Viggorli Fanfiction Guide
What's this about?
Do you like Lord of the Rings slash and especially Aragorn/Legolas? Have you come across LotRPS before but weren't really sure whether it's something for you? You'd like to dip your toes in and don't know where to start?
Fear not, because the Viggorli Fanfiction Guide is here to help you! Back in the day, Viggorli was a very big and active ship with a lot of different archives, communities and discussion groups. The quality of fanfiction was generally very high and interaction between writers and readers was thriving. (For proof feel free to look at the comments on any of the Livejournal stories I post further down. AO3 authors today have wet dreams about review counts like this.)
If you always wanted to try out Viggorli, if you're curious about what the hype was about or if you're simply interested in fandom history, you're invited to read on and maybe sample some of the stories!
LOTRPS, anyone?
Viggorli (or Vigorli - both were used interchangeably) is the ship name for Viggo Mortensen/Orlando Bloom - both of (among many other things) The Lord of the Rings fame. Let's have a little visual aid, shall we, to set the atmosphere:
LotRPS (or Lotrips for easier pronounciation) turned into a huge fandom as soon as the movies came out. For everyone not familiar with RPS/RPF: It means real person slash or real person fiction - stories involving not fictional characters but actual people: actors, musicians, even YouTubers or other influencers. The moral question of whether it's okay to write about real people will not be tackled in this post. It's up to you whether RPF is for you or not - I'll not sway you either way.
In theory, RPF doesn't have to be (sexually) graphic or even slashy. In reality, it mostly is. Especially for LotRPS. With only three actresses (Liv Tyler, Miranda Otto and Cate Blanchett) on the payroll, but a whole plethora of hot men of every age and walk of life starring in these movies, it was probably inevitable that slash fans jumped on board right away. This trend accelerated as soon as candid and BTS material became available. From the first premier on it became apparent even to the uninitiated passerby that this cast was extremely slashable. And extremely slashy. Not only did everyone hug all the time. They kissed and jumped each other at every opportunity and had no problem licking each others' ears. Or fixing each others' hair. In front of a camera, no less.
Seriously, do you get this close with your co-workers? (Then again, who is lucky enough to have co-workers this gorgeous ...)
The slashiness only increased once BTS material and anecdotes from the fifteen months of filming became available to the wider public through interviews and extra/BTS footage on the DVDs. From that moment on it was only a question of who you liked best with whom. To get an idea of the variety, take a peak at the list of pairings over at Of Elves and Men as preserved by Fanlore.
Why Viggorli?
Seemingly out of the blue, Peter Jackson - in a stroke of genius - saw the potential of hinting at the fact that Aragorn and Legolas had known each other pre-quest. Some say, only half in jest, that he was shipping those two before anyone else jumped on the bandwagon. The films made Aragorn/Legolas a big ship: Legolas jumping to Aragorn's defense at the council of Elrond. Legolas' and Aragorn's "reunion" after Aragorn takes an unexpected and un-canon-y tumble off a cliff. Aragorn and Legolas standing too close and touching each other at basically every opportunity. The slashy vibes were so rampant that they obviously formed a circular argument: Aragorn and Legolas had so much on-screen chemistry, because Viggo and Orlando were getting it on in real life. And because Viggo and Orlando were getting it on in real life, Peter Jackson decided to just roll with it.
I mean, are Aragorn and Legolas acting like an old married couple or are they acting like an old married couple?
Aragorn/Legolas basically jumps at you from the screen. For many, it was natural progression that Viggo/Orlando were just as desirable together. Then there's the creative aspect: Switching to RPS opens up a lot more possibilities than sticking to Middle Earth as you will see further down.
This is not a post discussing the possibility (or probability) that anything ever truly happened between them. If you want more in-depth analysis and some good old tinhatting, check out @charlidos content who has written extensively about the innuendo between those two. The content gathered in that journal is both concise and extensive and sums up their history (without ever giving you a definite answer - because we have none).
