Yay for the squee!
I've spent most of the last weeks on my quest to get the Barbie characters I want. I discovered that the doll set I was looking at featured dolls with no elbow articulation and their arms permanently bent, WTH. So I wasn't interested in that anymore and I set out to find better dolls of them. I discovered there are surfing and basketball dolls of Skipper and Stacie with full articulation, so I set my sights on those. I got Skipper thanks to Amazon finally stocking her and having some gift cards and a week trial of Prime handy. I don't understand at all why Mattel felt they had to make hollow plastic to have full articulation. Hasbro, Disney, and many others proved that isn't necessary. Hollow plastic is so cheap. But the doll is lovely! I'm still trying to get Stacie, aurgh. Target has her, but getting to Target is another matter entirely.
Chelsea, meanwhile, often comes with molded tops. (Again, WTH? Part of the fun of these dolls is dressing them!) I wanted full cloth. I finally got a cute one on eBay cosplaying Cupid for Valentine's Day.
It's been very stressful the last weeks having trouble receiving some gift card money I earned in a discussion group and then worrying about a friend soon after that. And then a whole lot of little things added on to that, and of course, little things can become hugely stressful and upsetting when other things are going wrong too. But I finally did get my gift card by contacting the parent company for help and they were able to resend it and I received it this time. And today I was able to find out how my friend is doing. So things are hopefully looking up.
I decided to split the gift card order in two, since things keep selling out so quickly. I bought Nikki and Daisy, and they were shipped separately, for some reason. Daisy arrived with a smashed box. She and her accessories are miraculously just fine! Amazon gave me a partial refund for the damage. I am thrilled with all the detail put into the set! Daisy's trunk really opens and it can store everything she comes with except her guitar, and of course I wasn't going to put the kitty in there. She also has an open bag, into which I stored the toothbrush and toothpaste. So cute! I've been wanting Barbie's cat Blissa, and I think that since the kitty is obviously a recolored Blissa figure, I'm just going to say the kitty is Blissa since Daisy doesn't seem to have a cat on the series. There is a separate Blissa figure, but she's asleep. Adorable, but I'd rather have an awake figure. However, if I can get a regular white Blissa, then I'll probably give the recolor back to Daisy. Or maybe the kitty will float around between them.
I'm still waiting on Nikki. She should be here Thursday.
Meanwhile, I watched The Great Puppy Adventure movie on Hulu and became obsessed with getting a Christie doll. She's out of print and very popular. I decided to get a beach doll and then dress her in doll clothes, since beach dolls are generally the cheapest. I was able to snag a beach doll with a painted on bikini. The painted on aspect seemed cheap, but all the other dolls were getting into bid wars, so I didn't think I should pass her up. And I haven't regretted it at all, even though I really couldn't afford her right now. She's gorgeous! Common canon is that she and Nikki are sisters, although I don't think that's current canon. But I will insist on keeping that part of old canon alive. I'm still looking for doll clothes I think are good enough for her. Meanwhile, she's wearing Barbie's tutu and it's being held on with the sarong Christie came with because the elastic wore out. I just keep loving how amazing she looks in it. It's all sparkly and billowing out around her like a big skirt. I love old Barbie clothes. The current ones just aren't doing a lot for me.
I also decided I want to make Big 5 figures, and I suddenly wondered if there were any 12 inch G. I. Joes that looked like them. A search immediately produced the Hawk head mold figures and I fell in love. Lector looks so much like that character! The cheapest set featuring him seems to be Challenge at Hawk River, which is an amazing set and I feel like getting two of them and keeping one as is while customizing the other into Lector. I want the light brown hair variant (there are five variants!), and I'll paint him tan. I should think it wouldn't be hard to find a figure that looks like Nesbitt, but so far I haven't. I found a firefighter that could probably pass for Johnson. Just need to find some glasses for him. Gansley and Crump will probably be my biggest challenges. I actually stumbled on an overweight doll body base by accident, but ... it's just the body. Apparently they expect people will bring custom heads. No thank you, I want a head base attached like other companies do!
The plot finally fell into place for my endgame fic where Yami Bakura has to fight Zorc. It's based on the 5Ds Dark Signer arc, and I took some elements from a couple of the Dark Signers' stories to fit my fic. For my verse, the Dark Signers are instead Negative Ring Holders and are evil counterparts of the elemental rings. And I did decide to use Carly's chilling backstory for a character in the fic. I have Lumis killed by a corrupted Bandit Keith and revived as a Negative Ring Holder. Of course, his spirit is still there and Umbra and Seto will be able to save him. Vivian, meanwhile, also gets corrupted and becomes bent on Lector joining her. But she ends up finally starting to understand real love when she sees Lector and Nesbitt interacting (although their love is friendship and familial and not romantic), and she ends up sacrificing herself to save Lector. I just posted that chapter and I love it. The whole first draft of the story is done and I'm just tweaking each chapter before it goes up. Chapter 13 was mostly already written, as I had scenes written before that I wanted to use for this fic and I just felt like I had to still use them. It took me a little over two weeks to write the first draft. I have rarely ever had stories flow that much! It was pretty awesome and epic, and emotionally draining. I must have squee now.
