zvi likes tv

don't threaten me with a good time (60023 words) by livinginaworldofnoise
Chapters: 11/11
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Characters: Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin, Jiang Yanli, Jin Ling | Jin Rulan, Lan Jingyi, Lan Yuan | Lan Sizhui, Ouyang Zizhen, Luo "Mian Mian" Qingyang, Nie Huaisang, Lan Huan | Lan Xichen, Wen Qing (Modao Zushi), Wen Ning | Wen Qionglin, some other random characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Reality TV, Alternate Universe - The Great British Bake Off Fusion, wwx is a chaos demon determined to make gbbo more exciting, lwj cares about the Integrity of Bake-Off, who will win????, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, gbbo au, content warning for absolute unhinged nonsense, Enemies to Lovers, by enemies i mean BAKING RIVALS of course, the last two chapters are the twitter reactions to the show so, Social Media AU, Podfic Available
Summary:

“I’m using orange liqueur to make my cake more interesting. Give it a bit of a kick, you know?”
Lan Wangji’s expression has only changed minutely—not a lot of range there, it seems—but Wei Wuxian can tell he is perturbed by this information. “Alcohol? In cake?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure any cake should even be made without alcohol,” Wei Wuxian says, offering another beatific smile that Lan Wangji does not return.

OR: the great british bake-off au???

I feel like I should have something more profound to say than this story is hilarious, but I don't really. This story is hilarious.

I like happy or reconciling family feels. I'm looking for a story where I can feel the characters loving each other, even if that love winds up being complicated or there are other issues. I really love people discussing and negotiating their relationships, where they know things have to be worked out because they love each other, but the working it out is actual work.

I like pregnancy fic where people experience their body changing and they accept and work with the changes, even if they don't enjoy them. If the biology of pregnancy is different from common, actual human pregnancy, then I would like you to do some worldbuilding around how the mechanism you picked works. I'm not that picky about whether it's a situation where mpreg is known and common, or it's a mad science experiment, or the character was always already a trans man, or a fertility goddess did it, but I just want you to explain to me (throughout the story, not in a big infodump) how it works. (By worldbuilding, I don't mean you have to make this stuff up from scratch; if you use ABO or mpreg tropes common in your fandom, I just want to know how they work) Three things I am not jazzed about in an ABO context; discrimination against a particular dynamic or babies born via the asshole, referring to partners as "mates"

Some tropes in pregnancy and babyfic that I like:

• Alpha/Beta/Omega (especially alpha women or somehow oviposition is involved)
• wish babies
• alien/animal biology pregnancy and spinning out the worldbuilding implications of that (I read a great hockey story where pregnancy was in the style of a shark, with a clutch of eggs hatched internally, but then the pups stayed in and Hunger Games'd it out to see which single shark pup would be born)
• food cravings
• adoption
• learning infant care basics
• learning infant care basics and wondering how you survived to adulthood because your parents did it so wrong
• lovingly disagreeing with your parents about how to raise your kid
• being tired and dirty from caring for a baby and wondering how it is possible for such a small person to create so much mess and confusion
• family and community helping with the baby
• people playing with the baby
• having complicated feelings about gender
• having complicated feelings about parenting
• not bonding with the baby immediately

The one trope I'm not a big fan of with pregnancy stories is morning sickness, and in baby stories, I'm not interested in super precocious babies. It's fine if their parents are convinced that they're precocious, but let the baby be a baby.

Some stuff I like in general: ( a long list of things I like which could spark your imagination, but I absolutely do not expect you to incorporate more than one or two things. It's a long list! )

DNWs ( this is a bunch of stuff that will make me enjoy your story less )

Prompts from the tagset that looked cool that I didn't request. Feel free to use or ignore. ( a very long list )

Last night I saw Be More Chill staged by the Monumental Theatre Company.

There are a lot of little theater companies in DC doing very good work, and I would like to go see more of it. I like live theater, and the TodayTix app #notsponsored makes it pretty simple to find something to see, even if there are no guarantees about quality.

Speaking of quality: I liked the feel of the company itself; they were set up in the black box theater of Episcopal High School (a local elite boarding school roughly the size of my tiny liberal arts college), they had cute company t-shirts, they served alcohol and were quite chill.

The show on the other hand…. Since I'm now old enough that I think Benny Was Right (RENT), maybe I should have guessed a high school musical was not going to work for me. Also, this is the original version of script and score from the pre-Broadway run; I hope that it tightened up some off-Broadway.

But the music, lyrics, and characters felt generic and archetypical, rather than specific. They genderflipped the computer (why does the computer have a gender‽) to "look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer" instead of Keanu Reeves, and did some staging adjustments to avert some rape-y implications. A lot of the pop culture stuff felt dated (maybe this will ease into period in the next twenty years? If this show is around in 20 years? Please don't be around in 20 years.) The protagonist was also terrible. His only desire was for Christine, but what was it that the liked about her, specifically? I watched the whole damn musical and I do not know. Jeremy had no interests (except for porn), no wants (except for his dad to put on pants), and no relationships except with his stoner best friend, Mike.

One thing that is weird and frustrating about this show is that Jeremy insists that Christine is the only romantic connection worth having, but since he doesn't articulate* what, specifically, makes her intriguing, it's never clear why the warm and sexy relationship he has with Brooke is not enough to satisfy his romantic aspirations.

If I were younger, I could see projecting myself into these lifeless, feckless, undifferentiated characters, but I'm not and I didn't.

*The music mix was bad. The band drowned out the performers for part of every song. Maybe Jeremy said what Christine special to him in his song about her, but I honestly didn't hear it.

Despite the material and the band mix, most of the actors got a decent glory note moment, just enough energy and face to make me want to watch them in something good. I especially liked Caroline Dubberly as The Squip and Christian Montgomery as Michael. Nigel Rowe as Rich really made the most of his song, but not much else. The only complete snore was Jonathan Helwig as Jake.

I'll keep my eyes out for future Monumental Theatre Company productions, but I'm not going to bother with Be More Chill again.