Putting the "Teatime" in "Teatime Tangents and Toys"--A Scary Tale Twyla!

It's kinda nice to be back to a little Monster High!

I didn't collect a lot of Ever After High dolls. While I enjoyed its ambitious narrative commentary about tradition vs. independence in forging one's path and reckoning with outside forces in your life, I was more into the aesthetic spooky edge of Monster High, and its wild variety of face and body sculpts. I enjoyed the EAH extravagance and aesthetic to a point, but only rarely to a point of full love. In how completely EAH stepped to the side to carve out a divergent identity, I found it to have sacrificed most of the appeal I found in its monster sister. Lavish costume detail is great, but with the tradeoff of low body variety and identical pancake faces, it didn't quite hit me as the right balance for the EAH dollcrafting budget. 

But of all the Ever After High characters, it was definitely the Wonderlandians that I found the most appealing. (I'm very attached to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass, and feel comfortable calling them formative favorite books.) I personally wouldn't class the Alice stories as fairy tales. They're newer than many of the stories in that umbrella, and they're really fantasy novels for children. Indeed, Alice was crafted in defiance of the moralism rampant in the craft of children's stories, and instead seems to direct its message at critiquing the behavior and standards set by adults! But I welcomed Alice's presence in EAH because the Wonderland characters had some pretty strong designs and Madeline Hatter was probably my favorite character in the fiction. 

I never had a doll of Maddie,
but that can change!

I liked that the Wonderland girls all had shorter bodies to nod to John Tenniel's distorted big-headed short caricature art style. Signature Lizzie Hearts is still my EAH grail doll, and probably the most perfect character design I can name from the brand.  And the Wonderlandians were the majority of my very small EAH collection-- I owned signature Kitty, Courtly Jester, and Carnival Date Alistair and Bunny (though that was due to a sale more than anything).  

A display of some EAH dolls. Now, the only things I still
own in this picture are Courtly's playing card diary, and
the Disney Alice LEGO minifigure.

I thought Alistair Wonderland was a very boring son of Alice, and it disappointed me that Mattel were unwilling to make Bunny and Kitty more animalistic, seeing as we had humanoid animal characters all over Monster High. Indeed, that likely made them decide not to go as far with EAH's characters, but I think that was a mistake.

So, spoilers: we're not reviewing an EAH Wonderland doll. But a piece from one of them is the impetus of this post. I try to maximize the utility of my doll-part purchases, so that I'm not throwing most of a lot of items aside just to use one dress or belt or so. And when I decided to get some Bunny Blanc stock to clothe my Rochelle (post coming soonish), I thought about those Victorian thigh-high cotton-tailed rabbit boots...

...and you can probably get a pretty good guess which monster I thought would wear them well, can't you?

So, anyway. Remember Scarily Ever After? 

This was a Monster High specialty doll line consisting of three of the main ghouls cast in the role of fractured fairy tale characters, with the twist on each tale coming from their nature. Frankie as Threadarella left a whole foot at the Prince's ball--not just a slipper. Draculaura as Snow Bite could never see her reflection to know she was the fairest, so the evil queen had no reason to feel threatened and just let her be. Clawdeen as Little Red Riding Wolf was both the girl and the wolf (EAH soon afterward lifted this dynamic for Red and the Wolf's child Cerise Hood)! 

So I was thinking...why not "Twyla as Malice in Wonderland?" She's got a rabbit association, is Victorian-themed, we know as of G3 that she drinks tea, and her domain is dreams, and Alice is the most famous story to be revealed to take place entirely in a dream! Twyla can be aware of the situation she's in, and turning the dream into a nightmare to get past every obstacle she encounters!

Here's my primary reference, of course-- Alice as indelibly illustrated by the cartoonist John Tenniel, whose work is essentially inseparable from Carroll's text:

For a base, I thought a new doll might be unneeded. I thought my restyled Coffin Bean Twyla, with her unusual nude lip color, could work well if I put a skirt over her waist (I ordered one of ultra-budget Raven's--Tea Party, to be exact!) and gave her some different accessories.

Could she be Alice?

I didn't think I needed to be so faithful to Alice's classic pinafore dress, given how the Scarily Ever After costumes are more modern, spooky, character-specific, and interpretive. 

With her wearing bunny boots, I needed to figure out how to make Twyla land as a representation of Alice in specific while still including other famous Wonderland iconography. This idea is what encouraged me to get a set of Bunny stock that didn't include the base doll or the hat headband, since I thought the headband would skew Twyla too much toward the White Rabbit, and another top hat from EAH would make her look too much like the Hatter. I settled on letting her use her Haunted bow headband, since the hair ribbon is a classic Alice staple and Twyla already had a piece made for her in that flavor. For earrings, I ordered Cerise's Hat-Tastic teacup and teapot set, which are silver in Twyla's style. Unfortunately, we've yet to see any earrings of straight-up doors from MH or EAH, but Spectra's had a Skullette key earring that would work well, so I decided to get that to pair opposite one of the tea earrings. That probably works better than a door one would, since a key is something specific to Alice's story, but also works well in line with Twyla's door-and-window boogeyman motif. It fits Twyla perfectly while pushing her into the fantasy role.

