˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

what is my project about?

Ever played a dress up game in the 2010s, when the internet was booming?

You've got dark skin and really curly hair, and you really want to make a doll who looks just like you—your friends suggested you go on this cute website—you could even download your doll and show it off at school. Other girls have done it, and you've seen how they'll look online—why not? Upon going on the website, you try to look for an option to change the skin color. You tap the girl, and she only changes her shade three times.

Huh. That's strange.

The darkest skintone is a peachy-fair color, like the girls you see online, their skin freshly kissed by the sun, bleach-blonde hair wet with sea water. Those girls are so pretty.

But they don't look quite like you.

Well, that's fine. You'll settle with the darkest they have.

Upon going to the hairstyles category, they've got ten hairstyles that load quick, all in three colors—again. You're noticing a pattern! There's blonde, dark brown, and black. You think a black hairstyle will suffice, but the only hairstyle that looks like yours is the black wavy hair.

This hair goes down to her mid-back, hair flowing down her chest. The waves curl together towards the end, while the top of her hair is straight.

It's not like yours.

Your hair coils and tightens and zig zags together at the roots down to the ends. Your hair stops at your shoulders and flies free on its own, alive and bouncing together, strands bound so tight they could snap—like a spiral staircase, they work on their own in their own beautiful format.

You love your hair. You like her wavy hair as well. But you'll suffice.

You continue clicking through the beautiful outfits. You pick out a pink top and a pair of jean shorts, a beautiful outfit you'd definitely wear in the spring or summertime.

You click the checkmark. Done! You look at the girl you made and stare at her well. You come to realize, she looks nothing like you.

You settled for options that made her look something like you, all to find out, she looks nothing like you at all.

It's not fair. All of your other friends were able to make girls that looked just like them. Slowly, over the years you realize how little you're represented in media at all as a kid. All the princesses have fair skin and blonde hair, their eyes as blue as the sky. Your favorite doll was Barbie, but you only saw girls like you later on as you got older, as you grew out of those dolls.

The question that formed in your head as you grew older was clear as day:

"Why couldn't those girls look like me?"

The truth is, it wasn't her fault. Hundreds and thousands of girls grew up on the web making characters. They played MovieStarPlanet and Stardoll. Sometimes they even went on the internet archive as they got older and went on DollzMania. They went on websites like GirlGoGames and what have you, hundreds of websites tailored for girls, and yet not girls that look like them.

These girls—like me—are older now. We may not play those dressup games anymore or go back on those websites, but I am sure that many of those girls grew up liking to draw, paint, work on fashion, etc.

With the discontinuation of Flash in 2020, flash games went along with it. Girls and boys lost time on computers and switched to playing games primarily on a personal device—if they had one. But with the death of Flash meant games of the past were pretty much gone until further solutions were found in recent years.

I don't think this deterred anyone, because games made through HTML/JS live on. They're effective, easy to use, and work on several platforms.

Growing up as a girl, I was the prime example of that girl I referenced. But I know several girls were just the same. But the issue isn't that these games are limited, I believe the issue is what these games tell younger girls with darker skin tones, curlier hair, different eye shapes, different lip shapes. They tell these girls that they don't fit into these categories, that they aren't like the girls with the bleach-blonde hair and the peach-tan skin. You don't have long legs and you don't have a perfectly chiseled jaw—you don't have a doll face, so how can you possibly look like one of these girls, these pretty girl dollmakers you see online?

Add on top of that, the only Disney princess we had that looked like us was Tiana, then Moana came along. Pocahontas, Jasmine, and Mulan existed as well, however they were based off of inaccurate, or romanticized and sexualized stories of women—even real women. There are so many European princesses. How come we settled for only 4 girls who weren't European princesses?

How come we ask young girls of color to settle for less so, so often?

I created Dove Dolls almost to heal my generation of girls who grew up without options to create themselves, who had to compare features to the dolls they saw online, who always had to settle for less. My goal is to make my game as inclusive as humanly possible with the skills I had.

I actually scrapped an entire idea for my game. 50+ assets down the drain because I wanted to start again, this time differently, with another mindset going in.

I ran into a few pitfalls. One—I didn't know how to code. Two—other websites were too restrictive and confusing. But there was something that drew me to the niche web and I decided I'd have so much more freedom if I just did it—if I just went with it and learned along the way. That I did.

Please feel free to play. It's so fun and there are many ways to create a character—you'll never make the same character twice.

