you that the average overall was 70. There's some of them that don't even have any secondary signs, it's just… blond. And, mind you, five characters singlehandedly lowered the blond score by six percent! It was crazy!
So, that's what I've been doing for the past two years. Thank you very much! *applause*
I still don't quite understand how to draw dwarves and hobbits, but in the end managed to depict Thorin's brother and sister - Frerin and Dis (can't "unsee" the image of Cate Blanchett as a dwarf >v<).
I love the detail in the Valaquenta that while mariners and coastal communities may love Ossë, they do not trust him. It speaks so much to the love for the seas themselves. Ossë delights in storms, when he served Melkor he wrought waves that destroyed large swathes of land.
I wonder what tribute sailors and fishers offer him and what lore and traditions were born out of the wary fondness for Ossë. Ships built with symbols carved into their bows that are said to offer protection. Poems and songs and tile mosaics about shipwrecks and tidal waves. Sacrifices or offerings beside houses upon sea cliffs. The rituals done in thanks when sailors return safely.
Through the fear of him comes greater understanding of weather patterns and marine conditions, knowledge that is then passed down.
Even if Ossë’s greatest power and threat is unpredictability, the people who live near or within his domain will incorporate this into their lives rather than abandon the places they love
