Subject: Ah, Oz.
Author:
Posted on: 2009-06-16 07:57:00 UTC
I agree with Trojie. Personally, the Oz I see in my head is a combination of musicalverse and the original Oz written by Baum. Am not a huge fan of the book Wicked.
If any of you have read Wicked (by Gregory Maguire), what's your opinion on that book? I'm not sure I like it.
I saw the musical recently, and I quite enjoyed it, until my friend compared it to the book. Of course, the musical cut out a lot, and I for one am rather glad it did. Because even though Wicked is a published work, it is still technically a fanfiction. In my honest opinion, it kinda ruined the Ozverse. But what do you guys think?
There have been other books like that. Susan Kay's Phantom springs to mind.
Every movie adaptation is a fanfiction to some degree - it just happens to be in a different medium. I can't think of any film-of-a-book that is exactly the same.
Nor, for that matter, can I think of any novelisation of a film that doesn't expand on it the way a fanfic would. (Or not, thinking of one HORRIBLE movie-tie-in in particular... *wanders off grumbling*)
...but is also singing "Where There's A Whip, There's A Way". Because it's a very silly song.
I agree with Trojie. Personally, the Oz I see in my head is a combination of musicalverse and the original Oz written by Baum. Am not a huge fan of the book Wicked.
When something is published, it becomes a Word World. And therefore the Oz of Wicked is canon. Its own canon, though, rather than being considered the same canon as the original novel/s by Baum, or the film.
I believe however that the Wicked book and musical are considered different 'verses of the same canon, from what I've gleaned.
Sedri would be your expert here. But my feeling is that it's not fanfiction, it's a Word World of its own by virtue of being published and by having so much independant canon and backstory that the original novel or the film.
I'm halfway through it now, actually, and I have to say I enjoy it, but that's probably got a lot to do with the fact that Maguire has done (a LOT better) for the Ozverse something similar to what a lot of my fic does to the Narniaverse - try to shoehorn adult considerations and politics into a canon written for children :)
From a fanfic and PPC standpoint, it's definitely a Word World of its own: Baum's work was out of copyright when Maguire wrote it, and it's published - thus, it is fully-fledged canon. There is a clear differentiation between the musicalverse and the bookverse for fanfic writers, however, those are considerd Wicked fanfiction, not Oz fanfiction.
However, from a story-reader's viewpoint, it can be either. Generally I find that those who didn't like Wicked in one way or another consider it Published Fanfiction and therefore ignorable, which is perfectly valid. I was never a big fan of Oz before Wicked, and so I consider Baum's work to be more of a background from which details can be drawn to give substance to the Wickedverse, but which is not strict law, meaning I can ignore the 'childish' and ridiculous aspects of the original Oz books that I don't like. So it works both ways.
Also bear in mind that there is quite a difference between Baum's Oz books and the 1939 film with Judy Garland which most people know - in the book, the ruby slippers were silver, Glinda was Witch of the South, and the Witch of the West was a one-eyed coward with perfectly normal skin. Maguire's Wicked is a combination of the two which leans more heavily towards Baum's book, while the musical is extrapolated almost exclusively from the '39 movie. So you basically have two parallel works of Published Fanfiction - one in books, one acted on film or in theatre - and four different potential 'verses, of which fans can theoretically pick any.
To answer your first question: I personally don't like Maguire's novel very much, for almost the same reason that Trojie seems to like it: Maguire seems to be trying way, way too hard to make an adult world - there's way too much unecessary sex and violence in the Wicked book for my taste. Butt the musical definitely isn't written for children - there's torture, several main characters die, and the love song verges on explicit - and I like that. I like the adult-but-still-soft version in which Elphaba was someone I could like. Of course, the fact that I saw the musical first will have a great deal to do with it. :)
…for Lost in Austen? If so, glaurung it all!
However we can solve that problem by no-one watching enough of it to become an expert and therefore it's unlikely anyone will be assigned a mission there, right? :)
On you don't know the Flowers... >:D
Eragon missions :P
I made my way through the first episode in a determined attempt to be fair. I believe that you, Trojie, were the unfortunate person who heard my screaming rant afterwards. :P
Poor Sedri. I'm not even going to try,
The four 'verses' interact a lot, obviously; sometimes people write in their author's notes that their fanfic is book/musical based, except for this detail or that - like Elphaba's allergy, Fiyero's tattoos, et cetera. They're not exactly crossovers, but they're not really the same world, either. It's hazy.