Wings

   Why is the art of fried chicken wing preparation so stagnant? Hot/Medium/Mild. Those are your options, plus some stupid green dip crap. What about strawberry teriyaki sauce? Why not marinate it in orange soda? Or chocolate syrup? Sure, there's stuff like jerk chicken and different cultural styles of chicken wings, but it's baffling to me just how conservative, how inconsiderate the sports bar chefs of America have behaved towards this hallowed national treasure. I mean, people regularly spend hundreds of dollars on exotic burgers and bacon pastries (this nationwide bacon fetish still amazes me) and the like, but are wings so low on the cultural totem pole that no one even gives a shit, just accepting their tired, tiered gradations of 'hotness'?

   I really think everyone in America needs to make a batch of orange strawberry chocolate hot wings, and just see what they've been missing. What could go wrong with a little Gallian avant-gardism in one's life? I think it's a great idea.

Saya no Uta

   Saya is a complete monster, a gleeful sadist who revels in exploiting Fuminori for his genetics and companionship. Yet she does genuinely come to love him, and even saves whatever chance of living he has left. It is clear that Fuminori’s insanity heralded the end to any sort of normal ‘human’ existence – but, as opposed to suicide, in finding Saya he became something else, something truly horrifying. He isn’t so much evil as utterly different, dissociated from the human condition so fully that he fails to recognize his own surroundings, and can only see his fellow man as repulsive, nourishing cattle.

   The tragic irony of Fuminori is how his humanity ultimately destroyed itself by fulfilling itself – in failing to recognize his own species as ‘people’, and taking solace in his graceful delusions of Saya, the only “person” in his life, he killed, consumed, abandoned, and ultimately doomed those who had been dear to him, but could no longer comprehend him. Still, residing in Saya’s World, he holds a small pity for his friend Yoh, mutilated and transformed by Saya into something appreciable by him, and even admits that he cannot bring himself to ‘hurt’ those he sees as humans, even if he knows the truth to be much different. His old acquantances Kouji and Ryoko are nothing but interlopers in his quest to be with Saya – and though one must be destroyed, it is not out of malice or hunger, but simple self-preservation. He has become in all but flesh a Sayathian being, with her eventual conquest of Earth the only way to absolve his sins and bring peace to his broken mind.

   The crowning moment of Fuminori’s life was the completion of Saya’s mission – her titular Song, transforming all humans on Earth into her own species. Our becoming Sayathians, nigh-immortal, intelligent, durable, and advanced as they are, was a perfect fate for him and us – we lose our weaknesses and failings to  become better, and Fuminori can live in peace with fellow humans once more (presuming Saya’s effect on him extends to her brethren.)

   In any case, this is the most refreshing perspective on horror fiction I have encountered in years, even without Saya. What if a Lovecraftian God was the only example of beauty and kindness one could ever know? What if all other people were repulsive monstrosities, yet also the only satisfying sustenance left on Earth? This story writes itself, yet, thankfully, Saya no Uta transcends it, with possibly the most beautifully inhuman finale of any game I’ve ever seen.