But: You don't need to actually believe that both were (are?) in a relationship to enjoy this ship. It's totally up to you whether you see this as wish-fulfilment or a fictional outlet for make-believe. You do you!
That said, I would like to give you a starting point for your foray into Viggorli-fanfic, because the "example stories" on the Fanlore page are a pretty sad affair. Unfortunately, a lot of stories are no longer online or are permanently hidden behind a friendslock. But fear not, I'll find something for you to read!
I will try to sort tropes and genres into categories and give you a few examples. I'm by no means an expert - the way I group stories together is simply my version of trying to find a path through what has been written, trying to find trends and tropes that occur again and again and showing you some fantastic authors along the way.
So, without further ado (this introduction was too long to begin with), let's dive into the stories, shall we?
General Vibe
What can we truly know about actors, you might ask? Probably not much. Or maybe more than we realise. There are a lot of interviews available and both have talked extensively about the experience of filming those movies. Viggo had many nice things to say about Orlando, but Orlando especially was known to gush about Viggo endlessly. (Again, for further reading I recommend @charlidos.) From all the information these two have presented to the public, shippers have condensed what I would call their fanfic personas. Authors use these personas (however accurate they may be) as starting points for their fanfiction. Common tropes and themes you might encounter are:
The age gap. Viggo is 19 years older than Orlando.
The experience gap. By the time LOTR came around Viggo had more than two dozen movies under his belt, starring alongside actors like Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore and Sylvester Stallone. Orlando was fresh out of drama school, he landed the role of Legolas two days after finishing Guildhall.
Viggo is often portrayed as the more "artsy". I remember a time when basically every article called him a Renaissance Man. He not only works as an actor, but he also paints and writes poetry. If the mood strikes, he makes music. He founded Perceval Press in 2002, which publishes poetry and arts books.
Viggo is quite the globetrotter and is fluent several languages. He's Danish on his father's side, the family lived in Argentina when he was a kid. Authors who want to give their stories a little international flair, can easily do so!
Orlando, in contrast, is often portrayed as more focused on his career as a movie star, which then can act as a source of conflict in fanfic.
This dynamic can play out in different ways. The spectrum goes from creative (Viggo) / naive (Orlando) to jaded (Viggo) / wide-eyed wonder.
Orlando seems to have been a bit of a wild child during filming, doing all kinds of physical activities (surfing, bungee-jumping) - whereas Viggo likes to, erm, fish. The one time he could be convinced to surf he ended up with a massive black eye.
Viggo was divorced in 1998, during filming he was visited by his son (who was eleven at the time). His son Henry often is a fixture in fanfic. His ex-wife Christine (Exene) is a recurring character in fanfic as well, mostly in AUs. The break-up seems to have been amicable. More often than not Exene is not portrayed as the evil ex but as a supportive character, who sometimes even drives the slashy plot forwards.
Probably due to his perception as artist, Viggo is often portrayed as more introverted and solitary, sometimes as a loner. Orlando, on the other hand, is described as more "bubbly" and outgoing, he's more of a people person - or even people pleaser.
In addition to being portrayed as "artsy" and "introverted", Viggo is also often shown as extremely knowledgable in many (practical) fields and capable to handle basically every situation a fanfic author might throw at him whereas Orlando is often shown as klutz-y and putting his foot in it.
Often enough Orlando is portrayed as the inexperienced party of the relationship (sexually, but this might extend to other areas as well). When authors don't want to go down that route he ends up being a wild party animal with lots of sexual encounters and experiences to draw from.
Viggo is often stereotyped as the stronger, more masculine party whereas Orlando gets the role of the weaker, more feminine character. Hence Viggo is often the top in the relationship. The age and experience gap also plays a role in this portrayal.
These fanfic personas tend to persist even in an AU-setting. Of course not all character traits are always there to the same extent - that would be boring. The fun of fanfic is exploring different angles! But authors tend to take these traits as status quo and then they shuffle them around and play with them.
