Saya, I'm home.
WARNING: Saya no Uta is an eroguro vn. Aside from heavy sexual themes and gore, it also contains themes of torture, rape, and general heavy violence. Please do not pursue it if you are under 18 or this would otherwise be upsetting to you.
When I was a teen, even a young one, eroguro and similar visual novels were a bit of a "guilty pleasure" for me. While I had no explanation for it at the time, I had been through a heavy amount of trauma and health problems, and often found comfort in the dark topics these types of games had to offer. It gave me a strange sort of insight into my own struggles, and something to resonate with.
I immediately connected to the premise of Saya no Uta because of my own interests and struggles. I had always been intensely into stories featuring eldritch horrors, and was very into cthulhu mythos. The idea of an eldritch girl who only one persom could see as human, who then seeks to make everyone else in the world like her, spoke to a very specific part of my personal psyche. The part that saw myself as horrible, unloveable, and strange, and often had intrusive thoughts about committing violence to rectify it. About doing anything I could to make someone love me.
Because of this, the vn became incredibly personal to me. It was incredibly violent and dark, so it wasn't something I particularly showed to others or talked about. However, it provided me a way to sit with the darkness of my own experiences, and to feel for a brief second that I was understood. It was games like this that gave me an outlet during that time, when I was taught that everything I'd felt and experienced was to be kept to myself so I didn't burden others.
To this day, I deeply resonate with the concept of eldritch horrors, and still love this game. It was very important to helping me cope, and looking back on it provides me a lot of insight into my health and how I've grown over the years. Stories of hopelessness and unknowable horror still speak to me many years later, and I will always appreciate what that genre of horror has done to help me.
Back to shrines?