Too many? (Dolls in drag, / relationships, etc)

*fluffs her Syo's petticoat*

...Okay, okay, you caught me red-handed. .__. Even though Yu's as straight as can be and just wants to look pretty when he looks in the mirror. He really finds women attractive, so he emulates them-- He's a heterosexual transvestite. It's a part of his character. He wakes up two hours early to put on his makeup and do his hair. His modern-day counterpart is an elitist-ass brand lolita connoisseur.

</boring character exposition>

I'm not changing one of my oldest RP characters just because someone on the interwebs is sick of seeing crossdressing boys, okay? If I made a debate thread saying, "UNOA GIRLS ARE OVERDONE, AMIRITE GUYS" or "GOD I'M SICK OF SEEING NARAES" or "FERS ARE UGLY, RALLY AROUND ME PLZ," (Just using examples here. I love Unoas, Naraes and Fers.) I'd probably be laughed out of the forum. Nobody would stop buying Unoas, Naraes, and Fers just because I whined about how many there were.

So what is this thread accomplishing? Nothing on this end. My boys are going to wear what they're going to wear, because that's what I want them to wear.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a ruffly black lolita dress to sew for my effeminate male doll.

 

I blame Anne Rice. Claudia started the trend for immortal children with the mind of an adult.

 

I kind of have to agree with this. I used to like vampires, then overdosed on it. I can't stand the vampire genre now. Especially with the idea that vampires are all so sexy and seductive.

Humans are FOOD. Do wolves make love to chickens before eating them? I think not.

But then again, I'm waaaay way way burned out on vampires.

 

So? Why do dolls have to mimic the exact same demographics that humans have? There are a lot of gay/bi/ and/or crossdressing dolls because a lot of people like gay/bi and/or cross dressing dolls, so if people like their gay/bi dolls, why should they do otherwise?

Because it makes their owners happy. Honestly, they shouldn't care if you or others are tired of it, because that's not the point. It's no ones job to make sure there is the proper amount of dolly diversity, and there are always going to be over lapping interests.

For instance, there's a lot of folks around here interested in yaoi. Now, that's not really a surprise since there are a lot male bjds that really lend themselves well to that, so this hobby will be attractive to yaoi folks (that's how I ended up here, actually). The same holds true for people with other interests--I mean, if you love lolita fashion, then getting to make beautiful doll sized dresses could be a real plus. And then, some themes just seem to resonate among a lot of people--it doesn't mean that everyone enjoys them, but it shouldn't be any big surprise or something that needs to change. People need to do what they enjoy and let the chips fall where they may.

 

Obviously it makes some people happy, otherwise they wouldn't do it, but it is a valid point of debate if people think they are becoming too numerous. I don't see that many of them, personally, but I don't go looking for it either. When a doll is supposed to be 4000+ years old it goes off my believeability scale and I stop taking it seriously.

I'm not saying people should not do something because I don't enjoy it, because that's not the point of being in a hobby, it's your doll, you paid for it, do whatever you wish...but the "Waaah! I need my doll to be accepted!" attitude isn't right either. If you are holding out for everyone to love your doll or your concepts, you will be waiting for a very long time. A lot of people seem to want that validity that they're doing the right thing with their own doll.

 

Which seems to be WHY they're always sniping about other people's styles being "too common" or "overdone", insinuating that everybody else should change their styles just to please other people, and then backpedalling furiously to defend their own styles as Purely Original And Cool.

And it also seems to be WHY these pointless threads get started, so that the OP can get validation from the mob: "We're sick of looking at [lolita dresses/boys in skirts/tinies/steampunk/etc.]! Who's with me, folks?" Presto, external validation; they feel like they've brought that trend down a peg, so then they no longer feel like an outsider for not liking it.

Actually, some people's opinion that a style is becoming too common doesn't really turn it magically into a valid point-of-debate. It merely boils down to a "do you like/not like [X]" poll. In the end, everyone here seems to agree "do what thou wilt with thy own doll", so this kind of public-opinion-temperature-taking is a pointless exercise.

However, it's one you're entitled to. So those who do care about popular approval will continue to beg for validation in Debate threads, and change their styles to suit the trends... those who do not care will continue to scoff at the notion that there's such a thing as too many 3000-year-old incestuous twin half-elf vampire Minifee Shiwoos in lolita dresses. As Taco says above, it's nobody's JOB to provide diversity, and it's nobody's job to provide the things you want to see. If you don't like what you're seeing, then go be part of the solution, and create it yourself.

