Dolly alter egos?

Sort of?

I have a resin version of one of my favorite MMO toons... who also exists in a tabletop RPG-character incarnation... and it's probably safe at this point to say that while she absolutely *isn't* me, there are definitely aspects of Kestrel that have become at least partially the Me that I wish I was. I aspire to have her confidence and at least some of her ferocity and determination.

 

One of my favorite dolls is partly my alter, I'd say she represents a kind person I'd want / like to be, rather than who I fully am. Still, I gave her, as character, a few of my own traits, mostly the messy ones.

 

I do, in a fashion. Most of my characters have a piece of me in them, but my Dika Doll Winter Solstice boy, Winter, is very much meant to be a representation of me but also an extension of my mental health issues. So kind of a menhera boy representing me, but not quite. There's a lot in menhera fashion that does not apply to me, specifically the self-harm aspect.

 

As a writer, I think there's a little bit of me in every character too, and that helping them go through certain things in fiction and grow and be better can help the writer navigate those issues and is overall kinda therapeutic for oneself if done right.
As an example, my Bimong Narae 412, Lianda, is my OC / self-insert in the Marvel world. She's like me in many aspects (introvert, stubborn, pessimist, conflict-avoidant, a bit of a brute both with words and physically when under stress...) but through her story and her relationships with others she learns to understand and respond better to different feelings and situations.

 

I know I want one of my dolls to be like me as a cool elf...but I have so many that they get their own looks and hair. So I guess they're all living the life I wish I could as a fantasy character.

 

I think all of my dolls have a piece of me in them, some much more than others. Though as far as an alter ego....Pepper is probably closest. She likes the same video games, the same music, a lot of the same foods and interests, loves dogs, and have a similar fashion--in fact, we have dressed alike for a convention before! She's an extrovert and kind of goofy like me. I think the biggest difference would be in her family history (I have married parents and younger sister, she has divorced parents, raised by dad, and an older brother) and her being a teacher and planning at least two kids in the future (I am so not a kid person).

 

Behold my mini me!

This judgey little dragon dude is pretty much my dragon form, his name is Tia which is short for Inertia one of my other online names.

I actually have another doll which was based on me with a twist as it was made for a fun and weird little art/fan club. The base idea was take yourself and mix with a favorite DC hero or villain give it a cool new name and that's your character go forth and draw them. Well at some pint my S.O. and I shelled our characters from that club in doll form.
Anyway my anti-hero self Velocity was a mix of me and a fave evil speedster. (The DC character is villain, and RL I'm a goody goody that equals anti-hero right?)
Velocity has actually changed both how I draw him and his doll form slight as I've transitioned. I need to sit down and sand his chest flat this summer. As I have had a male chest a whole year now it's very much his turn.

On top of those two pretty much based on me dolls, a lot of my dolls are either gaming PCs or writing O.C.s of mine so technically also me in some weird way I guess. /shrug

 

she's nowhere near finished, but I shelled my sona Karra with a mnf iset! It feels weird calling her a sona/oc, but she is, so... Anyway, she was my self insert character back when I was 12 and in RP groups on DeviantArt and neopets in the late 2000s, spawned from my usernames that were usually some variation of Karra-chan. She's always ended up as my default doodle character in my sketchbooks since then, since I don't really rp/do self inserts/etc anymore. Having Karra as a username now is just primarily habit, and if i'm playing a roleplaying game i'm probably going to name the character karra out of habit too.

Anyway, she's my icon right now, and I can't wait to be able to work on her doll, since I'm really behind on doll projects! It just felt right to have one of her since I decided to start shelling all of my important/foundational characters from my childhood/teen years

 

I don’t really have a Dolly alter ego as such but a few of mine contain parts of my personality. I also have a couple of dolls based on MMO characters I play if that counts.
Out of those dolls I think Patticake (Pukipuki Pipi) is the closest to an alter ego albeit a very childlike one. She’s kind of my inner child from a takes things literally, says what she thinks, doesn’t hide emotion and doesn’t always understand what she did wrong perspective.

