#happening with syy and cwm

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

I really do hope that whatever Lu Guang’s backstory winds up being that he really is just a guy who maybe happened to have had some messed-up ability-related things happen to/around him instead of him being not human or actually from the future or an actual time agent or something like that

[curapicas]

Why I think Lu Guang's answer to the riddle was the detective:

It's given at the same time Cheng Xiaoshi gives his own for misdirection. The one who gave the same answer as CXS was his own dad, a guy that for all his failings, was loved enough by SYY to try and change his death node - WQ is also attached to him, therefore we expect/hope CWM has an ethical side to himself; meanwhile the one who gave the same answer as LG was Vein.

It happens right before LG bets on Vein being murdered on that room, an antithesis to CXS changing the past for what he hopes is for the best to those involved (note: I'm fine with the guy trying to fix a death node by dumping a death node on his bestie's murderer, just pointing out them as a partnership don't EVER do things intending to eliminate the bad guys, ya feel me?)

CXS' answer presumes innocence (more on how to me, this reflects on link click's overall messages under the cut), but LG is analytical; he'd take in consideration that the detective is poor and the animals had a coin;

the riddle states that "you" are the detective. LG spends yingdu burdened by knowledge and trying to solve a disappearance along with CXS; we also know LG feels guilt over what he's doing and CXS' death (which is why he was harsh on Vivian not deserving CXS' sympathy when they were on the phone). Therefore, he not only has been functioning as a detective throughout yingdu and link click as a whole, but also presumes guilt for himself (meanwhile Vein presumes that ppl have hidden intentions like he usually does, I guess)

In other words; LG answers he's the detective bc he not only takes the seemingly innocuous clues into consideration, but by the end of yingdu he feels guilty and burdened by what he has done and feels he has to do. A far cry from the 1st episode, where he identified with the noble heroine who goes into a doomed quest; now he thinks of himself as the sharp detective who would burn a forest down to get what he wants.

Now, personally I vibe with LG and CXS pointing to two different directions: LG makes the audience aware that amidst all of the tragedies in link click, someone is benefiting; there's a person or a group who doesn't care others are being stepped on, which has been the case of the antagonists so far, be it LX or the typical bullies; and LG puts himself among them, since he doesn't justify to himself he has noble intentions so it's okay that they won't help with Emma's investigation, for example.

CXS is the other side of link click: actually, bad things will happen without anyone meaning to, as is the earthquake, the noodle lesbians' divergence, the time nodes getting messed up by well-meaning intentions.

Note: The big takeaway here is that LG thinks it's the detective bc he thinks he's the detective and LG knows himself as guilty. Not that his answer was (or wasn't) the most logical/obvious and CXS' was too naive, I'm actually trying to prove that even if he answers purely using logic, LG is being emotional about it too! A correct answer is NOT the point of the riddle

btw, the positive spin of LG going from the tragic heroine to the cruel detective is that he no longer is passive about fate, and sees it as something that can be seized, which gives him hope

[kurisus]

Link Click Bridon Arc: Thoughts

I'm back to make yet another compilation of my unhinged ramblings from this miniseason. Spoilers for all episodes under the cut.

So we're 3 for 3 on crazy shit happening around Lu Guang on each season finale, huh? First he gets stabbed, then the longest-running fan theory about him is proven true, then he does something nobody saw coming and nobody can figure out.

Like, seriously, when I saw LG threatening Vein in the PV after episode 5, I was scared he was going to make things worse for himself, but turns out it was a threat he followed through on.

Much like everyone else, I'm clueless on what exactly he did (I did watch/read the interview clips where the director elaborated on it a little, but those didn't explain much since it's going to be covered in season 3), but I do have a few observations from revisiting the episode.

Shao Yuanyuan was about to tell Cheng Xiaoshi something else ("One more thing") before Vein interrupted them, and I suspect it was something to do with that eye symbol that keeps popping up (in the Xia Fei PV and on the notebook Wang Qing keeps in her office).

The notebook was what Vein was after, and WQ disappeared with it. She must have grabbed it and skedaddled, since I was under the impression LG and the police arrived very quickly.

What was in the notebook? I have a feeling it has something to do with whatever the hell was on Liu Min's phone that everyone in season 2 was fighting to get their hands on. Something to do with powers, or the true cause of the fire...

SYY is trying to prevent Cheng Weimin's death, and urges CXS not to return to the fire to prevent interference. However, he already was there, and changed the course of events slightly. She also seems to realize at the end that she's not the only one fucking around with the timeline, making things yet more unpredictable. Her existing interference could also be why LG felt things changing slightly in Bridon despite trying to replicate the original events as closely as possible to reach his end goal of killing Vein.

