Neon’s A Doll A Migraine-less Day, More Or Less - 2019 edition!

[Alliecat]

What a fun pair. I'd like a laundrymajig and a magic hat -- I need extra storage dimensions.
I still love this idea about not being famous for one's stealth skills because nobody noticed

She's quite fond of horseless coach which for some reason loves to take people to swamps, ravines and other places that are hard to get away from and then it just throws them out and abandons them there...

Would there happen to be an airplane version of that?.... because Air Canada has one....

[neon_jellyfish]

Thanks everyone!!! To be honest, coming up with Rebecca's special appliances wasn't hard at all, for reasons most mysterious... I don't mind washing dishes (but I don't enjoy it either), but I hate drying them. I always end up leaving them dry on their own. My mom's dishwasher theoretically can dry dishes, but it never works. And it definitely doesn't sort out utensils and stack plates so that you could just put them away and be done with it...


Day 207

Today we'll visit Graveyard. Most of this district's inhabitants are nocturnal, so it's quiet now, but you can return after sundown and enjoy the nightlife, Friday dances at Grey Lady's are to die for! While the sun's still up, let's pay a visit to a very special establishment...

The Schwarzgrab Funeral Home



Schwarzgrab Funeral Home is the most reputable and really affordable funeral home in Oddwickshire. Most people (and other creatures) in Oddwickshire survive their deaths, more or less, so traditional funerals are only necessary if you rise from the dead in ghost form (you are going to rise from the dead, staying in grave is extremely rare). Schwarzgrabs are the only funeral home offering special supernatural upgrades (which allow you to turn into preferred type of supernatural after death instead of becoming a random revenant) and procedures preventing decomposition issues, so if you plan to use your body post mortem and keep it intact, you probably want to take advantage of their (very affordable!) services, otherwise you have a good chance of becoming a stinky rotting zombie.
Oh, and they’re affordable.


Salome Schwarzgrab

Salome is a great manager and the greatest party planner. Her Goodbye-And-Welcome-Back parties are the stuff of legends! Death might be a rather inconvenient life change, but Salome will help you get accustomed to your new circumstances and make the best out of them. A lot of people think of her as a party animal, but that’s inaccurate. She doesn’t like being the center of attention, she likes being the host, throwing the best parties and making sure everyone is having a great time.


Orpheus Schwarzgrab

Orpheus is the brain behind all the Schwarzgrab trademark raising-from-dead technology and procedures. You can go for Basic Revenant Package, which will simply keep your body from rotting and mildewing, or you can choose one from many Supernatural Upgrade procedures, lately, the Vampire and Fairy* ones have been insanely popular!

Rumor has it that the Queen ordered one created especially for her, and now the people of Oddwickshire are torn - they wish their Queen a long life, but they’re also very curious as to what is she going to turn into when she dies.

Nobody knows for sure, but some people say that Orpheus tested his very first revenant package on himself…

He might come across as a cold nerd completely consumed by his research, but he’s actually very caring, he’s just ex²pressing it in ways most people don’t understand. That’s where Salome steps in.



Schwarzgrabs are one of those rare couples who are happy eventhough their marriage was arranged by their families, and they themselves had very little say in it. Orpheus appreciated Salome for being a capable manager, which allowed him to fully concentrate on his research, and she liked having so many opportunities to throw epic parties, and while they were working on turning their funeral home pet project into a real brand, they grew close and fell in love.

*In some countries’ folklores, girls who die or kill themselves because of unrequited or otherwise unfortunate love will become fairies. Similar stories exist about will-o’-wisps. But Schwarzgrab Supernatural Upgrade - model Fairy will work regardless of what were your circumstances prior to death!

---

For some reason, Oddwickshire isn't overpopulated eventhough it theoretically should be. It just somehow keeps things in balance. Birth rates are on the lower side, a lot of dearly returned decide to see the world and move out, those who didn't use Schwarzgrab procedures and had bad luck when they returned sometimes rot away and die again, this time for good... The land itself simply seems to be well adjusted to accomodating such a high number of immortals.

