AG Complaint Department: The Top Five and Bottom Five A*G Events in the Past Ten Years of the A*G Wiki

Ten Full Years!

Where the sweet hell did June go--oh right, A-Kon work, Pride, swapping doll eyeballs, raiding the corpse of Toys R Us, Memorial Day, and family business. Don't beat yourself up, Neth. Just, you know, go take review pictures. There's lots of stuffs you could be covering. Just set up your photo spot and take the damn pictures, woman.

*dusts off cookies*

There's new summer stuff out! Woo, releases! And I have several opinions on it, good and bad. I plan to post about it soon--I wasn't able to get complete pictures of the stuff until the end of the month, because that was the earliest I was able to get to the store. I'm aiming Sunday or Monday's post.¹ Today though, is a super cool anniversary for me in the AG fandom.

Guys, gals, and non binary pals, today is the ten-year anniversary of what's been called the best database for American Girl Info since its 2008 conception, the American Girl Wiki.

Lemme set the scene for the launch. Picture it, Seattle Area, 2008. I'd been officially banned from AF Playthings that March, though I hadn't really visited in weeks at that point and was trying to get my stuff down from the site at the time of my banning.² I was overseeing training at my then-job--which mostly consisted of shadowing over someone who'd done all the main education and was now doing live work with assistance. Since it was a niche section, those of us that normally did the work were not doing it so they could get as much practice as they possibly could. So since I'd been doing the work for two and a half years, I was being paid to sit by my trainee, listen to their calls out, walk them through steps, and answer simple questions quickly so they didn't have to ask the supervisors. I needed something to do between questions and call listen ins, so I was surfing the net trying to get some AG data on upcoming new stuff and characters.

Look it was that or bike back and forth on the long path through Solaceon Town hatching eggs in Pokemon Pearl. Smartphones were not as widespread as they are now and I'd already done some sketching. 

But I couldn't get any data on anything that wasn't locked behind forums or on slowly updated personal sites--and what data that existed was primarily about the items and buying them. While AG is a merch driven thing and so it made perfect sense to talk about the stuff, that was all that got talked about. the Stuff. Very little on any site at all was about the actual characters, there was sporadic history on the line itself, and most of that was heavily coated in the idea that everything that came out before 2000 was perfect and flawless and everything that came out after was Mattel's Hot Garbage trying to turn the line into Barbie. Hell's chicken and fries, there was little to be found about the books. Many places had a list of book titles, but nothing about what happened in them. Not even character parent names.

And it occurred to me: why didn't the American Girl fandom have a wiki-style database? Other toys had them. Lego had one, the Brickipedia. There was an entire one about yo-yos. I'd just been using Bulbapedia to look up some Pokémon data, followed by getting lost on the Muppet Wiki. Hell, there was Wookiepedia--all Star Wars, All The Time.

Was it because someone had never done that themselves? Taken that step out to make an American Girl Wiki? Well, I would be that someone. TV Tropes had the right idea with the The Wiki Rule: There is no area of interest, no matter how narrowly defined, where a person cannot put up a wiki for it and attract at least a few editors with similar interests. So, even if I spent weeks alone coding in character and book pages, making notes on Addy's younger sister and Kirsten's father, I could do it.  Plus, it'd give me something else to do with my fandom knowledge. I did have like, almost all the books. All of them. I might hate the people who'd banned me and shunned me, but that didn't mean I couldn't do something for the AG fandom, even if I'd likely never be appreciated for it.

I submitted my proposal for the wiki to the Wikia staff--which, like onions on your belt, was the style at the time. I got approval and was sent the URL and given my admin and founder rights. I started to clean up the main page images, then started creating pages for each Historical Character and Girl of the Year. I created basic collection pages.  That was enough to start making more character pages and some item pages. I searched and scanned images from my books, making references and internal links here and there and coding. I couldn't post links on any forums, but I could promote on AG Over 18 and my own personal journal, and I did. By August  we'd been featured in the Wikia Spotlight. By September 2008 we had 300 pages. By the first anniversary, the Wiki had just over 850 articles.

