Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: The Why of Two-Kay: Nicki and Isabel Hoffman of the Turn of the Millennium

Stay on your side of the room!

For once I'm gonna be on time with something! A week and change later is on time, right? It counts. Get in where you fit in. Return of the Mack Neth.

So there I was, hot off the press of finishing Kavi's collection post within a reasonable time of her release, and preparing my checklist of "Things That Came Out In 2023/Late 2022 (So I Might Maybe Eventually Catch Up To Go Back)" when historical leaks hit hard. And by hit hard, I mean AG put stuff up several days early on the website and they were available for people to order, which counts as a release. So I set aside my checklist and decided I'd try to do a post on something fresh off the press on semi-time, even if colored. The time that is. It's a Colored People Time Joke. Then my attempts to post before February ended got delayed. But not by much! It's just the second of March. I'm fine, I'm a'ight. We're major. Happy Texas Independence Day.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand. On 2/22, only a month and a half after Kavi's release,¹ AG released their newest historicals: Nicki and Isabel Hoffman² of Seattle, Washington. They hail from the far flung, distant era of last century, the most ancient and noble year--

--of 1999. Hey, I graduated from high school that year!

Did you hear crying middle millennials after reading that year? I heard crying middle millennials. Yes, now it's the mid-to-late millennials' turn to feel fucking old about being represented by a "historical" era by the same doll company that started with the 1850s, 1900s, and 1940s. The early Gen Xers got whapped by the Historical Era Stick with Julie and mini vinyl records in 2007, the cuspier X-llennials like me did it with Courtney and mini cassette tapes in 2020, and now it's the middle to late Millennials turn with the Twinsies and mini CDs--and sooner than you expected it to be. Now it's y'all's turn to see the children ask you what a CD is³ and wince when a teenager who didn't even exist as a fetus during the 2006 midterms is on the Metronome App trying to tell you nothing happened at all during Y2K when you lived through that night and remember your desktop potentially glitching and the fears of the end of the world. Gen Z doesn't know how to sort through the file system or research without Google. You're older now. Your music's now part of the Classic music station--the hits of the 80s, 90s, and beyond! Stop lamenting that your age is closer to thirty than twenty, eat more greens, take your multivitamins, be glad you made it this far--not everyone has been so lucky--and for the love of gods, wear sunscreen. History doesn't just stop existing once color TV is invented. Just ask Julie. Hell, ask Melody.

We're going to start with my feelings on the Twinsies, and then follow up with the collection--which isn't that big to start, but then again neither has Claudie's been. Technically Claudie has more outfits. Technically.

Under the cut to where I'll fuss, cuss, and discuss. No Scrubs allowed. A scrub gets no love from me.⁴

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Broadway, Brown Skin, and Bollywood Beauty: Kavi Sharma of 2023

On the corner of Broadway and Representation.

Happy Valentine's Day! Or Palentine's Day. Or Fuck James Cook Day. Or Discount Candy Eve. Or Halfway through February Day. or It's Still Black History Month, Run Me My Money. For me, it's the last day of the Chocolate Gauntlet, with tomorrow freeing me from the loosely defined fears of cocoa products lurking in the seasonal aisles until September rolls around. I made it, people!

It's also a month and a half--give or take a New Year's--since the newest Girl of the Year launched. Though I have a backlog of AG posts spanning to before the entire damn still ongoing pandemic and a whole word doc to organize the items in, it won't get any shorter if I don't try--key word, try--to stay on top of newer things. Like news of outgoing girls who have worbs.

Speaking of outgoing things, and I don't mean the character I'm about to discuss. Remember in 2021 when AG Seattle closed, and I told AG Houston to sleep with one eye open?

Yeah, about that.

Spotify, play Chopin's Death March.

In a move surprising both no one and some one, AG Houston got murked like Flash Player at the end of 2020. Not only did it close--yesterday, in fact! body's still cooling!--but so did AF San Francisco Bay Area, which I had never been to. AG Miami is also done; it closed back in Sept 2022. This leaves only five non-flagship stores now, one--still!--in Dallas. AG Houston's demise is because, along with "the stores are not moving product like they used to", the entire Memorial City Mall is getting refreshed into a new look. Since the buildings are going down, AG was like "oh look, a reason to exit strategy the store!" Retail stores: they ain't what they used to be. There's a reason I toy shop at Target. That reason is because it's the only place with a decent toy department that isn't Wally World.

RIP AG Houston, we hardly knew ye.

I also know about the something new coming on 2/22 that involves Historical Jewish Twins and skipping the actual good part of the '90s, but I'll get to that when it launches. Or five months later, who knows, I keep my own fucked up schedule around here. On the real, I'll try to get on top of it before the month ends, hopefully no more than two weeks after they launch. Key word hopefully. For now, we're giving Kavi her diamonds, before people get distracted. I have quite a bit to say about Claudie once I get into that post and how she got undercut by releases and still is being so.

Go to the woods!¹

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Ski Free in Aspen: Corinne Tan of 2022 and Her Entire Collection (With Bonus Kira B. For Some Reason)

The mountains are calling, and Corinne must attack them.

In 2015 I opened the year of AG blogging not with talking about Grace Thomas, then-current Girl of the Year, and her then-the-most-expensive item ever bakery. (That was about four days later.) I started a fresh new year of doll blogging by pointing out that, in fourteen years of having a Girl of the Year, the characters had been overwhelmingly white. At the time, there had not been a Latina character since Marisol twelve years ago, an East Asian character that wasn't half white, a South Asian character that wasn't a sidekick without her own book, or a Black character at all. Nor had there been many characters of color. Lindsey was and has been the only Jewish doll in the line and most of them were long spans of whiteness--four characters in a row, generally, and often with brown hair or eyes but not both at once--that really didn't have to be so. Frustrating. There was nothing in Lanie's story that had to make her be white other than she was from Massachusetts. Hence me promoting--off and on, but still--the hashtag and campaign #AGDoCGotY: asking AG to give us Dolls of Color for the Girl of the Year.

Now it's been seven years and one president (with a four-year gap of fuckery) later¹ and AG has done some major improvements on the Girl of the Year diversity.  Lea was a lot of choices that I didn't care for one bit, but the doll at least wasn't light skinned. Hazel eyes, yes, lightish haired, yes--but she wasn't pale, and a lot of people got her and ditched the very off kilter story to give her more representation than her story gave her. This was followed by: Gabby my Babby--last minute and overshadowed by someone with a guitar but still there; Luciana the STEM Space Ace Latina we all adored; Blaire who...was Blaire but at least wasn't fully boring even if her focus wasn't exactly a focus at all; Joss who was the first disabled doll in being deaf² and the first white one to have both brown hair and brown eyes; and Kira, who gave us gay aunt representation in a land down under.

Yes, three and seven-eighths of them are white, but each of them had something more appealing to them other than being white and fantasy wish fulfillment. Even if I owe myself a read through of many of their books to learn more details. Look, I haven't sat down and read as many books as I'd like--not just AG, but across the board--thanks to my brain wonk. At least I'm not saying with my whole IG account that Samantha was a full fledged suffragette, Saige wasn't radical enough by discussing school art programs, and Felicity never liked a nice dress. The push for more representation from AG has been not perfection, but progress. 

Then at the end of 2021--because that's when they've been formally releasing the new girls now--we got the first Girl of the Year East Asian character: Corinne Tan of Aspen, Colorado. Corinne³ is Chinese-American--which means for the first time in the line, a character offers East Asian rep without a side dish of whiteness to help the ethnicity go down!

