My girl pinched my hips to see if I still exist.

Belated Holidays and what not.

I think not, I'll send a letter to my friends. A born again hooligan only to be king again.
~ Fugees, "Ready or Not"

*~*~

I've been sick and sleeping poorly.

Don't worry, it's not Covid. I stay masked. But it's been exhausting.

I'll cover Kavi in a few days and then go back to 2022. And 2021. And 2020 and 2019.

It's whatever at this point.

But I did get my Addys in holiday dresses, so I'm still hanging on.

Be here in a bit.

--Neth

It's a Cruel, Cruel Summer

 

it's been one of those days since may.

Me: *makes plans for anything even with Covid*

Plans: *severely fucked* 

Let's see where I am in October. 

--Neth

 

Crafting Creatively: Things I've Made: Addy’s Cream Lace Dress and Pinafore

Addy remains clothed in the finest of clothings.

It's that time again! (To floss our tongues?) No, it's time to learn today's lesson, and for that we turn to the Wheel of Morality--wait this isn't Animaniacs--

It's time for the Third Annual American Girl Collectors Secret Snarker Gift Swap! Well, the wrapping up thereof.¹ This year was quite successful, and I'll post about what I got later this week, because it's super cute and I wanna give it a full review--as well as the outfit I got last year.² But first, let's talk about what I made, because a gift swap is an excuse to sew, and there's never a bad excuse to sew. This year I got The Edwardian Girl as my giftee, who not only is one of the members of AGC, but runs an Etsy shop you should so get in on because she makes some damn fine outfits. (Do you not have Addy's Cape Island Dress? Do you like reproductions? She makes em! Get on that.) Sewing for another good seamstress can always be a touch intimidating, because I undercut how good I am at everything because who needs self esteem? (I'm getting better at it). But as I flipped through her survey, she mentioned Addy. We all knew where this was going the moment I saw Addy's name. Make another outfit for Addy Walker? Don't mind if I do!

Addy’s Cream Lace Dress and Pinafore

Addy is ready for another year of school at the ICY with her new outfit: a cream and flower print dress that Ruth just finished for her. It has fine cream crochet lace at sleeves, bodice, and hem; off-white cuffs and collar; side sashes, and three fine pink buttons down the front. Underneath she has matching lace-trimmed pin-tucked pantaloons, and when she wants to keep her clothes clean during chores there’s a matching lace pinafore. Tie her pink ribbon in her hair and send her off to school! 

And like usual, I made two, kept the weaker set, and am ready to talk about what I did, how, and why.

But before I do, a little bit of American Girl collection personal squeal. I have lamented muchly about how, through a mix of crafting, cheap purchases, secondhand, the occasional splurge, and gift, I had a nearly complete Addy collection. Nearly. Because the one authentic thing I was missing was the whistle from Addy's Church Fair Fun Set, and the costs people ask for a whistle were ridic, and I was never sure I'd ever get one.

Well, Miss Tae of AGC got one and sent it to me. As a gift. To finish my collection.

it is sitting in her lap and it makes tweet noises and so did I~

I am sure that y'all heard the squealing and the tweeting on the whistle (yo it is loud) and the flappy hand screeches I made all the way on the other side of the globe when I opened this package. And then I went and cleaned up Addy's trunk³ and sorted her clothes, and set it with the rest of her church fair set and plan to put a little cord on it so it can hang around her neck too.

I, for all intents and purposes, have a complete Addy Walker collection.⁴ All her old stuff, all her new stuff, all her BeForever stuff. My first girl has everything I've ever wanted for her from AG. Thank you, Miss Tae, thank you, thank you.

Now let's cut and talk about her new dress set.

In Which Neth is Terrified about Everything For A While.

What do we do, now?

I was going to start working on review posts, for outfits. Posts about creativity. Posts about the fandom. Posts about money management, about my Chicago Store Trip, about new items I have pics of. I have a backlog here like you would not believe.

Then this evening, the election happened. I would like to know what I did to piss November off, because first my father three years ago and now this.

I was shown a lot, in a few hours. I was shown that not only does American Girl choose not to properly represent me, and not only does a large part of the mainstream fandom not care about me or other collectors that are minorities of any kind--gender, religious, racial, class, what have you--as long as they can have their squee without "politics"....

I was also shown that millions of people hate me, and hate everything I fight for, enough to vote against their own best interests to hold on for a little longer to themselves on top of everyone. Tonight, I saw that when Hope is given to a people, hope and change that shows that that maybe we are moving forward as a people, that White people will snatch it away from us all and replace it with Hate. That White, Christian, male supremacy has won yet again in history, and will hold on and squash us all down to have white power on top of the heap.

That I truly am an outsider.

Many of you know Addy's story, if you have read her books and short stories. You will know she was so happy after the end of the Civil War, happy enough she chose the day for her birthday. Then a week later Abraham Lincoln was murdered and she was terrified of what might come next.

That is me right now. I am Addy in the wake of Lincoln's Death.

I am motherfucking terrified, and so are so many of my friends, and we don't know what the fuck is coming next. All we know is that we could lose everything--gay rights, womens rights, PoC rights, and some of us will lose our very lives.

The rest of my thirties is going to be horrible in so many ways.

I've voluntarily ended two friendships in this fandom in the span of less than 24 hours. I may lose more. I don't care. At this point, I have nearly nothing left to lose.  

I'm still gonna do all I can to fight, mind you. This blog isn't going anywhere. I am a bard, and a bard sings even when the enemy is at your gates.

I just can't do it right now. All I can do is hold my first girl, my Addy FirstArrival Walker, and pray to Yemaya Herself to Watch Over one of her very scared children.

I'll be back in December, once the month is done. I'm going to be concentrating on Nano, because that is a world where I have some control.

I just can't do anything right now but be scared.

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

--frequently attributed to Lyndon Bates Johnson.

 --Nethilia

Why I'm An Outsider: Part Eight: Summer Chaos in AG > 18 and Persona Non Grata, or How I Got Banned (Temporarily) From A Goddamn Community I Started

Felicity in a flower garden. I need all the floofy pictures for this one.

Good lord it's almost October. Where did my month go? Oh, right. Seasonal Affected Depression. Or something like that. Fall comes on and I get moody and sad like a punk. Pbbbth. Well, that should be the best time to pull this painful tooth of my time in the AG fandom in the late 2000s, right? Right.

I've been trying to do my posts in chronological order, which is why this one has been hard to get to. Which is probably why I've been putting it off forever, even though I wrote about it once before. But not in a huge public format like this. But I can't get to the garbage that happened to me on AGPT if I don't get through the garbage that happened to me by my then-best friend in the fandom. I honestly thought it had happened after my AGPT shit, but when I started to dig through the archeological mess that is my recordings, I found out that no, this happened first. Fun. Welp, can't have my arsenic til I have my strychnine.

