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Strangest Character Nominations – Silmaril Awards 2019

Tracey Dyck 135 Comments

The time has come, my friends. The hour has arrived.

The fourth annual Silmaril Awards commences today!

I have the honor of hosting the Strangest Character Award! This particular Silmaril should be given to a character who is truly strange, bizarre, unlikely, outlandish, quirky, extraordinary, offbeat, eccentric, or peculiar. Someone not unlike this award’s host…

*in the distance sings a merry voice*

Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My sweet!

Nominate stranger folks than ever did you meet!

Old Tom Bombadil a Silmaril a-bringing

One gleaming purple jewel a lucky winner winning!

Yes indeed, our dear yellow-booted friend shall be returning to present the character YOU vote for with this year’s Strangest Character Silmaril!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. If this is your first time here for the awards, welcome! Please do check out the official Silmaril Awards website HERE to get acquainted with the who, what, when, where, why of it all. I promise it’s a fantastical celebration like nothing else!

Nominate your favorite strange character by commenting on this post!

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you roll up your sleeves and begin nominating your beloved fictional oddballs…

  1. Tolkien’s characters are not eligible for these awards. We hold his work as one of the pillars of the fantasy genre. Given that illustrious position, it is Tolkien’s characters who show up to bestow the Silmarils on well-deserving characters created by other authors.
  2. These awards are solely for fantasy characters! But because the lines are sometimes blurred in the realm of speculative fiction, go ahead and make an argument for a fantastical character who belongs to a book with sci-fi elements. (Example: The Lunar Chronicles counts as fantasy.)
  3. When nominating, please mention which book the character is from. We blogger hosts are avid bookwyrms, but even we haven’t read everything in the universe just yet. (Trust me, we’re working on it.)
  4. Nominate AS MANY characters as you wish! You can also “second” as many as you wish by replying to another person’s comment. The top 5 MOST-seconded characters will move on to the voting round… so your seconds are important!
  5. Characters who have won in a particular category in the past are not eligible for that category again.
  6. Authors, you’re more than welcome to participate! We just ask that you don’t nominate your own characters. Do feel free to encourage your readers to join in, though.
  7. Oh yes, and remember these are for book characters, not film. In the case of stories that are both books and movies, if the book came first, it’s eligible.
  8. Have heaps and heaps of fun!!!

The nomination period runs from today until the evening of September 6th. The voting period will run the week after that, and finally, we’ll have two weeks of awards ceremonies on all the various blogs. I can’t wait to see who this year’s winners will be!

As an aside, the more the merrier, so if you’re sharing about the awards on social media, use #SilmAwards2019 or just #SilmAwards. 🙂 We’ve also got a Facebook page this year to make it easier to follow along with all the posts!

Here are the links to all the other categories open for nominations. Make sure to visit them all this week!

But before you leave, comment below and nominate your favorite strange characters! As a quick refresher, these are the past winners of this award, and are therefore ineligible to win Strangest Character again:

  • Peet Wingfeather of Andrew Peterson’s The Wingfeather Saga
  • The Mad Hatter of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
  • Puddleglum of C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair

Nominate away, my fantastical bookwyrms!

135 Comments

  6. Jenelle Schmidt
    Reply

    I nominate:
    Zifnab from the Death Gate Cycle by Weis/Hickman
    Alk from Spice Bringer by HL Burke (snarky fire salamanders count as “strange” right?)
    Todd Crane from Kyle Robert Shultz’s “Crockett and Crane” series… I know he’s been nominated other places, but a part-time centaur counts as “strange” in my book! 🙂
    Laura the Doorkeeper from the Rizkaland Series by Kendra E. Ardnek

  10. Matthew Sampson/Dmitri Pendragon
    Reply

    I nominate Brierly from Sarah E. Morin’s Waking Beauty and Davriel from Brandon Sanderson’s Children of the Nameless.

  12. Your Friendly Neighborhood INFP
    Reply

    I nominate Lady Hariawan from Golden Daughter (the seventh book in the Tales of Goldstone Wood series) by Anne Elisabeth Stengl.

  14. Marlene Simonette
    Reply

    I only skimmed the posts, so apologies if these folks have already been nominated:

    -Bramble from “Where the Woods Grow Wild” by Nate Philbrick
    -The Madman of Elkriahl from “The Madman of Elkriahl and Other Fairy Tales” by Emmarayn Redding
    -The Traveler from the same above-mentioned book
    -Donovan from “Circus Phantasm” by Naomi P. Cohen

    I also second all of my nominations, as well as Gurgi from Prydian Chronicles (I believe someone else nominated him above). 😛

  16. Marlene Simonette
    Reply

    Sooo I just came from another host for The Silmaril Awards, and the rules she has posted on her site say that we’re not allowed to second our own recs (but I haven’t read that on any of the other blogs so far; it’s been “nominate and second as many characters as you want”)?
    In which case, I apologize, but would like my recommendations to remain, and shall resubmit if necessary. 🙂

    That being said, I have one more nomination:

    -Schmendrick from “The Last Unicorn” by Peter S. Beagle

  17. Karisa Totah
    Reply

    I second Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter!!! And I also nominate Pattern from The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson, gosh he’s my favorite and so perfect for this!!! And also Wit from the Stormlight Archive too.

  21. Elise
    Reply

    I nominate…
    JinYeong from The City Between series by W.R. Gingell
    Silas from The Graveyard Book
    Odd from Odd and the Frost Giants
    Prince Duncan from The League of Princes series

  22. Maya
    Reply

    I second:
    Luna (Harry Potter)
    Gurgi (Prydain Chronicles)
    Dobro (Wilderking Trilogy)
    Uncle Andrew (Magician’s Nephew)

    I nominate:
    Nolan (Ashtown Burials)
    Arachne (Ashtown Burials)
    Lemon (Ashtown Burials) (wow, ND Wilson writes strange characters!)

  28. Katie padilla
    Reply

    I second Laura the doorkeeper from rizkaland
    I second uncle Andrew from the magicians nephew
    I nominate lady Cordelia from the beast of talesend, by Kyle Robert Shultz

    (I can’t think of any others right now but I may be back with more nominations later, but before tomorrow)

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