2023 recap and group photo!

It’s time for The Sin List aka annual group photo with The Commentary Nobody Requested.

 Without further ado, here's the big deal:

To sum the doll year up, things turned into a massacre here towards the end of 2023. Here's my 2022 group photo (taken January 2023) to compare:

The two headless dolls standing up were my Fantasia Doll sleepy Vivian and Iplehouse Douglas, whose heads were away for faceup at the time. The headless body sitting down is just a genuinely headless floating body. I used to have a big headless body issue (as opposed to most folks having a floating head infestation), but I think that among other things, I've finally come to terms with the fact that since I only like a handful of heads, it is not possible for me to own all of the dozen female bodies I like. So, I kept the absolute favourite bodies and let go of the rest.

I tried to keep the remaining dolls in the same order as in the 2022 group photo the best I could so it would be easier to perceive this mess, but it was quite tricky since so many are now gone. Normally, the group photo would also show who's new in the crew, but not this time: there's no new dolls since the 2022 group photo. Elyon (Fantasia Barbara) and Abigail (Fantasia Alice) got new faces by Angeltoast somewhere during 2023, so technically there's two new faces tho! Ha!

I had been feeling rather uninspired through all of 2023. I did a short post on my Instagram about this earlier. Towards the end of the year, I realized I had too many dolls to be able to give my time to all of them or feel inspired by them. The situation was already chaotic at the end of 2022 as you can see, but to further complicate things, there had been many new arrivals through 2023 at that point. The new resins are not shown on the 2023 photo - as I'm typing this, they have already been sold or are currently for sale, and I don't include dolls listed for sale in the Sin List as the sin has technically been undone (no?) 

So, I decided to sell over half of my dolls. Some already found loving homes, others are still looking. In the end, the decision of who stays and who gets listed for sale was made in 2 days. For this, I have to partially thank my impulsivity without whom I would probably never get shit like this done.

I’m sort of… tired of material possessions? It’s become obvious to me that the more clutter I own, the less I actually have time to enjoy it. For me, dolls aren’t like statues that you can just put on a shelf and they bring you joy simply by existing and making your home a prettier place. I keep my dolls in a cabinet with covered windows so I can’t see them at all unless I take them out of there to photograph, try on clothes, or just sit with me for a while. And it was getting incredibly demanding to do that with the 15 I had in the cabinet. I don’t enjoy being a person who spends a grand on something just to wait for it for a year, look at it for 10 minutes when it arrives and then shove it in the pitch-black abyss for the rest of its days, never to acknowledge its existence again. 

I don’t need the funds from my doll sales for anything else currently, so this was purely a decision of "what do I want to own?" (The funds’ll go straight to my savings so that I can spend them irresponsibly some other day and act like a stingy saint now). However, I do feel less stressed about my collection knowing it doesn’t hit the “you could buy a cheap apartment for what these extremely fragile collectibles cost” mark. For context, apartments here don't cost what they cost in New York.

One of my 2022 purchases was this Soom Dokkebi Garion. He's pretty, but I just don't need another doll:

Here’s the ones I decided I don’t need. All except one arrived during 2022 or 2023:

Iplehouse Aurora: She was a book character who doesn’t even look like herself, and her significant counterpart will not be shelled into a doll so it’s pointless keeping her.

Soom Garions: I somehow ended up with 2 full dolls + 1 head – they were supposed to represent a random standalone character from a book of mine, but in the end, they don't even look like said character. More like I just thought to myself I somehow must shell this character, and then went for the least displeasant of all the bad options out there. Same story as Aurora, that is. Really, I should know better than to try that route anymore.

Fantasia Doll Vivian: She was an old doll I had since 2019. I guess I liked her once, but stuff happened, and I came to own several Vivians over the years. I calculated I have owned 4 different OE Vivians, and most of those had multiple faceups. I just grew bored. I have seen this sculpt in all too many faceups, and done too many of them myself, too, back when I still painted.

Fantasia Doll Sleepy Vivian and Alice: Sleepy sculpts aren’t my thing, never were, and while I do love Fantasia Doll, I still notice these two were my least favorites because I couldn’t see their eyes. Some love their calm look, but I seem to love the creepy smiling dolls with eyes wide open. I think I just got them for the obsession of having every single Fantasia sculpt in existence, not really because I would have *wanted* them.

Iplehouse Opera Douglas: I really loved the Opera fullset, but a fancy set of clothing isn’t something that gets me to hold on to a doll that I wouldn’t keep if they were naked. Plus, he was just another odds-and-ends character from a book I wrote years ago.

Iplehouse HID Yui: I think she was a remedy to my wish to own a lady with Asian features. But, I couldn’t really find a solid place for her among the characters as is often the case with dolls whom I bought solely for the looks. And Iple sculpts never really sit right with me in the end.

Angell Studio mermaid body: It’s a lovely body, but I don’t do much with it, and it feels like it’s mostly a decorative object. Which is a shame since I don’t display my dolls. I wanted to have a human body for the head instead.

And after all the disappointments, here's someone who's finally hoping that next year, he'll finally get a private cabinet with Carol thanks to all the vacated space (no, not Grace):

Regrets? Doubts?

I don’t have any actual regrets for selling now that I've done it. More like I'm asking myself why I didn't have the balls to do this earlier. But as you can probably tell from the list above and how many of those dolls didn't make it to either 2022 or 2023 group photo, I do have quite a few *buying*. Maybe that's somewhat of a lesson for me?

