u/cvnty-mamaxo

**not sure what the “Success” flair is for, but I consider this a success story of being a NEET

I’ve been a NEET, by my reckoning, since June-September 2025. June was when I completed my last A-Level exam, and I didn’t look for work during the summer break as I needed the time to recover from the depressive burnout that A-Levels plunged me into. Results were delivered in August, and the next week (final 2 weeks of August) I was actively looking for work. We don’t talk about that, it went HORRIBLY. By early-mid October I’d given up. As for education, I hadn’t originally intended to go on to university, but came to realise that I do have a passion for some academic topics, I just need them taught in a way most similar to how university does it; so, I rushed through a UCAS application at the start of January and got in the door at the last second. I figured that if my NEET-dom wasn’t going to slide me into a lifelong slump, I just needed to angle it into a year-long holiday, which I did.

And all this to say; I’ve never been happier about anything in my life. My NEET-y gap year has been, quite possibly apart from when I was a toddler, the happiest period of my life. In this time, I have thrived on an emotional level. I have never felt so in-contact with my true self. I didn’t need a glamorous foreign holiday or a fuck-ton of work experience to teach me that. Turns out all I needed was to spend a whole year living much in the way one of the daughters from my favourite show - Downton Abbey - would’ve done; and that is to say, doing fuck-all! November-December was a glorious time; getting to spend all my time dedicated to Christmas healed my heart in a way I never felt possible. January’s UCAS showed me that I am*** ***indeed capable of doing hard work and enjoying it, there just has to be a good frame for motivation. I was doing uni open days from Feb-March, and they showed me how fun it is to travel up-and-down the country alone. Turning 20 in May without ever having had to experience being ordered about by some self-important manager might be a failure to some; to me, it was the best achievement I ever had, being able to maintain enough respect for myself to not ever have to degrade myself for money in that way. I’ve had a massive problem with authority since I was 5 and I don’t intend to start challenging it, not now, not ever! Get fucked, you Gen X and Boomers who insist on the development of a work ethic. It’s not that I don’t have a chance to work considering the current job crisis; it’s that even if I did, I wouldn’t want to pursue it anyway, cause fuck you if you think you’re better than me and thereby have authority over me. I don’t care if you hiked Kilimanjaro naked; you and me are at the same level, and you will not try to exert authority over me, not now, not ever! MWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH 😂

Ahh, NEET-dom, NEET-dom, NEET-dom. One of my Christmas presents was a pair of silk pyjamas and I feel they sum up my whole NEET ethic. I don’t feel in any way like I’m part of some noxious social contagion. Being a NEET has both brought me back into contact with a version of me I thought had died, a boy who sees joy and happiness and colour everywhere he looks; and at the same time, has developed me even more into the loud, foppish, hyper-opinionated, fabulously-gay, best-friend-to-middle-aged-mums man I was always destined to be. I always hated being put with other kids as a kid; and even though I’ll have to face that again when I go to uni - and thereby back into education - in September, I at least feel somewhat closer now to my life goal of sitting at the adult ladies’ table than I ever have before.

All-in-all, NEET-dom is fantastic, and I am currently both basking in the last glorious, golden, shimmering remnants of it; and mentally gearing-up to having to say goodbye to it in September. I’m not fully certain that I’m ready, but either way, at least I’ll always have the memory of this glorious, NEET-y gap year to anchor myself to. When the academic pressure burns me out and I start delving into another delusional self-hatred where I’m convinced that I’m the issue, that it’s me who has something wrong with me, I can always look back on this year fondly, and remember that my true self is never found in a lecture hall or a workplace, but in an upscale restaurant for my birthday eating oysters or a flower-drenched bench reading a high-fantasy book, being totally financially provided for by somebody else. And that, eventually, I’ll either bag a rich doctor or win the lottery to get back to what truly matters, with no expectations on me, once again 💗

To conclude; NEET-dom, oh NEET-dom. I love you more than words can describe, I’m going to miss you more than anything when you’re gone, and I hope to get back to some mature, adult-ified version of you, somehow, someday, someway. NEET me, you are the best version of you 💗💗💗

…by the devil in the music video for Tenacious D’s Tribute?!

