Howdy Rowdy Crowdy!

I’m really bad at introductions so I’ll just ramble, something I am excellent at. First off, I am Sister Kyoya, wife of Ravendruid (my high school sweetheart) whom a few of you met the other day. My fixation with stuffed animals and dolls is a genetic disposition, not a single point in my life do I have a memory of being without my collection of friends. I still have the sheep that my grandmother gave me shortly after I was born who survived a haircut from my older sister when I was too young to realize that it wouldn’t grow back. I also have Sannie (a raccoon with one hand because I chewed the other off) and Susie Woosie Bear, both of them were old by the time I was five and a half. The other two that I can’t go without mentioning is Wiffel, a ‘baby Bigfoot’ doll that my Dad gave me when I was seven. He used to be able to record a 5 second phrase that could be replayed until the batteries wore out, but the circuitry broke many years ago but he is still regularly snuggled while I sleep. I find it so funny that most kids have that special teddy bear they grew up with, but for me it was a Bigfoot (and that says a lot about my personality!)

 

And then there is Autumn, my first American Girl who is like a grade school version of myself. Being a kid of the 80s I remember hearing so much emphasis on how every girl has that perfect and special doll to share their childhood with. It could just have been from overly aggressive/sappy Christmas ads, “ideal” girly Christmas movies, the hoopla over the Cabbage Patch Kids or Barbie, but none the less it firmly rooted itself into my psyche. Growing up with a single mom going to college and as the youngest of four, we definitely were not well off to say the least. For many years I silently wondered why I wasn’t a special enough girl to get one of those ‘once in a lifetime dolls’, often feeling like I was punished because we weren’t rich. By the time I was 12 or 13, I remember crying my eyes out over my (faulty) realization that I had outgrown that dream. Fast forward a few years, moving to another city, meeting the love of my life, and learning to survive high school when my boyfriend’s little sister (they are 9 years apart) inadvertently introduced me to the American Girls. The floodgates of my heart burst open without hesitation, all the old dreams about that special dolly someone came back stronger than ever. Ravendruid had to deal with me gushing over Samantha for years, but even then I knew she wasn’t the one I had waited for. A few more years later, after we were married, I saw a picture in one of the catalogs, instantly knowing I had found my doll. She is one of the chose your own doll kind (at the time they were called AG Today) with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and glasses. You know the feeling when you fall in love and your heart stops? Yup, that’s exactly how it was.

 

If you want to find out more about Autumn and our other 9 American girls, I posted about it here in Ravendruid’s intro post.

 

I’ve been struck nearly speechless by the sheer amount of kindred spirits I have found already here on the boards, and it tickles me pink to see that it’s not a girl’s only club either! Boys are great! My dolls have always been my friends, and I have treated them as such but not a single person in my life understood it (husband excluded). For some reason with my personality I have the hardest time keeping RL friends, I seem to attract the very needy people who drain more than every last bit of energy I have. Other than my husband and my dolls, the closest friends I have are my family, and often they complain that I don’t stay in touch very well. So seeing so many people unashamedly treating their dolly children like the people they are, I feel like the happiest person on the planet. So there are people who see the world as I do.

 

My husband seems to think that he had to persuade me into wanting a BJD, but truth be told I started paying attention to them about 3-4 years ago. At the time though it just seemed like a horribly expensive hobby, and we already had 6 of our AG dolls that were taking up plenty of my time as it was. So although I found them really intriguing, I didn’t see at the time what the point for me would be. I have been sewing since I was eight doing well enough at it that I made all my own dresses in high school. My AG daughters filled the space for making clothes that I loved but didn’t want to wear or that would look better on a kindergartener than a woman over twenty-five. When I was a teen, I couldn’t comprehend life past the age of twenty-five, and I’ve always found it strange how a lot of women panic about being thirty. My mom said that she loved turning thirty because she started to know herself well enough that her life started to mellow out because she didn’t feel the need to do everything. For me my life was pretty great before I was thirty, but in the three years since then I feel like I have found out what really makes life worth living. Learning how to do what I love to do, without reservation, making me so happy much of the time that I’m like a kid strung out on sugar.

