One When I was little, I knew some friends. All kinds of friends. Since we were young, we inevitably talked about the future, and we’d talk about what kind of dreams we had. Apart from listing various vague professions, I noticed none of us had anything particularly “positive” to say about our dreams. How should I put it—a lot of our dreams were things like “endless money, endless snacks,” really simple, low-tier ideas, plus that kingly aura of “rule the world, rule the universe.” One buddy of mine told me back then: my dream is to “destroy the Earth.” When I asked why, he said: “I just wanna see what happens when the Earth blows up.” Sure, different people have different dreams, but I can confirm not one person’s dream was “to protect world peace.” Everyone wanted to be the hegemon—the one who destroys world peace. When I grew up and saw “man’s nature is good at birth,” I always felt it was self-deception.

When I get nostalgic, elementary school inevitably comes to mind. Because back then I felt like an ACG protagonist. People like to reminisce about when they were hot shit, not when they were a dumbass—totally understandable. But my so-called “protagonist” days weren’t about going to Beijing for some “X-Fusion” to brag about “this is so fucking insane,” or riding a bike to get Heytea and chafing my ass, or constantly tearing down laptops and fiddling with Raspberry Pi while saying “how how how amazing I am” in a Shonan accent, or juggling a female teacher, a pigeon girl, and a student I met in Japanese class. It was just that in elementary school my grades were okay, my looks were okay, my conversation was okay—enough that some girls would voluntarily get close to me. But what does an elementary school “protagonist” actually get? You don’t know shit in elementary school, and I didn’t either.

When I was a kid, I loved watching Disney animated films—stuff like Mulan, Tarzan, Aladdin. Those movies weren’t just well-made; they were fun to watch, and sometimes they’d break into song-and-dance numbers. So when the teacher asked us to write a review of a film we’d seen, I wrote about those. My feelings were pretty genuine—about as genuine as the game impressions I write now. And unsurprisingly, the teacher tore me a new one. She said I was shallow, criticized a bunch of things I’ve long since forgotten (this was primary school), but one line stuck with me. “American movies are all about commercialization. They have zero artistic value. What’s there to even write a review about?”

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.