While in theory slash can come with any rating it is also true that most of the stories listed here are explicit. For many authors the smut was (and is) part of the appeal and even if a story is very long or character-driven or plotty it will usually have sex scenes. Stories with a lower rating exist, of course - but I think the percentage of smut/no smut you see on my list can be called exemplary.
Deciding which stories to put into this wasn't easy, of course. I left out some long-time favourites of mine to condense this a little. Please note the following:
There is definitely overlap between categories and some stories could be sorted into two or more categories simultanously.
I tried to find stories that represent "their" category. I also tried to find longer/multichaptered stories simply to keep you entertained for a while.
I tried to get some variety into the authors I list. This isn't at all easy, because quite a few of the authors I would have liked to recommend don't have their stories online anymore or these stories are hidden behind a passwort or friendslock. But if you find an author in here you like, chances are that author has also written other stories and those can be found with a little digging.
All the stories listed here are complete.
Fanfiction can be grouped into two big categories: Canon and Alternative Universe:
Canon
LotRPS Canon - The Scripture Let's start with stories set in canon. For an RPS-ship let's assume canon means both Viggo and Orlando are who they are - actors. Stories set in canon often deal with the time of filming the movies or with them getting together - the getting-together fics are basically their own subgenre (also lovingly called NZ fic). Every self-respecting author has written their own variation of the getting-together. Canon-stories often draw from known facts and tidbits of information we get from the DVD-Extras, playing around with them and interweaving them with the slashy narrative. This means a lot of stories rehash (in the best sense possible) the same plot points, because we know that these events have happened. (Viggo and Orlando sharing a trailer, the getting-lost in the woods adventure, the surfing accident ect.)
These stories can also look at the time after, but the canon-facts can get murkier, naturally, the more a story points into the future - of course this also means more freedom for the author.
A Thousand Words - Namarie Juniperjen's request for the Anglican Doorway ficathon - "I like getting together fics - either set in NZ, or in present time. What was the catalyst that brought Viggo and Orlando together? How did they both feel about it? Romance with a little angst, but a happy ending." Explicit
Even Angels Fall: To Crash, To Burn - Io When fame is overwhelming, even angels fall. Explicit / substance abuse / co depency / generally dark themes
Method Man (Chapter 1 / 2 / 3) - Jasmineskie How do you make friends with someone you can't understand? Explicit
Educational Endeavours - Salix Orli is curious… and you know what they say about curiosity and the cat. Luckily Viggo is around to help. Explicit
Canon-Adjacent I call stories canon-adjacent when they to some degree mirror canon and canon events. At some point - or in some details - they veer off, though. Plot-wise, this can mean that one of them is the actor we know, but the other does something else entirely. It could also mean that the stories explore different angles but end up with canon events. Strictly speaking, these stories are already AU, but I see them as a kind of thematic bridge to the "full" AU-stories, because they still use at least some canon facts.
Separation of Desire - chaosmanor I read this neat book called ‘There’s a Bear in There (and He Wants Swedish)’, by Merridy Eastman, about a time when her acting career failed completely and she worked in a brothel. I decided, since everyone else has moved on from the Rent Boy motif, there was space for me to play around there now, and hopefully find something new for you all there. Explicit / (some) violence
Destiny's Hands - Lostiawen An encounter with the supernatural changes a bitter drama student's life forever in a tale of love beyond death. Explicit / character death (trust me)
Perchance - chaosmanor Explicit
Future!Fic Naturally, authors tried to imagine what their future would look like. Topics like gay marriage or openly gay relationships in Hollywood were common themes. The trope of Orlando not coming out as gay to not endanger his movie stardom was very common to the point of it becoming repetitive - same with his straight (canon) relationships that were usually portrayed in fanfic as mere beards.
