Theorycrafting: Interview with Scedasticity of the "Silmarillion Headcanon Survey" by Scedasticity and Dawn Felagund

Theorycrafting: Interview with Scedasticity of the "Silmarillion Headcanon Survey"

Over my nearly two decades in the Tolkien fandom, I've noticed that fanons and headcanons are subject to biases of perception. Some fanons feel like they are everywhere: the dandelions of fan theories. Others (often the ones I personally love the most) feel like they are as rare as delicate orchids that must be coddled and coaxed to grow.

Scedasticity has quantified which fanons and headcanons are in fact most popular among Silmarillion fans. Her Silmarillion Headcanon Survey now exists in several iterations and seeks to gather data on fan theories on any number of questions and ideas floating about the fandom. Scedasticity was good enough to answer my questions on the Silmarillion Headcanon Survey, its origins, its current status, and its future.

Dawn: Tell me about who you are as a Tolkien fan. How did you get involved in the fandom?

Scedasticity: My first encounter with Tolkien was as a very small child when there was a play of The Hobbit at the children’s theater, and my parents were trying to read me the book so I could appreciate it better. I was scared of the picture of Gollum on the cover of the book and did not properly appreciate the play. I finally gave into my parents’ ongoing recommendations and read Lord of the Rings (LotR) late in elementary school, and (their copy of) The Silmarillion sometime after that but well before the LotR movies came out. So they got me into Tolkien, but they didn’t do fandom.

My first interaction with Tolkien fandom anywhere outside my head was looking up information about the then-upcoming movies. I’d seen the animated versions and been, um, less than impressed, and my trust in film adaptations generally was low, but the first trailer for the Jackson films actually looked like it might be good? I had to learn more???

So Lord of the Rings was one of the fandoms I had an eye on as I got into online fandom in the early aughts, and then also Silmarillion fandom. But I was pretty passive until Tumblr gave me my very own soapbox for my fandom opinions, an actual audience, and mutuals who liked to talk Tolkien from time to time. Then I started theorizing in public, and then fanfic.

D: Tell me about the Silmarillion Headcanon Survey. If someone had never heard of it, how would you describe this project to them?

S: Okay, so, The Silmarillion leaves a lot of unanswered questions. If you bring in all the rest of the Histories material, that answers some of the questions but also makes some things debatable and raises even more unanswered questions. Some of these questions are obvious and some are subtler, some are easier to ignore than others, but in writing fanfiction or theorycrafting you will often run up against these questions which have no canonical answer, but which you have to make some sort of decision about to proceed. If you’re consuming the fanfic or theory you’re then going to be faced with that question and whether you can accept the writer’s answer. The goal of the project is to shine a light on some of these unanswered questions and see what people generally seem to conclude.

D: What inspired you to begin this research? What were you hoping to achieve when you released the first edition?

S: Very initially I think I was actually focusing on the relationship between “which of these theories do you believe” and “which of these theories do you strongly object to”—I wanted to be able to say, for example, “This theory doesn’t have that many people who favor it, but pretty much no one strongly objects to it”. Obviously things ballooned from there.

D: How do you personally define "headcanon"? Do you think this is the same thing as fanon or any other fandom terms?

S: Fanon is a headcanon or theory a lot of people share or buy into. (I was initially kind of frustrated that Silmarillion fandom doesn’t have a lot of fanon for, e.g., what some of the nameless wives’ names and backgrounds are. Can’t we collaboratively develop the person in this role rather than everyone having to make up their own? But by now I’ve mostly made up my own.)

Headcanon is used with a couple of meanings. My preferred meaning is it’s something you’re choosing to believe which does not significantly contradict canon—often it’s answering a question canon didn’t answer or didn’t even pose. But I know the word is also used to mean something you just decide, that isn’t at all canon compatible, and that usage isn’t wrong per se.

Silmarillion headcanons are often what I would describe as headcanons because there is so much empty space, so much inconsistency, so many ways to argue something doesn’t technically contradict canon.

I also define the term "fic postulate" to be something you don’t necessarily headcanon in general, but which is canon for a fic or fics.

A theory or interpretation can be a headcanon, but not all headcanons are interpretations/theories, and not all theories/interpretations are headcanons. (Example: I entertain several Hobbit origin theories, but haven’t pinned any of them as a headcanon.)

(Authorial intent is the author’s headcanon.)

D: What is your own experience, as a fan, with headcanons, fanons, and other fan-driven ideas, inventions, and theories, outside of the survey?

S: I think in most fandoms it is impossible not to have headcanons, whether you realize it or not, because few (if any) canons nail down everything. Even something as simple as “everything in this urban fantasy story that hasn’t been specified to be different is basically comparable to the real world” is technically a headcanon. I think. Hmmm, or maybe if you haven’t considered it at all it’s just an assumption, and you have to choose it for it to be a headcanon? Not sure. Well, after the possibility that there’s some unmentioned-in-canon significant difference has been raised and you’ve rejected it, then it’s definitely a headcanon!