I just heard the song again for the first time in like 5 years and it brought back so many memories. For context I was shown the song by my parents when I was like 3. Fucking amazing song, but 3-year-old me was absolutely shit-fucking-scared of Dave Grohl in that red body paint and fake horns. I used to be convinced that walking along a path or road in the dark meant he was gonna appear before me cause that’s how he appears to Jack and Kyle in the video

Please say I’m not the only one with this because I love that song but I’m 20 now and I still can’t watch it without being just a little bit spooked 😂

That scene of True Blood where Lafayette is goofing around with the waitresses and Arlene first says “Do you even know what’s between a woman’s legs, Lafayette?” and then, slightly later “Listen, not everybody is gay, okay! Not everybody wants to have sex with you”

Call me crazy if I’m being crazy but I notice this as a theme from the supposed straight allies of gay men, both in media and in real life. It’s almost like they have some line in the sand for how gay/camp you can act around them. It feels to me like they’re almost suggesting something like “Okay now, that’s enough gay, let’s reel it in”. Like you have a limit of how gay you can be around them and you have to just accept being clipped in the metaphorical ear if they “reach their limit” of how much gay mannerisms they can tolerate

Just ughhhhhh. Please tell me if I’m being crazy cause nobody else seems to notice this and that may very well mean I’m the only one who has a problem with it 😂

I was born in Leeds and raised there till I was 11, when the homeschooling journey of my childhood/early adolescence started and we moved to other Northern towns and eventually to Wiltshire. When I did my uni applications, I wanted to apply to LBU and stay with my cousin-who’s-basically-an-aunt but my A-Level grades are too horrific and there isn’t a Foundation entry for my course (History BA) at LBU. That’s one of the things I would KILL to have, to be able to return to Leeds for uni. I normally don’t feel a level of yearning for anything much as I’ve learned to be happy with my lot in life, as most do; but my GOD!!! Leeds, I am missing you this week 🥲🙏

There is so much I would do if I could be back. Roundhay Park, Tropical World. Lotherton Hall and the Bird Garden, and a tour of Temple Newsam and the farm. Watch a film in the Trinity Everyman and go for lunch at one of the hipster vans in the Trinity Kitchen after. Go to the museum for the mummy and the taxidermied animals section. The art gallery and those postboxes they painted gold for the 2012 jubilee. And UGH! The lights festival, Christmas panto in The Carriageworks and German market in Millennium Square. The Christmas displays in Victoria Centre. The shops in the Corn Exchange. Even somehow feeling nostalgia for the train station. Going to White Rose just for a little mooch. The whole industrial park in Colton. Langlands garden centre and looking at the dogs in Dogs’ Trust next to it. Fairburn Ings RSPB. Crowne Point, specifically my nostalgic memories of that tree lift. Crossgates shopping centre and Coe’s fish and chips. Rothwell Park with the aviary and the high street, even the Morrisons there too. I also feel a nostalgia for the Asdas in Middleton and Killingbeck.

Just, ughfhsnejsnsj. Leeds, I want to be back in you for just one week 😩🙏 love you forever, my birth city 💗

Recently watched The Age of Adaline. The process of biological immortality for Adaline in the film is that the combination of freezing water and a lightning bolt froze her telomeres in a single second of time. Telomeres being basically, the caps on the ends of chromosomes. The idea being that they degrade as you grow older and that’s what makes you age and eventually die. Now obviously, Adaline scars in the film and is never said to be immune to being, say murdered; she can die, just not in a natural/biological way. But if this had happened, and someone had biological immortality, all they’d have to do forever is be really, really careful and they could live for centuries. Now, how does this tie into Wicked?

Well, I’ve been thinking about a lot of discrepancies in the book, and unanswered questions in general (we all know Maguire loves his mystery). However, I think I’ve cracked something regarding the immortality of Mombey and Tip/>!Ozma!< in Out of Oz, which has inadvertently also given me an answer to how the Wizard and Dorothy reached Oz in the first place…

Tip mentions a story of him and Mombey, when she was still a fairytale crone, travelling by sand sledge over the Deadly Desert to the Ducal Principality of Ev (a real place in the Baum books). While there, they were hosted by a “second-rate duchess” (this is Princess Langwidere) who treated them to gross food and some private magic tricks; she was able to swap her own head out for a selection she has. Mombey was mysteriously silent the rest of the trip, then they set out for Oz; upon arriving back in Gillikin, they take the train, Mombey goes to the powder room; and boom, she’s gorgeously youthful and with a different head, and Tip never knows why or how.

