Burned at Teatime, But Not How You'd Think: Living Dead Dolls Series 23 Jennocide by Mezco Toyz

Yes, that is her name. Yes, I heavily disagree with the choice. Just making that clear. I'm being a descriptivist and honoring the character's official name but I find it poorly-chosen for its inappropriate glibness and its irrelevance to her concept.

Warning for surreal doll gore.

Of S23, Jennocide is our second outside guest invited to the tea party (Betsy and Agatha presumably come from the one household, which is hosting), and she feels like the most classic "tea-party dolly" of the group to me for her straightforward fancy vintage look.

Jenn died after being given acid in her cup, which splashed and ate away the right side of her face. This is done with a really neat paint job in a really gothic kind of gore that works for me, and there's a great distressing surrealism invited by her framing as an authentic old doll for a tea party. It's always disturbing and weird when bones and guts exist under the surface of a seemingly inorganic being, and an old doll having blood and a skull is quite alarming.

Which brings me back to her name because it has nothing to do with her. It's just a grim twist on "Jennifer" the way she uses it. Acid is hard to make a name pun on, but what about Corrhoda? Dissolivia? Flora (as in "hydroflouric")?  Best of all, she could have just been called Sulfur as a nod to sulfuric acid and the sulfur/brimstone sigil spread across Living Dead Dolls imagery.

While I still find it distasteful myself, there is a character I think Jennocide's name could have been better-applied to: Onyx from Series 28, who's designed as a frilly supervillain with an eye patch and a ray gun. Someone seeking world domination fits the name better. Or S14's Jasper, who earnestly tried killing the entire human population...but it amounted to only killing herself because she was under the delusion that everyone else only existed within her mind and thought if she went, everybody did. Jasper's intentions make her one of the most objectively evil characters in the brand, and Jenn's name would suit her.

Also, you can't say her name aloud in conversation in any positive statement without looking really bad. 

Go here to read the first post in this series (Agatha), here for the second (Betsy), and here for the third (Teddy).

Jenn came opened. Her doll tray is split into two parts with a plastic cradle on top for her hat, just like Betsy. 

Her chipboard color-codes her with dark pinkish red through the highlighted colored text, matching her dress.

The poem reads:

What happened to Jennocide was a tragedy

There was acid in her cup instead of tea

Some say that is what dissolved her flesh clean

But if you ask me I say it was just the caffeine.

I love the absurd punchline of this poem, but the rhythm needs work.

What happened to Jennocide, none could foresee

Splashed up with acid instead of some tea

She screamed as it burned out her flesh nice and clean

The hostess said "Pipe down! It's just the caffeine!"

Here's her death certificate. She died on December 26, 1974. 

I hope she at least had a nice Christmas, if she celebrated.

I wasn't able to find anything significant about this death date. 

Her poem here reads:

A long slow burn with a venomous liquid

Once it melted her face she had died

But it is impossible to keep a good doll down

And she arose from the dead as Jennocide.

And a rewrite:

Corrosively burned by a venomous tea

It melted her down to the bone and she died

A doll done injustice can't stay in the ground

She rose from the dead, the grim Jennocide.

While LDD reminds the audience the dolls are literal dolls on several occasions, it makes natural sense in a series themed around tea-party toys for Jenn to be referred to as such. This poem also seems to confirm that she was probably named Jennifer before the accident because it sounds like she took the edgy name after death. It's also indicated as such that Jenn's acid mishap occurred before this gathering that S23 represents. The dolls all have different death dates but are vaguely alluded to as dying during this party as well, so I think Jenn's burn would be from her "first death". I want to make it so she gets disfigured during this get-together, though. That'll just demand some very specific camera framing in the storytelling.

For Jennocide, I thought of the most acidic possible tea pairing that wouldn't pose any harm to me.

My favorite plating so far of these servings. The lemons didn't like to stay, though.

In addition to Teddy's claw swipes and Betsy's bloody berry staining, Jenn's tea has created lemon burn holes in the tea master's glove!

There was a version of this table setting and tea where I went more ham on the lemon imagery, but I think what I had to work with turned out just right. The tea serving might end up being my favorite of all. I think the plating is great and the joke about the digestive biscuits is my best gag so far of any of these thematic tea bits.

Here's Jenn out of the box. While she had been removed from the backing, the elastic bands strapping down her hair for packaging were still present and dyed by her dress.

And with her hair loose.

Jennocide has a fancy white hat with some similarities to Betsy's, though the two are different shapes. Jenn's hat has an upturned rounded brim in front with more of a cylindrical top-hat-style cone, though the rosette on the front is almost, if not completely, identical to the one on Betsy's hat. 

The shape of Jenn's hat is more snug. Betsy's likes to tip forward or fall off. Like Betsy's, the hat is thin plastic with white flocking. I think the rosette should be more centered, but this copy's isn't.

Here's the two grand ladies.

Jennocide may be less of a presence, but she's got much more class and taste.

