The Wizard of Oz 3

It was a long time ago, back in my earliest days of high school. We had a project due for my drama class, and the basic idea is we had to act out a bunch of scenes from a chosen play. Many students took this premise and simply worked with a collection of scenes from any well-known work of art, Shakespeare, and the like. I, however, had a deep and passion and yearning to not merely replicate works that had been previously done, but to put my own ideas out there in the ether. I wanted more than anything to create something that was mine and share it with everyone.

The huge caveat in this story being that the thing I created was not truly a brain child of my own making. It was a parody-sequel of a famous and well-known work. Based off of the movie, which itself was based off of a well known book series, I brought my very first wholly “original” work into the world. The beauty of that time and a plague on my mind for the remainder of my days: The Wizard of Oz 3.

The work was one of sheer randomness and pure incredulity. It was a mad, horrendous cacophony of thing after thing happening to characters that resembled their original story counterparts in nothing but name only. I did not think this at the time, I only thought I created the greatest and funniest piece of written work to ever grace the existence of the world. Toto? Killed in the first few lines of the play. The scarecrow? A purely reactionary character that didn't service the plot. The Cowardly Lion? A traitor to Dorothy in service of the true big bad guy of this new entrant into Wizard of Oz lore: The Tin Man.

The best way I could describe my writing of the time was: random and referential. If something happening wasn't some over the top, cartoon/anime-level nonsense, then it was referencing some extraordinarily niche internet joke of the times within the late 2000s and early 2010s. If it wasn't either of those things, it was a loose reference to the source material of which this was based on/ a sequel to. I think there may have even been character(s) addicted to drugs? The specifics I am foggy on as I've tried dearly to move past the days of Wizard of Oz 3, and as many times as I've tried to find the missing story I haven't yet. But, I know somewhere amidst my belongings, my composition notebook is lying in wait for me to find.

In the time since, I've written a lot more. A lot of a lot more. Some within the same vein, being a too close copy of another work or just a fan fiction, and from that point I sprung into far more original works and original stories. Stories that tie into more universal themes instead of just mere flash-in-the-pan references and humor. The stories I create nowadays take great inspiration from other works, like with any written work would, but they always form their own soul and stand on their own legs before too long.

To put simply, I've gone from somebody who couldn't establish a cohesive thought or even dream of creating my own world into someone who does that almost daily across multiple different settings and genres. To put it in anime terms, a time skip had occurred, and I finished my training arc to become an almost unrecognizable version of myself compared to whom I was. I couldn't be more proud to utter the words “I've changed.” and know it to be one hundred percent true.