If Death Comes - Sindaliessen Viggo and Orlando have been together for fourteen years, ever since filming the Lord of the Rings. They have been married for four years, gay marriages being legal since 2010. They both have flourishing careers in the film industry. They have four children between them. They have an idyllic life until the day Orlando finds he has cancer. How will they cope, will Orlando beat the cancer and will their marriage survive if Orlando lives for Death comes..... in many forms. Explicit
Alternative Universes
AU-stories make up a huge portion of Viggorli, which is probably just natural. I mean: How many stories can you write about the same events without sounding repetitive? Thus, the Viggorli AU was born in which the author has free reign of where to put the characters and what to do with them. There is absolutely no limit.
Maybe it's interesting for younger folk to see that (now) popular romance tropes like enemies to lovers or coffeeshop AU didn't exist back then - at least not under these names. Surely, there were stories that involved tropes like slow burn or miscommunication. But these stories were not advertised as such and no author sat down with the intention of writing Enemies to Lovers. To this day, I don't think I've seen a story where one of them owns a coffeeshop (feel free to write one, though). The themes and tropes that were en vogue back then will become apparent if you read a few of the stories listed below.
Likewise, it might be interesting to note that "historically" there was no such thing as recasting Aragorn and Legolas in modern roles. Within LOTR fandom, AU meant something else - mostly what people would call canon divergent now. This means that stories where Aragorn studies STEM and Legolas is in a creative writing class simply did not exist (or they existed as crack). If you wanted to explore such themes you had to resort to RPS. This is supported by the general A/L to V/O pipeline. Almost all authors (at least in the beginning of the LOTR hype) started out with Aragorn/Legolas and then proceeded to Viggo/Orlando when the fictional ship couldn't support their creative ideas anymore. Even authors who would later be known for their excellent Viggorli stories usually have written Aragorn/Legolas first (like chaosmanor).
Some authors use other actors from LOTR as supporting cast, others prefer to come up with original characters to populate their world. If other actors are used as minor characters it's usually the "core" of the fellowship cast. Sean Bean often acts as Viggo's best friend / sidekick. One or all of the hobbits are more in Orlando's corner. Fan favourites from other movies (Johnny Depp from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise or Eric Bana from Troy come to mind) pop up regularly.
Contemporary Romance Let's put everything here that is set in "our" current world. The only difference is that neither Viggo nor Orlando are actors. But they can literally be anything else: rock stars, journalists, successful photographers, professional athletes, recovering alcoholics, cowboys. Go wild! If you can imagine it, it's possible.
The Journey is the Destination - lennongirl Orlando and Viggo meet in Spain under strange circumstances and travel through Europe together in Viggo's truck, getting to know each other and themselves. Explicit / drug use
Pictures at an Exhibition - Artemis Allen A famous actor walks into a bookshop. Explicit
From the Ashes - Jean A young journalist clashes with a reclusive rock star. Explicit
Chalk Butterfly - Cynical Terror An AU set in New York city around 2004. Orlando is beset with a rare skin disease which makes even the simplest of tasks painfully arduous. Beyond shy, he has few friends, but one unusual Wednesday morning on the subway will change everything... Explicit
Speculative (Fantasy, SciFi or Horror elements) Yes, of course you can turn Orlando into a vampire and Viggo into a werewolf. Naturally you can put them on a spaceship. And of course you can make things creepy and scary. It's fiction!