I am a bit sad that I had to sell my Fanff Studio Model body earlier this year, but in no way do I regret that decision. I sold it because it was way too small for me. I purchased the studio’s newer body, Victoria’s Secret body, to take its place, and I’ve been very happy with it. It was claimed by Elyon (the light orange hair girl with horns in the 2023 group photo above). Here's another photo of her and the body:

My favourite improvements of the new Victoria's secret body are the less tense looking shoulders and the fact that Fanff offered a new set of "medium high heel feet" that fit most SD16 shoes. With the old Model body, they only offered one type of high heel feet, and they were so high arched that they didn't fit any of the shoes that were supposed to be her size measurement-wise. The new body also has mobility joints on her thighs, which the old Model body didn't, and I know that makes some people very happy, but I hardly sit my dolls down in such complicated postions, so for me, thigh joints just bite (literally) and I usually leave them out if that's an option. I'm not sure if it's actually an option with any companies other than Iplehouse and DFH, but yeah.

However the newer Fanff body is just a tad bigger and overall has more meat on it, which means it does not fit all the clothes that the Model body did. I loved how the Fanff Model body did fit Smartdoll brand clothes, and I bought quite a bunch just for her. I have *never* seen casual style doll clothes that are so skillfully made and look so much like real human clothes. One can think what one wants about Danny, but damn, his team makes some superior quality clothes. I almost considered keeping the body just for the sake of the clothes, but ultimately it wasn’t enough for me to keep a body that otherwise didn’t fit my plans. Unfortunately it also meant I had to sell most of my Smartdoll clothes, because they did not fit my other dolls and it’s unlikely I’ll ever get another doll that’s slim enough to fit them. I especially miss the purple cargo pants and the jeans!

I can say with confidence that I won’t become a Smartdoll owner just for the sake of clothes (resin and non-anime is just more my thing), but them coming out with the plus size ladies gives me hope that they might have clothes that fit BJDs. So far, the waist on the Smartdoll pear body pants does look quite low rise, so much so that it might not fit BJDs and is even on the edge of whether it fits the Smartdoll body itself. I mean I remember Danny on his Insta writing something along the lines of how he wants to expose the plus size doll's belly as much as possible, just because it pisses off people who think chubby persons should hide their bellies, but. Look at his website listing for the stain prevention leggings for the pear body. You would literally see the genitalia through the lace if the doll had one, something that does not occur with the slimmer body and its clothes at all, so I think he’s taking his low rise a bit too seriously, lol.

In some ideal universe, I could probably have repeated the following pattern to keep both Fanff bodies: 1. Instead of selling my Fantasia Doll sleepy Alice, have her eyes modded entirely open, so basically mod her into an OE head and maybe I wouldn't have an issue with her anymore. Because the lips on the sleepy head are more closed than on the OE sculpt, it would be a bit different from just buying two OE heads. 2. Keep both Fanff bodies so that Fantasia Barbara gets the smaller one and Alice gets the bigger one. 

However, my sleepy Alice had a faceup that I very much enjoyed and that would definitely have been destroyed if the head was modded extensively. I could not think of anyone to send her to for a faceup redo: my go-to for Fantasias would be Angeltoast, but my other OE Alice is already painted by them, so I’d probably not want another one to avoid them looking similar in style. Plus, I would have had to whip up a character for that extra Alice. So, I just thought it’s all too much hassle for an excuse to keep a few pairs of Smartdoll pants.

Besides, I think I have just enough Fantasia gals as is:

Waiting? Plans? Wishes?

I’m glad my situation with waiting and purchases isn’t very chaotic at the very least. I’m only waiting for one doll, Dodollsdream Leona in lavender resin, and one outfit for my dolls. That’s probably the good side of not being so invested in this hobby lately: all the new releases start looking and feeling underwhelming when you’ve lost that spark for dolls altogether. Or then I haven’t had a good mania shopping spree in a while. Fuck, I never know.

I did preorder Leona before I went on my little selling spree. I’m not set on giving up her right now, because a purple doll is something I’ve long wanted to add to my small group of very homogeneous girls. Time will tell whether it was a wise purchase. She certainly deviates from the rest of my crew a lot. 

I’ve however decided that if Leona's faceup just won’t click with me, I’ll list her rather than go through the trouble of trying again with some other artist. It’s hard trying to decide a faceup and style concept for her because she’s very much out of my usual comfort zone. The first (and last) time I tried to come up with a style for a fantasy colour doll, my vision didn’t end up working for me and I sold the doll. She was a SartoriaJ Sarah, and I sold her in the end for multiple reasons: SJ bodies aren’t something I personally like, and I chose the wrong faceup concept for the OC.

I don’t plan on purchasing anything in the upcoming year. I don’t have any need (story-wise) to get new dolls, and anything in the market isn’t interesting now. I don’t tell myself an absolute “NO”, because I can more than accommodate and afford a new doll, but I think I’m well held back by the fact that when my collection grows too large, I don’t enjoy any of it anymore. I wouldn’t like to sell any of my current dolls to make space for new purchases, so I’d really need to consider the pros and cons of buying a new one. I’ve also downsized on clothes, shoes and props a lot this past year, so I don’t want to buy anything like that either unless I really need it.

And, yes, I’d like to do more with my current crew. My doll cabinet is still a bit crowded as I’ve got a few dolls waiting to get sold, but the more space I liberate, the more I notice I like to just open the doors of the cabinet and look at my dolls at random moments. That’s something I haven’t done in a long time. I have a lot of materials for sewing stashed away, and I use my self-made doll clothes quite frequently, so sewing some more is definitely on my list. I also enjoy making jewelry, so that too.

Happy new year!