Have fun and thank you so much if you read all the way to here!

wip!

may fifteenth

only a few more days until the resource fair.. ;c oof.. not feeling really good at all. i dont know what happened, but i fell into a weird slump and now i just dont wanna edit anything. im trying my best to keep my work up because i don't have much time but i'm supposed to be uploading so many assets in five days just so it can be out and ready for these people to see.. :c just uploading all of the undergarments and all of the hair took me a full day. it's not an easy job and i also am getting nervewrecked about how my page looks--this one, to be exact.

i only have a few more days so i want to get as much done as humanly possible. doing this all on my own is a really difficult process but this is what i want to do. i just get a little lazy "(っ- ‸ - ς)ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

also i might need to change my font to a more readable one.

may seventeenth

im honestly realizing how much i need to actually cram into my dress-up game now. i have most of the back hairs done i just need to get the rest out, but the most important feature is, well, the clothes! i dunno what im gonna do, i've been stalling. it makes NO sense how much time it takes to upload all of these assets. being this is my first time ever making a website, i have very little experience and most of the stuff im doing im lowkey just learning it along the way and making mistakes and praying nothing goes wrong. lol

yesterday i was supposed to upload a few more assets but i got busy reading a few new books. good reads honestly :3 im happy. i used to be an avid reader but then i got caught up with writing. my previous visit to the CPEP, i almost finished an entire book in a single day. it was called my summer of pink & green or something like that. it was the girliest book there, but it was apart of a two or i believe three part series, because i had no clue what was going on until i went home and figured out what the book was about.

well, what am i even saying? this is ridiculously off topic. :/ let me continue uploading assets.

may nineteenth

huge update now that i've figured out how to make adding assets so much more easier. today is the nineteenth, so im squeezing things in really tight. my main goal for today is making sure everything works and is accessible--check updates for more info--and completeing my project page. its most important.

may twentieth

happy resource fair day. my website is pretty much ready to be shown, i dont really have much more to say. my sister, my mom, and my aunt have all made dolls for the game. my sister likes it, at least. she thinks everything is so cute. i've come a long way, and this website used to look very different from when i first made it, and it might continue to look different every few months as i learn. the next things i want to add are: nails, earrings, long skirts, another dress. thats about it. :)

june 6

after the resource fair i got so much fatigue like holy crap also this was super fun so i was thinking of making a personal website on nekoweb just for me literally i mean this site is also just for me and like anyone else who stumbles upon it but thats not even the point i just wanna do more. idk why i got so much fatigue tbf the end of the school year is coming up and its exam o'clock and i've been struggling, literally struggling, trying to beat these deadlines for work. also i got hacked lol so i lost so so so many assets (theyre here ofc but i had a backup on my laptop which is now erased) and saying it makes me wanna cry.. during resource fair i let so many people create their own dolls and everyone was so happy but after losing everything and a crucial part of my development of dove dolls was like, seriously something to me, lowkey heartbreaking and idk man, ofc im gonna continue doing what i do, but i lost a lot of information that was helpful to this site. im not gonna like do anything bizarre like scrap this entire thing but i was trying to add mlp assets (i finished drawing and coloring all of them, i just needed to add them in) but i've been so upset, so busy, that none of it really matters to me right now--is that crazy?

anyway, that's a lot to say. but im glad i was able to get this out on here. to be real with you, i dont know what im doing half the times. i just play around and hope something looks good and if it doesn't i try everything until it does. does anyone else do that when they're working? just mess around until something breaks? i do.

im so nervous to say anything to anyone on here. ive never been a really social person this was just supposed to be a me thing.

on nekoweb, im going to make a much more personal website. since this website is for school, i cant really say what i want to say because i have to do more for this passion project in my senior year and people are going to be looking at this. so i shouldn't do anything stupid or say anything i dont want my teachers or family to see... which is why i just need to make a new site on nekoweb, because i dont like feeling that way, like im censored on my own website.

but that is what i signed up for technically. i made this website, i knew what i was getting into, you know? should've known.

ive been getting back into homestuck. i read it a few years ago, got pretty far, and then things toppled on me in life. this is like my 3rd re-read of homestuck like what da flip

i love u if ur reading this. i love u sm. u deserve a kiss on ur mouth.

wip ;)

this is where im gonna put most if not all of my credits ;)

scripted neocities! dollcrds! codepen!

Status: feeling ok :3