...Mostly.

Her parents have, at the start of her story, divorced due to stressed exacerbated by the pandemic, and her mother Judy is preparing to marry her new boyfriend: a well-off Swedish man, Arne Karlsson.⁴ So not only is Corinne dealing with personal worries about what being in a blended family means and moving to a new place, but what it means that her white stepfather got that money money to the level of "has a personal decorator," "her little sister wanted to start ice skating so he just paid for it," and "No, Corinne, put anything you want on your pass at the ski lounge, I'll pay it." She's big into being outside and exploring the woods and mountains around her home, feeling like the outside and nature with it has a lot to give, and she loves to ski. She also gets a new puppy who she wants to train to be a rescue dog, helping find people lost in the woods. Put a sticky note on that, we'll get back to it.

Is this like Nicki from 2005, also from Colorado with a dog being trained? Yes, but Nicki didn't have anything in her book about skiing while Corinne is very much about it left and right. Also Nicki didn't have any underwear. Plus it's been long enough we can return to Colorado skiing. If we can have dancing based collections three times we can go skiing twice. The target age of AG, even at twelve, wouldn't have existed when Nicki had her year.

But it's not all ski slopes and more money woes for Corinne. There's also realistic occurrences of anti-Asian sentiment in book one and some rescuing involved in book two. I think. I need to finish a lot of reading and document a lot of things. I have a lot to do before November.

She's also due a movie on Cartoon Network followed by HBOMax and I'll get to it when I get to it.⁵ In the movie she's been bumped up to thirteen, in part because of the actress. I'm very curious for how the adaptation will go--we haven't had an AG Moddie movie since 2016, and that was a mess.

All these pics will be, of course, promo images and catalog shots, a first for me. Until Corinne's release, I was able to see every GotY since Mia face to face at least once during their active year--the ones until Kanani down at AG Dallas, and all the rest at AG Seattle until it closed. But given that it's October and I'm not planning any impromptu trips down to the LA store, I'm unlikely to see Corinne in the store before 2022 is up and maybe not even after. It's above me now. Other people will have to take pictures in stores of things. Hopefully they won't suck. Also her giveaway item was a poster, which she can't even wear. So I missed out on nothing that I'd later trade money for goods in a Safeway parking lot.

Ski jump under the cut for Corinne's entire collection so far--and a bonus that sets a very strange precedent.

Dat's my sister~ And my puppy~

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: The 35th Anniversary Party, Flashback Fri-Year, Stuff Down Under, and Whatever Else Has Came Out Recently

Party down if you ain't no clown. Also don't invite clowns.

Go, AG
It's your birthday
We gon' party like it's your birthday
We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday
And you know we don't give a fuck it's not your birthday--

But it is their birthday! At least, it was. Is? How does a year long celebration work vis a vis a birthday? I merely give myself a month, and that's more to allow gifts to arrive anytime in the span around with the actual celebration generally a few days before or after the moment of Actual Birthday. I even redid the layout of the AG Wiki to celebrate--and because hey, it should have a nicer background after this long. Fresh coat of digital paint and what not.

Congrats, American Girl. You were born in a warehouse north of Madison, Wisconsin--one of the two places in the state that has any concentration of black people, go argue with your unseasoned cast iron pan, I was born there--as the brainchild of a former teacher who gets over-revered. You started with just three modified Gotz dolls with the Romina Mold, covering three overly romanticized historical time periods and accompanying books, and outfits and accessories that fit a single two-page spread in the Doll Reader magazines that my mom's crafty and very wonderful friend used to let me flip through because I was a quiet well-behaved kid who didn't tear things up and I loved the blue trunk with the flowers on it and the doll that had the collection for it.

And now, past the invention of the CD, DVD, Internet, streaming and me being Entirely Grown, you as a company are still kicking it. In part because the last twenty-plus of your life have been Mattel run. No one tell the PC Purists, you'll break their hearts and send them into apoplexy when you remind them that Kit never was a PC doll no matter what the back of her head mold might say. Go argue with Samantha's shitty plastic shoes.

This is an achievement, and that's me being sincere. Not every line of toys makes it this long, or every line of dolls. Yes, Barbie's the same decade as my parents, and I'm older than Ponies--another line that still lasts--and I am Classically Trained in that an NES was my first system. There's things that last. But not every brand of toy thing lasts so long. Just a few doll and toy lines born the same year as AG that didn't make it out of the 1980s, courtesy of Ghost of the Doll:

• Jem, truly outrageous and over by 1988¹
• Fluppy Dogs, which didn't make it to 1987
• Shimmers, also didn't make it to 1987 
• Sweetie Pops, weird little dolls that only did a year
• Fairy Tails, birds with happy endings by 1988
• and MoonDreamers, which had images in 1988 Hasbro catalogs but never went into production.
  

Every few years toys and brands are born, live a little and die, burst onto the scene in a surge of popularity and fizzle out a few short years later to scatter thrift stores and wistfully look forward to the day they show up on Buzzfeed lists of Only Decade Kids Remember. Even the Baby Face dolls I like only made it two years, and I didn't know about Year Two until I was older. So congrats, AG, for making it three and a half decades, and thanks for making my life a lot more brilliant. Can't wait to see you make it to four decades and beyond.

Now let's talk goodies before the next set comes out. I am trying to maintain this 2021 energy of staying semi-on top of new things. Let's talk party booths and doll cupcakes.²  

Honestly, I meant to do this earlier this month--and the Wellies Retrospecticus last month before I did this. All these delays from me are for many reasons--including realizing damn near all my Wellie pictures for the past two years are of such poor quality that using catalog pics is just better for the whole damn thing--but the major one is that getting my anti-Covid shots³ whooped my ass. Like whooped it. I still have a cough since the last one at the start of May, WTF. My immune system went into major overdrive, which is good, but meant having hot eyeballs and swollen lymph nodes and a lack of focus to do anything but play New Pokemon Snap which is bad. The swollen knots in my neck, not New Pokemon Snap. That game is my friend. I'm chucking fluff-fruit at everything. But yay, I'm immunized. And still wearing masks in public because even though I'm fortunate enough to be stuck and the CDC claims we can just walk around with our faces out, not everyone is safely immunized, some fools who can be are refusing out of sheer selfishness, and the pandemic is still raging worldwide and other countries can't get all the vaccines they need for their people for who knows how long. Also I invested a lot in cute face-covering wear and I'm continuing to wear it and that way I can cough when my issues act up and know my mouth is covered. We'll decide how I feel about sipping Starbucks in the store later. 

I digress. It's a three day weekend, May is almost over, and I have my attention together long enough to blog about things even if I smell of Halls cough drops. So Wellies later--well, Old Wellie Stuff later, because I'm covering the New Party Stuff today--and New Stuff Now. Including New Stuff that's Old Stuff! But not Bitty stuff. LOL Bitty shit. Go argue with a Safeway doughnut.

Party under the cut!

AG Outsider Retrospecticus: Blaire Wilson, The Girl of 2019 and Character Neth Completely Forgot (To Blog About) and Introducing Fifi Martin-Russell

Blaire Wilson.
Or more accurately, Fifi Martin-Russell.

Beware the ides of March--oh. Right, that was a couple days ago, wasn't it? As well as Pi Day (the only made-up holiday where you can use math to compel people to bake you some key lime pie) and St. Patrick's day, the day all the Irish people and part Irish people get to heritage it up. Hope you maybe wore something green, drank a beer, and I guess posted Nellie on the timeline in the new Irish set. I'll do it tomorrow, to quote Goof-off Goose. Now let's talk dolls. The benefit with my blogging so frequently is that I have little to go on about myself and what I've been up to before getting into the meat of what you come here for: yammer about dolls, reviews, and integrated snark. Day to day nonsense and randomized art goes on the Instagram account.