The Poet's Cat - Beryll Lonely poet Viggo finds a cute little cat on a rainy night. Teen
The Long Road Home - Geale Quite a ways away from the village, almost down by the forest, in his cottage, lived the artist. Now, the villagers knew nothing of this, but the artist was in possession of a star and where it guided him, they could never have imagined. General Audience
In Dreams - Jasmineskie It's been five years since Orlando's ship was lost at sea. Even though Orlando was presumed dead, Viggo never believed it. Belief is a powerful thing, but is Viggo's belief strong enough to help Orlando find his way home? Mature
Dark Dreams - Lilys Eyes Famous painter Viggo Mortensen buys an old cottage in the countryside. Charming and cozy, it does not seem at all like a place to harbour a dark secret. But appearances can be deceiving. Explicit
Wing!Fic Strictly speaking, this belongs with Speculative, but since wing!fic was such a popular trope (and I'm not seeing it nowadays anymore, sadly) I'll add it as its own category. Wing!Fic means simply that a character has wings. How their existence is explained is up to the author. Oftentimes, it means that one of the characters is actually an angel. These stories don't only play with the fact that big, feathery wings are decidedly sexy (IMO, at least), they also play with topics like demons and angels, higher beings, a world beyond our own.
Testament to Love - Ariel An angel and a mortal find salvation in each other's arms, but are they willing to live with the consequences? Explicit
Summer Wind - Jenlynn An artist goes looking for his lost inspiration. Explicit
Grounded - Razzle A story of a future imperfect. What if the story behind Orlando’s scar was less clear-cut than in our reality? Explicit
Angels Series (Part 1 / 2 / 3) - Jeyhawk Viggo is one of the good guys, an angel sent to earth with the sole purpose of doing good in his everyday life. Orlando is the lost soul that has been labeled insane for most of his life. They are meant to be together but things aren't always that easy… Explicit
Historical Gold If historical romance is your thing, this category is for you.
Cold Antiquity - Razzle AU. This universe based on the society of ancient Egypt. c. 1300 B.C. Viggo is brought in as royal advisor to the young prince of the kingdom of Hisi. Explicit
The Velvet Devil - gattorodo Explicit
Movie Tie-ins Rewriting existing movies with Viggo and Orlando as the romance leads was pretty common. The quality (or novelty/originality) of these stories could vary wildly. Some would stay very close to the movie they were rewriting, some would journey a little away from the original to keep up the intrigue even for people who knew the movie.
Hungry Eyes - Jenlynn In the summer of 1963 Orlando and his family vacation in the Catskills in upstate New York where Orlando meets a dance instructor who changes his life forever. Explicit
Portobello Road - Pfyre Some days you just never know who will drop into your life.... Explicit
Crossovers I've always had a soft spot for crossovers. And of course there are crossovers that fuse real person fiction with fictional universes. The one I'd love to recommend (an Alatriste crossover in which Alatriste has to rescue a young man named Orlando from many evil things) is sadly not online anymore in its entirety. I think it's logical that there were quite a few LOTR/LotRPS crossovers, putting one or both characters into Middle Earth. It was also quite common to cross one of them with any movie they other had made. But in the end, you could choose anything that tickled your fancy.
Chasing Shadows - laeglass Before heading home, Tom/Joey meets someone at a bar. (LotRPS/A History of Violence) Explicit
The One with the Irish Wake - Ranmaru It’s not just sadness that can be found at an Irish Wake. An AU with adjusted ages and a huge cast of characters including spies, sarcastic boffins, and two stubborn people falling in love. (LotRPS/James Bond) Explicit
MPREG MPREG, standing for male pregnancy, is a genre of stories where one of the guys gets pregnant. It's up to the author to decide how "technical" it should get. There were stories getting into the medical aspects of it and exploring how and why that might be possible. It was even more common to take a "magical" approach and just have things happen. My knowledge about MPREG is pretty limited, because it has never truly interested me. But let me recommend two stories by authors I absolutely love!
