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books and AG.
Apr. 12th, 2021 01:36 amTime for a bit of random babble. First up, AG news. For those unaware, this is their 35th anniversary. As such, people have been waiting ever so excitedly to see what they'll do for this one. I'm not sure why since I swear their biggest celebration to date was the release of the minis what, ten years (ohgod, really? No... really? It does not feel like ten years.) and that was basically met with "uhhhhhhhh...okay?"
But still, if nothing else, hope springs eternal in AG fandom. Rumor has it that they'll be releasing three limited edition dolls on April 26th. Oh hey, my second vaccine shot day. Anyway, the good money is on Samantha, Kirsten, and Molly, and they'll come with their original Meet outfits and accessories. And fandom is... fuck, I don't know how to read this. Some are overjoyed. Some are underwhelmed. Some are convinced this is the holy gospel and definitely going to happen and others are full on "lol, that ain't happening." I'm somewhere in the middle on all fronts?
It's decidedly underwhelming for me personally but it does make sense. People have been hoping they'd release an anniversary doll for every 5th anniversary since I can remember. People have been wishing for the originals to be re-released since Samantha first got nuked. So I get it. They also laid the groundwork when they had Courtney go full meta and want a Molly doll. Hell, Courtney was also pretty clearly a nostalgic reminder that the company still exists and hey, if you never got that AG doll you wanted as a kid, you could either live vicariously through YOUR kid or maybe get your own.
But at the same time AG got themselves in trouble when they last released a billion dolls in a year (2017, I think) because you had Gabby, Tenney, Logan, Felicity, Nanea, and often forgotten Z. And let us not forget the TrulyMe dolls and... basically it was a lot.
This year we've had Kira and the Street Chic trio already, we're likely getting new TrulyMe dolls over the summer (pretty sure that was the rumor/usual release), and the contemporary "we're not racist just because almost all our GOTY dolls have been some flavor of white! look, we're making a whole new line of non-white dolls!" line comes out this fall. I kind of hope they aren't doing just one at a time for that line, so a conservative guess would be two dolls for that line since Evette and Maritza's books have appeared in searches via the Library of Congress.
Throw in 3 more dolls and it's a bit much. Plus, Sam, Kirsten, and Molly aren't particularly hard to find in good condition on the secondary market. Like... at all. Which means AG will be competing with that and the realization that a lot of AG customers have had recently about changes to the dolls... again. (AG, if I may offer you two completely free pieces of advice: Number one is don't fuck with the dolls. Make those HQ and stop fucking with the face paint. The wigs should be perfection. The bodies should be sturdy and not floppy. They should make people understand why they should pony up the extra bucks to go for AG instead of running down to Target and picking up an OG doll. Advice the second: fix your goddamn website.) Point is, if people can find better quality stuff for cheaper, why wouldn't they go that route?
The other reason I'm sitting in the middle of meh-ville is that aside from Samantha's original accessories, I have all three dolls in those outfits and have the accessories (sorry, Sam) as well. So this does nothing for me. It does make me wonder if BF Sam is going to go poof real quick.
So I guess that was a two-fer: Possible 35th anniversary re-release of the original trio and Evette and Maritza from the World By Us line confirmed via the LOC.
In book world, I'm stuck on Spin by Patricia Cornwell. I remember bits of the first book (and those bits do come back full force when something in the second book jogs the memory) but what I most remember was thinking it needed the second book to complete it and it really shouldn't have been allowed to end as abruptly as it did. So I thought I'd give book two a whirl after Mom brought it home. Even after she basically offered it to me as DNF. OOF. I don't know how far I am (not very) but the sheer amount of info dumping at the start is just UGH. Hell, not even info dumping. It's the alphabet soup for all the 'clever' things she's thought up. Just SO MANY.
I used to really enjoy PC's work but there's been a noticeable decline over the years and we won't even speak of the character assassination she did all over the Scarpetta books (so bad). Sigh. I figure whether or not I'll finish depends on what books I have available at the moment and whether the next couple of chapters get better or just stay the course.
Of course none of that will matter if this headache doesn't go away.
But still, if nothing else, hope springs eternal in AG fandom. Rumor has it that they'll be releasing three limited edition dolls on April 26th. Oh hey, my second vaccine shot day. Anyway, the good money is on Samantha, Kirsten, and Molly, and they'll come with their original Meet outfits and accessories. And fandom is... fuck, I don't know how to read this. Some are overjoyed. Some are underwhelmed. Some are convinced this is the holy gospel and definitely going to happen and others are full on "lol, that ain't happening." I'm somewhere in the middle on all fronts?
It's decidedly underwhelming for me personally but it does make sense. People have been hoping they'd release an anniversary doll for every 5th anniversary since I can remember. People have been wishing for the originals to be re-released since Samantha first got nuked. So I get it. They also laid the groundwork when they had Courtney go full meta and want a Molly doll. Hell, Courtney was also pretty clearly a nostalgic reminder that the company still exists and hey, if you never got that AG doll you wanted as a kid, you could either live vicariously through YOUR kid or maybe get your own.
But at the same time AG got themselves in trouble when they last released a billion dolls in a year (2017, I think) because you had Gabby, Tenney, Logan, Felicity, Nanea, and often forgotten Z. And let us not forget the TrulyMe dolls and... basically it was a lot.
This year we've had Kira and the Street Chic trio already, we're likely getting new TrulyMe dolls over the summer (pretty sure that was the rumor/usual release), and the contemporary "we're not racist just because almost all our GOTY dolls have been some flavor of white! look, we're making a whole new line of non-white dolls!" line comes out this fall. I kind of hope they aren't doing just one at a time for that line, so a conservative guess would be two dolls for that line since Evette and Maritza's books have appeared in searches via the Library of Congress.
Throw in 3 more dolls and it's a bit much. Plus, Sam, Kirsten, and Molly aren't particularly hard to find in good condition on the secondary market. Like... at all. Which means AG will be competing with that and the realization that a lot of AG customers have had recently about changes to the dolls... again. (AG, if I may offer you two completely free pieces of advice: Number one is don't fuck with the dolls. Make those HQ and stop fucking with the face paint. The wigs should be perfection. The bodies should be sturdy and not floppy. They should make people understand why they should pony up the extra bucks to go for AG instead of running down to Target and picking up an OG doll. Advice the second: fix your goddamn website.) Point is, if people can find better quality stuff for cheaper, why wouldn't they go that route?
The other reason I'm sitting in the middle of meh-ville is that aside from Samantha's original accessories, I have all three dolls in those outfits and have the accessories (sorry, Sam) as well. So this does nothing for me. It does make me wonder if BF Sam is going to go poof real quick.
So I guess that was a two-fer: Possible 35th anniversary re-release of the original trio and Evette and Maritza from the World By Us line confirmed via the LOC.
In book world, I'm stuck on Spin by Patricia Cornwell. I remember bits of the first book (and those bits do come back full force when something in the second book jogs the memory) but what I most remember was thinking it needed the second book to complete it and it really shouldn't have been allowed to end as abruptly as it did. So I thought I'd give book two a whirl after Mom brought it home. Even after she basically offered it to me as DNF. OOF. I don't know how far I am (not very) but the sheer amount of info dumping at the start is just UGH. Hell, not even info dumping. It's the alphabet soup for all the 'clever' things she's thought up. Just SO MANY.
I used to really enjoy PC's work but there's been a noticeable decline over the years and we won't even speak of the character assassination she did all over the Scarpetta books (so bad). Sigh. I figure whether or not I'll finish depends on what books I have available at the moment and whether the next couple of chapters get better or just stay the course.
Of course none of that will matter if this headache doesn't go away.