2019 was a strange year for me. Not as strange as 2020--the high of winning Joss followed by the free fall of literally everything after the start of March, can't wait for the anniversary of face cloth in two weeks--but strange all the same, what with starting the year in an apartment I'd lived in for over a decade with some really awful neighbors yet again and and wanting to move, and ending it in a house with stairs and a lot more doll storage. And yes, I am protected. I also turned 2000 weeks old that year, which was neat. I'll let you know when I hit 2200 weeks old, I already passed 2100. 

Though I barely think about the old place now, the in-person pictures I have of "Blaire Wilson" that aren't inside the late AG Seattle back in the days when people still breathed community air are instead at the previous residence. So I'm going to have shots taken in the past. Flashback. At least these were before the complex painted the place from the various rich jewel tones I liked to I Can't Twerk To This Beige, insisted everything had to be stripped off our porches for two months with no end date, and killed one of my tomato plants in the process. Joke's on you, complex, now I have a front porch, a cherry tree, and digging dirt now and I can cover them both in all the plants I fucking want!

...and paint the banister myself--or more accurately, hire people to do it. Ahem. At least I'll make sure it's nowhere near my plants.

Between 2018's "Go To Space Today" Space Ace Luciana Vega¹ and 2020's Cool Deaf Surfer Girl Joss Kendrick, American Girl released for the 2019 Girl of the Year a little character that could named Blaire Wilson. Blaire--with an E, we had to add that version to my spelling dictionary--started leaking around the end of 2018, revealing herself as a return to white girls after two years of PoC. But she did have some semi-unique factors, being the first and so far only super pale Josefina mold--she was as pale as the very recently released #78--with green eyes and very red curly hair. Basically she's like if Felicity was paler and had Dear Elizabeth's face for more than regular kissy kissy. 

However, other than the new looks, Blaire didn't have a lot going for her as a character. Hence recent reports from Mattel's that Joss outsold her by 20% across the board even in a pandemic and the stores being closed for several months. The theme of her collection--and books, they're not just packing ballast for your dolls--was a little all over the place, and even some angles of it I haven't quite figured out even two years later. That's why I personally feel like AG whiffed it with Blaire. Not that her message wasn't necessary--look, the person with a chocolate allergy isn't going to knock talking about food allergies and intolerance--but in her collection this wasn't given a lot of focus. Furthermore, there was a big issue in that she had the "bad" eyes at the start, and and since I have a lot of old news to go over, we'll be covering the issues with AG's "bad" eyes in depth here.

Step behind the cut to read about Blaire Wilson, her collection, the books I still need to read, and learn about Fifi Martin-Russell--as well as my experience with the 2019 eye-swap and the short lived "bad eyes" that American Girl may have replaced at no cost to the consumer, but definitely at cost to the company, so quit bitching stores are closing. You wanted the older eyes, and the monkey's paw made it cost AG Atlanta.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Dat Street Chic Urban, Flying the AG Skies, and Sweets, Treats, and Other Neats: The 2021 Early Quarter Releases

We run these exceptionally clean and well-maintained streets.

I got two retrospecticuses--retrospectici? retrobungalows? we'll take that to the workshop--in and started sorting images for the third when a local snowstorm came in and delayed me and my buddies going to AG Seattle together, even though it was good for Maryellen in the snow for pics. Followed by sad over my last day in AG Seattle. Followed by concern over my family and friends in Texas because of their own freak snowstorms. Followed by March yet again I'm just saying, February was wilding and my brain decided every trip up meant focus was bullshit. I didn't even get my Valentine's day takeout dinner until last weekend.¹ Yes, I'm a bougie bitch. Get you a partner that looks at you like a warm cheddar bay biscuit and then gets them for you to eat at home.

Anyways it's now March and as of today, it has literally been an entire year that my life has been affected by this pandemic. "I'll be working from home for at least two weeks" followed by "actually, roomie, don't go on your usual walking trip out to the store this weekend, it's not fun out there" followed by "...all my thingies are getting super cancelled and the Costco is out of  paper towels, bleach, disinfecting wipes, hand soap, baby wipes, hand sanitizer, and rice. And toilet paper, wtf, why is everyone buying all the toilet paper, good thing we restocked last week."² Things are better but we're not out of the woods yet. Wear your masks, stay home, and stay distant. I don't care what your stupid state governor says about opening the entire state up to full capacity right now because their dumb ass wants to force things "back to normal." Fuck a normal. This is the equivalent of going "the flames are only on half the house now, everyone back into the living room to play on the XBox!" That bastard ain't gonna pay your medical bills and you can't contribute to the economy when you're dead. Freedom is not freedom to be a dick to everyone around you because you're weaker than a fursuiter and mewl at the mild inconvenience of some cloth on your face. And if you're like "lol that's what Texas/Mississippi get, backwards states voted backwards and everyone there deserves it" I want you to snort capsaicin up your nose like it's the 1970s and sauce is the new snow. There's millions in the south, many of which are BiPoC, that are being voter suppressed and trying to be heard, and they're not less worthy. Fuck your northern moral superiority, you fucking weeb. Don't make me overlay the Republican dominated states over the diagram of the Confederacy again. 

Ahem.

While I was working on old stuff and also being sad at times, new stuff came out with AG. I already covered Courtney's new stuff--all of it, really--in her own post, but she wasn't the only one getting the goods. The only Historical, true--but not the only line. Lo, have the moddie things been thinging. Due to the local store closure, I knew I wasn't going to see any of it in person and would just have to use website images and details as it came out, with the oldest new stuff coming out with Courtney and the newest new stuff having come out yesterday. 

So to keep on top of that, I'm still gonna blog about it. And Blaire's gonna have to wait another week for me to take my meds, get my new glasses to read better, and slam some black tea with milk and sugar so I can go over the deep interest of her not being able to eat dairy. I could try to do her stuff first, but then I'm delaying more and then more stuff comes out and then we're talking about 2021 releases in 2022 and I've got enough of a 2019/2020 backlog. Also I've got something neat coming soon and y'all might get the first new review of something in forever.

That and those three new girls are stupid cute and I'm trying to decide when I'll get them.

Pop under the cut and run these streets, site-used images and all. 

AG Outsider Retrospecticus: Totally 80s, Dibbly Fresh, and Neth’s Early Childhood: Courtney Moore from 1986 (And What the 80s Were Actually Like)

Let's go to the mall!

Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Future.¹ It's Black History Month, pay reparations on my soul.

It was just thirteen scant years ago that the announcement came down the pipeline for the newest American Girl Historical Doll to be released in five years, with the most recent being Kaya pushing Felicity off her horse and letting the AG world know she and other Indigenous Americans were here first, redhead, now get in the archival vault. And the speculation was all over what era would be picked. Would she be of the 1920s? The 1830s? Maybe they'd finally stick someone between Addy and Samantha, since we'd kinda skipped forty years of history there and clothes and culture had changed a lot, even if black people were all living in our underground bunkers until the Civil Rights Movement.

Nope, none of that was correct. Instead the new girl was going to be from the far flung era of...

