Icarus_chained’s ideas on headcasing and the iron suitsOh boy, she gave the plot bunnies and muse something to chew on. This is what I had shared on my previous history of the O.Z. musings.
So it took a while as I was fighting with the map to realize I could keep the events and chunk out the numbers he put with them. Well, keep most of the events, I think Dorothy got stuck much like Ahamo did. It deviates from Baum too, but once Ozma got to the throne, she was able to control travel storms and immigrated Uncle Henry and Aunt Em to the Oz. DG ends up—without having to get crazy with year/annual calculations—being Dorothy and Ozma’s great-great-great-granddaughter. All the other people in the Mausoleum? technically are DG’s ancestors from Ozma’s family tree. Since Dorothy played a critical role in unifying Oz and killing a couple of witches, she was given a burial of honor there. I shortened the times that the Wizard held power and how long Shell is the Emperor Apostle, and changed Ozma’s birth date so not to have to deal with the fact she is supposed to be the same age as Elphaba.
Though if someone wants to take that and run with it, if Ozma the baby was hidden in the magic limbo world that DG met Dorothy in, that could have stopped her aging.
Also while working on it, I discovered that the Great Upheaval happened 109 annuals ago. And this really caused it to sink in just how shitty the people of the O.Z. and surrounding countries have had it for longer than that.
First there was the Great Drought the coincided with Elphaba’s birth (or was caused by her, Maguire is vague about it in interviews). Then the Wizard took over and reigned in a horrible oppressive fashion. Civil war broke out and only stopped because Dorothy’s house landed on the separatists’ leader. Then she goes and accidently kills the next closest person the common people and Animals have for a champion, but she gets rid of the Wizard and really wants to help the people who are suffering worse than she ever saw back in Kansas.
There’s a lovely dance for the throne and we end up with the Emperor Apostle, who in turns takes all the great ideas the Wizard used and ups the ante. I can see him creating both headcasing and the iron suits and making them tools of the government. Adds
jezabel_faust’s ideas to this train of thought. Before he was Emperor, he would go into Southstairs and drug and rape the female prisoners. Fun guy, Shell is. The Munchkins have enough and declare open war, which splits Oz. Vinkus tribes don’t participate even though their lands are declared part of the Loyal Oz. Gillikin tries to stay as neutral as possible. The Quadlings are ignored, but I think more end up on the Munchkin side than don’t.
In all of this mess, Ozma and Dorothy end up rebellion leaders and restore Ozma to her throne. Oz, reconnected with its Queen, ends the Great Drought. Five years of internal peace, but facing external threats. Roquat squares off with them three times, and fare so badly in the last one that he takes his mountain into the ocean to be as far away from Ozma and Dorothy as he can get. This is the Great Upheaval and it had some drastic effects on the landscape of Oz (the Gap across the O.Z. for starters).
But once they recover from that, there is 92 annuals of peace and prosperity for most people. Then the Great Famine started, and the youngest Princess died. Five annuals later, Azkadellia has overthrown her mother and declared herself Sorceress. And it’s open warfare once again.
And the poor Slippers who don’t have any of this baggage of history can’t understand why there’s a freak out from everyone over things like the Gnome King or witches. Yes, I am including DG and to some extent Ahamo in that statement, though I think Ahamo’s general way of surviving such things is “Lavender Eyes thinks it’s bad news and Ambrose agrees with her; okay, it’s bad news.”
*Sigh* If I don’t watch it, I’m going to end up doing stories to cover this backstory. :p Which normally, I wouldn’t mind sticking in the idea folder, but O.Z. stuff has a way of expanding faster than bread dough with too much yeast.
Which kind of leads me to my next point, getting annoyed with Tin Man Meta. I’ve accepted the fact that because of Live Journal differences, I will never be able to state anything there. For the most part, this is a good preventative measure for me. Cause I find myself reacting way too emotionally to points brought up in the “bad fanfic conventions, fail!characterizations, etc.” department. When I have to remind myself “They aren’t talking about my stories; 9 out of 10 never even bothered to read
Dragons and Ninjas because it’s not on their precious LiveJournal” (I have issues with company policy and think it’s dangerous to make it the primary hosting for any fandom community), I don’t need to be able to respond because it won’t be pretty.
So yeah, the rest of what follows probably falls into justification rant territory. I think there’s some good stuff in it, but I’m biased.