So, the setup, for those new to the Outsider Series who will later go back and read the other seven posts.¹ By summer 2007, there were two major American Girl groups to participate in, not including flittering  message boards which were the way tweens and teens begged for fandom attention before bokeh pictures with song lyrics on Instagram. The first major gathering of AG fans--called, appropriately enough, AG Fans MB--was slowly dying after restricting everyone from the group that didn't fit into their doorways, because you can't live when you close your communities to a small faction. But I was beyond them for the most part. I was part of two major AG fandom communities. AG Playthings was the big, open forum gathering, like the main hallways of a high school. AG >18, which had been started in summer 2006, was the back woods near the school where we smoked, drank, talked shit, and shipped queerly. They worked in balance with each other: AGPT was the public place found when searching for American Girl collectors,² and AG >18 was sort of an open secret place where you could talk some shit and not get hit. I'd started it with my then best friend, PNG, whose name--online or otherwise--I don't use. AG > 18 was doing pretty good at that time. That April, we'd installed two new mods: Bean and Colette. This took the modship of AG >18 to a grand total of four, including me and PNG. We were a self-running community, so we didn't need huge amounts of moderating. At most we were just semi-public figures, who if some one needed some business taken care of beyond public work, we did it. But we were all friends of varying levels, and PNG was my closest friend. To the point she had my address and even my phone number. She complimented my sewing. She praised my Fel-Beth shipping--I was even writing fic.

So that's why it hurt like a motherfucker when, in the summer of 2007, she stabbed me in the motherfucking back.

Prologue: Not Such a Sweet Baby Face
Part One: Finding AG Fans, or How Periods are Bad For Children
Part Two: There's Fundies in My Fandom
Part Three: The Wicked Witch of Customizing and the Birth of AG > 18
Part Four: Halloween is for Jesus, or How Otters Offended a Nation
Part Five: The AG Fans Revamp: No Pagans Allowed 
Part Six: The Great Mass Banning of Aught-Six
Part Seven: The Rise of AG Playthings  

Why I'm An Outsider: Part Seven: The Rise of AG Playthings

And then there were six--at least, until that spring. 

The next chapter of my time in the mid-Aughties of the American Girl Fandom--circa 2006--follows the last chapter of my connections (for the most part) with any and all membership at AG Fans. They had pulled a Charles Lee/John Adams and shat the bed. A whole mess of people from AG > 18 had just been banned from their prohost boards in the wake of the moderating staff overreacting to the idea that there were people in the fandom--nay, in the world herself--that were not 100% Christian, straight, or monogamous, that they were doing their own thing and being happy about it, that we were looking at them or participating in their community, and/or and that some of them, someone, somewhere, might be talking about them behind their backs in an unflattering way. And then tried to feed us some lines about trolling.

In the wake of the Great Banning of Aught-Six, the new hub of American Girl fandom became AG Playthings. As people left AG Fans and their madness to wither like a neglected avocado plant in the harsh winters of Alaska, they went to the open doors of AG Playthings.¹ And you know, for a good long while, AG Playthings was pretty okay to be at. With AG Fans locking down, AG Playthings was the place for news, sports, and weather Buy/Sell/Trade in the American Girl Fandom. It had its nasty aspects, and I plan to talk about them in depth in this and future posts. But they at least didn't start that way. They started as an open, accepting AG community that allowed dissident opinions, complaints, and even calling the mods out on their shit without the fear of being throw out on your ass to bounce down the road.²

Brief discussion of the Gang Situation. The AGGiR--for we were still living in Redmond--was now one member larger by that Giftmas, with the addition of Felicity Merriman, with all her pretty tribadism and her missing her Elizabeth--and not wanting the blonde one. She was best friends with Naomi, close to Addy as another Historical even though Addy had to school her on why her grandfather's plantation was an issue and Owning Slaves Was A Bad Idea, and had a crush on Marisol that Marisol didn't even get a whiff of. Yes, Lissie liked Brunettes, and a whole photostory was made about how she did and how the gang didn't judge her one bit for being queer. As Otters said outright: "I'm not going to give up my faith because of what other people think I should be. I'm a pagan, and I'm proud of it. Being a lesbian--a tribade--is part of who you are. Do your own thing and screw the haters." It was 69 pictures of dolls,³ full of the F word and blatant paganism, and out of respect for some of the members of AG Playthings, I did not post it there or even a link to it. But I did post it at AG > 18, and I did post Otters Teaches Paganism Part Four: Yule on AG Playthings with warm reception.

So what did I have to complain about? A lot. As 2006 became 2007 and Nicki replaced Jess, I continued to post on AG Playthings comfortably and be a content participant, work at Nintendo, and make good friends in the AG fandom. And things happened, for good and for ill. These are going to be in the order I took remembering notes in, because it was around six to seven months of AG Playthings participation mixed with AG > 18 participation.⁴ Also I have no access to anything AGPT anymore, obviously, so I can only go on my notes I've had.

None of these were big sweeping things like the Banning of Aught-Six or what would later be The Final And Complete Bannination of One, Nethilia from AGPT. But they were things that happened in, on, and around the fandom.

This one might be on the long side. Let's go. [/Alexander Hamilton]

Prologue: Not Such a Sweet Baby Face
Part One: Finding AG Fans, or How Periods are Bad For Children
Part Two: There's Fundies in My Fandom
Part Three: The Wicked Witch of Customizing and the Birth of AG > 18
Part Four: Halloween is for Jesus, or How Otters Offended a Nation
Part Five: The AG Fans Revamp: No Pagans Allowed 
Part Six: The Great Mass Banning of Aught-Six
  

Historical Clothes Reviews: Addy's Sunday Best and 30th Anniversary Mini Doll

Addy with Mini Addy is the cutest thing you've ever seen and you know it.

Let's get the news out of the way first. Yes, I have seen Melody Ellison. I stayed up well past 6 am Monday morning¹ to watch the CBS This Morning video off their YouTube site. I read the article with the pictures. I saved the pictures to my hard drive. I squealed so fucking loud I was worried for a hot second that I might wake up the Bae.

I have seen Melody Ellison, our 1960s BeForever Girl, and she is absolutely goddamn fucking gorgeous and no one can tell me otherwise. She has the flipped pressed textured hair, she has the cutie-patootie Sonali Mold--which I adore just as much as the Addy mold--she has an awesome plaid dress and yes I will be inspecting my DeeDees for the best dress with matching plaids, and she has big brown eyes that I could get lost in. She has a March in '63 pin²  and a kickass hat and bright blue pajamas and a recording studio. Between her and the HamilTome that's coming out this summer, I just will have to remain on the broke side of money outside of my bills. The funeral for my wallet was held Monday night. In lieu of flowers which die too fast, send funds to the Melody Ellison Day One Fund. Thank you.

