#do have

[prophecyofgray]

~2 more paragraphs to write for my stupid literature review for my stupid linguistics thesis that i willingly decided to write

[jt-attempts-dolls]

also aduke has this dress and she looks fabulous in it, they oughta model more of their bright color dresses on dark skin dolls

[jt-attempts-dolls]

I HAVE THIS IT IS THE CUTEST THING. :D Laser Eyes has the shirt, Aduke uses the orange tulle skirt as a crinoline under her historical dresses (it works great!), and Gabi is probably going to have the tights. The crocs are actually gray rather than black, and they tend to fall off, so I don't use them much, but TINY DOLLY CROCS I SWEAR TO GOD. :D

[jt-attempts-dolls]

Welp, better start at the beginning. This is Aduke “Addy” Walker, originally a historical character who escapes from slavery in 1864. My Aduke is a modern girl who does a lot of historical cosplay as various ancestors of hers – the original Addy Walker (using Addy’s collection), a 1770s free black woman (using Felicity’s collection), an Afro-Latina woman (using Josefina’s collection), a black pioneer girl under the Homestead Act (using Kirsten’s collection), and others. Basically, if a historical outfit comes into this house, it’s Aduke’s.

She’s also related to the Cherokee / Chickasaw / etc Descendants, whose enslaved ancestors traveled the Trail of Tears with the slaveholding Native Americans of the “Five Civilized Tribes” (so called because they had adopted white people’s customs such as, you guessed it, slavery. Assimilation never works. ;P) She has a modern powwow Jingle Dance dress relating to this part of her heritage. And she has a few modern clothes, but not many – it’s just easier for my brain to divide things up if Aduke is strictly historical from all the eras at once.

Once I get some good lighting in here, I hope to have a proper display photo of my Aduke. I’ll note if a photo on this blog is taken by me; otherwise, it’s from AmericanGirl.wikia.com , which is an excellent resource of excellence. (Trying to note that in the sub-header. Tumblr formatting is hard.)

[jt-attempts-dolls]

See, this one, I actually own, and I'm pretty much chill about letting it go? I have the pattern, I know I can sew a copy -- being arsed to find the correct sizes of lace is the hardest part. I've gotten to fiddle with the interchangeable stomachers and the pinner cap and the little tiny necklace. This is a... just a super classic example of how I play with my dolls? Sometimes I buy things and I'm gonna keep them. More often, I just need to see the thing in person, maybe fiddle with it for a while, try it on all my dolls, photograph it, maybe figure out the construction, try to copy it, develop an informed opinion on it, and then I'm ready to let it go. So it's sort of hard to figure out whether a particular thing is "worth" the purchase price to me, cos it's... I don't know if I'm buying it for resale or to keep. I don't know. I'm weird about dolls, maybe. ;P Other people seem to have a "want" feeling that reliably sticks around after they have the thing? And often a wiring that can handle owning ten, twenty, thirty dolls at a time. A lot of things, I only want temporarily, and I can only focus on or enjoy so many things at a time. I know there are some other people who prefer limited collections, but the temporary revolving-door sort of thing seems a bit... it makes me feel un-normal, within the doll-collecting world. Hell, within the world at all, it's like -- you're supposed to, if you want a thing, and then you get it, you're supposed to keep wanting it, otherwise you never really wanted it at all? Am I making any sense? It's this... it's that same retroactive lack of fluidity you get in a lot of queer contexts. If I'm a girl *now*, I must never have been a boy, and vice versa, kind of thing. It's not... common to be like "yes, I did want this, and now I have had it, and I have satisfied my wanting of it, and now it can go away cos it lives in my heart". Is it? I can't think of anybody who is even remotely like that. But, like... I mean, it's objects. They don't grow and change. With people, you're not like "nope, you were my friend, but I have gotten all the enjoyment out of you, so bye". Sometimes friends do grow apart, the person they are now is not the person present-you wants to be around, irrelevant of whether past-you and past-them were good together. But with objects, it's like... I don't know, I'd just expect it to be a lot more common, for somebody to be like "yup, there was a set amount of enjoyment for me to get out of that possession, and I have gotten it, and now I will pass the object on to someone else for them to enjoy". Like, my present willingness to get rid of the object doesn't invalidate my past enjoyment of it. Does that not... happen to other people? :S

[jt-attempts-dolls]

Bought this for Kaya. Still not sure if I like it or not. Might try it on Gabbi, possibly with leggings. Don't know yet.

[jt-attempts-dolls]

I have this, too. I'm giving it to Gabbi. :D Not Aduke's style, but it is DAMN cute, even with the stupid Innerstar U branding. (The hair elastics have long since gone the way of all dolly hair elastics, but they shouldn't be hard to replace if I want. ^_^)