[werepuppy]

Oooh, well these two are just fascinating! I take it their funeral services are affordable? How wonderful - do they have a brochure?

[davidd]

Oh my goodness, this was so funny!!! Some of the lines in here, like "Death might be a rather inconvenient life change" and 'the dearly returned" are laugh out loud funny!

And Salome is incredibly beautiful. Intensely beautiful, even!

What you have here is far funnier, more clever, and more entertaining than some highly acclaimed works from Very Famous Authors.

I think I shall specify in my will... note to self: have a will drawn up... that when the fateful day arrives, my remains shall be transported to Schwarzgrab Funeral Home for final... or not so final... disposition. My only concern would be, how affordable are their services?

[Jubilee]

@neon_jellyfish Well that's messed up those people get abandoned at those places but do they end up dying or find their way back home?

[Alliecat]

"Most people survive their deaths..."
OMG, how did we not know till now the depths of your amazingly imaginative story world?
I'd take one of their upgrades...
Today's installment made me think of this song... on a quick look, couldn't find anywhere to listen for free but you might find it worth the 99 cents for the amusement.
https://www.amazon.com/The-Undertakers-B...B0155OZVIQ

[Elfy]

Salome and Orpheus make a lovely couple, very photogenic. If Rebecca could invent a TV they could do their own advertisements.

[neon_jellyfish]

Oooh, well these two are just fascinating! I take it their funeral services are affordable? How wonderful - do they have a brochure?

Thanks! About the 'affordable services' thing - about a year ago, I was reading some funeral homes' advertisements (yeah, my idea of fun can be a little, uh, nevermind), and they all seemed really bent on conveying just how oh so affordable they are. I mean, all businesses will go out of their way to make sure you know how they're cheap, especially if they aren't, but funeral homes will go out of their way and then around the world to make it over-abundantly clear that their services are affordable. Every other sentence was about how you'll make it easier on your bereaved ones by choosing the most affordable service in town. It seemed like some sort of tradition within the trade, so I decided to use it.

One special thing about Schwarzgrabs is that they're so confident about their products, they'll let you do a layaway.

Brochure is a great idea!

Oh my goodness, this was so funny!!! Some of the lines in here, like "Death might be a rather inconvenient life change" and 'the dearly returned" are laugh out loud funny!

And Salome is incredibly beautiful. Intensely beautiful, even!

What you have here is far funnier, more clever, and more entertaining than some highly acclaimed works from Very Famous Authors.

I think I shall specify in my will... note to self: have a will drawn up... that when the fateful day arrives, my remains shall be transported to Schwarzgrab Funeral Home for final... or not so final... disposition. My only concern would be, how affordable are their services?

Thank you very much!!! I'm glad you liked it.

I didn't actually work on detailed price list, but the Basic Revenant Package and Ghost Upgrade (that one makes sure your ghost can touch things while preserving your ability to go through walls) would roughly equal to $300, Advanced Revenant one is about $500 (Basic Revenant will only make you about 10 years younger than you were at the time of death, Advanced is guaranteed to make you biologically 35, and if you were taking a good care of your health, 30 or even 25 is possible), Supernatural Upgrades start at cca $800 for Vampire and Werewolf ones and the price can climb up depending on how complicated they are, if you want a customised one, and so on... And you can do a layaway!

I don't have the foggiest idea how much it would cost to transport the corpse from Utah to Oddwickshire, though.

@neon_jellyfish Well that's messed up those people get abandoned at those places but do they end up dying or find their way back home?

Some get away, some don't. The coach was supposed to simply take its passengers to their desired location, but something went wrong and it ended up being like this instead. It wasn't used much ever since then. Her Majesty likes to use it for her survival skills training, and sometimes, criminals or spies and other uninvited guests get disposed of this way. They still have a chance to survive and run away, if they have what it takes...