Each suits her own hat best, but here's a swap.

Jenn's hair is black, long, and wavy, and feels pretty nice. After combing out, it gained some volume. The hair also plays into Jenn's big design feature--her acid burn. The splash didn't only get her skin, but it obviously got some of her hair, too, as her hair is rooted with a big arc around the burn that pushes her hairline far back in that spot. With her hat on, you don't notice her burned-out hairline!

Jennocide's face has a stark half-and-half effect with the clean left side and the bloody burn line and bare skull on her right. 

On her left, she has a pretty typical Living Dead Dolls cartoon eye and harsh swooped brow. She has a bold black makeup wing on her eye, and her iris is royal blue. The eye outline is subtler than old LDD eyes, and the two eye reflections are also not typical, but they make the eye look even brighter and add contrast. I think it's meant to look like an inset glassy doll eye. (It'd have been great if any S23 doll had gotten a Resurrection to have a real inset eye treatment! Eyeless Agatha wouldn't be able to partake.) Jenn's nose is mostly intact, and her mouth is untouched, where she has wide red lips. What's left of her skin is very pale, but not at all stark white or grey.

On the right, a big line of bloody burned flesh surrounds the hole left by the acid. It's technically not actually stated this was a splash wound, but if she'd drank from the cup, she'd look much worse and this wound wouldn't make sense. Jenn would have no mouth or throat if she'd ingested, and that's probably the least of it. Then again, we all know dolls can't actually drink at their toy tea parties, so maybe it was always going to be a splash wound and Jenn just aimed wrong over her eye instead by mistake. The red paint is partially spray-like and pointillistic, and I'm guessing no two Jenns' paint jobs will look exactly the same because of this. The skull inside this line is bony-colored and features an empty dark eye socket--the right eye was destroyed. The socket paint overdraws the LDD eye sculpt for a more skull-like shape. The skull also features a really nicely airbrushed curve of bone contour coming off the eye socket, and it's remarkably effective at depicting dimension that isn't there.

It feels like you could brush the skull with your fingers and feel the ridge, but Jennocide has the normal LDD face sculpt. Nothing new. Makeup artists are all about contouring illusions for beauty, but this girl is demonstrating how you can use them for horror!

Similar features would be employed for the Resurrection variant doll of Chloe, who has skull-like decay paint and a hairline that deliberately shows some asymmetric forehead. Maybe the two dolls will meet and be friends someday.

Jenn is my first one-eyed LDD, but she won't be my last, I'm sure. 

While Jenn has a harsh eyebrow, I'm still inclined to view her as a pretty innocent victim of the tea party. She looks more confident and pretty than mean. 

Here-- (I can't believe my brain went this direction) I graphed it. I decided to plot where I think each Series 23 character would fall between the axes of being horrified by the events of the party and innocence/kindness. 

I'm aware I'm a nerd, but nothing has ever made me feel more like one than this.
And I hate math!

So I think Agatha would be the least innocent and the least horrified by the party because she planned for the guests to die and hated everybody there.

Betsy would be just as malicious as Agatha, but by contrast would be very horrified to have her plans for the party subverted by Agatha, because she's a demanding brat who's used to everything following her whims and she'd want the guests to die her way.

Teddy wouldn't be horrified by the party because he's stated to prey on the guests, and is about in the middle morally, because I see him as childishly selfish and mindlessly zombified, but not necessarily cruel by nature or intention. 

Jennocide is the most innocent and most horrified by the party. I have no evidence for her being a nice person, but the writing really seems to frame Jenn as taken completely off-guard by a horrific injury, so I think she was the biggest tragedy. She looks more like she's done with everything and maybe getting her nerve to fight back after what happened to her, not like she's truly malicious.

Quack strikes me as the most gentle and naive, and is far too gone to the substances she's ingested to be at all worried about anything going on around her.

Jenn is wearing a pearl necklace, a feature which was seen earlier on Series 5's Dahlia with a longer string of beads. 

I've worked with a Dahlia behind-the-scenes already for a later project, so I can report that neither doll's necklace is removable without popping off the head. For Dahlia, on the swivel body, that operation is lower-risk than it would be for Jennocide, whose ball joint could pop out instead of the head if I wasn't careful. I didn't find it worth trying on either. 

I forgot that Series 28's Ruby also has a strong of pearls, and I think hers is the same length/size as Jennocide. I've heard Ruby's are on an elastic string.

Jenn's dress is very classic-dolly with lace for the collar and trim, and it features a wide skirt with a high waist and puffed rounded sleeves. The color is a dark red with just a bit of pink/violet hue, and it opens pretty far down the back.

The dress caused staining on Jenn's arms since they had been touching the skirt for so long in the box. Dear lord, Mezco, couldn't you have done something about color fixatives at all? If you're dyeing most if not all of your own fabrics, then why not make sure it sticks?

Under the skirt, Jenn has a pretty short and small mesh petticoat as a separate piece, elasticated around her waist. Her painted underwear matches her dress.

