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Fandometrics In Depth: Game of Thrones Edition

Winter has finally arrived in Westeros. 

Season six of Game of Thrones had everything: Time travel, necromancy, dragons, shame… It also had 7.4 million tagged posts and 8.2 million searches here on Tumblr (that’s through the duration of the season, April 24th to June 26th, 2016). We analyzed literally everything tagged #GOT and #Game of Thrones for this special edition of Fandometrics.

Top Episodes

6x09, “Battle of the Bastards”: 53% of the posts

6x05, “The Door”: 14%

6x04, “Book of the Stranger”: 11%

And the least popular: 6x06, “Blood of My Blood”: only 1.7% of the posts.

Top Characters

Jon Snow had the biggest year (of course) with more than 1.5 million of the 7.4 million GOT posts tagged with character names. To illustrate your absolute favorites, we now bring you charts!

Top Ships

There were more than half a million posts about 13 different pairings during season six. Interestingly, most didn’t use the common portmanteaus (think: Stucky) that are popular with modern ships. 61% of the tags used a classic “character 1 x character 2" naming structure instead. Here are your favorites:

Jon Snow x Sansa Stark, 33% of the posts

Brienne of Tarth x Jaime Lannister, 24%

Brienne of Tarth x Tormund Giantsbane, 15%

And the least favorite: Sansa Stark x Tyrion Lannister, with just 0.22% of the posts.

[thefantasticscholar]

I have to say, if anything made this quote resonate with me, it was Tumblr. I’ll come out and say it: sometimes I think that I am the only one of my kind. I don’t mean that in a lonely, cryptic, misunderstood teenage angst way, but sometimes I have reason to wonder if there are people out there who love the same things I do to the extent that I do. So often I overhear “I haven’t read a full book since high school,” and it breaks my heart a little each time. I’ve had the occasion to wonder if there are people out there who, like me,  retain the love for the stories of their childhood but are actively finding ways to expand and enjoy such stories in adulthood. Then I get online and I see the community of people who love the same things I do, like one big supportive cyber family that’s actually never met, and reading is the connection. Sometimes it’s nice to know we’re not alone.

Find me on Twitter

[thefantasticscholar]

how many books are in the archives?

ok so in TNOTW or WMF (i forget which) willem says that it would take a full span to read all the titles in the archives with no breaks. a span is eleven days. the average reader reads 250 words per minute. which is about 4 words a second. assuming the average title length is 4 words so one book title a second…

take 11 times 24 to get the hours, then multiply that by 60 to get minutes, multiply that by 60 again to get seconds (and thus the amount of titles) and you get…

950,400. almost a million books

that is almost half again how many books there are in powells bookstore in portland. which takes up a full city block and has multiple floors. and it is dubbed ‘city of books’

[thefantasticscholar]

In honor of International Women’s Day this past week, I would like to discuss the portrayal of women in Middle Earth.

In December 2013 the trailer for “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” was released and with it, a new female character. Tauriel, a Silvan elf and captain of the Mirkwood Elven Guard, was collaboratively created by filmmaker Peter Jackson and his wife, screenwriter and producer Fran Walsh. Initially I was slightly irked that the films brazenly created a new leading character in Tolkien’s legendarium. But after I saw Tauriel, and realized what I strong female character she is (in a story that could use one), I rescinded my judgement. However, I do wish that the creation of a strong female lead was not synonymous with the fabrication of a love triangle. Regardless, Tolkien has a few strong female characters, but they are mostly laced around the periphery of the narrative.

The major players that people know about are Luthien, Galadriel, Eowyn, and Arwen, who is more of a minor role in the books than in the films.

Luthien Before the Throne by Neffinesse

Galadriel Vs Sauron by LaurenceAndrewPage

Eowyn Vs Nazgul by Oliverojm

Flight to the Ford by Lairelark

I haven’t forgotten the queens of the Valar, or some of the other female elves in The Silmarillion, but they exist more in the periphery of Tolkien’s universe than as significant main characters, and are not portrayed on film (although I’m sure we’ve all dreamt about aSilmarillion film). Check out “They Are No Men: Tolkien’s 6 Most Bad-Ass Forgotten Ladies” for a more in-depth look at some of the women of The Silmarillion. This evident inequality of female characters, however, is not because Tolkien was a misogynist, or thought that women were weak. Given the time that Tolkien was writing all of his Middle Earth material, he imposed the gender roles he was familiar with.