Ten years later and with two other admins, we're at a touch over 4000 articles--and I often hear across the fandom how useful the AG Wiki is to pull up information and how nice it is that within days of new stuff coming out, there's at least something on it even just a stubble. And to think, I started the AG wiki with just about 100 or so pages, supervising training at Nintendo, and hoping I was able to do something for American Girl fans with my information, because I was getting damned sick of sites that only talked about the stuff and most of that was in forums people could be banned from.

Oh and the moddie line has gone through about three names--but since category changes are hard, we still call the category by a name several years out of date. Edits, whatcha gonna do.
 
We're fairly quick with the updates--and if you're curious about, say, that one-off character in Felicity's mystery? You can probably get some data or add it in yourself--as long as you follow the rules, are over thirteen, don't edit in garbage, pay attention to the rules about descriptions because a single line edit is not a description unless they're just plain white socks, and don't spam the wiki with petitions to bring back flash games from your childhood because AG is not going to bring back flash games from your childhood. Flash is a terrible thing anyways.

I'm very proud of what the AG Wiki is and has become, and what it will be in the future. 

That being said, I have more to say. Since it has been ten years, I decided that I'm gonna babble on about the Top Five and Bottom Five Things AG has done in the past decade since I started wiking. All opinions are, of course, my own. Of course they are, this is my fucking blog. There will also be some honorable--and dishonorable--mentions in there too.

Hop under the cut and getcha read on.

Crafting Creatively: Things I've Made: Cécile’s Turkey Red Dress, Fawn Jacket, and Trimmed Cottage Bonnet

Two sets at once!

Mwahah, Leap Day! I just have to make a blog post today. C'mon, it only comes once every four years, and I'll have to wait another four years to do anything on that day again. Gods bless St. Tib's Day and celebrate Eris, Goddess of Discord and Order!¹

The 2016 Secret Snarker is wrapping up, and my gift has arrived to me and will be documented on Instagram later. And mine has gotten to and been the recipient--one of the two sets I made. As I explained when I made "Samantha's" Pink Dress and Pinafore, I generally when making a gift go ahead and make two sets of things. This in part helps me craft better--not only do I make them simultaneously and thus can figure out the steps all together, I make sure to give the better put together set to my giftee. This time I was gifting kaleb92 and she has among her gang members Colette, who is Cécile with a name change. Guess which Historical Gang Member didn't have a Miss Nethie's Original Outfit? Okay, more than one. I've have the brain issues. But Cécile was the one that matched a member of her gang, and it was a chance for me to design something sweet for her Colette and my Cécile.

I even wrote a description like the old catalogs did. (I actually did for the dress and pinafore, which I've retroactively put in.)

Cécile’s Turkey Red Dress, Fawn Jacket, and Trimmed Cottage Bonnet

Cécile is ready for a bright spring day in her new ensemble. Her turkey red vine print dress has short sleeves, a faux vest with a bow accent, and a scalloped overskirt—all edged with cotton lace trim. (Turkey red is a highly fashionable, colorfast red—and is so named from the method of dying, not the bird!) The fawn colored jacket is fully lined with six smart buttons down the front and a flared shape, and the matching cottage bonnet has runched ribbon trim, a flower accent, and gathered lace trim on the lining. With her full ensemble—including matching hair bows--she’ll look her best!

There's only one major difference between my set and the set I sent, which I'll point out. Hop under the cut for details of the sets.

Also--because this doesn't need a whole post--I've released my first cross stitch pattern in my Etsy shop, which I've restarted. It's to make a 1900's Style Cross Stitch Sampler, with bonus instructions to turn said sampler into a pillow. Take a gander. I hope to get more cross stitch patterns out over the month, once I've crafted them into something. It's always a task to know what to do with a cross stitch once you've finished it sometimes.

*~*~*

AG Complaint Department: The Ten-Year Rise and Fall of the Best Friend Line

So long, girls. The Era ends with you.

Have you been living under a rock for a few months in the AG community? I haven't, even if I have no need to post something every day on this blog. This is not Tumblr¹ and I'm not a news blog cause I don't need to be. I've got stuff coming up that y'all will like--the gang is up to another girl--and tons of reviews and shit. But I'd like to address the end of the Best Friends line before the launch of BeForever at the end of this month, so that on occasion my articles can seem timely.