The 1970s. The historical era of bell-bottoms, disco, President Ford, avocado colored interior design, and fondue. Her name was Julie Albright, she had long blonde hair and brown eyes, she liked the Brady Bunch and basketball, she lived in San Francisco--our first Californian Historical--and her parents were recently divorced.²

Now I hadn't been in the fandom very long--and the only place there was any fandom outside of AG Over 18 was AG Fans (from which I'd been banned for rampant public paganism) or AGPT--and that mess I still need to go in on, how the mighty fall like a Fall Out Boy song--but the reaction was, from the more middle aged sectors of the fandom? Melodramatic flailing. 

"How dare American Girl say my childhood is historical! It wasn't that long ago!" was the outcry from quite a few women--mostly white--who had been celebrating the anniversary of turning twenty-nine for the past decade or so and had forgotten how to count. Those that weren't clutching pearls over having to realize they (as late boomers/Early Gen X) were way above their dirty thirties and had been kids nearly forty years ago were instead running around in circles and fainting in the pews, because Julie's parents had committed the awful sin of ending their marriage and American Girl was daring to endorse/condone/promote the breakup of good marriages and stable homes. You know how Kira B.'s books were controversial over women marrying women? Yeah it was kinda like that. We had the same levels of outcry from the homeschooling conservative ladies who were terrified of their eight year olds learning about poor people, over the portrayal of women daring to seek no-fault divorce instead of remaining miserable housewives. Women ain't supposed to do anything but take pills and stay married to shitty men that treat them badly, I guess. Karens gonna Karen, Beckys gonna Becky, and conservatives are going to whine that we're destroying the family and all of America by daring to let a woman have a right or something. 

Yet, among all the lamentations, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the rending of calico peasant dresses, marriage certificates, and Have a Nice Day shirts from Nice Old White Ladies, Julie--and Ivy, the superior Julie--came out Fall 2007 with much fanfare, six illustrated books, and quite a few outfits and accessories. The predictions failed and her release did not suddenly turn people who were ten in the seventies into dust when they had to explain to their own target-aged kids about the US Bicentennial, Title X, the 1976 Election and record players. AG Life went on, and after Julie came Rebecca, Caroline, Marie-Grace and Cécile, a lot of retirements, characters out of the vault, the start of BeForever, Maryellen, Melody, Nanea, the end of BeForever, this blog, and a whole slew of white Girls of the Year.

And in February 2020, American Girl announced that they would release a new historical character from the newly minted vintage era of...

The 1980s. Historical era of Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, wanting your MTV, VCRs being stupid expensive, Walkmans, designer jeans, Cabbage Patch Kids, President Reagan--the second worst president that's ever been president in my lifetime--and hanging out at the malls and watching Saturday Morning Cartoons. Because it was that or go outside, and outside didn't have air conditioning and Nickelodeon.

And as the news came down the pipeline that American Girl had declared another generation "historical" everyone looked at the fully Gen Ex kids and waited to see how we'd react. 

We rejoiced. At least, in my corners. I'm sure somewhere online, a collector fell face down on her bed and cried into the body of her lopsided Kirsten doll with the uncombed hair and shitty hair loops because American Girl was stating the 1980s was now historical and she believed American Girl history should remain firmly before 1940, as it was when Saint Pleasant was still in charge of the company and everything was made of balsa wood and glass but Samantha and Molly's shoes still sucked and Felicity's books wouldn't say outright that Rose and Marcus were enslaved so folk could say deadass to my face that they were just "hired servants." But I haven't been on AGPT in over a decade now and I don't let people who suck that hard around me unless they want to get bodied. 

Anyways. I rejoiced.

My friends and I in that late X early Mill chunk were hype for the news. Unlike the 70s kids who'd been swooning over the fact AG had slapped their asses with the history label, a good portion of us were excited to be folded into the canon of a company we'd known about since we were kids. Many of us had been right around that target age of eight to twelve when American Girl launched with three dolls and required mail ins and calling and $85 for a doll was asking for a lot so no, we did not get the West Germans. Many of us didn't get our first dolls until we were older--if not fully grown--but we cherished our gangs and had memories of pouring over the catalogs and hoping for tiny doll plates. We put on Whitney Houston and Prince and Debbie Gibson and A-ha and talked back and forth about our childhoods in excited voices as we pictured tiny Trapper Keepers, acid wash jeans that zipped at the ankles, scrunchies for days, side ponytails and Get in Shape Girl leg warmers--and we were hot to be here for every neon poisoned, acid wash, Swatch Watch minute of it. 

And we pretty much got it. 

Baby Boomers in 2007: nooooo the 70s isn't history nooooooooooo you can't say we're old nooooooooooooooooooo
GenX in 2020: hehehe courtney go beep boop

I'd long ago created Kimmy Kim and her best friend Tyanna Lewis as my representatives of the 1980s, because the fact is that history and historical events keep popping off every day.³ And Courtney--in all her Valley Girl Southern Cali glory--was going to join them as part of the AGGiRL on day one. As more pictures of Courtney and her collection came out and more information leaked, I just kept here and there bouncing in my seat and going "dolly play the Pac-Man" because dolly indeed, play the Pac-Man. She had curly blonde hair--mistaken for red early on, because lighting was off--and blue eyes--mistaken for hazel, same lighting off--and was wearing leggings and ankle boots and acid wash skirts. 

My body was ready and my wallet was squeaking.  

The AG Brat Pack. L to R: Tyanna, Courtney, and Kimmy.

Courtney Moore launched on the website about a month before my birthday, and Bae--who buys me one AG doll like, every half decade at most and the rest of the time tells me "I love you but I can't tell your dolls apart, honey, I'd probably buy you a double of something you already have"-- gave me a shopping limit, an upgrade to two-day shipping in place of paying for ear piercing since I owned a power drill so she'd be here in two days, and an "I love you, this is your Big Birthday Thing" since we didn't get to do what I wanted on my birthday anyways and I was hitting a big birthday milestone and there was a pandemic out there that'd been ruining my entire year since March. She got here that Friday and I was up for the FedEx delivery and took pics of her arriving like I had with Edith and DeeDee four years prior, meeting the girls like her already here and they formed the AG Brat Pack even though I haven't actually watched The Breakfast Club.  

Step 1: Courtney's Collection
Step 2: Joy

When AG Seattle⁴ put things out in the store the weekend of the 26th, I  went, got the giveaway extras--a scrunchie and some crafts⁵--and got even more of her collection then. In fact, there's not a lot of her smaller stuff I don't own, and that's more of a matter of balancing my desires for other things across the brand and things being constantly on back order. Or not ever arriving at AG Seattle, weep. 

I love Courtney so much, guys. She's now in my top Ten Historical Characters. Maybe Top Five. There's kind of a Fog of War there in the middle. Maybe someday I'll do a proper ranking of Historicals and Why Neth Likes or Doesn't Like Them, and everyone can tell me why I really should appreciate Molly, you guys, because Nanea is a SJW promotion of a tiny part of American History that didn't apply to as many people as much as turnips and tap dancing. The shit I be reading with my own eyes. So in this post, we're going to cover her entire collection that's out now. Including the three new cute and fresh things that just came out recently, are already coded onto the Wiki because we work that fast--me and one of the content mods almost overlapped, we were so hype--and that I won't have personal pictures of until I place an order later in the month and wait two weeks for its arrival unless I want to pay a hit extra for two-day shipping.⁶

This post is probably one of my longest posts, right up there with my covering of the BeForever release in 2014. I, unlike some people in this fandom, know that on the internet we are made of words and don't show up cutting off my own fingers. There's no limit on how many letters we can use to type the whole word out instead of going "skskskkskss lol u say 2 much." I mean, character limits on Discord, but you can type twice! Even paragraphs! Boo boo, we gave up netspeak way back in the days of MySpace in the transition onto LiveJournal--but I'm pretty sure you weren't even potty trained when that was the hotness, if you were even so much as weaned. They don't even use that shit on Twitter and for years we only had 140 characters and could post via text message. In this thread I will--ahem.  

