#so whatever im saying is just like gathered bits and pieces from those expert analysts yeaahhh

[asherasgayagenda]

oopsie link click angst thoughts hit me. my apologies for the rest of this ask 🙏

do you ever think about a potential ending where lu guang is dead and cheng xiaoshi goes through all the photos they have together just to feel like he's not gone. to spend just a few more moments together. but each photo can only be entered once and eventually there's none left and he has to accept that lu guang is Gone.

or what if they never had any photos together. what if that was an unspoken rule between them. so when lu guang is gone cheng xiaoshi can do nothing.

and they had bunkbeds. it's always strange losing someone when you're so used to having them sleeping in the same room as you. everything feels quiet. too empty. too big of a space for just cheng xiaoshi and qiao ling.

apologizing in advance bc im no fandom theorist i just kinda go woag. feelings

thats like. chefs kiss angst level. cause I think cxs would obviously try to preserve the memories that he has and gain more in the remaining ones, if any, that he has. that kind of ties to a paradox theory—what if cheng xiaoshi took photos in the photo and then preserved them? and then jumped back in time [in a photo in a photo]—would that work? I keep thinking about that one lc comic I saw a while ago that begins with shiguang having a normal day, and lg is oblivious to the odd way cxs is acting.. and his golden eyes. yet he's not really There he's only catching glimpses of his memory and even that is a ticking clock. I think he'd be gripped by that fear and desperation, knowing that he's selfishly using up whatever he has left just for one more moment of peace? calmness? normalcy? with the one that he feels connected to. but I think it'd be character of cheng xiaoshi to fight with whatever he has, tooth and nail, whatever it takes to bring lu guang back to him. disregard lg's rules because he just cannot accept that he's beyong the realm of saving.

I think they would have a few photos since cheng xiaoshi has (canonically? atleast in the shorts... but that's not exactly canon) taken photos of lg before but. I like the way you think. imagining cxs absolutely hopeless., knowing that nothing he can do in the present world can change the fate of lu guang's death. ough. because it's always worst when theres nothing to do. there's nothing more hopeless than knowing a definite fact and having the knowledge that there was AND IS nothing that could alter it. maybe he could convince himself that "it's for the better" if he acted (no matter how rashly) on the small glimmer of hope to restoring lu guang, to restore his memory, to restore the person that he knew. maybe, he could tell himself enough times that lu guang isn't completely gone, there was still some way to capture the "lu guang" he knew, and then do something about it. but all he can do it to settle with his own futile memories , that crack as time goes on.

your last line holy shit that was poetic as hell. thinking about that... how cheng xiaoshi would need to get himself used to the way that it used to be Before Lu Guang. and finding himself absolutely unused to dealing with a silence beside him. because there's a blankness where the 'silence' used to be, you know? it might've been fine with ql in the past, but then again, there's something missing that even his childhood friend can't fill.