If you've had a pulse on the AG community for any time since about January to March, you'll have heard whispers of both Samantha's return and the retirement of Marie-Grace and Cécile. Many people saw the end coming through whispers, catalog scans that didn't include the others, and jabber from personal shoppers. Finally in May, AG officially stepped up and said that Marie-Grace, Ruthie, Ivy, and Cécile are going into the Archives. This is in preparation for the launch of BeForever--a rebranding of the Historical characters to focus on the main AG characters and appeal to girls again. This includes new clothes, the return of the emphasis on girls being the same in essence through history, using new ways to appeal to old ones--aw yiss, apps and nets--and rumors that include removing illustrations from the books to appeal to older children.² This does not include their best friends or the NOLA Girls. There's several articles that have been published on news sites and around discussing how this removes the only black character that hasn't been a slave and the only Asian-American character in the lineup. I'm not going to knock them in any way. They're right in saying that with Ivy getting booted, we don't have a Asian American character represented in history anymore--and that Cécile is the only well to do pretty princess we've had that was black. But neither girl really got a chance to hold down the fort herself, and the best Friends Line was a poor way to put both of them in. 

For the most part, the Best Friends Line did not do much for AG's bottom line or their appeal to the historical characters, and the one time it touched the moddies it tanked hard. While the Best Friend Line had its appearances of successes, it also had its problems--lots of them. I do kind of like the idea of best friends and two girls sharing an era, and a lot of my historicals have theirs. Edith has Dorothy, Kimmy has Tyanna, Addy has Sarah, and Felicity has pretty brunette Elizabeth. I'm even debating finally creating Charlotte's stepsister/close friend from Caroline.³ And the most technical sense, I have several of the Best Friends: Nellie, Cécile (though she's not a best friend, she's a split collection--more on that later), Kimmy ("Ivy"), and Sonali. A lot of people will talk about the good of the line. But I feel like the AG community and the purchasing population at large didn't really feel the Best Friends Line, and that it going down is going to overall be a good thing.

If you haven't clicked onto this, this is all my perception. I'm not a marketing mogul, I've never worked for AG in my life, and I majored in English. These are just my opinions as someone who came into AG at the small start of the Best Friends Line, and saw how things came--and now, how they're going, along with things one of the members of the forums has observed and I'm alright with passing along. You're not here for numbers. You're here for my opinions, education, snark, and to learn better about the kyriarchy and how to tear it down. 

Let's start the same way AG did: with Samantha and Nellie.

AG Identifications: Historical Underwear

Insert "Panty shot" jokes here, with Cécile.

Hey, so as of tomorrow I will have been AG blogging for a year. Not bad work for a year. Let's keep going.

So a discussion came up on the AG Collectors board¹ about the historical underwear--basically, if Addy and Caroline had the same underwear. And they do and don't. From that I decided that it would behoove us to have an ID post showing the slight--and the not so slight, in some major cases--differences among the historical panties, bloomers, and undergarments that the historicals came with. And so snapped pictures as I was changing everyone around. That way if your girl comes without her panties, you can--if you so choose--seek out her drawers and bloomers and cover her ass, as the case may be.

A little history before we start looking up skirts and down pants. Most of the historicals have white underwear. To modern eyes, white underwear might not seem to make sense, because white is traditionally harder to keep clean and shows dirt fast. But here's the sitch, Mitch: white can be sun bleached. As in laid out in the sun and allowed to fade. And in the days before Clorox² this was was the best way to get out major staining without scrubbing the entire hell out of clothes. Other colors will and do fade (which is why old clothes can often look really pale, when they likely had vibrant bright colors.) So underwear were white because you wore those often and maybe had one or two sets (one to wear while the other got washed) and you had to get those stains out with vigorous abuse of the cloth. Sure they might get dingy and faded, but honestly no one was looking at your underwear most of the time anyways. Also, why would you waste expensive dyes on underwear? Again, no one was looking at your underwear.

Furthermore, the girls between the invention of pantaloons and the later shift to bloomers--from Caroline to Addy--have sealed drawers. That is, not split crotch. Split crotch drawers weren't wide open, but there was an opening front to back so that when you squatted down to attend to nature's call, you didn't have to pull down your pantaloons. Like elastic instead of tie strings, we're letting it go. I could go into historical underwear all day, but that's for review posts.

