What comes first - the backstory or the doll?

Definitely backstory before the doll for me! I have an incredibly hard time bonding to a doll that came without a background and so far has only happened once to me. In the few other cases I braved bringing a doll home without having a developed character beforehand I ended up selling them sadly. I'm attempting this once again halfway, though. Instead of having no idea about a doll I have a loose grasp on what I want my newest one to be and I'll let him pick a name and solidify his personality aspects after he's here to see if that will work for me. Skip the next two paragraphs if you're not interested in examples! xD

I always pick dolls that seem to me they could 'be' that character. For example Bosschan (who's true identity is unknown but is called Evander by his girlfriend/future wife) is the definition of an online troll in real life, head of the Japanese branch of a more than a millenia old Organization, and like the troll he is he takes pleasure into trolling his subordinates and employees in the worst possible ways... These vary, from getting them caught in unfavorable situations to sending them sickeningly sweet yet twisted mission messages that usually end in a 'please try not to make a big mess with your blood 33' or 'try not to die, the morgue is full today ' or something similar. So, for a while I had written this character off as a lost cause for simply I had never looked at a doll and though 'wow, this guy looks like someone like that' not to mention that Evander is in his mid-fourties and most dolls look extremely youthful... That was until the Immortality of Soul Chaos came along. To this day I remember my reaction to seeing his face was 'he totally looks like the kind of guy to send off those mission messages' xD;

Same goes for Isao (who has had several identities much like Bosschan) who happens to also be Evander's childhood friend and arch nemesis. They are the same age too, but unlike Evander, Isao has concocted a youth serum through his years of extensive research. He is, in addition, very good looking and amiable the kind of person that habitually attracts others to them but is also somewhat dangerous. So I needed a mature yet somewhat youthful looking doll that could combine both good looks with a little bit of slyness. He took equally long to find a proper shell for, if not longer, if so I must say... and the search ended when Switch came out with their Seoha sculpt. It took a very slight eye mod to make him appear just a little bit more alert (his eyes are still mostly closed) but I must say he's absolutely perfect for what I needed him to be.

I could go on for each and every one of my dolls since those two are but examples but this post would get far too long. The point is I usually don't have a loose grasp of the character and their appearance and as such I am very picky about the character's shell that is each doll; it can prove more than frustrating and I don't recommend it to anyone, to be honest! But that means that usually, when I bring the doll home, chances are they will most definitely fit what I intended them for. I won't say that I have never been surprised by the dolls when they came home or that they didn't develop personality traits I hadn't thought of before that I then attributed to the character themselves for this has happened several times now and it's always a welcome thing to have.

 

I've done both! My mirodoll is I bought specifically to be a certain character, but I still don't know who my minifee is going to be when she turns up!

 

Backstory first. I have developed numerous characters each with a long history and spanning numerous incarnations and I look for dolls that fit their look. It also helps that I used to draw them.
Finding the perfect sculpt is still hard though. Most of the time I go, "oh yeah, the eyes and that glare is about right." It's rare that I look at a sculpt and say "Aha! That's it." My main characters give me the most headaches because I have developed and drawn them for so long, I can't just cram any old doll into them.
But I have the problem that when I do find a particular sculpt, they can play a few characters since many of them are family members so they look alike. It just boils down to who I like best. (favoritism! )

 

For me, the backstory came first. I have a bunch of characters in my head that were created over the years. I spent a good month or so looking for just the right doll to become my character Liz. She isn't 100% perfect, but I kept coming back to her over and over and I just knew that she was Liz.

Since purchasing her, I have been looking at other dolls still, trying to plan out future characters. I see plenty of dolls that I think "Oh, thats cute." or "Oh, what a great price!" But they don't have a foothold in my heart like Liz does. They have no personality or character. I could give them one, but it would feel forced and I doubt it would make me love the doll any more unless I got to actually role play the character for a few months. Even then, depending on the outcome of the game, I might not like her much.

So for me, the character will always come before the doll. Now I just need to get lucky and find a 65cm cat boy.

 

Backstory SHOULD for me, but not always. usually, I need to test out the character and story because I need to be sure the bod even lasts. I can own a really beautiful doll, but if their character and story don't work for me, I'll end up selling them anyway. I need that character bond, and it needs to be strong. I have a couple of dolls I got just because they were pretty or were a surprise, and have tried to build a character around them. It doesn't work nearly as well, and my bonds are so weak, the doll mostly just sits on a shelf.

 

Usually backstory is the first thing I "set up", but sometimes it happens that I see a doll and the background just pops up in my head, as clear as the sun xP
I'm waiting for Lacrimosa and his story hit me the second I saw him. On the contrary I have a floating head which I bought on a whim, the sculpt was so cute >v< I started thinking about his story only recently, and I came up with a shy a sweet tempered gardener

 

It depends. Sometimes I match dolls to stories, and sometimes I see a doll that I just fall in love with and then I weave a character for them into the story because I just have to have them!!

