Wow, finally one that I have actually written for! (And have an active WIP for. shh I will finish it someday.)

A lot of enemyships take the form of "we are nominally on opposing sides, but the more we are forced to interact, the more we understand we like each other have a lot in common, even if we would loudly deny this if asked". Vimes/Vetinari is the inverse on - "We are nominally on the same side, but the more we are forced to interact, the more we will loudly declare, in the face of all evidence, that we hate each other and have nothing in common."

... at least that's what Vimes would say if you asked him. (What Vetinari would say depends entirely on the asker.)

I can't do what I usually do and just go rec the top fic on AO3 by kudos, but if you want an illustraion of my preferred dynamic for this pairing, you should read that one!

Here are three more longtime favorites:

• Treason (975 words) by halotolerant
  Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
  Rating: General Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes
  Additional Tags: Pre-Slash
  
  I like the canon tension where despite clearly respecting and trusting each other deeply, Vimes and Vetinari both have to believe very hard for their own reasons that Vimes wants to see him overthrown and cast down, and that Vimes will help do so if ever given enough rope to hang him with. But I also like to see that tension finally snapped once and for all and what come after, and this fic is the best version of what happens when they can't hold the balance anymore that I have found.


• A Shot In The Dark Aimed Right At My Throat (5541 words) by gyzym
  Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
  Relationships: Sybil Ramkin/Samuel Vimes, Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes, Sybil Ramkin/Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes
  
  So the problem with this ship is that Vimes is married to Sybil and Vimes should be married to Sybil, because Sybil is great and they are great for each other. Which is why the best versions of this ship are either a) UST where Vimes stays faithful, or b) Sybil ships it. And it's canon Sybil and Vetinari knew and respected each other long before Sybil met Vimes (and that Vimes knew and disrespected Vetinari long before he met Sybil.) This fic did such a good job drawing out Sybil and Vetinari's relationship that I no longer remember how much of it is detailed in canon, because the fic overwrote it.


• First not on AO3 recs! A 2003 LJ fic series, and as far as I can tell it's never been posted to AO3, though the author is there. Luckily I did actually bookmark things on del.icio.us sometimes. It was was probably the first fic in this pairing I ever read (probably one of the first few hundred online fics I ever read at all?) and I still love it a lot.
  By wikdsushi, pg-13 rated
  
  Twilight
  
  The Oddest Couple
  
  Grumpy Old Gentlemen
  
  Dusk
  A few years after Sybil dies, Vetinari and Vimes retire. To Genua. Inexplicably, together. They settle in to each other. (There may be a fair number of "People retire together" recs coming. Just. So you know.)
  
  It is interesting how much this one shows its age - both in terms of just the general low-level background radiation in the story that everybody will think two men being together is strange and slightly gross because that's just what normal people think, which has pretty much entirely disappeared in the last twenty years thank goodness; and in the way that it treats the canon het. (There are also two prequels in this series that feature Sybil but I am not reccing them, even though there is a lot of good in them, because the subtle underlayer of "het is icky" just feels so very off-kilter compared to what I'm used to now, even though it was par for the course in slash in the late 90s.)

Hello, Purim gifter!

Sorry this is a little bit late; I made up my mind to sign up at the very last minute and didn't have a chance to write until now.

I would love anything about any female character, or Jewish character, or person being persecuted by evil viziers, in any of the fandoms I requested. I don't have any particular DNWs for any of these, and I love the kind of silly and/or fluffy fic that Purimgifts is good for, but I would also be okay with something that went dark (as long as it's appropriate for Purimgifts in general, of course - nothing along the lines of the bad fandom example in the faq.) I listed my top rating as mature because I didn't want you to feel pressured but anything at any rating is fine if that's what calls to you.

I'm okay with basically any ships in any of these fandoms, but please don't break up any ongoing canon ships to get there (turning canon ships poly is ok though.)

I requested a bunch of SF/Fantasy-ish fandoms that have very little canon Jewish content, but for any of them, I would love any AU or OC or worldbuilding-based stuff that looks at what it's like to be Jewish in that universe, and I also love everybody-is-Jewish AUS. (Or anything expanding on the Judaism canon there is, for the ones that have some.) I have some ideas (that I have been saving up every year I considered doing Purimgifts) below, but I am not Jewish, so some of them are probably Wrong, and feel free to ignore them and write me something else entirely.

I only requested fandoms where I could think of things I wanted for women OR evil viziers OR Jewish characters, so there's a lot under here, but feel free to ignore it all if that helps.

( Discworld )
( Good Omens )
( Highlander )
( Imperial Radch )
( Rivers of London )
( Star Trek:TOS )
( Star Wars )
( Thor movies )
( Wonder Woman )

Now y'all have presented me with too many options and I can't decide what to do tomorrow. :P I guess I will keep thinking about it and see if anyone gets back to me.

Anyway, I hear it is More Joy Day, so I went and posted Rivers of Ankh-Morpork. (since we all know I will never get around to getting it beta-read.) Have some joy?

Rivers of Ankh-Morpork (6335 words) by melannen
Fandom: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Peter Grant, Angua von Uberwald, Samuel Vimes, Foul Ole Ron, Gaspode (Discworld), Sybil Ramkin, Thomas Nightingale
Additional Tags: Crossover, community policing, hydrological engineering, Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Summary:

The Faceless Man miscalculates, and Peter Grant falls into a river.