 

I’ve been in this hobby for many, many years now and have amassed a good-sized and extremely varied collection, all to tell the story of “me” (sounds a bit egotistical perhaps but it’s really not.) They are my “life journal” and represent aspects of myself, my emotions, and the experiences of my long life…all the way from a young impressionistic and starry-eyed flower-child from back in the day, to a faded and dried flower to represent the whimsical beauties and struggles of growing older…and every fantasy-based thing along the way. I created my characters one at a time to be part of the fairytale of my life, always with an eye towards diversity in my collecting. This has given me tremendous joy and been way more fun than creating a life journal from simple pen and paper. It has allowed me to express myself creatively, decorate my home in a unique bohemian way that my entire family loves, and to emotionally heal from some of the more difficult things while embracing the joy of other experiences. Ah, the memories each doll holds…

As for whether they actually look like me, most do not since they simply represent the experiences, thoughts or emotions of my life. But my daughter has remarked that my angel boy looks just like me if I was a guy. And I did just preorder a Ringdoll Jade because she looks just like me as a teenager…I just couldn’t resist that!

 

Vidania is a self-insert character. I don’t know why she is, she was never intended to be, but all the backstory I have about exes being abusive is projected onto this tiny little traumatized cleric. She doesn’t look like me—she has purple hair and a side-shave, I have red hair that is an integral part of my gender. Dania is a part of who I am on an emotional level, and so I have to have her latest shell absolutely perfect. It’s coming together—I have a lot of mods to finish.

Valentine is a self-insert character for another part of me. He’s very specifically my gender envy character. He has the red hair, heavy gothy makeup, and the very overdone, seductive-femme wardrobe I wish I could get away with in my day-to-day life. I wrote him to explore the identity as a he/him femme lesbian, and came out realizing that was my identity as well. I only use he/him with supportive friends, not in my whole life like Val does, but he was made to embody my ideal gender and presentation.

 

I do not have "Conventionally Attractive" Disney princess features. When I finally found a doll sculpt that looked like me, I was just overjoyed and bought it at once. I am going to paint this one to be a self portrait. She is a Nakana Doll Panya.

 

I have a doll "version" of myself but it's not a bjd it's a las reinas Mei of Paola Reina which kind of represents me when I was a toddler and lived with my grandma best times ever I don't have an adult minime though.

 

Ludovica, my MDD, originally started out as a mini-me, but has developed a character all her own. She does possess features and coloration closer to that which I wish I had, as opposed to my actual self (though these desired features are ones I possessed in the past).

 

I've always known that my dolls all have a measure of my self-expression and personality. I shell OCs, and I've tried to style and develop their characters to be very different to me, but never succeeded: they all end up drifting back to some variation of my personality. And the one time I managed to style a doll to be more different... I stopped recognizing the character and didn't identify with them anymore, so I sold the doll. So while I'm not into creating an alter ego/self-insert doll, my crew all end up like me anyway.

I had a relative who's known me since I was a child, but as an adult I seldom saw her. When I showed her photos of my dolls, she immediately said that all of them look like me, regardless of gender or styling. Seems that my self-expression is quite visible. I've since realized that the way I buy clothes and dress my dolls is nigh identical to the way I buy clothes and dress myself, so... I guess my whole crew is wearing my wardrobe and maybe that's what my relative saw. (And while I don't wear kimono, I sew my dolls' kimono in colours/patterns that I like... many of which are ones that I wear a lot...)

 

Yeah I wouldn't say I have any intentional dolly alter-egos though I had some previously. It was eventually time to say goodbye to that method of processing and coping. I would say that I do currently have one doll character whom I joke about in private and sometimes refer to myself as him when I am being alike to him but we shan't discuss specifics on the public forum.
Yeah I have always gone about things in my particular way. My dolls are little fragments of ideas, memories, emotions and as such they are all valuable expressions and extensions of myself, but not myself precisely. I am no expert on what cohesive thing I am, perhaps just a vessel of weird ideas.

 

Like most artists, some kernel of me always ends up sneaking into my dolls. I don't have any intentional dolly alter egos at this point, though!