 

You know, I don't think that the most interesting question is whether or not certain things have been done to death, but more why do we tend to go for similar things? I think it's because we tend to be quite similar people.

Whilst there is huge diversity amongst the BJD community, it is possible to caricature a typical BJD fan. She (sic) is in her late teens/early twenties, from a middle class background, artsy, likes fantasy (fantasy literature, fantasy films, fantasy art and fantasy computer games) and dressing up (cosplay, historical re-enactments etc) and is heavily into oriental culture, particularly Japanese.

Now, what sort of doll might that person like? One that contains attributes from as many areas of her interest as possible, I guess. So, a doll with an oriental background (or at least name), a fantasy character (vampires, elves etc are always good) and maybe slightly leftfield (the artsy influence). I'm not sure where the propensity to homosexuality, incest and cross-dressing might come from. It is certainly a distinctive attribute of the BJD-world. Perhaps these are just more common female fantasies than the mainstream has yet realised and that we all go hell-for-leather manifesting them just because we have license to in this area. I don't think Anne Rice's stories would have been so popular without the homoerotic content and, of course, there is yaoi.

So the infamous DoA hive-mind, where many of us have the same ideas about our characters or dolly-styling, is probably just down to that. We are similar and like similar things. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Now, before everyone jumps on me and tells me that they are nothing like the caricature, I have to add that this is the nature of caricatures. They take a distinctive set of features and exaggerate them. No one in reality is like that, but I'll bet you can recognise the type.

Right, I'm going back to my 400-year-old gay vampire lover cousins now. Bye!

 

The doll is 4000+ years old.

-OR-

The doll represents a character that is 4000+ years old.

Of course, the distinction often gets muddled here, but I'd thought I'd point it out anyway. No offense intended.

 

While I do agree with this for the most part, I think it is because most people discovered BJDs in a similar manner as well. It seems the most common ways people discovered BJDs are...

-Through other Asian fashion dolls (Pullip, Blythe, Momoko) <-- i fall into this category
-Through anime conventions (panels, other antendees who are owners)
-Through art/photo sites (like DeviantArt and Flickr)
-Through films or music (Doll Master, Kerlie...)
-Through lolita (BTSSB or other lolita-fans who are owners)
-Through a friend who owns/likes BJDs

All of the BJDs I know personally found them in one of these ways, which is also rather interesting.

 

Well i guess as human style changes dolls styles changes. Your doll changes as you change. I don't think the trend is done to death, i mean if it's what the owner likes or wants for their doll than they should do it.
And for the cross dressing of dolls, this is something i find hard to change in the future. So many dolls are made femme or girlish looking. You can easily take a "girls" head and put it on a males body and the other way around.
Homosexuality, i think what it is sometimes is that guys like to see girl on girl so girls like to see guy on guy. I'm not saying this is the situation for all dolls, just some.

i'm not seeing the debate here~ but i put in my thoughts anyways..

 

I agree with Madammaumau and Imhitomi that in a hobby with no single inlet (it's not as if we're all, as in every member, here because of a shared love of manga), there are bound to be people whose interest was piqued because of who they knew/where they saw their first doll/interest in the culture etc etc...some things will cross over and other things won't translate at all.

I'm not into manga and I like lolita fashion in a peripheral way. I was drawn to BJD through photography and art, and I'm sure that if you asked everyone else who came to the hobby through that inlet, there would be some commonalities between all of us.

I do find it a bit more than a 'commonality' when the majority of the male dolls I have seen here are homosexual though!

Obviously, unless someone has an actual Roman BJD, there won't be any 4000 year old dolls. Clearly I meant "doll as character", not "doll as a physical object", for a lot of people their dolls *are* the character, not just a shell pretending to be their character. This is why we name dolls after all, instead of leaving them blank and nameless to be a catch-all object.

</b1tch> I know you meant no offense, but this really rankled me. I'll put my toys back in my pram now

 

It's really not a very valid point of debate. Whether or not some trend in the doll world is becoming too numerous is merely a personal opinion based on individual interest and taste. Opinion does not equal fact, nor is there any logical argument to saying there is too much of X (which is why this makes a poor topic for actual debate). What actually constitutes too much of X? Is having a lot of X harmful? Is it denying people the right to like or have Y? No, it's just a matter of a larger number of people liking the same kind of thing.

