Unbonding with your doll?

Maybe you just need some time to love her again, and just don't stress about it buuut... I understand you!

I am a doll customizer, so sometimes I also get uninspired by my own dolls, even tho I loved creating their style, taking photos of them, and sharing some stories from "their life". I usually get uninspired by them after 7-12 months. Sometimes I just sell them, and buy another doll that inspires me, but other times I keep them, and after some months, I get inspired again to "play" with them.
As you wrote, you have had this doll for a long time, and you and your taste in dolls might have changed over the years, so if you are really attached to her, you can keep and experiment with new looks, styles, bodies, and faceups.
If you feel that you are in a "new era" and she is not someone who will inspire you in the future, you can decide to sell her and invest in another doll, maybe, that you admired and loved over the years.

 

I also agree about taking time to work through your attachment to the character Flash, and also the doll who shelled that character. Sometimes the frustration of an unsuitable body or failed hybrid can affect your view of the doll as a whole, and it may take a bit of time to sort out what is what. (Saying this from experience ... I'm currently working through that with one of my hybrid dolls - I'm not fond of their body, but I'm also trying not to let that affect my perception of their head sculpt too.)

Having Flash "grow up" along with you sounds like a great idea, especially if you still love her character and want to continue imagining her and giving her a doll form. If she's grown and changed, it makes sense for her to be reshelled into a different doll, and I think that can become a meaningful process of reviving the character in this new phase of your own life.

As for Youpla Ziya hybrid who is the doll shell... if you still enjoy that sculpt, perhaps you can hang onto her to represent her legacy as Flash's original shell? Or perhaps you can restyle her completely and reshell a different character into her, or use her to explore other ideas you wanted to try in a doll?

And there's nothing wrong with selling that doll, if you find you have completely no attachment. But I would give yourself some time to reflect on what to do with the Ziya hybrid and not be too hasty to sell. These dolls do end up holding a lot of memories and representing a phase of life, they can remain significant as objects even if they don't shell the beloved characters anymore. I think it's worth taking some time to think and detach from the doll, so you can hold onto the good memories you had with them, and then sell them without regrets.

I develop pretty strong attachment to my dolls and their characters. I have bought and sold dolls before, but in all those cases except one, the bond wasn't very strong, the dolls never really established distinct characters in my imagination, so it was easy to sell them. (In fact, I sold them because I didn't develop strong attachment.)

That one exception was a doll that I bought right before I went on a very long hiatus from the BJD hobby, where I stored my BJDs away and did nothing with them. When I came back from that hiatus, I tried to shell a character into that doll, and at first it was promising. But over time, both doll and character started giving me problems: I grew more frustrated with the doll's posing and wanted to ditch the body and get a new one. But the character wasn't developing either, and that lack became more and more apparent as I bought new dolls and developed stronger bonds with them. I still tried, though -- for a whole year, to get the character to "spark" in my imagination, and figure out how much I cared about the head sculpt and whether my problems would be solved by merely hybriding them to a different body.

Eventually, I realized that the character simply wasn't sparking, and I was falling out of love with the doll and didn't have the heart to invest in them anymore. I just wanted to take that energy, time and money I was putting into them and redirect it into the rest of my crew. In this case, I think flaws in both the character and the doll together contributed to the "unbonding" I felt.

It still took me 4 months after that realization, to work my way up to putting the character to bed permanently (I don't reshell characters) and sell the doll. But once I made up my mind and let go of all attachment to the character, the doll stopped having personal significance to me, I just wanted to get them out of my house and it became very easy to put them up for sale. I guess with unbonding, it takes me "a very long time to make a very fast decision". And I'm not sentimental or nostalgic by nature, so once I stop bonding with a doll, I have no reason to keep it around.

 

It's understandable but... Why is it a problem that she's a child while you've grown up...? Will you have to be forever reshelling her so her age matches yours as you age, that's a lifetime of ongoing reshelling you'd be taking on.

My first BJD - the one in my little icon picture has been ten years old since I got him 20 years ago. That's part of his character. The same with his siblings and cousins, they are the age they were when their character came into being. I have dols who are older (though few of them are older than their late-teens or early 20's) but they are perpetually those ages.

I suppose if I could look for a new doll that resembles the child them and have a grown up version as well as the child version (but I don't like assigning a character to a doll beofre I have it and "get to know" it as it's often an exercise in frustration when the doll reuses to conform ot the predetermined character - so it's unlikely I'd go down that route unless a new doll I bought happened to turn out to be the adult version of one I already have).

