how to buy at surpara

Surfers Paradise is a website that sells digital doujinshi, much like Digiket. Its catalog seems to be a bit less diverse than Digiket, but Shoutaroh Kojima fans will rejoice - it carries the exact same Kojiman doujin as Digiket! In fact, he just released a new book, called Nicchi Bocchi Station 2 - it's an apparent sequel to his Bakuman. book called Nicchi Bocchi Station from April 2010, but instead of featuring the chubby Miura, this new release's hunk of choice is our beloved 16-year old muscle monster slash football player, Rikiya Gaou from Eyeshield 21.

The best part about SurPara is that, unlike Digiket, it accepts credit cards! No need to buy WebMoney to make purchases at SurPara: all it requires is a credit card and an email address. You don't even need to register (Digiket does if you want to use WebMoney, check my guide here). The whole ordering process takes all of five simple steps that I'll show in pretty self-explanatory screenshots.

1st step: click the red button to add the doujinshi you want to the cart. Doing this will take you to the next screen:

2nd step: click the button to proceed to checkout. Pretty straightforward right?

3rd step: check the box next to the red text. Fill the forms with your email address (my hotmail.com account worked just fine). Choose "Credit Card" as your payment mode, then click the button proceed.

4th step: make sure all the information is correct, then click the button to proceed.

Final step: fill the form with your credit card information. Cardholder name, credit card number and expiration date. Then click the button.

After this, check your email inbox. You should have received an email with the download link. Just follow it, download your quality porn and fap to your heart's content! Buying at SurPara is super easy, and cheaper than Digiket too since you're paying n yen instead of having to buy a 1000-yen WebMoney card for 1200 yen.

hunks work shop fan translation

A few people in the Bara Board are attempting to translate Hunks Work Shop. HWS is a generation-defining game and I doubt anyone with even the slightest interest in gay manga hasn't heard of it. I'm attached to it for several reasons. Masanori was my first exposure to "bara", before I knew it even existed, and for that he will always have a special place in my heart, together with Takeshi Matsu for being the first gay manga I bought, and obviously Shoutaroh Kojima for being my personal god and influencing my nerdlife so damn much. Back in the day, when we "bara" fans learned he was working on a gay eroge, everyone went completely insane. Our expectations were extremely high, and they were fully met with the game's release - I wasn't disappointed in any way, it is THAT good.

Niikura, in particular, is my everyone's waifu. Not only is he one of the hottest manga ever drawn, his backstory (cop turned yakuza godfather's bitch) is so awesome it deserves a full-blown manga. Heh, even Masanori seems to like him better than the rest. Occasionaly he would tease us with images from Niikura's past. This one is my favourite:


I wish them luck and success in their endeavour. Hunks Work Shop is amazing in every sense - I might be repeating myself, but I'm absolutely not exaggerating. People who haven't had the chance to play it due to the language barrier need to be able to do so, and I sincerely hope this translation will make it more accessible to people. Masanori is a genius and deserves recognition.

Funny that someone in the thread said HWS was the first thing he fapped to. It made me feel so old! I can't remember exactly the first thing I masturbated to, it was either to a Boris Vallejo barbarian or a perfume ad with shirtless sailors. I think I was 13 at the time. When I learned of "bara" I was 17 and already an accomplished fapper. It's amusing to think that young gay nerds these days start masturbating to gay manga. And they have so much of that just a few clicks away. I envy them a bit. :)

videogame heterocentrism and gay romance

In Dragon Age 2, there are four characters in your party that can be romanced by your main character, Hawke: Fenris, the typical angsty male elf; Merril, the cutesy, slightly childlike female elf; Anders, the smart, suave human male; and Isabella, the skanky oversexed human female. Hawke can be either male or female, and your choice of gender, made at the start of the game, doesn't influence whether or not you are able to romance those four: they are all bisexual by default.

