Of all the doll series Volks has ever released, the interstellar boys' dormitory had always been one of my favorites. Even as I'd moved my focus in the hobby from resin to vinyl, I still really liked the character and outfit designs - so much so that I ended up finding a clothing set secondhand for my beloved boy Eiran to wear. I'd never really considered owning one of the dolls, though...by the time I'd rediscovered my interest in resin and had the funds to pursue something like that, the sculpts I really liked were discontinued and only available secondhand for crazy prices, so I set aside my hopes for one of them, figuring that'd be something I could go for if I ever happened to come into some crazy money.
Then in March, right before my trip to Japan, Volks decided I was done waiting, and announced that not only were they releasing new stuff for the series for its 10th anniversary...it was a rerelease of my favorite doll, Regulus. I thought I was cooked right then and there, but they also announced a new character called Reda Venir, who ended up blowing poor Regulus out of the water at first sight. He hit all my favorite design tropes - an androgynous glasses boy, with a side glance and a narrow eyed, mysterious expression that could be a smile at some angles and a more serious, thoughtful look at others. He fascinated me, but between the trip eating my limited budget, a doll collection I was already really happy with, my own misgivings about the size and weight of a 65cm doll from Volks (known for having heavier dolls), and the ever-present "wtf am I gonna do with this" question I ask myself when looking at a potential new addition, I was really on the fence about doing anything more than saving a few pictures of him. I kept coming back to him, though, and while I was in Japan, I ended up getting the issue of Volks News with him in it and flipping through it more than once. This blog entry will cover the journey I typically go through when picking out a real keeper for my doll collection, both as a personal reminder for when I inevitably fall for another doll and as (I hope!) an interesting peek into my creative process.
I stayed firmly on the fence regarding Reda as the trip ended, and throughout April, too, only mentioning him again when Volks US announced their lottery sale for him - despite my plans to ignore it, I joked with my friends that the urge to get him was whispering to me like the devil waving the green goblin mask at me. Every time I tried to ignore him, he came up again in a different Discord server, and I found myself back at his product page once again, flipping through the photos. I could admit it, I wanted him, but with no funds (and more importantly, no concrete plans), it seemed like a terrible idea - I'd dealt with impulses before from seeing a pretty doll, and I'd learned by now that any doll I got just because they were pretty was doomed to be a shelf sitter, and I did NOT want to spend over $1k on a shelf sitter. So I went through the few techniques I knew to manage the urge...distracting myself, revisiting existing dolls to better appreciate them or expand their lore more, trying to notice and point out all the flaws in his sculpt and faceup that could bother me in the future to discourage myself from wanting him...even going as far as grabbing a model kit from Volks that I'd been eyeing for a while to try to assuage the itch for new stuff (the root of a lot of my new doll impulses) with something less expensive...and they all did very little. So, okay, I clearly wanted him in a way that wasn't just an impulse or a passing fancy...but I was still stuck on the real killer, the all-important "wtf am i gonna do with this" question.
This question is my tried and true impulse killer because it covers a LOT of ground. First and most obviously, it covers the actual day-to-day usage and enjoyment I could get out of owning this specific doll - can I see myself enjoying dressing him, getting him to hold a pose, taking him on photoshoots, carrying him around in a doll bag, and/or any of the other things I do with my dolls...do these things seem both feasible and enjoyable to do with him? It also covers physical space - firstly, that I have enough space for him, but also that I can justify spending that space on him instead of on something else. And then on a more abstract level, "wtf am I gonna do with this" covers the lore, character implications, and overall "vibe" of the doll - I'm not one to maintain a cohesive collection-wide story, I find it unnecessarily limiting, so the characters my dolls represent don't know or interact with each other in that way...but I do care about them "fitting" in in the sense that I tend to gravitate towards a rather narrow band of aesthetics and vibes when going on photoshoots or picking out outfits/poses, and trying to make a doll that sits outside of those aesthetics and vibes work for me is an uphill battle. My couple attempts at owning robot and cyberpunk dolls can attest to that. I just can't make them click. Any doll I end up actually getting needs to have a good answer for all three aspects of this "wtf" question or it won't last long, so if my wallet had any hope of Reda not battering it to death, it would be here.
The day-to-day vision for Reda was shaky, but seemed feasible. At 65cm, he would not be my largest doll (Zhen, at 73cm, held that honor), and I found that my largest still handled well and dressed well, so I was pretty confident I could make his size work. Poseability was a bit of a concern, but I'd read a pretty solid review on the SD17 by a doll blogger I admired, and Verdi had taught me enough about resin and its quirks that I was willing to give it a real shot. The only thing I was really worried about was his weight, but I'd just bought some shoulder strap padding for my doll sling that had worked really well when carrying my SD16, Vajra, so I knew I had one option available, and I could experiment with others. Plus, this would open the opportunity for me to start shopping for 70cm clothing, which had a lot of really nice releases from the Chinese side of the doll market recently. I'd always been locked out of that before! So I knew wtf I was doing there. As for space...since I no longer needed Agrippa, my big Dollshe boy, I could replace his spot with Zhen, so there was still plenty of room in my doll cabinet for a new member. I wasn't hurting for space, and I felt I could justify spending it on him since that was why I'd set aside a doll cabinet to begin with. Clothing-wise, I was also confident, thanks to my new method of organizing clothes, so he had plenty of room for a wardrobe as well. But these first two phases of the "wtf" question are always the easiest. The third is the real doozy, and that one would take longer to answer.
