(fallen london stamps by a lot of folks have That One Media which woke their inner nonhumanity and I think for The Girl (and by some mathematical principle, a fair number of us) it was FFVI. the espers (and their treatment at the hands of the Empire) haunted her for years. she always wished that she, too, could make her own secret sanctuary dimension and seclude herself away from the world that felt so foreign and exploitative
thinking about how there are stories that are big fantastical aesops about how Imperialism Is Bad but like, a lonely and abused kid might not really be thinking about how Imperialism Is Bad or whether this is a good and nuanced discussion of how Imperialism Is Bad. instead they just might see themselves in the magical creatures being slowly drained of their lives by the empire, and their family in the empire, and I think that even though that's a very specific and personal reading it's still a meaningful one