I haven't had the opportunity to go through Dragon Age 2 yet (too busy playing Pokémon Black), but being a staunch defender of a broader portrayal of homosexuality in videogames, I considered this a major selling point of Dragon Age 2. While the game itself has several glaring flaws, giving more choice for non-het romance (the first Dragon Age had only one gay angsty morally-debatable elf) was something I considered extremely positive.

However, a straight male gamer wasn't pleased. He wrote a post in the Bioware official forums saying that the main gamer demographic - that is, the straight male gamer - was neglected in Dragon Age 2. His argument is that straight male gamers compose the great majority of players, adding two gay romance options (or, rather, four - he seems to ignore the lesbian possibilities) instead of increasing the het options contributed to making the game mediocre.

I obviously have a completely different viewpoint from everything he said. In fact, I had quibbles with Bioware when they didn't add the option to having gay romance in Mass Effect 2. Every remotely open-ended game that features romance (something I personally find superfluous, although it's apparently very popular) should have homosexual options. It's not even a matter of being politically correct. Heck, it's frigging REALITY. Homosexuality exists. Not having it makes your game less truthlike. So just add a bunch of believable gays in your games. Simple like that. Avoiding stereotypes is a major plus.

The crowning moment of awesome was the first reply, from David Gaider, an actual Bioware developer and the game's lead writer. His whole post deserves to be read, but this excerpt was my favourite of the lot:

The romances in the game are not for "the straight male gamer". They're for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don't need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant... and that's ignoring the idea that they don't have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else.
(important parts bolded)

Wow. This made me a bit emotional, even. Bioware took a pro-gay stand and stated as clear as daylight that we, gay gamers, deserve games that feature homosexuals as much as straight gamers deserve games with straight people. And the best information of all, gay gamers aren't negligible - we're a significant portion of their base! I get teary-eyed when I think that my favourite form of entertainment might be evolving to a point in which homosexuality is portrayed as a natural fact instead of an awkward comic device or an excuse to sociopathic behaviour.

I wasn't going to buy Dragon Age 2 because it's a badly-made game, rushed for release, padded with paid reviews and therefore wholly undeserving of my money, but after reading what Bioware said, I now feel almost morally compelled to making a purchase.

that manga called one piece

I made an unspoken promise to myself long ago not to read manga or watch anime anymore. It's too addicting and it makes me feel almost physically ill. I remember when I read Eyeshield 21 compulsively, I cried for weeks when Musashi (AKA Takekura Gen/Red’s-number-one-favourite-character-ever-in-any-media-ever-produced-by-man) returned and became a completely different character. I must admit I never really got over that. Also, when I watched Fullmetal Alchemist... Hughes’s death had about the same impact on me. I'm easily moved by stuff and I always fall for the scriptwriter’s traps, as far-fetched as they might be. That’s why manga and anime are hazardous to me.

But for no real reason I felt like reading One Piece again. My past with One Piece dates way back. I started reading it around 2000-2001, over ten years ago, and it's ever since been among my favourite manga (I’d say it’s the runner up, Eyeshield 21 being number one). But One Piece consumes you, it feeds on you. Reading a whole OP saga is comparable to watching your heart being ripped off your chest and sliced into pieces. At least that's what it does to me. Everything about One Piece makes me cry buckets, it doesn’t matter if it’s a sad story or if it's a heartwarming, touching moment. I cry all the same. It’s a horrible combination, because it's exceedingly good and impactful, and I’m way too easily influenced by what I read. Reading One Piece is emotionally draining to an alarming degree.

Anyway, I felt I needed to make up for my lost time. I’m about 4 years late: I stopped right at the end of Water Seven/Ennies Lobby arc, around chapter 430. So I picked it up and, lo and behold, Smoker showed up around the second or third chapter I read. It’s hard to say exactly how much exactly but I was mad about Smoker back when I was a teenager, and he is still and will always be among my top favourite characters (and, gosh, he’s still ridiculously sexy and he's in a gratuitous shirtless scene – fanservice much?). I took it as a sign I shouldn’t drop One Piece again. Odacchi, I'll hate you forever for creating something that just so beyond what a manga is supposed to be.

resolutions

2010 is over, and it was... uneventful. Sort of a "do stuff you should have already done long ago" year, like surgery for making sex a bit less painful, or getting my driver’s license. Highlights of the year were League of Legends, new Kojiman books and the trip to Buenos Aires (Persicco owner, so sexy). I guess I might as well make a short list of resolutions to try to turn 2011 into a more remarkable year, even though I’ll probably forget about them in a few days.

