Wicked cartoon by Disney

...

Is this real?

No.
Well, it was made by a Disney artist just for fun.

Ah.

Nice art though, got a name on that artist.

Minkyu Lee

Nice art, but I hate it.

You didn't actually read it/saw it, did you?

I really like the art for this.

I don't really like Galinda's design. She should be more posh.

Did you like it dubs man? In all seriousness I'd like to hear from someone who liked it. I found it quite tedious and too full of the standard modern themes to be very interesting. Nothing really happened and the whole thing felt like an exemplar of subversion for the sake of subversion. But it's been a while and I never got the chance to discuss it with anyone seriously, so lay it on me.

Thanks.

It's not so much subversive as revisionist. The book is more edgy though I doubt you'll be interested either way. If you thought that "nothing happened" I'd imagine it's not for you entirely, every time I see someone use this phrase I imagine a child turning in his seat, waiting for cool robots to appear and start exploding things. I'm not gonna bore you with subtexts and allusions, after all - Kong Skull Island is out in theaters right now, don't miss it.

It's more a critique of the plot. It ties into my claim that it's subversive. Bear with me, because it has been many years (I am talking about the book here, I've never seen the musical).

In general, I read the events of the book as a gallery of grotesques. The "good" witch is really self-centered and vain. People are mean to Elphaba because she's different. Her main connections with other people are her warped relationships with her family and a meaningless sexual relationship with the captain. The Wizard of Oz is a venal tyrant. Dorothy is a plain, stupid farm girl who has no idea what she's doing. I may have missed some deeper allegory but the general theme seems to have been one of cynicism. There were no heroes and no moral center. The characters who would have been heroes in a conventional story all had selfish motives. Now, I will concede that there is some truth to that perspective. Family relationships, political theories, and heroes never match the Platonic ideal in reality. Now, if you got something out of a tale which highlights how some of the elements of fantastic stories would, in reality, be rather flawed then great. I can't really gainsay you. But it left me cold for two basic reasons.

First, I didn't feel that the author had anything very interesting to say. Best example, that whole stupid thing with the wizard being a tyrant just like Hitler and the animals being an oppressed minority just like Jim Crow drove me up the goddamn wall. How many fucking times have I seen that tired analogy? And the motherfuckers always have the audacity to act like they're being profound. If you can't be creative and least be interesting. Animal Farm did it right. Orwell didn't draw a crude little analogy where the pigs are just like Stalin. Orwell told a story which brought you there. We see the hopeful early days of the rebellion, we see the gradual compromises of ideals, and then only at the end does he lay the "it was impossible to say which was which" on you. Most of Wicked’s plot points felt like the opposite of that to me.

Which brings me to my second objection: subversion for the sake of subversion. I felt that the author shortcut the kind of storytelling work that Orwell did by parasitizing Baum's work. When Maguire wants to make a point he doesn't have to do the yeoman work of building something up first. He can just say "Dorothy" or "The Wizard of Oz" and the reader immediately has a preexisting impression to work with. He then uniformly proceeds to tear Baum's edifice down to serve his own thematic purpose. I feel like that's a cheap trick which doesn't earn any respect. If Maguire had told the exact same story using characters from my homebrew /tg/ campaign his technique would lose all impact. If it turns out that "Glinda the Good Witch" is actually kind of bad the reader probably cares a bit because they're familiar with the character. But if Maguire told you the 33rd Emperor of the Northern Imperium is actually a coward, who cares? I simply cannot respect a dark derivative work. If you're going to stand on someone else's shoulders you can't shit on them and have me take you seriously. I'd give Galaxy Quest as an example of the polar opposite of this sort of thing.

That's what I was trying to get at with "Nothing really happened". If all of the characters are corrupt or hypocritical then it's hard to have anything meaningful happen. Whatever other faults Frodo had, he resisted the temptation of the Ring long enough to destroy it. When Edmond Dantès relinquished his desire for revenge he grew as a character in a way that belies cynicism. I didn't see anything comparable in Wicked. Just the subversion of a lot of fantastic tropes using a very dark mirror.

Might just be a minor detail here, but those animals were reverting to dumb beasts. Elphaba did her revolutionary thing and nothing came of it because the cows she'd free had no fight in them - wouldn't even help her help themselves, probably because they knew they were heading toward dumb beast-hood.
Which all seems to me like the opposite message. Or a completely fantastical one.

I'd say that would fit into the general theme of cynical subversion which I didn't like. Even in the 1963 Civil Rights fantasy there are no heroes. And then you get killed by a corn fed white girl.

But my memories are a little vague. I kind of want to read it again to see if the distaste I had when I last set it down has colored my recollections of it. On the other hand if it sucked as much as I remember I'm not sure the game is worth the candle. Talk me into this user.

I don't see the problem here… You a faggot OP?

...

...

I've read it, it's worse than that. Leave it to a faggot to make sex seem like some nauseating horror.

Well, life is tragic and inevitably pointless, and even if you apply some meaning to it, at least some people will lose and die unfulfilled. Like Elphaba.
I really liked it. Good prose, light on the narrative causality - which is a big plus for me, and you might find it not quite a degenerate as you seem to remember it.
But if you're iffy about it, there's no particular reason to force yourself. What do you want to read? What do you like?


I'm pretty sure Glinda isn't exactly a heroine.

Well he didn't seem to remember the scene where a little boy springs a boner over his half-drowned half-brother getting mouth-to-mouth so no I think he will.

I seem to have forgot that too.

lame as shit, waste of good art

This

that's a pretty good analysis, and I feel similarly about most of it. however, I believe it's a net benefit that it exists, because the musical is fun to listen to and tells a more hopeful story.


I like the idea of Glinda and Elphaba having a tinge of romance in their relationship. it's almost better because it would never come to be, adding to their tragedy. plus you can just have them form straight relationships later, implying it was a phase.

The musical was bad enough, there's absolutely no god damn way to translate the novels into a family friendly story without tossing the entire "Wizard of Oz but DARKER" premise out the window. The best part of it was how not only did every single good deed have horrible immediate consequences, but that the long-term consequences of everything snowballing together caused a genuinely happy ending for Oz as a whole. Sticking to just Elphie's story is shit, because it ends with her dying pathetically and achieving absolutely nothing.

it doesn't even annoy me, it's just dull and I can't fathom why anyone would be interested in it

I thought Return to Oz was like "Wizard of Oz but Darker".

I wish someone would adapt Phillip Jose Farmer's "A Barnstormer In Oz".

WEW LOOK AT THIS HOTHEAD