Welcome to my website... thing.

Welcome to the Bex Base, a cyberspace resort where you can wallow in unreality, marvel at spectacular sights, and enter the abstract dreamworld of the Sun itself! Oh okay, it's not that fabulous, but I guess it's worth a brief look if you have the time or are incredibly bored. So enjoy your stay, and please wipe your feet on the way out. I mean in! Yeah.

Monday 7 July 2008

The brain functionings of an obsessive collector

So, I haven't written to this blog-world of mine for some time, and I'd like to say there was an exciting and important reason for that. I'd really like to say that my life has been so full of social activities and mind-enriching experiences that I simply haven't had the time to write here.

But I can't. Since I've left school, I've been bloody bored.

Which is probably the reason why I've had a dangerous relapse of childhood collectorhood, if that's a word. You see, ever since I was nine (or thereabouts), I would become obsessed with all sorts of franchises and fandom. I guess you could say I was a fangirl. Well the few that spring to mind right now, are all anime TV shows: Pokemon, Digimon, Cardcaptors, etc. And when I liked a TV show, I wouldn't just like it. Oh no. I'd become obsessed.

These obsessions lead to severe desires to collect the various merchandise of my favourite shows, in particular, PVC figures. It started with Digimon.

We were on the way to Argos, me and my sister and fat-walleted Dad (or so we liked to believe). We'd seen them on the telly, and in our Argos catalogue; 1.5" tall, plastic PVC Digimon figures, which came in sets of five or six. An hour later, we were home, tearing open the card backing of the packets and popping the figures out of their clear plastic packaging (severely devaluing them at the same time, I might add). The rush of excitment that went through me at the smell of new PVC and the novelty of having my favourite TV characters, real and solid in my very own hands... It was almost addictive.

The trouble with having the mind of a collector, is the excitement doesn't last very long... not very long at all. Soon, you want the next set of figures, just so you can build up your collection a bit, as well as experience that spark of enthusiasm as you rip open the packaging. And when you have several sets, you slowly change... change from just a collector, into a completist. You must have them all. You won't rest until you have the lot.

I still have all of my Digimon figures today, and I still really like them. I don't like Digimon itself now, but for some reason, my collectors mind won't allow me to get rid of them. Maybe it's that addictive PVC smell, or the fine detail in which they've been manufactured, I don't know. But I've found a new addiction now.

I may have said this before, but I am a dedicated Doctor Who fangirl. Everyone in the school seems to know as well (even people I don't really know, as I discovered one Physics lesson). And among the various Doctor who merchandise, are the collection of the most amazing, precisely and accurately detailed figures I've ever seen. So you do the maths. And even today, savagely ripping open my new delux figure of the Empress of the Racnoss that came in the post this morning, I still get that same odd buzz as I smell that lovely new PVC, and marvel at the 22 articulated joints, and detailed paintwork...

It's going to be an expensive year.

2 comments:

Jem said...

I wonder what to buy becky for her birthday...

Anonymous said...

HE HE i remember that physics lesson. The one where u conivced stace that she had made a radioactive substance, from making the rock spark. Nearly as good as your face when sir handed u that CD.