Dollieh Sanctuary

I've never understood any sort of fear over dolls. I mean, some are suppose to be spooky. The thing that terrifies me more than anything is human behavior. With dolls, there is none of that.

People can have real phobias over just about anything. Naturally, we need to be understanding about that.

People can also have ignorant prejudices over just about anything. Those people can eat resin.....

I have had friends who expressed a dislike of dolls.

One of those friends is now a proud and interested doll mother, and others have also changed their minds after receiving one of my soft braided yarn kids. Mind you, most of them started out with a PLUSHIE (doll!) collection. Just that one who is now proud and interested didn't. She's got a little doll family now of various sorts.

I think this is me agreeing with the understanding comment. Not sure though. It was hot today as I walked home with a whole load of new doll stuff from the store that's shutting down.

I had a mild fear of baby dolls when I was younger, no thanks to my late grandmother for gifting me one and over dramatic makeup on dolls scares me(early 80s paper funeral goods, scary Hong Kong/US horror movies of yore)

Took a long time to work my way to 1/3 bjds on realising how some of them reminds me of my 1/6 actiin figures. At current point certain faceup artists who does macabre faceups fascinate me with their style(drowned sea zombie).

I'm okay with other people owning such dolls, but I draw the line at owning young dolls or over dramatic faceups for my own.

Speaking of dramatic makeup - I think my fear of clowns stems from a marionette clown that my mom bought me when I was very young. I wouldn't play with it and she said it cost too much to get rid of so she hung it on inside door knob of my closet (hoping I'd eventually like it, I guess). Every time I opened the door it would sway and bob. I wouldn't open that door at night and after about a year I finally moved it into the very back of my closet. She eventually forget it and I threw it away, but it took a couple of years.

I went through a patch as a kid where the eyes on dolls were really bothering me. I had to position any dolls I had so they weren't looking at me because it made me uncomfortable, which meant putting some of them in the closet. A relative took advantage of this to steal some CPKs that had a lot of sentimental value for me, so now I tend to worry more in favor of keeping my dolls where I can see them and make sure none have gone missing... but I still have to pose them so they don't look right at me when I'm sitting at my desk or in bed. (I'm fine with it when dressing them or ooaking them or doing anything with them, just as long as they aren't sitting on the shelf and staring at me. XD But I don't like people 'staring' either, so it's not just dolls.)

Follow up, the person who was rude to me in the guild got kicked out of the guild for being rude to everyone. I didn't have to do a thing.

As for myself I actually hated dolls all my life and preferred stuffed animals, the original my little ponies, original littlest petshop and pokemon plushies, but then when I was in either my late teens or early twenties an online friend showed me her dolls and I instantly fell in love. Honestly I find the average BJD way less creepy than many dolls I saw growing up. Their eyes were so much softer, realistic and not buggy like some baby dolls I can think of. I didn't like dolls like barbie or bratz either.

Before then I only ever got three dolls in my entire life. The first was a baby doll with the blinking eyes. It was Christmas afternoon and my mum and sisters came out of the hall hiding an "extra present" for me. When I saw it was a doll I instantly began to throw a tantrum, I was somewhere around four to six. So they were "Oh alright, we'll put it back then." but my little kid brain was conflicted because it was a doll, but it was also one more present, so I immediately asked for it back because, present.

It would be interesting to find out how many people creeped out by dolls don't like body horror movies or if it's the other way around.

I've got no probs with body horror and make dolls I can't buy. I also do portrait art and have a slight interest in art history and know a few of the secrets to why some Greco-Roman statues are so beautiful.

DollyKim wrote:It would be interesting to find out how many people creeped out by dolls don't like body horror movies or if it's the other way around.

Only really "creeped" if the dolls are "staring" at me, which may be due to other psychological issues (I am undiagnosed, but me and my gran are/were both suspicious I might be on the autism spectrum).

Body horror films do not bother me. Even when I was much younger (as in middle school age due to grandparents that let me do whatever I want since I acted like a small adult anyway), I would stay up late watching the horror films of the time. Including Hellraiser and such. Fell asleep during a Nightmare On Elm Street Marathon once, which still seems amusing to me. Not fond of more modern slasher films (like the Saw series) not because of any squick but because they rely too heavily on the "shock and gore" method which really has no effect on me at all, meaning the films are pretty much just boring. I feel similar disappointment in films that rely too much on jump-scares. They irritate me for startling me repeatedly. The only movie I can think of from the starting edge of the jumpscare era that actually managed to scare me was The Ring. It's also the last/most recent horror film I can recall that scared me at all. Most is just boring shock value and no actual dread to hold it up...

But I got off-topic, so back to "body horror". I had a fairly good interest in special effects when I was younger (and still do), and I understood even at an early age enough to know that no matter how something looked on screen, it was fake and someone DID something to make it look that way. I was always more fascinated in figuring out how they did it if I saw something particularly extreme, and that seemed to leave no room to be disturbed by it.

I don't know how much of this is normal or how much might be related to some sort of non-neurotypicality. I've never had an interest in body modification for myself, and don't even normally wear earrings (tho I have pierced ears, which were done to me as a child despite protests). I am, however, not disturbed emotionally if I am injured. Yes, they hurt, but if something happens and I'm bleeding I've always managed to stay calm and do something to treat it. When I was younger I used to think that was just because I was a girl and it wouldn't make sense to freak out over seeing some of my own blood if I was going to be seeing it every month for a good segment of my life, but I had to rethink that after one time I cut my leg and my gran completely flipped out while I just sighed and hobbled downstairs to get an ace bandage. (Tho, granted, she could have been concerned about tetanus, as I cut it on a metal file box.)

Semi-related to body horror, I also seem immune to the Uncanny Valley effect. I found it interesting and confusing to learn about way back when I first got internet in the 90's and find that humans squicking over 'giant dolls' was one of the things holding up research into more human-like robots.

And to get back to dolls (and body horror), two of my current OOAK projects pending are a Silent Hill Bubblehead Nurse and Pyramid Head set (for the Evil Overlord). Which also reminds me. There IS one part of that project that disturbed me in 'body horror' terms. We got a cheap poseable doll for the nurse that had insert eyes... which were removed in preparation for the OOAKing because no point in wasting them. I am somewhat uncomfortable looking at a doll face with no eyes, similar to how I am uncomfortable if they are staring right at me. The action figure guy to be turned into Pyramid Head is similar as (when purchased secondhand) he has marker on his face specifically marking out the eyes. I also remember one horror movie clip from when I was a kid that disturbed me (no idea which film, actually, as I have not seen it again) that had a teddy bear on some kind of turntable (or the camera moved around) with its eyes pulled out and it was bleeding. Oddly, Tommy Tortoise, my oldest plush, is missing one eye and THAT doesn't bother me, but it might be because there's no hole (his eyes were applique or some kind of iron on, not sewn on) and because he's been like that for decades and I'm used to it. And even more oddly, this does not extend to humans. The staring thing does, but the "eye scream" not so much. Someone in a horror film loses an eye, or something like the notorious needle-in-the-eye scene in Dead Space and it has no more effect on me than other gore. It's just dollies and plushies losing eyes that I find disturbing.

Hope that ramble helps with any research (weird psychological studies are another thing that interests me XD), and sorry about the link to anyone not so interested.