Either way, the doll has a backstory before they come to me

 

I just like to buy dolls that are pretty. When I find a sculpt I like, it motivates me to create an awesome character around it. Since the dolls I buy (usually) don't have a pre-existing character, I can alter their style, personality and background freely if it doesn't fit my original idea. They become OCs once I have them figured out

 

Both, for me! I ordered a Pipos Baha a while back, but won't get my hands on it for another month. I've never even seen it in person, but already have a full-fleshed backstory for him.
I have a Pet Ari Popo arriving to my house very, very soon, and have no idea in the world what kind of backstory to give her. I'm hoping it hits me once I hold her!

 

i only have 1 doll right now, and my experience was that i planned and i planned around a very particular character. i got her wig and some clothing before i got the doll, and i saved for the doll and thought YES! THIS IS HER!
and then when i got her put on the wig and the clothes it wasnt her at all. my doll had her own personality and was NOT going to be confined by my preexisting plan. i doubt this will always be the case, because i feel like she has so much character and fit right into the place of another-who i didnt expect to create at all. it took weeks before she told me her name, but i knew right away the things i purchased for her were not hers at all. im still trying to find her forever wig, and have one on its way (i hope THIS is the one!). maybe my first character will find her body in the next doll.

 

The dolls have to be here, although there is an exception right now, but I am familiar with the doll coming in, who will be a love interest to a doll who has been here a while. I buy my guys based on my attraction to them. Once they are here and living amongst the others I can sometimes see relationships forming and sometimes I start a story in my mind and look to see who might fit. I have been very surprised at times. I've only had to "re-shell" one character but it was the same doll, different persona to fit the story.

So my answer would be always have the dolls here and let them tell me what their stories are.

 

Either one for me, really. I have ordered dolls for characters with a backstory. I've also bought dolls because I liked them and then created a story for the doll. I've also run into the problem where I got a doll and the doll didn't suit my character like I thought she would, so I had to hold off on my original character and create something new for her.

 

Usually it's backstory, then doll, but in a couple of cases (Siofra and Linnaea) it was doll, then backstory.

 

Backstory first for me; most of my dolls are shells for characters I've had around for probably around 20 years, give or take a bit now, long before I'd ever encountered a BJD, much less considered actually buying one! At a couple of points in the past, I'd considered kitbashing to create figures of these characters, but never got around to that; BJDs were a natural leap from there, as the customization is much easier (and they're a lot more fun to play with afterward, as well)!

I do have three right now who came as dolls first and have a character/backstory developing, but on two of the three it's been slow-going... the third sort of worked her way into the story of one of the character shells, so her character evolved from that.

 

Backstory. Because I don't have a doll yet, but settling on a sculpt

 

With me the backstory came first in the most amazing fashion lol when I was in highschool I had been doing an rp with a friend of mine and I LOVED the character and this was years before I even knew what BJDS were. But anyways I had poured so much into her character and I loved her so much that when i finally got into dolls I thought she'd make a perfect bjd but I couldnt find a doll that matched what she looked like in my mind so a friend asked me for a discription of her and when i told her she came back a few days later and told me that she thought that she had found the perfect doll for me and she had! this doll looked identical to the character i had created back in high school and I couldnt belive how perfect she was. Unfortunatly she is waaay out of my price rang so i'm still saving up to get her. But the most iromic part of this story is that the doll my friend found me has the same name as my character from years before it was ment to be

 

Backstory for me! If there's a sculpt I really like, I'll find a way to incorporate it into my story. My top priority dolls, though, are all characters that came before the doll struck my fancy.

 

Backstory all the way. If I really fall in love with a sculpt but don't have a character for it yet, one will form in my mind ... if it doesn't, I won't get the doll. I've got so many characters yet to be shelled, I won't go for "just another pretty face" (yet).

 

In my case my doll came first. I really have a thing for witches and magic and I was hoping to turn her into some sort of witch, I wasn't even worried about a backstory. I write a lot and have tons of characters I could have planned for but I didn't think about it at the time. I probably would have gone into total obsessedperfection mode and I'd still be shopping for my first doll and trying to decide which character to do first... so I'm glad I just went with a doll I loved overall as my first doll.

But then she was giving me a faint gothy vibe. Ooookay. I kinda figured out it was just all dat white skin. And then someone here mentioned their doll being an android and it clicked for me and I'm kicking myself in the butt for not realizing it sooner. I love androids and I have a character in an MMO that is an android with a rough background story idea so I'm thinking of stealing a bit of that for my doll's background (they will look NOTHING alike, she looks very robotic/mechanical). It's really fuzzy right now but I'm slowly narrowing it down. I started playing on a virtual world last night with some new friends and started building an avatar there and that helped some.

If I ever get another doll I am totally just going to wait until I have it for awhile to see what happens with it. I'm glad I spent every last penny I had on that doll and couldn't afford any clothes... I would be sitting here with a confused android in witchy clothing :-p