I struggled for a while, coming up with nothing concrete, but made a breakthrough a couple of days later. While looking at the upcoming outfits releasing at the Dolls Party event Volks was dropping Reda at, I remembered that Volks made ram horns as an option for their custom order dolls, having noticed them being modeled alongside a "forest guardian" type outfit. I'd also remembered that I'd considered grabbing a pair for Vajra a while back, before I'd fully settled on her character. Thinking on it again, I still kind of liked the idea of having a doll with horns, and Reda might be a good opportunity to try that aesthetic idea out, so I grabbed a clean photo of the pair, made them transparent, and threw them on my favorite picture of him on a lark. They looked really good. Just to make sure that wasn't a fluke (it was my favorite picture of him!), I threw them on a couple other pictures for good measure, and still found myself liking them a lot. Somehow, that one addition had completely changed the doll for me. My previous jokes about him being the devil had inadvertently come true - while all of my other Volks dolls were tied to angels in some way, keeping with Volks's own lore, Reda's expression alongside those horns made for a beautiful demon. Soon, my idle thoughts about how pretty he was were replaced by dialogue snippets, personality notes, voice claims...and even a little bit of a plot. I'd found what I wanted to do with him.
Much of my character development for both my 2D OCs and my dolls happens spontaneously like this, and usually in bits and pieces - I have an idea while reading something else, or a conversation triggers some inspiration, or even a stupid meme that seems like something one character or another would do gets added to their lore. The main difference between the OCs and the dolls is my focus - with dolls, I find I do better with using the bits of character building I do to inform how the character would look (letting me decide on outfit ideas and key accessories) and act (for pose ideas), as well as what they value or take an interest in (a triple whammy of photoshoot location, pose, and prop ideas). I also try to keep plot and storyline intentionally light for my dolls, because I find that a character that's a little too heavily predefined becomes more of a burden to clothe and photograph out of fear of making them "OOC"...it's why I often bounce off of licensed character dolls. After the horn breakthrough with Reda, I spent the following morning thinking about him and daydreaming about whatever came to mind, and then spent most of the following days brainstorming and writing those ideas out to further refine that (shoutout to my doll friends on Discord, who were equal parts patient and enthusiastic about my Reda Rambles quarantine thread).
I knew right away that instead of the 17-year-old upperclassman that Volks's stock Reda was, mine would be much older, and a teacher. Very few of my dolls are younger than me, and I liked the flexibility a teacher character, especially at the college level, would offer, particularly since he'd be in a position of power as a demon. I wasn't fully sold on how hard I'd lean into him being a demon, though - again, for bonding reasons. I just don't do well with unambiguously evil characters! So I explored the idea of what an evil being might be doing in academia, pulling from a few anecdotes from friends and bloggers I admired who worked in academia, pursued higher degrees than mine...or fell through the numerous cracks in that system. While I didn't intend to delve too deep, I still came out of my dive with an idea for what my Reda's brand of demonic meddling would be - he's got a selfish streak and a vested interest in his pet research project, so when he takes on grad students, he just...keeps his favorites from graduating for a little while. It took a little longer to settle on what that pet research project would be, but I did some brainstorming and settled on him having a theory on how the universe self-balances, with a focus on the metaphysical weight of societal rules, contracts, and relationships. That'd reign him in from being a purely evil creature - a demon believing social contracts have weight would put a lot more emphasis on being civilized and honest in his dealings, and believing so strongly in this research would absolutely motivate him to feed grad students to it beyond just simple sadism. Plus, he'd need instruments to measure magical fluctuations to prove his theory, which would let me look around for sooooo many little crystals and books and mini tools for him to play with. So much fun.
What was more fun was stumbling into a book recommendation that informed some of his character, too - That Devil, Ambition came up on one of the blogs I was digging around on, and when I saw that its whole premise was built around a demon summoned to teach a high school magic class, I knew I could get some good characterization bits out of it. I did, and it was a very fun read to boot! My Reda owes quite a bit to the Professor, he was very helpful with solidifying his mannerisms and interests. It also gave me the last piece of the puzzle for making this doll my own - a name. I've been collecting for years now and have never kept a doll's sculpt name...Reda's sculpt name was really cool, though, and I kept referring to the character with that name throughout my planning, which bothered me...but nothing else I could think of fit! So, I took the idea of the Professor using a title as a pseudonym and applied it to my character, too, by tweaking the sculpt name's spelling a bit so it became the French verb redevenir, which became my demon's title. A redevenir (to become again) demon is one that can maintain the same form across multiple summonings, and since he didn't want to share his true name with colleagues, he went by that instead. And since it was only ever shared verbally, he could take whatever spelling for it others came up with and use that for written communications, completing the pseudonym without ever technically lying - resulting in the final name Redda Venir. (Still not quite sure I'm content with that, since those who don't get the full lore dump could easily assume I just changed the sculpt name a little to keep using it, but I know why I picked it and I can't come up with anything better, so it's good enough for me!!!)
At this point, I'd gathered enough information to easily start putting together outfit, photoshoot, prop, and pose ideas, so there was really no other option but to admit that I knew exactly "wtf i was gonna do" with him. It was time for the wallet to admit defeat, and for me to start working through that goal I'd set back in January to list some sales up on Mercari - Reda Venir was clearly not an impulse buy anymore, and I'd have to get the funds ready for him one way or another! Actually getting him would be another story, to be covered in part 2.