Those links are fascinating, thank you! I suspect that some of it is a variation on the existing fandom habit even in English of making certain character speak ultra-formally in certain ways they don't in canon e.g. fic in which a character doesn't use contractions even though they do all the time in canon, because their actual speech patterns are missed and short-hand is reached for.

Though I suspect that with The Untamed it doesn't help that the Netflix subtitles at least really do muck about with names and honorifics* in ways that can really change the register. I wouldn't be surprised if there are times where "Wei Ying" or other names get used in these where the text just has "you".

*I appreciate that there are multiple reasonable ways to deal with the issue of honorifics in translation, but I can't help feeling that just dumping them is not the solution.

/drive-by flist :-)