As I waited for pieces to arrive, I started having second thoughts about the idea. I think the Coffin Bean romper was a suitable basis for an Alice costume, but I wasn't feeling so sure about the doll herself. The hair was so dark, and I was starting to think the light-haired 13 Wishes signature version would feel more Alice-like, especially because the other SEA dolls didn't feel quite so stylistically divergent from their characters. So I decided to buy a nude signature Twyla to build the doll on. I then stole the romper from my Coffin Bean doll, leaving her a little bereft. However, since my New Scaremester Twyla project had given her a bedtime look and a night-out look and I was also stripping down my Haunted Twyla to turn into a new character, I thought I could put the out-of-use bedtime costume onto Coffin Bean now, plus the bed-shaped Haunted shoes that'd actually fit her. And it worked!

Somehow, the light violet tone works well with the dark blue-toned head and hair of the base doll, and something about it grounds her and makes her face look less weird. With the outfit being lighter, her face looks more typical of Twyla to me--her nude lips don't make her look as starey and spooky. Not that those were bad things, but redressed here, Twyla feels more like herself, and the bedtime look suits the nude lip color. I also have no problem with the shoe change removing her from the Dead Tired doll line's aesthetic, since the bed shoes kick ass and she can actually wear them due to their being sculpted for the little-sister foot shape.

I decided instead to order this nude 13 Wishes Twyla to modify.

The Twyla I ordered appealed to me for multiple reasons:

• She was a complete body.
• This edition had already-pierced ears.
• Her face seemed well-screened.
• Her hair didn't look like a gluey disaster.
• Her bangs had an angled split in the middle that differentiated her look from other 13 Wishes Twylas and served, with her boiled hair, to give her a unique hairstyle.

If I'd wanted Twyla's hair to scrupulously match Alice's in the Tenniel illustrations, my only option would be her G2 School Spirit doll, which is her only release with hair that is rooted with no part and no bangs. I'd be able to achieve the swept-back long hairstyle of Tenniel's Alice that way, but for multiple reasons (faceup tweaks, hair color tweaks, and gappy-jointed body), I don't want to use a G2 Twyla on principle--not even rebodied on a G1. Disney's animated Alice has parted bangs, so that's a valid look, and Twyla is allowed to retain part of her signature hair in this role. 

The base Twyla has some yellowing I'll need to take care of, but that should be pretty simple. 

Here are the pieces that arrived to clothe her.

I hadn't noticed when ordering, but the ruffled pink Briar Beauty teacup and the Tea Party Raven skirt were sold by the same person, so the two items arrived together in the same package!

Here's Twyla dressed up. The teacup and headband will have to be repainted, I think, and the Spring Unsprung Kitty bracelet I tried here doesn't work, and neither does the belt from the same doll. 

I combed Twyla's hair forward a little over her body to be more Alice-y, and then I took those front sections and cut them short to make that shape permanent.

I wasn't sold on the blend of the skirt and the romper, since the skirt has a lot of reddish violet that makes them seem to clash with the bluer top, plus the trim at the bottom looks bad in silver. I took these pieces downstairs to paint some violet dashes onto the top of the romper and turn the waist, cuffs, and hem black to make the costume feel more cohesive. I think the chest mesh on the romper does the job of balancing the shade of mint seen with the feathers on the skirt, so that's fine.

It's still not a perfect blend to me, but it's definitely more successful than it was.

For the faceup, I did want to make some changes to give this edition more standalone worth, so I thought I'd replicate the nude lips I gave to Coffin Bean, and see how that worked out. Alice is a seven-year-old girl in the original story, so I think it'd make sense for Twyla to look less made-up in her role. I also painted the headband black for a more classic look, and painted the teacup white to match Twyla's colors more.

And there was one last thing to do. 

Sometimes, the idea that starts you on a project isn't going to survive in the final product, and that was what I found with the boots. While the Victorian theme and bunny tails made me think of an Alice Twyla to start with, they just don't come together at all for an Alice outfit and it seems silly now that I ever thought they could work. Alice wears tights and strapped shoes; that's her look, and I instantly found my opinion of the doll improved when I brought out Twyla's blue Coffin Bean platform Mary Janes instead. Paired with Scaris Rochelle's translucent stripy tights from another lot I ordered, it made for a great shadow-Alice design. Here she is finally looking proper.

It's only correct that she gets to be the new owner of the off-brand "Fairy Tales" EAH stand since she's actually fairy-tale themed! As you can see, the white Dustin I painted for my New Scaremester Twyla gets to be hers now, too. Because obviously. 

It's hard to see, but the silver earring is a teapot pouring into a cup.

The great fun of any toy depicting Alice is the fact that it'll never able to be considered anything but life-size! Given all the size-shifting escapades she endures in her adventures, any environment is plausible for her, and you can play with macro and micro proportions.

Much too small.

I wouldn't dare drink from this giant cup; look what's already happened!

Rather too large.

And I decided to take Malice out for a couple of photos with our mushroom lawn stake. 

This is my favorite photo of her.

But I had to try this out too.

And here's Malice and signature Twyla next to each other.

I'm pleased with this little side project. It was a parts shuffle among my Twylas that worked out well-- what I did with Coffin Bean was interesting, but not perfect, and that doll looks good in the unused pajama outfit from the NS doll I redressed. I think Malice looks plausible for the Scarily Ever After line, and though she's not super flashy or big as a presence, I think it would be hard to make that right for Alice and her concept as a Victorian boogeyman with a pet bunny aligned too perfectly with an Alice cosplay to pass up the chance to make it so. My favorite ghoul and my favorite story unite!

I should hopefully detail my work with Rochelle Goyle soon--I'm just waiting on one parts order I put off for a while out of distraction.

How ironic is it that the first Twyla post I make that doesn't turn into a huge rabbit hole is directly related to the origin of the phrase "down the rabbit hole"? 

How perfectly nonsensical.