Confucius, Jesus, Guang Liang and Shinjou Yuu all said it: “first love is infinitely beautiful.” Especially in Japan, a country with an especially deep complex about “初めて” (the first time), “first love” means a sweeter, more awkward, even slightly painful memory you can’t stop chewing on.

“First love” is the first time someone’s heart stirs, the first time they taste what romance is, the first time they start to mature emotionally and learn the playbook. After going through it, a person might turn into a smooth operator or a cynical old hand who no longer gets moved by the simple stuff. Seen that way, first love really is precious.

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Ranked matches in 王者荣耀 hadn’t been going well lately. Someone suggested I buy a “touchscreen” controller to improve the feel of the controls and boost my win rate, so I did.

Taobao has way too many kinds of these things, so I bought every single type.

Right now these products fall into three categories…

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Back in high school I read web novels every day. A lot of them were… okay, I guess. Some were way too terminally online, but at least they told a coherent story with a distinct flavor. If it was entertaining I didn’t nitpick the literary quality, and if it was actually serious I wouldn’t treat it like a power fantasy.

Man, though, seriously written web novels are rare. Most are drowning in internet slang and come with their own snark. A little self-aware snark in a literary work isn’t necessarily bad—it can add flavor—but overdo it and it gets ugly.

I remember two web novels I read: one called Sanguo Houhei Zhuan and another called How I Picked Up the Campus Belle. The latter is actually decent—I’d recommend it, it’s solid for a school romance. The former just made me shake my head… I bring them up because they share a trait: both love their own snark.

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Didn’t I buy a printer last year…

Anyway, I didn’t use it all that much over the year, and the printhead got clogged.

So I checked JD, and holy shit, it was still under warranty — and today was literally the last day! I filed a warranty claim right away.

JD called me and suggested I first take it to a local HP service center, since that’d be faster than having JD repair it.

“But today’s the last day of my warranty. If I hand it over to HP and they say it’s expired and won’t honor it, what then?”

The JD support guy thought about it, agreed that was a fair point, and let me send it in.

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Back when I used the Xperia Z1, I remember the charging dock came in the box.

Then the Xperia XZ Premium rolls around and it’s not included anymore… you have to buy it yourself.

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Back in high school I used to frequent a site called “Huanhuan Wenyuan”—basically the text-only version of a porn site, with dirty stories updated on the regular.

That site kept going until I graduated college, then it vanished. Never came back.

There were some genuinely good pieces on there, well-written enough to get your imagination going. The one I remember most was about a female teacher who promised her class that if the slackers all ranked near the top of the grade, she’d let them have their way with her.

The writing was actually pretty interesting—the teacher goes through all these psychological hurdles, and when faced with the principal’s coercion she ends up choosing to give herself to the students instead. The ending was a bit unexpected, almost had a Happy Ending vibe.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. But some formulas really do deliver results you wouldn’t expect—like this game, PacoMane: Watashi, Kyou kara Meimon Yakyuubu no Seishori Gakari ni Narimasu… (パコマネ わたし、今日から名門野球部の性処理係になります…).

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Easiest cookie I’ve ever made, and it tastes the best too.

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Bought fewer CDs this month — probably because I’ve been lazy lately, and there wasn’t much worth picking up either. Aside from that one from Lump of Sugar, everything else was doujin work and group albums.

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I haven’t played that many eroge, but I’ve played some. A few of them I’d call genuinely worthwhile, and plenty I’d call garbage.

Even in the garbage there’s usually a pattern. Most of it comes from a planner or a writer trying to make a big splash, or forcing some baffling twist that ends up as a botched imitation of something better. The stuff that’s honestly made to cater to a specific taste rarely has these landmines. Siscon games, for instance.

Siscon games are pure in their positioning and simple in their pacing. The protagonist is the older brother, the heroine is the little sister, or “little sisters.” Some flirting, and that’s about it. The occasional darker entry still doesn’t betray the core idea: showing “the little sister’s love for her brother.” However twisted it gets, it’s still love, right? Chopping off your brother’s head, dissecting him—that’s love too, isn’t it? Yandere is still a kind of dere.

So for a long time I figured “playing a siscon game” could never go wrong. At worst it’d be dumb, or look silly, but it wouldn’t disgust you, right? Even if the system is boneheaded and the plot is idiotic, the little sister is innocent. The creator’s intention to give you a cute sister is not wrong, right?

I’m not a siscon, but I can still find some comfort and warmth in these games. Say what you will, they’re honestly handing out sugar. Between siscon fans there’s nothing but resistance to social norms and mutual understanding—nothing like those otaku who spend all day hurting each other. It’s so full of love. To borrow a line from the famous internet personality “Crazy Bull Hermit”:

“Siscon brothers are all friends.”

Of course, there are no eternal friends—until I ran into Chitchana Hanayome.

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I read a lot of forums, and there’s this pattern I keep noticing. Women-dominated forums are mostly people dunking on scumbag boyfriends. Men-dominated forums, porn boards aside, are mostly people tearing each other apart and crying about getting cuckolded.

Getting cuckolded is a weird phenomenon, yet apparently a really common one. Are that many people actually getting cheated on? Are that many people actually choosing to forgive him or her? Either way, several forums I frequent have picked up new nicknames that don’t even match anymore. Greenery Street. Thunder Bluff. Some people don’t even bother being subtle and just rename the whole forum “Cuckold Forum.”

So lately my browsing is nothing but green everywhere. Halal green, betrayed green, green this way and green that way. At first I found it gross, then I got used to it. I can’t even get someone to take me on as a rebound, so what do I care about cuckolding?

This “getting cuckolded” setup is common in Japanese eroge too. The Japanese call it 寝取る, NTR. Basically your wife gets slept with, which means you got cuckolded. NTR games have their fans, but most of them are the same: you get a girlfriend, she gets screwed behind your back, and in the end you either forgive her or leave her.

But think about it, why is NTR always by convention the woman betraying the man? What about the man betraying the woman?

We call that cheating too, but it still can’t compare to the whole green-this-green-that internet culture, can it.

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