Chapter Titles - Blog Posts

I’m annotating the Official Translation of MDZS before I lend it out to non-Chinese friends, and as I was reading I realized that the Chapters are different! Paper Book ch 1 = online book ch 1-4!

Which is ok, fine, sure…but that also means that there are no incredibly cute chapter titles to make the relationship between author and reader feel more intimate. I love MXTX as much as I do partially because every few chapter titles felt like it was a charming little inside joke that she wrote just for me (and her other millions of readers).

Here is a screenshot and link to Awesome Charming Cute Chapter Titles:

Here are the English Translations, courtesy of the MDZS wiki ❤️:

So my questions now:

do I just Pencil In the Cute Chapter Titles in the paper novel where they would/should appear?

Do they matter as much when it’s so difficult to translate the completely different style that they are written in — cutesy slang — vs. the writing style of the novel — proper “period” XianXia? I mean, of all the LWJ references in the chapter titles, she only writes his actual name Lan Wangji “properly” twice. Twice, in over 100 chapters. I learned how to read slang in Chinese because of these chapter titles! (And the end-chapter notes, and some of the comments :)

What’s the best way to introduce this story to a non-Chinese, non-XianXia, non-BL-reader?!?!?