Back to Middle-earth Month

It kind of makes sense to me that original characters are so popular. As others have said, I'd guess a lot of those are women, and when the canon doesn't give you a lot to choose from (I'm speaking more about Lord of the Rings since I don't know the Silmarillion) people do tend to make up their own. Plus writing in that world from a perspective other than the heroes is always fun. It was really interesting to see these trends; thank you for pulling this together.