Author Topic: PC259: The Great Zeppelin Heist of Oz  (Read 11332 times)

Cutter McKay

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Reply #25 on: May 22, 2013, 09:10:31 PM
The stealing of the zeppelin as a climax didn't really make sense to me, because I don't recall any mention of the witches having a zeppelin.  So it didn't tie into the original in any way that I considered significant. 

Exactly what I was getting at. If you're going to play in someone else's sandbox, don't bring your own toys and then leave with them, too. It makes me wonder why you came over to play in the first place.

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Max e^{i pi}

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Reply #26 on: May 23, 2013, 10:50:38 AM
The stealing of the zeppelin as a climax didn't really make sense to me, because I don't recall any mention of the witches having a zeppelin.  So it didn't tie into the original in any way that I considered significant. 

Exactly what I was getting at. If you're going to play in someone else's sandbox, don't bring your own toys and then leave with them, too. It makes me wonder why you came over to play in the first place.
Well, because the neighbor's sandbox is always cleaner. Mine has all kinds of wild animal poop in it and god knows what. Anyway, from all the way down the road your sandbox looks waaaaaay cooler than mine. But you don't have a Tonka dump truck and I do. So if you don't mind...

To put it plainly, in this case it didn't bother me so much. Maybe in other cases it would. I guess it depends on how emotionally connected I am to the world being used.

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Liminal

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Reply #27 on: May 28, 2013, 04:50:40 AM
Exactly what I was getting at. If you're going to play in someone else's sandbox, don't bring your own toys and then leave with them, too. It makes me wonder why you came over to play in the first place.

It's been a long time since I read the five or six Oz books that I read as a kid, but a zeppelin wouldn't have been out of place in any number of them. There were all sorts of weird and strange things throughout the series that aren't in the first novel. Baum wrote 14 Oz novels and then there were a bunch of authorized novels that came out after he stopped writing.

For example, here is the Wikipedia description of Pirates in Oz, written by John R. Neill and published in 1931: "Peter returns to Oz for a third time, this time with pirates on the Nonestic Ocean (which surrounds the continent Oz is on). Meanwhile, Old Ruggedo, the Gnome King, is back. He had been hit with a Silence Stone at the end of The Gnome King of Oz, and decides to answer an advertisement for king of the Land of Menankypoo. He also encounters Pigasus the flying pig and Captain Samuel Salt and his band of pirates."

Oz is a way bigger sandbox than what most people know from The Wizard of Oz.

For those who are curious and want to dig around that sandbox, all of Baum's books at least are in the public domain and available at Project Gutenberg as well as some other places around the internet.

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Reply #28 on: May 28, 2013, 12:52:49 PM
I'll grant you that I haven't read all the Oz books, but the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wicked Witch of the East feature prominently in the first book (albeit East only as a pair of legs sticking out from under the house).  If they had a zeppelin, I feel that it would've been mentioned.



Cynandre

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Reply #29 on: June 06, 2013, 09:01:01 PM
I did not like the Oz character or how he spoke, what a Charlitain. I'm with the Witches on this one.

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Talia

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Reply #30 on: June 11, 2013, 01:25:53 PM
I had trouble getting into this one at first because I found the Oz character to be rather intolerable (although when I thought about it, true to what I recall from the film. I've never read the books). I toughed it out, though, and was glad I did, because I enjoyed seeing him become the laughingstock of the land and the subject of mockery from the witches.

This wasn't to my mind a prequel. It was a tongue-in-cheek mockery of some of Oz's sillier aspects. Therefore, the adult content worked just fine for me.



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Reply #31 on: June 11, 2013, 01:33:50 PM
I found the Oz character to be rather intolerable (although when I thought about it, true to what I recall from the film. I've never read the books).

He was similar in the book, though he didn't have the real-world counterpart like in the movie.  The gifts he gives are different, and he has a different fake form for each of the visitors, but he's the same guy.



danooli

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Reply #32 on: June 11, 2013, 08:54:38 PM
I'm a big fan of Oz related things, and this was OK in my book.  Not great, for MANY OF the reasons already stated, but I enjoyed it. 

I do think though that the narration was out of this world. Coincidentally, I just recently listened to David Wong's This Book is Full of Spiders and Nick Podehl narrated that as well.  He nailed it.  (I had listened to John Dies at the End a while ago and was upset that Spiders had a different narrator.  Silly me!)  I loved his reading so much that I went out and used a credit on another book he narrated, The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1) by Patrick Rothfuss...



DKT

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Reply #33 on: June 21, 2013, 09:49:40 PM
I do think though that the narration was out of this world. Coincidentally, I just recently listened to David Wong's This Book is Full of Spiders and Nick Podehl narrated that as well.  He nailed it.  (I had listened to John Dies at the End a while ago and was upset that Spiders had a different narrator.  Silly me!)  I loved his reading so much that I went out and used a credit on another book he narrated, The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1) by Patrick Rothfuss...

Ah, good to know! I have two of those in my audio queue (though I'm putting off the Rothfuss for a while until the third one is ready to come out so I don't have another GRRM situation). But yay - was hoping to find more of his work to listen to! Thanks, Danooli :)


LaShawn

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Reply #34 on: June 27, 2013, 06:58:17 PM
GROOOOOOOUP HUUUUUUUUUUUUG!!!!!! Welcome back Dave!

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this. I was rather surprised that beneath all the bluster and blabber of Oz himself, there was a shrewd mind with ulterior motives. Granted, he was still a jerk, so it was perfectly wonderful to see him get his comeuppance. And yes, great narration too!

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