Island of Dubious Fiction

I'm feeling whimsical today, for some reason, so I decided to dig up the first story I ever wrote for @alex51324's Island of the Gays. Is it finished? Yes. Is it good? Not really. Did I immediately decide to give it a complete overhaul, fleshing out my OC to a believable level, and have it turn into a sprawling, impossible, probably never to be finished psychological nightmare? Well, this is my brain we're talking about here.

It's still technically in the works, but the OC has been replaced by someone more manageable (not telling you who), with a back story that doesn't need it's own novel (although I'm still trying to figure out what, exactly, that is). However, since there are people who like to see how things start out and how they end, I figured I might as well post this.

Warning: It is not my best work, even for a rough draft, and was written in November of 2020, so it's old enough I still had the American spellcheck set on Scrivener. It was absolutely pounded out for NANO and reads like it. Deals pretty heavily with Gordon's background and psychology, but with the sort of on-the-fly, not-as-accurate-as-it-could-be, I'll-sit-down-with-my-old-college-psych-book-for-the-next-draft handling.

2025 Writing Wrapped

alternate title: In which I did not write much last year...although I did do other arts/crafts, but I don't know how to quantify it here.

Do a run-through of your works, be they writing, art, or otherwise, starting 1 January 2025.

I was tagged by @angelswing236 Thank you! 😊

Summary:

Words written: 84,564

Stories published on AO3: 7 published new in 2025, 4 more updated during 2025

Podfics: 0

Tumblr drabbles: 0

Fandom written for the most: The Gilded Age

Most common pairing: Marian Brook/Larry Russell, John Adams/Oscar van Rhijn, Thomas Barrow/Guy Dexter (2 Each)

Most common additional tag: Humor/Fluff

Superlatives:

Longest: Stolen Child (67,314 words)

Shortest: Point of View (1,117 words)

Best Title: Fit to be Pied Most

Popular: Stolen Child by hits and kudos, started in 2024, finished in 2025. Most popular published completely in 2025 is Modest Proposal.

Most Overlooked: Point of View

Most Likely to Be President: Modest Proposal. If it can't make office on Oscar's charm, George will bribe people.

Best Dressed (work skin/format): I don’t change the work skin/format.

Life of the Party: Island Sandbox, because everyone loves when I update and it's been ongoing for years.

Late to Class: Stolen Child, because it's already a huge trope.

Director's notes under the cut

Book Review: Dorothy Must Die

Title: Dorothy Must Die

Author: Danielle Paige

Genera: Young Adult

Book in Series: First

Stars: Three of Five

It should be noted that when I purchased this book, it was at the front of the store with no markers to indicate it’s genera or that it was part of a series. The back of the book also gives no indication with the description being the sort of thing that could easily indicate general fantasy. If I’d opened it in the store, the inside of the cover would have told me it was a series, but not it’s genera. In short, when I started reading, I was expecting something a bit different. I figured it out fairly quickly (the writing style makes it obvious), but it was a bit flat footing at first. I still feel it’s a fairly middling YA book and will probably appeal more to people aged 10-20, but it’s far easier to forgive some of the things I’m not fond of when viewing it as the proper genera.

It should also be noted that I never read any of the Oz books past the first one. Of course, over time I’ve picked up on the existence of other characters (predominantly Ozma), but I don’t know a great deal about them and there are other things I don’t know at all. So, since this book clearly draws liberally from the Baum works (Ozma isn’t the only character I recognize from later stories, but I don’t want to spoil things), I might be missing some really awesome references. I also can’t comment on how well she did with these characters.

All of this is a very long way of saying: I am not this book’s target audience. At all. I am at least twenty six years beyond that. If you are a young adult debating whether or not to read this book, this review will probably have some useful information for you, but take it with a full tablespoon of salt. It will be more suited for people in and around middle age who still enjoy the occasional YA book.

So, quick, spoiler free summary. Our protagonist, Amy, is a poor girl from a broken family living in Flat Hills, Kansas. Basically backside of nowhere. While she’s home alone with only her Mom’s pet rat for company, a tornado comes through, picks up the trailer, and dumps it in Munchkin Land. Here she discovers that after returning to Kansas, Dorothy decided it actually sucked there, came back to Oz, had Ozma make her a princess, then got addicted to magic and has turned into a psychotic dictator. Basically everyone who was good in the original series — Dorothy, Glinda, the Tin Woodsman, the Lion, the Scarecrow — is now evil incarnate. After a run in with the New Regime, Amy is rescued by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked and bound to help them in their mission: kill Dorothy and free Oz.