There won't be a Scottish Festival this year thanks to the #*$%T#& coronavirus, so I decided that this year I will finally write my Scottish Festival fic, so I can still "attend" one. I wrote the first scene of it today. It felt good to write something light and cute. The Big Five and the bikers will be the main players in it, but I'm sure everyone will get into the action. I haven't fully decided if it's a long oneshot or a short multi-chapter with a mild mystery, but I lean towards the latter. I realized last year that Nesbitt would be of Scottish ancestry, and then of course my Alister always has been too.
Chelsea, meanwhile, often comes with molded tops. (Again, WTH? Part of the fun of these dolls is dressing them!) I wanted full cloth. I finally got a cute one on eBay cosplaying Cupid for Valentine's Day.
It's been very stressful the last weeks having trouble receiving some gift card money I earned in a discussion group and then worrying about a friend soon after that. And then a whole lot of little things added on to that, and of course, little things can become hugely stressful and upsetting when other things are going wrong too. But I finally did get my gift card by contacting the parent company for help and they were able to resend it and I received it this time. And today I was able to find out how my friend is doing. So things are hopefully looking up.
I decided to split the gift card order in two, since things keep selling out so quickly. I bought Nikki and Daisy, and they were shipped separately, for some reason. Daisy arrived with a smashed box. She and her accessories are miraculously just fine! Amazon gave me a partial refund for the damage. I am thrilled with all the detail put into the set! Daisy's trunk really opens and it can store everything she comes with except her guitar, and of course I wasn't going to put the kitty in there. She also has an open bag, into which I stored the toothbrush and toothpaste. So cute! I've been wanting Barbie's cat Blissa, and I think that since the kitty is obviously a recolored Blissa figure, I'm just going to say the kitty is Blissa since Daisy doesn't seem to have a cat on the series. There is a separate Blissa figure, but she's asleep. Adorable, but I'd rather have an awake figure. However, if I can get a regular white Blissa, then I'll probably give the recolor back to Daisy. Or maybe the kitty will float around between them.
I'm still waiting on Nikki. She should be here Thursday.
Meanwhile, I watched The Great Puppy Adventure movie on Hulu and became obsessed with getting a Christie doll. She's out of print and very popular. I decided to get a beach doll and then dress her in doll clothes, since beach dolls are generally the cheapest. I was able to snag a beach doll with a painted on bikini. The painted on aspect seemed cheap, but all the other dolls were getting into bid wars, so I didn't think I should pass her up. And I haven't regretted it at all, even though I really couldn't afford her right now. She's gorgeous! Common canon is that she and Nikki are sisters, although I don't think that's current canon. But I will insist on keeping that part of old canon alive. I'm still looking for doll clothes I think are good enough for her. Meanwhile, she's wearing Barbie's tutu and it's being held on with the sarong Christie came with because the elastic wore out. I just keep loving how amazing she looks in it. It's all sparkly and billowing out around her like a big skirt. I love old Barbie clothes. The current ones just aren't doing a lot for me.
I also decided I want to make Big 5 figures, and I suddenly wondered if there were any 12 inch G. I. Joes that looked like them. A search immediately produced the Hawk head mold figures and I fell in love. Lector looks so much like that character! The cheapest set featuring him seems to be Challenge at Hawk River, which is an amazing set and I feel like getting two of them and keeping one as is while customizing the other into Lector. I want the light brown hair variant (there are five variants!), and I'll paint him tan. I should think it wouldn't be hard to find a figure that looks like Nesbitt, but so far I haven't. I found a firefighter that could probably pass for Johnson. Just need to find some glasses for him. Gansley and Crump will probably be my biggest challenges. I actually stumbled on an overweight doll body base by accident, but ... it's just the body. Apparently they expect people will bring custom heads. No thank you, I want a head base attached like other companies do!
The plot finally fell into place for my endgame fic where Yami Bakura has to fight Zorc. It's based on the 5Ds Dark Signer arc, and I took some elements from a couple of the Dark Signers' stories to fit my fic. For my verse, the Dark Signers are instead Negative Ring Holders and are evil counterparts of the elemental rings. And I did decide to use Carly's chilling backstory for a character in the fic. I have Lumis killed by a corrupted Bandit Keith and revived as a Negative Ring Holder. Of course, his spirit is still there and Umbra and Seto will be able to save him. Vivian, meanwhile, also gets corrupted and becomes bent on Lector joining her. But she ends up finally starting to understand real love when she sees Lector and Nesbitt interacting (although their love is friendship and familial and not romantic), and she ends up sacrificing herself to save Lector. I just posted that chapter and I love it. The whole first draft of the story is done and I'm just tweaking each chapter before it goes up. Chapter 13 was mostly already written, as I had scenes written before that I wanted to use for this fic and I just felt like I had to still use them. It took me a little over two weeks to write the first draft. I have rarely ever had stories flow that much! It was pretty awesome and epic, and emotionally draining. I must have squee now.
There won't be a Scottish Festival this year thanks to the #*$%T#& coronavirus, so I decided that this year I will finally write my Scottish Festival fic, so I can still "attend" one. I wrote the first scene of it today. It felt good to write something light and cute. The Big Five and the bikers will be the main players in it, but I'm sure everyone will get into the action. I haven't fully decided if it's a long oneshot or a short multi-chapter with a mild mystery, but I lean towards the latter. I realized last year that Nesbitt would be of Scottish ancestry, and then of course my Alister always has been too.