Ahem. If you don't want to summon my death glare, keep your name out from behind your teeth. I've hexed people for less. I don't know why you keep trying to waste my time.

Are they gone? Good. 

Get some snacks, yo. This is a double sided 90 minute cassette, with Side A about Nonsense in the Fandom and Side B about The Stuff. Moonwalk under the cut, and let's talk 80s, babies.

Including how I'm coming for everyone's necks today because these damn children have no idea how anything before 2000 worked. 

AG Outsider Retrospecticus: Beach Bum Baby Gay Joss, The Many Closures of AG Stores, And Some Things I Missed In My Last Post

Welcome to the first of a series of posts: The American Girl Outsider Retrospecticus.

No, Retrospecticus is not a misspelling of "Retrospective." Yes, it is a Simpsons ref from the season seven finale episode Summer of 4 Ft. 2 released on May 19, 1996 that's nearly 25 years old. Thanks for asking. I wasn't born at the tail end of Gen X to not make casual Simpsons references on my blog about doll shit.

It has been, minus one post about Joss at the start of what became The Year of the Pandemic--and my last two most recent posts--two years, give or take, since I did a proper snark and opinions on AG Releases. And we've already gone in on why, you can click backwards and read, I'm not saying the same thing yet again. Brain dumb, pandemic dumb, moving good. There, a six word story. 

There is a ton to cover that came out. The Moddies, The Girls of the Year--two of them--the Wellies, and the Historicals. And news to touch on as well, some of which I said in passing in Joss's first post and want to go into more now.

But you gotta be organized. Sometimes. 

So on Sunday I sat down with a Vanilla Coke, the same Journey song on loop on Spotify, cracked open the AG Wiki, went back through the last two years of news and releases, and sorted them into a word doc. Then I printed that out, used it to sort things into sections, and printed the new document out to ref as I go through and write posts. The resulting text doc is twenty-four pages. Twenty-five, with the cover. I'm one of those writers that uses analog paper to help my mind make sense as I type. This is why I have, you know, writing notes and binders for my books stacked a foot high instead of a Scrivener doc.¹ 

We're starting with a relatively short set, even if the costs are high: Joss's last collection items and some things that either came out under cover on the AG site or that I overlooked in my last post. And since some of that was not at the AG Seattle store--and never will be, le grand sigh--I'm already busting out the website and catalog pictures. Day One, baby!

I also am going to talk about one set of news that was going to be in my MegaNews Post, but AG dropped the bombshell on me yesterday and I might as well bite the wax tadpole now.

Dive under the cut for wildly expensive weed vans, hospital bears, a deck of UNO cards, and me explaining why I have reached Acceptance with occasion Lamentations in my stages of grief over AG Seattle.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Around The World in Five Outfits, Knit-ness Meets Fitness, and The Queerest Shoes Ever Launched by AG: The Truly Me Early '21 Launch

Travel in your brain, and don't get on a plane.

What a long, frustrating, set of years it's been.

I've lost family, made great friends, had to face ending toxic friendships, seen the glory of Galarian Ponyta, seen the nonsense that is Karens¹ and Tankies and rising white supremacy, blocked TERFs on sight on the social media places, seen entire transphobia and dumbass shit, wrote books, read books, not written books, not read books, proceeded to gather a whole slew of Copic markers, misplaced my phone and my embroidery floss and a box of Pokémon cards, played hours of Animal Crossing, and bought a lot of tarot decks and a Bluetooth speaker so when I'm lounging in my bathtub-that-is-separate-from-my-shower with my unicorn braids pinned up, I can listen to Spotify play 90s Baby Making Jams while I ask my wonk brain to enjoy the bath bomb I tossed in there and not think about rabbits.

And through it all, I've kept up with American Girl. Not only have I bought several things--look this is a fandom where folk buy things, I buy the things--I've kept my pulse on AG releases and news. Running the AG Wiki and keeping it updated, modding my message board and other places even when it's hard and people's feelings get hurt because they have to be told "no, that's not right of you"², hanging with my fellow dolly friends, and tried to blog here and there. And I was doing a semi-good job. 

Until came the year I moved to an entire new home and that took my focus because an entire move, and then when I had to stay very close to it for an entire next year while a spiky boi was like "hello, I shall bugger the whole human body and make it ded!" and the fucking morons fucking up the government that just got yeeted this week just let that shit run rampant and thus more people have died in the US of Covid-19 than died in all of World War II in the span of not even a year. And I'm still here in my house except for when I go out and shop and yeet people from around me. Privilege has meant that I've been blessed to have the space to be locked down comfortably and that my household is, if occasionally stepping on each others toes and glaring at each other and "I don't think I like you right now"/"no talk me I'm angry", are doing all right through this--and it's a good thing we didn't have to do this whole thing in an apartment because I might have had to strap on a mask just to go out and stab someone in the eye with my snap knife. I miss my mommy and grandma and sisters and con friends and family, but we spend this time apart so when we get back together none of us are missing. (Most of us, anyways. Love you, Uncle Mac, from your Little Lady Nethie.) And I miss the little things, like taking my coffee in with me to sip on while we shop for groceries, sitting down in a bookstore, food samples at Costco--god, I miss food samples, that says a lot--and my husband calling me nightly to say he's on the way home from work. 

And I thought Twenty-Gay-Teen went on forever. At least then I could graze on grapes in Fred Meyer and go to the state fair.

Still, now that I don't have to doomscroll³ Twitter for hours to see how shit is going south and have been getting sleep which means I can do things? I'm slowly swinging back up on my bullshit. I haven't sewn much--that's my next hopeful "get on my shit" task along with cleaning--but these past two days I've been feeling like, better. I've actually done art. Like, got out my watercolor sets and my brushes and done me a fooking artz. Check the IG. There's art! I have two monthly art boxes now. I have ordered new tools to help me do art at my desk more, and I've joined a PoC creative Discord. 

And I just...is this serotonin? I still need to do other stuff for this body of mine and get on more meds, but is this...is this fine? Is this what it's like to feel some degree of peace?

What's a potato serotonin? Tastes very strange!

All that is to say I have eaten the plums this post now means I've done more posts here, even quickie ones to confirm my existence, than I did in both '18 and '19--and on the next one, I'll have done more than both those years combined. Again, y'all don't pay my salary, but I have wanted this even when I couldn't make it happen, and so have my readers. We're doing what we can with the tools we're given. And we finally found the tools! They were in the goon closet.

So let's talk moddie shit.

Recently, AG tends to do a "start of the year" release for moddie stuff that comes out for purchase about one to two weeks before the new year actually flips over. Likely to give the Girl of the Year her own focus, even if it all goes together in the catalog together, and also make it so the staff at the stores aren't doing an entire store turn over of both the moddie stuff and the Girl of the Year in a single night. Or something. I've mostly just blogged about it all together--or would have, but. But.

Best laid plans, mice and men, gang aft a-gley. Putting that BA in English to semi-decent use.

This most recent set was released about the 23rd, and I was able to see it on the first. And also get the queerest shoes released for AG. Look, these shoes are for the queers⁴ and the kids and for the queer kids. There's Travel Stuff, Gym Stuff, Shoe Stuff, and Head Stuff. And some other stuff. 

