#tl;dj

[djsoliloquy]

I found a letter on my phone from past me, circa Feb. 23. Past me was very distressed about the logistics surrounding a trip to the library and requested guidance before discovering milk in the refrigerator and forgetting to address all the moving parts  

[djsoliloquy]

your prose is quite nice, but you write erwin so out of character it is honestly difficult to properly enjoy your fic. I would love to see a more dominating erwin with a submissive levi - after all, that is canon!

As a good friend put it, this would be of course the dick-sucking canon we’ve heard so much about.

Thanks for kind words on the prose! It’s nice to hear you were able to appreciate it despite your difficulty doing so properly.

But listen, I’m actually really glad to hear from you. There were issues this week on Twitter from people reading my fic and being anonymously harassed for it, and after asking anons to come to me instead of bullying others I was beginning to wonder if I wasn’t going to hear from anyone. I much prefer you come to me. So welcome from Twitter! Speculation about fictional sex is one of life’s great joys.

What canon gives us is that Erwin is a leader and commander of the Survey Corps. Levi is his captain, a squad leader, and something of a right hand man.

That’s about it!

Everything else veers more or less into theory and interpretation.

Here’s what I like and take away from Erwin and Levi. I like the dynamic of loyalty and service. I like that despite military ranks they use each other’s first names and don’t take shit from each other. I like the power couple vibe. I like what I see as mutual trust and reliance in each other. Levi is loyal, but Erwin seems to treasure that loyalty and treats Levi as an equal for it. He puts Levi on his level (and Hange and Mike, too!), when he doesn’t have to. When I’m in an optimistic mood, I like that they seem to face challenges as a terrifying united front of doomed murder husbands than a strict leader-and-his-underling.  

As for how I think that translates to the bedroom, in my mind who dominates and who submits is split pretty even with them, but it’s not something I…explicitly think out often? They’re adults with equally big axes to grind with the life, the universe, and everything, and sometimes each other. Erwin is more psychological, and Levi’s more physical. Sometimes it’s too give-and-take and muddled to tell. Because Erwin, mostly. When Erwin wants something, he maneuvers to get it. When Levi wants something, he steps in and grabs it by the balls.

That’s the interpretation I like best from what I can get out of canon. More than one comment on the R-rated fics has described their dynamic as “reciprocal” and I liked that a lot. The respect and trust leads to a lot of switching on who tops, bottoms, submits, doms.

Though I looked over my r-rated fics to see if that actually made it onto paper, and I noticed the person “bottoming” was generally the person who initiated or was in control of the encounter, regardless of whether it was Levi or Erwin. So there’s my kink bias! Turns out I like power bottoms and a sense of equality and all parties holding their own in the bedroom. They don’t even have to like each other. Power couples are hot as fuck. Power couples—not power person and complementary retainer. Lots of power play and playing with power roles and just getting messy. Because I think it’s hot.

So I guess I’m not sure where you’re coming from on this. Maybe we’re not syncing on what we mean by dominating and submitting. How about in that gangbang fic I wrote? If you want Levi on his back taking it, well, there it is. It is abundant in anonymous penis. Penises for days. Erwin even tiptoes in and puts Levi through his paces. But Levi doesn’t even take names in that fic, anon. If people can’t keep up he doesn’t have time for them, full stop. That has nothing to do with dominance or submission or topping or bottoming, that’s just how I think of Levi’s mind working. It’s not how Levi would have chosen to do it, but it works, and once Levi sees that it works he’s all for it. You know, like how I view them in canon.

(I mean, look anon, I know Erwin’s licking boots in that one fic, but if you don’t think he’s equally or even more in charge of that encounter than Levi, well, I don’t know what to say.)

Is it that I don’t actually write a lot of dominating/submitting? Is it shades of ingrained slash thinking—the tall commander with the impressive jawline must be dominating or it’s out of character, and the short one in the lower position of power who likes cleaning the castle clearly must be submissive? Or is it shorthand for assuming professional roles dictate personal lives, and leaders can’t be submissive and subordinates can never be Doms? Or maybe it’s specific ideas about sexual acts—only submissives suck cock and only doms penetrate, something like that?