"Most people survive their deaths..."    
OMG, how did we not know till now the depths of your amazingly imaginative story world?
I'd take one of their upgrades...
Today's installment made me think of this song...  on a quick look, couldn't find anywhere to listen for free but you might find it worth the 99 cents for the amusement.
https://www.amazon.com/The-Undertakers-B...B0155OZVIQ

I don't really work on backstories in detail until I have certain amount of dolls, otherwise it gets crazy. Characters pop up left and right and demand shells, so I jot down some basic ideas, but I only start working on them after I have at least a third of dolls on the wishlist (my first Pullip wishlist had 80 dolls on it at one point, because the pre-alfa version of Oddwickshire went out of control). I didn't really have anything shareable for a long time.

I personally would go for Fairy or Werecat upgrade. Vampire and Werewolf are the cheaper, but vampires need to drink blood and werewolfs can suffer from random transformations around full moon (Orpheus didn't even plan to make them, but the demand was overwhelming).

This is fun. Maybe I should really make a brochure...

Salome and Orpheus make a lovely couple, very photogenic. If Rebecca could invent a TV they could do their own advertisements.

Oh, they don't need TV ads. You can meet their ads on every street and ask them about their ex³perience in person...


Day 208

Time to go to Cabbage Gardens! Let's take the underground route for once. We don't have a certified guide, but I've been here a few times already, so I know the way. See those milky opalescent crystals? That's actually a type of moss and it can only be found here in Oddwickshire. It will start its life as translucent white moss, and it will grow bigger and harder over time, and after a few years, it will form solid crystals. You can take some with you - if you paste some blueberry yoghurt over a piece of limestone and put the crystals on it, the stone will be covered in moss in about a week. It likes dark and humid places.

Now up the stairs - watch your head! The ceiling is rather low... And we're here!

Most of Cabbage Gardens’ houses are covered in vines, have beautiful gardens and ornate greenhouses, but the one we’re about to enter is special.
There’s something almost… sentient about its greenery, the scents filling the air are stronger and more exotic, the many colorful blossoms of all shapes and sizes seem to be turning to you as if they could see you… And there was no creeper twisting around your ankle a second ago!!! Find petals that look like cat ears and scratch them gently, it will let go. Oh, look, the mistress of the house is here to help you.

Florianne du Jardine

She looks cute and a bit naive, but don’t let that fool you! Florianne is a genius botanist, genius to the point of complete madness (scientists seem to be extra prone to going mad in Oddwickshire, I wonder why…). She’s a friendly mad scientist, she isn’t dangerous unless you deliberately cause harm to her plants. Her plants are all she ever talks about, so she might be a somewhat tedious companion, unless you’re a botany addict yourself… Sometimes, though, she will burst into sinister laughter in the middle of the sentence and for no apparent reason, so that does break the monotony a bit.

In addition to her own garden and greenhouse, huge part of royal gardens is reserved for her, and she grows the most peculiar flowers in there. Right now, she’s trying to grow giant carnivorous orchids that could be used as guard plants around the castle and eat intruders, but so far, she wasn’t successful - all they ever want to eat is chocolate. She’s also working on another project - aniplants, intelligent plants with some animal features. That one already had some good results (you personally met one of them), although it’s still in its initial phase and the aniplants aren’t very sophisticated...


"Ghiiife uths chokholaaate!"
"Not this again... Well, at least they can talk now, so that's some progress, I guess... Mwhaha. Mwhahaha! MwhahahaHAAAAAAAA!!!!!!"

[werepuppy]

Well. Florianne sounds delightful.

Importantly: is she going to teach the flowers to sing?

Also, that crystal moss... Sure we can take some? Jewellers might like to see it...

[Alliecat]

LOL. This is great fun.
I wish my orchids could eat intruders.
Then again, they'd only be helpful once the intruders were IN, because it's too cold to grow them outdoors to surround the house... :/

[davidd]

About a year ago, I was reading some funeral homes' advertisements (yeah, my idea of fun can be a little, uh, nevermind), and they all seemed really bent on conveying just how oh so affordable they are. 