 

I have loved cartoons as much as I have loved my dolls, but for a lot of years I was heartbroken because to enjoy them I had to deal with heavy-handed childish plots that were no more than contrite drivel. Then a year and a half ago through a combination of Hulu and Netflix my husband introduced me to anime. Real anime, not the afternoon ‘Japanese cartoons’ that were on at 3pm in the 90s that thrilled me as much as Power Rangers (not at all.) I have been a cartoon junkie bad enough to fake being sick in middle and high school just to stay home and watch them. So when I finally saw ‘Japanimation’ (snicker, snicker) as an adult, starting with Best Student Council, followed shortly behind by D-Grey Man, it isn’t an understatement that it changed my life. Within a few months waltzes in Ouran High School Host Club… irrevocably turning me into a raving fangirl and finally making me realize that I was obviously a geek, but more accurately I’m an otaku with heavy yaoi tendencies.

 

My husband just finds this horribly funny, but he’s a yuri fanboy so we get along well. To some this may seem like insignificant things and very little to do with BJDs/DDs, but they are in fact very closely connected for me. *Pauses a moment to decide how much more extensive to make her already lengthy ‘intro’ post…* Seriously, this is my life in a very concise and streamlined manor, I warned you that I was good at rambling!

 

Ok, one more temporary detour to connect everything back together with the BJDs, I promise (I think.) So now I’ve got my AG dollies and stuffed animals in one arm, otaku and yaoi fangirl badges firmly pinned to my shirt. Loved girlie ‘Japanimation’ since the 80s? Check. Have a mother curious enough about the Japanese to learn the language in college, at least somewhat exposing her kids to it in the process by sticking Kanji labels all over things in the apartment and making us eat Japanese rice? Affirmative. Be hugely envious when older brother gets to go to Japan on a middle school band trip, making life totally unfair? Heck yah… Can you believe the dork that got to go is the type who traveled all over the world when he was in the Navy, and has done nothing but complained about it ever since? And then there’s me, who has lived in two cities her whole life in the same state, never traveled farther than Nevada, and the only other foreign country I’ve been in was 2 hours into Canada (and couldn’t get enough.) So, needless to say I have been exposed to a variety of bits and pieces of Japanese culture for the majority of my life, and my love/need for it grows by the day.

 

Because we have been delving so much into the anime it has triggered my husband’s love of research and reading that he recently ran across Danny Choo making me watch one of his shows where they had the DD featured in one of the segments. Ravendruid had already talked about all the anime figurines that are so popular (Len Kagamine Nendroid? Gimmie! Gimmie!) so seeing the DDs made into familiar anime girls didn’t surprise me. The unexpected thing that caught my heart was hearing these daughters referred to and treated like the individuals that they are, not some pretty and lifeless mannequins. Truthfully I was stunned when they showed the audience, all men, unashamed and very proud of their darling daughters. My heart had an epiphany when the little six year old girl from the 80s still living inside me crashed into my adult otaku self, fused together with how I always believed the world did work. I thought to myself, if these men can express their heart in such a manor for their daughters, why can’t I for my own?

 

I’m staggered at how much courage DD daddies have for their daughters (and sons?) For girls, loving dolls at any age is an acceptable part of our personality, although unless you are really young or really old, people do still find it odd and occasionally creepy. For many years even I felt the need to call myself a doll collector because of the acceptability to the title apposed to being in my 30s and still playing with dolls. That’s like saying you are a friend collector because you like having a list of names filling up your cell phone… Silly, huh?

 

For all the time I’ve spent watching anime, deep in my heart I’ve been silently regretting that I couldn’t somehow drop myself into the anime world. For an extreme oversimplification of the connection, having a DD would make her kinda like my anime avatar, allowing my heart to use her to complete the connection. (Side note: oversimplification is a rather complicated word for such a simple meaning. ) She is a lot more to me than that, but it is distinctly an important factor to who she is, just like Autumn is my personification of myself as a child. It is so much easier for me to remember who I am by having sons and daughters who illustrate important aspects of my personality and memories. My husband thinks it’s funny how much of the time I still view and react to the world like a 14 year old, so it doesn’t seem strange to me that I want a DD that is like my high school self, but also the female best friend I wish I could have had at that point too.

 

Life is all about the memories and stories that we create, remember, and choose to believe in. Finding so many people so much like me on Dollfie Dreams, who care about making sure their DD/BJD children’s stories are heard and shared, touches me so much that I want to cry happy tears. Even though my husband and I just discovered this community, knowing that there are people who care about hearing our unique family’s story has given me an outlet to not only develop our (soon to be ordered) DD lives, but also finally giving real voices to Autumn and her slew of existing siblings.

