Lan Wangji - Blog Posts
He wasn’t scared of falling. He had fallen many times over the years. But hitting the ground still hurt.
How wonderful it would be if there was someone there to catch him.
Adhd-autism dream couple
Fan coloring of beautiful original art by Marina Primalova
If I had a nickle for every time Lan Wangji actively cut off a cultivator's arm/hand, I'd have two nickles. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Well a whole 2 people asked for it and who am I to deny the masses?
I....it'll be a happy ending eventually. Maybe
It's hit 1200 pages guys I am not okay
Very underrated dramatic moment you see, but I'm just distracted by the fact that Jin Guangyao has lost his right hand at this point so I'ma assume the novel image is mirrored for dramatic effect.
There that's better.
I need more "Lan Xichen gets a happy ending" fics is what I'm saying. Should I post a 900 page fanfic that I've invested too much of my time into?
Ahhhh it's so pretty tho
mdzs jp audio drama x MEDICOS + MDZS characters (幻鏡🪞 ver)
mdzs x 微博会员 + official illustrations! ❤💙🐇
One of my favorite additions that the MDZS adaptations gave us was the little detail that, in addition to storing Emperor’s Smile in his room, Lan Wangji also stored bamboo flutes and was implied to have learned how to carve them and did so on a regular basis.
I just really like the idea that even though he didn’t know if Wei Wuxian would come back, he was preparing for it anyway. He raised Lan Sizhui and tried to train the juniors to be open-minded and unbiased, he held the weight of his whip scars and the sun brand on his chest, he filled his room with Emperor’s Smile that he might never be able to give Wei Wuxian.
I like to think Lan Wangji was learning to carve bamboo flutes even before Wei Wuxian died, since his methods of expressing himself often manifest in secret actions rather than words. Before he knew it, he found himself taking an interest in making dizi flutes and had a collection of them building up - and Lan Xichen is watching with a knowing gaze and offers to tune the flutes to help him improve (does Lan Wangji know how to play any flutes? I assume Lan Xichen knows somewhat how to play a dizi even though his Liebing is a xiao but I'm not a floutist so idk). Bonus angst if Lan Wangji ended up burning a pile of flutes every time he had a breakdown about Wei Wuxian being dead. Then he just goes around carving more.
The original novel has Wei Wuxian using the same out-of-tune bamboo flute nearly till the end, but like - Lan Wangji seeing Wei Wuxian playing badly just to (poorly) hide his identity and then Lan Wangji being so madly eager to show off his skills that he prepared just to serve Wei Wuxian at any and all times. He just whips out a bamboo shaft and a carving tool, and masterfully makes a flute in moments, and Wei Wuxian is oblivious like "Wow, nice job, thx!" and doesn't fully grasp that Lan Wangji is saying "I will make you a thousand bamboo flutes because I love you and will give you whatever you desire, that little surprise and pleasure on your face is worth all the time I waited -"
You know?
Still working way too hard on an MDZS fic BTW, like it's way over 1000 pages in Google Docs and half of it is me just transcribing the novel and the other is me repeating my feelings on everything with an OC or three. What am I doing with my life?
[He wasn't scared of falling. He had fallen many times over the years. But hitting the ground still hurt. How wonderful it would be if there was someone there to catch him.]
Don't mind me just obsessing over this pair
little doodle for twitter lmao
tender 2.2 bc something was bothering me with the lighting on the last one
t-tender 🥺
" But it doesn’t hurt, and once Lan Wangji gets used to it, he actually doesn’t mind. It feels… exciting, maybe? It feels like half of a dance, an invitation to move with Wei Wuxian through unknown steps in order to make something beautiful together. Without really thinking about it, he tries to match the steps a bit, to take Wei Wuxian’s invitation, and—"
Art inspired (loosely) by A Curse of a Different Color by nickel710
No thought Wei Wuxian in homo sweatshirt
Where are you Honey?
Click for better quality
Text, extensive translators note, and general remarks with a bit of meta under the read more
Text id:
Where have you gone
I’m looking for you in the night*
This night like every night
I want to still believe you.
Embrace you this one time**
this absolute last time.
lightning strike me***
I’ll be moving on at dawn
****
But where are you hiding,
I’m looking for you when it’s too late.+
Tonight as a last hope I want to finally catch you
to tell you what’s on my chest now++
to tell you all my mistakes now
to tell you how much I’m scared now+++
to tell you how many tears I’ve shed
I’m begging you
come back to drink them. °
Here there’s everything to see
Here it’s daytime you know
you can have more than just the night.°°
You won’t ever regret if you come back to sit here
where no one knows better than me
how to look at you°°°
Translator's notes:
*night in the og text is actually 'dark'.
** I'm deliberately mistranslating here, in french "embracer" means to embrace and to kiss, but commonly it just means to kiss
*** god this gave me a tough time. French is "promis juré craché" which basically means cross my heart and hope to die. The literal translation would be "I promise, swear, spit on it" and there is a kind of gradation to it. You can say promis or promis juré by themselves. It's also a bit childlike to say the three, which I think fits well the song, someone making a desperate, almost pathetic bid to get their lover closer to them. I didn't find a good equivalent in English, and I didn't want to use "cross my heart" bc I feel like it brings up images of boy scouts. What I used is what I found to be a rough equivalent in mandarin to the french version and then retranslated to English do with that what you will.