Listed in Reverse Historical--starting with Julie Courtney (as of 2021) and going back to Kaya. Note that the petticoat Cécile is wearing under her meet dress isn't one that's made by AG. I have a Laylie³ who got out of all that frilly historical stuff and Cécile now wears her petticoat as ruffly cute under her dresses.

Historical Clothes Reviews: Cécile's Special Dress and LE Mini Doll

Joyeux Noël from Cécile Rey!

So as you've noticed, every other day brings you a new holiday review. Because not only do moddies all have holiday outfits left and right, so do the Historicals. This is because all the historicals ended up with some sort of holiday in the winter to have them have something specific for parents to look at and go "That's the holiday dress! Put them in it!" thus making holiday shopping easy as fuck. Kaya got Generic Winter Giving Holiday with her adorned dress, Kirsten initially mixed it up with St. Lucia's Day and a wreath¹ and Rebecca holds down the entire Hanukkah front. Julie got Chinese New Year even though her entire collection focuses on the incredibly awkward holiday tea with her father. Every historical at least skimmed near the winter holidays at some point--or faked it, as the case is with Kaya.

And then along came Cécile Rey and Marie-Grace Gardner, two girls over six books. Because heaven, the Summerlands, and the Gardens forfend they just, you know, give a black girl her own series without her white companion. People might mistake her for Addy or think she's worthy or something. (I really wish Marie-Grace had been left out altogether, or demoted to Best Friend.) Their six book split doesn't even dance near the holidays, what with focusing primarily on the 1853 yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans and the fallout of that as it affected their families and lives. (There is a mention of Christmas in the start of the books, as it is post holiday season--what with their new fashion of the Christmas tree--and then at the end of Book 6.)

While Marie-Grace is boring to me, I adore Cécile. Cécile Rey is a rich black girl in 1850s New Orleans--much better off than Marie-Grace. The fact she is really got some white collector's bloomers twisted because Cécile is black, free, rich, and friends with a white girl. And the way they teach history in this country is so shitty, spotty, and whitewashed that there are generations of people who claim to be educated but believe that black people before 1865 were all slaves and that rich black people are historical anomalies or unrealistic and they certainly would have never been friends with white people lest they be turned into slaves by proxy or something. As Cécile spits at the American idiots in the candy store, she is gens de couleur libres, or a free person of color. Free blacks were not only in New Orleans but everywhere, and have been since the start of the US. Don't go saying stupid shit. She's a goddamn smartass and her first bold act in the books is to basically say "fuck you whitey, don't think you're better than me, I'm free black and if you insult the wrong people in this town we will take your white Américain ass down to the motherfucking ground." Ahem. Go girl.

Still the two girls needed fancy dress. So the two got "special" wear, which can pretty much be considered their holiday wear. Marie-Grace got her Party Outfit, and Cécile got her Special Dress: a set consisting of a red patterned ribbon trimmed dress, white pearl necklace, and matching velvet hair ribbons. Technically she doesn't wear this for the holidays; she wears it when she recites a poem at a benefit for the orphanages in the city in the wake of the yellow fever epidemic. But AG pimps it as holiday wear and holiday wear it is.

As soon as I saw Cécile I declared that she must be mine a la Igor from Dork Tower. I originally had planned to pick her up day of but then they tossed in a preorder bonus of a small set of paper dolls, and I decided that was better than having to go pick her up after work on a Tuesday. Tuesday, when I was working, was my Monday and thus my most bitchy of days and I didn't want to have to cuss a motherfucker out. Cécile got here about a week after official release; I preordered her, every outfit available for her at the time other than the Masked Ball wear,² and then went to AG Seattle and traded in the single book for the six book series and got to reading and all that. The Special Dress cost $28, and still costs that much except for sales. For some reason it is currently not available off the site at the time of this writing, but I suspect that it will go back into stock and not just be abruptly retired out of nowhere. Shit, it better not be. On eBay it appears to be going for less than that, likely because of all the sales MG and Cécile have been having on their collection. I'm sure it might stay there on eBay, barring this temporary sell out being a total retirement whereupon the prices will jack the entire fuck up. 

The double proof that this is her holiday wear is that it's what her LE mini doll is wearing when it was released--though, since there was no holiday book, her mini book is an abridged copy of Meet Cécile. There was a mini book with every LE, and yes I have them, and no, I'll discuss that when I discuss Mini dolls and not a blog post before.