Film noir over the rainbow: Let's play Emerald City Confidential.

Alternately it's high praise! I think it's the same as what we in Denmark would call a 'mandagstræner' - Monday Coach. Someone who rates a game of sports after it's long done and claims they know JUST what should have been done to win it. Basically you'd be calling them haughty know-it-alls, which IS a nice insult.

I'm sorry for the long break; However I'm very pleased with the lengthy derail here and will catch up on all of it tomorrow (Tuesday) morning. I'll also be updating tomorrow (Tuesday), so I can get one out before Thanksgiving, and I'll shoot for one Wednesday as well. After that I'll try to return to regular updates for a few days, but once December comes, it'll be harder, making a mad dash to obsessively find the perfect gifts for everyone I've ever met and refusing to settle for anything at the first store, then eventually going back to the first store and suddenly finding this perfect thing I over looked. Lather, rinse, repeat. The joy of giving, etc. *crawls under blanket and sobs a little* At least I don't go out on Black Friday, I've heard horror stories about it... *shudders*

I approve of your dedicated gift giving. That's the most season-spirited thing I ever heard!

.....

Now if you'll excuse me I'll order an Xbox game for my parents over the internet.

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much the person who created this game knows about the Oz books. I'm a huge fan of L. Frank Baum, so I think I'm probably getting more out of this than you. (I recognized Tik Tok, Bill, and Trot before they were introduced and Ruggedo means a lot to me.) By the way, in answer to one of the questions you asked, Betsy Bobbin and her mule, Hank, aren't originally from Oz. They arrived in the Rose Kingdom by raft after being shipwrecked and then made their way through the Land of Ev, crossed the Deadly Desert by sandship, and entered the Land of Oz. She's a friend of Dorothy and also an honorary princess. Cap'n Bill and Trot aren't originally from Oz either.

Wow, you sure know a lot of it. I didn't even know these were characters from the books.

I would definitely recommend the books! They're all great. I spent much of my childhood reading and rereading the ones that I own. Actually, I started freaking out as soon as I saw the shop next store and we didn't go into it right away because Scraps Patches is one of my favorite characters, as is General Jinjur. I am eagerly awaiting seeing some other characters, like the Hungry Tiger (who probably really does eat fat babies in this version), the Woozy, the Sawhorse, the Frogman, Ojo, Woot the Wanderer, the Tin Woodman, the Tin Solider, HM Wogglebug TE, etc., etc. Of course, there's a good likelihood that not all of those people (and animals) will actually appear, but it'd be awesome if they did.

I'll surely read it in the summer, thanks!
And I don't remember all characters, but there are lots of them in this game.

I am still planning to update, don't worry, I just got caught up in watching movies...for four hours... Currently I'm on Old Yeller. Once that one's over, I'll crank out an update. I'll have one out earlier tomorrow.

I'm not sure you can call is season-spirited, it's more that I tend to be a perfectionist and I want to think that whatever I give anyone at any time will just like, make their entire life amazing and fantastic...It doesn't always work, but I'm not giving up dammit!

That's actually interesting, like Sofalisa I didn't know they were from the books. If you notice any other things like this, please point them out! It's interesting to see how much fits.

And yeah, the owners of Wadjet Eye Games tend to put an unexpected amount of references and research into all their games that tie it all together, but you don't really understand them right away unless you know what to look for, but once you do it just makes it all so much better. They always manage to surprise me.

All I can say it: Some appear, some don't, but I don't think you'll be disappointed either way. They were also all most likely supposed to appear, but as I said some pages back, two parts got cut from the game, it's likely they were in those and couldn't be fit elsewhere if you don't see them. IF I remember right, we'll be seeing one soon though... ~*failed attempts at foreshadowing*~

I did try to give the perfect gift once.

You see, my brother was REALLY into the Fable game his after school institution had for the Xbox. He'd always tell me about it, how great it was, how he wished I was still in the same institution so he could show it to me.

So a few years back I got him Lost Chapters for Christmas and he was THRILLED. So he went to install it first thing the mext morning and it... bugged. Didn't work. Couldn't install.

Luckily I got it from a reliable supplier who replaced the game ASAP, and it works now, he even still plays it, but... yeah... the excitement feel flat a bit.

