#we don’t know where Lu Guang is first of all SECOND Cheng Xiaoshi is with pinkie pie and someone mind controlled

[raddestrose]

oh my gosh, this has me stressing so bad. Their whole plan is growing absolutely garbagely like half the team is gone

 and the other half is mind controlled

[brokenmachinemusings]

actually, i’m putting this in a separate post since people usually don’t see my reblogs, but whoever animated train trial’s typography knew what they were doing. props to you. every character has their unique animation while drawing parallels between some of them.

li tianchen, our first character, has tje most out of them, namely 3 (which i noticed at least). qiao ling also has 3, but i left the li tianxi ‘reference’ in my other post which talked about observations.

li tianchen’s are as follows: something like twin stars (alongside a third smaller star towards the side), the first one being framed as in a photograph and the second one simply around the text. maybe worth noting the stars are four-sided and they are hollowed out. accurately representing the li twins, if you ask me. the other one is just another four-sided star, and a constellation around li tianchen. the constellation, again, has four-sided stars, which is quite interesting.

liu xiao has two, but i chose to show one. the other one is a heartbeat monitor which is behind the text, i’m not sure if it counted. a lot of the mv revolves around cutting and dicing like you’re playing fruit ninja, but liu xiao also has a lot of puppet imagery; in his lyrics, too, and he literally holds a wooden puppet at some point. (also, rewatched and the strings are ALL OVER his part, theyre very obviously puppet strings.) either way, the one i show is like a classy, old-timey architecture which i’ve had to clrd way too much of that i’d rather not. (also, is it just me, or does liu xiao’s look a lot like a butterfly?)

qiao ling also has three, but again, i’m showing two. mainly, i don’t feel like making a reblog. you can see the li tianxi one here. as for the ones i screenshotted, it’s a roundish cube, and some more cutesy framing, contrasting liu xiao’s elegant one which is slightly sharper, as opposed to qiao ling’s round imagery.

cheng xiaoshi’s is more brash and stable. two five sided stars at either ends, as well as a lot of cubes and angles for framing. the second one actually looks a lot like either a print with guidelines, or even a photo, or multiple square photos with different dimensions, different type of film. a lot of his animation actually revolves around him diving… well, quite obviously. makes sense why he’s a star and why he has a picturesque framing, mirroring qiao ling’s round one a little.

lu guang actually doesn’t have any specific ones, but he does have two, if you can call the second one a specific one. this one however… diamond shaped stars with a constellation like look. where did i see this one before, hmm. scroll up for your answer. this further solidifies the parallels between lu guang and li tianchen, i think. though, if we circle back, li tianchen’s is double-looped, which often represents “lies”, “two-facedness”, or other similar things. but also, lu guang’s is quite sectioned. or maybe the animator was rushing to get through the last part, or didn’t get enough assets to animate with. if you’re curious, the “other one” is quite literally three dots above the lyrics. groundbreaking, i know.

either way, i hope the animator for train trial got a raise. for the most part, they had ONE artwork to work with and still managed to keep it insanely interesting and engaging while giving colour and personality to all the characters, things that are uniquely them. quite amazing.

[muninnhuginn]

hello! for the wip ask game: 🌀🌧️☔

hi! sorry for taking ridiculously long to answer this, but thanks for asking ^^

🌀Post the fic summary for a fic you haven't written/published yet. It can be hypothetical or something you really plan on releasing...

Went for the placeholder summary of the angsty CXS-QL siblingisms fic I've been stalled on for months:

It's not that Cheng Xiaoshi wouldn't like Qiao Ling as a sister. It's just that she has her family; he has his. That's all there is to it. That's all there will ever be.

🌧️Share something angsty from your WIP.

