#‎AGDoCGotY
American Girl, keep giving us Dolls of Color for Girls of the Year.
Showing posts with label claudie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label claudie. Show all posts

Monday, October 3, 2022

The Return of An Outsider and Regaining My Voice in the Fandom

A picture of Claudie Wells in her meet set, facing a sunflower.
Claudie Wells and one of my many sunflowers.
Finding peace where it can be found, some days.

Let's start my return with a confession. 

Sometime early last winter--December or so--I considered quitting this whole blog. Shutting it down and leaving. Writing a "goodbye" post, then packing up shop. Not taking down any of my posts, mind, like I did when I was removed from AG Playthings and felt that my reviews shouldn't remain on a site I wasn't welcome on. Right call, that. But I was ready to call it quits, and leave AG fandom to the next generation: AGIG meme accounts, TikTok videos, and whatever the fuck is going on on AG Tumblr involving book piracy. I'd go dark and just stay in my own little corners where maybe people would leave me alone and stop hurting me. Because people were hurting me.

I almost gave up my voice.

And to start to bring it back, I need to say that and several other things.

I'm being vulnerable in this post, but not too vulnerable. Some of what I went through mentally and emotionally is for the select circles who know the best ways to reach me and treat me the way I ought to be treated--gently, and with love and care. There's some things about me that aren't worth the energy I'd spend trying to talk about it on a public blog about dolls and shit, where any yahoo serious with too much free time on their hands tries to scan every paragraph I write and twist my words for their agendas and vendettas. 

But the truth is I almost quit, and I want to be direct about it. 

That's the tone we're starting with. And this post is not so much about AG or even dolls or toys as it is about me, the Gen X black demifemme human behind this blog, and what I've done to even get back to where I can write this. So if that bothers you or you don't want to hear that shit because it's not the tone you enjoy, then go ahead and back out now because actual feelings on "new" things this past year to catch up and "old" things to look back on in Retrospecticus Posts won't happen until later this week or so when I have the energy to do research for the posts I want.

I'm a person behind this, same as anyone else, and I ought to be allowed to be myself.

The rest of how I feel and where I'm going--as much as I'm willing to share--is below the cut, along with some random pictures of dolls that I've taken pics of.