Ϟ "After all this time?" "Always"

2.0 farming (it's not easy at all)

"Chu Wanning watched coldly, but his heart was gradually getting hotter."

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In order to resolve this issue, the method Luo Binghe employed was to look for human vessels. When the moon was full, he’d search for someone with strong spiritual energy and pass the excess demonic qi in his body to them; in exchange, he’d absorb the greater part of the other’s spiritual qi. Like this, balance would naturally be achieved.

Hualian AU’s

«The moment Xie Lian raised his head, a silver butterfly flew past his eyes. That silver butterfly was sparkly and translucent, looking pure and limpid. This butterfly was extremely intelligent. Not only was it not frightened, it even temporarily stopped on his fingertips, both wings glittering and beautiful to the utmost degree.»

(and I do genuinely mean conversation, I’d love to hear other people’s input on this, because I did just write a long-ass post about the subjectivity of interpretation in translations)

So when I started interacting with the fandom and reading people’s fics, I got really confused by the way some folks were writing dialogue for Lan Wangji; he often sounded super awkward, spoke in fragments, and sometimes exclusively in third person. To be fair, all of those are elements of his speech at various times, but like, seeing it in English-language material felt like a really heavy-handed way of rendering it in translation?

I guess when you use third person within the first three episodes of the show, it makes a pretty big impression on the audience

This is not at all intended to be a criticism of people who are 1000% writing and creating wonderful work, which is more than I can say for myself, but I want to poke and prod and tease at some linguistic nuance here.

Take a deep breath, grab a pot of tea (this’ll take more than a cup), because we’re going to take the scenic route on this one–

because I’m a nerd who majored in ancient China and still can’t let it go

okay so we all know that wangxian invented romance, but let’s talk a bit more about the iconic dialogue in episode 25:

Lan Wangji: 你把我當成什麼人? / What kind of person do you take me for?

Wei Wuxian: 我曾經把你當做我畢生知己 / I had once thought that, in my lifetime, you would be the one who knew me.

Lan Wangji: 現在仍是 / I still am.

I’ve seen various translations of the phrase “畢生知己” as “lifelong confidante” or “soulmate,” and I’m always so torn because these are both fine translations but like, not quite there