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live from new york
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.
“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.
Unknown Binding
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 12, 2023
The pining! The humor! The writing! The references! Meng Yao chilling in the corner humming "Mastermind"!
This was a goddamned delight.
I had NO knowledge of canon going in and I'm sure I would have dug this even more if I did, but ultimately it didn't matter: these characters are delightful, the SNL setting works incredibly well -- a surreal, high-stress, high-octane environment where a week might as well be a year -- and the whole thing is super-queer, super-horny, and super-soft. An unbeatable combo. The pacing is ficc'y -- this is a 100,000 words of two doofi figuring out what is glaringly obvious to everyone but them -- but when the journey is so lovely, it's nice to just relax and enjoy the ride.
For fellow Untamed un-initiates, this twitter thread by Foz Meadows is indispensable.
Thanks to wasteland baby for the rec!
This was a goddamned delight.
I had NO knowledge of canon going in and I'm sure I would have dug this even more if I did, but ultimately it didn't matter: these characters are delightful, the SNL setting works incredibly well -- a surreal, high-stress, high-octane environment where a week might as well be a year -- and the whole thing is super-queer, super-horny, and super-soft. An unbeatable combo. The pacing is ficc'y -- this is a 100,000 words of two doofi figuring out what is glaringly obvious to everyone but them -- but when the journey is so lovely, it's nice to just relax and enjoy the ride.
For fellow Untamed un-initiates, this twitter thread by Foz Meadows is indispensable.
Thanks to wasteland baby for the rec!
February 23, 2023
Third(?) reread, February 2023:
I have now come to a point in my life where I can admit that this story has SOME flaws (I found the story of the jade rabbit to be a bit heavy-handed as far as metaphors go tbh!! and yes I am aware that makes me heartless but so be it!!), but god it's just an absolute fucking wonder. The comedy is...incredible. Does not get old, never fails to make me delighted no matter how many times I read it. And it's not just that the ideas for the in-universe sketches are hillarious and the one-liners are absolute zingers, it's that so much of the comedy of this story comes from lovingly embracing the characters and all their idiosyncracies. I'd quote an example but I'd be quoting the entire thing, because humour just envelops this fic like a warm blanket. So here's a quote that I read and I thought "ahhh okay, this is going in the GR review", not because it's exceptional, but because it is so like every other part of this story. (Btw this is from chapter 1 and honestly I can't remember the last time I read something where chapter 1 set up everything about the characters and the setting so perfectly and owned my ass so much.)
"He’d come in the year after Lan Wangji, him and Jiang Cheng and Yanli, hired off the back of their wildly successful YouTube sketch channel. Lan Wangji had hated him. He’d hated his bad posture and the way he tore pen caps to pieces chewing on them, hated the way he wrote notes on everything, any scrap of paper he could find; hated how quickly he made jokes, how fast they slid out of his mouth, funnier than everyone else in the room; hated how often he’d hand those jokes over to the other writers, filling out their sketches and not taking any writing credit; hated how he’d sit next to Lan Wangji with their shoulders touching and slide him little doodles when other people were talking.
He hated his easy laugh, his small ears, his perfect mouth, his dancing eyes, his frenetic hands, always moving. Always moving. Lan Wangji hadn’t been able to focus on anything else. It had wreaked havoc on his sketches.
He’d hated him, and then one day Wei Ying had fallen asleep on the couch in their shared office in a horrible old tank-top that said “2001 SENIOR WOMEN’S BOCCE BALL COMPETITION” with his mouth hanging open, drooling onto the cushions, and abruptly Lan Wangji had not hated him, had never hated him, was shocked and upset to realize that there was not one person in the world whose drool he’d rather have staining his shitty velvet.
“Mn,” he’d said, dismayed at himself.
Wei Ying had startled awake. Dried spit flaked off the corner of his mouth. He looked terrible. Lan Wangji wanted to bury his nose in his armpit, which was appalling. “Lan Zhan! Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I meant — well, okay, yes I did. But only because you weren’t here and it’s so fucking noisy downstairs. I came here not to sleep but to tell you that I had this idea, and stay with me for a minute, that we add a rap verse to the opera parody song, and we get Yanli to do it.”
