Have you ever "overgrown a character"?

I've been in the hobby since 2006 and have occasionally felt this with some of my earliest dolls. I've been loathe to sell any of them since I also use dolls and figures as drawing references. My collection capped at nine dolls for nearly a decade, but I just added two new ones that I'm absolutely in love with and have ordered another head. I'm thinking of selling two or three of the six 1/3 sized dolls and the spare heads I've done nothing with. There are a few options I can think of.

1) You could change Julietta's style or reboot her character. If Hollywood and Disney can reboot their media, why can't we do it with dolls? Perhaps a fresh look on her history or new changes to her backstory. Maybe new hobbies and interests, or new friendships are in order for her? There are many different ways to spice things up for a favorite older character!

2) Have her as a display doll. It's 100% fine to just display your doll(s) without needing to buy or make them something. Sometimes it's just nice to look at them or hold them every once in a while. Many of my dolls just hang out on my dresser or animation desk most of the time while I am juggling work and classwork. I don't often have much free time to do stuff with them (sewing, doing faceups, sculpting additional parts, customizing them, etc) but I love to just have them nearby and I'll stroke their hair before bed each night.

3) Store her for a bit. If you miss having her nearby, then keep her. If you don't miss her, you could put her up for sale on the marketplace. Your character is your character whether or not she's in doll form. If you're not feeling happy having her as a doll it's okay to send her to another home.

 

Funny enough, I'm going through that now. The doll is a male Myou Vieruodis and while he was great for the longest time, he doesn't "spark joy" anymore. His character was absorbed into a different one (two actually), and so I've decided to sell him. I can't bring myself to see him as any character other than the one he was, I tried. Like you described, I've outgrown him.

 

I've had multiple doll characters that I've grown away from. Kaiyashu has said everything I'd give as advice, so I won't repeat it, but I will give my own examples.

My little fae kids (all three of them), which include the doll I first bonded with, kept their appearances, but I am no longer attached to their characters. I even recently reshelled one since she was originally on a body body and I finally was able to buy her (Luts Yul Satyresse) in full doll form with a girl body and everything during the summer event this year. I still love the dolls themselves, and I love how I styled them, so I've kept them and still do upkeep like restringing them. The girl is the only one I really do anything with, so I've considered giving them "modern day" clothes just to do something with the other two. I think it's really a matter of how much effort you're willing to invest in keeping things fresh with your dolls, and for me I've been able to keep things fresh because I really love the dolls themselves.

Then I have another doll that I came back from a hiatus and didn't want to sell because I was attached to it, so I reworked the character into someone new. I also attached her to the story of one of my other dolls, so it helps keep me interested, since it's a story I'm still invested in. I would not have been able to just style her the same because I wasn't attached to the style, either. So in that instance it was just better for me to restyle her and come up with a new character for her.

 

For me, it's more that I don't write for them very much. My DZ Mo-2, Raleigh, was my first doll and I hardly write for him at all. This is probably less to do with the character himself and more the fact that I finally managed to shell two characters I've had in my head for years longer. They're easier to write for. A lot of my early dolls have fallen off, but I couldn't bring myself to sell any of them.

 

I had this happening too. I often write on my story- i really do like writing a book and a new character develops. I write more and wonder about which sculpt feels suitable, if I got the feeling "I need to hold this character in my hands". Then i get the doll, I write more, I develop more. But as I already got my main charachters, the doll itself sometimes feels like "Than you for beeing my co-star in some episodes. Your story is told and if you appear again in some more episodes I can imagine you are here but I don´t need you phisically in my hands". This happened with a couple of my dolls and the characters stay in my story but the dolls don´t stay at my shelfs.

 

Yes, I outgrow characters myself.
I think it's complicated though. There is a difference for me from the feeling of just being totally finished with or apathetic about a character vs. In the reality of having more than a handful of dolls simply not feeling like doing anything with them but being glad they are still here. I have some dolls I feel I've outgrown but they are special to me and since I'm happy they are here I keep them for now, and I'm happy for the connection to the me of the past.

For me, if I still love the sculpt of a doll and don't need the money or space I'll definitely just start changing directions with them until they have become someone I can get more excited about or feel happier with. Sometimes after doing it repeatedly I get tired of the hard work and sell them anyway because at the end of the day, this is supposed to be fun.
Since I started asking myself literally every time a doll is making me feel bad: is this feeling guilt? I've been finding it much easier to get myself out of these funks. There is no reason to have to feel guilty about your dolls in general or to keep something around that ultimately makes you feel bad because you're "supposed to" or whatever.
Sometimes I have characters I don't want to lose but I'm so absolutely tired of them I just let them rest for a couple years or more... I have one who basically was inactive for a decade and now he's a favorite again.
It's definitely a frustrating feeling but I hope you figure out what will work for you.