Note to self: READ ALL YOU SAID WHEN I HAVE TIME!!!

Spouse, I need a hug. My hamster died yestersday, and as you're a hamster yourself, I'm afraid to loose you.

Okay I was just joking there. But really, I'm still kinda sad.

In that case, I'll add a few other observations. A couple I'll put under spoiler tags because they may be spoilers for the game, even though they're pretty obvious if you're as big a fan of the books as I am.

First of all, you wondered why Dorothy hadn't aged. I actually was wondering the opposite thing. You see, in the books, no one ever ages in Oz because it is a fairy country. So if we're going by the ages in the books, both Dorothy and Betsy are too old. Dorothy was supposed to be about 12, Betsy maybe 13 or 14, and Trot 10. I suppose they could be taking her age more from Judy Garland because that makes it easier to have femmes fatales, but Judy Garland was really too old for to play the role if they wanted to be accurate to the books. In any case, Petra might very well be 19 or so physically.

I was also a bit confused as to why Petra was so against Tik-Tok. He would seem to be one of the easiest guards to get past. You see, he runs on clockwork and that clockwork eventually runs down. All she would have to do is wait for either his thinking, speech, or motion to run down, as they're all wound separately and he'd be pretty useless. He wouldn't make a good guard unless there was someone there to keep him wound, honestly.

The reason Petra says that Jack is smarter than he looks is that he's proven to be stupid over and over again in the books. By the way, even though people can't die in Oz, apparently pumpkins can spoil, which is why Jack Pumpkinhead grows a field of pumpkins. That way he's able to get a new head year round. When his current head starts to spoil, his brains get a bit mushy, and his thinking slows down.

Jack Pumpkinhead was originally made as a prank by a boy named Tip, to scare a witch named Mombi, who had raised him and who he hated. Mombi had just gotten some Powder of Life through a trade with Dr. Pipt, who made the stuff illegally. She tested out the powder on Jack and he came to life. Later, Jack and Tip escaped Mombi together. There's more to it than that (Tip turns out to be a very important person), but the Powder of Life is also used to bring the Gump to life. There's supposed to only be one, but I find it hilarious that they now function as the taxi system in the city.

These books seems really great! I'll totally read them!

Have any of you read the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland book and it's sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There? They're so great! I laughed a lot with them!
It looks like the author drank a lot of mushroom tea while writing it, but who cares! That's what makes it amusing!

Apparently it's a scathing criticism of imaginary numbers as opposed to basic mathematics. Or so I heard.

My english didn't allow me to understand your sentence very well, but it does have a lot of criticism in it. It's a humorous criticism, though. That's why children can read it.

Basically Carroll wasn't a big fan of the new complex Math, fractals and irrational numbers and the likes. Wonderland, the way he sees it, operates on complex Math logic rather than our world's logic which, he believed, was rooted in 1+1 = 2 Math. Again, it's just what I've heard, mind you.

I don't remember this on the book, but maybe I just didn't pay attention. It's a critic to Victorian England. The Queen of Hearts had no real decision over things, like the queen at that time. People were afraid of her, but her decapitation orders were never really fulfilled.
I heard he also criticizes that time's literature, that was all education and moralization, trying to define rigid roles for men and women, telling what is virtuous and what is considered chastity, etc.
That's all I remember.

Speaking of awesome, funny children's books, The Phantom Tollbooth is still one of my favorites.

Yeah, they're fantastic. And even better, they're all in the public domain, so you can read them online, free and legally! Here are a couple of places where you can do so, starting with the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Project Gutenberg (which is one of the ones I linked) also has downloadable ebooks if you'd prefer to read it that way. It's a classic series, so you can probably find them at a library too.

I have read both the Alice books! I really enjoyed them a lot. I actually really love children's and young adult literature from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century (though there are some great series and books from the later half of the 20th century as well, like A Wrinkle in Time and Madeline L'Engle's other books, The Indian in the Cupboard series, etc.) such as the Oz series, Alice, Little Women (and its sequels), The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, the Anne series, the Little House series, and The Chronicles of Narnia. I feel like children's novels did less "writing down" to kids back then, so a lot of the books are the type of books you can still love when you reread them as an adult.

