One of my writing professors started each semester by telling his class that he reserved the right to be wrong. Without acknowledging his fallibility, he couldn’t honestly and openly offer students feedback. (Spoiler: we were all bad.) This week, I’m talking about how I display my action figures, and I feel that now is a good time to reserve the right to be wrong.

There are a lot of collectors in the world who do awesome and innovative things with their collections. Some of these things, like buying glass/plastic cases that keep the dust out are awesome but expensive. Some other things like building a fire escape on the side of a bookshelf to display Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or equally awesome custom displays) are awesome but require an artistic talent. I don’t have either of those, but I have a lot of action figures and flat surfaces. This is what I do with them.

Here’s a picture of my writing desk. (If you think it’s messy now, you should see how terrible it looked before I cleaned it up.)

On the bookshelf my mom got me for Christmas, I’ve got a WWE Championship Belt hanging above the different print journals who have published my work. To the left I’ve got editor extraordinaire J. Jonah Jameson giving me a stern look and telling me to get back to work. To the right, I’ve got I Am Elemental Persistence telling me to keep writing. It’s a profession where even a good story will be rejected ten times before a journal will take it most times. She grounds me for the first nine rejections.

I tend to go for things like that, that have emotional resonance with me rather than cool poses. I’m an okay poser, but find that the really cool poses fall over sooner rather than later without stands, and believe stands are cheating.

I also keep piles of figures that I particularly like or are particularly goofy on my desk. When the writing isn’t coming or I’m on the phone, I fool around with them. Daniel Bryan and Batista (Drax the Destroyer technically) have been wrasslin’ for the last month or two.

I’ve got a few more on my bookshelf. These are actually only out because I’m not sure how to store them. Falcon and Wasp both have wings that are hard to put on and fall off easily. Since I keep most of my figures laid flat in shoes boxes, I prefer to keep them out.

My roommate keeps her Carol Walking Dead Pop Vinyl on top of our Amazon Echo, and I’ve got a little Batman that we use for Nerf target practice on top of the TV.

We keep a Hannibal Lecter Pop Vinyl behind the glasses because he’s a classy dude. Creeps me the hell out.

I’ve got different villains displaying my other roommates Desert Storm conflict cards. Why those exist and why we own them is a rabbit hole I’ll leave to your imagination. They get laughs at party.

This is how I display my action figures. I think there are a lot of people who do it in different (read: cooler) ways. The important thing is to display them in a way that makes you happy.

A Call to Action (Figures) is a weekly column published on Wednesdays, chronicling my rants and raves about all things action figure. Next week I’ll be talking about the theory that Marvel doesn’t merchandise the X-Men movies because they’re trying to get the franchise rights back.

How do you display your figures? Send me pictures in the comments!