Be Happy For the Strappy and jump under the cut to go on a trip to the gym and Europe!

Well, not really. Pandemic.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Kira B.'s 2021 Aussie Adventure, The Future and Past Two-Year Retrospecticus on Releases, and The Reason Anon Should Get Off My Areolas

Be like Kira. Stay in bed and stare at the wall.

I haven't done a substantial blog post since January 2020. 

I haven't done a properly set up review of items in my collection since Sept 2016. I haven't done a craft post since 2018. I haven't done a true Book Blather since May 2016, a Casual Friday since 2018 with Series One Hairdorables, a complaint department since summer 2018, a "Why I'm an Outsider" talk since 2016, and several other things in...whew. *mops face with sweater sleeve*

2019 got barely anything--certainly not any Blaire posts--and 2020 got two posts: the start of Joss's collection (and my joy over winning her for free) and my lamenting that I ever invested in a day planner by July, when I'd basically been no further from NethBae's House of Fabulousness and Sparkles than about a thirty minute drive since March, hadn't been in a group of more than two other people since that February, and masking up was the fashion of those not trying to die on a fucking ventilator.¹ And this is not because I don't care about American Girl any more. I love AG still. I can get things done on the Wiki, and snap pics for Instagram, and sometimes even sort a whole one bin of doll clothes! And Courtney was my 40th birthday present.

So why haven't I blogged in forever? Simple and complicated. Not only is there an entire pandemic throwing my entire groove off like an emperor in a Disney animated movie, but I have a wonk problem.

Wonk? Wonk. 

Cut for talk about my head, and then we can talk about Kira B.'s things to start to try again.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Surfing In with Joss Kendrick, A Double Handful of Moddie Mix-and-Match, and Notes on the 2019 Discourse

Surfing In: It's Joss Kendrick!

Meet Joss Kendrick, 2020's New Girl of the Year! She Surfs! She Cheers! She Can't Always Hear! And oh, how I am buzzing to really tell you why she's my new darling in so many ways this soon into her release. 

We will not discuss my lack of actual review, talk, or new shit posts in 2019.

*gets glared at and someone points to the two--two!--posts I did in 2019*

Okay, okay we will! I'm sorry!

In the past year I didn't cover anything. Not Blaire, not the death of BeForever and Rise of the Historicals Again, not the Moddy Shit, nothing. Between the all new house and the all new other shit on my plate, I let the blog fall aside. I've been packing! Unpacking! Putting up trees! Putting up book cases! Putting books on them! Not having enough book room! Painting rooms! Washing raw wool and processing it and spinning it into things! Working on novels! Spinning yarns in both senses of the word! (I wouldn't be the queer you know and love if I wasn't doing both things.)

...And in all that, not blogging. And now here we are, in 2020, with a whole new Girl of the Year, and I haven't even covered the last one. Entire Mix and Match sets have risen and fallen in the time since I last gave a "new shit" post.

I will make it up to you, my beloved audience.

First, let's talk about what I've missed talking about that can be summed up in paragraphs and expanded on later.

Then, about the new shit.

*~*~*

2019: All The News That's Fit To Blog

What's happened in the last twelve months on the AG Front news wise? Well, well,  well...

 It's All In Her Wonk-Filled Eyes: 

After copious complaints from everyone--some justified, some not--AG has gone back to an older style of eyes. Dolls could be sent in to have their eyeballs popped out and replaced with new ones, so you didn't have to live with inferior peeper. You had until December 31st to get this done for free. Now you'll have to live with your choices in eyes. Or pay, maybe, I guess. I sent Blaire Fifi in as soon as she was purchased, but everyone else is staying the way they are. Including Luciana.

Maybe now that annoying Bring Back the Kwality account on IG can quietly tumble into a bayou.

BeForever Is Dead, Long Live The Historical Characters:

In October 2019, AG publicly removed all the BeForever branding from the Historical Characters. Kit and Josefina have joined the Cube Life with Addy, Samantha, and Felicity--wait, Felicity? We're not sure. Is she there? Is she not? She's in the catalogs but not in the stores. And what of Molly? What of Molly?! Who knows? Anyways. Now every character has their own adorable logo that emphasizes the year and their name, and their books have the illustrations back! Addy, Kit, and Josefina will get theirs in a few months, but Ellie, DeeDee, Nanea, Julie, Becca, and Kaya already got theirs, which meant all new pics for the first three!

Speaking of those books.

We seem to be missing some things...¹

The new books have pictures. And whole chunks of books and story missing.

Guys gays and enby pals, welcome to the Abridged Historical Books. Barnes and Noble was having a yoink one yeet one free sale on AG books right before the switchover and had the new abridged AG books, so Neth got them all and did a few comparisons since I have all the prior volumes. And what changed? 

Well, hope you like illustrations more than all of Maryellen's holiday story. Or Rebecca's. Or Julie's story about helping eagles. Or Kaya's story with Lone Dog other than maybe a chapter. These books said abridged and they mean it. Stories are missing, chopped, remixed, and screwed like a 90s mix tape.

AG answered the demand for illustrations to come back by monkey pawing y'all. Picture's worth a thousand words and I'd say about that many got cut per volume. If you're a person who doesn't already have the books in some prior form, first of all what are you doing with your AG book life, get them old books. And second, you're going to be a sad panda. I suspect we're going to have a new set of readers in the future who won't understand major plot things (for example, there is no conflict of Speaking Rain being anywhere but back with her tribe forever). 

Y'all asked for illustrations back, you should have said you wanted to keep all the words too. You know genies are assholes. Next time specify your wishes into the universe. I'm chill but others won't be.

Maybe unabridged will come out later. Or maybe we're all boned. 

AG Stores, We're Two Down: 

American Girl closed two AG Place locations--Mall Of America/Minneapolis and Boston/Natick--on March 20th. All the petitions in the world online didn't help and just got your data harvested. Enjoy the spam mails! The general thought is that AG, losing money hand over underwear and eyeballs, let them go. Or the malls just didn't want to renew the leases because whatever reason. 

My store seems to be doing okay. 

Here's the Free Shipping You Wanted, and Dolls Are Cheap and Plentiful
  
American Girl in June started offering standardized free ground shipping on minimum orders of $125 or more. Additional charges continue to apply for rush shipping, shipping outside of the US or Canada, and shipping large items.  

Then they dropped the cost of dolls across the board to $98 by October.

So you're going to have to buy more than dolly and a pair of shoes to get them sent to you no cost. Get her accessories. And then some shoes. 

AG Rewards: It's now by Moneys:

The AG Rewards got a revamp, with the biggest change being that that each tier is reached by dollar amounts spent annually, not points accumulated per year. Y'all were gaming the system too hard, now it's dollars. Each reward level will have its own unique annual reward certificate gift, and Berry level members also will not have points expire as long as the level is maintained.

The 2019 Retrospecticus: Neth Will Cover What She Missed

She's got a chicken!

Regarding the old new shit, here's what I'll do: Every few posts here in January,  I'm going to go over the 2019 things. Blaire, the All New Old Historicals, Moddy Shit--even if it's gone forever and your only hope is eBay or crying on Instagram. Hell, half the stuff missed me by. It was gone faster than Sam's Velvet Underworld Dress. I was too busy picking out carpet and bedroom funiture, visiting my mom and grandma, hanging out with cool people, ending up with two Kirstens² and hanging vertical blinds³ to get everything, and what I got I'll be okay with. Hey, Blaire's still around. Hell, Luciana kind of is.