When I was a kid, in addition to reading most of the books I listed above (there are a few exceptions, I didn't read the Alice books until recently and I didn't read Little Women or the Anne Books until around Jr. High, though I'd listened to quite a few of the Anne books on tape and had seen the Megan Follows' movies; other than that, the list provides a pretty good, though far from complete, reference of what I read in elementary school) I read things like the Babysitter's Little Sister series (basically an even more juvenile version of the Babysitter's Club.) Looking back on that series, I'm kind of embarrassed that I ever liked it because the writing is pretty awful and the characters are all extremely annoying. It isn't the type of thing that you can find enjoyable as an adult unless you are viewing it through layers upon layers of nostalgia filters. However, the other books I listed are all books that I still love now, despite being well past "children's literature" in both age and reading level.

In some ways I may just be kidding myself since it's books like that which get remembered as classics in the first place and there were probably plenty of duds back then too, but there don't seem to be that many children's novels that are so rich and creative and high quality anymore. Harry Potter is a step in the right direction, but it still seems a little narrow in its characterization to me (Harry Potter kind of makes me sad because I feel like there was a lot of missed potential; the concept of the series is super interesting, but I didn't like how the everyone in Gryffindor was automatically good and everyone in Slytherin was automatically evil, it would have been a much more interesting series if we saw someone who was ambitious, but not necessarily a bad person, put into Slytherin and have them be effected by the people around them to become bad, instead of being bad from the get-go.) I'm not saying the Oz books are perfect by any means, honestly, I wish Ozma's characterization had been done a bit differently as she is a bit too feminine and perfect for my taste (especially considering the information that I put under that spoiler tag in my last post.) However, I like these other books I listed much better than the Harry Potter series, as I think the writing is better and in addition to being somewhat simple in its view of good and evil, I feel that Harry Potter suffers from too much focus on the main character, when he is a lot more annoying than and not nearly as interesting as the other characters around him.

Anyway, this kind of got really tangenty. I apologize, I'm an English major, I don't know how to not be verbose when talking about books.

There are a lot of different theories on the meaning behind various children's books and like analysis of any other book, it's hard to know whether or not they are what the author intended unless the author gave the reason themselves or responded to theories that were put forward. Even then it can be hard to tell, as authors aren't always completely forthright about their writing, for various reasons. I don't know whether Lewis Carroll specifically commented on his intent, but whether or not he did, as long as you are able to support a reading with evidence from the actual text it can be considered valid, though it is dangerous to assume you know what the author meant to say. For example, there's a commonly known theory that The Wizard of Oz was written as a Populist allegory, which is nonsense, as L. Frank Baum was in no way a Populist and got the name Oz from a filing cabinet that said O-Z, not from the American measurement ounce (abbreviated oz.) However, there's nothing wrong with viewing it as a Populist allegory as long as you don't try to argue that that was the author's intent. Nor is there anything wrong with saying you think a theory was the author's intent, as long as there isn't a large body of evidence against it and you don't claim your theory of the author's intent to be the gospel truth.

That said, as someone who hopes to be a writer, I hope people won't be attributing all sorts of unintended allegories to me. I don't mind if they create allegories for my work or interpretations that I disagree with, but I hope they won't think I intended something that ends up being totally off base.

I'm sorry, I write way too much. I'll shut up now.

Oh, Narnia. It's just perfect. The end is kinda sad...

I have to deffend Harry Potter on this one... Not all Slytherins are evil. I mean... Snape. And even Draco wasn't all that bad in the end. And Harry's father wasn't a perfect griffindorian (don't know how to say grifinório in english). He was a motherfucker bully after all. The book isn't in first person, but it mostly shows only Harry's thoughts and feelings, so it basically shows it how he sees it.

Sometimes people attribute stuff I never thought about to what I write. It's funny.

Granted, I've only read the first four books of Harry Potter (I kind of lost interest after that, actually, I probably would have lost interest sooner if my grandmother hadn't kept sending them to me as Christmas presents), but I feel like the examples you listed were too little too late to counteract what has come up to that point considering I couldn't even get that far when I'm someone who usually finishes a series once I've started it, even if I'm not super impressed with it. And while your point about the book being in third person limited is valid, I have to question the choice to have the point of view character be one of the least interesting and most grating characters in the novel. I think things would have been more interesting if she had gone the Great Gatsby route and had the point of view character not be the main hero of the story. Moreover, since the novels are not completely third person limited (we sometimes see scenes which Harry himself does not), you would think that the book wouldn't be completely colored by Harry's impressions.