Ha haaa! Are you my long-lost cousin from another continent? Back in my high school and post high school days, a few friends and I were funeral parlor obsessed. We called our imaginary funeral home Haven of Rest Funeral Parlor. Our catch-phrase was:
Elegant, Exquisite, and Extremely Ex.pensive
Haven of Rest Funeral Parlor
If You Don't Have the Money, Don't Waste Our Time

I also subscribed to The American Funeral Director magazine for a number of years. (It was pretty boring; mostly standard business management articles, and not enough pictures of hearses or coffins)

"... if you paste some blueberry yoghurt over a piece of limestone and put the crystals on it, the stone will be covered in moss in about a week."

Sounds like those Magic Rocks they sold when I was a kid. I haven't seen them in years, but maybe they're still around. (I looked; yes, they are.) Or, I believe there was a way to grow crystals using common (albeit somewhat toxic) household chemicals.

Cabbage Gardens sounds like a fascinating place! I've been intrigued by greenhouses since I was very young, and a slightly mysterious older lady who lived down the alley behind my grandparents' house had a greenhouse in which she puttered about. 

Florianne is another radiantly beautiful resident of Oddwickshire. Is exceptional physical beauty a common trait throughout the region?

[Elfy]

A chocolate eating plant? That wouldn’t get a pot in our house.

[Jubilee]

The flowers look like their glowing from it being dark in the room.

[Lejays17]

Florianne is an excellent mad scientist. Both the plants she is trying to grow sound very interesting, and I' sure she'll be able to tweak the orchids a bit more to increase their palate from just chocolate.

(the orchid is beautiful, and I like how it's angled so it almost looks like it's searching for the chocolate )

[neon_jellyfish]

Well. Florianne sounds delightful.

Importantly: is she going to teach the flowers to sing?

Also, that crystal moss... Sure we can take some? Jewellers might like to see it...

I don't think she's going to teach them to sing, because that isn't her goal. However, if a certain influential person decides that singing flowers could be a great article to ex²port, it might become Florianne's goal after all...

Nah, the crystal moss wouldn't be good for jewelry-making. Even the fully solidified crystals are still rather soft (as in, they scratch easily and they can't hold facets well), if you don't let them age for long enough, you could cut to the soft core, and, most importantly, even old solid crystals can still sprout new moss, so you would end up with very mossy jewelry box and unwearable jewelry...

LOL.  This is great fun.
I wish my orchids could eat intruders.  
Then again, they'd only be helpful once the intruders were IN, because it's too cold to grow them outdoors to surround the house...  :/

Oh, don't worry about the cold, these giant ones are frost hardy. Weather in Oddwickshire is rather cold, too. But as they are now, they would eat all your chocolate and none of the intruders...

About a year ago, I was reading some funeral homes' advertisements (yeah, my idea of fun can be a little, uh, nevermind), and they all seemed really bent on conveying just how oh so affordable they are. 

Ha haaa! Are you my long-lost cousin from another continent! Back in my high school and post high school days, a few friends and I were funeral parlor obsessed. We called our imaginary funeral home Haven of Rest Funeral Parlor. Our catch-phrase was:
Elegant, Exquisite, and Extremely Ex.pensive
Haven of Rest Funeral Parlor
If You Don't Have the Money, Don't Waste Our Time

I also subscribed to The American Funeral Director magazine for a number of years. (It was pretty boring; mostly standard business management articles, and not enough pictures of hearses or coffins)

*snip*

Florianne is another radiantly beautiful resident of Oddwickshire. Is exceptional physical beauty a common trait throughout the region?

My great-grandfather, my grandfather and my grandmother were doctors (grandma is still alive, just retired), so there are some interesting books on pathology and some real human bones and a comlete skull in their house. The book about forensic pathology is especially interesting! We (me and my cousins - the spaceship crew) were always allowed to play with them (because being curious and motivated to learn was a good thing), and I think my love for the macabre might have been born back then...

Well, all my characters were created for my dolls, so they're beautiful by default. But I guess that with the omnipresent magic, being pretty isn't all that hard in Oddwickshire (just make sure you know what you're doing, beauty spells can go wrong sometimes. But hey, who said that frogs aren't cute?)

A chocolate eating plant? That wouldn’t get a pot in our house.

