#yang dong

of course, ye wenjie was the absolute highlight of the story. i dreamed of a female protagonist like this! the one who doesn't heal from her trauma but bears it with terrible consequences. i kinda get her decisions and of course i hate her for them as well and the way the circumstances of that one insignificant life actually shaped the destiny of entire humanity is just... delicious. there's something so humane about that, even if it turned out to be ultimately anti-human. the parallels between her and the trisolaran responder, the irony of both wishing for a better civilization and willing to betray their own for each other unknowingly?? oh boy, i'm so looking forward to see how it plays out.

but please, PLEASE tell me there will be something more about yang dong. because this is the single most fascinating point to me emotionally, and i desperately wish that the mother/daughter dynamics were explored more in depth. the generational trauma, yang dong becoming an unwilling sacrificial lamb for her mother's dream. i mean, ye wenjie also had no idea it would come to this, right? she wasn't capable of loving her husband and that's a sad reality for many women, especially back in those times, but her own child? would she try and save yang dong if she knew? did she think about it when she found out? i know ye wenjie is an incredibly traumatized woman and obviously shut down because of this but i wish we had more of a glimpse into how she took the news of her daughter's suicide, whether she possibly connected the dots. did she regret it? she obviously doesn't regret her message to the trisolarans, of course, but... maybe i'm lacking media literacy here and i'm one of those people who need everything spelled out for them, idk. it's just so delightfully tragic, i can't stop thinking about it as well.

and just yang dong herself too. she inherited her mother's trauma but it was still uniquely her own. growing up on a military base, in isolation with scientists like her own mother who left little space for humanity. how science itself was possibly the only love they shared, so yang dong crumbled when it was taken away from her. unable to cope in a world that made no sense. i wish we had more of a glimpse into her mind and her character.