That said, they're not bad books and I probably wouldn't even mention them if I didn't think they had potential. I just think it's rather unfortunate that they came so close to the mark without meeting it. They're not bad, but I don't think they're fantastic either and they could have been so much better.

I may or may not have gotten distracted by movies until I fell asleep last night and only gotten half the pictures I needed then somehow convinced myself that was an update until I looked. I'm so smart, guys. Anyway, it'll be out soon, and if anyone finds my brain, please return it to me. I miss it.

You've let your brain fall into the toilet again, sweetheart?

I see your point there, and I won't hate you for not loving Harry Potter or anything, haha.
I love the series, but I agree Harry himself isn't that interesting, as you said. My favorite characters are Snape, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Fred and George, Lupin, Luna, Ron... I should stop listing almost all characters.
Have you watched the last 4 movies? maybe you'll get what I said about not all slytherins being bad. The movies aren't so great in my opinion. Even with awesome actors and scenarios, they couldn't cause so much emotion nor explain the plot very well. A lot of people I know only watched the movies and didn't read any of the books, and in the end they didn't understand most of it.

I loved the Harry Potter books back in the day, but I dunno if I burnt out on it, or if the change in tone didn't fit me. I still like them, it's a good read, well written and flowing, but I don't get the same intense FEELZ from them that I used to get. Dunno why, really. Maybe I've gotten to used to traditional fantasy? (I'm a huge David Eddings fan, the man who made a career of using tropes right. Tropes and witty party banter. Bioware should totally hire him.)

The HP movies are fine on their own, they only pale in comparison to the book, who are so vibrant and casual they build a vivid image in your mind without even trying - whereas the films tries furiously and only manages to look like expensive movie sets. They're a very good argument for the magic of the imagination, in my mind - not to mention they've gotten alot of kids into reading, no small feat these days. I wish other books series would have gotten the same careful attention the HP movies gotten - the Percy Jackson movie, for example, was clearly a case of "let's just make it sexy and slap some pop music and BAM best seller!" rather then an honest attempt to transfer the story into another media. I really love Rick Riordan's books, and I realize much of their charm comes from the dialogue, so my expectations were low to begin with - but not even sweet Logan Lerman, who rather excel at portraying smart ass teens (I loved him as d'Artagnan <3) could not save that mass of special effects and MTV wannabe slang.

I'm gonna stop now before I start talking about The Hunger Games and reveal how much YA/Teen fiction I read despite clearly being too old for it (grown up books are so dull! All serious and contemplative and full of people sitting around drinking coffee in their dark kitchen. Other then chick lit. I love chick lit, any book about shoes and someone struggling with their heels in the rain is a must read for me. I'm unrefined and crass, so sue me.

Yep, Percy Jackson the movie was nonsense. They were supposed to be 11 but they were like 5 years older in the movie, and the Vegas part was just lolwut. They were supposed to only play video games, dammit!

I enjoyed the Hunger Games movie a lot, but didn't read the book. In my point of view, it was a damn criticism to media and stupid reality shows, and I love it.

I also loved the Series of Unfortunate Events. One of the best YA series I've read.

I mostly read Astrid Lindgren books growing up, and a 4-book series about some kids in a family called Melendy.

OMG PIPPI LONGSTOCKING one of the very best books from my childhood! I still have them!
Don't know the other one you mentioned, though.

I have NO idea what the title translates into, but I really loved her Emil books, even though the part where he's trying to get through a blizzard alone to get a doctor for Alfred was scaring the ever-loving lights out of me as a kid. I think I actually cried when he did, I got so invested in it. Pippi was such a boss, though. I know I still have all of the Lindgren stuff around though I imagine it's take me half an hour to read most of them by now. My mother used to read them aloud to me so in my head Pippi Longstocking is the length of Atlas Shrugged XD.

Nah, it's not that long, has cute pictures (at least mine have) and a fun read.