My explanation of this is as follows…

&gt;!Some time ago, the Royal Family of Ev figured out a way to summon spirits of the wind, air and rain; through some sort of native magic. They ended up developing a semi-magical process of telomeric shock-induced paralysis, and have done it for centuries without anyone knowing, as the knowledge of this is expressly forbidden and limited only to the King or Queen of the family, who is the only one allowed to practice it. However, during the Evite wars with the Nome King (Gregory, awesome spinoff idea!!) the Royal Family are mostly all murdered, and the sole survivors flee to a smaller chunk of land closer to the Desert and therefore, the Ozian border.

At some point, the Grimmerie made its way into the tatters of Ev; seeing all events past and future, it presented itself to the now-disenfranchised Duchess Langwidere - the last vanguard of Evite royalty - who was desperately insecure of her appearance. It was the Grimmerie that taught her the art of head-swapping. Around the same time, she discovered, from a High Priest who was the only other one trusted with the telomere-freezing knowledge, the process of telomere freezing. Knowing that Ev was unlikely to continue after her death, she took the choice to have the process performed on her, with a promise to reverse it should Ev be restored to its former glory; this thing was done.

What the Evites were unaware of, however, is the danger of summoning the lightning spirits. They aren’t actually “lightning spirits” at all. Oz - or, as I learned in the Another Day series, the planet of Peare it resides upon - is a parallel version of Earth; a theory I will get into some other time. However, the long-and-short of it is that there is a metaphysical barrier between the two; which was fashioned by Lurline to separate the two; and keep magical wonder locked in Oz, out of reach of the hands of religious fanatics and future secularising forces. This barrier has a collective consciousness, and that is what the Evites summon when they call the lightning spirits - they actually summon the consciousness of the barrier, which lashes out at them by trying to strike them with lightning, but they’ve mastered the art of charming it to their will.

What they don’t realise is that every time they summon the lightning spirits, they rip a hole in the barrier. When Duchess Langwidere casted the “spell of immortality” upon herself, it - in conjunction with the Thelemite/Theosophist human sacrifices he was performing - ripped the hole that allowed the Wizard’s hot-air balloon to float in.

All this leads to this. When Mombey went to Ev, she had this spell performed on her and on Tip. For herself, it was so she would always find a way to weasel herself into being Queen of Oz. For Tip, they explain it in, I think, ALAM - the rumour going round is that The Wizard did keep Ozma alive in Mombey’s custody for the sole purpose of, if he were faced with a Royalist coup, he could bring forth a grown Ozma to prove that murder charges against him were unfounded. Mombey figures; what if this huckster lives and rules another 40-60 years say? I don’t mind being immortal and keeping careful forever; I surely don’t want Ozma alive forever, but the Evites love me now; as soon as she might fulfil her purpose of proving the Wizard’s innocence, we can just make a return trip to Ev and reverse the spell on her. And so, they had it casted upon them. At the same time, Langwidere bestowed the additional gift of head-swapping onto Mombey; this was in thanks, as a magical Ozian presence acted as an unofficial Wizardic ambassador and likely contributed to the cooling-off of the Evite national catastrophe.

And, ladies and gentlemen, it was this very spell cast upon Mombey and Tip that ripped open the hole that brought forth Dorothy’s house; the tornado essentially hit the spot where the fabric ripped in our world, and then made like a double-funnel of itself in Oz and swept Dorothy in.

FINIS!<

So, thoughts? Very welcome to any suggestions, and I should hopefully be making more Wicked theories soon as I have a lot

Just been spurred to this because I saw a video title (it was AI slop but got me thinking) saying “What if Sansa had told the truth about Joffrey at the Trident” i.e what if she said he attacked Arya and the chain of events leading to Lady’s death never happened.

Whether it’s about this specific what-if that I’ve seen, or about any of your own personal what-ifs, please give me them and be very detailed as I’m curious to hear people’s what-ifs and what affect they would have on the story

That’s it, that’s the tweet. Well, sort of…

I am like a chapter away from the ending of The Witch of Maracoor and have Elphie: A Wicked Childhood lined up next (and obviously buying Galinda in the autumn). I cannot understate how much I love, love, LOVE Maguire’s Oz and I am truly so desperate to see more of it. Not necessarily always continuation of the stories of Elphaba’s bloodline, but maybe other aspects. Yes, I read >!The Wizard’s!< IRL prologue in Oracle, but I would love to see a prequel around him that might actually give some answers as to what Oz really is, dimensionally speaking. I’d also love a prequel of Mombey and Tip/>!Ozma!< trudging about Gillikin and the outer countries.