What’s more, Tolkien does push the boundaries of some of these gender roles. Eowyn, a self-proclaimed “shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse” is the clearest example of these extended boundaries. Eowyn has had to watch helpless as the world darkens around her, confined in a cage of stereotypes. Although she knows that she has the skill to aid and protect her home and her family members on the battlefield, she is left to tend Meduseld while the men ride off to war, and comments,”‘Shall I always be chosen?…’Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?'” And yet we know her best from her declaration “I am no man”  which stands out clearly as a monumental and pivotal moment in “The Return of the King” film. 

Although this narrative is permeated with sword, bow, and axe wielding heroes, none of them have the power to do what Eowyn does, and end the reign of the Witch King of Angmar. So despite the insistence of characters like Theoden and Aragorn, who advocate that Eowyn remain behind for the duty she owes her people, her duty is best performed on the field of battle. Perhaps Tolkien imagined that many women who were stuck in mundane societally-acceptable female roles actually wished to be shieldmaiden like Eowyn. It is not unreasonable to imagine that during the 1900s Tolkien may have seen women who ought to be shieldmaidens of academia forced into dry-nurse roles due to the constraints of English gender roles during the the early decades of the 1900s.

Edith Tolkien

Lately I have been reading Tolkien’s biography by Humphrey Carpenter, and there is a lot of detail on his relationship with his wife, Edith. To be completely transparent, some of Edith Tolkien’s life was rather miserable. She spent a while moving from house to house to be close to Tolkien while he was in the army. Then, when Tolkien was teaching, she would again move from house to house depending on where his job was. Her role was to stay at home and take care of the children. She loved to play piano, but stopped pursuing the practice with any vigor because she became aware that as a married woman in the early 1900s, she “couldn’t” become a concert pianist. Edith Tolkien was ensconced in a community of professors and professors’ wives, next to whom she felt uneducated, self-conscious, and intimidated. It was very difficult for Edith Tolkien to find community, and her husband, who had a community of scholars like himself, didn’t really understand this. It stands to reason that Tolkien didn’t really understand women, or at least that he had an antiquated enough view of women to assume that the needs of his wife were dissimilar to his own.

This is not to say that Tolkien didn’t love his wife; she was the only woman he loved his entire life, since childhood. He thought of her as his own Luthien. But regardless of how much he loved Edith, the socially imposed gender roles of the 1900s translate to a conspicuously smaller amount of strong female characters in Middle Earth. Don’t get me wrong, Tolkien’s leading ladies, when they do lead, are awesome fiery wild women, but they are few and far in between.

Stay tuned for more insights, or check out more from The Fantastic Scholar

[thefantasticscholar]

This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen

[thefantasticscholar]

So true. They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard was a masterpiece of our adolescence, and will consequently live forever

[thefantasticscholar]

So incredibly excited for this—word on the street is it’s being made into a 3 part series.

Behind the scenes featurette for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) 

[thefantasticscholar]

After some inactivity, I’ve undergone a redesign on Wordpress, and have added some new articles. Head over and check them out! More to come via Tumblr soon.

[thefantasticscholar]

I'll have to add this to my someday collection

This beautiful edition of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings arrived yesterday! 

[thefantasticscholar]

Choose wisely, Pat. 

Putting this narrative in the hands of the wrong studio could be a tragedy. 

[thefantasticscholar]

THESE ARE SO COOL! Someday I want to have a section in my library for Harry Potter only. It will have tons of different editions and these will be the jewel! Plus, as a kid, how cool would it be to have those books read to you, and to learn to read them yourself?

“The Harry Potter books are so magical so mysterious and so adventurous. Basically these books are on the border of childhood. Therefore my goal was to redesign them with such illustrations that able to show this extraordinary atmosphere of the books. I started to experiment with interactive illustrations what not distract attention from the plot, but add to the story” - Kinsco Nagy

To earn her BA degree, Kinsco Nagy redesigned the Harry Potter series. Each book glows in the dark and features interactive pages! 