I tend to think leaders can make some of the best subs, actually! Good leadership isn’t about power and making people do things. It’s about serving others. It’s about giving yourself to a greater cause and understanding that your wants and needs come second. What leaders have to give up to achieve their goals is a reoccurring theme in SnK, and that’s what I choose to focus on when I think of Erwin characterization. Erwin submits to duty. His life is not his own. In my opinion he’s most defined not by how much authority he has or how he rules the field, but by what he’s given up in the name of a cause he considers more important than himself. He’s sacrificing more than his life—he’s giving his humanity. When something is important to Erwin, I think  shows it by putting it before himself. When he can, anyway. 

I joke sometimes that Erwin/Levi is OOC simply because Erwin has no room in his soul for anything but the Cause. He’s too busy serving humanity to have time for anyone else. The man has his priorities.

And giving orders, being in command, and preoccupying oneself with the well-being of others are all solid dom traits too! To clarify—if you like dominating Erwin and submissive Levi, that’s totally fine. A lot of the above? Me working with canon how I see it, focusing on what I like. A hundred people could read the same thing and all come to different conclusions about dynamics and motivation, etc. and that’s okay. That’s, like, the point of fanfic and fandom. In fact, I enjoy dominant Erwin and submissive Levi too. This may surprise you. Truth is, I just think a lot about them, but the lack of it in my fic is probably because... the fics haven’t happened. The fake!maried heist fic. The prohibition au. You may have noticed the last time I posted fic was four months ago? I don’t have the energy. But I’m kind of all about the give-and-take mutual respect thing, so switching is a-ok with me. It’s when the assumptions start that one view is how it is in canon because of reasons that I get side-eye-y.

If you want to see more dominating Erwin with a submissive Levi though, Carthage/themonstersoflove’s fic “all your demons and desires and dark sides” is my go-to rec if you need a good BDSM fic. (Their Dom Erwin in particular, gah. Hot and well-written and responsible and overthinky in an Erwin kind of way. I get a big kick out of the dynamic in Jamie’s “Corporeal Vocabulary” too. It’s lush and does awesome things with words and manifestations of self, very cool read.)

So if you want to see more of something in fandom and have a fic prompt or “hey I like your fic, could I request Dom Erwin and sub Levi?“ comment, that's one thing. No promises. But see how that’s different from “hey I like your fic, could I request Dom Erwin and sub Levi because Erwin dominating in the bedroom is actually canon and yours is OOC kthx”?

Why would we deprive leaders the joy of sucking cock (or any number of activities or preferences), anon? Don’t they deserve a little happiness? Haven’t you ever looked at Erwin Smith and thought, now here’s a man who could use a break. What better break for a guy who's taken it upon himself to save his species from extinction than letting someone he trusts call the shots for a few minutes? In devastatingly sexy ways?

[djsoliloquy]

SHAN/ARAS. earth 90s au. no space but there's just aliens on earth.

“When did the humans invent jewelry to sense pheromones?” Aras says, watching with interest as the rings change color.

“No, they’re only—” Shan leans her against him as she glances at his claws, her own ring the same dark violet. “Eh,” she says and presses against him more, “six or one half dozen of the other, I guess.”

[djsoliloquy]

2013 fic meme / round up

*

ASSASSIN'S CREED

quad shots cafe (Templar OT4)

school of business fraud (Johnson/Hickey) 

as of yet not publicly posted Johnson/Hickey petplay um

Interview (Altair/Malik) 

Revolutions (Altair/Malik) 

SHINGEKI NO KYOJIN 

Indecision (Erwin)

Opposite of a Secret (Bertholt/Reiner) 

Way More Than 10 Things Jean Hates About Eren (Eren/Jean) 

A Mess to Clean (Erwin/Levi) 

Speechless (Jean, Armin) 

At the Bottom Looking Up (Erwin,Levi) 

If At First (Erwin/Levi) 

can't go home again (Jean) 

the importance of curtains (Erwin/Levi)

Armistice (Eren/Jean) 

Give and Take (Erwin/Levi)  

happy birthday mr smith (Erwin/Levi) 

One vs. (Levi/Male OCs; Erwin/Levi) 

Flush (Erwin/Levi) 

TEAM FORTRESS 2

Stupid Cupid (R!Sniper, B!Sniper, Spies) RED Sniper receives an experimental cupid-themed sniper set.

TSURITAMA 

Practice (Natsuki/Yuki) Learning how to kiss.

