Building Families

When I decided to do a Barbie blog and thus spare people on the rest of my social media, I knew I wanted to do stories.  Most of my favorite Barbie blogs do that, with great variety!  Some are silly, some downright adult in content, and I wanted to join in on the fun.  

  I've not figured out how to divide this blog into sections like most of them.  They generally have an area for story lines, for character lists, and the like.  I found the idea of building Barbieville all at once intimidating.  Stephen King once said "The story is the boss", so I decided to simply let Barbieville evolve as the stories demanded.  

 At first, the only family I had developed was the Pike family.  Main characters, if you will.  A few of the family members I decided on had official names and I tend to stick to those.   Pike could be the dad's first name, so I had to decide if he'd stay Christopher and answer to his last name.  My other options were O'Dair (the twins), McKessie (Taylor), Roberts (Stacie), and Flintstone (Fred).  

I decided to make them a blended family since there are clearly two races represented.  It's been my experience that mixed-race humans do not remain so clearly one or the other.  I toyed with the idea of ex-wife drama, but that's been done to death.  Candy, Pike, and Rose-Grace love the kids and will not put them through the wringer. 

So Barbieville began with one big happy family.

The Smiths happened to give us a peek into Rose-Grace's life between husbands.  Since John was a widower, I found a couple of brats who looked like him.  I used the Dad's surname, as I had with the Pikes.  Roxy is technically a Stacie, so both she and Kelly should be Roberts.  There's some history between him and Pocahontas Nedakh to be explored.  Will she be the new Mrs. Smith?

The Eatons are named for the eldest son.  The only one with a character surname was Four (Tobias Eaton).  Esmeralda never had one.  Both the younger boys are named for former Mattel dolls that never had one.  Marcus was named for Four's dad in Divergent - but he's a much better person.  They evolved to further the KBV storyline.

The Montez family was almost accidental.  Joe was mentioned in a bit of dialogue and I didn't want another widower.  Gabrielle and Courtney were already sisters, at least in my head.  I noticed Courtney has very dark auburn highlights.  Batgirl has auburn hair!  Maybe her maiden name was Barbara Gordon.  Jenny joined on a whim.  

Violet needed a last name.   Her daughter Raven should make an interesting contrast - I see her as very easy going.  So they are the Baxters.  Raven is very firm in my mind as an only child, but does Violet have a spouse?  (BTW, the doll is the main character of "That's So Raven".)  

These two had a very sisterly vibe in the Disney films and I knew I wanted to bring that to Barbieville. When my Kida Nedakh died of Head Transplant complications, I made them her daughters.  Pocahontas left college to take over her mother's storyline amusement park and take custody of younger sister Nakoma.  Their father has always been absent.

Claudia Kishi is my favorite character in the Babysitters Club books and I named the Babysitter Inc Asian for her.  Ben is raising his little sister.  Why?  That remains to be seen.

These are my characters, short Peeta Mallark, with surnames but no assigned kin.  Midna was originally Sunburst of the Fairytopia line, so I made that her last name.  Brent Spiner had no name when I got him, but reminded me of the actor. Ken's official last name is Carson,  Hikaru Sulu runs a greenhouse - botany was a hobby of Sulu's on the original Star Trek. 

 Tris Prior, Mariko Nakano, Alex Russo, and Skipper Roberts in back.  Charmaine (originally Sharpay) Evans and Wendy Darling flank Wilma Flintstone.  What will become of them?  What will become of the Barbieville citizens without surnames?  Only The Story - The Boss - knows for sure.

**Of course, the disclaimer.  My characters share only faces and names with those of the copyrighted characters.  Well, maybe some personality traits.**