Dolly curses/superstitions?

I don’t know if it’s a superstition or not, but I can’t go to bed/sleep if any of my dolls are in an uncomfortable-looking position. They have to look nice and posed before I can actually fall asleep or else I’ll wake up a lot throughout the night.

Thankfully I haven’t had any horrible ‘curse’-like shipping issues....yet.

 

I dont know if it's considered superstition but I have to make sure all my dolls look comfortable. Like they're sitting down nicely and nothing is cocked weird on them. I know it's kind of weird, they dont have feelings and they're not alive, but I like to think they can so I try to make them as comfortable as possible like if they're feeling good it contributes to the good vibes of the rest of the room I guess haha.

 

If i buy a doll of one size, I have to buy a second one at that size, so the first isn’t “lonely”. Also, I mostly buy from just one company (Blue Fairy), but the few times I’ve branched out, I feel like I have to buy two of the other company’s dolls— again, so they don’t feel lonely or too “different” from my other dolls.

On the other hand, when you have two dolls the same size (i’m thinking of my 19cm tinies here), it feels like it’s less stressful to shop for— the perfect wig that finally arrives... and doesn’t work for the doll you bought it for? Usually, it works out for the other one! (Hopefully lol)

 

Sharing some folk traditions related to the curse topic. In my country, some people are superstitious and thought the doll might be possessed by spirits during this time of the year (Lunar July is considered the Ghost month). In order to prevent ghosts from possessing the dolls, it is said that tieing a red thread to the waist of the doll would scare off the ghosts. Another way is to bless the doll with incense from the temple. I never did any of that to my dolls I prefer to treat them like vampires and place them in boxes, away from the sunlight would be good enough.

 

Wow, that's really cool! Folk traditions/superstitions are always interesting.

My background sort of has the same kind of superstition. A doll might be a host for a wight (basically a spirit that protects the home but can also be "unlucky" if angered) or other spirit, and so dolls should be treated with a degree of respect. Not sure how much I believe it, but I figure treating a doll with respect doesn't hurt. In any case, it keeps them from getting broken!

 

I have a weird thing with setting my doll’s eyes - I can’t have my dolls looking straight ahead, they have to always look to one side or the other. Maybe I just really, really hate eye contact?

 

I don’t know if this counts as a superstition but I can’t leave my dolls in my living room overnight. I have to bring them back to my bedroom. In my head the bedroom is the safe place. This makes no sense because I live alone so all my flat should be “safe”. I tried to leave my Soony’s body in the living room recently when I was using it for a sewing project and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had to get up in the night to retrieve it

 

No curses, but a few superstitions. The main one being that, because they are vessels which I invest my imagination into, they function as extensions of me and (I don't remember if I derived this from my ethnic culture or another one or if I made this up entirely) since they are dolls, they serve to protect me. Not in any manner other than dream- or energy-wise, anyway. So if I have a doll out and about, they're deliberately facing my bed to ward off nightmares.

The second part ties in with the idea if you're good to them, they'll be good to you. It's all about the vibes; how you feel will be bounced right back. I know fundamentally these superstitions are exactly just superstitions, but they make me feel better to operate under.

 

I don't really believe that my dolls are haunted or alive, but it's become habit to apologize to them when I accidentally do something that might "hurt" them, like letting their hand kick back into their face, or not noticing that they've been stuck in an unnatural position. I even apologize when I have to take them apart for maintenance or to swap heads or whatever.

I guess if they ever do get possessed I'll be relatively safe, but I think maybe it's just because they look like people that I instinctively treat them like it.

 

This topic reminds me of Thai 'luk thep' dolls. I vaguely remember someone posting on a local forum years ago that they spotted someone using a BJD as a 'luk thep' doll when they were in Thailand or something.

 

This may sound a little strange, but I was raised in one of those "New Age" hippy cults that got started in the '60's, and one of the things that it teaches is that everything has a consciousness of some sort. Everything is made of energy, consciousness is basically the movement of energy, so everything, even apparently inanimate objects such as dolls, has a consciousness of some sort.

What this means with my dolls is, I feel like I'm letting the doll down if I give up and sell them. This is especially bad with second hand dolls, because they almost feel like orphans that I "adopted" and therefore I have a responsibility towards. I know it's not literally true, but the fact that they can look at me really doesn't help.

 

I can definitely relate

I've been on the hunt for one of my grails this year and I keep stumbling on "orphans" in need of adoption and it it so hard not to get stuck into buying every gorgeous doll I feel a connection with. And when I do adopt i feel like I have to spoil them more then the new ones I purchased.

 

I have to have eyes, wig and clothes ready as soon as the doll arrives home, and I have to do the face up within 24 hours. Even if that means doing it at night in the rain and redoing it later. If a doll isn’t complete within at least a week, it kills the bond for me.

 

All my dolls have to be surrounded by items that speak to their individual characters in elaborate displays...they absolutely have to be living in their own little world somehow, independent of me. I cannot bear to have them simply standing alone or with others on a shelf, or stored away in boxes. I know it sounds silly, but It would be like I was denying them their own lives or something! That would just feel wrong to me.

 

Same.... although now I have dolls in lots of sizes, so I guess it is not as important as before.

I usually always have to give my dolls some moles or beauty marks when I do faceups, because I need them to look like their imperfection is natural or something... and it helps hide dust caught in MSC.

I do feel a little superstitious about my Fairyland Rona, who was bought from a dropoff to Goodwill that was discussed about on here. I feel like, since she was auctioned off with a lot of other BJDs so haphazardly, her original owner might have passed or lost her under bad circumstances, so I want to keep her faceup the Fairyland original like the original owner did.

 

This is the same exact thing for me. If I have a doll on order, like I do now, I do a lot of researching on the sizes and whatnot, making sure I have everything from the wig to the shoes all sorted and in hand. When the doll arrives, I like to get them all dressed up. There's just something about a doll sitting around blank for an extended period of time that doesn't sit well with me. I did that with my very first doll, because I didn't know any better, and I just never really connected with the doll.

 

I have what I call the "new doll curse." Over the years, I've finally had some exceptions to it, but nearly every doll I buy new (as opposed to secondhand) has something wrong with it/the order. It can be parts that should have a right and a left that I've gotten both left of, or cracked eyes, or rusted s-hooks. A couple have had chipped parts. One doll ended up in a mix-up at the dealer where I got someone else's doll and they got mine. Looking around the room, I can count on one hand the number of new buys that haven't had an issue, and if you look at my "at home" list in my profile that'll really speak volumes to how often this happens

I try to buy secondhand when it's a viable option now

 

I do the same! I also always want to apologize at least mentally if I do something wrong with the doll
(when tightening them for example, or drop parts).
Talking about strange circumstances, when I ordered pants for one doll, at different times and from different stores, all three pairs of pants got lost along the way. I was very annoyed. But that was a few years ago, when the tracking of postal items in our country was not all right. Still not ok. After this things have never been lost in such quantity. And in general I had a lot of problems in order to buy clothes for this doll.