I keep waving at her and calling her pretty girl, and the gang here is super excited to have her. Addy can't wait to have another member of the Black Historical Club. Ellie is excite to meet her and share science and stuff. Otters thinks she's going to have awesome clothes, Shanna wants to know as much about the music as she can.³ Dorothy is eager to meet more black kids. And Edith? Edith just realized she is like Felicity and Melody is her Elizabeth.⁴ Their relationship will be so Radical. I didn't expect a new face mold--AG tried that with Marie-Grace and while there is nothing wrong with the MG mold, the circumstances of the situation has likely made AG gun shy on pulling for another mold. Her without dimples is fine. Her hair is straight because in the 60s girls didn't wear naturals--they pressed their hair all the live long day. If you had read the book you'd know that her mom sorta has a mini-shock when her oldest daughter wears her hair in a fro. It wasn't the style--Black and Proud was still working its way into the system.

And if you're whining mewling and puking that Melody looks too much like Cécile because they have the same face mold, you can get smacked by the same picture I put up on my IG: #AGIG Racist Logic. The first three girls all has the same face--first four when you include Felicity--and the Classic Mold has more dolls than any other mold released. There's more blond haired blue eyed Classic Mold Dolls about in the moddie line than there are black historical characters ever released. If you have more than two Classic Mold white dolls in your collection but you think Melody looks too much like Cécile to have around, then you need to enema the racism out of your brain and go cleanse your soul and wash your ass. Same if you're whining about her textured hair as being too fuzzy or frizzy. I will harbor no quarter. No County for Old and Young Racists.

So that's the Melody news, and it's got me bouncing off the walls. I'm itching for her so much. The last time I wanted something this badly I french kissed a girl. (We both liked it.)

To today's review because I can't review any Melody stuff til she's out.⁵ Today we're covering one of my most liked outfits for Addy FirstArrival Walker. Back in the far-flung era of 2008, I had been kicked from two, count em two boards and been stabbed in the back by the person that had been my best friend. So I wasn't in the best of contentment in the AG fandom. I still had AG > 18 though, and so when some new shit hit that September, I still got news on it. Among the plethora of things were Kit's New School set, Ruthie's Super Fug Holiday Dress, Felicity's even more Fug Fuckawful Gala Dress, Sam's Velvet Dress that would only last a few months before AG flipped the script and put her in the vault, the Moddie Meet Outfit change to the Star Hoodie set...

...and a set for Addy which I geeked about because Addy hadn't had new clothes since that damned African Dance Outfit. Addy's Sunday Best had a black felt decorated hat and purple print dress and I got it as part of a fall order a couple months later after getting what I wanted from Sam's then-retiring collection. The set was $24 when I ordered it but had eked up to $28 by the time it was coded into the Wiki in 2009, where it has stayed. This year, it even got a mini form in representation in AG's 30 year anniversary mini dolls--sans hat, and with the new shoes Addy wears nowadays. Advertisements originally had this as made by Ruth Walker for her daughter to look cute on Sundays, and I can dig it because Ruth Walker is that kinda momma. The outfit originally had no story ties at all, but with the BeForever recovers, the outfit is seen on the cover of Volume Two of Addy's central stores/Classic Volumes, A Heart Full of Hope. Which is tons better than having the cover of her birthday book have her Stilting Outfit in the revamp, an LE set that was hard as burnt buns to get. Seriously AG, what were you thinking?

Outfit, then mini. Addy's wearing her Classic Meet shoes and stockings because that is how we started and that is where we're staying.

Why I'm An Outsider: Part Six: The Great Mass Banning of Aught-Six

The holidays were coming, and so was the bullshit.

Depression sucks. Depression sucks a lot. You don't get anything done like you'd want, things get pilled up in piles, and all your executive function gets shot to shit. I fight major depression--and I don't mean "oh, today I feel bad" bullshit, I mean "brain no worky so I sit there and don't do anything and can't get anything done really pbbbt" depression which is a chronic illness. I've wanted to do tons of reviews--including Grace stuff, I got all I wanted from Vanilla Bean's collection I'm pretty sure--the introduction of Maryellen to the gang, and a huge helpful post about adding to the AG collection without breaking the bank that is still sitting in queue to work on and has been since frigging September.¹ And then my brain is like "no, you're going to do fuck all for weeks and weeks" and the photocorner stays a mess and leaves no room for shots. I'm not going to lie about why there's been a dearth of posts. I try and my brain chokes up. I'm going to try to do better, but every day is a struggle, and some days turn into weeks of terrible.

With that said, I hope you understand.

Before we get into the point of the post, news catch up. Yes, I've seen Lea Clark. From what I can see in her looks she's Marisol with the Hazel Eyes that AG bought way too many of, and she's at most biracial because AG can't give us a full PoC. My protest and post stands. American Girl needs to give us dolls of color for the Girl of the Year, and not just mixed ones with whiteness imbued to smooth over white racism that makes it so that characters of color have to be mixed with white to be acceptably ethnic. We'll see what her stories offer. But one character is not enough, especially when surrounded by frequent whiteness. I'm tired and you should be too. Blech.

To the story.

When we last left you at the story of AG Fandom Fucking It Up in 2006, AG Fans had just moved from Hostboard to phpBoards and taken the opportunity to do a widespread ban on Paganism and Pagan displays, as instigated by Yours Truly, the Pagan. They had also closed the board to the point that new users had to agree to the rules before they could read them. It was a nasty knot of BS, and while I had a lurker account to see the mess and get news, I was not a participant and was more a participant of AG > 18 and AGPT.  This was December 6th, 2006. I'd started working on a photostory called Naomi's Giftmas Surprise at the start of the month, which would slowly introduce the sixth member of the AGGiB,² and taught myself to restring to restring both Addy and Beth Cady (and found it a lot easier than I had thought it was).  We kept snarking at AG > 18, and newsing at AGPT.

December 13th, 2006, is when shit really got fucked.

Prologue: Not Such a Sweet Baby Face
Part One: Finding AG Fans, or How Periods are Bad For Children
Part Two: There's Fundies in My Fandom
Part Three: The Wicked Witch of Customizing and the Birth of AG > 18
Part Four: Halloween is for Jesus, or How Otters Offended a Nation
Part Five: The AG Fans Revamp: No Pagans Allowed 

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: '15 Summer Launch with BF Bedtime, Grace by Space, and Modern Comforts

Just because we don't get along doesn't mean I can't frame you well, Samantha Parkington.

It took me a bit to handle the new shit. The weekend right after the new launch I went to the mall that has my comic books but not AG stuff as well as a festival, and since the Bae does the driving we can go to one mall a weekend if they're in opposite directions from each other, and they are. Look, I don't argue with the conservation of gas. Save the Planet. So instead I went to AG on the 3rd, spent the 4th burning things in the name of AMERICA, and the 5th complaining that it's too damned hot to type. It's still too damned hot. I think I brought the Texas Weather back with me to the PNW. But I'm at least in a position to get my blog on for you, the eager consumers of my content and happy audience--and if you're here to be a hater, then hate on, I don't give a fuck sweetie.

