Do you have a secret doll?

I am not a social media user at all. I have no personal social accounts. I did try doing a doll-specific Instagram for awhile, just because I know the doll hobby is really active over there, but I deleted it after about a year of very sporadic use because I genuinely hated the whole "social media" vibe for so many reasons. That being said, I think I have posted a photo of every single doll I own at least once, either here on DoA or when I did still have an IG.

But there is a way in which they all feel very much like "secret dolls" to me: their characters/stories.

When I first started with BJD, I didn't have any real stories and only the loosest, vaguest ideas of personalities for them. I saw people who did the whole character shelling thing and had elaborate detailed backstories here on DoA, but I just really didn't have anything like that and figured that wasn't how I did dolls.

Over time though, as I styled and sewed clothes for my dolls and so on, different little things would come to me, and finally after a couple of years I realized that without setting out to, I'd imagined out a whole story for a few of my dolls. Then I decided, a few years ago, to do NaNoWriMo just for fun, and ended up writing out all the stories I'd randomly come up with for my dolls' characters as a novel. (Which I also kept completely secret/to myself! I didn't even end up turning it in to the NaNoWriMo site to get credit for word count/participation.)

So at this point, my dolls all do have extremely detailed characters and fully written, long, complex stories-- but that is an aspect I don't share at all, that I keep completely private just for my own enjoyment. I don't post anything about that anywhere (nor do I share or talk about it offline!). I only talk or share about the actual physical dolls themselves and modding, sewing, or crafting projects I'm working on with them. In that way, there is a big component of my dolls that is "secret". Through dolls, storytelling/fiction writing has become kind of a second/side hobby for me, and it's one I keep completely to myself.

 

I'm a bad photographer and not that social even on social media so technically all my dolls would be secret dolls

 

I never post pictures of or even talk to other people about my first doll. It's not because I don't care about her - on the contrary, she is very personal to me and I love her dearly. The thing is, I find it incredibly difficult to talk about her because she is a very abtract, symbolic sort of character. She is not a character in a traditional sense; though she has a name, she has no personality or backstory. It is super difficult to explain but she sort of... represents a part of my life. A time, a place, an image, a feeling - all of which don't exist anymore, except through her. She is a memory of a happiness and safety, and I am very protective of that memory, so I prefer to keep her to myself.

This probably made no sense hahah, I just saw the thread and got excited because I thought I was the only one who had a secret doll, and I figured I would share my experience.

 

A lot of my dolls have inadvertently become secret dolls for me haha, though it's mostly because I'm too forgetful to upload on social media. I have a separate IG account for bjd related stuff but often times, I end up using my main account to like doll posts anyway

I find that I tend to keep floating heads a secret more than full on dolls. I don't know why- I'd say that I spend a lot of time "ooh"-ing and "aww"-ing nude doll bodies and blank floating heads, but I never feel compelled to take pictures of them as I do when they're clothed and customized.

 

I went years without posting my dolls anywhere and I just recently started posting to instagram, so I'd say that they were more or less "secret". I don't really share the ones that are blank or in progress either, so.

 

I don't share on social media but I also dont really want to share my dolls with my family either because I know it would weird them out XD and in general is not something I can discuss much with people outside the hobby.