Rambling spoilers and incoherence follow.
...the conversation between Mianmian (Luo Qingyang, rather) and her husband after Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji leave them is, I think, especially badly translated. It's not that any one line of it is particularly poor in terms of grammar or even inherent logic, it's just that when you put them together in context (and especially when you apply the greater context of the entire show) then it stops making sense and becomes very head-scratching.
Replacing the random farming family with Mianmian's family both makes sense and doesn't make sense at the same time. Like, this way there was no reason for Wen Ning to create a distraction to let them "escape" because they were just standing there having a pleasant and potentially useful conversation with an old friend. Also, the daughter's reluctance to be friendly to Wei Wuxian no longer makes sense: in the novel, she was so reluctant because she accidentally saw a moment of somewhat questionable intimacy (hinging on a bit of hero/villain roleplay that had led to Lan Wangji using his forehead ribbon to "tie up" the "villain" as foreplay) that caused some natural uncertainty in the child. Here, it's just like...she likes Lan Wangji better for no apparent reason? 🤷 Also the purpose of Wei Wuxian wanting to give the child some money is now gone, as the real point of that in the novel was to have the context make Wei Wuxian realize why Lan Wangji's coin purse had been bothering him all this time: it was the very same bag that Wei Wuxian had gotten from Mianmian at Mount Muxi, in which her scent sachet had been made, and which Lan Wangji had stolen from him at some point and was now using to carry his money as a way of having something of Wei Wuxian's on him at all times.
😭 They're in Yiling and Wei Wuxian is reminiscing about the time they had lunch before, and the moment when his thoughts shift from "happy times with my Lan Zhan" to thoughts of a-Yuan being dead...that look on his face just makes me start crying uncontrollably, even though I know perfectly well that a-Yuan is alive and well and a super-sweetie. After he says something about how a-Yuan would be a teenager now if he was still alive, Lan Wangji looks at him with so much emotion in his gaze, like he wants to tell him the truth so desperately but also can't. (Though, really, apart from story reasons, I'm not sure why he feels he still can't tell him. Technically, he ought to have told him a long time ago at this point. Except that then the viewer would learn about it too soon, since that's supposed to be part of the climactic ending reveals.)
....and now it's mistranslating "jiujiu" as "Grand Master," too. Do the translators have something against the word "uncle"? Seriously, why do they keep wanting nephews to call their uncles something other than "uncle"? It's really bizarre. (Also, freaking inappropriate. At least with Lan Qiren, there was some sense to the title, but with Jiang Cheng? No! Absolutely not! An earlier episode had Jin Ling address him by name as Jiang Cheng instead of calling him "uncle," which at least made a modicum of sense. But this? WTF?)
Um.
The dude who was being addressed as "Dad" by Ouyang Zizhen is way too old. Like, he was Yao-zongzhu's buddy and partner in making absurd accusations at Wei Wuxian. In other words, he's of the elder generation, and thus more the right age to be Ouyang Zizhen's grandfather than father.
No way is that his father.
I think I'll go with the headcanon that that man is his father's uncle. Said uncle murdered both his brother and nephew in order to become the clan leader, but then felt guilty about the idea of murdering his nephew's infant son, and decided to claim that the boy was his own son. (I'd say he's just the boy's grandfather, but there'd be less reason to lie and claim to be the boy's father if that was the case, also I had Ouyang Zizhen's grandfather show up and he wasn't so unreasonable, either. Also he was too ill to take part in the Sunshot Campaign.)
Because there's no way the mostly-OC character in my fic would ever turn into that man. The guy in my fic is a bit obnoxious and definitely homophobic, but he's nowhere near being outright evil, which that guy basically was in the final episodes of the flashback, being both one of the loudest voices trying to crush Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants and trying to get his own hands on the Yin Tiger Tally at the same time.
Uh.
Didn't we see Yao-zonzghu getting killed in Nightless City? Or at least having a limb chopped off? That @$&*er should not still be alive. He is almost as horrible as Jin Guangshan. Possibly worse, in a way, because he's also incompetent, so all he's doing is spewing pointless bile. At least Jin Guangshan had the power to act on his evil ambitions. I mean, admittedly, the speech he's delivering here was also his speech here in the novel, but in the novel that was practically his only dialog, period. He was buffed up as a character considerably for the drama, and made much, much worse. Like, "want to see him suffer in hell" kind of worse.
Aaaaand because they typically don't show any of the magical effects in the fighting, the only way they can show their powers being sealed (apart from Zidian suddenly retracting and failing) is to have them start spitting up blood. 😰
Wait! Why is Nie Huaisang using a sword instead of a saber?! I mean, I get it in the sense of "he knows the saber cultivation has cost the lives of all his ancestors" but also...uh...it's very clearly spelled out in the book that although he doesn't want to keep going with the self-destructive saber cultivation, he also doesn't dare change the way the clan cultivates because that would be to disrespect his ancestors.
....and "The Rite of Spring" makes a return appearance. (Albeit only for a moment.)
I think it's especially noticeable because there's a fair amount of brass in it, whereas the original music composed for the show doesn't use brass instruments much, being mostly string-based with some woodwinds. (Given the instruments played by the two lead characters, that only makes sense!) As soon as those trumpets kick in, you know you're back in Stravinsky. 😰 If they had to borrow from classical music for the combat scenes, you'd think they would at least have picked a piece that was more musically consistent with the rest of the score.
So...the Lan Clan's musical technique to destroy evil things is being translated as "Evil Destroyer Music." That...um...sounds really clunky in English. There are places I could use that name in the fic, but I think I will opt not to because..."Evil Destroyer Music." 😅
What I observed during the Yi City arc has continued: the endings of episodes are more abrupt now that they're in the present and are following the book more closely. Not as abrupt as some of the ones I noticed in a different drama (which I swear I recall as one time literally ending in the middle of a line of dialog) but still very much not a "real stopping place" but just a brief pause because the amount of allotted time for the episode was over. At some point I should see if the "special edition" version is posted online anywhere. (This being a web series, I'm sure it must be, though the question of whether it's legally posted anywhere with English subtitles is another one entirely.) That reduced the run time from 50 to 20 episodes and trimmed at least one entire subplot (obviously the Yin Iron subplot), so even when you get into the endgame of the story where there isn't a lot of fat to cut, I'm sure the episodes all end in different places. I'm curious if any of them have better or worse places to end the episodes. Also, just generally curious about what all they cut, because even if you removed every single scene dealing with the Yin Iron, that would only trim off maybe 8-10 episodes' worth of screen time, so one is definitely left wondering what else they cut to make it that much shorter! (I did see someone say that the "special edition" version is essentially incomprehensible if you don't already know the story, though. Which, to be honest, only makes sense. In fact, there's actually a fair chunk of stuff in this version that doesn't entirely make sense unless you know the additional information from the novel that they didn't/couldn't put in the show.)
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