AG is getting fairly good about their social media presence, even if I'm still unable to interact wholly with their FB page.¹ Not only was the Spring Fling given leaks on Pinterest (which I hate to deal with) and Instagram (which I like dealing with), so was this Summer launch, giving us eager buyers and collectors an idea what was up and coming. Even if I pretty much knew a huge amount from scoop fairies and unethical eBay sellers selling factory seconds that folk be finding, that doesn't mean that everyone does, and I like to see how AG pushes their own hype. Which is why I hate hate hate comments on posts like AG, Monster High, and Ever After High media posts that are all "we already know this is on the way and the name of that character and her monster parent and blah blah blah give us something new."² Companies have their own way of announcing things and building up marketing for their products, and it's not by you finding leaks of shit on line and spreading it among your little small media circles to the point you're bored already when they start talking. Not everyone knows everything already from leaks and dig ups and is in the loop like that. Don't be a fucking killjoy about new stuff to people that maybe haven't seen it. It's arrogant, rude, and dickish. Don't be a dick.

This summer release comes right on the very heels of  the Truly Me Revamp--only about a month later, in fact. This is because, come August, Caroline sails away to the big Archival Vault and Maryellen pops out and that is going to be the thing to sit in the spotlight and the book set I'll buy immediately. Ah, I remember when Addy was launched and she only got her first three books and the rest came in the next spring and there was nothing to be done but wait on the entire second half of her story. Be glad you little cheeky baubles get things much more upfront now.

To the shiny things!

Historical Clothes Reviews: Addy's Limited Edition Dress and Sewing Set

Crafting done right with the right girl for crafting.

It's been a rough couple of weeks and a great couple of weeks. I had a good time visiting family and I had a great time at A-Kon--it's like family reunion for me my trips to Texas. I took Addy and Kira with me to Texas and managed to get to go to two AG stores in the process--AG Houston with family and AG Dallas on the way back from the airport.  And I got back home safe and with neat things, including the Last Hearts 4 Hearts I wanted and a new little darling BJD that, if you follow my Instagram, you've seen shots of.¹ (I shall pick back up Casual Fridays and post more about her then.) But on the flip side, I've been super duper exhausted. Not physically so much as mentally. Not only is there the draining news over and over of assaults on black people and the utter mental strain of being a black woman in America looking at all this hate and cruelty and racism, there's been the tropical storm coming too close to family for comfort, and general malaise and anxiety. I have been suffering from what can be called a severe case of "Fuck This Shit, I'm Out."

Time to retreat back into doll blogging and restabilize myself.

To show you I'm keeping up with the AG News: There's been a small release for Grace--well small for dolls, largeish for stuff overall--and I'll cover that when the summer release comes out so that I'm not blogging about just three things and people clothes. There's also the Pintrest sneak peeks for the new BeForever and Truly Me stuff ²--and Addy stays winning and blowing away the competition. Goddamn, is blue her color. I can't help myself when it comes to Addy--I want practically everything she has AG offers, and if that means she owns two beds and two nightgowns then damn it she's going to own two beds and two nightgowns.³ My girl will stay spoiled rotten and there's shit all anyone can say to me about it.

I tend not to delay on getting my happy brown hands on Addy stuff, even if it means I don't pay the sale price when prices drop a few months later on one of the frequent AG sales that they seem to be doing nowadays. So when Addy's Dress and Sewing Set was released as part of the Spring BeForever release, I went straight to the store as soon as I could and snapped it right up. Not only was it Addy, it was sewing, and that's one of the most perfect combinations for me, like combining ducks, ballet, fairy tales, and magical girls.⁴ For $48 dollars--or $38 if you got it on sale--the set comes with a plaid dress, white ribbon trimmed pinafore, stockings, inner laced boots, scissors, tape measure, and pincushion, and the story with the set is that Addy is helping her mother and Mrs. Ford out in the dress shop in her cute new duds. And y'all were whining that outfits weren't going to be tied to the stories anymore. Wah wah wah. I may have payed Early Adoption Taxes⁵ but it's Addy, so I take my lumps. That and when the set was on sale, it was hella backordered. As it is Kit's Chicken Keeping Set only came off back order long enough for me to get my mitts on it before it decided not to show back up again until August. The set is part of AG's new deal with Historicals where they release Limited Edition outfits that are only here til December 31st in their current incarnation, so this one has an end date before you're looking at eBay for a complete set. So don't delay or you'll find yourself shortchanged on the pretty. There's also a matching girl's set--historic cosplay in modern styles, and that would be the Periwinkle Plaid Top and Classic Crops--it'll go away as well, when this set does.

Once again I find myself blogging about Addy on Juneteenth. It's only fitting, I guess. To the review--where I've decided stuff comes before clothes cause that is how I took my pictures.

Why I'm an Outsider - Part Five: The AG Fans Revamp: No Pagans Allowed

One of these girls ain't wanted on AG Fans.

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men an' dollybloggers gang aft agley.¹ I had plans for photoshoots, my loves. Not only do I have Addy's and Kit's and Kaya's 2015 LE outfits, I had plans to snap mad pics of them and start to review the hell out of each. But my homeplace informed me that they were redoing all my windows and that meant clearing everything away from them. Including dismantling my photoshoot corner. And my altar (how very fitting for this next topic). Oh, and my body decided that functioning without another daily lifestyle med is for chumps and I caught a cold that fucked me up on the hardcore. I'm full of issues. It's like Nat Geo up in dis bitch. So rather than reviews--those can come next month--what you get is more about how AG Fandom had fucked up problems and shit. And this is one of the BIG ones from AG Fans.

Enough prologue. Let's get into this.

So Halloween--Samhain for us pagans--2006 had passed, and the message couldn't be clearer to me. Paganism was super offensive to those of AG Fans, enough to get an album thread shut the entire fuck down and deleted. I had stuck my neck out to test the rules on faith and demonstrating it to see if they fairly applied to me as well as others. The response had been the equivalent of a smack in the face--I had been shown in no uncertain terms that this was not to be tolerated, thank you young lady, you keep that non-Christian stuff in the dark where good White Christian God-fearing children can't see it.

November went on, with the hot mess continuing to happen. AG > 18 stayed in our corner for the most part, talking amongst ourselves and getting hella annoyed with racist and bigoted thought running unchecked and discussing the ongoing microdramas that kept going on and thinking the way people were being treated was some grade-A hot steaming load of bullshit. Meanwhile, AGPT was on the rise as the better place to be to talk about American Girl without feeling like a lesser person--the album had gone over fine there!² I was actually liking it over there, since I could be who I was--black, pagan, poly, bi--without the mod staff getting panties in the ass any time I pushed back against bigots.They had fuckups, but they were less fucked up than AG Fans, which was saying something.