- Get a new job. It's been almost 4 years since I started my current job, heck I was still in college, and I can’t stand it anymore.
- Save more money. My savings are at an all-time low, and since I plan on going to Japan with Shawn in 2012 I need to find a way to save money! Possibly by getting a new job, which ties in with the previous resolution.
- Read more books. All my free time is spent gaming, really. I think I need to read more. One of my goals is getting to the end of The Devil to Pay in the Backlands.
- Start working out. I have no money to afford a gym though, so I have no idea how to make this happen.
- Re-learn Japanese. I stopped well over two years ago and I’ve forgotten almost everything. Japanese is amazing, though, I really wish I had more time to take classes again.

cataclysm

The third expansion pack to World of Warcraft, Cataclysm, was released this Tuesday. I tried not to jump into the bandwagon so soon, having been in WoW-remission since July, but in the end I bought it on release day. I’m Blizzard’s sheep as awful that might be, I can’t do much about it.

For very practical reasons, I decided to level my Dwarf Paladin as my main character this expansion instead of my perennial main, my Human Rogue. The paladin was my first healer, as soon as he reached 80 I respecced from Retribution (my leveling spec) to Holy (my instancing/raiding spec) and never went back to anything non-healy. Now that dual-spec is very cheap (a 99% drop, from 1000g to 10g), I ended up buying it. I’m going Retribution-Holy, Ret for easier questing, Holy for dungeons. My endgame plan is going Holy/Protection for complete utility, but I’m not sure yet. I’m actually enjoying the Ret playstyle, the remake made it rather rogue-ish. I haven’t abandoned my rogue, he is still my favourite character, but hybrids are just so more useful.

For no actual reason I’m questing at Vashj’ir. I had no idea where to start and followed the first quest I got, the one given telepathically by the Draenei, and ended up underwater. It’s RIDICULOUSLY linear but at least the scenery is pleasant I guess. As I get deeper into the zone it gets kinda scary, it gives me the feeling a gigantic abyssal monster will swallow me whole. The rogue will go to Hyjal for sure.

WoW seems to have fully embraced its "easymode pastime" image, because it keeps getting more and more brainless. You now level at an alarming rate and everything became user-friendly to the point of ridicule. Seriously, there was a quest I had to shoot spears at nagas and I didn’t even had to CLICK the nagas, just click the spears in my inventory (or rather, in the quest log conveniently placed below the minimap – I didn’t even have to search my bags for the quest item) and they would automatically hit the nagas that were passing by, who as a matter of fact didn’t aggro either. There was absolutely ZERO danger in doing this quest. After playing some League of Legends I can definitely notice the difference in a skill-based PvP game and WoW’s grindy leveling/instance playstyle. It’s still fun, but I’m not sure for how long.

good news and bad news

One of the few good news this week is that Tactics Ogre claimed the top spot in Japan's best selling games. If it's anywhere nearly as good as the original, I can't think of a more deserving position. It's a masterpiece.

On the other hand, two hate crimes against homosexuals recently happened around here, one of them in my city. As it seems, in Brazil if a gay guy comes on to you, beating him up and defacing him with shards of glass is a perfectly reasonable response. Isn't it lovely to live in a civilized country? I can only imagine how it must be.

By the way, I have not yet written an entry on the doujinshi Kojiman released back in AUGUST. I'm a terrible fanboy, I mean, I'm so late he even had a new release last month so I'm two dounjins behind. Sadly I don't have Photoshop after formatting this PC so it's kinda hard to make some preview pics! Anyway, December is coming closer and with it Winter Comiket and another brand new release to look forward to.