Lan Wangji had said: “...”
And Wei Ying grinned, somehow already knowing he had won."
DO YOU SEE HOW EXCELLENT VARNES IS AT LOVELORN LAN WANGJI??? DO YOU *SEE*???? DO YOU FEEL ALL THE FEELS RN COS I SURE DO!!!
I intended t0 also quote a paragraph from Yanli's POV but honestly I will get too emotional, I love that girl too much, she deserves the world, it's so hard being the best shijie in the world (maybe I'll be strong enough to delve into it at the next reread lolol)
Original review from February 2022 (February is clearly Wangxian season lmao):
this is my second reread and it still slaps so fucking hard
the mix of hilarious comedy with heart-wrenching earnestness and tenderness??? iconic and showstopping.
if someone asked me to point them to a fic that showcases what early 2020s fanfic is *all about* (at least from my reading experience, the full scope of fanfic is vast and unknowable and lowkey scary) live from new york would very likely be my pick.
this shit EXEMPLARY, motherfuckers!
I have now come to a point in my life where I can admit that this story has SOME flaws (I found the story of the jade rabbit to be a bit heavy-handed as far as metaphors go tbh!! and yes I am aware that makes me heartless but so be it!!), but god it's just an absolute fucking wonder. The comedy is...incredible. Does not get old, never fails to make me delighted no matter how many times I read it. And it's not just that the ideas for the in-universe sketches are hillarious and the one-liners are absolute zingers, it's that so much of the comedy of this story comes from lovingly embracing the characters and all their idiosyncracies. I'd quote an example but I'd be quoting the entire thing, because humour just envelops this fic like a warm blanket. So here's a quote that I read and I thought "ahhh okay, this is going in the GR review", not because it's exceptional, but because it is so like every other part of this story. (Btw this is from chapter 1 and honestly I can't remember the last time I read something where chapter 1 set up everything about the characters and the setting so perfectly and owned my ass so much.)
"He’d come in the year after Lan Wangji, him and Jiang Cheng and Yanli, hired off the back of their wildly successful YouTube sketch channel. Lan Wangji had hated him. He’d hated his bad posture and the way he tore pen caps to pieces chewing on them, hated the way he wrote notes on everything, any scrap of paper he could find; hated how quickly he made jokes, how fast they slid out of his mouth, funnier than everyone else in the room; hated how often he’d hand those jokes over to the other writers, filling out their sketches and not taking any writing credit; hated how he’d sit next to Lan Wangji with their shoulders touching and slide him little doodles when other people were talking.
He hated his easy laugh, his small ears, his perfect mouth, his dancing eyes, his frenetic hands, always moving. Always moving. Lan Wangji hadn’t been able to focus on anything else. It had wreaked havoc on his sketches.
He’d hated him, and then one day Wei Ying had fallen asleep on the couch in their shared office in a horrible old tank-top that said “2001 SENIOR WOMEN’S BOCCE BALL COMPETITION” with his mouth hanging open, drooling onto the cushions, and abruptly Lan Wangji had not hated him, had never hated him, was shocked and upset to realize that there was not one person in the world whose drool he’d rather have staining his shitty velvet.
“Mn,” he’d said, dismayed at himself.
Wei Ying had startled awake. Dried spit flaked off the corner of his mouth. He looked terrible. Lan Wangji wanted to bury his nose in his armpit, which was appalling. “Lan Zhan! Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I meant — well, okay, yes I did. But only because you weren’t here and it’s so fucking noisy downstairs. I came here not to sleep but to tell you that I had this idea, and stay with me for a minute, that we add a rap verse to the opera parody song, and we get Yanli to do it.”
Lan Wangji had said: “...”
And Wei Ying grinned, somehow already knowing he had won."
