In the 2000s I'd go to cons and spend like $40 buying a single doujin from the yaoi paddle guy. But it felt so exciting and adventuresome -- I had no idea where the hell to even begin trying to get this stuff online. I'm not sure I even had a credit card back then. It felt like a guy would have to travel to Mars and back to get real actual doujins. Anyway some years later I started doing scanlation and that forced me to learn how to buy raws, and where you go to find second-hand doujins and ancient back issues of magazines and things like that. And initially that felt very cool, like I'd been let into the private members' club, but I guess it takes a lot of the magic out of acquiring this stuff once you actually know how to do it. And now I'm a real working man like Shinji in 4.0 and I could go on Yahoo Auctions and buy all the fondly-remembered doujins of my youth but, of course, I haven't. Thank you for reading my pointless blogpost.