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Sorry I haven't been writing this week. I never get trivial colds-- unless I KO my immune system by spending a couple of weeks in a manic daze, getting too little sleep and expending too much energy on mental tasks. Should have remembered the other consequence of college finals week when I was comparing it to Yuletide writing season.
*blows nose* Yeah, so I'm a little under the weather.
Anyway. I'm seven books into the Oz series now, and seriously curious about whether there is any analytical commentary available about them. I mean, fan-level commentary, not scholarly works attempting to frame them as political allegories, or whatever. Attempts to explain (in-world) the wobbly inconsistent elements of Baum's fourteen-book canon (not including the rest of the "Famous Forty", or the multitude of Oz-ian apocrypha written since they started going out of copyright, ranging from additional children's books to more adult entries). Even attempts to real-world-ize them-- to come up with "reasonable" (as far as you can get with magic) explanations for the weirder bits.
Because right now? My brain keeps insisting that Glinda has to be sneakily evil, and thanks whatever source she gets her powers from every morning that Dorothy dropped in and eliminated her only serious competition, thus paving the way for a young girl with every reason to be grateful and attentive to Glinda's advice to take the throne and start running Oz the way Glinda wants it. I like Ozma. Lots. But some of her decisions, especially in Patchwork Girl, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and her attitude has definitely shifted since her introduction in the series.
The next seven books might change my opinion again. But right now? Yeah, I can definitely see how the tarnished O.Z. of "Tin Man" evolved from the "perfect" fairy-tale world of Baum's books.
~
*blows nose* Yeah, so I'm a little under the weather.
Anyway. I'm seven books into the Oz series now, and seriously curious about whether there is any analytical commentary available about them. I mean, fan-level commentary, not scholarly works attempting to frame them as political allegories, or whatever. Attempts to explain (in-world) the wobbly inconsistent elements of Baum's fourteen-book canon (not including the rest of the "Famous Forty", or the multitude of Oz-ian apocrypha written since they started going out of copyright, ranging from additional children's books to more adult entries). Even attempts to real-world-ize them-- to come up with "reasonable" (as far as you can get with magic) explanations for the weirder bits.
Because right now? My brain keeps insisting that Glinda has to be sneakily evil, and thanks whatever source she gets her powers from every morning that Dorothy dropped in and eliminated her only serious competition, thus paving the way for a young girl with every reason to be grateful and attentive to Glinda's advice to take the throne and start running Oz the way Glinda wants it. I like Ozma. Lots. But some of her decisions, especially in Patchwork Girl, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and her attitude has definitely shifted since her introduction in the series.
The next seven books might change my opinion again. But right now? Yeah, I can definitely see how the tarnished O.Z. of "Tin Man" evolved from the "perfect" fairy-tale world of Baum's books.
~
