There’s a line literary types like to throw around: “Life should include a trip you take on a whim—pack your bag, hit the road, get away from the city noise, and find inner peace.” Honestly, that’s not wrong. Most of the time even when we do travel, we lose the fun to planning and second-guessing, so one carefree trip really can be a decent way to blow off steam. Unfortunately, I hate traveling… Or rather, I hate traveling in China.

“So… you like music?” When I told the blind-date woman—God knows which number by now—about the only hobby I can actually bring up, I finally got something slightly more positive than the usual “oh.” “Yeah, a lot.” As I said it, my head was full of the line from an eroge: “はい、大好きです。”

I don’t watch porn anymore, but back in high school I watched it every day. Watch enough and you start thinking about it—you even start arguing with other fans about what makes a good one. The standard was always whether it got you going hard enough. Maybe I’m a bit of a deviant, but while everyone else was chasing pretty actresses with huge tits and great bodies, I was hunting for specific scenarios: humiliation, getting gangbanged by a bunch of Black guys, being dumped out in the middle of nowhere for all kinds of play, getting raped in the middle of the street, etc., etc. But over time I gradually realized I was being an idiot. The stuff I liked was way too fake—either there wasn’t enough struggling, or the acting was just completely unconvincing. Honestly it was less convincing than the rape scenes in Chinese TV dramas. Watch too much and it gets old, because it’s still just porn they filmed—if it were realistic enough it’d be a crime. After thinking it over, I figured those older-sister-takes-your-virginity plots were better. At least they aren’t that fake, right… Thinking about how I got into porn always brings up Wu Lao’er.

For a long time—well, no, more like recently—I’ve been mulling over one question: What exactly is it that makes me unable to get a girlfriend, and makes every arranged date blow up in my face? After turning it over and over, there’s only one answer: I’m bad at picking up girls. And with a determination to get to the bottom of things, it’s worth digging further—why am I bad at it, and what the hell do I need to do to get good?

Back in elementary school, my family bought a VCD player. I can’t remember the name of that player anymore. What I do remember is that it came bundled with a stack of pirated VCDs. My dad bought it thinking “once we have this thing we can watch blockbusters at home,” and the discs they threw in were all big prestige movies, stuff like Mission Impossible. So we immediately fired up this fancy machine and watched Mission Impossible for a good long while. Halfway through, neither my dad nor I could stand the movie. It wasn’t that the content was bad, it was just… boring to watch. So for a long stretch after that, the VCD player just sat there gathering dust, because there was nothing worth watching.

The first time I heard of Rene Liu wasn’t because of her songs. That was probably middle school. Star Chinese Channel was airing April Rhapsody, and Rene Liu played the rather tragic lead — but it was that role that stuck with me. I don’t know if I liked the frail woman she played or liked Rene Liu herself, but I think it was the former. At least later, when Pink Ladies came on, I took one look and ignored it. Luckily I later heard her songs. Most of them have the shadow of cover versions, but her distinctive voice still left that first impression: a frail woman, quietly singing those slightly sad stories.

I know a very gay straight guy. He’s obsessed with otome stuff, even BL. Watches it, raves about it, and constantly tries to convert me, hoping to turn me gay. But you know how it is. If there’s only one straight guy left in the world, it’s me. So I turned down all his invitations and dodged every trap in the videos he sent me. Still, back when I was being an idiot two years ago chasing a fujoshi, I figured this little gay dude was pretty reliable. As a fudanshi, he’d have deep insight into fujoshi.

Everyone loves to flex, but almost nobody enjoys watching someone else flex in their face. There’s a very telling phrase for this: “flexing with actual skill.” Sure, it’s mostly used as a joke, but it gets at something real—when it comes to flexing, if you’ve got enough genuine chops to back it up, there’s not much anyone can do about it. Speaking of “skill,” I’m reminded of a conversation I once had with a friend about cooking. Back then I was being a total idiot, convinced that “a great chef has to make all these flashy, fancy dishes to be legit.” My friend just shook his head.

First off, let me confirm that Twinkle Crusaders (ティンクル☆くるせいだ) is indeed a galgame. (dead serious) Visual novels have always been treated as digital novels, and some studios have tried to do something with the systems to make us feel like it’s a game, but most of them failed… Twinkle Crusaders is the first game that changed my mind about that…

In my whole life I’ve read exactly two power-fantasy web novels. The first one I finished: Rice Wu’s I’m a Hooligan, which I followed all the way to its finale, I’m a Hooligan: Dragon War Starfield. The other one, also fairly famous, is How the Bad Guy Was Forged—and I didn’t finish that one. To put it in terms the ACG crowd will get: the former is SAO, the latter is Log Horizon. I’m a guy who likes things punchy, so I finished I’m a Hooligan and dropped the other.