Neon’s A Doll A Day… Again (2020)

[Alliecat]

Or an album cover

[Elfy]

Those three do look too cool for school.

[Loona]

The shelf pattern in this colour makes the picture look like they are out watching the northern lights - I find that pretty cool! And these are all lovely dolls. The FdC line was such a cool one with the bold outfits and face-ups - and with that plasyet that you so often use in your photos. I love that piece too, it's someting that I have openly displayed in our living room (with my two favourite Rochelles and B&W Frankies in front of it).

[neon_jellyfish]

Many thanks, everyone!


Day 332

We're going to have a doodle ketchup for a few days, starting today. I need to go through the thread and count the doodles and fix numbers, so for now I don't even know how much ketchup do I need, I'll figure it out on the go.

I'd like to apologize - all the remaining doodles are going to be uber simplistic scribbles, because I don't want to drop my own challenge, but I also don't have any motivation left, and don't want to put too much effort in it, which, sadly, means that I'll be making you look at a lot of less-than-half-arsed stuff. Sorry, but this is the best I can do under my current circumstances.

I had two supernaturals I wanted to do properly but weeks of migraine did a number on me, so I don't have the energy to do that. I'll mention them briefly now and hopefully get to them some time in future.

***

ADAW ketchup #44

Bludička

Bludička translates as will-o'-wisp / will-o'-the-wisp. Every culture that has swamps, marshes or other causes for natural ghost lights has some sort of supernatural ex→planation for these phenomena, and bludička is the Slavic one. Various Slavic nations call them various names, but the monster is pretty much the same everywhere. Bludička is the Czech one.

There's not much to be found about them. They're either ghosts or corporeal apparitions, but they're always human-like, because they are people who died in the swamps, or were killed and their bodies were disposed of in there, and unchristened babies were added with time, but they don't appear in many folk tales, they're only said to become will-o'-wisps. The ghostly light comes from special lanterns and ranges from yellowish green to icy blue.

Their job mostly revolves around using their lights to confuse people, make them lose their way and lure them into the swamp, indirectly killing them. In some tales, they do so because they're evil, in other ones, they're cursed to do it and have no choice, and it makes them sad. There are tales about freeing a bludička from her/his curse (bludička is used for both genders, despite the word being feminine, male ones are also called světlonoš, more on that in a bit), but I'm having troubles finding reliable sources, so I won't go into detail right now.

Bludičkas can also guard treasures, and if you make friends with them, they can show you the way to one. Or, if you got lost, they could use their light to show you the right way. No idea how you make friends with a bludička.

When dealing with Slavic supernaturals, there are usually remnants of the old lore, and then bastardized versions from after christianization. Bludičkas (proper plural would be 'bludičky') are an exception, the 'before' and 'after' kinda blended together.

I have this personal theory not based on any proper research that there used to be more to them, because a) there usually is, b) the treasure guarding thing, c) the word 'světlonoš'.

I understand the need to ex!plain a weird phenomena as a dangerous creature as a safety measure, so that people don't wander into swamps. The word 'bludička' hints that the creature is dangerous - it is derived from 'bludný', which you usually see translated as 'wandering', but in Czech, it can mean both someone who lost the way and something that makes one lose the way. Bludička makes you lose the way. But then, why do they guard treasures? That's an odd combo isn't it? Plus, the word 'světlonoš' would translate as light-bearer, that doesn't sound particularly nefarious, does it?

There are regional tales about all sorts of creatures ruling over certain area and having access to a ginormous treasure, and if people needed help, asked nicely and did some task or two for that being, they were given enough to live happily ever after, or received some other kind of help, usually much more than they asked for. If they tried to steal or even hurt or kill the guardian, they were punished threefold.

I think that světlonoš might have been that sort of being, maybe separate from what bludička was, and they merged later, or the lore of světlonoš got deformed, and the word bludička came later. I haven't found any info on when which word appeared, so this is all just wild speculation, but I like to imagine some of it might be true.

I based will-o'-wisps in Oddwickshire on Czech ones, except they aren't spectres, they're living species. The crew foreman and light source of the First Lighthouse, Isidor Glowman, is one such will-o'wisp.

Huh, that wasn't brief at all...

*Cough* And now onto the doodle! I had a hard time drawing a ghostly light on a light background, and I couldn't be bothered to do a dark background, and then it wouldn't even photograph, so just imagine it's glowing sinisterly, hypnotizing you to leave the safe path and walk right into the swamp, thank you.

[davidd]

It's such a wonderfully cute little creature! No wonder people feel inclined to follow it wherever it leads!

[werepuppy]

Have to agree, easy to was why it would be followed. It's a great design!

[dunneh]

Robecca: Lovely! Love the studs... she's like a steamlike robot girl? Awesome!

Rochelle: Wow love the pose and the hair colors too!

