This is a great post! I find Tan Xiao and Zheng Yi very moving, and you've picked up on a lot of the ways and moments that make them so. Some random thoughts: She could simply have been adopted by Zheng Zhongyuan, no mother involved (in which case, how did she get from him to her birth parents? Is there an underground Dixingren illicit adoption thing going on, with Zheng Yi and Zu Ma too?); or maybe Zheng Zhongyuan married her mother, who was Dixingren, or maybe her mother was Haixingren and her birth father Dixingren. So many possibilities and all sad. I refuse to believe that she's 15--I think maybe that's a slip from a pre-revision version or something, that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Ten or eleven at most by me. Given that, the thing that gets to me about Zheng Yi is her air of fatalism right from the start--she's already resigned to bad things happening, and not having any good options. Tan Xiao is an unlooked-for blessing for her. Given that they step in to fight for the SID at the end, I figure she does learn to control her power--maybe Tan Xiao's technical knowledge helps? It's kind of an ongoing theme, that it's not the power itself that is bad but the way you use it (early vs late Zheng Yi, Wang Yike, Zhu Jiu vs Wu Tian'en and their teleporting, Shen Wei vs Ye Zun, in terms of temporal power Zhao Xinci vs Zhao Yunlan even). (And thank you for the fic rec! ♡)
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She could simply have been adopted by Zheng Zhongyuan, no mother involved (in which case, how did she get from him to her birth parents? Is there an underground Dixingren illicit adoption thing going on, with Zheng Yi and Zu Ma too?); or maybe Zheng Zhongyuan married her mother, who was Dixingren, or maybe her mother was Haixingren and her birth father Dixingren. So many possibilities and all sad.
I refuse to believe that she's 15--I think maybe that's a slip from a pre-revision version or something, that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Ten or eleven at most by me. Given that, the thing that gets to me about Zheng Yi is her air of fatalism right from the start--she's already resigned to bad things happening, and not having any good options. Tan Xiao is an unlooked-for blessing for her.
Given that they step in to fight for the SID at the end, I figure she does learn to control her power--maybe Tan Xiao's technical knowledge helps?
It's kind of an ongoing theme, that it's not the power itself that is bad but the way you use it (early vs late Zheng Yi, Wang Yike, Zhu Jiu vs Wu Tian'en and their teleporting, Shen Wei vs Ye Zun, in terms of temporal power Zhao Xinci vs Zhao Yunlan even).
(And thank you for the fic rec! ♡)