As for AG Fans? Bigotry abounded, and it continued on that people were banned behind closed doors for protesting mod abuse and told things in sickly sweet language complete with condescension smilies and tone. This included statements that AG Fans was willing to look at your dolls but you had better take your goth and devil issues elsewhere.³ Posts on AGFans were getting edited to remove such subversive language as "alternative lifestyle" and replied to with saccharine sweet statements when people rightfully protested. The claim outright said by one of the mods on AGFans to someone's post was that "Would I want my eight year old to see it?" should be a good baseline for how the place was run, and since some people didn't want their eight year old knowing about certain things, it was just best not to talk about it. Would you want your precious eight year old to know about homosexuals and other non-Christian faiths?

dot dot mother fucking dot.

Okay, first of all eight year olds shouldn't be on the internet unsupervised, so there's that shit to start. And second of all, yes. I don't want my theoretical eight year old to become a goddamn prejudiced asshole who thinks that it's okay to be a homophobe and that talking about alternative lifestyles is so goddamn taboo that the mods have to ninja edit posts lest a kid read the word "girlfriend" spoken by a girl and instantly stop going to church and embracing witchcraft and lesbian acts.⁴ I plan to also teach my kids about paganism and any other faiths out there--even that it's okay not to have one at all--what their reproductive organs are for beyond "naughty things we don't touch and talk about," how to buck against an unfair social system, and how to curse out every other kid on the playground if they need to. Don't expect me to muffle myself because you're too fucking ignorant/lazy/stupid/bitchy to parent your child. Because last I checked, no one's crawled kicking and screaming out of my uterus yet--and not from lack of wanting to carry a child. REGULATE YER OWN DAMN KIDS. If you're that damn concerned, take your eight year old off the internet--and probably put them in a tiny box somewhere until they're married or run away from home.

Back to November 2006. I had gotten the message that my pagan albums weren't wanted, and that should have been the end of it, right? The pagan had been told, she had been told very blatantly, and she knew to keep her filthy heathenish ways away from good people. And that was that.

Nope. Nope, there was still fall out to come, and oh was it coming and it was going to be nasty.

Prologue: Not Such a Sweet Baby Face
Part One: Finding AG Fans, or How Periods are Bad For Children
Part Two: There's Fundies in My Fandom
Part Three: The Wicked Witch of Customizing and the Birth of AG > 18
Part Four: Halloween is for Jesus, or How Otters Offended a Nation

AG Complaint Department: Asinine Assumptions About Addy Walker

Happy Birthday Addy! Now let's get people to treat you right.

For those who are good on their AG knowledge, yesterday was Addy's Birthday. Unlike most of the other American Girl Historical characters,¹ Addy did not know her birthday at all; she was born into slavery and Mr. Stevens didn't write her birthday down. So she picked her tenth birthday as the official end of the Civil War: April 9th, 1865, and celebrated with ice cream, pie, a new dress, freedom for all, and her family and friends. Addy was a lot of firsts in the American Girl Line: the first one not to use the classic mold (thank gods), the first character of color, and the first one I fell in love with. Y'all wouldn't even be hearing my bitching and squealing if Addy Walker hadn't come along in the line. Well, I might have picked up Kirsten because I had a thing for Laura Ingalls, but I was raised in consciousness and I remain so. So I got the black girl first. Addy--here known by the full name Aduke FirstArrival Walker--is my number one girl and always will be; GotY will come and they will go, but Addy will be here for me always, even if they archive her.

Alas, too many people do her wrong, and they have since I first set toes in the American Girl Fandom. I've seen a lot of shit, I've seen a lot of shit go unaddressed, and a lot of shit needs to stop. 80-90% of it is based in racism, classism, and bigotry. And that's me being nice, because to tear it down and kick that ass, about 100% of it is based in at least some subtle, unaddressed racism or bigotry. And unlike my ripping down of the fuck ups with Kaya, I'm coming from a place of my own culture and knowledge,

So sit down, shut up, and learn some goddamn things so I don't have to roll my eyes at seeing your terrible Addy shit attitudes ever again.

Crafting Creatively: Picking Perfect Prints and Fabric

Kit's dress looks good because I started with good fabrics.¹

So there you are, doing your first AG sewing project! You've already decided to avoid the Generidress profile--or if you're working with it (because it's a great starter project), you're tweaking it to look like more than that. Maybe you bought a pattern or two from Etsy, or are doing a basic gathered skirt, or something. Either way, you're all ready to cut and sew and make something neat for your doll wardrobe. It's go time!

Wait, no it's not. Don't cut that fabric just yet. Let's make sure that your fabric fits what you're doing. Set the scissors down and listen, cause we can all learn a little something before we get into the cutting. Learn twice, cut once, cause you can't uncut fabric or trims.

There's a lot of good, cute fabrics out there, and a lot of good, cute clothing patterns. I own several patterns and like buying them from Etsy shops. But part of working with an American Girl doll and making clothes for them is working to scale. Like I said with my knitting post, messing up the scale, the print, or the add-ons and not trying to work within some limits for dolls can turn what might have been a nice outfit into a hot, oversized, terrible looking mess. And this is especially true with fabric. I got a lot of my mistakes out as a kid on other doll brands, but I also didn't have the internet to show these failings.² I fucked it up so you don't have to.

This doesn't just include the fabric, it includes the trims. Let's hop below the cut for the things to do, and things not to do.

Historical Clothes Reviews and Historical Accessories: Addy's BeForever Meet Outfit and Accessories

It's the all-new Addy-Meet Review, starring Addy Walker.

Oh, Addy. My first and forever American Girl. As soon as I saw her BeForever revamp, I knew that she was going to top it all and threw money at AG for her and her things. She's winning the game better than anyone with what she's been getting, including Samantha and her Goddamn Gazebo. Yes, I have innate bias and I don't even care that I do, because Addy needs and deserves love. Addy is the best character and written with a massively poignant character arc since she didn't get her stories mealy-written or the teeth torn out like some characters--Samantha, your potential was so great. People who claim otherwise or don't give her her props and shit on her need to get a clue and a half and get the racism out of their souls.¹ I've yet to get her tweaked books other than her Journey book, but I'm aiming for that eventually. And not just hers, but all the others. Again. Even if I have them which I do, The BeForever Books added text and tweaks, as I saw messing with Samantha's for a bit in the store, and that's just enough change for me to desire a whole new set. The life and struggles of a bibliophile are many and take up lots of shelf space. If they offer the books at Costco again, I'll likely bite down for that as the best bargain of a box set.

But let's not dwell hard on that. This is a clothes review, not book blather, and clothes review means clothes cuteness. Since Molly's out of the game for the forseeable future and not likely to come back any time soon, Addy's taken over the blue color² and that includes her meet clothes, since we're doing color coordination now. Gone is the classic cinnamon pink dress and cap toed boots that I reviewed some time back; now when Addy is given brand new freedom clothes, Miss Caroline hooks her up with a whole new fancy set: a blue calico bell-sleeved day dress, white drawers, white stockings, and black button side shoes.