Jennocide's socks are knee-length, which is an uncommon length for LDD, and she has standard black Mary Janes. The Mary Janes have the common problem of being too loose around the feet, even in socks, which means the doll can wiggle inside them and her weight wanting to pitch forward isn't at all counteracted by the shoes because she can lean forward within them. It's not too hard to pose her hips right so she won't topple, though.

Jennocide has a skull teacup like the others. 

While I wanted to make her left-handed for a change, her story makes it make more sense that she'd be a rightie, whereupon the splash of her acid cup landed on the same side. Even if Jenn had been a leftie, I'd assume post-death that she would avoid risk to the intact half of her face and keep her cup to her right afterward.

I was dismayed to discover no table leg after opening the box and double-checking. I messaged the seller just to verify that it was supposed to be missing and it was on me for not catching that, and yep. On me. I'm bumping into a couple of spots recently where I'm noticing missing LDD pieces a bit too late--more on the other soon. Unlike that other upcoming case, though (which I don't regret because there was an attractive novelty in that listing), the remedy for the tea table is a bit less of a hit to take. While it still requires buying a doll I don't need and cannibalizing a piece, Agatha goes pretty cheapish still in some parts, so another copy of her with the table leg wouldn't be too painful. And if her neck paint and hip tightness are better than the first Agatha, that could even replace the copy I have. I just don't relish buying a doll as busy work. Ugh. I could see how the table works with three legs and maybe makeshift a leg myself while completing this blog series, and then relegate the task of replacing the leg to a later date with holiday gift money to waste on the extra doll. I just worry Agatha's prices might rise by then.

Alternatively, I could find some round-ended clothespins and paint them black and replace the LDD pegs altogether because there might be options that feel tighter and more stable than what LDD provided. Or find a central one-leg column solution for the tabletop rather than corner legs. Part of me would still like to have a full set of official legs, but giving up on that is a lot cheaper!

Perhaps this suits Jennocide's vibe as the out-of-place doll in the party. Maybe she's the nicest of them, but also pretty rejected in this circle of characters, such that she isn't really wanted there, gets ragged on for not contributing a piece of the table through an honest mistake, and gets no sympathy for the acid mishap. Is Jenn trying her best to be friendly with people she should avoid at all costs? Is she put-upon and prone to misfortune?

Jennocide's tea was really nice, but I'm a freak who enjoys lemon juice straight, so many other people would find it a challenge. The tea definitely was tart and stung a little, but it was tasty. A LDD Jennocide tea might be just what the doctor orders when next my throat is sore or I get a cold (knock on wood that if I get sick, that's all I get this year...) Maybe the simplicity of lemon only, dialed up a ton, was what made the tea so successful. Jenn and Teddy's teas have been kind of easy rides for me, but oh geez I'm gonna make myself question things with Quack.

The cookies were a great joke but not necessarily a good pair for the lemon tea itself. I love digestives, but they're best with a black tea that has milk and sugar.

Now, some portraits.

And the group together so far. 

I wish there was progress made on the table here. I might bite the bullet and get the cheapest table-leg-bearing doll I can early next month so that can be corrected before Quack rounds off the group. I just don't know if I can bear it otherwise. I'll see how I'm feeling. Even if there are better alternatives to the LDD legs for standing the coffin lid, the semantics of at least having all four are important to me. It's an "if not sooner, someday" thing to address. 

And that's Jennocide! (and that's still a yikes!) And...this might be tantamount to heresy, but it's looking like Teddy is gonna end up my least favorite of this series. There's nothing wrong with him and he's not a bad doll, but he's simple and he's giving less in my book. Quack also promises to be everything he does but with more detail and personality. Jenn, meanwhile...she's gorgeous. Yes, her dress is stainy, and my choices got me an incomplete copy that will see me shelling out at some point or another for extra to get the table leg she lost. I don't like those. But the doll is otherwise wonderful. She's got one of the most mesmerizing and cool paint jobs of any LDD (she's right up there with Hush for me now on beautiful scary faces that just fascinate me) and I love how her hair plays into the gore with its unusual rooting. Her hat looks good and fits well, and her hair is pretty nice. She's very classical, very surreal, and very Gothic, and has a pretty fun outlandish gore design that sets her apart and brings some blood into the series in a fun way. I also like her facial personality for what survived. She's got the cartoony LDD retro glam on point, but with a bit of extra elegance and brightness that makes her face look fancier and more antique than dolls like Sadie and Lottie. I think she and Agatha have been my two most smooth experiences in this series so far. Betsy required leg repair and Teddy's tea setting caused a honey disaster I had to clean up. I gave myself time setting up for Jenn and didn't let myself feel rushed or frantic, and there were no roadblocks or interruptions to the process where I had to divert into fixing or cleaning something. Hooray for that!

If Agatha is the art of tea and Betsy is every horrible tea-party playtime tyrant, then Jenn is the perfect classic tea-party dolly guest...gone terribly wrong!