I got pictures of it all! I just didn't blog. So you can still have my thoughts on everything.

*~*~*

Now, we can get to talking about Joss! 

Air over the cut and let's get this surfing party starty.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: 'Twas The Week Before Giftmas for Moddies and Wellies

Not a Wellie was stirring. Except she was. Because cookie dough.

I was ready to blog for my birthday, after getting decent shots of the new stuff that'd come out on October 1st.

I...did not do that.

Long story short, some stupid shit went down two days beforehand that ate the entire second half of October right up until Nano. Then I spent all November working on Nano, and making up for the fact that I lost my entire planning period dealing with fuckshit.¹ As me and my friend BWI put it, when both the Libra and the Scorpio want out of the birth month, then you know it's been fucky.

If I've told you what happened, then you know. If I haven't told you but you know I would, then you know how to get to me to be told. And if I don't want you to know? Then you ain't gonna know. I'm damn near forty, I gave up fucks for Lent years ago. Silflay hraka and die mad about it.

So yeah, it sucks that 2018 also was a low blogger's year. Which is weird because Twenty-Gay-Teen has gone on for what feels like 200 years already.² Sucks that I am getting out the October release *looks at her phone clock* two weeks before the Girl of the Year Twenty-Fine Bi-Teen launches.³

But then I wouldn't have this cool heading. So, uh, silver lining.

To the stuff that came out months ago and you already heard other people opine about. Or maybe not, because maybe I'm the only doll blog you read. And in case you're wondering, yes, I did get #80 for my birthday, her name is Giselle and she's pretty.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: New Tones, Veggie Stands, and No Driving with Cell Phones: The Summer 2018 AG Release Two Months Late

When you go on a trip, you don't blog.

AG's most recent new stuff came out in mid-June. And new stuff is probably going to come out in a few weeks to cover the holiday spreads. Why am I just now getting to the new clutter? Well let's see.

A week or so after my last blog post, I set my online life down and prepped to head out of town for about three weeks in the Lake Michigan area. I spent those three weeks with family, including a full fledged family reunion--and while I do take my laptop with me for long trips and mess with my social media, I don't really blog there because I'm generally either busy enjoying festivals and fairs or just enjoying spending time with family. Look, I have one living grandparent and one living parent, I get all the time with them I can and I actually half unplug from the internet. I got back mid-August, had to handle some other stuff, then after this weekend of getting my brains rebrained I moved the pics I'd taken off my phone and onto the computer to start this opinionation about AG stuffs. And here we are. August is hot, I can't go outside because the air is hazy¹ and so it's a good day to blog.

Before I do, all the AG News that's worth my time and maybe yours: now with opinions from Yours Truly, Me!²

1) That new Molly coming out? She might be a Costco only exclusive; in which case I might end up with a not!Molly just to get that sweet new meet. We'll see. The glasses are apparently plastic. Welcome to the new age.

Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu.

2) The news has gone out about modern collection retirements. At the end of 2018, Tenney-Sue is retiring and taking Nogan with her! Good riddance, you two, I'll get what little I need before year's out.

...and also, Gabriela and Z are retiring. Well. Gabriela I knew would eventually: she got two whole years, she's not been in stores much since Luciana came out, and she was due to leave eventually. Z, on the other hand....Z got boned. Outright screwed over by AG. And I have my personal theories why.

Z is a victim of Tenney's Shadow.

AG was planning for Tenney to be the girl of the year in 2017, quietly extending the line of white and white IDing Girls of the Year out even further than they had (with Lea as a little speedbump of ambiguous brownness). They hyped Melody early in 2016 as the new historical after MaryEllen, getting ready to make a big deal about all the good research they'd done for her time period and all the black people they'd consulted. But then there was public media call out in 2016 on CBS which pointed out both the retirements of Cécile and Ivy and how there had never been a black GotY--in fact, that out of the twenty-odd character dolls created only three had ever been black and none of them had been modern. And the company backpedaled. AG snatched #46 out of the moddie line, made her their new GotY and had her first book written in a few months, and tossed together something quickly to get that Black GotY out.

But there they were with a whole collection's worth of a modern white girl, complete with fancy earrings and a big stage to perform on. The stuff was already being made and had been. They weren't going to just let millions of dollars worth of product catch dust for a year, would they? Hell no. They had stories about songwriting girls from Tennessee to get out while people might still remember that Taylor Swift once sang country. They were not going to take that L on Tenney Grant.

So they created the contemporary line as an excuse to get Tenney released anyways. They had Tenney and Nogan--who we were already getting leaks about as early as summer or so 2016--wait six weeks and then released them under their new line to make it like they had totes planned to just make a new line of modern dolls. They created Z from their online Stop-Motion blogs, and got her together a quickie collection they could release a few months after Tenney--see, we're totally just making a non-limited GotY line! They even kept Gabbi out longer, to make that whole Choose Your Character a big deal--and tossed in Felicity and Nanea as well, to make it very clear that they were going gung-ho with pushing out six characters in only eight months.

But now that Tenney's had her little spotlight and all her stuff and Nogan have been out long enough that they can pretend they weren't going to make her a one-year thing, they're pulling her like they planned. And Z? Well, not only was poor Z the named face³ of the permapanties fiasco, but she had done her job of helping push the illusion that Tenney wasn't just GotY 2017 but held back for six weeks. She's gotta go too, or we can't keep this lie up.

Alas poor Z. You were done so wrong.

3) AG opened a new outlet store! It's in Hershey, PA and thus the air smells like Deth Food. AG would put their outlet in the one city I would probably puke my guts out in. Then again, when will I ever be in PA? They sell some old stuff, some exclusives that may show up oneBay or online or something--I only like a shirt or two--and moddie dolls! For full price. Hah you thought outlet stores were cheap always? Nope.

4) There has been some noted changes in production in recent dolls. The most noticable, if you notice doll eyes a lot, is that the eyes have changed their design since Luciana's release. Instead of the large metal weights in the back and a slight hollow behind the eyes, and clear plastic as the base, the eyes are now a different weight style and made of solid white so the white pegs can be visible. The change in weight leads to some dolls having a downcast, off center eye look, more visible eye whites at the sides and when the eyes are closed, and trouble when eye swaps are done. I've only gotten one new doll since the change⁴--Luciana, who I had to really have the eye whites pointed out to me recently, and had to look in with a flashlight to see the white pegs. So I have no first hand knowledge of the new eyes. I have seen some images of a wig swap gone wrong with vinyl peeled up, with and cracked and "squished" vinyl accompanied with hands pushing so hard the white person's fingertips are white from pressure, so I'm leaning away from that.

Has the production design changed? Yeah. Could parts of it be improved? From sources I know well and trust enough not to throw a fit: sure could. Would I like this to be looked into? Sure.

Is blowing up every IG post with the same four words helping? Hell naw. Cause this is what AG's comments on the official IG account  have looked like for about a month:

AG Official IG account: This month our monthly book is one of Gabby's! Read along with us!
Twenty people in the comments: bring back the quality!!

AG: It's Friendship Day, Tag a friend you're happy to have! 
The same twenty people in the comments: my friend says bring back the quality!!