Yeah, rationally I know that. It's like when I visit my old primary school, though, which I used to do a lot before they closed the library there, I keep being surprised how SMALL everything is because it felt gigantic when I was a kid. It's my prior perceptions messing with my view of things. I mean, it took me one day to read Goblet of Fire; YA literature in general would probably breeze past, but in my head what I had read aloud as a kid are just these doorstoppers, bigger than any book. Perceptions is a strange thing.

True story.

As an occasional writer, I love it when people see things in my work that I didn't intentionally put there. Whenever I put intentional symbolism it seems really pretentious and ham-fisted to me on rereading it, even if other people don't see it that way, whereas unintentional symbolism feels natural.

I get really frustrated when people try to argue author intentionality as if that's the most important thing. Something doesn't have to be intentional to be meaningful or significant or just really, really cool.

This gets all of my likes. I love when people notice things I didn't and I'm like, "Wow, I didn't even think about that, but it fits perfectly!"

I saw the first movie, but haven't watched any of the others. I'm not a huge movie goer and I usually don't go out of my way to see movies that come out (the Narnia movies are one of the few exceptions, but I've been a fan of Narnia since almost before I could read. I don't remember being read very many picture books, though I know my mom used to read them to me, but I have great memories of my dad and brother reading me chapter books when I was younger. The Chronicles of Narnia was one of my favorites though my dad read a lot of the classic books I talked about earlier to me when I was young, as well as the teen version of the Left Behind series, Little Pilgrim's Progress, Hind's Feet on High Places, and others.) I probably should finish the Harry Potter series someday, but honestly, there are just so many great books out there that I don't have enough time to read all the books I want as it is (I'm ashamed to say that I still haven't gotten around to reading Lord of the Rings, which is horrible, since I love fantasy and want to be a fantasy novelist, am a Christian, and am a big fan of C.S. Lewis, who was close friends with Tolkien; there's really no excuse for me having not read them yet, unless you count the million and one Nabokov books I've been trying to read), especially since I'm an English major. (The great irony of being an English major is that you have no time for reading, at least reading books that aren't assigned for classes.) I might read the rest of the books someday, but for the most part, I'd rather focus on books I actually want to read.

My brother's a huge David Eddings fan. I like his books alright, but I started to like them less after reading a second series by him. Belgariad and Elenium felt extremely similar in every way. It made all the characters and plot points feel recycled. I don't mind when authors recycle the ideas of others, as long as they put a new spin on them, as David Eddings does so well, but when they start recycling their own stuff it just feels like laziness. For comedic fantasy I much prefer Peter David's Sir Apropos of Nothing series and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, though Discworld does suffer some of the same sort of recycling that David Edding's works do. However, it's a little more understandable in that case since there are more than thirty books in the series.

I feel like my posts are starting to degrade into "books, books, book." My geeky English major side is showing, I apologize.

Yeah, the same thing works with most forms of art, if not all. I hate it when people get really anal and insist that only one interpretation is the correct one, and anyone who says differently is damned. (It's The Highlander theory of interpretation! :D ) As far as I'm concerned, people interpret what they see and read differently, depending on who they are, but as long as they get something out of it, it doesn't matter how they interpret it. It doesn't have to be the meaning that the creator thought of when they made it or wrote it.

Though there are people that get some really batshit insane ideas from works that leave me scratching my head. I don't know what to say about such people, but arguing with them about it is usually useless.

I rather like interpretations that seem batshit insane, but then it turns out they are actually backed up with facts that people put a lot of thought into. Stuff like this, I mean. Overanalysis of fiction just fills me with dorky glee.

Hmm? I'll admit I don't spend a ton of time in the main gaming forum but they're not as bad as all that.

And I enjoy my title of Elitist Negative Nancy, though I do miss being a Keeper of the Elemental Materials.

The next update will be out tonight, as I got caught up in early Christmas stuff after Thanksgiving, but I wont be doing anything tomorrow/Monday until evening, meaning I don't have to worry about sleep or waking up in time for anything. This update will be brought to you by this giant Santa mug I bought, which can hold a 16.9 oz. bottle, and it only goes up to his mustache. And it's wonderful.

