#Gregory maguire

[unpopped-cherry]

Favorite panel from the Wicked graphic novel. Sadly there is no artist's depiction of the philosopher's club 😮‍💨

[thestarlightforge]

SHE’S— I CAN’T 😂

😂😭💀

[voy-por-nuevos-caminos]

nanny talking to elphaba and saying this like oh they were CLOCKED. by everyone apparently

‘everyone knew you were gay’

[the-clock-of-the-time-dragon]

I've seen a lot of people lately harping about how "Wicked isn't canon to the Oz universe", "it's just glorified fanfiction", etc., and I can't express how silly that is, and how annoyed it makes me every time I hear it, lol. Baum's original Oz books were never meant to be some canonical series — they contradict each other constantly; Baum called it a "fairy story" with loose cohesion at best; and it only became a series at all because the first one got popular enough that Baum felt a duty to the fandom to keep making more (even after he had wanted to end it). And the 1939 film is every bit as much "fanfiction" as Wicked — it changes the story in both major and minor ways, including a complete shift of framing (i.e., making Oz into a dream rather than a real place).

Maguire's great contribution to the overarching legacy and lore of Oz was to harmonize the very weak "canon" of the older works with a different shift in framing: recontextualizing all of the prior Oz material as a revisionist history (going off of Baum's own idea framing of himself as a "Royal Historian of Oz"), and attempting to tell "the true story" behind the other works (fictively of course — we're never meant to literally think Maguire's version preceded Baum's, irl). In literary studies, this is called an urtext. The Wicked Years and its adaptations are as much "fanfiction" as the 1939 film: it's just self-aware of that fact in a way that earlier works weren't, and uses that perspective to deconstruct the material and explore deeper (and darker) themes — not simply adapting or reimagining the original text (as the 1939 movie did), but actively challenging it; interrogating it. It's not meant to be "canon" as such: it asks you to ask whether (and why) there is such a thing, and what that might say about the stories that we are meant to literally believe in, in real life.

[warningsine]

After Elphaba's death, Glinda dreams of her:

prays to her:

helps Liir, Elphaba's son, and later raises Elphaba's granddaughter, Rain, as her own child:

believes that Elphaba is alive:

believes that Elphaba will come to free her from prison:

And what do you know? Elphaba does.

"Hold out," Elphaba told her when they parted ways.

And Glinda did. For decades.

[mask131]

So... Wicked is coming back in style. And as such I need to make a little informative post.

Because since as early as my arrival onto the Internet, in the distant years of the late 2000s, a lot of people have been treating Wicked as some sort of "official" part of the Oz series. As part of the Oz canon or as THE "original" work everything else derives from (literaly, some people, probably kids, but did believe the MGM movie was made BASED on Wicked...) And as an Oz fan, that bothers me.

[Damn, ever since I watched Coco Peru's videos her voice echoes in my brain each time I say this line.]

So here's a few FACTS for you facts lovers.

The Wicked movie that is coming out right now (I was sold this as a series, turns out it is a movie duology?) is a cinematic adaptation of the stage musical Wicked created by Schwartz and Holzman, the Broadway classic and success of the 2000s (it was created in 2003).

Now, the Wicked musical everybody knows is itself an adaptation - and this fact is not as notorios, somehow? The Wicked musical is the adaptation of a novel released in 1995 by Gregory Maguire, called Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. A very loose and condensed adaptation to say the least - as the Wicked musical is basically a lighter and simplified take on a much darker, brooding and mature tale. Basically fans of the novel have accused the musical of being some sort of honeyed, sugary-sweet, highschool-romance-fanfic-AU, while those who enjoyed the musical and went to see the novel are often shocked at discovering their favorite musical is based on what is basically a "dark and edgy - let's shock them all" take on the Oz lore. (Some do like both however, apparently? But I rarely met them.)

A side-fact which will be relevant later, is that this novel was but the first of a full series of novel Oz wrote about a dark-and-adult fantasy reimagining of the land of Oz - there's Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, Out of Oz, and more.

However the real fact I want to point out is that Maguire's novel, from which the musical itself derives, is a "grimmification" (to take back TV Tropes terminology) of the 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz. The movie everybody knows when it comes to Oz, but that everybody forgets is itself the adaptation of a book - the same way people forget the Wicked musical is adapted from a novel. The MGM movie is adapted from L. Frank Baum's famous 1900 classic for children The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - and a quite loose adaptation that reimagines a lot of elements and details.

