Me reading the Hecatia interview at the end of Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia and just going "basedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbased" the entire time
Like. Being on the internet forever but only getting into touhou a year and a half ago makes finding out that touhou is kinda woke very eyeopening
Using this post as an excuse to reread that interview and honestly I don't think I've ever recovered from the first time I read Hecatia Lapislazuli basically doing everything but directly constructing the sentence 'The closest thing to a real-world Hell is a land of the free in which the powerful and the useful survive and those outside that strict categorical definition of 'strong' are left stranded in a world of pure suffering' while looking directly into the fucking camera, speaking to you, the reader, about her daughter that just happens to wear stars and stripes and carries a torch everywhere, and how her 'strength' shouldn't just be seen as some noteworthy exception amongst her minority.
Like. There's subtext, and then there's constructing that level of thematic battering ram. And you know what? Literally ZUN couldn't be more real for this.