THE YOUNG MAIDEN IN LOVE IS A CARNIVORE

Tooth, Claw, Kiss (Spino-ko/Tyra-mi) Schoolgirl dinosaur romance

MISC.

3 Sentence Fics (Various, Assassin's Creed, Gentleman Bastards, Greek Mythology, Mass Effect, Pokemon)

Total number of completed stories: 22, not counting drabbles and such

Total word count: ~41,000ish, definitely counting drabbles and such

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?

More than I thought I would in January, less than I was hoping by December? Shingeki No Kyojin was a shot in the arm but there’s so much I dropped or didn’t get around to finishing.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

Ha, well, I didn’t start SnK until May, but Erwin/Levi was a bit of a surprise.  I pegged Eren/Jean as my jam, and it is. But Erwin/Levi is also awful and doomed and nailed me right after finishing Mass Effect when I still had so many doomed commander feels and nowhere to run but into the arms of power couple old men loser darlings. And Erejean gives me dyslexia or something, it's vexing.  

And I never, ever, ever would have predicted The Young Maiden in Love Is a Carnivore. Ever.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?

Revolutions/Speechless (+ Indecision and you can’t go home again, a little) are all in the gang of fics where I tried to condense big ideas into small wordcounts and still pack an emotional punch. I think they did well? Really happy I can go back and get teary reading some of them. I GUESS THAT’S WEIRD BUT I MAKES ME HAPPY. And as basically a goodbye/thank you fic to Asscreed fandom, Revolutions was particularly special.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

Porn was on the up this year! Some of that was thanks to giving myself permission to write as horribly or unsexily as needed as long as the fic got written. Basically saying FUCK IT, covering my eyes, and stepping off the plank. Give and Take was the first of those. The rest of the porn was trying to just...write the parts that were character-driven and interesting to me and that I wanted to write instead of worrying so much about filling an expected choreographical formula. Digging on the kink and the ust and the negotiation and forgetting orgasms if that just didn't happen. Character before orgasms. Sex scenes are still a pain but at least it feels more like a work in progress rather than an impassable wall.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

I want to finish more fic! Or at least learn to let go of the ones I’m not going to finish; my WIP list is getting out of hand, haha. I think some of the best fics this year were the ones I stressed about least, so I’ll try enjoying it more too—care less about meeting a certain perceived standard, focus on not nervously over-writing as a consequence. This may result in me needing to apologize to all of you later, but let’s hope not!

My best story of this year:  

I’m quietly proud of A Mess to Clean, for being tight its use of sex for meaningful interaction between characters, with all their priorities and their strain/trust with each other being worked out through action rather than words. Depending on how you interpret it, it may also have unreliable narrator/POV which is right about my favorite narrative trope ever. It just takes a lot of the things I’ve been working on this year and gets them all mostly right.

My most popular story: 

Way More Than 10 Things Jean Hates About Eren. Dorks, oops orgasms, excellent fanart from mer, and a snazzy title. What’s not to like?

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: 

The Yuletide entries (Tying the Knot & Tooth, Claw, Kiss), but honestly they got to the parts of the universe they were intended for  <3 Also the 3-sentence stories I included because a couple where entire mini worlds all to themselves but…they’re also only 3-sentences. I really liked the Pokemon one. That’s as much an uphill battle against the universe as it gets.

Most fun story to write:  Practice because cute smooching boys and fishing metaphors.  And If At First because badsex. Which was also a fun odd way of learning about writing explicit content, with all the same elements but none of the hassle about whether it was titillating or not.

Most Sexy Story: Give and Take. Erwin being classy as fuck on his knees and Levi letting him be that way, as I think tanya put it. I heard y’all like the needy bootlicking. I tend to agree.

Story with the single sexiest moment:

A hand toys with the upset strands on the back of his head. Levi says in his ear, “Were you making yourself dirty for me, Erwin?” and Erwin considers admitting it. Levi adds in a low promising voice, “You did kind of a shit job.”

Erwin frowns. “Did I?”

In answer, Levi casually knocks Erwin’s legs out from under him and pitches him back onto the office cot. The hand stays behind Erwin’s head to save it from knocking against the frame, but then Levi leans back, one knee bent and straddling Erwin’s waist. “I know,” says Levi, straightening Erwin’s collar, “a thing or two,” unbuttoning and wrenching the shirt open, “about messes.”