I keep my chocolate reserves carefully hidden...

The flowers look like their glowing from it being dark in the room.

That's just something orchids do on photos. They semi-translucent petals reflect the light so that it looks like their own bioluminescence.

Florianne is an excellent mad scientist.  Both the plants she is trying to grow sound very interesting, and I' sure she'll be able to tweak the orchids a bit more to increase their palate from just chocolate.

(the orchid is beautiful, and I like how it's angled so it almost looks like it's searching for the chocolate )

I'm sure she'll succeed. She's like a mad dog, once she sinks her teeth into something, she won't let go...


Day 209

Okay everybody, brace yourselves - wall-o'-rant incoming! I'll post a TL;DR version first and the full version at the end of the post.

* * *

If we walk down this street, we'll get from Florianne's house to the Triangle Square. There have been some debates about its name. They went roughly like this: "Your Majesty, 'Triangle Square' sounds like a geometrical nonsense, we would like to suggest a new name..." "Hmmm... It does sound like a nonsense, which is why we'll leave it exactly as it is!"

Traingle Square is Oddwick's largest and most busy square, and its name comes from its shape. All three districts meet here - one side of the square belongs to Old Town, one to Graveyard and one to Cabbage Gardens. The most impressive building of the square is the Library, taking up half of the Old Town side of the square.

TL;DR Version

The Library is very pretty, very magic, has some dangerous books, is opened 24/7 and has day and night shifts. We have one shelled and two unshelled characters here!

A note on fairies
If you decide to read the full version, you might get confused about fairies. Faires in Oddwickshire aren't one genus, they're a huge family of very diverse species, some are human-sized (like fairies from Czech folklore, which I wanted to include here), some are your typical tiny winged creatures, others are somewhere inbetween. There are many kinds of fairies tied to certain elements or natural habitats. It's a mess. The Schwarzgrab upgrade turns you into the human-sized fairy.

And now we finally get to the characters! First the shelled one:



Iselle Honeyford

Iselle is the head day librarian. She knows every single book in the library from memory, and she’s an ex³pert script-tamer (you can’t become head librarian if you’re not an ex³pert script-tamer). If you want to read something but don’t know what, she’ll always pick just the right book for you. Day shift is under her command, and important decisions have to be made together with head night librarian, but they often take turns, so that one of them can enjoy some free time.

Aside from reigning the library, she likes to travel around Oddwickshire and collect folk tales, write down every regional variant and then prepare the collections for print.

She’s a caffeine addict and she loves to prepare her own coffee. Lately, she picked up latte art, but no matter what image she tries to create in the foam, it always ends up looking like a letter…


Aldegar Nightingale

Aldegar Nightingale is the head night librarian. He’s a banshee, but he couldn’t and didn’t even want to inherit the family death-foretelling business, because Oddwickshire banshees are matriarchal, so the oldest daughter is always the main heir, and Aldegar has four older sisters, plus, he hates noise more than anything. And the banshee business is all about noise.

Banshees, by the way, are very important, because if you didn’t preoder Schwarzgrabs’ impeccable services yet, and you hear a banshee calling your name, you have 24 hours to secure the afterlife of your choice. You basically get a heads-up and a sufficient time reserve for free.

But back to Aldegar. He’s gay, which is extremely rare with banshees, so between hating the very principle of banshees’ existence and not having the slightest chance to find himself a partner in his community, he had no reason to stay. He decided to move to Oddwick and get a quiet job. The library was perfect for him, and because he’s very reliable and serious about everything he does (that’s another banshee thing, thoroughness and reliability are a must when you have to inform people they are going to die very soon), he became the head night librarian in no time.

And he finally found his soulmate.


Samael Whetstone

Samael isn’t a staff member, but he spends a lot of time in the library. His life story is complicated. For example, even calling it a life story is somewhat problematic. You see, Samael is a grim reaper, he never really had a life to begin with. People in helping professions in general have higher chances to suffer from occupational burnout, and if your job is technically a helping profession, but everybody hates it, and hates you for doing it, and you’re destined to do it by simply being the biological species you are, it’s practically inevitable.

