An open letter to recast owners
I’ve been debating with myself wether or not to post this because I’ve been away from the hobby and this ‘discourse’ for some time doing my own thing and generally trying to get my shit together but then someone had the bright idea of posting that delightful list and attempting to brand myself and some 700 people as bullies and stalkers. Not cool bro, not cool at all.
So this is my open letter to the recast owning community, particularly those like the admins of the above blog. I always welcome discourse, if you want to discuss any of this or any of my points then I more than welcome you to my inbox, it’s always open.
Gretings fellow doll lover, The thing I really, really want to emphasis above all else is that we get it. We really do. Who wouldn’t want something they’ve been wanting forever and a day for cheaper than usual? It’s only natural and we’re a generation (or two) of people who’ve been brought up to search for a bargain every chance we can. So we understand the temptation. But the issue of recasts vs supporting artists goes much deeper than just the price tag and that seems to be where the disconnect is, at least from what I’ve observed the last few years. Allow me to make an analogy; Imagine, if you will, that you’ve got yourself a job cleaning floors, be it for a bit of money on the side or your sole source of income. You’ve got yourself all set up, you’ve bought the brooms, the dustpan, the garbage can and bags. Not to mention you bought all those cleaning chemicals which weren’t cheap at all. So you’ve come up with how much you charge your clients based on the cost of your equipment and you manage to squeeze in a little on top to cover your labour and time. You come up with what you consider a very fair price considering the time, effort and cost involved in your work. Sounds fair right? Now imagine you’re cleaning a floor, you’ve done a good job, you could eat off that floor. Some guy comes along, tells you what a good job you’ve done and even picks up a piece of rubbish for you but the second your boss appears to pay you what you’re owed this other guy, we’ll call him Mr R quickly shows him the garbage can, telling your boss at length what a wonderful job has been done and he’ll only charge half of what you where asking for. Oh! Well your boss loves that idea, a perfect floor for half the price! Who wouldn’t jump on that deal! So MR R leaves with the money, having done a tiny amount of work compared to you. You’re left out of pocket and with nothing to show for all that time and effort your poured into your work. How would that make you feel? Maybe you could let it slide if it happened just once but imagine that Mr R keeps coming back, he’s got the money now to follow you to your next job and the one after that and so on after all. I’m hoping it’s obvious where I’m going with this… on a simplified level that’s exactly what recasters do. They make money off the hard work, skill and all that time an artist pours into making dolls and deny those same artists potential sales by poaching customers with an artists own work. I don’t know about you but I’d find that so incredibly beyond galling if it were me in the artists shoes. And if your work is constantly being sold out from under you, why bother to continue? That is the crux of why recasts are so harmful to the BJD world. Creating a BJD from scratch takes skill (something which might have entailed formal education and the debts that go with it), a hell of a lot of time and development and a lot of money sunk into it along the way for equipment and materials. Why should anyone sink all that into making dolls when someone else is going to come along, make the minimum amount of effort and make money off that artists hard work? And if artists decide they’ve had enough and it’s just not worth their time to make dolls anymore then we ALL loose out. Even recast owners. Because what’s there going to be to recast if dolls aren’t being made in the first place? There’s been many good posts made about the costs of producing dolls and I encourage and implore you to go look for them. Do some research on what’s involved in producing the dolls we all enjoy and you’ll come away informed and hopefully with a good sense of what it’s like for the artists who’s work we all covet. So much of the narrative being used by blogs like bjdrecastpositive and the people behind them relies upon is attempting to paint anyone who disagrees with them as bullies and stalkers. I can’t speak for all 700 people singled out on that list they complied but I know that I’ve never stalked anyone in my life (who even has the time or energy for that?) and I certainly don’t bully anyone. Being vocal and disagreeing with something someone posts publically is not bullying. And once again I implore you to use your own common sense and take that list and posts like it for what it is; an attempt to shift focus away from the real issues at hand. There’s some very impressive mental gymnastics going on (which we’ve seen before) comparing recast owners and their side of the 'debate’ to the struggles of the black community or the LGBTQA community among others, not to mention all that intersectionality but and I really must emphasise this as hard as it may be to hear it; recasts owners are not the victims, they are not being persecuted or discriminated against. That isn’t what being disagreed with in a debate is. That isn’t what having your decision to buy a fake doll called into question is. And a decision is exactly what recast ownership is, with the exception of course of the poor people who get scammed, it is a conscious decision to put luxury wants above all else, regardless of whom it hurts. How ever someone wants to justify it to themselves on no level does deciding to buy a fake doll and having that called into question compare to being persecuted for your skin colour or sexuality. And I honestly cannot believe that’s even something I have to explain. The mind boggles. Like I said at the beginning. I get it, I really do. None of us are pretending to be perfect or to have never made questionable decisions but the point is that we are all capable of looking back on our decisions, realising it was a mistake and doing the right thing. Be that by changing our ways or by making amends. Even some of the big name doll companies have made such journeys, Dollzone started out as a recast company, they decided to change their ways and they’ve since flourished into what they are today, likewise Fairyland fucked up pretty big by copying the designs for their steampunk weapons a year or two back but they realised they’d messed up and made it right. We are all constantly growing and learning. It’s part of life and learning from our mistakes is a fundamental thing we all share. All I’m asking with this letter is to encourage recast owners and supporters to simply put themselves in someone else’s shoes, to think about the implications of buying fake dolls and to have a good hard look at their decision to do so. There are so many alternatives, be it layaways or this awesome list of dolls under $300 that @bluekitsune put together. The alternatives are there, you just need to look for them.