Now, a lot of people present Maguire's novel as being based/inspired/a revisionist take on Baum's novel... And that's false. Maguire's Wicked novel is clearly dominated by and mainly influenced by the MGM movie, with only a few book elements and details sprinkled on top. Mind you, the sequels Maguire wrote do take more elements, characters and plot points from the various Oz books of Baum... But they stay mostly Maguire's personal fantasy world. Yes, Oz "books" in plural - because that's a fact people tend to not know either... L. Frank Baum didn't just write one book about the Land of Oz. He wrote FOURTEEN of them, an entire series, because it was his most popular sales, and his audience like his editor pressured him to produce more (in fact he got sick of Oz and tried to write other books, but since they failed he was forced to continue Oz novels to survive). Everybody forgot about the Oz series due to the massive success of the starter novel - but it has a lot of very famous sequels, such as The Marvelous Land of Oz or Ozma of Oz (the later was loosely adapted by Disney as the famous 80s nostalgic-cursed movie Return to Oz).

So... To return to my original point. The current Wicked movies are not directly linked in any way to Baum's novel. The Wicked musical was already as "canon" and as "linked" to the MGM movie as 2013's Oz The Great and Powerful by Disney was. As for Maguire's novel, due to its dark, mature, brooding and more complex worldbuilding nature, I can only compare it to the recent attempt at making a "Game of Thrones Oz" through the television series Emerald City.

The Wicked movies coming out are separated from Baum's novel at the fourth degree. Because they are the movie adaptation of a musical adaptation of a novel reinventing a movie adaptation of the original children book.

And I could go even FURTHER if you dare me to and claim the Wicked movies are at the 5TH DEGREE! Because a little-known-fact is that the MGM movie was not a direct adaptation of Baum's novel... But rather took a lot of cues and influence from the massively famous stage-extravaganza of 1902 The Wizard of Oz... A musical adaptation of Baum's novel, created and written by Baum himself, and that was actually more popular than the novel in the pre-World War II America. It was from this enormous Broadway success (my my, how the snake bites its tail - the 1902 Wizard of Oz was the musical Wicked of its time) that, for example, the movie took the idea of the Good Witch of the North killing the sleeping-poppies with snow.

[wolfienation]

i thank god that gregory maguire watched the wizard of oz, heard the wicked witch call glinda the good by her first name and thought to himself "huh, maybe they had a yearning-pining-ambiguous situationship in uni that made them crash out"

[forlornfig]

Reread wicked again. I love the musical with all my heart but the book has something really special to it. It goes against the whole chosen-one trope and instead details the lives of children, students, adults moving through the world while facism rises around them. And like regardless of what their views are- they’re pretty powerless to stop it. They can only experience it.

I understand that this may make the plot seem slow or oddly paced but it’s not really about the hero’s journey, it’s about ordinary people’s lives. Elphaba is NOT the hero, or even the anti-hero. We might agree with her morals over other characters but she actually accomplishes very little. Almost every moral crusade she undertakes fails. She dies as just one of the many symbols of the resistance. The most productive rebellions we hear about comes from the Vinkus allyships and that happens in the background. Even the succession of munchkinland is a controversial event for its citizens.

Wicked isn’t a book about good saving the day, or about compassion unifying the country.

At the end of the book, Elphaba and Glinda are divided by morals, Fiyero died for a cause he was never that much a part of, and Boq and the others have retreated into the background to protect their own. The wizard leaves yes, but he leaves behind a society in political turmoil. Munchkinland is facing re-annexation, the Vinkus is under attack, the Animals and the Quadlings have been shoved almost out of existence. The wizard can’t even be called the true Villain because his leaving does miraculously turn society back to “good”.

Wicked is about radicalism and facism can very quickly become the norm for a society through a series of tiny and almost ignorable steps for those not directly affected. It’s about waking up and realizing that all of a sudden you can’t remember the last time you saw an Animal walking free through the city.

[ruindunburnit]

sIR, IF YOU DON'T--!!

[yellowfog4]

the book version of elphie is HILARIOUS i love it so much

She said "not you, Boq, I'm gay for Galinda"

[unpopped-cherry]

Boq trying so hard to hook up with Galinda and Elphaba is having the time of her life at his expense.

[mot-hesbian]

Say what you want about Gregory Maguire and The Wicked Years books, at least he had a set of balls.

Like, the man did not back down from making an unashamedly queer book series about a classic book series that, intentionally or not, did have queer elements. And also took heavy inspriation from a classic movie made based on those books where Billie Burke played Glinda.

This man made the gayest, most trans friendly (for the 90s and early oughts), series of books I've ever come across. You've got polyamory right out the gate. Bisexuals, lesbians, gays, and pansexuals galore. A trans princess (no I will not let this go, can't believe this is canon in the og books too).

Elphie's bi, Glinda's a lesbian, Dorothy is some kind of fruity and going around kissing girls, a whole day couple legit just exists in the background which I will forgive simply because the book is primarily centered around Elphie's story.

[thatsbelievable]

[voy-por-nuevos-caminos]

yeah i bet

[omglaurashutup]

NOT GREGORY MAGUIRE HIMSELF SAYING THAT GELPHIE HAD SEX ON THE WAY TO THE EMERALD CITY

[notearsnora]

Likely post for Ariana “The President of Gelphie Nation” to be liking.