Jolts up wait. Link Click mother thesis is that mother loves you so much but cannot meaningfully protect you from anything.
Its so omnipresent in the narrative. Cheng Xiaoshi and Shao Yuanyuan, Chen Xiao and his mother, Emma and her mother, Doudou and his mother, the twins and Liu Lan. Mom loves you. Mom is ill tempered or faceless or too passive but she loves you. But she can't really protect you at all. Shao Yuanyuan, we don't know much about her, but we know she loves Cheng Xiaoshi and yet in her quest to save her husband her son is dying and we don't even know if she knows. She loves her son but she left him too and he grew up with only Qiao Ling and a belief that never came true that his parents would come back for him. Chen Xiao's mother loved him to a point she sacrificed her life for him but she couldn't protect him from losing everyone else he cared about, from every regret in his life. Doudou's mother loved him to a point she broke after he was kidnapped and yet was unable to keep him safe right in front of her. Emma's mother is the one constantly reaching out to her and worrying about her despite her father's dismissal and yet she couldn't protect her daughter from the predatory workplace she wound up in and couldn't save her from dying. And Liu Lan? Hugest example of this. Every step she takes to save the twins from Li Fan is the wrong one, everything she tries fails until she bleeds out in their arms and it saves nothing, Tianchen continues his father's violence and anger and Tianxi is never given agency in anything until her dead. Mom loves you so much. Mom can never protect you.
And Dad? Who is Dad but the perpetrator. But the one she fails to protect you from. But the one who doesn't love until its too late. But the one who leaves you first, but the one who might have cared and loved you too but didn't understand what you needed. Mom is trying and Mom can never protect you. Is Dad even trying at all?
It's just. The way gender is so central to Link Click - the eternal link between masculinity and agency, femineity and the lack of it - it's insane. It's all insane. I'm going insane. Mom loves you and can never protect you but god didn't she try and was it enough?
