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| Read. It's still good for you--better than short form clips. |
Hello, beloved readers, doll fans, toy collectors, unregistered randoms, and freaks of the industry.
I bet you'd thought you'd seen the last of me on here, after a single post in May 2025 was followed by radio silence on damn near all fronts. I'd thought I'd seen the last of me on here. Blogging is a lot of work--writing, reading, editing, linking, notes, researching so I have backing behind my opinions, and no video1--with not always the same level of payoff, especially in this short-form scroll fast gotta get em in the first four seconds of the video internet style. And that's just the internet--my life has been even more up and down.
I've said "thank you for loving me, see you on the other side of the haze" to multiple relatives, crying my eyes out at not seeing them here anymore even knowing they had long lives and died in peace and are still there for me, and also been shocked by losing those in my family who didn't get them as long as I'd hoped. Maybe I'll memorialize them here like I did my dad over a decade ago. Maybe I'll keep my feelings in private circles.
I've had my heart ripped out, my back stabbed, my tears flow, my anger rise up alongside my bile, lost and gained, been pushed to my absolute fucking limit of what I'll tolerate and then some, and had my dreams deferred both temporarily and permanently and my wishes sometimes only half-granted. I've fallen apart, ripped my seams, crawled through multiple medical issues, feared for my friends and family, grieved and smiled and cried and gained, and rubbed the already thin spots of my soul raw--and had to get my own damn sewing needles out to stitch myself back together, pop up the loom to weave my own patches to cover the holes, and darn my own socks I knit in the first place. I've had more than two emotions in the past several years and having two whole emotions means the day is cancelled, it's bedtime, my Libra scales are outta wonk and I need to go rest my nerves.
I have been in the Swamps of Sadness trying so hard to stop Artax from drowning--and if you get that reference, it's time for your colonoscopy. Colon health is no joke. Eat fiber and get checked out.
Maybe I'll eventually talk about some of it. Or maybe y'all have to grind outside Cascarrafa for six hours to earn enough levels of Neth Friendship to unlock Deeper Lore. I've gotten shy and reclusive in my middle age--I'm officially there--and it's helped that I've weaned myself off most social media for a myriad of reasons. Outside of Tumblr, and that's cause it's Tumblr, the last bastion online of a decent feed for fans and curating my own experience without having to speak around the algorithm. We say fuck here, sir--and cocksucker, motherfucker, sexual assault, murder, and tits. The only grapes I talk about are fruit and a PDF is a digital file. People die when they are killed, and if you need me to be less direct they pass away when they are killed. Fuck me, I don't even have a public Instagram account for people to check up on me from--and if it was public, you'd have shit all to see on it because of my aforementioned lack of social media posting. Want to see a single picture of a birthday cake to prove I'm still here? You're getting a picture of a birthday cake. I've been crafting, connecting, and collapsing instead of scrolling.
I've lost my self in playing Pokemon and Pokopia and caught a lot of Shiny Pokes in ZA--thirty years this year--and reading Baby-Sitters Club in book and comic form--forty years this year--and staring at Zelda--also forty years. Damn, I'm celebrating a lot of fandom anniversaries in 2026. I've been writing without official Nano because it's dead, but November is still Writing Month and I count my work in hours instead of words. I've been taking pictures of flowers and dolls and books and random thingabobs. I've been gardening in the summer and tending my roses, which is a form of touching grass. I had friends immigrant away from where I live and others immigrate near where I live. I've read both books by a close friend and am anticipating the third, and that's only one of my writing friends that's published.2 I've questioned my gender, reaffirmed my sexuality, and ultimately come out cis enough to still select female but with a propensity to say "no more gender today, I'm tired of it" and "my gender is 'come back with a warrant' and 'do you have at least 15 minutes to discuss race relations and white supremacy worldwide.'" I've logged into Infinity Nikki almost every single day since it launched, never mind the 1.5 update that made so many people upset, and let the magic of Whim and magic through outfits take over. I've drank water, minded my business, voted from the comfort of my home, and got to see Blue Texas again. I've been writing newsletters and reviewing images, reading and writing tropes, and winning ribbons.
