re: (galactiboy's Cantina) "Where everybody knows your name..."
[...] Good points and very true. I know that my wife and I won't always completely agree on everything, but I don't ever want my collection to be a source of contempt or dislike. It's always better when your other can at least find something cool about it, even if it induces the occasional eye roll.
Everyone's relationship is different, but when people are stressed, they can do odd things and idiosyncrasies like geeky collections can make convenient albeit unfair targets. Relationships can be tricky across the board, at times.
There are items in my small collection that my girl loves, and some she can see the cool factor in. This is a hedge against things she flat out hates.
I love to hate some of her stuff, too. When balanced out it can be fun and healthy.
Nostalgia probably plays the biggest part - that's a hard one to fight against.
I guess I was four or five when I saw Star Wars, and the childhood memories of the toys stay with you, more so the time and place all that stuff was attached to.
I think nostalgia takes different forms, but we all know there's no going back, and we wouldn't want to. This is one of the reasons I try to remember to reference the past rather than inadvertently recreate it.
I haven't mastered true minimalism yet but I'm always being selective and asking myself "If I could only choose one...". I've read a lot of your posts on this topic and similarly I'm always torn between the two extremes. Beyond my (complete) loose vintage figure collection, I feel no need for completion.
For me that's been as much philosophy as practical, but after building a household here things have taken an interesting turn; my girl and I have talked about moving to Europe for a while to be closer to her parents.
I don't have a ton of stuff in general to begin with, but a move to another country is a game changer that will affect the way I do things for the next couple of years even more, and not just in terms of collectibles, which are physically a small part of my life (I spend more time following the releases online and discussing them than actually owning a lot of them). We'll see how minimalist things really get. My girlfriend likes to have more stuff than I do for it to feel like a home, but if we're gonna pick up and move things will have to be leaner by necessity.
I have a three year old son who currently loves my toys and has some of his own. Who knows how he'll feel as he grows and forms his own self identity.
The world is a little different now. The internet has rendered many things atemporal; people and their interests are less isolated now. That said, your son will engage with his version of popular culture more than with yours, and may reject such things outright for a time, at least.
For myself, I remember being into comics and geeky stuff right up until I was 15. All of that save the odd novel went out the window at 16 when I made girl-chasing my number one hobby. The two pursuits were mutually incompatible, especially at that time.
I briefly revisited geek culture in my early to mid-20s before it all but disappeared from my life, save catching the odd film as it came out.
I guess it was three years ago my interest was re-kindled. In my early 40s now I read a couple of select comic titles, follow the films and of course, high-end action figures, but as you know from my long-winded posts, I try to maintain a tight focus.
Because the whole media landscape with the marketing and products attached to it...has inertia. Naturally it's all designed not just to entertain but to turn a profit, and if you appreciate it, you can get swept away to a degree. So I try to avoid too much repetition and fandom.
I love stories and I love art; these things will never change. But how we express that love is mutable.
I'm not sure there will ever be a fully drawn finish line. There's always something to add as time goes on, however those items become fewer and fewer if you maintain a minimal mindset with a sharp focus.
This. Even if I had a great deal of space and much, much more money...I can't imagine having everything because I wouldn't have time to appreciate it all, and really...where does it all go? You can't take it with you and life is finite. I don't want to be remembered for leaving behind a bunch of consumer products for someone to deal with.
When I do have a 1/6 figure it tends to get posed and rarely adjusted, so it really becomes a display piece, not much different from a carded figure in that regard.
Same for me, but the reason I'm stuck on action figures rather than statues is that I can move it
if I want to; which is the sculptor in me I guess, and I appreciate the engineering.
(Speaking of sculpting, I've been training on digital sculpting software lately, and as I do my homework all I can hear in my head are the voices from this board regarding head-sculpts...
)
- other items just end up clouding that path until I look back and say, "With all this stuff, I could've bought that instead ...". It's funny how those little things can add up.
Amazing how that happens. It works both ways. Little savings add up quickly. Ah, money matters.