Photos taken by Richard Kelemen, and binding by David Petro

[thefantasticscholar]

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." Oh the irony.

[thefantasticscholar]

I've heard about Tolkien's knowledge of the kalevala, but I'm not sure if I knew about Kullervo. The synopsis shows Tolkien grasping and transforming that hero archetype. It's interesting that here he dooms his character to a tragic fate. I suppose it's food for thought whether or not he dooms all of his characters, or rather to what degree.

[thefantasticscholar]

Because why wouldn't I reblog?

[thefantasticscholar]

I just started watching Game of Thrones this month and I've just had to tell myself "everyone you love will die"

[thefantasticscholar]

Ainulindalë, part 2. Thanks for all the positive feedback, everyone! A lot of you have asked about buying a copy in book form. I will have copies at SPX and then I will sell them online. They are expensive to make since there are 54 pages of crazy color.

Part 1 is here

Part 3 is here

[thefantasticscholar]

I'm not sure how much of this is true, but there are some really interesting insights into what may have been happening

To the Editing Room and Back Again: How Warner Bros Almost Ruined The Hobbit

Something that I noticed really irritates me is the stunning lack of research in the Tolkien fandom regarding The Hobbit trilogy and how they pin the blame for everything on Jackson. But as I discovered over the past three months, there’s a bigger story. The trilogy had one of the most nightmarish productions in recent memory and all of it is Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s fault. 

The first problem emerged in 2008 when New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. refused to pay the Tolkien Estate the money that they owed them (including for The Lord of the Rings). What followed was two and a half years of everything spiraling out of control, not only sending the film into Development Hell but causing Guillermo del Toro to leave production after having been attached to it. To make matters worse, these legal issues got so bad that it would have taken the production out of New Zealand entirely. Only when Peter Jackson decided to come back to the director’s chair in late 2009 was everything sorted out.

And then the studio only gave Peter Jackson and Weta six months of pre-production and told him to start filming immediately afterwards or else. And before production could even begin, Jackson was hospitalized in January 2011 for a perforated stomach ulcer, which eerily was one of the contributing causes of Tolkien’s death. Luckily, it was caught in time and surgery went smoothly. This, however, forced production and principal photography to be halted for a month.

Filming itself went smoothly for the most part until the decision was made to split it into three movies instead of two. The sound designers, mixers, and editors had to create and edit new sound effects halfway through doing the second film. Then there was the decision to CGI Azog, Bolg, and the orcs in the first and second films, with the decision with Bolg being made so suddenly that whole sequences had to be re-shot, which is why in the trailers Azog is the one chasing the dwarves but in the film it’s Bolg.

Another piece of evidence of the suddeness of switching from two movies to three: the scene where the group tries to bury Smaug in gold in the forges was added only because the filmmakers needed a cliffhanger (they confirmed this when asked) and the actors and some of the crew literally had no idea what they were filming until the finished film.

The romance between Kili and Tauriel was always intended to be in the film from as early as 2010 with her relationship with Legolas being strictly platonic and more like a brother and sister. But when re-shoots were done to turn it into three films, the studio forced them to write Legolas into the love story and turn it into a love triangle. Both Evangeline Lilly and Peter Jackson have admitted they hated the idea of a love triangle and just wanted to tell a simple love story. This is also evidenced in the healing scene in Laketown. In the original script, she healed one of Bard’s daughters (most likely Tilda) but when re-shoots happened it was changed to Kili, which coupled with the aforementioned Bolg switch suddenly explains Kili being hit with an arrow.

When it finally came time to do the third film, the studio practically took the film away from Jackson and forced him to edit it in a way he didn’t approve of and imposed tons of baggage onto film, demanding more emphasis on the love story and possibly more Alfrid scenes.

All of this ended up blowing up in Warner Bros’ faces and while the trilogy did do well, it became a Base Breaker for audiences and critics and the Tolkien Estate has relinquished the film rights to the books until further notice. All the aforementioned meddling was confirmed not just by Peter Jackson but also by Graham McTavish and Evangeline Lilly, with McTavish confirming the theatrical cut for the third film isn’t what was intended and that the extended cuts of all three films are closer to Jackson’s original intention. 

Yikes. Now you know all this, I hope you at least are aware of what was going on behind the scenes. Thank you.