Oooh, that's a great point about why she starts talking to Xiao-Guo in the first place, and her wanting to be remembered.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Crow tribe have a kind of "survival of the fittest/no time for weakness" mentality

Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily a deliberate/conscious philosophy - Ya Qing's behaviour doesn't really fit that, IMO - but just in a "people falling through the cracks if they can't keep up" sort of way? That would make a lot of sense to me.