This is from the siblingisms fic. Hopefully makes sense without much context, but tldr Cheng Xiaoshi and Xiao Li are at the store having accidental emotional (un)honesty hours:

Cheng Xiaoshi muttered, “I’m not going to make the mistake of pushing myself into somewhere I’m not wanted.” That hadn’t been what he’d meant to say. “Not that I think– Maybe when we were younger, it was one thing, but Qiao Ling has her own stuff on, nowadays.” Better. Xiao Li's expression was unreadable at that, so Cheng Xiaoshi cleared his throat and continued, “You do get that, right?” It came out more pleading than he was comfortable with. He clearly hadn't convinced Xiao Li, whose eyes narrowed. For a second, Cheng Xiaoshi thought he might leave it be, but then he moved closer. Cheng Xiaoshi resisted the urge to shy back, well aware there was a shelf directly behind him. “Look,” Xiao Li said, resting a hand on Cheng Xiaoshi’s shoulder. “You’re young. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Now is the time for you to make mistakes, alright?” The grip on his shoulder tightened until it verged on painful. “Make your mistakes now so you don’t make them later.” Xiao Li looked away then, allowing the harsh lights of the store to catch his wrinkles. He seemed old, all of a sudden. “Don’t presume you know what’s going on in someone’s else’s mind.”

☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?

I've got two here. One Link Click (donghua version), one White Cat Legend (cdrama version specifically).

The Link Click concept is something I may attempt one day, but eh, for now it's just in my head. So, the hospital-boat loop in season two. I subscribe to the idea that Lu Guang never meant for Cheng Xiaoshi to loop back in his place at the hospital. And I'd love to explore the implications of that if you actually follow them through. Lu Guang may not have even *realised* that Cheng Xiaoshi went back at first, so in this concept, when he realises what happened (due to CXS casually referencing the phone passcode of trauma LG did not know he knew), he freaks. Thinks CXS could have seen something when was possessing him (s2 finale spoilers obviously :V). And in trying to dig to figure out *what* Cheng Xiaoshi knows from his possession that time (which is... basically nothing) Lu Guang would basically give the game away to some extent. Hadn't decided if to make it full reveal or not, but that was the gist (still not written a proper reveal in general, but at some point I should at least try rather than dancing around it).

The other concept. So, honestly, I *know* there are probably fic with this as the basis but none of it is in English so I'm stuck pawing sadly at the sidelines. White Cat Legend (cdrama not donghua) time travel fix-it with qiubing. Where they both go back and don't realise the other has also gone back and so spend the whole time suspicious of each other. I hadn't gone any further than that because I know time travel fix-it deals tend to be longer than a short one-shot which is all I trust myself to write, but their whole canon loyalty/distrust dynamic is so compelling. They're both falling on swords for each other whilst refusing to clear any of the misunderstandings up. So turbo charging that dynamic with time travel and giving them the chance to fix everything if they'd just talk *properly* to each other is like catnip to me.

[quil12]

So basically, I started looking at the full lyrics for the season 2 opening of Link Click and I started making connections to things that happened over the course of the show and so I just wanted to write out all my thoughts and essentially make a lyrical analysis - it really fits everything so amazingly well and I love it. There are lots of spoilers for the end of season 2 in here though.

As a general thing, I’m interpreting everything in this song as happening from Lu Guang’s perspective.

Let it unfold

‘It’ being everything that’s going to happen. This gives off a tone along the line of ‘I’m ready for it, so get on with it’

Will howling tides give me something to hold?

On to my life when I've sunken so low

I’m including these as one line because I’ve always read it as ‘to hold on to my life’. There’s a line in the first episode of season 2 when he’s bleeding out, where Lu Guang mentions that things are going to be different now, which means that the past has changed to the point where he doesn’t quite know how things are going to go down now. Therefore, this line is asking if there’s going to be something that he’ll be able to metaphorically ‘grab on to’ (probably events that still happen the same way). I’m interpreting the word ‘life’ here as not necessarily his physical life, but instead as the people and places around him (if you want to be sappy, you could say that it’s Cheng Xiaoshi - that he is his life). And then the ‘sunken so low’ part is him knowing that he shouldn’t have necessarily changed the timeline - that he’s breaking his own rules and that he’s doing a bad thing.