I was almost ready to buy a whole new second Addy to get the new outfit and still may get one later on to help push the Addy love. But AG smartly offered the new outfits for all the revamped girls on launch day for a flat rate of $36, and I was lucky enough that there was one left in stock at AG Seattle when I went to the BeForever launch that I snatched right up. Fates with me. The boxed new outfits--which will each get their reviews as I get to them--don't come with any hair ribbons or decs in box, so if you want those you will either have to call in and order them or get a new girl, and I have blue ribbon around the house everywhere so I just clipped two of those to get her hair in the new style. But you get everything else. Her accessories also were revamped; she still has her cowrie shell necklace that means a lot, but her bonnet has been revamped with a new black plaid ribbon and she has given up the kerchief for a practical quilted tote bag for the low cost of $24. Yes, it cost me $60 plus tax to outfit her in her meet set again, and I don't even care because it's Addy. There's sets on eBay, and they cost varying amounts, but don't buy things from eBay that are available to you standard. I took these pictures right after she got her new set--the same time I took the ones for Josefina's review--but it took a while to get to. My review also includes the new Mini-doll, since I have one of those too.

Before I get into the review, news up. Yes, I know about the upcoming Fall BeForever Character on the docket and her three books, as well as the upcoming Journey book for Josefina. But until I have more details, I'm not going to speculate. I don't like speculation that can't be confirmed.  That's how you say wrong things. And one last Josefina thing--I recently got her older rebozo, so go back and look at her Meet Review to see it!

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: '15 BeForever Spring Fling with Modern Add Ons

Addy forever slaying these ButterCream and Wonderbread Heaux.

All right, it's the American Girl Spring Fling Release! Some leaks came out a few days ago on Pintrest, which I saw and had early squeal. I only have a Pintrest account because there's no damned way to get links to interesting things without one. I still use my bookmarks, I know, what. (Ignore they need to be cleaned as much as my damn non-virtual bookshelves.) I went up to AG Seattle last weekend--tea with friends if you've seen my Instagram account--so I won't get to go back until next week at probably the earliest. Official shots it is. Also, gods bless the other admin of the AG Wiki, Akaikaze, who swoops in and gets all the new stuff up fresh and hot while I'm still having mini fits over doll scissors and chickens. This release was a lot of BeForever and some Spring stuff for the Moddies. With some Bitty shit but lol Bitty Shit, I ain't here for that, my Polar Bear not withstanding. 

Since I probably won't post tomorrow, I want to announce this as well: Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the opening of American Girl Collectors. What a year it's been! I thought when I started this blog that my time in a huge fandom space was behind me, and the board launch would ultimately be tiny space dwarfed by the looming power of AG Playthings and their chaos. Now we have almost 350 members and a bunch of active ones, and together we've build a beautiful, safe, exciting community of people with open minds and lots of full discussion. We've talked about everything from the launch of BeForever to the still lingering remnants of WonderBread; instructions on rewigging and body fixes to how to pop the eyes out of a head; we're bringing back DollerDay, and of course there the heartwarming tale of The AGC Cousins, Lightning in a Bottle. Boom, Starzz, and I couldn't have done this alone without the people there that keep us a community. If you haven't joined already and you're of age, what's keeping you? Run on and join the lovely chaos.¹

To the new stuff. Some of these images are the larger Pintrest shots because no need in double saving images.

Why I'm an Outsider - Part Four: Halloween is for Jesus, or How Otters Offended a Nation

And then there were four. And the drama really started.

I was enduring the American Girl Fandom in August 2006 a lot better than I had been earlier in the same year. Firstly, AG Playthings was a up-and-coming board to counteract the super repressive fundamentalism of AG Fans. The mods allowed open discussion, and challenges to people's opinions. So I could talk about my sexuality, race, and faith a lot more openly than I ever could at AG Fans. (That is, at all.) And AG Over 18 was the LiveJournal based spot that we jokingly called the space behind the main school where the "bad kids" gathered to snark on bullshit, think critically about American Girl beyond the squeal and the buy, and watched Felicity and Elizabeth make out, and offered the idea that Kit had the possibility of growing up to be a fine young man.

I was starting to feel a lot better about being part of the American Girl Fandom. It didn't have to be all fundamentalism and controlled speech and "what about the children" in every corner any more. And the best part for me was how AG > 18 was just thriving. I had only thought we'd have a few people there, but we were so active and inviting. Quite a few people would join to feel a lot less pressure around them. It was a place where you could breathe deeply and not feel like you were walking on razor-blades to just talk about yourself and your dolls without getting fussed at for having such "unwholesome" things as naked doll ass, race talk, queerness, and hair streaks.¹ We were passing around older AG pattern scans, snarking on things, making non-wholesome jokes, talking about things that mattered to us, poking at Emily being the English Friend of Molly, and becoming a community. It was a thriving community I'd help start. That was a very good feeling.

I'd made a lot of friends, especially on AG > 18. PNG (Persona Non Grata) was probably my closest friend of them all.² We talked for hours. Not just online, but on the phone--to the point I ate up too many minutes on my phone plan and had to scale it back to avoid high fees. Around late July to early August, she said she'd like to send me early birthday and holiday presents. I accepted with glee--people sending me things! Wow! She went on the AG site to send me still-newish #26 in the Ready for Fun Meet set (because I was worried about the new one upcoming not being something I liked; I was right) and found Marsiol for cheap on eBay with her near complete meet set. And that's how Amber "Otters" Flynn and Marisol Luna joined up, doubling my gang in the course of a day. Only a few days later she also located and purchased Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who arrived very soon afterwards--within a week.

She...needed her hair did. So badly.

She wasn't my only friend either. In fact, the day before Otters and Marisol arrived, I'd met Colette and Inky, and we'd hung out in downtown Seattle. Not only was I making friends, they wanted to meet me!

They sat on a statue man's butt. We took pictures.

That September, I got a job--a real one, working for Nintendo Consumer Service. Nothing big, and likely not to last, I'd personally thought. It was basic customer service for the Nintendo DS--connecting it, troubleshooting, setting up repairs, etc. I did my training the first two weeks of October, started working right after my 26th birthday, and accepted that I would have to work over the holiday season--the reason I hadn't gotten the job last year was because I would be out of town over the holidays.³ My fiance was doing good in his college classes, and with me now having a job we were a little less boot at our throat for finances. I was doing well both in life and starting to do well in fandom.

And then Halloween came, and I pushed harder against AG Fans than I ever had before and blew things up.