Most “holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story: 

One vs. maybe? I don’t know about wrong, but it’s the only one I can think of that everyone didn’t see coming a mile away. (Heh.)

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: 

A Mess to Clean I guess? It was the systematic see-if-the-ship-floats fic, this back in the spring when eruris were few on the ground. And still my only serious canon-verse fic for them that deals with their issues.

Hardest story to write:  Armistice. Erejean is hard now and I don’t know why! Honorary mention to four unfinished kinkmeme WIPs.

Most disappointing: happy birthday mr smith. Let’s just say how embarrassingly hot I found the premise and how unconvincing the final product felt in contrast.

Easiest story to write: 

After excellent brainstorming, quad shots café practically wrote itself. Way More Than 10 Things Jean Hates About Eren took maybe twenty minutes, just for hoots, and it’s a level of fun and ease I’m sad to not have reached again with that pairing because I really do enjoy it. Someday the gates of erejean heaven will open to me again…

Biggest surprise: Tooth, Claw, Kiss. Dinosaur schoolgirl romance.

Most unintentionally telling story: Speechless.

Story I’d like to revise: A few of the 3-sentence fics need about two thousand more words apiece to their names.

Story I didn’t write but will at some point, I swear: 

Oh, my god. Well, there’s a cat burglar eruri, a seiyuu AU eruri, and another erejean prompt on the SnK kinkmeme that are unfinished, and a Salvara/Locke threesome on the Gentleman Bastard kinkmeme as well. And then the WIP backlog. Katekyo Hitman Reborn time travel erejean AU and fake!married heist Eruri au have been at the top of the list the longest, and then a slew of other eruri aus that I don't swear on but they're always just.... there. hovering. biding their time.

eruri harry potter crossover with consensual recreational love potion experimentation the prohibition-speakeasy mobsters one sparring awkward pda awkward sexting good sex round two for If At First domestic married domestic swingers also married sparring detective noir phantom handjobs lawyer!erwin-paramedic!levi in space time travel coffeeshop domestickink with erwin tied to the kitchen table while levi makes cookies where erwin finally gives an order levi won’t follow one of them makes a decision that ends in the other’s death

sobs. 

[djsoliloquy]

SCREECH YOU SHIP ERWIN/JEAN TOO??????? gosh wasn't that fanart just so perfect it was like everything about why i ship it in two images so creepy so bad touch

re this

Ohh I think you may be disappointed I AM A BLATANT AND UNASHAMED MULTISHIPPER I WILL SHIP ALL INTERESTING ARRANGEMENTS OF CHARACTERS if there’s one thing I love it’s getting favorite characters in a room and having them drag their themes and morals and issues and insecurities and hopes and dreams in behind them and watching the ensuing heartbreak. And then seeing everything in a new light because contrast.

But well first I just love that picture because of the contrast with my doomed ship Erwin/Levi. The complete lack of trust—and why. “Because I mean nothing to you.” That’s not…completely true, if you want to split that hair down to the molecule. You wouldn’t say a pawn on a chessboard meant nothing, would you? Those are valuable pieces. Players lose games when they think pawns mean nothing. But pawns often mean less than a knight or a queen, and all of them mean less than winning. (Or maybe they’re just worth less.) What I mean is, when push comes to shove, if Levi means more to Erwin than a theoretical Jean, it’s probably only by a matter of degrees. Erwin and Levi know what they’re signed on for. BUT TO JEAN THAT’S A BIG DEAL. Treating people like things is the biggest deal! The status quo is not good enough! (I think it’s a big deal to Erwin too, he’s just cataloged the consequences and decided the cost was higher not to do it. how he deals with that burden in private is anyone’s guess.) Worthless and meaningless aren’t exactly the same—pawns might have worth on a chessboard, but if that’s the level of care you extend to human lives maybe meaningless is exactly what it is.

and yeah wow it’s not fair, but it’s a neat and completely different kind of honesty and way of thinking about the war, and people, and what matters, particularly with Erwin/Levi in contrast to Jean/Eren, and it highlights just how very messed up that blind loyalty can be in the grand snk tradition of stripping gold leaf off heroic war tropes. (Jean calls Eren out and holds him accountable for the loyalty people show him. uughhfhfhfhhgh)

Multishipping is so good for the heart.