The cause of death on Vein is...odd, and I wonder if it was falsified or something, since it wasn't like his body was sent to burial or cremation. If anyone, he has the power to falsify records. Liu Xiao went to fetch him in what appears to be a morgue, and that's as far as we can tell.

Does LX's power of hearing heartbeats extend to being able to manipulate heartbeats? Did he revive Vein, or is WQ's ability the one to create a fake death, and thus he was aware there was a time at which the subject returns to life?

The only thing that's bugging me about this was the director waffling on whether LG really knew Vein was dead (eventually saying "no"), when he appeared to work together with WQ to bring him down. If he just wanted to stall Vein to give WQ time to escape, he would have known he wouldn't actually be dead.

And what was up with LX telling XF "If you knew each other's secrets, would you still be friends?" What secrets does XF have, apart from being a student at Bahati? Why did everyone they asked about CWM look horrified at the mention of his name? I think it's obvious he started the fire, but there's gotta be something else that's being kept from us about him.

They also never explained how Vein seemed to know the boys were coming (the post-credits scene of him reading the texts about the flight info). Via LX? How did he know?

Anyway, on to the analogy of the last episode. I feel like this part, and the beginning of the therapy session, was really WQ talking to CXS, but as soon as she took that photo on her phone, it switched to SYY.

So the story goes, the animals can't figure out who started the fire and pay a detective to do it. The fire is pretty clearly the Bahati incident (because it is a literal fire), but it's also an overall analogy for CXS and LG sticking their noses in where they shouldn't. They, as the detectives, are hired to figure out who started the metaphorical fire, and I suppose the animals in this case are their clients?

To make this a proper mystery, though, it's missing motive from each of the animals and the detective. What could they gain by burning their home down? What conflicts existed between them that could have escalated to this? Honestly I don't blame CXS for giving the glib "No one started the fire" answer, since I was thinking the same thing. There's a theory LG said a different answer, and that's why it wasn't stated to the audience, so I wonder if that will come back into play later.

Speaking of, there are a lot of things that keep building up that haven't been fully explained, and I wanted to briefly recap my season 2 retrospective since I have a few questions that have been answered since then.

CXS inherited his powers from his mother, and gave them to LG when he died, so presumably LG still has both sets of powers (this was also stated on his character sheet for this arc), unless CXS's faded afer he stayed in the photo for 12 hours. This, therefore, means Qiao Ling has Li Tianxi's powers, and LTX is confirmed to have died.

Her death was something I opposed last time due to not being shown a body, BUT considering this show's genre, it's highly likely her brother will focus on using it to try to bring her back to life, rather than change the course of events with his mother like before. However, since multiple timelines aren't a thing here, I wonder how he will go about it. Either way, we haven't seen the last of her.

Last time I also wondered if Li Tianchen would get a redemption arc or get worse, and I want to think with the introduction of Vein (and possibly XF) as a villain, his sister's power going to QL (one of the good guys), and him generally being manipulated by far worse people, he's going to get better. At the same time, though, he's known LX for a long time, and seems to trust him completely. It's going to take a lot to disillusion him from his childhood friend.

Anyway, another thing I wondered in my retrospective was how many times LG has rewound time, saying my gut feeling was that this was his first. Bridon itself was definitely his first time re-experiencing it, since he kept comparing stuff to "last time" instead of "previous times" and was generally surprised by changes happening.

However, while I'm less inclined to think that now due to inconsistencies with season 1 compared to Bridon (CXS having no clue about his parents, CXS not knowing what would happen if he dove without LG), the events of episode 6 seem to lead directly into season 3.

On the other other hand, there's also the matter of the inconsistencies in the photo studio fight in episode 1 of Bridon, as well as the time lag of about 1 hour from CXS getting shot to LG diving back to the basketball game (I was right about the dive point being the basketball game, heh). There were a lot of animation errors and inconsistencies in this miniseason, which I'll get to, but the issue of the blood streaks suddenly appearing across the floor, and the fact that "Vein" left even though LG, his presumed target, was trapped in a locked room, leads me to think there was more going on. There was also LG going from being uninjured to quite badly injured in that time. (Yes, I've read the "Vein in episode 1 was actually XF" theory, and I don't fully subscribe to it but I do think it's an interesting choice to make XF left-handed in his PV and show Vein shooting a gun with his left hand.)