Teddy

 

Hmmm.. yeah. So what about leaving her as the teen vwersion and looking for another doll that can represent the adult version - that way you still have the teen version intact and have a mini-me version that better fill s the adlt role...? It might not work, but you could sell on the new doll if it doesn't work and look into potential other solutions top the dilemma

Teddy

 

I've had it happen to some dolls that were my absolute favourites at some point, but then at one moment I just look at them and don't "feel it" any more. We grow and our preferences change, and move on with our collections - and perhaps sometimes the doll has just fulfilled it's "role", even if it has meant a lot to you.

Personally, I just sell the doll in such a case but I'm very "if I don't use it all the time I don't want to keep it" and I don't shell characters I've previously made so I don't worry about letting them go that much. Maybe if you still like the physical doll, though, it would also be a possibility to customise it into a new character and carry the old character onto a new doll?

 

I've been into this hobby since 2007 and it's happened to me several times. Sometimes I've outgrown the character and sometimes it's been the doll itself that has made me lose interest in it. I take my time bonding with a doll. It's often not immediate and can take me a long time, which is normal for me. But I have lost that charm for both dolls and the characters shelled in them.

Do you think I could work a little more on the character and give it some extra depth or twist? It has worked for me several times.

 

I concur that it is both normal and healthy to outgrow characters and/or character designs, particularly as part of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. I've tried to revisit many of my dearest characters from when I was a teen over the years, but they stubbornly refuse to develop in a way I find interesting or inspiring as an adult. I just don't care about the plight of teenagers anymore and my teen characters are very much stuck in the time and age when they were originally made.

My first doll, Waverly, is long gone from my collection and my pool of characters. However, I have used her template to develop a sort of spiritual successor in Khadija, who is far more robust and interesting using some of the same concepts. In fact, if I start looking closely at most of my dolls/characters, most of them are reimaginings of much older and long-abandoned dolls/characters. If Flash isn't turning your crank anymore, it's okay to put her current iteration to rest and discover a new, different version.

 

I think sometimes the dolls speak for themselves. As we grow older, our dolls and characters change too. Sometimes you just have to let them go, or you can try another faceup, another styling. I tried to reshell my oldest boy but when the new doll arrived it turned out he just doesn't suit the character. So I had to change my plans, and so my oldest boy will get a new faceup and body and the new boy will be a new character. So as you can see the dolls can revise our plans.

 

Hi. I've had a similar feeling about a doll. I took my time figuring out my issue as I didn't want to have regrets. Ultimately, I listed her in one of my doll groups for sale and then she didn't sell for weeks. No one was interested. So, I took down my listing and forgot about it. Then a few months later, someone in my doll group happened to be looking to buy a doll just like her. And then she sold quickly and went to a new home that could appreciate her. I haven't regretted it one bit because I knew I was truly ready to move on.

 

You can reshell and keep the original!

My first doll, Amir, is an AoD Chen from 2007, that I bought in stock new in early 2008. I had a very very deep connection with him both as a doll and character. The character was 19 when I first created him, and we "grew" together through our 20s. Eventually, the bond did weaken to that doll as he's 1/4 and I realized I much preferred 1/3, but being my first doll and my first deep attachment to a BJD, I also felt wrong selling him. So I kept him, put him in his box and stored him in a closet, but also reshelled him into a 1/3 sculpt, who was my favorite for several years! But in time, again, my stories/roleplay gradually changed and he was no longer a main character. I eventually sold the 1/3 doll, and just let the character fall to the side, but he will always be special to me--I even have a tattoo for him! Anyway, long long story short, going on 18 years later, I still have the 1/4 version, and I'm so glad I do. He doesn't fit with my current crew at all (though he is a very minor side character in the current roleplay at age 36 now, the doll doesn't fit), but he's still beloved with so many memories. He sits in my display cabinet with toys from my childhood and sentimental gifts, separate from the others in the doll room, and I'm good with that! Sometimes a phase of our life is over and we move on, but that doesn't mean we can't hold on to the keepsake.

 

I've never been in a similar situation in 11 years of being in the hobby, but I would probably stop needing her/his character in the story...
It's okay to change and evolve.

 

Early on in my journey through this amazing hobby, I did occasionally fall out of love with a character or a doll in general. When that happened, I would sell them and invest those funds into a new doll or a new shell for that character. I considered it part of my learning curve. But eventually I refined my personal aesthetic and today I love every single doll I own, and simply couldn’t see myself ever giving them up. So today if one (for whatever reason) no longer sparked joy, I would decommission their character and come up with a new one for them. I have a large enough collection after all these years that I can “shop at home” for any new and fascinating character that I might want to shell. Lucky me!