Using the memoir class, how to baseline align without inserting space between paragraphs?

Question

I'm using the memoir class and need to align the bottom of the pages in a page spread. By default, the memoir class does this by inserting spaces between paragraphs, which I don't want. So, I'm using the \raggedbottom command and inserting vertical spacing only where I want it.

I'm running into situations such as below where I want to add roughly half a line of vertical space, so I want to add just a tad of space above the two section titles on the right page.

I inserted the command \vspace{\fill} above both section titles, but it's only working for me if the space at the bottom of the page is more than a line or so. If it's small, like in the above example, I get this:

Can \vspace{\fill} solve this use case? If not, is there a better way?

Here's my MWE:

\documentclass{memoir}

\clubpenalty=10000
\widowpenalty=10000

\usepackage{lipsum}
\raggedbottom
\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-10]

\subsection{Subsection Two}
\lipsum[1-1]

\vspace{\fill}
\section{Section Five}
\lipsum[1-1]

\vspace{\fill}
\section{Section Six}
\lipsum[1-1]

\section{Section Seven}
\lipsum[1-1]

\end{document}

EDIT

Here's an example of when \vspace{\fill} works great. I added the command \enlargethispage{2\baselineskip} to line 11 and 23 of my MWE, which gives this:

Adding \vspace{\fill} above the section titles fixes things nicely, as shown below. So, I'd like to accomplish the same thing regardless of how small the space is at the bottom of the page.

Answer 1

This answers the question "How to adjust the setting for the smallest allowable space inserted by \vspace{\fill}?" In the meantime it was made clear that this wasn't what was actually needed. The answer is kept for posterity.

Instead of \vspace*{\fill} you could use \vspace*{1cm plus 1fill}.

Answer 2

You are allowing the space to grow arbitrarily large so introducing the large gaps before the section

\vspace{0pt plus \baselineskip}

would give penalties for growing more than a baselineskip and produces this:

where you see the page with the section headings is more reasonable and does have the page flush to the bottom, however the first page is a line short due to the setting

\clubpenalty=10000
\widowpenalty=10000

which is always problematic.

On that page you either need to allow the page (and perhaps so the double spread) to be short, or give up on the 10000 penalties or adjust the linebreaking with \looseness but in this text there is no easy paragraph to force to be a line longer.

\documentclass{memoir}

\clubpenalty=10000
\widowpenalty=10000

\usepackage{lipsum}
\raggedbottom
\begin{document}

{\emergencystretch=1em
\looseness=1
\lipsum[1]


}

\lipsum[2-4]


\lipsum[5]

\lipsum[6-10]

\subsection{Subsection Two}
\lipsum[1-1]

\vspace{0pt plus \baselineskip}
\section{Section Five}
\lipsum[1-1]

\vspace{0pt plus \baselineskip}
\section{Section Six}
\lipsum[1-1]

\section{Section Seven}
\lipsum[1-1]

\end{document}

is

which is not clearly an improvement

Answer 3

I was going about this all wrong. As mentioned in my question, I want flush bottoms but no spaces between paragraphs. The default memoir class gives this output with the para spacing I don't want, like this:

So, I was using \raggedbottom to keep the paras together and then fixing the spacing between. Here's the same text with raggedbottom:

I now see I can use the default flush bottom spacing and get rid of the para spacing without using \raggedbottom by setting \setlength{\parskip}{0pt}, which works great but understandably give a big space above the section title:

Which can be reduced by shortening the both pages by one line with \enlargethispage{-1\baselineskip}:

My manuscript has lots of quoted text, sections, and figures, so lots of opportunities to add spacing that's not between paras. I'm sure this won't suit everyone's needs, but I tested it on the first 100 pages of my manuscript and it's working great for me.

Here's the code for the above examples

\clubpenalty=10000
\widowpenalty=10000

\usepackage{lipsum}

% \raggedbottom

\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-9]

\subsection{Subsection Two}

\enlargethispage{-1\baselineskip}
\lipsum[1-1]

\section{Section Five}

\enlargethispage{-1\baselineskip}
\lipsum[1-3]

\section{Section Six}
\lipsum[1-1]

\section{Section Seven}
\lipsum[1-1]

\end{document}