In REVEN, the seasons are roughly the same, but the new year officially starts at the hottest part of the cycle instead of the coldest. Also the sky rains down dry “snow” that looks like someone exploded a glitter bomb over the whole country.

I actually shouted when you ripped the cover off so quickly. I didn’t realize you meant literal bookbinding. 😂

Yet another reason I’m glad I ditched it as a search engine. Google seems hell-bent on destroying its own reputation.

tl;dr: Retellings like Wicked shine when they are in dialogue with their source material rather than talking over it.

In addition to Oz's original focus on classism, Wicked adds in metaphors for race/disability/general otherness via Elphaba's skin and the animals' speech. It's an intersectional analysis that provides extra layers to the conversation.

Wicked shines not because it evolves past its predecessor's ideas, but because it skips over the white-washed adaptations and expands upon the original novel's point: the leaders who claim to be the smartest and most magical usually get their wealth and power through trickery, not merit.

The Wizard of Oz film would soften this populist message, playing up the story's fantastical elements. The film casts the Wizard not as a fraud, but as a bumbling old man who is just trying his best to give the simple Munchkin-folk the authority figure they crave.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy gets lost and wants to go back to the good-old days of America's simple agrarian economy (Kansas). She follows the yellow brick road (gold) to the dollar-green Oz, but learns the Wizard's system is a sham, so she uses her silver (later ruby) slippers to go home.

To oversimplify: America was debating about whether to tie the value of the dollar to gold (gold standard) or to gold AND silver (bimetalism). The gold standard benefitted the government and the wealthy, while bimetalism was better for the working class. (Spoiler: America chose the gold standard)

A lot of commentators talk about Wicked like it introduces a political edge to the original Oz story, when that's not actually true. Many scholars believe the original Oz novel was an allegory about the economic changes of the late 1800s.

For a quick history recap:
📗Frank L Baum published the Wizard of Oz novel in 1900
🎭Wizard of Oz became a stage play in 1902
🎬The Wizard of Oz film came out in 1939
📗Gregory Maguire published the Wicked novel in 1995
🎭 The Wicked play did its US tour in 2005
🎬The Wicked movies came out 2024-2025

What kind of side-eye were those turkeys giving Trump, that he had to ask if they would attack him?

One of my wisdom teeth grew upside down, but nobody caught it until my mid-20s. When the dentist saw the x-ray, she called in her assistants for an educational moment, and they cooed over the picture like it was a photo of a newborn baby.

Flashbacks. My early drafts always put in way too much backstory.

Reven has a trans guy. Can’t say who without spoilers. He’s not the protagonist but he is my beloved chaos gremlin.