That being said, and putting aside hope for Maguire to continue on with Oz, does anyone here think he actually will? He probably has thousands of lore points he can expand on so I wouldn’t be surprised, but does anyone else think that once Galinda releases, he’ll be truly done and dusted with Oz? I’m hoping not, but just want to get people’s opinions

What is the Fist of Mara actually supposed to be?

A book reviewer I saw on YT has suggested that it seems like something from our world which I can see. It seems like it might be some sort of irradiated or even nuclear object. But with the description of it in Brides of Maracoor I can’t actually picture what it looks like. Anyone got any ideas?

For me, it’s a continuous process of realising that I actually don’t get inspired by those boss-bitch movies where someone has a long impassioned speech about the power of working hard and being independent because I have no work ethic and am not ashamed of it. Examples include…

1. I don’t have sympathy for the boyfriend in Devil Wears Prada because he is very narcissistically abusive; but my mentality is probably very similar to his or the friends. I also cannot take any of that Nigel speech seriously, just fuck off with this expectation to knuckle down and forge yourself into a new person just for some bullshit job

2. Had pretty much the same feeling watching Upgraded recently. Always the same story about an overworked intern being viciously torn to shreds by their superiors and the happy ending is them developing the same work ethic to get to the same position. FUCK OFF

3. The way that Kate King from The Other Woman is portrayed as having a bad life. Yes she DEFINITELY does because of what Mark does to her, but it would be my dream to be a stay-at-home husband with no job, no responsibilities and being taken care of by someone else. Sounds glorious

Anyone else’s?

…is a Child of the Forest using a glamour. Bran’s book chapters confirm that all the ravens in Westeros (or at least a vast majority of them) have a CotF soul living in warg-form within them. Alys’s witchy references to being a barn owl in human form is actually an allusion to her becoming a bird after her physical body dies, as most non-greenseer CotF do.

After the Battle Above the Gods Eye she will be the one to pull Daemon ashore on the Isle of Faces and we will see her de-glamour into a CotF (let’s pray we have a design that isn’t quite as lizard alien-looking as GOT’s). She will vouch for Daemon to the Green Men and as they are sworn to protect the weirwoods - and thereby the CotF - her word is essentially law and he will be inducted to their order under her patronage

I also happen to believe in “A Nettle is a Leaf” so since she’s obviously the show’s version of Nettles, I also believe that she’s Leaf

That’s it, that’s the whole post

(Credit to Michael Talks About Stuff cause he has essentially said all this but the CotF are my favourite part of ASOIAF so I had to get it off my chest after I started believing this lol)

Earlier on I was scrolling TikTok and came across one of those bog-standard “biggest mysteries of ASOIAF” posts - what caused the Doom, what is Euron planning, etc etc - actually was quite fun to leave a comment about the Doom almost 100% being from >!the Faceless Men assassinating the Valyrian bloodmages!<. However I did see a comment concerning the true nature/purpose/desire of the Others (as “what the Others want” is obviously one of the big ASOIAF mysteries) which really interested me, as it would be a cool ass twist but I’ve never seen it anywhere before.

Essentially (it was brief) this person said that the Others >!are created from the magic of the Amethyst Empress and that they are intent on gaining revenge for her usurpation!<

Now as I say, I have never seen this before but the way this person phrased it was very certain/almost like this is obvious? But I’ve never seen any published theories on this.

So, if anyone could point me towards any posts concerning this theory, please do! I’d be very interested to read!

I’m only making this post cause I saw an older autistic woman’s comment once (which I’ve sadly lost) about this topic and it’s making me think…

I’m on a gap year before I go to university in September. I want this time to be mental recovery from the burnout I experienced in A-Levels and for the most part it has been. However, I’m finding that whenever anyone relies on me for emotional support, I just can’t give it; if I try to I just feel I’m pouring from an empty cup. I increasingly feel aggravated whenever anyone asks for a shoulder to cry on or to vent their feelings. I have a friend who struggles with his sexuality and as a (only slightly older) gay man I try to provide what wisdom I can. But in all honesty I just find him to be the most annoying, whining little boy at times. Even the sound of my cat meowing at me a few minutes ago has set me off because I just do not have the energy to provide attention and love and comfort and wisdom to anyone. Just why the fuck can everyone not get over themselves and stop fucking whining at me with their stupid little palsy problems. Just shut the fuck up!!!

Maybe being burned out in the past broke something in me mentally, idk. But I’ve heard this can sometimes be a thing autistic people experience; so, autistic adults, is this familiar to you?