Prologue: Not Such a Sweet Baby Face
Part One: Finding AG Fans, or How Periods are Bad For Children
Part Two: There's Fundies in My Fandom
Part Three: The Wicked Witch of Customizing and the Birth of AG > 18

Why I'm an Outsider - Part Three: The Wicked Witch of Customizing and the Birth of AG > 18

It was still just two.

It can be very hard finding one's place in any fandom, especially when there's a tone that doesn't mesh with yours. The American Girl fandom is both huge and small at the same time. And American Girl, unlike a lot of other fandoms, don't often seek out AG so much as stumble upon it one way or another as a child. It was catalogs in the 80s and 90s, and nowadays it's stores. Most people learn about AG as children too young to properly be on the internet. And a lot of people lurk to get a feel for a place. (I'm sure there's lurkers on AGC.)

I didn't like the tone of the AG fandom or the heavy fundie feel, but I endured. Even with the overall tone on AG Fans that conflict of any kind and bickering was improper, your posts had to be able to be read by the most sensitive of people, and there was a lot of stealth editing of posts and deleting of controversy. Things had to be for the children, and the baseline was "super sheltered Christian girl child whose eyes would melt at the mention of anything unwholesome." This also had the nasty effect of people often saying that we needed to consider the children in everything we did, thought, or posted. It was very Helen Lovejoy.¹

I had other fandoms to get my weird out in, though I was starting to fade out of the majority of My Little Pony fandom, Gen 3's awesome notwithstanding. I was deep into into Harry Potter, where we were in the gap between Half Blood Prince and the unnamed Seventh Book Conclusion; I had Pokemon--which still was on Gen Three but creeping towards Gen Four with Diamond and Pearl due out in Japan that September. I was sewing and crafting some. Even if I was woefully unemployed, I was okay. Depressed, but okay.

But I wasn't getting a whole lot out of the American Girl fandom. There was mostly news, and keeping up with what was coming out.  The American Girl community on LiveJournal was slow moving, and mostly about the buying and selling of things. I stayed lurking like a motherfucker on AG Fans, but I had made some decent friends and connections. I'd signed up to AG Playthings--which was starting to rise--and people knew my dolls, Addy and Naomi. I'd taken them both to Texas for a vacation at my mom's and taken some photostories with them, mostly consisting of things like hanging around outside the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Texas A&M campus. I wasn't a big name fan, but I was making a bit of a name for myself. I was even, on my ElJay² going into a series of posts about the issues in AG--sexism, racism, and the like. Seeds of social justice planted, though I'd had that for years in ways. About the only new thing coming around were small releases of historical stuff, some modern stuff, another set of All White Bitty Twins, and the Big Thing for Jess--since at this time they did the big thing during the summer. I wasn't doing great, but I was doing good.

Then a spark lit up. And it wasn't even me who fully started it. Go fig.

Prologue: Not Such a Sweet Baby Face
Part One: Finding AG Fans, or How Periods are Bad For Children
Part Two: There's Fundies in My Fandom

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: BeForever: Dropping It Like It's Hot

Bring in the new noise, bring in the funk!¹

It's been a wild ride for the AG fandom in 2014 regarding the Historical line. We've heard since February that Samantha Parkington, the Pretty Princess of American Girl, was on her way out of the AG Vault like a Disney animated flick. We've heard of the end of the Best Friends Line and the way it screwed Marie-Grace, Cécile, and Ivy over. (Oh and Ruthie. But eh, whatever.) We've seen people whine about the historical accuracy of items and cite the 1940s and black and white pictures to say that color wasn't invented before 1970 like they're Calvin's daddy--you know who you are--and the terribleness of them without actually seeing the stuff out and mewl that Addy's skin is lighter--hat tip it's not any lighter than it was on August 27th. (ETA: Proof from someone who got Addy and BF Addy a day apart can be seen here at Lissie and Lilly: BeForever Addy vs Original Addy Comparison ) We've had happy squeal, new book covers and book rebundling, mini spoilers, eBay leaks, and videos on the official AG Youtube leaking images to us and revving us up for the new looks. We've seen the hype and smelled the haterade. And now, we have the official Launch of BeForever. *trumpets and confetti* Whoo, BeForever!

What's BeForever? Have you been under a damn rock for the past several months? Oh, no, you're new to AG fandom somehow. All right, I'll play nice for a sec. Basically, BeForever is a rebranding of the Historical line to make the characters of the past appeal to the hip youth of today--what with their touch tablets and Internets and cell phones and iPods and hip hop and Wonderbread Girls of the Year. Out go best friends--Cécile and Marie Grace included, alas we hardly knew ye--and in place returns Samantha as the backbone of support for this new launch, since AG has relied on her for the launch of new things. The Historical characters all got new meet outfits except two: Kaya--who really can't get much of a change in wardrobe since her era is pretty stuck in the past; and Caroline, but she's only been out for two years so we're letting it slide. There's outfits inspired by the meet outfits--both loosely and pretty close--and new items, and the books have adapted into a new form. And many things changed--but many stayed the same. Sort of like the line is advertising again.

Yesterday, the whole thing dropped. After seeing things online at 10 pm my time--two hour diff from AG's headquarters--and losing half my shit at AGC, a buddy of mine and I went to AG Seattle and squealed the hell out and I lost the other half of my shit. I snapped a bunch of pictures and then got several things to bring home. I wondered in June if my body was ready and OH NO IT WAS NOT. There's so many new things and if I were a rich girl with a house large enough for everything I would have gotten the world of stuff. As it is, I came home with a decent amount, and will be doing reviews on the newness later.

This post is about all the shiny good-good and new hotness--including the All New and Semi-Improved Samantha. Pics are all my own pictures taken at the store--some of mine are off center, I was too busy jumping around in excite. I'm already excite about something else in AG fandom (if you're part of AGC you'll know what) and so the last week and change has been an utter crazy whirlwind of ups and downs and swings and swirls. I tend to have a lot more feels on historical things than moddy stuff, so this is a long ass post. I had to start the post, go to sleep, wake up, finish it, and then back time it. There will also be handfuls of animated gifs so if those bother you, take that into account. I know photo sensitivity since I have it, and warnings are appreciated.

Before I start into this all new Historical minty freshness and the new hotness in the streets for the young jeezies, a mini rant. We already have a stupid split between PC stuff and Mattel stuff hovering around and stinking up the place like spoiled Similac formula. It's irritating and annoying and people should slip into the sea for it. We don't need another split. The first split is terrible and I really can't stop it except to hiss at people. But we can prevent prefixes on titles right now.  Don't do it. Don't do it. I swear to the gods, fandom, if you make "pre-BeForever" a thing like "pre-Mattel" I'll find ways to make you hurt like I rammed glass and Legos in the soles of your feet. I will curse you to never find the last item you need in your Molly collection in a sensible price range and for your first edition Kirsten to develop silver eye and you to never find a person to do an eye swap to keep her soft lashes and for your favorite girl to get a mysterious stain on her cheek that won't come off without a full head replacement. Consider this my preemptive strike against your stupid smelly failure. Also the old stuff isn't coming back, BeForever is the way things are from now on. You can't have the old looks, the NOLA girls are gone, Pleasant Rowland wasn't the Lord Goddess of Historical accuracy by a long shot, and there's not going to be any return to the past of how you want AG to be or plaid dresses for Samantha no matter how many likes your ill punctuated mewling little wet pants baby rants on the AG Facebook page and Instagram filtered Samantha selfies get. Stop being an irritating little buttboil on Facebook and move on. I have worked customer service and the people having to reply to these things are both sighing in irritation and laughing at you. You're now in the file of "stupid jackass customer." Ahem.