Even in all the quiet and silence here, I've kept up with American Girl--and the AG Wiki, and I've had non-public thoughts on everything that's come out. Yes, even if it's been five years
since AG Seattle closed down and I've not been inside a store since then; my last trip anywhere near an AG Store was to bury yet another relative because I'm at the age where you might go to just as many funerals as weddings, if not more. I haven't stopped caring or loving American Girl and finding critiques than aren't just "but it's not like it was when I was a kid!" and "everything I don't like is woke a cash grab" even if they're hard because so many people lean on that old chestnut. I still, forty years and a month after seeing a two-page ad spread in a now-defunct doll collector magazine as a curious kindergartner, keep up with the releases and characters of American Girl. More on that in a tick.
I've opened and closed my blog so many times I feel like that kid that keeps looking in the fridge trying to find what they want to eat, seeing my fruit and eggs, knowing I really like fruit and eggs, saying I'm going to finally eat my fruit and cook my eggs--and then the ADHD and depression and all the rest of it hits and I only grab a string cheese stick before I mindlessly scroll my Tumblr For You Page on my phone for a smackerel of dopamine via Polytrix fanart, and four weeks later the other quarter of my pre-cut fruit bowl has started an ecosystem and the eggs are now only good for the compost. The very rich compost that gets lots of nourishment from my forgetting to eat things.
I've been trying to pull it together and then had to set that plate down after everything just kept happening. Because it just kept happening. And blogging had to go to the wayside.
Let's be real, peeps. Blogging just ain't what's done for the fans of things nowadays. You don't get engagement from writing 5K+ words about dolls with interspersed close ups for the review. We can't even get some people in this fandom to read the books they claim matter about the characters. People get attention and eyes on them from short quippy graphics with various levels of jokes, IG playing on character names that I'm not interested in, short clips saying "did you know??" before they state the most basic data and might not even get it right, and hour long YouTube videos with thumbnails that have someone staring at the camera with a confused, shocked, or annoyed look and bold clickbait text asking "IS AMERICAN GIRL DYING (i haven't looked at the brand since 2007)" or "IS AG SISTERS REPLACING EVERYTHING MODDIE?" (answer:no but I wanted your eyeballs for this ad for Raycons) and "THEY PAID ADDY IN WOIMS?!"
Yet I remain stubborn and silly. I have never been the kind of person vying to show up on your FYP or your Shorts or your Stories. I won't be posting about AG on TikTok, YouTube, Reddit--of all the things I will likely never be doing, Reddit is just one of them--Facebook, or Twitter. I don't even interact with AGIG all that much now and AG Tumblr? Oof. Less on that forever. I'm too old for all the shit a lot of folk be doing too much of now, and at solidly middle-aged I been saying I'm tired of it.
I'm getting back on my original bullshit.
Plus? I liked blogging. I like writing. I'm a wordsmith and a literature witch. It's a slow meal to digest instead of fast food doordashed to the house, and I can sit and think and make sure everything's how I like it and actually link to things instead of having to say "link in bio" and don't have to crop and clip and fit into an arbitrary time cap before I hit post. And you can sit and read at your leisure without having to worry that hitting refresh means you'll never see a post again because you forgot to follow. I don't have to talk, face the camera, have a video camera, or have any background other than the green cloth I snap review pics in front of. I can blog with my bonnet over my braids and my bra off in my shit ripped inside leggings and no one has to perceive me. I am not a content creator to passively consume and beg the algo to put me in front of eyes. I've always been an outsider and outlier.
So I'm going back to Cali blogging in this year of Twenty-Twenty-Styx. Like the river.
Lemme get a damp rag and wipe the dust off--when it's this thick you gotta wipe, blowing doesn't move a damn thing--and spend this post talking about the things that came out from American Girl specifically for the 40th Anniversary that are about or involve the Historical Characters. Other things? More on that in another post.
But first before that, lemme introduce y'all to one of the many members of Neth's AG Gang that have shown up in the interim.
Cool kids and kittens remember going under the cut.
*~*~*
