#varnes

❤️live from new york

by varnes

E, 87k, wangxian

Summary:  Wei Ying lets out a long, ugly groan. “I am fine, Lan Zhan. Everybody is overreacting, it’s so embarrassing for all of you.”

“You had undiagnosed pneumonia, which you walked around with for weeks until you passed out during dress,” Lan Wangji corrects him. “It got a big laugh, until everyone thought you were dead.”

He keeps his voice even and does not tell Wei Ying that it had been Lan Wangji who caught him, who called the ambulance, and who rode with him to the hospital, where he was yelled at by nurses who wanted to know why he hadn’t noticed that Wei Ying couldn’t stop shivering or string proper sentences together.

“Rumors of my demise have been vastly overstated,” Wei Ying says. “Anyway, I’m already feeling much better. Basically fine. Really almost completely back to normal, so stop babying me and tell me why the fuck you let your stupid brother hire the worst man in the world to host our show.”

-

OR: the one where they all work at SNL, Yanli's ex-boyfriend is hosting, and that's just the beginning of everybody's problems.

My comments:  This was sooo funny, ohmygoodness, but also chock full of pining and withheld communication and stupidly sacrificial idiots. Author juggles an ensemble cast flawlessly, and everyone's personality shines in the rawest and most shamelessly hilarious way (I saw someone comment that they were all feral, which suits). Story is most often lwj POV (he and wwx are co-head writers) and this boy is SO IN LOVE, but doesn't want to damage what he's got, so he stays silent (mostly). Their relationship drama is subsumed in the utterly hectic week that leads up to a Saturday show (Sunday is off, Tuesdays have a hallucinatory never-ending feel, Fridays are actually much busier than Saturdays).

Excerpt 1:  There is no “end” to Tuesdays. There is Tuesday, and then later Tuesday, and then midnight Tuesday, and then timeless Tuesday, when it stops being nighttime but isn’t yet morning, and then eventually the sun is up and it’s not Tuesday on the calendar but it’s still Tuesday spiritually, because no one has slept and everyone is all hopped up on caffeine and cigarettes.

Excerpt 2:  Some funny bits: 

“Laughter is the best medicine!” Wei Ying wheedles. “Come onnnnn, Lan Zhan, I’ve been rotting away for months and months, if someone doesn’t let me get a joke on TV in the next twenty minutes I’ll die. I’ll literally be forced to fling myself out of the Jiang family’s beautiful bay windows, and on the way down I’ll shout, ‘This was avoidable! This is because Lan Zhan wouldn’t let me punch up the promos!’ and then you’ll be fired for secondhand murder and it’ll be a tragedy like the sketch comedy circuit has never seen.”

Lan Wangji says, “Second-degree.”

“What?”

“Murder. Not secondhand.”

Wei Ying furrows his brow. “...I’ve heard it both ways,” he says. “That would make a good detective show spoof skit, though. Secondhand Murder.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji agrees. “Murder She Wrote, but an idiot.”

“Keeps suggesting a series of increasingly implausible manners of death,” Wei Ying agrees, scribbling on the back of the takeout menu. Yanli and Lan Wangji share a look. “All the deaths are like — incredibly obvious and she goes buckwild with her theories anyway.”

“Police keep asking her to leave.”

“I want to be one of the victims,” Yanli says. “Put like, a sword right through my chest, but I’m still alive, telling the cops what happened, and she’s still like, ‘No no, that’s what the murderer wants you to think.’”

“Gruesome! Love it,” says Wei Ying, making a note.

Excerpt 3:  some just plain esoteric turns of phrase:

Lan Zhan mutters, “Wei Ying,” in that voice of his. He says Wei Ying eight million times a day but never the same way twice. A mood ring of Wei Ying. Wei Wuxian wants to be fully dead about it, wholly and completely excused from this earth because of how Lan Zhan says his stupid name.

“Lan Zhan,” he sing-songs back. “Ah, Lan Zhaaaaan.”

Excerpt 4:  Some gut-punches: 

Wei Wuxian wants bruises; Lan Wangji wants scars.

_____________________

ETA: There's a Sequel!

It's 19k of sheer delight as our boys go to the courthouse to get hitched... only to find out they've been married for the past 3.5 years. How. How did this happen? Wwx points out that they've never had anything but married sex which is very responsible and traditional of them. But still. How do you get accidentally married???

Excerpt:  “How are you so chill about this,” Wei Wuxian demands, turning his face into Lan Zhan’s palm and kissing it at the center. “I feel like someone just informed me that everyone else on the planet except me has two dicks, and you’re just like, tralala, dry cleaning.”