We also still don't know why this is the "last chance" for LG as opposed to the "only chance." Was that a bad translation? Did he have multiple photos from the game? Did he experience Bridon multiple times, and kill Vein multiple times? It seems weird he'd request a do-over after successfully (he thinks) pulling that off.

In any case, creating an unchangeable death node before another death node to alter the course of events leading to it answers my question about why LG thought "better me than him" when he got stabbed. He thought that might further change the course of events to prevent CXS's death, and was fine with it if that was the case. Plus since this is his last chance, if this doesn't work, nothing will.

I also wondered about LX's powers last time, and we got confirmation he can hear heartbeats, but I doubt that's his only power. I think he stole the power of that guy he played Russian Roulette with in episode 2, since what else was the purpose of that scene except to show us there's a guy with the ability to see various outcomes? He was arrested, not killed, so perhaps LX was just keeping him safe to murder him and take his power later, but I fully believe he has it by the end of season 2. Who else has he been taking powers from?

On a different note, the visual inconsistencies went crazy this season. There was the two frames of CXS having yellow eyes in the first episode that everyone said was evidence that the boys are in an endless loop of diving back to save each other before it was confirmed to be a mistake. I don't necessarily hate the theory on its own, but it was kind of funny to see people going feral over what seemed to me to be an obvious mistake.

There was also the matter of XF's disappearing rug with the eye pattern on it, the book in episode 1 switching between paperback and hardcover, the photo of the trio shattering in a different way, there suddenly being streaks of blood across the floor into the darkroom (though the jury's still out on whether that was intentional, like I explained above. Seems to me like a big detail to overlook). There are also smaller clothing errors. When rewatching episode 6, I was amused by how Vein's sleeves/gloves are drawn differently in every single shot, sometimes disappearing altogether.

I was attributing these errors to the co-director Yuanyuan Lu being young and inexperienced with directing a whole 6-episode miniseason, but there was also the recent news this was supposed to release later in 2025 but was pushed up to winter 2024.

Undoubtedly this was due to the show suddenly increasing in popularity throughout/at the end of season 2, but I'm bummed about it. I'm willing to wait to not have animators overworked, and I hope season 3 doesn't follow the same pattern of being rushed through production to meet demand. Let them cook!!!! They've got something interesting!!!!!!

I saw people complaining about the season being released with 6 episodes instead of 8 like they originally said, but I'm personally fine with the longer first episode since I know those same people would have been complaining about it taking half a season to get to Bridon in the arc named Bridon...ahem. The pacing was kind of weird in the first episode, but the rest were fine, so I do think it was just due to splicing 3 shorter episodes together.

Final thoughts: this miniseason left us with still more unanswered questions, and I hope that in season 3 they start answering them instead of letting them pile on each other without going back. An effective mystery/thriller has a point at which everything clicks into place, and I feel like there's no way they can have one single moment like that without it feeling cheap, so I'm going to resign myself to not having everything addressed. Just as long as they wrap enough stuff up neatly, though, I'll be satisfied.

That's really my only concern. I enjoyed the hell out of this season, short as it was. It was totally unpredictable in a great way, and I generally found it very charming to watch as opposed to season 1 constantly making me cry and season 2 stressing me out every week.

Will season 3 be the last one? Considering it's 24 episodes and the way the plot is moving, it seems like it. However, nothing's been confirmed yet, so I guess it depends on the demand and the studio's production schedule. While I want to see it next year, I don't mind waiting longer if that means everyone isn't rushing to meet deadlines!!!! Please let them cook!!!!!! I'm just one guy but I'm yelling Very Loudly in the hopes that they can hear me.

If yall think I'm bad now...imagine how frazzled I'm going to be after six straight months of Link Click Thursdays, oh lord.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and see ya next time!

[notcarasuma]

Personally, I can't just easily judge/hate Cheng Weimin or Shao Yuanyuan just from the first impression (admittedly bad first impression), but syy made me question a lot of things.

If her ability is the same or similar as Cheng Xiaoshi, doesn't it mean she can jump to the past? As in, syy that we met in yingdu episode 6 is from the future? Where did she go in the past ten years (from 2009 to 2019 and further)?

If she got trapped in time like Lu Guang did, why did she only show up in the future where Wang Qing gave cxs' photo to her? What would it mean for Lu Guang who is probably doing similar things as her? What happened to her within 10 years time gap? And she's still trying to save cwm in the future?

[xiaovein]

if it really is that cheng xiaoshis death node cannot be prevented unless syy allows cheng weimins node to happen we should just let cwm die im srs