Over the end of the vortex we took every breath to follow

Time is often associated with ‘vortexes’, so this would be referring to him going back in time at the cost of the present world.

Where do we go

Where do we end up when we save the world

We don’t know yet what the circumstances were surrounding Cheng Xiaoshi’s death, but it’s safe to assume that it was doing something to help people - based on Cheng Xiaoshi’s personality and past actions, it was something like a ‘heroic’ death wherein he helped a lot of people. So, it’s Lu Guang lamenting that his reward for helping people was ending up dead.

Truth in the shadows so brightened in gold

When Cheng Xiaoshi possesses someone, their eyes turn gold, so the word ‘gold’ here is referring to his eyes - basically that for Lu Guang, all of the dark feelings that he has go away under his gaze, but the truth is still there - that he went back in time to save him at the cost of other people’s lives.

Place our fate into the ones aren't in control

Now that he doesn’t know everything that’s going to happen, he doesn’t feel in control anymore and has to rely on others to try and keep him safe.

–

Stop

A couple things undue

This is honestly a weird line to me that I’m not entirely sure about. I’ve always known the word ‘undue’ as meaning something along the lines of ‘excessive’ which could make sense in that he’s viewing his death as ‘undue’ - like the circumstances around it were excessive and shouldn’t have happened.

Drop the fight and let it follow through

Freeze just for a sec or two

Breathe again in the world anew

I’m including these all together because it almost feels like a list of actions. The first line is probably about Cheng Xiaoshi actually dying, then the second is him only hesitating for a second before making the decision to go back into the past (he still had his blood on his clothes when he did it), and the last one is about him seeing Cheng Xiaoshi being alive again.

I guess that there was never such a thing

Like everything's meant to be

This is him coming to terms with changing the past. Whereas before, he was very set in not changing the timeline and letting everything play out ‘as it was meant to be’, now he’s deciding that he’s not going to follow that anymore - that he can change fate.

But I'mma win this silly game

When I first heard this part of the song, I thought it was about Cheng Xiaoshi wanting to ‘win the game’ he proposed against Li Tianchen at the end of season 1 - which it is definitely referring to as well, but if we’re taking this as being from Lu Guang’s perspective, it’s probably about him changing fate (as in fate is a game) - or potentially him trying to put an end to the ‘game’ between Cheng Xiaoshi and Li Tianchen before Cheng Xiaoshi dies (again, we don’t know the circumstances surrounding his death yet).

Until then I will never leave

He’s not going to give up and go back to his present.

Take back all my regrets

This one is pretty self-explanatory - he regrets letting Cheng Xiaoshi die, so he’s changing the past to stop it from happening. 

And camouflage it like your silhouette

This refers back to the previous line - that him facing Cheng Xiaoshi in the past is him metaphorically facing all of his regrets in letting him die - in other words, his regrets taking the form of Cheng Xiaoshi.

Time is like music

Play it 'til the end and then reset

This is a very simple and pretty self-explanatory line, but I genuinely really love it. We have the simile comparing time and music and then the second line explaining it. It almost makes it seem like doing this isn’t a big deal - that going back and changing the past is as simple as restarting a song - potentially as him trying to downplay the severity of it all to himself. It also plays into the fact that the song rewinds at the end of this verse.

Knowing it all am I destined to fall?

Like once you did for me

Again, I absolutely adore this line - the last few in this section are really good imo. I think this line works the best if you view it from the perspective of happening before the season really gets going - where you don’t know if Lu Guang is going to survive or not. It’s asking if he’s going to die like Cheng Xiaoshi did. It also raises a question regarding Cheng Xiaoshi’s death in general - did he die to protect Lu Guang in some way? You can simplify the line as ‘will I die like you did for me?’ which implies that he did.