We're starting with Addy, of course. She's my first girl--and the best.

Why I'm an Outsider - Part Two: There's Fundies In My Fandom

Two dolls and too deep in the madness of the American Girl Fandom, circa 2006.

So there I was, barely two months into the American Girl fandom, with only Addy Walker to my name. And I had already gotten in trouble for talking about a standard part of human anatomy because babies get here by sparkledust and fairy tales and don't you forget it. I was starting off on a great note, let me tell you internets.

On the collection front, Addy's collection was growing slow but steady, and I had very recently gotten my first post-college sewing machine, a Janome 3125 (nicknamed Janome Halloween-Giftmas) that I still have as a travel machine. I had even attempted to remake two outfits that had been retired out of her collection¹ and started to design my own for her, including one as a reaction to Addy getting left out of a release again. But, having been smacked once by the Hand of Mod and not in the mood to be smacked again, I did what was Standard Neth Operating Procedure at the time.

I lurked like a motherfucker.

I didn't totally lurk. I still posted things and tried to get along with people and be friendly to the others on the board. But as the old saying goes, I kept my head down and my nose clean. Without standing out too much or getting in trouble and while guarding my words heavily, I watched how people posted and saw the community actually felt, and tried to figure out how not to make an ass of myself again.

This is how I found out that there was an underlying level of Christianity, fundamentalism, and financial enabling that I look back on and get more than a little skeeved out about.

Prologue: Not Such a Sweet Baby Face
Part One: Finding AG Fans, or How Periods are Bad For Children

Historical Clothes Reviews and Historical Accessories: Addy's Meet Outfit and Meet Accessories

Addy meets the world! And runs this joint.

Did you miss me? I'm sure you did. I'm pretty awesome. I got back home about a week ago, but circumstances got in the way of my posting. I'm sure you still love me, and I'll try to get back on a regular weekly schedule. Anyways, enough chatter from me, and more posting. I'm here to both review and educate, and I plan on doing both.

If you didn't know--and how could you not?--now you know: BeForever is coming down the pipeline. This is a revamping of the Historical Characters Line that will be resulting in a lot of changes to appeal to a new generation of children and the return of the doll Everyone Loves to Kiss the Ass of, Samantha Parkington. Some changes I've seen the leaks of include new Meet Outfits, redone Central Series books¹ that will be bundled into two-book volumes, and new outfits and accessories. This has also resulted in the official retirement of the Best Friends Line (with Ruthie Smithens the first doll to drop out of the race and end up out of stock). While not every Historical will be getting redone clothing--Caroline, for one, will be keeping her current look--several are getting a whole new Meet. Including my favorite girl, Addy Walker.² So I'm likely going to go over her and several other Historical Character's meet sets in some reviews.

Before we talk about her meet outfit, let's have some history education, Today is actually a very historically significant day in Black American History: Juneteenth. Juneteenth marks the last day that slaves in the US learned that they were free. Everyone knows about the Emancipation Proclamation, which announced the end of slavery. But that was just in the Confederate States--and only in places not already under Union control. Plus it didn't apply to the border states--states with slavery that didn't secede. Hell, Delaware and Kentucky still had slavery legal until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. The Emancipation Proclamation was less a "Lincoln freed the slaves" moment of equality and more "Lincoln wanted to cut off a major part of the South's production and fuck them up" war maneuver. But given the circumstances, black people took what they could get.

Anyways, freedom for slaves! In theory. The Confederacy--Texas included--didn't give a single fuck what those Yankee bastards had to say, and ignored the shit out of the news. And unlike nowadays, news didn't move very fast, and if you didn't tell someone news, they just didn't know. So as the Union Army worked its way south and west and took shit down, they would tell the slaves "oh by the way, you've been free since January first, 1863, get on that." Also, travel was slow as shit, not helped by the fact that there was, you know, a fucking war on. This all led up to the fact that Texas kept its slaves for practically the entire war and a few months afterwards.

It wasn't until June 18th 1865--over a month after the official end of the war on May 10th (and three days before the final shot was fired on June 22nd by the CSS Shenandoah) that a Union General, Gordon Granger, and federal troops showed up on Galveston Island. They took Texas back for the Union and enforced emancipation. On June 19th, General Granger got up on the balcony of the Ashton Villa and let the black folk of Texas know that they were free people and that this was the way shit was. Celebrations started immediately and were formally done the next year in 1866--and have, in some way, been happening ever since. This makes Juneteenth one of the oldest Black History celebrations in the US. In Texas it was made a Texas state holiday in 1980--the same year I was born--and in the 80s and 90s when my black ass was growing up in Texas the celebration was in major revival and spread across the nation. So yes, Addy would have likely participated in Juneteenth celebrations at some point.

Back to her meet outfit. Addy Walker's debut in 1993 added the first doll of color to the AG lineup and the first girl with earrings--permanent as they are. She came with her first three books illustrated by Melodye Rosales and a lot of neat shit that I absolutely coveted and now pretty much have all of--including the desk. Addy's meet outfit--until the relaunch--consists of a pink and white dress, white drawers, black stockings, black boots, and a blue hair ribbon. Her accessories--for $20 originally and bumped up to $24 as prices rose--are a straw bonnet, half-dime, kerchief, water gourd, and a cowrie shell necklace. You've got til August 28th before the revamp to get her in original form; after that, you're looking at eBay prices which range from "that's not so bad" to "you're getting ripped off, honey." But you'd probably still be able to find them for respectable costs since she's been around for over twenty years. Addy was a Giftmas Gift to me in 2005 and my first AG ever, so I paid "ohmigawd I love you in-laws you are the best" for it. Unlike several meet outfit and accessory sets, Addy's entire outfit is given major significance in her books: the outfit (and hat) is the first outfit she is given by Miss Caroline on her way running to freedom in the north, and the accessories are all mentioned in her first book.

Oh, and the background isn't my usual fully backed green for the most part; it's the wall of my mom's place on top of one of her display tables, and the images are a little yellow in places because of the lighting at the time. I meant to make this post while in Texas, but so much came up that it didn't get posted. And with my scanner in WA State, I couldn't give you all the beautiful data I like to give with my historical reviews so it all works out.

On with the show!