...well, more onto a river, really. He may have bounced.

So, like, months ago, carmarthen was talking about shaving kink and how people should write it, and I was reading Night Watch at the time, and I realized I had basically been waiting to write Vimes/Vetinari shaving fic all my life.

So. Uh. Have some Vimes/Vetinari for the Twenty-Fifth of May! (I totally had a minute left to go when I posted it.)

Honed (3040 words) by melannen
Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes
Additional Tags: Unresolved Tension, Shaving, straight razor, Trust Issues, Mind Games, it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you
Summary:

There are very few people Samuel Vimes is willing to trust with a blade at his throat. Havelock Vetinari's list is even shorter.

In which I for once make a good life decision:

By choosing to re-read Pratchett's "Night Watch" instead of picking up the Brick.

But I can't write a fusion with this because it's just too easy. I mean, to start with, Night Watch basically is a Les Miserables fusion already. I'd been wondering at what point I became aware that Les Mis has had a small-but-active fandom all these years, because I've talked to a few other people who I thought would know and find them completely shocked, and now I'm suddenly thinking that I'm pretty sure I read this book back when it came out, then went and read all the Vimes/Vetinari, and when that ran out [far too quickly], I went and looked for Javert/Valjean.

Not that the ships are at all the same, but -- well. Vimes on the barricade has Grantaire's alcoholic cynicism and Enjolras's obsessive love of country and charismatic leadership and Javert's copper's ethic and tarnished but unshakeable faith in the primacy of Law and uncontrolled urge to sass authority and perfect dramatic timing and Valjean's sullen anger and paternal benevolence and socially awkward class mobility and expansive compassion and Bahorel's boiling violence and Marius's loving wife and happy ending and etc, all mixed up together into everything that is fandom catnip for me and kicking ass with competence. And frankly that explains so much of how I've been reacting to Les Mis fandom. And I got a bunch more of the direct references this time and I kind of want to read the Brick just to find out how many more there are.

Anyway, the problem here is that there are too many possibilities and I can't pick just one. (I know, I had the same problem with Highlander and just went with all of them, but I can't do that every time.)

There's the one I played with first, with minimal direct crossover elements, where Elderly!Steampunk!Combeferre is playing with a time machine and accidentally sends one of his old friends back to a few days before the night of the barricades (perhaps badass grown-up Gavroche?) And he gets adopted by Musichetta-the-seamstress-who-is-actually-a-seamstress and Joly and Bossuet, and sort of half-accidentally fixes the timeline so NOBODY HAS TO DIE. And there needs to be more steampunk!Combeferre in general, yes there does, and also happy-ending AUs with lots of worldbuilding where everybody is old and distinguished and has changed the world.

But then it is also SO TEMPTING to just write Les Amis as one of the groups manning the barricades of the Republic of Treacle Mine Road. (Would they be students at Unseen University in this version? Why does that image simultaneously terrify and enthrall me?) Bahorel would get his eggs! :D So much other amazing possibility! Although I think want I most want out of this version is Enjolras and bb!Vetinari being VERY INTENSE at each other about politics in Snapcase's Ankh-Morpork, and then not having any sex at all. Ever. (I actually have had all sorts of THOUGHTS about the political philosophies underlying much of Discworld for a long time, it kind of needs an Enjolras to be intensely republican about it, so much.) Meanwhile, wizzard!Grantaire tries to pick up Young Vimes at a tavern, but ends up just getting him very drunk while listening to him rant about his love for his bitch of a City, and begins to suspect he has a Type.¹

But of course there's also the swirly portal type of crossover, and hey, this book comes with a swirly portal built in! Sure, in canon it's through time and space rather than between universes, but it's also in the Library of Unseen University, which is connected by L-space to all other libraries everywhere in the multiverse, so it's not entirely impossible that the Librarian might have picked up a certain brick-like tome and attempted to use it to stabilize something and accidentally made a connection?

Maybe Vimes fell through to the Paris insurrection instead of the Ankh-Morpork one! And pointed out to the barricade boys that they were DOING IT WRONG. And then made everything better. And then Combeferre gets to do steampunk mad science to send him back.

Or maybe Javert jumped into the Seine but landed on the Ankh! And bounced, of course. Although I think in this version I'd want him to fall into modern-era Ankh Morporkh instead of barricades-era, because I want him to end up annoying Vimes so much that he gets put on Moist von Lipwig's security detail, because that would be hilarifying and full of sass. And gets adopted by Lady Sybil, which he would handle both much better and far, far worse than Vimes did. (Or hell you could do this one without the swirly portals and just write Vimes as Javert's superior in the Paris Police, which would be equally hilarious really.)

There, I have written almost as much in bunnies for this as I did in actual fic for the others. :P Now why hasn't any of this been written yet? *sighs*


¹This is probably The One I Am Most Likely To Actually Turn Into Something I Could Post To AO3, but we're back to actually needing to learn about Enjolras's political philosophy. And figuring out how the city government of Ankh-Morpork actually works.<sup>2

2</sup> Screw it. Fine:

( May 25th, in the second year of the patricianship of Lord Snapcase )

(..also can I just note for those of you trying to figure out Javert's timeline that Vimes' timeline is impossible? The Ankh-Morpork novels contradict each other incessantly, and that's even without the parts that involve time travel.)