Ends of Fate

Last year was a bust. Work consumed almost all my time due to a coworker being out. Then, major upheavals leading to a promotion! Which also meant lots of work, lol! I worked on minor things with the website in the background, but no official updates. And definitely didn’t have much time for faceups.

I was looking forward to a good, positive, new year post. Unfortunately, my first post of the year will just have to be a rather sad event.

Den of Angels, known as DoA, the premiere forum and social site for Ball-Jointed-Dolls for over two decades, has announced it’s closing. While forums have often seen passed their hey-days, they continue to serve a vital part of social media that modern offerings lack. Main, organized categories, i.e. threading, and preservation of information. Where timelines are fast moving, forums remain static so that vital information from the past doesn’t needlessly need to be re-stated over and over. And over again.

DoA isn’t just a social media website. It’s an archive of vital research and information. It has remained relevant when other sites have long gone. Current, modern attempts to create BJD communities still lack the very static nature that DoA is able to provide. It has had it’s ups and downs since it’s inception, but it has continually grown. Aspects of the site could have been better done or updated to keep with modern technology.

And yet, none of it’s technical failings are why it is having to close it’s doors. It is not lack of interest, either. The reason DoA is having to close is really an unfortunate situation. The site is owned by a single individual who has become incommunicado. Only two remaining mods have had any ability to manage the site, and their permissions have been limited. They could not hire new individuals to take over higher level moderation, and unfortunately, this meant they also couldn’t step down or step back. This left no room for them to deal with personal lives without affecting literal thousands of other individuals.

Attempts at reaching the owner of the forum has proved fruitless. I feel certain the closing announcement was written and posted with heavy hearts.

Even now, other community members are trying to archive what they can from the website. Attempting to preserve vital knowledge. I read one member liking this to a slow burning library, and I absolutely agree. DoA’s true value isn’t as a social media site. It is as community library.

But don’t get me wrong! It is also about the community that was built through the years. Even in libraries there are grouping meetings. I originally joined in 2006, but I actually discovered the forum in late 2004 to early 2005. At that time I would read through the forums instead of joining because I had a bad habit of joining everything and was attempting to slow my roll. By 2006, I realized I was spending enough time reading what I could of oublic posts, and didn’t have access to a much larger hub of information, that I should probably join. So I did.

I may remember DoA fondly, but I also remember how it felt in those early days. I found myself lurking for the most part, afraid I would say or do something and receive one of the infamous “bans”. DoA was the main go to for all things BJD and I didn’t want to risk it.

Elitism ran rampant and we were constantly reminded it wasn’t “our” forum. The early wording for the site description was that Den of Angels was a resin ABJD forum, specifically “Asian” ball-Jointed doll forum, not BJD, and centered on specific esthetics the original owner and mods decided on to separate it from BJDs from other regions and materials being used. Dollfie Dreams were grandfathered as they were Volks and the first released Dollfie Dream was also ball jointed, even though they used vinyl for their construction. Unlike other sculpts, years of production was not a limiting factor on DDs, so the newest releases were still allowed to be discussed, shared, and sold on the forum. Some early non Asian sculpts were also grandfathered, such as artist made dolls, as already being parts of various discussions. It would be many years later that the “A” was dropped and discussions open to BJDs from other countries such as France and Russia, as long as they met the esthetic expectations of the forum moderators.

More new rules, though, delivered under the banners of keeping members safe, were coming down the pipeline to stipulate what was allowed for discussion. As new companies were being introduced, community members were being informed of what was and was not acceptable, even from Asian companies. An early distinction was that, if a doll did not have ankle joints, it would disqualify it. This rule was later relaxed many years down the road as more companies, including Volks, produced “heeled” legs that did not have ankle ball joints.

New doll companies were cropping up right and left, but the cheaper they were in price, the more their legitimacy was attacked. New BJD owners may not realize how unpopular Dollzone was in the beginning. DZ started their career out making a grave recast copy mistake. They addressed it, removed the sculpt, and started anew, but this mistake haunted them for a long time. Legitimate dolls were still considered to be suspicious. Community members analyzed doll parts from the shape of fingers down to belly buttons to try and prove theft. It was hard, but DZ made it through, changed their image, and have become one of the largest, respected older companies.

Resinsoul, in conjunction with Bobobie, were scrutinized heavily because they kept their prices cheaper. They were attacked as poor quality with poor sculpting and compared with Volks. For that matter, all companies were compared to Volks.

All of these discussions, decisions, and rules to the forum proved to have repercussions beyond just the forum itself. Over time, the forum’s criteria became a litmus test for companies to make decisions for their own businesses. If a company was banned from DoA, their business was almost 100% guaranteed to fail. Companies had started to use DoA for announcements of new dolls, products, and events. If a company were not allowed to post on DoA, and they were a BJD company, then it cast doubt on their entire company’s trustworthiness. Many felt that surely the company must have done something potentially illegal, and were therefore unsafe. Founded or unfounded, these were beliefs being upheld by the community members of the DoA forum.

This ultimately put DoA in a very powerful position. One not just for discussions, but one in which they could dictate and control actual trends within the entire hobby. And this persisted for many, many years.

But as all things do, they change. New and younger members were joining without the originalist elitism that founded the forum. And the dominance that DoA held began to change when more and more hobbyist joined faster moving social medias. Twitter and Instagram had a large part to play in this, and later Discord. By only having to join a single company to access many outlets, users were able to find and crossover to multiple fandoms, hobbies, and interests, rather than one, centralized location that was restrictive in what could be shared.

This could have ended DoA then, but for the wealth of information that had already been built for well over a decade by this point, it’s centralized announcement location for companies, and for it’s second hand marketplace that still had not found a better outlet anywhere. By this point, DoA was considered vital to the community as an information hub almost more than anything else.

The community being fostered was more gentle, if not as voluminous as it once was. More and more discussions on companies, sculpts, projects were taking over. Even more recently, when a popular doll artist became sick and had a life threatening situation, it was community members that could speak her language that shared what was going on. Helping each other, celebrating accomplishments, sharing what one knows, alleviating fears… these are all the best parts of the community being fostered. In one place, like an international city.

The last decade has shown what the entire BJD community could become. There has been an explosion in creativity. New designs have shown there is so much more potential hiding within the hobby. New companies are cropping up overnight. More recently, Blind Boxes have entered the arena challenging us all with the question of “what else can be a BJD”? Entry price points are lowering, ultimately challenging illegal recasts. Honestly, this is an exciting time for the hobby.

Not quite what it once was, DoA still had a chance to bring in a fresh approach to forums and capitalize on uptick in interest. Especially this forum. And yet… nothing was happening. Membership approvals were taking longer and longer. Complaints were not being being addressed nearly as quickly as they had in the past. And none of the community members were the wiser.

Until just recently, when the final two lead moderators announced the inevitable closing due to the forum owner being MIA.

You could call this an end of an era, but the era isn’t over. The influences of DoA are still there, and really still will be far after the forum is gone. There’s still a chance the forum could be saved, but even if it’s not, many community members are already trying to save what they can like Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria. New forums could start cropping up, new websites, and honestly, this could be a revitalization of information within the hobby.

I will not be sad at the end of needless stress, control, and repression of others. I will be sad at what we will lose, at the loss of the community we created against all odds, at the really good progress that had been made, at all the hard work for decades just… lost.

But I am not alone, and am a hopeful person, and I see the potential for great things to rise from the ashes.