 

Now on to what you probably actually wanted to know… about the DD that I’m planning on getting! (I feel like I would be the worst person to strike up a conversation with in a stuck elevator…)

 

Naomi Watanabe (girl)

 

Stats: DD Body- normal skin, 04 head w/ open eyes and firm cap, Animetic Eyes (B Type) Bright Green/Metal but can’t decide on size, Maroon wig from Leeke World, Black framed glasses from Dollmore.

 

Personality: Energetic ‘glasses girl’ high school type, Vocaloid fangirl with a thing for Kiyoteru, but who thinks that Kyoya (from Ouran) is cute but way too fussy to deal with. Loves the theater (plays, not movies) because of the unlimited amounts of costumes there are. Favorite food is inarizushi and has a blazing hatred for Hatsune Miku. Originally I had a different first name for her that was starting to annoy me a bit so I went looking at Japanese girl names and ran across Naomi, which was my grandmother’s name (American version) and thought it was very suitable. The name fit the doll well, and my grandmother was very beautiful when she was younger. She was my favorite grandmother who passed away when I was in middle school, we used to call her Grandma Ohmie, and I have missed her very much over the years.

 

The only couple of unsure things I have with Naomi is trying to figure out the best eyeball size and if the braided buns in her hair are actually braided from the hair attached to her wig, or if they are clips. If they are clips it’s not a big deal to add more hair to end up with what I want, but I wish I knew if I could avoid such a tedious endeavor, other than that and her hair is perfect. Somewhere on Volks, they said that the 24mm eyes are best for the head I want, but I don’t want these gigantic dark eyes, even if they are in the anime style. With her going to wear black glasses frames, I think I’d like the 20mm so more of the white part of her eyes show, making it so her face won’t seem dark and looming. I just didn’t want the eyes sitting in her head weird because of the smaller eyes. My OCD has been having a field day with details like that for days…

 

Tamayuki Otake (boy)

 

Stats: MDD body, 03 head w/ eyes open & firm cap, 22mm HG glass eyes-Midnight, DD short wings hair- Pearl Silver (all by Volks, however I wished that they had an identical wig like his on Leeke.) Truth be told that I saw the pic for the wig after opening the link more out of curiosity than anything, and then saw the doll and instantly wanted to bring him home, minus the ugly red sweater. Belatedly I realized that he looks significantly like Yuki Fujinuma the ‘long-lost girlfriend’ in book 1 of Love Is Like A Hurricane (yaoi manga).

 

Personality: Very quiet and shy and although he looks like the boy from the stated manga, they really aren’t the same except the both look a bit girly. Tamayuki puts up a bit of a fuss when Naomi wants to dress him up in girl clothes, but only because he feels like he’s supposed to since he’s a boy. His favorite anime is Angelic Layer and spends a lot of time working on his ‘models’ of Ohjiro, Wizard, and his own custom Battle Angel doll. But this really just gives him an excuse to sew and play with his dolls. He hopes to make his own Sumomo (Chobits) someday and Zelgadis (Slayers) to snuggle with at night. Although he wouldn’t admit it outright, it makes him happy when Naomi goes yaoi-fangirl on him, since he’s not the type to ask for attention even when he wants it.

(At the moment he’s mostly my yaoi, moe, cross-dressing boy who makes a mouse seem like it makes as much noise as an elephant.)

 

One of the things I find really fun is Tamayuki’s dolls. I bought one of the EB Mini boys and finally got him yesterday, thoroughly impressed at how nice they feel and are a perfect size in my hand! So cute! Not long after that Tamayuki (in my head) shyly made his way over and started snuggling with it, seeming as happy as if it was the best birthday. I had originally bought the mini and one of the 27cm EB boys (less impressed with that one…) to use as poseable bodies for drawing figures. When undemanding Tamayuki became so smitten with it I couldn’t tell him no, and I ordered another last night to use for Wizard so I’m hoping they have just one more left. However I’m going to use a Parabox/Obitsu head and body for Ohjiro so he can be a tiny bit taller than his Battle Angel.

