About Me

Hi! Thanks so much for taking an interest in my weird little site. I'm Vernon, your typical weeby millenial trans man. I love all things cute and pastelly and it's taken me a number of years to be okay with that :P

I guess a major thing with me is that I'm definitely some flavor of neurodivergent, and I am physically fucking incapable of doing anything in half measures. Or in other words-- I am a man of extremes. Anything I love, I love hard. For example, I started making bento for my partner every day because it's the only way I can really manage to express how I feel for her. And you know, people think it's weird that I do that, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me. Like, what, you want me to just make her lunch once a week? How is that supposed to express how I feel? What is that supposed to say about my devotion, my want to stick by her when times are tough? Anyway, that's just an example of how I do things: very, very obsessively.

Being an obsessive person, the social media thing was just horribly, overwhelmingly toxic for me. I'm a former arts professional, and I recently retired from that field to go back to school and find a new career that doesn't involve me selling my soul to social media. There's never been a good century to be a working artist, but damn-- this shit definitely sucks in a unique way history has never seen.

What with the career change and everything, it's been stressful as all hell, and I'm finding myself turning to my hobbies as comfort.

I've always wanted a personal site to share my inner world on, ever since I stumbled upon all those neat geocities and angelfire sites back in the day. Modern social media hasn't been good to my hobbies-- it feels like the BJD hobby in particular got pretty rabidly consumerist as time went on and social media got more and more about things you can buy and how fast and cheap you can get those things.

I guess I want to bring the weird DIY spirit back to my participation in the hobby. I want to keep making cool stuff for my dolls and not feel like I need to participate in the attention economy rat race nonsense. I guess that's the kind of spirit I want to encourage in other people-- make the thing, learn a skill, be willing to suck as long as you're making things with soul.

Soul. Surely I can't be the only one that reflexively recoils when that word and dolls pop up in the same train of thought. Like, you remember all those forum threads? "Do you believe your doll has a soul?" Or even worse, "These weirdos think their dolls have souls." Well, I certainly cringed at all that stuff when I was younger, but now as an old and decrepit weirdo who's been called delusional for much stupider reasons-- Yeah, you know what, dolls have souls. It's a soul created by the human hand, definitely, but that's a soul, and my hands are here to express those souls when I customize.

I think a lot of what I like about the Build A Bear community is all the creative little goblins doing their thing, expressing that soul through their own hands. So, even though I'm relatively new to the space (sadly didn't grow up with BaB like others have) I feel like I've been here for decades. So thank you, BaB customizers, for being my kind of people. :D

So-- wow, I wrote that all in one sitting and I would sincerely like to thank you if you read all that.

Contact Me

If I managed to tell you about myself without scaring you away, and you'd like to be internet friends, feel free to reach out! My email is chef@catboykitchen.com and my discord is saica.