Now if we were talking about to many emissions, invasive plant species, or communicable diseases, that would be different, but we aren't. We're talking about perfectly harmless doll trends.

I don't expect people to like everything I like--that's not what people are saying. Like what you like, don't like what you don't like, but is it necessary to whine about what other people are doing with their dolls? The people complaining about too much X are also seeking validity--otherwise they wouldn't feel the need to make a fuss about the things they don't like or feel like they must combat the trends.

 

It's as valid as any of the other arbitrary things that have been discussed in this thread. Nothing will change as a result of this debate anyway, people are still going to have gay dolls, people are still going to have cross-dressers and people are still going to have non-aging dolls, regardless if the overwhelming consensus here was that these things are terrible fads that are destroying BJD fandom, or something equally ridiculous.

It really doesn't matter to me what people do with their dolls, but I'm not going to suspend my own opinion when there is an outlet for it and plenty of others have done the same. I'm not here because I particularly despise something, I just like reading what other people think.

In my case, dolls/characters with vast ages irritate me because there is usually little in the way of exposition for those characters, writers rarely show that these characters have lived for so long and seen so much and dolls representing characters with advanced ages, yet remaining young-looking don't reflect that in 4000 years of life their mind would have grown up and they would think like an adult would. Or it is used as a plot device to allow a 45cm doll to have a relationship with a 60cm doll, without much more thought going into it than that.

 

the challenge now is for someone to come up with something fresh... that will start a new trend. lol! personally, i want something unique for my own boy. what is the point of all this customizing if your doll still ends up looking just like all the others.

 

...and no, my boy is not another ex-male prostitute turned vampire or something.

 

The sad thing about this is you don't even know what you want. Stop worrying about what others think and do what makes *you* happy.

 

Yes exactly, so what's the point? If people have the right to say that some trend is a terrible thing, then others get the right to point out that it's a ridiculous position to hold (because it can never be anything more than personal preference).

There's nothing wrong with not liking something as I've probably said 100 times by now. However, I simply question the attitude behind some of the statements made. This is not necessarily directed at you--in fact, the first post of mine you replied to had been aimed at someone else due to the particular language they employed when giving their opinion--some posts boarders on people can do what they want but they shouldn't do that. And if someone asks why do something,"it makes the owner happy" really does sum it up, and it's something that some folks do need to remember. There is no great mystery in all of this, and the people doing things that others don't like aren't harming the hobby, so again, the point is? Remember, this is supposed to be a debate thread, not general discussion.

That is up to you. You don't have to like it, you just have to respect the fact that others feel differently.

There's stuff I'm not interested in, so if I come across it I just move on to something else and don't give it much thought. Why? Because it's a non-issue and doesn't affect me. That's the thing about some of the responses in this thread...they're taking something that really is a non-issue and turning it into an issue, which doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense. When it comes down to it, that's what bothers me so much about this thread--the total loss of perspective coming from some people.

 

Well, mine is because that's what floats my boat. I'm afraid he is created by me for me, selfish as that might seem.

 

Why not? He would be in great company

I do respect that others feel differently, if I went to a meet and someone showed me their MNF Shiwoo dressed to the nines in a ballgown and spangly slippers and explained that 'La Belle Claude', was an ancient vampire trapped in a teenager's body, I wouldn't go "eww!" to their face. I probably wouldn't think "eww!" to myself. There is plenty of room for all sorts of dolly owners.

I don't go looking for what I know I won't like. I skip over it when it comes up in the galleries and I wouldn't seek out these things just to tell their owners I think their idea sucks, because even if something doesn't immediately appeal to me, I may find it grows on me later on. I don't have that final an opinion, I can be persuaded, I can be moved...ex-male prossies turned vampires is really intriguing me

 

I think the free sexuality has made it interesting to play with the thoughts of homosexuality. I think it's a good thing that it interest so many people, because then we can hopefully demolish this weird, old-fashioned idea of it being unmorally or something.
And well...there are always newcomers to the hobby, so there has to be certain areas/styles that are popular. Thats the freedom you get when owning a doll. ^^