And! Just between them and their thing! Ahh all the ways Jean is this burgeoning different and better kind of leader, not a cut-and-paste replacement, and it’s so so obvious when it’s illustrated it like this. Erwin!! He shines in his own monstrous way. We haven’t seen a lot of people say no to Erwin yet. Or we do—he can take subordinates’ thoughts/disagreements into consideration in a tactical sense, and technically civilians say no to Erwin on a regular basis…large mobs of them, all yelling about wasted sacrifices and lives lost—but it’s not someone from the military calling him out for moral reasons, to his face, in any way that’s remotely between equals. Not necessarily equals by rank, either. the difference between “but what choice was there?” and “oh my god how could you??” and “no. this is bullshit and you know it.”

looks over glasses at Jean

waits worriedly for Armin

[djsoliloquy]

TELL ME ABOUT THESE ELABORATE ERWIN/LEVI AUS

YELLS YEAH OK

the most elaborate is the fake!married trope one for Emily, where they go to Sina to lobby for funds and it turns into fake!married heist fic essentially because getting levi gracefully through fancy balls and dinners while conniving money out of rich asshats is ten thousand times harder than pretending to be spouses. also erwin makes a point of publicly doting on levi as part of the act and levi is pretty good at the act too but lmfao ”””act”””

possibly with sweet sensual 100% angst free honeymoon celebratory sex when they get all the moneys. 100% angst free.

and then you and jamie and a prompt on the kinkmeme got me seriously thinking about a speakeasy au. The spin from the kinkmeme was that Erwin was a mob boss and Levi is the up and coming arm of the law trying to stop him. Stasia suggested undercover. which erwin knows about right from the start but lets it go on. and then aggressive grinding against each other bending each other over a desk at some point. 

the au where erwin takes levi out on a proper date

the au where they have good sex where nobody is dropped on the floor

oh god and then tanya and I have the joke about the porn au. Where erwin is the director and levi is humanity’s most adept porn star specializing in suspension and rope work.

[djsoliloquy]

[SnK fic] Way More Than 10 Things Jean Hates About Eren

Rating: M Pairings: Jean/Eren Notes: For the kinkmeme. Drunken hatesex for Jean and Eren is really more like clueless fightsex where nobody knows what's going on. 

--> [AO3]

[djsoliloquy]

[Moist von Lipwig/William de Worde] Reasons I Ship It, Headcanons, meta

Started a breakdown of my Moist/William and subsequent Sach/Will + Adora/Moist OT4 feels then decided to just make a post. It got long! Half essay, half tumblr yelling. Sorta-NSFW stuff way at the bottom if you’re not into that. Or are into that. It's at the bottom.

  ABSTRACT: Moist/William is all about performance and handling truths and it's a little like shipping anthropomorphic Fiction/Nonfiction and it’s wonderful and works so well and no no wait come back—

CONCLUSION: A lie can get around the world before the truth has got its boots on. And then the lie gets back, tugs off truth’s boots and truth’s shirt and pushes the truth into bed and they have a roaring good time.  

TL;DR: I’M SO DONE

-

Background and technicalities: This is mostly Moist/William but that begins and extends to a William/Sacharissa/Moist/Adora big open relationship pile of an OT4, see this post. It makes me happy to think Moist and Adora both like Sacharissa—and I imagine the gals having dangerous lunch dates and other adventures when William is abroad covering some war or another and Moist is up to his nostrils in whatever colossal task the Patrician hands him that week. But the ladies agree it’s an all or nothing deal so the rub is getting the boys to not get their fur riled being in the same room with each other. And oh how the fur riles.

With Sacharissa and Adora in the background rolling their eyes, no doubt.

And so M/W are the delicious conflict crux of the whole thing, and here's why I ship it in a nutshell: it’s the good ship Truth And Belief Manipulation. Shakily ascended scribe with a chip on his shoulder vs gainfully employed former scam artist. They use a lot of the same tactics, can both be boneheaded and stubborn and get on a roll where their feet don’t touch the ground until the end of it (Moist with his faster-paced lies makes more a habit of it, though and/or it just takes William longer to work himself up). But I suspect the trouble deep down is they probably both think they invented most of said tactics—we’re talking really deep down, here—and it throws off their grooves a little when someone can waltz into their lives already aware of the tricks, handwaving past the usual defenses. The pool of people in the city who are immune to their narrative weaving is fairly shallow, including such players as Lord Vetinari (the master weaver), the sharper members of the Watch (uncovering plausible narratives from evidence and obfuscating personal accounts is what they do), and Moist & William’s significant others. And the number in this group who are potential bedroom partners, at least until the next essay, could be counted on one hand. 