AG: It's Campfire Day with Maryell--
Those Same twenty people in the comments again: bRiNg BaCk ThE qUaLiTy!!!!!11!!!!eleventy! WE HATE YOU FIX THE QUALITY BRING BACK THE QUALITY QUALITY WE HAVE SIGNED A PETITION TO ADDRESS OUR GRIEVANCES EMAIL THIS TO THE CEO HERSELF 

Hey, kids and kidlike adults? You're not helping. One bit. Take it from someone who used to work for a large corporation who got a lot of correspondence insisting their feedback go right to the CEO: The CEO is not looking at these comments on IG.⁵ You can scream "we will be HEARD" in the comments until you've basically tripped the spam filters, but Marketing isn't even reading those comments. You're spamming the mentions of a Customer Service rep who, after about the fifteenth comment she's read while trying to ask about National Brownie Day to make her 10 bucks an hour, is wondering if she really can't ask IG for a mute function like Twitter has.

Y'all will not get heavy weighted eyes back this way, even if they do come back. You're just being a ass.⁶ Customer service can take your feedback, and forward it on, and like the permapanties I suspect that enough complaints are likely to get things fixed on some form even if it's not back to what it was like before. But flooding the IG comments won't change things faster. Send your data once, be clear and polite and articulate your exact problems, then let it be. CS can't change the eyes themselves. They won't port your e-mails or comments to the CEO. They just can forward your feedback and hope that it gets up the chain so they can stop hearing about it and get back to the other parts of the job.

And yes, I know what the complaints about permapanties did to change the lines. I also know that those got a ton of noted media attention. The permapanty controversy made People's website. A change in eye weights and the vinyl being squishier haven't so far. Maybe you should try sounding less like a nine year old who just discovered they could copy paste comments on social media.

Onto the shiny things, with their wonky eyeballs and all. And enjoy long pics until I get a better digital camera. I'm not changing the aspect ratio on my phone for my general blather.

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.

Rambled Opinions, General Snarkiness, and Crafting Creatively: Two Kids of Mid 20th Century Release, A Smackering of Books, and the 1952 Walk-Away Dress for 18" Dolls

A fancy striped dress was not one of the things released. It's one of the things I made.

Me, Jan 2018: 2018 will get me back up on the proverbial AG horse! I'm gonna get back on that blogging wagon! Luciana exists, I will get to do cool things, I will be seeing HAMIL--

Depression: siddown bitch, be humble *kicks me in the solar plexus of my brain*

Me: yes brai--*does not finish sentence because she just puked, curls up, can't move*

And that's where I went for four months, because the brain weasels are shitgibbons and resolve to ruin my world like so many mansplainers going "well actually--" and the very existence of election manipulation because white people were primed to vote stupid or throw shit away because they fell for racist, self-centered bullshit.¹

Have I done stuff since then? Well, yeah. I just haven't been blogging. Which I feel bad about. Let's start over again and don't hold my problems against me. As the song by Rag 'N Bone Man goes, "I'm only human, after all." It's okay to be a sad Neth.

What's happened in four months?  Um, well, a quick gloss. 

Gabbi's still hanging in there, even unto May, even if her bed is gone. Tenney-Sue still stinks. Logan is a No-gan. There was a short leak of the nu!Molly which was then instantly yanked down, but not so quick that I didn't put it on the Wiki. Luciana became part of my gang,² known colloquially as Space Girl Lucci, and enjoys things such as knit sweaters, Houston Town Pride (mine moved, I know more about Houston than Virginia), and Sailor Moon. The end of January had a purple moon--when a blue moon gets eclipsed.

There's the books listed for the GotY for 2019. Toys R Us is shutting down--and it's not dying from WalMart or Amazon or millennials not having enough babies, but because people like Mitt Romney murdered it and are looting the corpse to fund the rich-poor divide.³ And it's ruining the world of toys--AG sales dropped badly last quarter, but I try not to freak out about AG dying. MCM is coming up this year but I have family stuff to attend to at that weekend so I shan't be going. HAMILTON.⁴

I continue to spin yarn. I actually used some and now I'm not scared to use my own yarn. I saw Black Panther, added to the destruction of Titanic in high rankings, and now Wakanda Forever. (Infinity War what now? Nah.) My local AG store no longer has a cafe, because the economy is crap and AG picked the Seattle and Scottsdale stores to get kicked from having a cafe. We had a successful Secret Snarker, but I didn't post about my outfit because of brain weasels so I'll get on that soon. I went to Emerald City Comic Con and I loved it and I want to get a full pass for next year, like three days if I can dig it. I now have four of the AG Craft sets from the 90s. Janelle Monae came out as queer and I am a Dirty Computer but I do not consent to be cleaned.⁵

And such and such. 

Oh, and the part that's in this post: I released a pattern and there was a short AG release that consisted of a handful of Historical stuff and the Bitty stuff I tend to ignore. I did get to get pics in February. February. Ugh, my stupid brain. So this is a short post, since there's not much to yammer about. And at the end of this post, I'm going to be a little more proactive about my Etsy shop. If I can't pimp me, who can?

But on the real, I'm sorry that I made y'all worry about me. I try to let people know I'm alive--if struggling--on Instagram by posting fairly regularly. But these past four months, every time I went to go work on any blog post, my brain screamed "shut up, no one wants to read your garbage words about toys aimed at little girls,⁶ you're an adult, this is stupid, you're stupid, you care too hard, no one cares this hard when they're normal. You're weird and ugly and boring and garbage for being damn near forty and being so ass to the wall about girls' toys. You should be an adult and into things such as homeowner's fees, shot glasses, babies, long form stories about soup on recipe blogs, eating at Applebees and the stock market--you know, things that might matter to people. Or nothing, because caring about things isn't cool, South Park and Family Guy said it so it must be true." And as the span got longer since my last post, I kept feeling more and more like I should just like, give it up and pack it in and stick to silence because no one really cared.

But you know what? No. No, I can talk about what I want on this space of the internet I've chunked out for myself. And what I want to talk about in this chunk is American Girl Dolls and race and gender and sexuality and intersection as a person who lives the intersectional life by the nature of who I am--black, queer, female, and into dolls. At least one person cares, I know they do.

And if there are in fact people who don't like me doing this and wait for every post online I make to go spend their time reading all that I blog and 'gram and tweet, and hover around my e-presence in order to see me say something they think is dumb and run over to their own e-space to go "ah ha ha what a freak" and talk shit about me?

Okay. Fine. Let them. If these people really do enjoy spending their precious free time looking at me or anyone else doing shit openly and complaining that people are living, when they themselves could be using that time to do literally anything else in this span of life they have to themselves? I hope it's fulfilling to them. I'm too old for that shit. I been too old for that shit since the days of Cloak Girl and Barefoot Jimmy. Dolls and race and being queer and shipping characters and social justice are fulfilling to me, and I'm gonna do what I can to be a happy person.

Are you hate reading me? Did you stumble across my space, sneer, and decide this is fucking stupid? Okay. "Enjoy" this post and all the posts I've made and will make after it. You could spent that time watching Netflix, reading a book, editing TV Tropes, playing D&D, carving swords, spending time with people in your life that love you, or doing anything in the world to add to your skillset as a human, but instead you're spending it with me in my room in the internet for some reason I don't understand and frankly don't want to. You do you, boo-boo. It's your life to do with as you will. I'm going to keep blogging.

Are you reading me for joy? Did you stumble across my space, smile, and decide you want more? Are you one of the people who, for whatever reason, like and enjoy reading what I have to say or think or anything about dolls made for 8-12 year old girls? Do you understand that just because a toy is aimed at preteen girls, the company has been around thirty-plus years and like anything it has people who have grown up with them, found love or peace in them, and who have made bonds with others over doll collecting? Do you like seeing people find affection for things instead of only derision? Am I kinda cool? Did you miss me? Then hey. I'm back, and I'll do what I can to get back to the rhythm.

Go under the cut and read on.