Thursday's Child - chaosmanor Explicit
Unexpected - Jasmineskie Prologue / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 and epilogue This whole story is an attempt to take a serious look at something unbelievable that happens to two real men. Explicit
The Road Goes Ever On: The Future is now! You think a ship like this can only be interesting while the movies came out? Then you'd be wrong! Naturally, the fandom has quietened down and a lot of people have moved on - just as the actors have moved on, but there are still people writing new stories today. They are not only writing AUs either - versions of how Viggorli might be possible right now are still being written:
come. and be my baby - lesamys They don’t really talk about it. Orlando buys a ticket at least once a year to wherever Viggo is. Sometimes they go camping by a lake or river and live off the land, which means eating whatever Viggo manages to catch for dinner because Orlando is uniquely terrible at fishing, a sport based entirely on patience and luck. Sometimes they spend the entire week in Viggo’s bedroom, on his ranch in Idaho, in his top floor attic apartment in Denmark, in the secret cabin in Vermont no one knows about. Sometimes they don’t even kiss. Explicit
Volcanoes - charlidos Viggo and Orlando go on a trip to Iceland and have to deal with 20 years of unresolved feelings. General Audiences
You can leave your hat on - Artemis Allen Total PWP. Immediately follows the screening of The Dead Don’t Hurt at the Soho Curzon cinema in London. Thanks to Randy Newman for the title. Explicit
Where to read
Viggorli and LotRPS in general predates AO3 - The Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001. Because of this, everything you see on AO3 from the time when this ship was hot was archived after the fact either by single authors moving to AO3 or by Open Doors preserving certain archives. But it should also be an indication of the fact that only a small percentage of the fic written back in the day can be found on AO3.
LotRPS happened mostly on Livejournal and on dedicated archives, first static html archives and later automated eFiction driven archives.
A lot of authors posted exclusively on Livejournal, some of them did so only for a select group of friends (this is called a friendslock, I have written more about this here). Most of these Livejournals are inactive nowadays, which means the stories are still there but can only be read if you are in that person's friend circle. A lot of authors either got their journals deleted (see Strikethrough) or left of their own account, many setting up camp at Dreamwidth. Some authors got their Viggorli stories professionally published as original fiction - the fanfiction to published fiction pipeline is not a new development! For examples, try Bad Case of Loving You (general smutty fun in a hospital setting) or Clouds and Rain (Cowboy!AU very heavy on the H/C).
None of the dedicated archives are still online. Some have been preserved by Open Doors (like LOM or OEAM), but there were many more. Especially the loss of Mirrormere is quite a blow to the LotRPS community.
However, you can still find stories scattered in all kinds of different places, it just takes a little sleuthing. If you want to find the gems AO3 doesn't host, here are a few starting points.
Vigorli @ Dreamwidth This is a mirror of the old Livejournal community of the same name, which means old Livejournal posts were imported when the community moved to Dreamwidth. If you explore the archive you can find old stories - be prepared for a lot of broken links, though. The Dreamwidth community is still active today. If you want Viggorli fresh off the press, you will have to go there. Anglicandoorway @ Livejournal This Livejournal community might be a good starting point for further reading, scrolling and exploring. You should find a lot of still "readable" fanfic since stories were posted to the community and not to people's personal journals. If you visit the profile page of the community, you will see who was a member. Feel free to amble through people's journals for more reading material.
Lotrips Story Fingers @ Livejournal Just as the title says this is a community for people looking for certain stories. I can't promise that the links still work and maybe just reading all the descriptions of fics you can't access anymore will cause you depression, but I wanted to put this out there anyways.
LBES & OEAM & VOLA The old static versions of these archives can still mostly be accessed via the Waybackmachine. There are a lot of gems there, but if you find a multichaptered fic that sounds appealing - check first whether all chapters were archived. The Waybackmachine doesn't seem to go overly "deep" into a website, quite a bit of stuff is missing here or there. Just a gentle warning ...
And that's about it - I've rambled for way too long as it is. I've wanted to write a post like this for quite a while now and I hope this might be of interest to the 2 1/2 people who want to read more Viggorli. If you have any questions or additions, feel free to comment, reblog or send an ask!
One last Word:
If you find any broken links, please let me know and I'll try to fix them. If you want to read more from a certain category, comment or send an ask - it's likely that I can provide more recs! And feel free to share this, save and reference it. I wish you a wonderful time with any or all of these stories and don't forget ... keep shipping!
