#lg wants to reciprocate that trust. he wants to avoid betraying that trust as much as possible

[just-honey-dewd]

Honestly, was thinking it a lil strange that in the end Yingdu was the same timeline we’re following current Link Click’s story. It’s just too vague rn to understand how LG’s feeling— how many times and in what specific ways does CXS’s death node manifest? Is it always Vein? Is the xetroverthink actually telling us how many times and in what ways CXS’s died?

However, I don’t think we needed to see a failed dive play out to prove that LG’s been through it multiple times? I think the S1 flashbacks and that one nightmare where he thought he was back in the “present” communicated enough to me that this isn’t his second dive at the very least. LG remembers a different first meeting with CXS, and met him in high school (according to Director Li in an interview). In Yingdu arc, LG has taken a photo in a basketball court where CXS was… and they’re freshmen in uni. This sugggested that in a previous dive, LG has made an unprecedented choice to delay their meeting — or at least changed the circumstances of their meeting, and made a checkpoint to this version.

There’s enough instances of LG being unfazed by things to suggest he’s done a full dive to the past before, but he also gets caught offguard enough to suggest that he doesn’t have every incident alphabetised and organised in his journal. I think LG’s memory and information absorption is kind of inhuman, so that journal isn’t unsettling me— he was able to take notes from CXS!EMMA scanning through the info on her boss’s computer, so he’s really just built different.

I don’t think he’d choose to possess CXS, not only because I think that’s intrusive of him, but it also sacrifices CXS’s autonomy. As hypocritical as LG can be with his dive rules, I think he genuinely believes in not directly involving innocents in dangerous situations for personal objectives.

We also have to acknowledge that if he did possess CXS— within 12 hours he would be stuck in his body, which could be a form of killing CXS and also trapping himself as CXS indefinitely. It’s not occam’s razor if he has to pretend to be someone else on top of trying to save the person he is possessing. (Theoretically he’d have to find a picture that he, as LG, had taken if he wants to return to his own body. Which sounds too complicated to think abt ^^)

Also, on top of that, he probably couldn’t act as CXS realistically. If he possessed CXS, and chose to dive back to s1 era— he’d have himself to deal with. And LG probably would have to subject himself to some form of ego death and crisis from being in a foreign body for long term.

It’s going to overcomplicate things if the CXS that LG is trying to save was actually sometimes a LG from the future that’s directly affecting the timeline. That’s unnecessary uncertainty that will throw things into disorder if he had to account for the possibility that his future self would ever possess anyone but himself.

It’s also just reckless to have two selfish time travellers operating with the same goal in mind in one timeline. Two LGs but one’s possessing CXS sounds like a funny premise, but I think LG’s methods operate with a standard of not imposing his will onto others to avoid influencing people’s choices in ways that wouldn’t happen in “previous dives”. He can’t control people’s actions, but he can control his reaction to things — that’s appears to be his base principles, so that extends to how he’d approach diving to save CXS.

He wouldn’t possess anyone else because symbollically he’s stuck in his own head. Unlike CXS, who extends his empathy generously to people— LG is fiercely independent and isolates himself, only capable of perceiving his influence over others, and sometimes being controlling to the point of not accounting for others’ input.

So I think LG would never even entertain the thought of possessing anyone other than himself.

Mmm, I still think he’s only ever possessed himself, possessing CXS introduces more unknown variables than it solves. Though I haven’t come up with a concrete idea of what defines the timeline we’re following as LG’s “last chance” so (shrugs)

not sure if this has been said before or if this theory has any teeth, but ever since the Yingdu finale it's always bothered me that THAT'S apparently the timeline we're currently in? i expected to see at least one failed dive to prove that Lu Guang has re-lived the timeline multiple times. 1. bc it makes him more tragic, and that's just wish fulfillment for me, but more importantly 2. this line at the end of the finale

saying that this is the LAST chance Lu Guang has to save him (implying more chances were had and they were fucked)

and there IS the implication that Lu Guang has done dives outside of what we see because

this is an insane little diary to have of some of the EXACT TIMES that certain things happen. like, if you asked me to make exact timestamps for something that happened to me a WEEK ago I probably couldn't do it. maybe Lu Guang is just built different, but this to me implies that other dives have happened

but the thing i'm proposing today is: could Lu Guang have been implying that he has done many dives to save Cheng Xiaoshi, but maybe possessing Cheng Xiaoshi HIMSELF?

we've always just kind of assumed that Lu Guang was diving back into his own body and re-living as himself (and in Yingdu, specifically, he does) but if he received CXS's power from him, does that not give him the power to possess ANYBODY who's taken a photo? and why NOT choose Cheng Xiaoshi, the professional photographer and active social media user. he would have a ton of options to choose from right in the studio.

and if YOU received the power to possess people in the past and YOUR best friend had just been killed, wouldn't occam's razor suggest that the easiest solution to prevent them from being killed is to possess THEM and remove them from harm's way?

maybe that's what Lu Guang had been talking about. maybe, using photos Cheng Xiaoshi had taken, he had possessed him as many times as he was able to to try and prevent him from being killed by Vein. fought Vein, hidden Cheng Xiaoshi, run away, etc etc, but somehow Cheng Xiaoshi always ended up dead as a result

finally, as an act of desperation, the LAST idea that Lu Guang had, was not to possess Cheng Xiaoshi, but to go far back in time and possess himself. to set up everything exactly how he wanted, to control the system far enough in the past that the murder of Cheng Xiaoshi isn't even a whisper of a thought in Vein's mind. if he possessed himself and STAYED in the past, he could control everything from the very start