As for them personally, Moist thinks William has a stick up his ass. (There were WORDS TO THIS EFFECT in Making Money I think? I remember laughing really hard.) 

Actually I looked it up.

“Youth at the helm? This from William de Worde, who was almost certainly the same age as Moist but wrote editorials that suggested his bum was stuffed with tweed.” –Making Money

Tweed! Close enough. But the next bit is good too, and there’s not much of these two actually ‘interacting’ so:

 “It was sometimes hard to tell in all the ponderousness what de Worde actually thought about anything, but it appeared through the rolling fog of polysyllables that the Times believed Moist von Lipwig to be, on the whole and all things considered, taking the long view and one thing with another, probably the right man for the job.”

Still laughing, part because we don’t get a really clear impression of William’s style in his own book and the outside perspective is hilarious, and part I’m amusing myself by imagining him crafting this otherwise (tentatively) flattering article and intentionally giving it that extra little tilt, just so, with the happy knowledge that Moist would read it in the morning and make faces at the wording (“as though he was chipping the letters in stone” Moist thinks re William’s writing style god these two, and I actually bet poor William is under the impression he does an ok job of being engaging and fresh?And maybe he is, to a non-Moist audience. I mean, he was about two seconds from inventing the profession of sportscaster in Unseen Academicals, wishing he had a megaphone and being adorably out of his comfort zone until he grabbed an assistant and threatened to fire him if his shorthand couldn’t keep up with the ensuing overexcited sports reporting commentary yelling, complete with wild disheveled hair and a crazed look in his eye. So William can be exciting! Really! Somewhat! He’s a long way from the de Worde manor setting, anyway. Though the idea of William taking down plays at a sporting event would fill Moist with a sort of nameless dread-bordering-on-amusement. Like hearing they replaced the sports presenter with the encyclopedia writer.)

Which is a roundabout way to say: imagine a fiction novel trying to stomach a dry yet earnest nonfiction that thinks it’s being entertaining but tends to miss the mark by a few editions.

That’s what they are. It’s freaking delightful. 

And I wouldn’t be surprised if the dig about ‘youth at the helm’ is as much writing convention as the cherry on top. They both might both be around 26 but at least one of them didn't have that episode of flashing around the city in a golden outfit. 

Because yes. If Moist thinks William is stuffy, then William would think Moist was insufferably ostentatious. Or something to that effect but using even more syllables. Before they know each other, when he thinks of Moist he probably imagines a tabloid with a golden cover.

And that’s all basically right? All roughly in order if you’re painting the truth with the extra big brush? Except rather than just sensationalizing things, Moist does really have the truth on his mind an awful lot and mostly uses his powers for good these days, and William is working on the stick-tweed situation because no one wants to wake up one morning and realize they’ve become their father after all, particularly when said father is a bloodcurdlingly intolerant fuckhead. 

(As an added annoyance William likely has to spend time thinking about Moist anyway just thinking up the headlines, or at least staying on top of vetoing some of the zingers made up by the interns, whom he suspects Sacharissa and Otto are conspiring with after one or two particularly suggestive... suggestions.) 

Adora and Sacharissa are still rolling their eyes at them behind their backs. The entire time.

Basically M/W might not be a thing but damn I love all four of them and just had to ship it because I SHIP THEIR THEMES TOGETHER REALLY FREAKING HARD. Crafting what can be less-than-factual perceptions from cold hard facts vs delivering some manner of truth through compelling nonsense? Fiction vs nonfiction? Yes please sign me up? The core of it is that they seem reversed and incompatible but they’re more similar than they are different, same problems from different angles, and both can be used for good or bad as we see in their respective novels. Like, you can’t even deny that journalism can be a manipulative scam in the wrong hands, or that a funny fantasy series can’t sometimes tell you more about the world than a newspaper article.