DO YOU SEE HOW EXCELLENT VARNES IS AT LOVELORN LAN WANGJI??? DO YOU *SEE*???? DO YOU FEEL ALL THE FEELS RN COS I SURE DO!!!
I intended t0 also quote a paragraph from Yanli's POV but honestly I will get too emotional, I love that girl too much, she deserves the world, it's so hard being the best shijie in the world (maybe I'll be strong enough to delve into it at the next reread lolol)
Original review from February 2022 (February is clearly Wangxian season lmao):
this is my second reread and it still slaps so fucking hard
the mix of hilarious comedy with heart-wrenching earnestness and tenderness??? iconic and showstopping.
if someone asked me to point them to a fic that showcases what early 2020s fanfic is *all about* (at least from my reading experience, the full scope of fanfic is vast and unknowable and lowkey scary) live from new york would very likely be my pick.
this shit EXEMPLARY, motherfuckers!
November 2, 2024
Bold move to take something good (MDZS) and do an AU of it as something much less good (SNL)!! What’s next, a White Collar AU where they’re at, like, Hogwarts?? (This brought to you by my rewatching some White Collar recently. Do NOT get any ideas please. If this already exists I do NOT want to know.)
This has some very good parts stuck in the middle of a too-long fic (I DNFed at the end of ch. 7 of 8; I also had to skip the script excerpts because they were horrible to me, personally). And while this isn’t RPF it’s worse, it’s Real Workplace Fic. FWIW I’ve also loathed every second of The West Wing I’ve seen. If you’re going to write about people working at an actual real life job with this level of professional and personal detail you better be Shonda Rhimes bc otherwise I’m gonna hate it.
In other words, would like the author to please tailor their (fine, excellent) work to better suit my personal preferences… is that too much to ask!
This has some very good parts stuck in the middle of a too-long fic (I DNFed at the end of ch. 7 of 8; I also had to skip the script excerpts because they were horrible to me, personally). And while this isn’t RPF it’s worse, it’s Real Workplace Fic. FWIW I’ve also loathed every second of The West Wing I’ve seen. If you’re going to write about people working at an actual real life job with this level of professional and personal detail you better be Shonda Rhimes bc otherwise I’m gonna hate it.
In other words, would like the author to please tailor their (fine, excellent) work to better suit my personal preferences… is that too much to ask!
August 27, 2025
BITCH. SOMEBODY HOLD ME.
THIS IS SO SUPER FUCKING GOOD WHAT. I THINK THIS AUTHOR SINGLEHANDEDLY BROUGHT BACK REAL YEARNING AND IM NOT EVEN JOKING
if you fw silly sex jokes and wangxian.............this is for you...........i'm physically shaking at a frequency which could shatter glass
this is low-key embarrassing for me like who almost cries over an SNL AU,,, ACTUALLY WHO THE HELL COMES UP WITH THE CONCEPT OF AN SNL AU???
author…….please let me wine and dine you…….i can treat you right……..please………
THIS IS SO SUPER FUCKING GOOD WHAT. I THINK THIS AUTHOR SINGLEHANDEDLY BROUGHT BACK REAL YEARNING AND IM NOT EVEN JOKING
if you fw silly sex jokes and wangxian.............this is for you...........i'm physically shaking at a frequency which could shatter glass
this is low-key embarrassing for me like who almost cries over an SNL AU,,, ACTUALLY WHO THE HELL COMES UP WITH THE CONCEPT OF AN SNL AU???
author…….please let me wine and dine you…….i can treat you right……..please………
January 8, 2023
Lan Wangji hitches Wei Ying’s legs up and traps him there, to be carried. Wei Ying huffs in surprise, and then settles, his chin on the top of Lan Wangji’s head. His arms snake around Lan Wangji’s shoulders and he settles, a warm weight. Sturdy, and solid, and here, in Lan Wangji’s hands.
November 12, 2021
this has honestly been one of the best things I have ever read I cannot express enough
September 11, 2025
how you even think of this is beyond me
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews