#my translation guidelines are in my pinned and on ao3 as well.

[koogi123]

It sucks that this also needs to be said- but if you're doing a podfic of my works on Youtube- DON'T Monetize it. If I'm not allowed to make money off of my own fanworks, YOU aren't either. I don't even aim to make money off of them in the first place, I write them for my own self indulgence and self serotonin. And it's so damn wonderful that people enjoy what I write :,) Don't put down writers who just want to express themselves like that with your own greed.

I allow podfics because I want my fics to be accessible, and because I am no way in hell reading them out loud myself LOL. But I deserve credit and I also deserve my boundaries to be respected. I'm honored that someone would want to read out my fic, or even translate it as well. My silly little fics? No way.

Again though, respect my boundaries and my guidelines for these things.

[cinnonym]

last christmas (i gave you my heart)

Written for Day 4 - Food & Drink of 12 Days of Supercorp @supercorpbb

Read on AO3

Fifteen years on Earth and Kara still failed to understand human customs sometimes.

In her defence, some of them made very little sense.

Like, road traffic regulations? A mystery. (And even though Kara had a license –  had, in fact, fought very hard to get it in the first place and then keep it in many, many other occasions – she was secretly more than relieved that Supergirl didn’t have to abide by red lights.)

But, as much as she’d hated to learn them by heart, at least traffic followed rules. Actual, written, publicly available rules that, for the most part, evaded ambiguity.

The same could not be said for dating. And therein, unfortunately, lay the problem.

See, Kara’s intentions with the dinner invitation had been as pure as could be. (Which, considering it was Lena they were talking about, might translate to “not quite 100% pure” because, like, have you seen Lena? You didn’t invite someone like that over without secretly dreaming about maybe kissing her a little, platonically.)

So anyway, she’d invited Lena for dinner. And it happened to be Christmas, like, the evening they decided on. Because for one, Kara’d meant for Lena to meet Eliza for ages, and also the thought of Lena celebrating Christmas alone in her spacious and endlessly empty apartment made Kara’s stomach cramp into a nauseous lump.

Once issued, Kara hadn’t paid the invitation much thought beyond the routine “Does this dress make my boobs look flat and why do I care” worries that accompanied every meeting with Lena. Oh, and maybe she had been counting the days a little, but like, that was just what people did for Christmas. That was why advent calendars existed (an earthly custom Kara’d always been delighted about).

But in any case, preparations had run smoothly. It was only when the doorbell rang, at 6 pm on the dot just like Kara’d expected, that trouble started looming ahead.

Because Eliza reacted with a “This must be your girlfriend.”

Because Alex rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “you really should have told me.”

Most of all because Lena greeted Kara with a kiss on her cheek.

(To clarify: the kiss wasn’t the problem. In fact, it was so very much not the problem that it almost became the problem again, because Kara’s body responded so violently to the soft press of Lena’s lips to her skin that she all but forgot about the brief confusion as to why things were happening as they were happening. A grave mistake on her part, as it turned out.)

And then dinner was served. Kara felt vaguely aware that she was smiling maybe a tad too widely through the entrée and first toast (“to expanding our family” from Eliza, if Kara remembered correctly – she’d been distracted by Lena’s soft blush at the words), but since she couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried, she figured it was okay.

Besides, Eliza was beaming too, Lena’s lips were permanently curved into a little smirk that was one of Kara’s favourite expressions on her, and Alex…

Well, Alex was frowning, for the most part.

And in hindsight, that really should have been clue number two.

(Or three, considering that there were a million other second clues happening simultaneously. Like Eliza asking an endless string of questions, starting at “Where did you meet” and ranging up to “Who did ask whom out?” Like Lena finding Kara’s gaze and holding it while answering “depends on who you ask, I suppose” before Kara could ask if Eliza was talking about lunch or what. Like Lena’s foot brushing against hers under the table and then, instead of moving away, just staying there, lightly resting against Kara’s. Kara would like to plead that particular circumstance as an excuse for not catching on sooner.)

It took until dessert.

Dessert until Eliza’s bottomless well of seemingly arbitrary questions was exhausted and her eyes, which had been going back and forth between Kara and Lena with sparkling intrigue, settled on a sort of satisfied shine.

Dessert until Lena’s hand had moved from the table to the backrest of Kara’s chair and down to the small of Kara’s back, where it now rested with a casualness that made neurons in Kara’s brain short-circuit.

Dessert until Alex had finally had enough to drink to stop glaring and – much to Kara’s surprise and absolute horror – start sharing anecdotes about how “Kara’s always liked Lena” and how she “should have known this was coming”.

And, like, Kara’d been in a haze ever since Lena’s lips had connected with her cheek, but even she noticed that this was going somewhere in the direction of downhill. Fast.

Before she could protest, however, before she could sit up straight and avoid Lena’s eyes as she denied the truth in these stories, denied she’d ever thought about Lena like that, denied she’d ever woken up with the shadow of Lena’s name still on her tongue, Lena spoke up.

“I have to admit,” she said, her tone so calm that a treacherous hope somewhere in the back of Kara’s head sets fire to all her lies, “that unlike Alex, I was surprised to receive Kara’s invitation the other day. It’s quite the first step, as first steps go, but I am glad for it. It probably would have taken us years to get to this level of intimacy if we’d chosen the conventional way. In fact, who knows if we’d ever moved beyond the friend zone. I, for one, would have never dared to confess my feelings if I hadn’t been 100% sure that they were reciprocated. So,” she lifted her glass, and pinned Kara down with a stare that seemed to say everything at once, “here’s to the courage to grand gestures.”

And while Eliza and Alex toasted back, Kara’s world shattered.

(But like, in a good way.)

***

Sixteen years on Earth and Kara still fails to understand human customs sometimes.

Dating, for example. A mystery. Especially because there are no written rules to it, no actual guidelines that can be read up on if you for example aren’t sure whether celebrating Christmas together counts as a love confession.

(And even if a rule book does exist, dating seems to be a horribly ambiguous matter, in which you coucanld never be sure how the people around you understand or misunderstand your intentions. Or misunderstand them in a way that was already understanding them again. Or even understanding them so well that they can actively pretend misunderstanding them, only so you can understand them yourself.)

In other news, Lena invited Kara to dinner today. It is their first year anniversary.

It also happens to be Christmas.

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 4 - Meng Yao has a crush & Foxglove likes to babble

Hello everybody, welcome to episode 4. I slept like a baby last night, but I have a migraine so I may sound a bit incoherent. (Post episode Foxglove here, I’m not incoherent in this, I’m just ranty)

Poor WWX. Funny story, during my first? Second? Year of Med School I fell aspleep on my biophysics notes during exam period, woke up at 9pm when my alarm for my meds started ringing, realised what I’d done and called my mum (who was on a 24h shift at the hospital) crying. In hindsight is hilarious because I had something like two weeks until the exam so I lost no more than a few hours but oh well.

Full disclosure here: I don’t like the Lan sect, LXC, LWJ and the Ducklings excluded I think they’re a bunch of hypocrites. You can’t call yourself righteous and boast about your almost 4000 rules and then shrug when people decide to commit genocide.

Also, 4000-ish rules? Fuck that noise, there’s a post floating around here where some amazing soul translated what they could see of the Wall of Rules and yeah, some of them are in the “don’t be an asshole, don’t hurt yourself or others” vein which, absolutely fair. But things like “dress properly” who are you to tell me what and how I cover my body with? “Don’t be promiscuous” wow thanks for the slut shaming my dudes. “Don’t smile foolishly/don’t smile too much”, “sit properly”, “don’t be too sad”, “don’t be too happy”. You’re telling me these are rules, not guidelines, not common sense stuff. RULES. You’re telling me people get punished for grinning or crying. Fuck off mate.

And we can’t forget the golden example of hypocrisy “Don’t talk to Wei Wuxian” so much for “don’t speak ill of others”.

Is my Western Girl showing? I’m sorry, I’m from Spain and I was raised by the guidelines “don’t be an asshole, don’t hurt yourself or others, don’t take anyone’s bullshit, live and let live, have courage and be kind, we will always love and support you” so some stuff in here is very very grating. I don’t have enough knowledge about the culture to discern if it is because of my modern sensibilities or because my culture is so different.

Oooooohhh I don’t like birds. I mean, I love crows, ravens and birds of prey to an unhealthy degree, but they keep their distance. The other day a pigeon flew into my building and decided that my (very dark) doorstep was the place to have a rest. I screamed like a banshee.

Hey, those two assholes at the back, get the fuck out of here.

LXC protective mode activated.

You will never convince me Meng Yao did not develop a monster crush right then and there.

Oh no. It’s this asshole.

Oh WangJi about to cut a bitch.

Drag him WWX.

MY’s protective mode activated.

And LXC is too done with this shit. Yep, NHS also thinks MY got a massive crush.

WQ aka Qishan Wen’s only braincell.

It’s the One Braincell Trio!

Notice me sempai! Omg JC’s faces.

This is where I dump all my canon-divergence AUs:

Meng Yao stays in Cloud Recesses. He and LXC keep gazing longingly into each other’s eyes.