I probably just ran into a bad thread. People tend to adhere to the set tone, and the tone there was SELLOUTS SUCK GAME HORRIBLE NOTHING EVER GOOD NO GOOD GAME HAS BEEN MADE SINCE PAC-MAN.

And then I ran away. I need my sunshine and rainbows.

No, brain,, you cannot sleep until I update this. I've procrastinated far too long, and by now, even I miss this. I apologize if this seems more...random than usual. I really, really need sleep but I put this off too long and if I let myself go back on my word and slide another night, I'll never get anything done. So, without further ado:

~Six: We Finally Stop Putting off the University~
When we last left our heroine Petra, we had visited Jack Pumpkinhead and gotten almost nothing out of him, not even his seeds, and thus we were forced to face our worst nightmare: School. I know, I'm as devastated as you are. But, we have on thing to keep us going, one important, time-honored goal to remind us just what we're doing all this for: Cold hard emeralds. And so, with determination building up within my sleepless brain and greed in Petra's head, coupled with a strong desire to punch half the people she knows in the nose, we press on. Shall we finally see just what this place looks like, ladies, gentlemen, fellow hamsters?



It's actually a bit nicer than I remember, though I didn't think it was bad, it's not as nice as a few other locations. AND NOW FOR RAPID CLICKING, though which we learn:

- The statues are of Professor H.M. Wogglebug, T.E., Royal Educator.

- The journey of self discovery starts with a single step.

- All seekers of knowledge are welcome.

And on that note, shall we enter? ...Why am I asking you these things? We're going in anyway, and you're going to like it, or no dessert tonight.



Inside, we meet Professor H.M. Wogglebug, the man in the statue, and that painting behind him. For those interested, the other paintings are The Wizard, who Petra says she used to hear stories about as a kid involving how he used to rule all of Oz. Queen Ozma, between him and Wogglebug, who reminds Petra that she needs to buy more darts. On the other side of Wogglebug, we have Glinda, you should know of her by now. The last Petra heard of her, she died in the Phanfasm war. The two busts are of Dave Gilbert, the game's creator and the one in glasses - who Petra has never heard of and assumes isn't important. The other is L. Frank Baum. Petra isn't sure who he is, but feels like she owes him a lot.



...A tooth sparrow sounds like a frightening thing. But yes, good strategy Petra! Show off your literacy while carefully flattering him! He confirms that he is who she believes him to be and, with just the slightest signs he may be impressed in his tone, asks if she's read his book. Okay Petra, we're doing well so far, now just



...oh Petra honey. And you were doing so good too. Can't you play nice and kiss up, just this once? ...On a side note, isn't discussing insect mating calls with a large insect sort of dirty? If it was also written by him, I'm sort of wondering if it's erotica.

He then asks if she's bought his books but not read them. Alright, Petra, you can still save this. Tell him you plan to, and you've been busy, or that you just bought it and have been eager to start, or...



...Or just literally anything but that. Wogglebug asks if she wants something, most likely trying to hurry her out. I don't blame you, Wogglebug. That's a huge hit to your pride with there.

Let's try not to kick the bug while he's down and get to the point. Do YOU know a man named Anzel, Woggles?

At first, no, he does not...until he sees a picture, and says that he does. He looks like one of Cutter's fellows, but who IS Cutter, and what exactly does being one of his fellows involve?



And the long, endless months of waiting and wondering are over. Well, Dee did say Anzel liked to travel, so does Cutter, they both worked at the university... Yet, for some reason, I don't ship it. I know, I'm just as surprised as you are. Also, Cutter is Wogglebug's assistant, after he couldn't afford the tuition five years ago when he came as a student and offered to work for it.

I go out on a limb and ask if Cutter is here, assuming I'll get a swift and hasty no, then suddenly all the information just given about him will be false and Anzel will secretly be Wogglebug or something, as people in this game seem to like giving as little help as possible until you figure almost all of it out on your own, and



...What? WHAT? WHAT? He's actually HERE when he would need to be? I've finished the game, and even I'M surprised by this. ...um...okay, I still had stuff to ask Wogglebug but sure. Let's talk to Cutter. So, Cutter, surely you know Anzel and all of this will be over soon, so I can sleep and Petra can get her money?




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