–

Back to me

I feel like this is a fairly common line in this style of music if it switches sections like this, but you could also interpret it as Lu Guang ‘having Cheng Xiaoshi back’ now. This makes sense especially after the ‘rewind’ section.

I know that you can track it back to me

Another slightly weird line, but it could be interpreted as him being afraid that Cheng Xiaoshi will figure out the truth of what he did - or just figure out that he’s been changing things.

No matter who and what and when intertwined dive back in time

The truth will remember our legacy

‘No matter what we did together in the past’ is how I’m interpreting that first line. Then, probably that he’s always going to remember what happened the first time around and how it changed.

Wasn't it hard to follow?

There are a couple different interpretations of this line, but going off the next line, the one I like the best is him asking himself if it was hard to go back and change what he needed to - to follow his plan to change things.

The other big interpretation that I see is him asking Cheng Xiaoshi if it was hard to follow his instructions not to help people.

I'd do it again tomorrow

It drag me down and drag me down

He would be willing to make the same decision to save him all over again even though it’s eating at him.

Maybe we'll never leave

These are his doubts - that maybe he won’t succeed and that Cheng Xiaoshi will die again. That he’ll have to keep going back to try and save him over and over again.

Like trying to bend water

Why would you even bother

Another thing time is often likened to is a river, so it’s saying that it’s a task equivalent to trying to change the course of a river - of nature - by himself, so therefore, what’s the point in trying?

Time is like music

Now you know I've got to kill it

He wants to stop time or at least divert it beyond recognition. That he doesn’t care what happens to it.

Wanting it all

And the whole world will crumble and fall

He wants Cheng Xiaoshi to survive and he’s willing to sacrifice the entire world and the lives everyone in it in order to meet that goal.

–

Let it unfold

Will howling tides give me something to hold?

On to my life when I've sunken so low

Over the end of the vortex we took every breath to follow

Where do we go

Where do we end up when we save the world

Truth in the shadows so brightened in gold

Place our fate into the ones

(This is all the same as the beginning)

–

I've held promises unbroken

Probably a promise to himself/Cheng Xiaoshi saying that he would figure out a way to save him.

Even when the night has fallen

‘Night has fallen’ is a phrase that has a sense of despair or hopelessness. He’s held on to this promise even when he feels like he can’t do it or is wondering if it’s okay for him to do.

Shattered mirrors our reflection

This is actually an ambiguous line. You can interpret the word ‘mirrors’ as either the plural of the noun ‘mirror’ or you can interpret it as a verb i.e ‘to mirror something’. I think you can get a similar interpretation of the line out of both of those - saying that their reflections are shattered - that Lu Guang has had to put his morals on hold by sacrificing the world to save Cheng Xiaoshi, meanwhile, not only has Cheng Xiaoshi had to do the same in the past and knowingly not help people, he’s also living on borrowed time - in Lu Guang’s present, he’s already dead.

Should you keep the light on reason

Asking himself if he should just give up on the whole thing - it’s not reasonable to do this - it’s actively hurting people - but he’s not acting within that reason

I've held promises unbroken

Shattered mirrors our reflection

Let it un-

Let it un-

Let it un-

Let it unfold

These are all repeat lines, but the song ends with him saying to bring it on, that he’s ready to help him and make sure that he doesn’t die again.

[rysmaonthemic]

Shiguang dai li ren/Link Click thoughts

Spoiler season 2

I needed to take a deep breath after watching the last episode of season 2. Too many questions, too many theories: my head was and is at full speed. The whole season was hell of a ride, September 22th has to be a national holiday for Shuguang dai li ren fans 😭 (yes I’m a drama queen)

Establishing strict rules that should never be crossed otherwise terrible consequences would occur, the cliffhanger of saison 1 open the door to a large amount of questions. Thus, season 2 begins with a promise of trials and tribulations.

