Positiver and Positiver

Now I've got the big groan out of the way, I can talk about more fun/interesting things!


This month I'm going to LONDON :D B and I are going to stay with L&C and try and meet up with as many folks as possible, whilst also attempting to see the sights. B wants to see Freedom Press and the Houses of Parliament, I'm bringing a BJD for fun travel dolly photos - I want one of Melangell sat in an iconic red phonebox.


I've started to be more of a physically organised person - mentally I can be organised and I write lots of lists, but I seem to leave disorder wherever I go. My room is a shit-tip, quite frankly. I have so many things going on with my wardrobe that it's unreal. Anyway. I threw out lots of rubbish at the weekend, and today I'm sorting through my wardrobe; things to throw, things to keep, things to donate and things for Ro.


 Later on I'm meeting up with my friend, Ro, and her baby (my godson!) for tea, cake and a chat! We're trying to meet up at least every fortnight so that he starts remembering who I am (he'll be 9 months old this month) and also so she gets some grown-up chat and to see a face other than her fiance's! I'll be bringing a bag of clothes for her - things that don't suit me but I bought anyway...that kind of thing ;) I keep my clothes in very good condition and she threw away a lot of her pre-pregnancy clothes thinking they wouldn't fit her afterwards (oops!)


Another postive thing is mexican fajita Pringles. They taste amazing. B and I had some yesterday and they were fantastic.


So, not everything is grumbles! There's a lot of positive stuff too!

Kennels of Irritation

It seems a bit bad to be opening a new post with annoyances, but these have been building up a while and I want to get rid of them. So here goes; 

Recasting - I really don't care what your justification is for buying that bootleg, so don't even try. I've heard things like 'Oh, but I *really* love the dolls and can't afford originals' or 'I'd never buy a recast of a doll from single artist studio, but Volks/Soom/Iplehouse are really big companies - it's like sticking it to Walmart/Tesco.'

I'm not an elitist who says 'GTFO of my hobby if you can't afford it, peasant', I don't think like that. At all. But the hobby is expensive and anyone getting into it should be aware of that. You're not 'doing everyone a favour' by driving prices down by buying recasts - you're sowing distrust throughout the community. Second-hand dolls pass through the community a lot and many people are happy to finally track down the doll they've admired for years, but this is all going to stop if we can't trust that the second-hand dolls we buy are genuine. There are already a few countries on my personal blacklist for being too prevalent in dealing in bootleg BJDs. I just can't take that risk with my own collection.

All the people I know in this hobby are not made of money. We love the dolls and scrape and save to be able to afford them. There is no big horde of rich collectors sneering at you because you can't afford a doll. That is your insecurity. We want to cheer you on and encourage you as you save, the way we are encouraging each other, we don't want or like to pat you on the back for getting a 'bargain', when it means you've basically rubbed an artist's face in muck and trod on their back to get their hard work and innovation for cheap. Nice, huh?

There is a common misconception that Volks is a huge company. It isn't. It's a successful hobby company, but not huge. Super Dollfie is the smallest wing of the company, it only looks huge in the hobby because we only see the BJD side, not the garage-kit and figure-kit side. They are hit by the recession as well, closing down Sumikas and moving to areas with lower rents. Volks isn't in trouble, but they are feeling the pinch. If you keep buying recast Volks dolls rather than genuine Volks dolls, the people who create the dolls you admire will be out of work because they won't be paid if they can't sell their product.

Everyone loves a bargain, but a direct copy harms business. There are enough smaller studios copying trends from bigger companies - there's a doll for every budget, honestly. There is no need to buy a recast doll.

Having a whine about DoA - I love being a moderator on DoA. I love helping people out and giving something back to the community, I really like DoA as a fun space to be. Nothing pops my bubble faster than seeing other people slag off the forum and the mods.

It's not difficult to follow the rules, they're there, black and white, anyone can find them and read them. The same as forum announcements - we write them and post them to keep members informed about upcoming changes or updates. I find it so disheartening to receive angry PMs from members who have broken a rule that was announced over two years ago. If we bother to write these announcements, the least you could do is take a couple of minutes to read them, or if you're new, try reading the rules first before jumping in head-first and getting unstuck for spamming.

I have a thick skin, thicker than some of the other mods, but some of the things that have been said about me personally really make me gasp. I'm a mod for an online doll community and you don't even know me personally. I had no idea that being a mod would make me 'high profile' enough to be bitched about. I don't know whether to roll my eyes or be proud I've 'made it'.

People gushing about new dolls and then turning around and selling them a week later - this isn't really a huge annoyance, just something that gives me a wry smile. It really is entirely up to you what you do with your dolls and if you really don't want to keep a doll longer than a week, you shouldn't have to just because you worry about what other people will think. I just find it amusing to watch people so in love with their new dolls quickly put them up for sale. People have unique circumstances, I know this, there may be a pressing reason why you need to sell the doll and get the money together quickly, but when it happens three or four times in a row with new dolls, I do wonder a little whether the person might be better off hanging on to their money and enjoying the dolls they already have for a little while before buying the next doll? So much money must be lost with Paypal fees and conversion from JPY/USD/HKD/SGD/GBP/EUR... over continuous sales. I don't know. If this is you, more power to you, I just don't think I could do it myself!