To name a random and nonspecific example.                                                                                                                                  

For them personally maybe it starts by going from dislike to seeing that thread of resemblance. If nothing else de Worde isn’t a government employee per se but they have the same boss as everyone else in Ankh-Morpork. And maybe it almost becomes a game between the two of them. They have different strengths but are fairly evenly matched! An element of mild competition in what they both perceive to be their arena would likely appeal to both of them. Significant others still rolling their eyes, of course.

So yes. Saying I ship Fiction/Nonfiction just about covers my Moist/William love.

“Moist William” is way more fun to say out loud, though.

  NSFW and Misc. headcanons that don’t really fit anywhere else

-  I MENTIONED SACHARISSA AND ADORA HAVING ADVENTURES AND THAT IS COMPLETELY A THING I WOULD LOVE. I want a Sach/Spike noir detective agency AU that investigates cases of golem injustice or something. But also the four of them working as a coherent whole. Moist and Sacharissa are more conniving and aware of aesthetics. Adora and William are more stubborn and tend to operate in straight lines. The two canon couples as-is are great but dang they could have mad synergy if they found a way to make it click.

-  I suppose, if Moist were some manner of publication--that William would imagine him as instead of a glitzy tabloid, I mean--he’d be a less comedy-focused/less satirey version of The Onion or around thereabouts: Entertaining, not literally true, but oh boy can the truth under all that glint cut when it needs to. It’s the truth done up as spectacle. And this being the Disc, where reality can be defined as much by what happens as by potential and what is perceived, that’s not a bad skill to have in your back pocket.

-  The first letters of their first names are mirrors of each other. That’s a cool thing, right? Yeah.

-  Misc. Moist: I was talking with Emily that Moist is basically the Disc version of Tony Stark. He fixes things. Dips in and out of trouble so quickly that it turns the heads of lesser beings and at the end of it you’re just like how did he even pull that off I don’t. what? Plus...shiny metallic suit. Love interest who is take-charge fantastic and too good for him in the beginning but he cleans up well and they eventually make it work. (I don’t know what William would be in this but now I’m picturing Fury and Vetinari’s roles mingling and am so very scared and charmed.)

-  BEDROOM STUFF? Because. I think M/W would, at some point. If this were ever a thing. Because it has the potential to hit half my fleet of communication/negotiation kinks, among other reasons. Maybe one of them gets their instincts tipped off, senses something just a little off and they get really invested and interested and turned on and god can’t you just imagine like Moist leaning forward with a fascinated grin to lick a stripe up William’s neck and say with a chuckle in his ear, Are you telling the truth?

-  Actually, any way you can think of that sort of banter in pleasant bedroomy ways, then. That’s it. You're there. Welcome.

-  William is a Classicist, of sorts. He considers himself as such! It’s his style, and extends to bedroom behavior too. He’s one of those people who read through their childhood and had to figure out sex from dictionaries and ancient literature and ended up unintentionally imprinting on sources and kinks that haven’t been in vogue for a thousand years. (That doesn’t mean they aren’t really good kinks.) He’s been around the block—once, to take notes—but there are gaps in his theoretical knowledge, though Sacharissa has changed that somewhat since William’s bachelorhood in The Truth. He’s candid but not always smooth (usually because of the candor), keen but also stubborn, and he can be embarrassed by interestingly shaped vegetables. But the honesty and self-taught book learnings at least form an interesting starting point.

-  Moist is, unsurprisingly, about the opposite. If he has a good trick you can bet he didn’t learn it from reading it somewhere. And he’s...flexible. He’s emphatically not a bondage type of guy. Physical bondage, anyway. He’s had a rope around his neck and it wasn’t what he’d call a pleasant or elevating experience. More a short abrupt drop kind of experience. Other kinds of bondage though would be fine, something mild like holding his wrists or telling him not to move. He gets super dedicated to people he trusts.

-  Basically rogues/thieves being happily and symbolically ‘caught’ in the bedroom by the people they love is a whole chapter in the book of Things I Like. Um.

-  Investigative journalism. Sexy investigative journalism.

  So there you go. The lie can get around the world before the truth has got its boots on. And maybe the second time around the truth gets wise and just sits back and waits for the lie to catch up. Similar roaring good time had by all.   

Now I’m done.