Long story short, Samael, after millennia of ending lives and being hated for it, was completely exhausted, suffered a major breakdown and simply couldn’t go back. After recovering (for the most part), he settled down in Graveyard and wanted to do something creative for a change, so he took violin lessons. He became insanely popular violin virtuoso, with crowds of fans.

At first, he enjoyed being popular and seemingly loved by everyone, but he soon found that being popular as an idol is far from being truly loved, accepted and appreciated, and his overly zealous, constantly yelling fans littering the stage with lace-trimmed bloomers are tiresome more than anything else. And they don’t even care about his music, they only like him because he’s “so hot, omg!!!1!11!!”, whatever that means... He wanted a quiet refuge where being an idol wouldn’t mean anything. So he started hiding in the library.

There, he met Aldegar, and they found that they have a lot in common - death-related former jobs they couldn’t bear to do anymore, strong aversion towards noise… Aldegar showed Samael some great books, and Samael showed Aldegar some great sounds. They discovered literature and music thanks to each other. Then they started meeting in their favorite coffee shop once a week (it’s hidden in a narrow street in Old Town, and Samael’s fans have no idea it exists). Then twice a week. Then every day they could… And before they knew it, they were holding each other’s hand and they were very, very happy.

(Samael isn’t necessarily gay. He’s a grim reaper, so he simply doesn’t care about gender and sexual orientation. Grim reapers don’t discriminate.)

* * *

And now onto the way too long version (just the Library, so if you're only interested in characters, you don't have to read this)

The Library

The building is dark and cold, appropriately gothic in style. It is famous for its many stained glass windows, depicting scenes from Oddwickshire folk tales (which are rather grim and mysterious - true to the nature of the land they originated from, and half of them are ghost stories) or illustrating peculiar local flora and fauna.

The interior is decked out with dark wood encrusted with ornate carvings that match motifs on the windows, imagine english Arts & Crafts furniture with a bit of a Wonderland twist. There are lots of plants in all parts of the building, the roof is made of special glass and the attic is one big greenhouse. The reason is that a large part of library personnel are library fairies. They were originally forest fairies and developed into new species after spending centuries in the library (nobody knows for sure why they took such an intense liking to it), but they still need a lot of greenery. The roof greenhouse serves as their dormitory. They’re cute little helpers, and if you can’t reach to the top shelves, they will gladly get the books for you. But they can pull pranks, too. If you’re too loud, you’ll get one ‘shhhh’ from a human-sized librarian, and if you don’t comply, the fairies will make sure you behave.

The light in the library comes from lamps utilizing various glowing crystals from the Underground. Their light is safe for the books, they last for years and they don’t cost anything, so it’s a perfect solution.

You can find the usual set of sections here, but there are also sections with magic books. General Magic section has books on magic theory and basics of witchcraft for beginners. You’ll find more advanced and specialised books in the Higher Magic Works section (don’t skip the basics!), but the most interesting volumes are stored in Forbidden Vault. You can only enter there with script-tamers, specially trained staff members, because these books have not only information on magic, but also their own magical properties, and their magic mixes with magic that’s naturally seeping from the Underground, which can cause a major mess on regular basis. They need a lot of taming before you can read them. If you need to study the books in Forbidden Vault often, the library offers a course on combat techniques for magic reading, self-defense against feral tomes and survival in the case of book-emergency. If you take this course and pass the final exam, you can enter on your own.

Oddwick library is opened 24/7, because about a half of the population is nocturnal. The staff is divided into day librarians and night librarians. I do recommend staying up late and visiting the library at night at least once, it’s a mesmerizing ex²perience. Night staff consists of a variety of nocturnal creatures that usually stay hidden from light-dwellers’ sights, so the library presents a unique opportunity to get a close look. Don’t stare too openly, that would be rude, but they do tolerate a curious glance here and there, because they know they’re quite a spectacle. There are boogeymen, talking owls, a will-o’-wisp, some werecats and vampires, a few mares and lampads… And the night fairies are also different, with dark blue or purple skin and glowing eyes.