I think you are implying a bit too much here
It is still nowhere certain to be Cindy and Wade's bedroom. Yes, the photo looks a lot like Wade but the wreath is kinda hard to swallow for someone below 50.
Yeah, it's speculation, I agree. But if you compare it to the picture Cindy posted in chapter 8, the colours look completely identical. It would be a pretty big coincident if another picture had the exact same colour structure.
I agree on the wreath, though. But as we know, she never goes out anymore, and Wade isn't very social with her either. So if a girl like Cindy spends way too much time at home trying to find meaningful things to do, well, I guess she'd eventually end up with wreaths.
Edit: If it
is Cindy's bedroom, what I'm most worried about is the "live, laugh, love" picture. Imagine if Ian and Cindy become a couple and Ian's book becomes a huge critically aclaimed success… And the rumour then starts spreading that he's got a "live, laugh, love" picture over his bed? The guy's going to lose all his credibilty and become the laughing stock of the whole publishing industry.
For the backgrounds I think you are misinterpreting the word final in ' Meanwhile, I'm dropping a couple final images that I teased a while back in sketch form. ' IMO final refers to the state of the images as in finished, not in sketch form. She never said that these are the only new backgrounds.
Yeah, I agree on the meaning of "final", but when she posted the sketches she wrote that "Chapter 9 will feature
2 new backgrounds. Or, more precisely, will feature a new background and retroactively add another one". She didn't say explicitly that those were the only ones, but I think she would have worded it differently if it wasn't the case. (Axel's apartment and Seymour's office were, as we know, created a long time ago.)
For me it was always clear that the trip would be limited in scope. Lena can't spend much time away as all the characters are here and new characters don't make much sense as they wouldn't (be here).
I completely agree about the point on all the characters' location. But once you've strongly hinted at something like that trip happening, you have to somehow follow up on it; that's why I expected it to be a significant part of next chapter. But I guess the fact that we have two protagonists makes it easier to skip the trip and still somehow include it in the story – with phone calls from Lena to Ian or something similar.