I sometimes get frustrated and/or confused by blatantly countercanonical fanon, once I notice it. Working within the bounds of canon compliance/canon compatibility is trickier but more satisfying to me, usually. (What’s stupid is I sometimes get frustrated by countercanonical fanon for fandoms I’m not even in. I have never seen show x, it should not bother me that the characterization in this crossover is all wrong, but I’ve seen enough discussion to know it is Off and so it Bugs me.)

D: What is the most surprising or interesting thing you've learned from the survey? (More than one is welcome!)

S: Hmm … I don’t know that any of the majority answers have really surprised me. Some things that have surprised me: More people than I expected have countercanonical birth order headcanons for Finwë’s grandkids! (Not a lot, but still more than I expected.) At least four people think Thingol and Melian condoned the killing of Petty-dwarves, which is baffling to me. There’s one person who has the theory that the Petty-dwarves were Hobbits.

Oh, this is interesting. In Version 4, I had the question, “Who does the treasure of a deceased dragon belong to?” with the answers "The original owners or their heirs", "Whoever killed the dragon", "Finders keepers", and "If you’re arguing over who owns it you've already lost". The last one got about 70%; 26% were "The original owners or their heir", then 3% for "killed the dragon" and 2% for "finders keepers".

For Version 5, I decided to remove the "you’ve already lost" option. Now we have 55% original owners/heirs, 17% whoever killed the dragon, and 28% finders keepers.

The pool of survey-takers is not identical, and at the moment Version 5 has only about a third as many votes as Version 4, so take this with a grain of salt, but: It certainly looks like who people think the treasure of a deceased dragon belongs to is strongly predictive of how wary they are of dragon-sickness!

D: Have responses to the survey shaped or changed how you view the Tolkien fandom?

S: I am shocked—shocked, I tell you—that people who said the offered multiple choice questions weren’t sufficient to dissect Finwëan grandkid relations or the Elrond-Elros-Maglor-Maedhros snarl aren’t jumping at the chance to really dig into things with the Cousin Gauntlet or Excruciating Detail Supplement. (No I’m not shocked, the Cousin Gauntlet is insane.)

I don’t think any of the surveys has enough reach to say anything about the Tolkien fandom as a whole. It’s interesting that there’s so much diversity of opinion within the relatively small group it reaches. (Though I joked—mostly joked— that I could tell Version 4 hadn’t truly reached a wide audience because no one had chosen "Thingol did nothing wrong".)

D: The Silmarillion Headcanon Survey is a vast project. I remember taking one and being so impressed at the amount of ground you covered while maintaining a sense of humor through it all! Can you give us some insight into your process in designing one of these surveys?

S: It’s a constantly evolving process. Most of the repeated questions went through a couple different versions before I found one I like—adding choices, removing choices, rephrasing the question for clarity, adding "none of the above" options I forgot to, removing free-response options I knew very well were going to mess up the results …

One specific example: In the first version, I asked whether the Choice of the Peredhil was “Innate for anyone with a certain amount of human and elven ancestry” or “Offered by the Valar to specific people and lineages; any other 'half-elves' are elfy humans.” I’d gotten the impression somewhere that the second was canon, but I’d seen other people assuming the first and honestly liked it better, so I decided to ask. I can’t remember but someone must have pointed out those two options don’t cover all possibilities, so in the second version, I offered those plus a free response. Based on those responses, in the third survey I included five options: the previous two, the previous two with “BUT those whose parents chose human are considered human”, and also “None of these are anything like my theory”. There were still some in that last category; for Version 4 I added a supplemental survey on Awkward Biology Questions and got some free responses.

Now in Version 5, there are three questions: One asks whether the choice is innate to all Half-elves, offered by the Valar to specific lineages, or offered to all Half-elves but it wasn’t always; the second question asks about the status of Half-elves who don’t get the choice (elfy humans, humany Elves, or either depending on something other than choice). Finally, there are some checkboxes about later-generation Peredhil for opinions about those whose parents chose human, heritage proportions, etc.

There is at least one question in Version 5 that I am desperately wishing I’d done differently, it really needs a "none of them believe that" checkbox, but after the debacle of 1.0 I resolved not to edit surveys after posting.

D: What do you see as the future of this project? Do you plan to continue releasing surveys or to use the data you've collected in any way?

S: Survey 5 hasn’t been doing so well in terms of responses—I think splitting it into three sections was a mistake. I was trying to make it less overwhelming but I think it just made it worse. Unless I’ve wandered out of the fandom there will probably be another in six months or a year? I haven’t started the new version yet—partially because Tumblr has polls now so I can just immediately yell into the void “Do you think granaries in Aman get rats?” or “Did Elves at Cuiviénen have smelting?”

My attempts to present the results are hampered by my apparent inability to design questions that will produce readable results in static images on the Google Forms results page. I sort of want to do some comparisons between questions but the export format of the data does not make this easy. I don’t currently have any plans to do anything more with the data, partially because I think they have a pretty small reach.

The Silmarillion Headcanon Survey has several active surveys and is looking for participants! If you have a moment, perhaps consider sharing your own perspective on the different fan theories being bandied about the fandom:

• Part A: About the nature of things
• Part B: Demographics
• Part C: Feelings and Misbehavior
• All of the surveys and their results (including the daunting Cousin Gauntlet if you're feeling brave!)

Scedasticity can be found on Tumblr and also on AO3.