 

I had this happen to me too. In my case, it was with my 2 first dolls. Their characters had become boring and I couldn't see myself doing anything with them, plus just by looking at them I was reminded of some things that happened around the time when I got them and that weren't exactly happy.
That said, I had very clear that I still loved the sculpts and didn't want to get rid of them, so creating new characters for those dolls was the definite answer for me. It took a while to figure out who those new characters were going to be but, being having written a lot of fanfics and original stories, it wasn't as hard as I had first envisioned.

 

I outgrew the very first characters I made specifically for my dolls. They were fun for the first couple years, and with one of them I had more fun than any of my dolls. But at some point their aesthetic, design, background and co. was really not doing it for me anymore. You could tell I was a lot younger when I made them, and every attempt at making them fit my current standards didn't work out. I reshelled all of them at least once, the first guy even four times (!), until I accepted that it wasn't only their doll shell but everything else too that bothered me. So I retired them, sold the dolls, and focused on my other group (that I still have to this day)

 

Dolls are kinda like people in that way, some change as they get older and others stay exactly the same. If your doll isn't doing it for you but you love the sculpt, why don't you give her a chance to change and grow
But if you aren't attached to her sculpt anymore either then it's okay to let go too
I do sometimes wish in hindsight that I had given the dolls I had "grown out of" so many years ago, another chance. But when I try to imagine how I would style them if I did still have them... yeah, I'm drawing a blank So I think it was for the best.

 

For me, I can't say I've outgrown any of my dolls. Characters? Yes. I did a lot of OC role playing in high school...and got burnt by the friend group I did it with. Since then, if I RP which I haven't in a long time now (sadly), it's with pre-existing characters. A large part of my doll collection is Tolkien based. I can have Elrond chatting to Glorfindel while Melkor is scheming with his cat demon minions (who make up Sauron) whenever I want. I also bought a lot of dolls because they sparked some kind of story idea...that I haven't fleshed out. So for me, they're untapped potential as opposed to expired ideas. I should probably try to weed some of them out and rehome them but I have no real desire to do so.

 

This sounds almost exactly like what happened with my first doll, Amir. He started as 1/3 AoD Chen, then I "upgraded" him to 1/3 AoD Gu, then decided after awhile that my collection focused more on his son than on him and I didn't really need the big version anymore. Sold it, then several years later shelled him *again* in a 70cm Dollsclan Kien...which lasted about a month until I realized as much as I love Amir and he was such a huge part of my life with an extensive story and background, my main crew really had moved on. So I sold the 70cm and now I still just have his original 1/4 version. The rest of my dolls are 1/3 sized so he doesn't fit in, but while I don't focus on him and his story anymore, he's still very special to me. I think him more as a special stand alone doll. All of my dolls are displayed in my spare bedroom, but Amir sits in a case in my sewing room with all my other very special things.

 

I have also been in the hobby for a long, long time. When I first got into BJDs they were my whole world... all I wanted to do was get one, and once I did all I wanted to do was play with her. My collection grew, some dolls I paid more attention to than others, but eventually life and other hobbies "took over" and everyone ended up in their boxes.

The intention was to sell them and get out of the hobby completely but I never did get around to it... and now I'm very glad I didn't. Fifteen years later, a rabbit hole on instagram had me reaching for them a couple of months ago and now I'm thrilled to be "playing" with my girls again.

Before, I just dressed them up in whatever I ended up with that was pretty. Nothing specific in mind, but now I have D&D characters/ OCs and am making a personal project of turning each of my dolls into one of them, or into a book character I really like. It's not exactly the same as your situation - finding a different mold/doll to embody an already created character. But I think what brought me back to the hobby is nature of being able to customize a doll so when you're tired of a look you can start over and make them someone new.

 

I once had a bjd named Elle, and she was a really vivid OC of mine who just came to life all on her own. I got her head in a trade, and one day it just inspired me and I created the character. She was one of my favorite dolls for a long time, but slowly I started to feel distanced from her. I tried redoing her faceup and kind of refreshing her, but nothing worked. Eventually I sold her, and strangely enough, I don't regret it. I do miss how I felt when I was so happy with her, but I found I don't miss owning her. I guess I kind of outgrew her, and so she'll be a fond memory for me now.

 

I sell tons of dolls, so that might bias me here a little. I outgrew an entire universe of my dolls after I ended a really damaging relationship. The dolls were all from things I wrote with that ex, and I needed to get away from those characters. I still can’t go back into those written works, and I have no desire to rework 90% of the characters.

this meant more than half my dolls either had to be redone, or sold. Of those dolls, I think I kept three bodies, a couple heads and 1 full doll that were in our shared ‘verse, and all of them were completely redone character wise (bonus: two of three of the bodies changed genders).