Through out the episodes we are the witness of massive ups and downs with a frenetic rhythm: it’s an absolute emotional roller coster for the viewers 😭. The unbearable tension reached its peak when we found out Lu guang is from the futur and he’s trying to change the past at all cost.

At the last minutes of episode 12 when we see the blood on his shirt, I don’t think it’s after being stab in S1 (he wouldn’t be so calm) it means it’s directly after Cheng Xiaoshi death in his real timeline ( bro didn’t even try to live 00.3s without CSX😭)

Despite of everything LG taught us, he broke the rules. We were aware of the rules through LG statement but now that we know he is an unreliable character maybe those rules aren’t completely true? For example the 12 hours rules (if so why would he lie to CSX?)

LG was also a time traveler: since when did he has the power?

He either had it before the new timeline - I don’t think so- or he gain it when CSX die in his arms. (Which imply futur-LG no longer has CSX power in the new time line). I think it’s the second solution.

We see LG going back to the past, is it the only time he did so? If not, how many time did he uses it?

To my mind he only used it one time. The way he feels guilty when he did it shows that it’s not something he is used to do.

What’s in the picture ?

I think he went back in time either at his first encounter with CSX or at the overseas trip : either way the LG we have known since S1 has to be LG from the futur.

We will learn more this overseas trip in s3 for sure (as well as CSX and LG past, I imagine a lot of flash back in s3)

Qiao Ling acquired Li Tianxi’s ability then how is she gonna use it ?How would she confront LG about it?

I think she would be chocked with a lot of empathy and understanding toward LG. She might combine her ability with LG in order to prevent CSX death…

Liu Xiao is clearly a new threat alongside Li Tianchen : Does he has power too? Is he kind of a time line agent or something ?😩 Will he combine his supposed power with Li Tianchen ? Now that he lost his sister and left his phone on the bench I think he has nothing to lose.

Moreover, how will CSX react to his non-death news ?

I feel like LG wouldn’t admit his act directly to CSX and CSX is going to found out through someone else. Will he be :

- Furious at LG (he prevent him from saving the village whereas CSX was deeply affected by it)

- Enraged at LG but accept his destiny

- Mad at LG but try to help LG to save himself

Whatever the answer above, I think CSX will be extremely angry at LG and his impulsivity might put him even more in danger.

LG is clearly willing to do everything and anything for CSX’s sake. However, all the event in S2 (twins etc + him being stab) is unknown to him bc it didn’t happen in his original time line. Lu Guang said something like “event seems to be changing ”

What if, at the very end, he goes back (one last time) to a past where he didn’t even meet CSX? If saving him means to never met him in the first place I think he would.

(Without LG in CSX’s life everything we saw wouldn’t happen ..?) (it’s super sad tho💀)

Whatever the end of it, LG might sacrifice himself for the life of CSX.

All in all, Lu guang is gay, we must protect CSX, QL is an adorable bad ass and we’re all going to suffer.

One last straw: LG keeps the date of CSX death as his phone password the same way Edouard Elric kept the date of his mother death on his watch. They both keep it as a reminder of their goal and the lost of their love ones 😃🔫

PS: I need to watch S1 again as well as S2

[muninnhuginn]

Thoughts as of end of s1 of Link Click. This is... mostly just going to be spam.

- I’ve been thinking this the last few episodes and I think as of the finale I still believe it to be the case that the show works best when trying to tell fairly self-contained stories about people and their relationships.

- Ngl, I’d seen some speculation online about an “opposing” person who could possess people, but I hadn’t really bought into it until Liu Min suddenly lost control of his legs again in the last ep. I guess all the mentions of “my friend” as well as the police case weren’t totally for nothing. I do feel the plot side of things has been weaker than the rest, so we’ll have to see how this spins out in s2.

Rest of thoughts under cut.