 

I would like to congratulate you if you have suffered this long through my rambling, I am a rather verbose person even with my attempts to curb it. And it may shock you, but this could have been much longer.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Hi, welcome! It's great to see someone else from Washington! Maybe we could get together and you could teach me to make clothes for my doll? I would love to see some pictures of your various collections (oh, wait, that's my job isn't it?) I can't wait to see how your dolls look when they finally arrive, and I'm really curious as to what you'll do with the faces.(Actually rather curious about what the face on mine will end up looking like, too).

 

Anyways, hope to see more of you here.

 

Craig L

You are such a dork bubbin... Some things never change.

 

Now, if you are looking for something to do in the meantime, I do have a few suggestions. Deciding on clothes would be good and I even need to do that for Tamayuki. Knowing what you want to do for your dolls face is kinda rather a biggie. Hey, maybe you could make her a jean dress! And doing socks would be good because I forgot to budget for shoes, maybe even some fleece slippers to go with them. I know the first thing that Yuki's going to do once he's all put together and himself is make some underwonders for his dollies but most likely he will just grab and snuggle them in a corner for a long time. Naomi wants her school girl outfit done when she gets here, but I think she will have to settle for a slip, underwear, I'll need to figure out how to sew a bra and maybe some pajamas. I'm not doing finicky clothes until she gets here to make sure the measurements aren't wrong so I don't have to redo anything.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Heh, having a couple on the same boards seems to be quite the potential for fun!

 

Glad to have you both aboard! I suppose being verbose *can* be a bit much sometimes but it also shows excitement.... which in this hobby is a good thing. Being able to share pics and info about the things that make us happy and excited is a big part of this for me.

 

I hope you guys can get your future DD's together soon and have lots of fun here!

 

 

 

Billy

In all my life, I have never read an intro post this long.

 

It's interesting to see what other peoples views are. Even if they are a bit different than your own, it gives you an idea of what the other is about.

 

If it were me, though, I would get the heads with the squishy headcap, and not the firm.

When people say the firm ones are hard to get off, they are not kidding; I used a screwdriver, a butterknife and a hair-dryer and it was still difficult to get off. Plus it's also a bit hard to get it back on, even with the notches.

 

As for the eyes, the 04-head usually takes 24mm eyes since it's eye sockets are a bit larger. But as you said, you want a bit more white showing. 22mm should do the trick, since it's in between both. The 20mm might look a bit too small for the 04-head, but it's up to personal preferance.

 

Anyways, welcome to the fourm!

Baldylox- I never really thought about my husband and I being on here together as a curiosity. Shouldn't surprise me though because we are just a couple of oddballs. It wasn't my intent to overwhelm everyone with (five pages) of my ramblings, but sometimes my mind starts talking and won't shut up. I don't intend to make a habit of it though...

 

Every day I've been almost tapping my fingers all day long, waiting until we can order our dolls. In the mean time at least I have an EB Mini boy that I was working on making pants for today, even though he is still bald and faceless.

 

In all my life, I have never read an intro post this long.

I laughed when I read that. It may have been a first even for me...

 

I have honestly been a bit confused over the choice between firm or soft headcaps. I was thinking about getting the firm because of the possibility that it would stain less easily. There is so much information I have tried to compile in the last few days that I'm getting dizzy from how much my mind is spinning. I'm usually pretty good at figuring things out and how they work just based on pictures, but the more pieces there are to the puzzle, the harder it is for me to keep a solid reference of it in my mind. With something as complicated as the DDs can be, it's like I regularly get a 'faulty parameters' or 'incomplete data' when I try to think about things like the socket size vs the eyeball size. Another thing that has been really confusing me is the height of the finished DDs (without a wig) because the Volks site states a height, but they don't say if it is with or without the head. Even with my EB Mini he was stated at being 22cm, but I have measured him many times and he is only 20.5cm. Not a big deal, but it makes me question the accuracy of the DDs stated measurements.

 

Thank you for your advice about the headcaps and the eye size. I hadn't been too sure if I should lean more towards the 20mm or 22mm eyes, but I think I might like the 22mm a bit better. And even if I don't it would be easy to get another set.

 

Thank you both for having the patience to suffer through my ridiculously long first post.

 

~Sister Kyoya

You could always get a cloth head-cap cover: http://www.volksusa.com/ofoth20091205.html

They are made to prevent staining from the wig base. They work with both the firm and the squishy.