itch.io

Ah! thank you for reading, and thank you for asking these questions! It's great to have insight into how readers interpret what we wrote and what we ended up leaving out.

There are answers to your questions in my head that I guess did not come through in the text... most notably the details about Garbage Doll's becoming. I really regretted not having the space to do more than hint at the backstory and the origins of Garbage and Neon's relationship, and maybe a prequel would be in order. But  might never make one, so if you're curious about what I was trying to put in the subtext [spoilers ahead]:

Garbage and Neon were involved for a while, when both of them were more human. They were girlfriends who did hypnokink stuff. Neon, who wanted a doll, had talked to Garbage (when lucid) about turning her into one, and Garbage, who was having like a rough family life, trouble with school etc, transitioning, found the idea attractive but had not officially decided. Then Garbage attempted suicide, and Neon decided to save her by making her a doll. It's not right to hypnotize women into dollhood, and Neon could get in trouble with the other witches. However, I think she didn't actually hypnotize Garbage at that moment and instead took advantage of the fact that Garbage was vulnerable and already conditioned to go along with whatever Neon wanted. Garbage doesn't actually have a clear memory of what happened.  

This sort of reflects other Empty Spaces stuff we've read. Many witches are benevolent and seem to live to provide their dolls with whatever they need to feel fulfilled as dolls. Some are flat out evil and abuse their dolls (and some dolls seem to want that).  I wanted something in between for Neon Cat... she's kind of self centered, she thinks she knows best, she does what she wants, her dolls are there for her to use. She does care about them, but once she feels like she's failed them she shuts down and avoids thinking about it. 

(I think in other ES stories the witches often also use real magic. It's not really codified and it's often not the focus of the stories.)

But yeah, I couldn't figure out how to get all of that in at the time since it only really came up during the climax and I didn't want to slow things down too much. Oh well!

Oh, and about the scissors: Garbage Doll needed specifically a witch's scissors to cut the magical stitches on its mouth which is why it didn't buy a cheap pair from the store. The scissors in the medicine cabinet are, after all, the ones Neon used to repair Garbage Doll when they were living together.  (Also, you can't order a hat and wand online, or perhaps you can? But Neon Cat went to a local magic supply shop to get replacements.)

But yeah! Thanks again for reading! Glad you liked the art :)