NHS introduces him to the other two from the One Braincell Trio. WWX takes one look at him and goes “yep, you’re my friend now, I’m kneecapping anybody who fucks with you.” Because there’s no way he wouldn’t be sympathetic to MY after his own childhood (omg, both of them drunk, making terrible gallows’ humour jokes about living poor and mostly homeless while JC and NHS just listen horrified). JC goes into overprotective bro mode with MY. I mean, he still can’t emote for shit but he’s made very very sure that he will cut a bitch for MY and at least he knows MY has a brain, not like someone else he knows.

Shijie makes friends with MY because Shijie is a goddess and MY is so confused because how the hell does someone so kind exist? And she wants to be friends? And she doesn’t care at all about his past? What? MY.exe has stopped working.

Maybe JZX gets his head out of his ass and goes to talk to MY and warn him about what an asshole JGS is, because I refuse to think JZX doesn’t know it. Maybe MY hears him disparaging Shijie and decides that nope, the Jins can fuck right off every single one of them is a rude idiot; it’s ok with him because of his parentage (it’s not ok) but no one touches Shijie. The Yunmeng sibs is where it is at.

And that’s when he unleashes his full Slytherin powers on behalf of his new family. Because he does indeed have a fully functioning brain and shit is going to get really ugly really fast for all the people he loves if he doesn’t try and mitigate the damage somehow.

(A lot of mutual XiYao pinning is going on in the background because I live for the angst ok. LWJ fully approves of him as a brother-in-law tho)

A lot of terrible shit still happens because this is my AU and I want pain, but not only does JGS not have MY’s enormous brain on his side when he tries to seize power, he’s actively working against him (you can’t tell me MY wouldn’t get the kick of his life publicly bringing down and exposing his terrible father).

I’m sorry, back to the commentary.

This two idiots omg.

It’s WQ! Drag him WQ (gently)

I’m going to channel my ballet teacher here for a second: put your hair up! (You bunch of spider crabs, as she would call us)

I mean, JC’s hair is clearly in his face when he’s doing drills and, while the visual of all that dark hair whipping in the wind with the robes (another beef I have, they look like they’d catch on everything) is very dramatic I can assure you it’s fucking annoying. Plus it limits your visual field a lot. Again, I know jack about the culture and people can fly on swords here so why am I complaining about hair but let me live.

I used to have that much hair (then I got a pixie, now I’m growing it back out) and smacking yourself on the face with your own braid hurts.

Shijie knows what’s up with Jiang “I can only show anger” Cheng.

My one track mind when I saw the fish: Anisakis!

I think I would absolutely become a vegetarian if I got dropped in the past tbh. Not only is there no quality control of animal products (hello Trichinella), there’s also no way to do a proper cold storage (hello Salmonella). I’ve read and seen to many horror stories due to contaminated animal byproducts and, while vegetables pose their own risk (hello E. Coli) usually you only have to be thorough at washing and peeling to not have trouble.

5am wake up call without coffee. Fuck that noise.

Wei “I’m a petty gremlin” Wuxian.

I once called WWX a “mad scientist with ADHD” on an AO3 comment and I stand by that assessment.

Ok, but why the turtle caricature? It’s because turtles are “old and wise” like LQR? Is that the joke? Or are they laughing at WWX’s balls?

AW NO PAPERMAN.

“Tell me, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood? // Where, would you look if I asked you to get me a bezoar? // And what is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?” It’s pretty much the same energy. LQR is Ancient magic China’s version is Severus Snape down to the pettiness. He tries to catch WWX in a mistake, and when he can’t he dismisses his knowledge (look at Shijie’s face when he says WWX should not be proud to know what he does). He keeps pushing until WWX’s runs into a wall, then uses LWJ to “show him how it’s done” I mean, look how smug he looks and how uncomfortable everyone else is.

“Pity... clearly, fame isn't everything.”

(No, I don’t like LQR and I don’t like Severus Snape either; tragic past and sacrifices do not give you a pass to abuse children don’t @ me, I’m not interested in changing my mind)

And here is where all my “mad scientist with ADHD” hc stem from.

“No screaming in Cloud Recesses.” Screams LQR (yes, I’m 100% that bitch)

WEN NING IS HERE HI WN YOURE SO PRECIOUS.

But intercepting an arrow mid flight is some Geralt of Rivia Witcher bullshit right there.

Detective Wei strikes again.

The scenery is gorgeous my god.

Can we talk again about how this 16-year-old boy reacted to someone sneaking up on him by drawing his sword and attacking? That’s not fucking normal, that’s a common reflex in soldiers or people with PTSD.

(The Netflix translation has him calling LWJ “WangJi” and I die)

Thanks for reading!