You, my brown-eyed Frodo

[Mnemosyne]

As someone who read fan-fiction voraciously before ever dreaming of becoming active on the Web, I became aware very early of how the characters "looked" in most fanauthors' eyes: Frodo had "dark brown," if not "dark" hair and these gorgeous luminous blue eyes that made you want to get lost in his impending tragedy; Pippin had green eyes and sometimes even a ridiculous Scots accent (written in!); Sam sometimes had brown eyes but always had lighter hair than the rest. It didn't matter how strictly book-verse it was, or how well the author wrote (though the better writers only gave Pippin a set of bagpipes); the hobbits at least always resembled their counterparts in the Jackson films.

It was a self-perpetuating meme, and I didn't really question it until I reread the books and suddenly recalled that there was little to no evidence of how the hobbits looked! Sam is said to have had brown eyes twice; the mat Nob places on the bed in the Prancing Pony to look like Mr. Underhill's head is just plain "brown," not "dark brown" and certainly not "dark." And considering how little movie!Frodo, at least, acts like his book counterpart, I began to get very irritated whenever an act of sub-sub-creation described him as looking like that weak, pathetic victim.

Consequently, on that reread I began to focus on those parts of the books that have no counterpart in the films and try to figure out how exactly Frodo looked to me then, and was pleased to find a rather stouter, somewhat redder about the cheek, and thoroughly brown-eyed fellow in my mind's eye. Discovering other adaptations out there, especially the BBC Radio 4 version, did not hurt, and soon I was able to come up with a set of characters that was descriptive enough that I could keep them distinct from their filmic versions. Now the only problem came when I looked at other fanauthors and fanartists who did not do the same (I found the back button helped here immensely).

Some characters were easier to distinguish than others. Faramir was a piece of cake, since he's described as nothing like David Wenham and David Wenham acts nothing like him. Aragorn just needed a bit more weatherbeating and a stronger nose. Saruman I kept around because Christopher Lee is awesome.

Now, the most interesting thing to me out of all of this is that, before the movies came out (so far as I can remember), the characters were nothing more than fuzzy dark blobs with a few vague characteristics (e.g. Gandalf's bushy brows). Now I have something concrete and rather anti-filmic (which means that they've been influenced by the movies, just not in a positive fashion).

What I was curious about was how, if at all, the films and/or other media affected your perception of the physical appearance of the characters. Specifically:

1). If you read the books before the movies, what (if anything) did the characters look like to you?

2). After the movies came out, did this change?

3). If your answer to 2 is yes, have you tried to recover your previous mental pictures and/or create new ones in response to the films? If so, how?

4). Have any of your mental associations with characters been otherwise influenced by other sources (i.e. illustrations, fanart, other adaptations)?

and 5). Have you ever engaged in any sort of sub-sub-creative effort that draws upon any of these mental pictures (i.e. RPGs, fan fiction, fanart)?