So I just bought Elphie the other day, along with the Another Day series. As I’ve just recently finished Out of Oz, I’ll be reading Another Day first and then proceeding on to Elphie - but, before starting Elphie I’ll be reading the Munchkinlanders chapter of Wicked as I feel like it provides a good entry into the Elphie timeline + I get an excuse to read the best chapter (with the exception of City of Emeralds) in Wicked again.

Now obviously, I’ll be buying Galinda when it releases. However, I am curious as to whether Galinda and Elphie sync up timeline-wise. Elphaba and Glinda are the same age when they start university, no? I would assume that the prequel books happen simultaneously to each other, and that way it’d really be neat if I read Munchkinlanders in Wicked, then Elphie and Galinda, then picked up in Wicked’s Gillikin chapter. However, just curious to see if that’s how the timeline is structured (i.e Elphaba and Glinda having their childhoods simultaneously) or if I’ve missed an explicit age difference written somewhere.

Thanks! 💚💗

Calling out to all people who were homeschooled up to the point of GCSEs or A-Levels here. I was homeschooled from 8-15, and recently celebrated my 20th birthday so have obviously been doing some mental pondering on my life so far.

One of the things I was thinking about in relation to homeschooling the other night was my motivation as a kid, my want/desire to be homeschooled. Like most of us I hated the school environment, but not for a lot of the same reasons. A lot of people I think either are, A) bullied, which I wasn’t really, or B) are either too dumb or too smart for the average primary school.

None of these issues are relevant to me. My main reason was because I hated being around other kids. I didn’t/don’t think that I’m any smarter or more developed than the other kids were; I just hated being around them. I quite literally always felt as if I was an adult born into a kid’s body and just wanted to be around other adults; or specifically, having coffee mornings and wine nights with the stay-at-home mums. That’s literally all I wanted since I was about 6. While I was pondering on this I realised something that inspired me to make this post and see if any other ex-homeschoolers understand what I’m talking about…

The true reason I hated school was because I felt that the whole purpose of it was to mould you into something better; someone more knowledgeable, more capable, more grown, more rounded. And for me, I always hated that because I felt inside that, just by merit of existing, I was already fully-rounded, surely? I was already a person with the ability to interact with the world, so what more needed to be built on or developed? Why should I have to make myself better and learn more and perfect whatever skills I may or may not have had and become a grown-up or become something more than a kid, when I just exist? Surely that should be enough?

That’s about the crux of a lot of how I felt when I started being homeschooled. Just want to see how many ex-homeschoolers this can reach as I’ve never met another person with my experience who’s felt this way. And it’s still a feeling I have now, so I want to find anyone else who understands.

I would offer a long-winded explanation of exactly which XYZ thing made me feel like this today but I cannot find the energy for it. All I’m gonna say is this…

I am sick of seeing like hyper-independent hugely successful corporate powerhouses loudly proclaiming pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality from the fucking rooftops like it’s a magical formula for happiness. I’m also sick of seeing midwestern Christian tradwives with their unpasteurised milk and 1500 blonde Aryan children clawing at their heels, preaching to the virtual denizens about how God made men to lead and women to serve and that women shouldn’t have jobs or bank accounts or any kind of savings because “a godly man will never cheat on a godly woman”. Finally, I’m sick of seeing TikTok communist Thomas Sankara theorists argue that people who are sick of the current job/housing/every-bloody-thing crisis will be liberated by a glorious communist revolution as if that really gives people the freedom to follow their dreams instead of just making them into a cog in the glorious socialist party’s machine.

I don’t care about any of this. I keep thinking about money and adult expectations and responsibilities - rent, bills, mortgages, financial independence, job skills, MONEY - and I cannot, I repeat, CANNOT cope with it anymore. I don’t ever want to have that level of responsibility in my life. It’s not because I’m an irresponsible person (yeah haha) but because I just do not want to have to navigate any of this. Frankly I just want to turn back the wheels of time to when I was 3 years old, sitting in my grandma’s living room eating her homemade cherry Bakewells and watching Balamory, going to the park and feeding breadcrumbs to ducks.

I do not want to see a glorious Marxist revolution. I don’t want to become the gay-man version of a pathetic simpering Christian tradwife. I don’t want to transform my mindset to become productive and independent. I JUST WANT TO BE TAKEN CARE OF LIKE A BABY. I DON’T WANT TO MAKE MYSELF INDEPENDENT OR HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF MY OWN NEEDS. I AM SO SICK OF THIS.