- My main qualm tbh is how Emma’s been handled. In episode one, they made sure to characterise her by her connections with her boss, her parents, and generally did a really good job of making people empathise with her and giving a hopeful end to her story before pulling the rug out from under everyone’s feet. So, episode one on its own I don’t take issue with because for shock impact it worked super effectively and hit emotionally hard because of the entire setup. What I personally didn’t like was how we returned to her in later episodes, found out it was worse than expected, and then the writers tried to pull the exact same trick as episode one. I’m not going to say the scene at the bridge wasn’t still emotional because it was, but I do find it a bit... not sure the best word to use here... “cheap”, perhaps? Because you give hope and take it away once, that works. But to do so again after even more build-up about potentially saving her? It does feel a bit like they’re just trying to cash in emotional hit points, just a tad.

- Semi-related to the last point is my half belief that Emma’s death was always a node and so CXS didn’t actually cause her death so much as change the opportunity for when Liu Min could get at her. (This is also somewhat backed up by Lu Guang’s confusion over how Emma could be saved when it looked like CXS was persuading her successfully not to jump) However, CXS believes (and the way it’s presented to the audience also agrees with this, I’d say) that Emma would originally have survived and CXS sending the message altered the node to cause her death. Ultimately, I lean towards the former explanation, but I don’t know which is “correct”.

- Time travel mechanics. As you can tell by the above, as of the finale, I’m not totally sure as to how these actually work. The mechanics started fairly solid by virtue of being deliberately ambiguous around it all and sticking to the node explanation. However, I think they start losing consistency around the point of the Doudou episode with the revelation that if CXS goes into a picture from CCTV footage he’ll just appear in them as himself rather than as whoever took the photo. And the fact that the past was clearly changed enough to guarantee Doudou’s safety when that seemed tied in with the node of him being abducted. I think the latter I can perhaps try to explain away if you try to make it about “visible nodes” rather than just “nodes”. By which I mean, if the situation as LG/CXS understood it was that someone had died on x day, then they could manipulate the situation so that this person only appeared to die on x day, and then that person had to not be revealed as alive to them until the present day. And this would all check out because to them the nodes hadn’t been “changed”. That said, I’m not sure at all if that was what was intended by the writers or if I’m just trying to explain away plot holes here.

- My favourite arc is definitely the earthquake one. I’m not sure how well it’ll hold up on rewatch, but on my first go around every single episode in that arc worked excellently and for different reasons, at that. First episode was more about establishing the scene and near the end there’s the worry Cheng Xiaoshi is going to be impulsive again. Second episode is meeting the characters of the arc more and just building the sense of unease because why is Lu Guang saying nothing will change? And then the last episode is where you know where it’s going and the episode uses that to full effect, especially with Chen Xiao’s mum and the parallels to Cheng Xiaoshi’s own parents. I think if I were to make someone watch any arc within the series, this would be the one I’d recommend.

- The fact there’s going to be a season 2 reassures me at least on one of my major quibbles with the show, namely how Cheng Xiaoshi had a lot more development than Lu Guang or Qiao Ling. Definitely hoping that next season is going to use the opportunity to fill in all the gaps we’ve left there, especially given how promotional materials, the opening, and the ending all give the impression of a much more balanced cast than we ended up getting in season 1?

- I’ve barely skimmed around the fandom for this series beyond finding general discussion threads for each episode, so I don’t know how correct my impression is here, but I feel like the sound design for the episodes is super underrated. Whenever it uses the ending music to build tension before cutting to the ending proper, for one. But I think the best use of music was in the original Xu Shanshan confrontation with “Liu Min” as well as its replay ft. Cheng Xiaoshi. The insert songs were also pretty good. (Meanwhile my impression on the art/animation is that I like it personally for its quirks and how it shows expressions really well, but I can definitely see how it may be an acquired taste)

So yeah, those are my thoughts overall. I guess it I were to give the series a rating I’d say around 7.5/10 overall, though my opinion varies depending on the arc and I think that how s2 pans out when that releases could definitely affect my opinion of s1.