all right guys, let’s have a conversation about linguistic register, Lan Wangji, and I guess Wei Wuxian can come too
(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–