I turned 20 on Saturday. Thought this feeling would go away when I officially became a young adult but clearly it’s sticking around. Is this normal? I can’t be the only one who experiences this, surely

I’ve just realised that my “80s playlist” had music from the 70s to the 2000s so being a perfectionist, I’m splitting it out 😂 I’m absolutely stumped for a name for my new 80s-only playlist though. I’m thinking something with a Miami Vice inspiration but I genuinely can’t come up with anything. Any suggestions welcome!

(PS - any suggestions for my 70s-only playlist are welcome as well cause I’m stuck on that too)

Easily, my favourite part of the entire ASOIAF-verse is the Children of the Forest & the weirwoods. That’s why I was so excited when I was younger that I heard there’d be a prequel featuring them quite prominently, and was super disappointed when it got cancelled. However, I keep seeing this rumour about what the characterisation of the CotF would’ve been like in Bloodmoon and am just curious as to whether it’s true or not…

Basically, I keep seeing people say that one of the reasons they cancelled it (or, at least, one of the reasons it wouldn’t have taken off) is because they tried to characterise the CotF as black humans who were like, cursed by the weirwoods into forest elf creatures? And they could see the massive implications of racism that go with that, so they cut the pilot (among many other reasons)

Just wondering if this is true because Bloodmoon is genuinely the show that got away for me and it would be really weird/disappointing to have seen it and have the CotF be characterised in this way

I recently finished Out of Oz (my post history will show) and I’m currently saving a pretty penny for Another Day, Elphie and to preorder Galinda because I genuinely cannot get enough of this series or this world. That being said…

My retrospective analysing of Wicked Years is that it’s a series that starts amazingly, and ends very poorly. Wicked and Son of a Witch feel, in my opinion, like books that flow narratively; a world is being built when you read them. Then A Lion Among Men completely ruins the entire flow. Having read Out of Oz, I think a third book in the series was either A) unnecessary, or B) should’ve been focused on other characters. Personally, I think said characters should’ve been Tip/Ozma and Mombey. Tip shows up halfway through Out of Oz, awkwardly folds into Rain’s motley crew, has a one-liner about Mombey’s head-changing magic, and then any development of his character is just “oh well Rain isn’t bisexual so that relationship is tragically over” with like 2% focus on the revelation of Ozma’s return. In the same vein, Mombey just rules Munchkinland because, we never learn really of any of her backstory, her powers or even how she reads the Grimmerie (Rain has to be present to read it?) nor of what the relationship between her and Tip is like. They’re implied to not have a warm relationship, but she’s very happy to see him when he returns to Munchkinland at the tail end (yes that’s probably cause all her eggs are back in one basket, but still, undercooked)

General Jinjuria is never actually shown. Cherrystone and Glinda appear in one chapter and then are irrelevant. So many unanswered questions; what happened to the rest of the maunts from Saint Glinda’s? What actually went down between Trism and Candle while Liir was in the Vinkus (is there an implication of SA there? Or just jealousy on Candle’s part?) What did Loyal Oz really look like under the Emperor’s rule? Why is so much of the story about lost souls wandering in the woods being blind to all the real action, and then 😉clicking their heels😉 and resolving it instantly with zero character building? Also why does he all but confirm Oz used to be coastal based on the seahorse mosaic and the salt flat geography of the western Vinkus, then just say nothing about it?

On the other hand, so many things could’ve been resolved sooner. Yackle could’ve been resolved in SOAW. Cowardly Lion only needed a chapter in SOAW or OOZ. Nor/Ilianora didn’t have to die for the plot to be strong/er. A lot more magical/interdimensional lore could’ve come from Mr Boss if he was anything other than comic relief. Even in the first book, the reveal that the Wizard performed occultist rituals with Helena Blavatsky (and likely committed ritualistic human sacrifices) could’ve been drawn on at some point and there’s just nothing.

Yes, even Son of a Witch drags a bit compared to the first novel, but I’m just wondering if anybody else feels the same that it seems to have been part of a narrative whole. Liir’s story flows from Elphaba’s really naturally (even if his magic is underdeveloped). ALAM just ruined the whole narrative to me, I feel like Maguire’s train of literary thought was derailed by it. All the stuff in Out of Oz would be so unbelievably interesting and able to be really well fleshed-out if it wasn’t just 600 pages of Rain finding herself. Not that Rain is a bad character, just think she could’ve been developed if OOZ was the third book, or if the third book was about Tip & Mombey, or the political happenings in the Emerald City which would also be very interesting to see.

Idk, sorry if this is harsh, just been brewing in my mind a little while. Anybody else feel the same?