Aragorn Fan Fiction Recommendations

... and the Silmarils are in my hair.
~ not J.R.R. Tolkien, never written in Letter 19 to Stanley Unwin

"Silmarillion" fans have long recognized that the texts have in-universe authors whose perspectives and limitations influence the stories that form the basis of our fanworks. We put a lot of trust in those in-universe authors. We turn their allegiances and their biases and their life stories every which way to figure out where gaps in the histories as they tell them might not be the full story, but we generally assume they tried to be honest and that they were, you know, paying attention to all the fighting and dying and oathing going on around them.

But what if our in-universe authors were flat-out … wrong? This month's challenge assumes the worst. It assumes that the in-universe authors heard things dreadfully wrong, or came in too late to the telephone game that is history, or maybe wrote stuff down after quaffing one too many goblets of miruvor, or were just spaced out, thinking about the Girdle of Melian or something.

Prompts this month make just a slight change—just a word or two, sometimes a mere letter—to a quote from The Silmarillion, giving us a piece of story with a very different meaning than the one that got recorded in the book. (Thank goodness for the exemplary copy-editing of one J.R.R. Tolkien!) But for just this month, we're going to pretend that these weird, perplexing, and sometimes inadvertently insightful quotes are the real deal.

To participate this month, choose at least one of our unquotes and make a fanwork using it in some way. You do not need to include the unquote in your work. As always, you can take the prompts and run in whatever direction it takes you. While the nature of this challenge produces prompts that are rather silly, your fanwork certainly doesn't have to be silly.

Prompts for the Unquote challenge can be found here.

You asked for a brief kvetch of my stuff that is connected with my imaginary world.
~ also not J.R.R. Tolkien, never penned to Milton Waldman in Letter 131

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 15 November 2026. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.