Loot Camp
Adventures in VeVe #66 Halloween Edition (Patton Pending)
Be seated!
Now, I want you to remember that no collector ever got an exclusive by being the last guy in line at a convention.
He got it by getting there early and dashing to the front… and making the other collectors be last in line instead!
Fellow officers, all of this stuff that you’ve heard about people not wanting to collect, especially online, is a lot of horse hockey. People traditionally love to collect. They love their pay-to-play skins, their rare playing cards, and digital house items… even when they don’t even own them.
When you were kids, you probably admired the checked-off trading card lists of the boy who had every Pokemon Card or every Garbage Pail Kid. Everyone loves a completed collection and will not tolerate having that one box that never gets checked off! That’s why we’ll never stop collecting, and will not tolerate any FUD about our favorite projects. I wouldn’t give a hootin’ hell about any Fudder who called someone a loser and laughed. No collector has ever lost as long as they collected what they loved. They find anyone who wishes a collector to lose their sets as hateful and self-deprecating.
Now, Halloween is a training ground for our young cadets, waiting in the wings, and we need to support them as a team.
Because Halloween is how we hone a brand new generation of convention goers, who are learning how to cosplay, how to tolerate eating junk, deal with crowds, endless walking, and waiting their turn, no matter how popular the house, trunk, or booth may be that they’re waiting at.
In fact, I feel sorry for those ground troops waiting for the cadets to descend on them… you know, I really do. Because we’re not only going to hit this neighborhood, you know. We’re going to get in the car and hit the next neighborhood… and the next! Until the last “one per trick-or-treater” bowl has been looted!
Some of you may wonder if you will last that long… don’t worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty to hone the next generation of collectors.
You will buy them candy! Save your coins! Help them with their costumes! You might even electronically improve it, or even convince your cadet to pick a costume that matches your favorite AR collectible! We are not holding back anything, and we are constantly encouraging them in pursuing their own special things so we can share the experience! And we will do so safely, by checking their bags, wearing reflectors, glow sticks, and phone flashlights!
Now… There’s one thing you collectors will be able to say after fifteen or more years of Halloween cadet training… that you survived to make another collector. Ten or twenty years from now when they have their own little cadets, that new generation might ask you where you were in the early days of Digital Collecting…. and you won’t have to tell them that you sat on the sidelines, afraid that everything was a scam.
Alright you collectors, degens, moonbois, and fudders, now you know how I feel.
I will be proud to lead my cadet every year without fail, and then join the troops on the front lines forever more with candy and stickers for every cadet that comes to my door.
That’s all.