Iselle is lovely! Which girl is she? Love the antiquated version, looks very legitimate. Reminds me of old western photos from the US.

Love the B&W lineup.

My boyfriend gets migraines and was prescribed something called... I think it was sumatriptan. He also said nothing used to work before this. I will have to double check though but he's sleeping right now. Either way I hope you feel better soon. *big hugs*

[Alliecat]

That's a cute little creature. I could see the influence on Oddwickshire as I read. Are there drawings from this old lore of what people thought the creatures looked like? If you could time travel, it would make for an interesting book, to go back to when these legends were more commonly known and collect some stories.

[Elfy]

I can see your difficulty with drawing a light on a light background, but you have dealt with it masterfully.

[dunneh]

Oops for some reason I didn't see the Bludička post! What a cool lore and drawing of one!

Also love the MH girl, her hair especially is so great and curly and cute. Definitely one of my faves. ♥

Also it was sumatriptan that he was taking for migraines he says it works really well; he is someone that painkillers don't work for usually.

[neon_jellyfish]

Thank you very much, everyone!


Day 333

ADAW ketchup, number yet to be determined. #45

The last monster I want to talk about is vampire.


(no detail photo, as the doodle lacks any detail that could be shown)

'...What? Didn't she say they were all going to be Slavic or specifically Czech not-your-typical-Halloween monsters?' you probably didn't ask but I'm gonna go ahead and assume you did.

You see, there are vampires everybody knows and then there are the old, and I like to call them real, vampires.

This post is more of a teaser, because I don't know even a fraction of what I'd consider enough to write a proper vampire post. I always knew there was a big difference between what I know from books and TV, and what vampires used to be, but when I delved deeper into the topic, I found out that my knowledge is painfully shallow. It is, however, a topic I'd like to revisit and report about it in greater detail, so this isn't the last you hear about them - the old, weird and often unrecognizable ones.

Suave and seductive, aristocratic vampires that populate various niches of literature and movie genres (and Oddwickshire) were fashioned after none other than Count Dracula, who wasn't the first of his kind, but was the one who gained the most popularity and influence and fathered the genus of literary vampires. The folk vampires, however, originated from Slavic* and also Baltic tribes and evidence of their existence (OK, evidence of people's beliefs involving vampires) stretches back deep into the prehistory, mostly in form of bodies buried in very specific ways.

*There are several reasons I'm proud I'm a Slav. Being the first ones to be scared out of our wits by vampires is close to, if not on, the very top of the list.

Vampires of the old took their time before they started resembling vampires as we know them today. At first, they were more like revenants, or zombies, they were walking corpses. They didn't even suck blood, and I'd love to write more about the evolution of vampire, but boy, would that be biting off more than I can... gulp...

For a very long time, they weren't pretty at all (they were obviously dead, their clothes torn and dirty), they (un)lived in their graves instead of fabulous mansions and gothic castles and they tortured people in many different ways (e.g. spreading diseases, although I'm not sure how, probably by using magic). The oldest concepts of what they were and how they came to be are, naturally, lost; but the oldest ones we know of don't really involve spreading vampirism through infectious bites, the dead turned into vampires because a cat, a dog or a wolf jumped over the lazy... sorry. Jumped over the body, sometimes on it. It was the same for early werewolves here, so they and vampires were kinda blended together for a while. Later, witch's curse became a popular reason to become a vampire.

I call these vampires real because of their power to prompt real people to do real things to other real people, no matter how much these lusus naturae themselves do not, scientifically speaking, exist. People were killing other people, including children, and disturbing graves and mutilating bodies because they firmly believed in and greatly feared vampires, adding more than a touch of realness to their existence.

When you look at Count Orlok from Nosferatu, you see something of old vampires in him, eventhough he was based on Dracula. He's still aristocratic and has stylish clothes and a properly grim gothic castle, but there's no way you'd mistake him for a human person. It might be why he's my favorite movie vampire.

And that's it for today, I have more learning to do when it comes to vampires, and I'll be back to report about my discoveries whenever I get to make them. Probably not the next year though. Next year I'll be trying to cure my zombification, as it gets in the way of my vampirism.

[werepuppy]

I love your little doodle of the vampire. It seems almost shy.

And I need to read up more on the Slavic vampire...

[Elfy]

The doodle looks like a young Nosferatu.

[Lejays17]

The will-o-wisp versions sound fascninating, that there was possibly two different tales/creatures that have been combined into what is known about now.
And your doodle illustrating it is very cute - I can see the light around the lantern well, or maybe that's jjust the power of suggestion

There are so many variations of the vampires legends, the older ones are much creepier than the ones based (essentially) on Dracula. Orlock is what would be considered the "non-sexy" version.

[dargosmydaddy]

Loving the doodles (and their dolly presenters, of course).