I call bullshit on the opinion that Cain needs decades of therapy before moving forward with his life, so all Cain/DG ship fics are bad and must die in burn in fanfiction hell (so the fics from the one stating this opinion are the only ones that count as valid—DAMN, I feel snarky about this today and I can’t even point to one post that set it off. It just seems to be this pervasive superior attitude I feel when it comes up.) And I will cop to yes, I feel that they are picking on my ship and what I write about and what I try really, really, really hard to make damn plausible with the context of fanfiction and the limitations of the universe.
That said, what really upsets me about this view is I think it does a disservice to Cain’s strength of character as portrayed in the miniseries (even with all of its plot and backstory holes). Cain was shown captured and beaten, they heavily implied that his family was tortured and maybe even had their deaths faked in front of him given his absolute certainty they are dead, and shoved into an iron suit which kept his body in physical shape while he watched a projection of that day over and over again for annuals. Eight is a number agreed upon by most of the fandom. This is horrific torture; Cain has a nightmare later of Adora’s death and it turns into a projection on him. Yes, he has issues (just like all the other characters), but I don’t think those issues mean he needs to check into the nearest available psychiatric ward.
I actually like the theory that the iron suit is a sensory deprivation device, and Zero’s addition of the time loop project helped keep Cain sane. It has a delicious sense of irony because that was so not Zero’s intent. He knows he’s watching a projection; hello, he’s a cop, a trained observer! Even if he had a bad week or month, he would reason out that it never changes and it never stops eventually. It gave him time to mourn his wife and son, and plan what exactly he was going to do to Zero when he got out. And this is exactly was Cain was ready to stride off to do after DG and Glitch save him and he realized he was free. Yeah, we got time lapsed right over that bit, and I do think it took a while.
Only whatever trait in Cain that led him to becoming a police officer and led him to resisting a tyrant’s rule won’t allow him to abandon DG—who honestly doesn’t know anything about the dangers of this world—with only a convict for protection. So he reluctantly agrees to guide her after her parents.
DG has an affect on Cain, no matter if your opinion falls under romantic shipping or they’re just friends. DG insists on saving Raw from certain death—a position a Tin Man should automatically take. She instinctively turns to Cain for protection (just try to convince me that doesn’t stroke a male ego unconsciously *snort*). Cain puts DeMilo in his place when he gets lewd interacting with DG, a response all on Cain and not due to DG jumping behind him for protection. And then she suffers a blow no one should, and finds out her parents lied to her for as long as she can remember. She is a good if exasperating person, and she’s only exasperating because he wants to get her safe and sound anywhere so his conscious won’t nag him as he puts a bullet in it after Zero’s dead and she keeps delaying that outcome.
So when Father Vue tells DG to go to the Mystic Man, Cain figures his duty will be done at that point. Her parting shot “You’re a Tin Man, not a killer” hits home, even though he manages to ignore it up until hearing she is in danger as Zero’s new target. By the time he is confronted with the shell of the Mystic Man, it is pretty clear that Cain is not a stone-cold bastard even though he’s trying to maintain that image. Not for the people he cares about and DG has been added to that list with the Mystic Man, and to a lesser degree with Glitch and Raw—he doesn’t accept them fully until after the Tower rescue and escape. Would a man so on the edge of a psychotic breakdown be as gentle as he was with the withdrawal-suffering Mystic Man?
Yes, Cain gives in and has revenge-addled moments, most notably at the Northern Palace. His hopes rise especially after Ralph confirms Zero’s story. But even once they are dashed again after seeing Adora’s grave, he doesn’t turn on or take it out on this new group he has bonded with. He accepts DG’s comfort. He does tell Raw off, but not as harshly as he could. After the Realm of the Unwanted, he is freely giving out hugs! That’s a huge leap for the guy who didn’t know what to do when DG pounced on him in the Tower.
*SNORT* But I suppose all this is supposed to be shuffled onto sucky writing of the miniseries and not any growth of the character, who according to the archetype is supposed to realize he has had a heart and compassion all along. I’m willing to leave it to individual writers as too how long it takes before Cain decides to have another romantic commitment, if any, after Adora, but I don’t think the five month or the annual long wait I’ve used so far is out of line considering what growth the miniseries projected.
Unrelated side note,
icarus_chained reasoned out Raw’s speech logic exactly along the ideas I was using but hadn’t articulated yet.
EDIT: OKAY, I think I have finally figured out what goes wrong with the damn links. I usually type posts in Word and then cut 'n paste. Word has smart quotes turned on, and for some reason whenever I add HTML codes and then cut 'n paste, Blogger adds in this URL and screws up the link. They should all be fixed now. Just click refresh if it doesn't work for you.