“It’s easier for me,” says Lan Zhan, very tenderly. “I’ve always had two dicks.”

Wei Wuxian laughs, helplessly. “Lan Zhan.”

modern au, SNL au, saturday night live, humor, comedy, pining, FOREST OF PINES, light angst, lots of jokes, ensemble cast, feels, oblivious wei wuxian, oblivious lan wangji, idiots in love, slow burn, lack of communication, self-sacrificial idiots, flirting, getting together, everyone ships it, top lan wangji, bottom wei wuxian, roommates, hijinks and shenanigans, comedian everybody, jiang siblings, friends to lovers, found family, adorable juniors, happy ending, favorite, @itsvarnes​​

Additional Tags: 

Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic

Word count: 14k

Summary:

“A-Yuan,” he says, carefully, “did—did you make the flowers grow like this?”

A-Yuan shakes his head in exasperation. “Baba, I said. Doctor Flowers did it.”

“Doctor Flowers,” Lan Zhan repeats, pointing at the tiny plum tree, just to confirm that his son is suggesting a magical tree named Doctor Flowers sprouted overnight and made their tame family project turn into a verdant jungle.   A-Yuan nods. “Doctor Flowers,” he confirms. “He’s funny! I like him.”

-

A mysterious garden blooms on Lan Zhan's rooftop. His internet forum pen pal gives great gardening advice but never seems to sleep. The man who works at the florist, who keeps reviving the plants that Lan Zhan can't seem to keep alive, has a beautiful smile.

Additional Tags: 

SNL au, is that ... a trope?, if it's not a trope it really should be a trope., Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, A Family Can Just Be The Staff Of A Popular Late Night Sketch Show, Pining, Getting Together, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, and they were ROOMMATES, Frottage, Light Bondage, could not be lighter or gentler bondage

Word count: 87k

Summary:

Wei Ying lets out a long, ugly groan. “I am fine, Lan Zhan. Everybody is overreacting, it’s so embarrassing for all of you.”

“You had undiagnosed pneumonia, which you walked around with for weeks until you passed out during dress,” Lan Wangji corrects him. “It got a big laugh, until everyone thought you were dead.”

He keeps his voice even and does not tell Wei Ying that it had been Lan Wangji who caught him, who called the ambulance, and who rode with him to the hospital, where he was yelled at by nurses who wanted to know why he hadn’t noticed that Wei Ying couldn’t stop shivering or string proper sentences together.

“Rumors of my demise have been vastly overstated,” Wei Ying says. “Anyway, I’m already feeling much better. Basically fine. Really almost completely back to normal, so stop babying me and tell me why the fuck you let your stupid brother hire the worst man in the world to host our show.”

-

Chapters: 1/6

Additional Tags: 

Sound of Music AU, (i know!!! i know. stay with me on this.), Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Family Feels, spies to lovers???, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Protective Siblings, Sometimes You Just Want Your Dads To Admit They're Your Dads

Word count: 13k

Summary:

Wen Qing relaxes minutely, scrutinizing him. “Then,” she asks, “why are you here, Lan-er-gongzi?”

He thinks of seven children, living here, surrounded by ghosts, fathered — fathered? — by the one who harnesses resentment to command the dead. Children he has named, inexplicably, Lan. Wen Qionglin is a fierce corpse, and yet he apparently talks and thinks and makes his own decisions. The children call him jiujiu. The children climb on his lap and ignore his instructions and say things like “he’s dead” with a careless lilt in their voices.

Whatever the Yiling Patriarch is doing, whatever Wei Wuxian wants, Lan Wangji does not think it is an act of war.

So he does not say, “I am here to neutralize the Yiling Patriarch.”

He does not say, “Sentiment is gathering against you.”

He does not say, “First liberate, second suppress, third eliminate.”

Lying is forbidden, so Lan Wangji bows his head and says something true: “The Lan sect has very recently learned of seven disciples living in Yiling. I have come to attend their education.”

-

Additional Tags: 

Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, snl au, Secret Marriage, Accidental Marriage, it's like that thing where you marry your coworker by accident, but don't find out about it for three and a half years? Series: Part 2 of live from new york: an snl au

Word count: 18k

Summary:

The Swiss Cheese model of accident causation likens human system defences to a series of slices of randomly-holed Swiss Cheese arranged vertically and parallel to each other with gaps in-between each slice. Defences against failure are modelled as a series of barriers, represented as slices of the cheese. The holes in the cheese slices represent individual weaknesses in individual parts of the system. The system as a whole produces failures when holes in all of the slices momentarily align, permitting "a trajectory of accident opportunity," so that a hazard passes through holes in all of the defences, leading to an accident.

OR: Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian go to the courthouse.