**** I deleted a full verse! But I actually have a translation for it :
I once again got fooled,
by your sugar-coated words
and your half backed promises
lulling me to sleep too early
I'm looking for you in the night
where the stench of all this sham
ends up on the boulevards,
in our hopes and without coats.
I didn't really see a point in including it and it was just more words to illustrate, but I did like the whole sugar-coated words (words with water in french) and the literal "bastard promises" haha. Let Lan Wangji be angry and resentful in his grief 2k21.
+ Literally, it's "I'm looking for you in the too late". It is also grammatically incorrect in french but it's even more awkward in English. Also in french it's just "I'm searching for you" but I liked the "looking" motif bc I thought it paralleled well with "seeing you"/looking at you at the end
++ In french it's "to tell you what's on my heart" which is what inspired the art for this specific illustration
+++ as someone remarked in the tags scared and scarred are very close in English, sometimes stuff just works out.
° Still not satisfied with the English for this. The singer for this song actually said he didn't want the lyrics for his song written down officially because he plays on homonyms a lot. Here the word used in french both means to recount a story and to count numerically. And 'boire' (drink) much like 'croire' (believe) is kind of an odd choice to end a singing phrase with? It's not really pretty, and it feels very raw, it really annoyed me that I don't think the rawness of it comes through at all in English.
°° also really stretching the og text here. In french it's "coup d'un soir" meaning literally "one night hit" but it means one night stand. @/pumpkinpaix and @/hunxi-guilai (who you should follow bc the work they do is extremely helpful and god I imagine so time-consuming and draining) both wrote a long post about the translation of 知己 zhiji in English, which you should read but I think the main idea was "the one who understands me" would be an accurate enough translation. I was actually working on this before I found those posts but I like how "looking"/"seeing" someone in English can be used to convey understanding the person (you see me for who I really am, etc). Idk I'm just fond of how "to look at you" means both in the physical sense "I want to see you" and also, no one else will know you as I do.
°°° last TN but I missed "au grand jamais" from the original text. It's just a superlative, it kind means, like never ever in any time or world or something in that spirit. But I really like that the song ends by looking.
In the spirit of things I really wanted to say a few words about the translation ha. I think maybe the first thing that I kinda miss from the french is that eddy de pretto (the singer) has a very uh, crude? way to sing. He is known for being both from a lower-class background (in french I would say from the "cité" which wordreference translates to ghetto) and homosexual. A lot of it is french "argot", which basically means french slang, but it's very difficult to translate because my knowledge of english doesn't necessarily include that much slang, and also it just doesn't hit the same haha. A lot of words are contracted, "r'viens" "j'te cherche" etc, which carry a sense of urgency.
This is maybe turning into a Lan Wangji meta post but I think a lot (or used to) about how he had to have his character growth mostly of-screen, in the years where he had to reconcile being alive and raising a son. One of my interpretations is that Lan Wangji was probably more aware of his feelings in the first place, but when we meet him (post 13 or 16 years whatever), we meet someone who has come to terms completely about who he is as a person, what he feels etc. Like this is a man who probably has lived through some of his worst-case scenarios (his home got destroyed, the person he loved died in front of him). And I'm always thinking of what it is to try to grow and reconcile your teachings while raising a kid and mourning you know? I think that's why Honey (the song) resonated with me in that light when I listened to it, just like. God man's had a rough life.
Also, I wanted to say I'm misinterpreting the point of the song, in context Honey is. Kinda complex (there's nuance), but basically the singer is talking about his partner, who's at the time of the song sleeping with someone else. Personally, I think it's unclear if the person the singer is talking about is cheating on him or if they are just in an open relationship, but the singer overtly yearns for a deeper connection for that person.
Omg not me editing a post that's already too long for people to engage with but I forgot! what the whole point of doing a TN was! It's to show ppl how much gets lost or missed on purpose between two languages that are super close. And it's like, maybe 10 sentences! And yet I some stuff I genuinely could not translate correctly. And not only I am a native french speaker living in an English-speaking country but I've done like, actual translation before. It terrifies me sometimes to think how much is lost, and how much is added, in the translation process, which is rarely examined as even being relevant. (edit edit: it was pointed out to me that it is a very active field of research haha, I meant specifically in fandom spaces it's deffo being examined in academia)
[text : to tell you how many tears I've shed I'm begging you/ Come back to drink them. Here there's everything to see/ Here it's daytime you know/ you can have more than just the night. You won't ever regret/ if you come back to sit here / where no one knows better than me/ how to look/ at/ you.] Trans. of Honey by Eddy de Pretto
part 1 / part 2 / part 3
[Text: But where are you hiding, I'm looking for you when it's too late. Tonight as a last hope/ I want to finally catch you/ to tell you what's on my chest now/ to tell you all my mistakes now to tell you how much I'm scared now] Trans. of Honey by Eddy de Pretto
part 1 / part 2 / part 3
[text: Where have you gone / I'm looking for you in the night / This night like every night / I want to still believe you. Embrace you this one time / this absolute last time. lightning strike me/ I'll be moving on at dawn] Trans. of Honey by Eddy de Pretto
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3
