WogglebugLove Productions
Dreamer
This is the text from the Amazon review of Lika Laruku for the whole series of Oz books. This is not a review from me, but this girl really said almost all of the same things I would like to about the other Oz characters and series in general. With a few exceptions. If she actually liked the Wogglebug me and her would be almost on the same terms.
(Spoiler Warnings)
I figured I'd write something different from everyone else, stuff that totally surprised me the first time I read through these. Firstly I will say that the first few books were way better than the movie. Secondly that the characters revolve around irony & that their personalities are drastically different from the movie.
The cowardly lion always says he is afraid of everything, but is actually a bit of a violent bully when push comes to shove. Dorothy undergoes a personality change latter, but in the early books she is a pushy insistent inconsiderate little bully who gets her jollies telling people how wrong they are & how right she is; mostly it's refreshing to have such a spirited girl as the hero, but sometimes she's just a cold b**ch (sorry, but there's no other word to describe her when it comes to the guy who breathes music).
When the Scarecrow wanted a brain, he wasn't as stupid as the thought he was, but when he got a brain, he wasn't nearly as smart as he claimed to be; indeed he managed to be simultaneously intuitive & dense with an undeservedly high opinion of himself. Nick Chopper aka Tin Woodsman always claimed that he had no heart & therefore no emotions, apparently not smart enough to figure out that emotions come from the brain. Once he gets his placebo swag of a heart & is asked to become king of the Winkies, he shows his immense ego. Nick LOVES bling, riches, statues & paintings of himself, replacing natural fauna with metal, plating himself in chrome & having his men polish him several times a day, bragging about how much stuff he has. The only thing he likes as much as himself is Scarecrow, & he really REALLY likes Scarecrow.
Tik-Tok always says that he can't understand human thoughts & emotions, but for a robot, he spends a lot of time thinking & feeling. Princess Ozma, who is technically a queen & an empress, gets a complete personality change after she is initially introduced; how does a girl raised as a boy her entire life become so utterly girly overnight? Sawhorse is the "buttmonkey" of the series; just because he does not have a humanoid form, he is constantly dissed & treated like livestock.
Jack Pumpkinhead & the Patchwork Girl of Oz I heavily suspect inspired Jack Skellington & Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Glinda in the movies was a blend of the squat blue witch of the Munchkins & the tall red sorceress who rules over the Quadlings & has an all-woman army. In the book, Glinda is a powerful authority figure & the most powerful person in Oz. Oscar, the charlatan Wizard is a cool guy who really shines in the 4th book. (If you only count the books written BY Baum as canon continuity, it's suggested that Oscar conspired with Mombi to get rid of the real king of Oz & his daughter).
Billina the talking chicken; Dorothy is pretty rude to her, even forcing her to change her name on the grounds that it wasn't feminine enough. Wogglebug I must accuse of being the original Jar-Jar Binks. The fact that he's not nearly as educate as he claims to be, yet runs his own school is pretty scary. Polychrome is this utterly useless girl who does nothing but compare how much cooler things are where she lives & dances around in completely transparent clothing. Tip & Zeb were a couple of level-headed boys you couldn't dislike, so they never show up again (at least not in Baum continuity).
The series actually starts going downhill when Baum overly sanitizes his series by flat-out forgoing antagonists & having any conflict solvable by simply leaving the area. The other downer is that Santa Claus exists in this world, & he is just a glorified Marty Stu that doesn't really contribute to or direct the series in any way, like filler.
(Spoiler Warnings)
I figured I'd write something different from everyone else, stuff that totally surprised me the first time I read through these. Firstly I will say that the first few books were way better than the movie. Secondly that the characters revolve around irony & that their personalities are drastically different from the movie.
The cowardly lion always says he is afraid of everything, but is actually a bit of a violent bully when push comes to shove. Dorothy undergoes a personality change latter, but in the early books she is a pushy insistent inconsiderate little bully who gets her jollies telling people how wrong they are & how right she is; mostly it's refreshing to have such a spirited girl as the hero, but sometimes she's just a cold b**ch (sorry, but there's no other word to describe her when it comes to the guy who breathes music).
When the Scarecrow wanted a brain, he wasn't as stupid as the thought he was, but when he got a brain, he wasn't nearly as smart as he claimed to be; indeed he managed to be simultaneously intuitive & dense with an undeservedly high opinion of himself. Nick Chopper aka Tin Woodsman always claimed that he had no heart & therefore no emotions, apparently not smart enough to figure out that emotions come from the brain. Once he gets his placebo swag of a heart & is asked to become king of the Winkies, he shows his immense ego. Nick LOVES bling, riches, statues & paintings of himself, replacing natural fauna with metal, plating himself in chrome & having his men polish him several times a day, bragging about how much stuff he has. The only thing he likes as much as himself is Scarecrow, & he really REALLY likes Scarecrow.
Tik-Tok always says that he can't understand human thoughts & emotions, but for a robot, he spends a lot of time thinking & feeling. Princess Ozma, who is technically a queen & an empress, gets a complete personality change after she is initially introduced; how does a girl raised as a boy her entire life become so utterly girly overnight? Sawhorse is the "buttmonkey" of the series; just because he does not have a humanoid form, he is constantly dissed & treated like livestock.
Jack Pumpkinhead & the Patchwork Girl of Oz I heavily suspect inspired Jack Skellington & Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Glinda in the movies was a blend of the squat blue witch of the Munchkins & the tall red sorceress who rules over the Quadlings & has an all-woman army. In the book, Glinda is a powerful authority figure & the most powerful person in Oz. Oscar, the charlatan Wizard is a cool guy who really shines in the 4th book. (If you only count the books written BY Baum as canon continuity, it's suggested that Oscar conspired with Mombi to get rid of the real king of Oz & his daughter).
Billina the talking chicken; Dorothy is pretty rude to her, even forcing her to change her name on the grounds that it wasn't feminine enough. Wogglebug I must accuse of being the original Jar-Jar Binks. The fact that he's not nearly as educate as he claims to be, yet runs his own school is pretty scary. Polychrome is this utterly useless girl who does nothing but compare how much cooler things are where she lives & dances around in completely transparent clothing. Tip & Zeb were a couple of level-headed boys you couldn't dislike, so they never show up again (at least not in Baum continuity).
The series actually starts going downhill when Baum overly sanitizes his series by flat-out forgoing antagonists & having any conflict solvable by simply leaving the area. The other downer is that Santa Claus exists in this world, & he is just a glorified Marty Stu that doesn't really contribute to or direct the series in any way, like filler.
