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Sell, you little shits! Sell!
Mar. 5th, 2013
I am this close to giving up on specialized comic creation software and making my own templates and such in PhotoShop Elements or equivalent. It seems impossible to find a piece of comic creation software that is user-friendly, robust, easily customizable, up-to-date and backed with actual tech support.
The Doll Maker by Sarban, take three
Mar. 5th, 2013 06:06 pmI just finished reading my Tartarus edition of Sarban's Doll Maker a few moments ago. I enjoyed it as much this time around as I did when I read it the first time. This reading actually increased my appreciation for the story because I realized that the author takes protagonist Clare's travails seriously.
As I've noted before, The Doll Maker has a simple, trite plot, in which an Innocent Girl falls in with a Devious Older Dude and becomes Swept Away with Infatuation, which leads her to do some Truly Stupid Shit, which she must save herself from in an Act of Maturity. Lonely and naive, Clare welcomes attention from Niall the power-hungry doll maker. He grooms her to become his latest puppet, while she interprets his caressing focus on her as love, which she, in turn, believes that she feels for him. Sarban demonstrates so clearly the deleterious nature of Niall's predatory interest that I started yelling at Clare, "Don't hang out with the creepy man!!" [She didn't listen.]
Despite Clare's obvious cluelessness, she does not come across as painfully stupid. This is because Sarban does not use a third-person omniscient viewpoint, which would permit him the Godlike distance from which to judge Clare. Instead, he employs a third-person limited perspective, which looks in from outside, but perceives only what Clare perceives. This viewpoint, free from sententious authorial asides on Clare's foolishness, treats Clare's infatuation, peril and self-rescue with exactly as much gravity as she herself experiences it. I really appreciate that because it's very very rare to find a naive young woman taken seriously as a protagonist, especially by a male author.
As I've noted before, The Doll Maker has a simple, trite plot, in which an Innocent Girl falls in with a Devious Older Dude and becomes Swept Away with Infatuation, which leads her to do some Truly Stupid Shit, which she must save herself from in an Act of Maturity. Lonely and naive, Clare welcomes attention from Niall the power-hungry doll maker. He grooms her to become his latest puppet, while she interprets his caressing focus on her as love, which she, in turn, believes that she feels for him. Sarban demonstrates so clearly the deleterious nature of Niall's predatory interest that I started yelling at Clare, "Don't hang out with the creepy man!!" [She didn't listen.]
Despite Clare's obvious cluelessness, she does not come across as painfully stupid. This is because Sarban does not use a third-person omniscient viewpoint, which would permit him the Godlike distance from which to judge Clare. Instead, he employs a third-person limited perspective, which looks in from outside, but perceives only what Clare perceives. This viewpoint, free from sententious authorial asides on Clare's foolishness, treats Clare's infatuation, peril and self-rescue with exactly as much gravity as she herself experiences it. I really appreciate that because it's very very rare to find a naive young woman taken seriously as a protagonist, especially by a male author.
My dolls' dolls need dolls.
Mar. 5th, 2013 09:16 pmIn case Isabel's dolls need dolls, I have found a tutorial about making an extra super minuscule doll out of a toothpick or 1/16th inch diameter dowel. The scale is approximately 1:144 scale or 1:12 scale for 1:12 scale!