While it’s not the most original concept out there these days, it does have a lot of potential. In fact, since most of my issue is with the writing itself, I would probably like it much more (possibly to the point of loving it), if it were adapted to a well done graphic novel or a very well done film. It has some enjoyable original characters — I’m particularly kinda fond of Glamora — and does some interesting things with the idea of Ozian magic. Even the “protagonist is poor kid stuck taking care of her drug addict mother while being picked on by The School’s Popular Bully (wearing pink, of course!)” start, which is kinda trite by this point, gets put to decent use later in the story. Some of that use is predictable, some is less so.

My main objection is that when she gets to Oz, the author starts trying too hard to get her point across. It’s kind of like a Mary Sue world. Not a world filled with Mary Sues, mind. The actual world is a Mary Sue. She just works so very, very hard to let you know how amazing and sparkly and otherworldly everything is and how Horrible Dorothy and her crew are. It reminded me of the villains I came up with when I was a teenager who were ranked from “minion to head villain” based on how much of an abusive, murdering, raping, genocidal bastard they were, because I had zero sense of scope or nuance at sixteen.

(It’s not actually that bad, of course. Not even close. If it had been that bad, I’d never have gotten through the book and this review would simply be “No stars. Don’t read. How the hell did this make the NYT Best Seller list? Who even published this?!?!”)

(Incidentally, Amy is sixteen.)

Admittedly some of the ideas, especially what she did with the Yellow Brick Sidekick Trio, were really neat, she just kinda bludgeoned you with how bad they were after awhile. Also, when you got to the Revolutionary Order, there’s a point where she goes wanna be Tolkien with the room descriptions. Every one is described in great, glorious detail, and I swear there’s at least three per chapter. It calms down after a bit, but I seriously got to the point where I just...skipped the room descriptions.

And actually, kinda forget what I said about it not being a world filled with Mary Sues. I got very, acutely tired of Amy running into people who were a) around her age, b) attractive or, c) both. Yes, I know, YA, but there is a limit. I swear that describes half of the characters, and the ones who aren’t tend to be Evil, around three thousand years old, or a monkey. The winged monkeys are never attractive and Amy doesn’t seem to care about their age. There are two potential love interests. She has little to no chemistry with either. With one, it’s a good thing ‘cause it turns out he’s not actually a love interest.

...actually, it might have been more interesting if it was him, but it was the other one.

Now, generally speaking things got better as the book progressed — writing, action, interest, and character development (although there was still never much chemistry) — so the sequels might continue to improve, but I honestly can’t be bothered to find out.

She also starts killing people off to drive home the Scope of the Problem before you really have a chance to get emotionally attached to them, so that doesn’t hit as hard as it should. Then again, I might have still been adjusting to the genera at that point. The book does move at a fast clip and is incredibly readable, but that just means I was at least of a third of the way through before I really settled into the YA thing.

There were a couple of solidly decent plot twists, unless you’re the sort of person who knows the end to every mystery by the end of the first sentence. I have known that person, and if you are them, you’ll be bored to tears. I am not that sort of person, so the fact that I figured a couple of things out in advance through the clues given felt pretty good and is a gold star to the author for the right amount of subtle foreshadowing for most people.

The one thing I am very on the fence about is the PoV. Like many YA stories, it’s first person, and not the best first person. In a lot of ways I think it would have been better in third person limited, especially since there’s a lot of Amy guessing at what other people are thinking that would have gone more smoothly in limited third. The thing is, when it comes to what Amy is thinking — and more importantly what she’s feeling — the author is very ‘tell, don’t show’, but she manages it without the annoying, repetitive, talked down to feeling that style can have. This means while I was aware of it, it didn’t annoy me. Why is this important? Because I’ve known people, and run across more of them, who prefer that sort of writing, and there’s not a ton of it out there. What is out there doesn’t tend to be at all readable by people like me who prefer more emotional nuance than “I was angry. Again.” (Amy spends a lot of the book being angry, but honestly? That’s fair. If I were her I’d have tried to kill a few people other than Dorothy before I reached the climax out of sheer frustration. “We need you to stick to the plan.” “And the plan is?” “Sorry, can’t tell you anything beyond ‘kill Dorothy’.” ...yeah, murder attempts would have happened.)

So, yeah. Part of me wants to say “Change the PoV” and part of me is very much “Mmmm, nah, leave it. We need things with a wider appeal.”

I really do like the Oz Canon bits that she pulls in, at least the ones I pick up on. As I said before, she has some great character ideas. There are things I’m curious about with the future books, just not curious enough to read them. There’s a wiki, I might read that, if I decide it’s important, but it would take someone I really trust saying “Yeah, it got better as it went. It really is worth it.” to get me to pick them up. If the general concept sounds like something you’d like, I really would recommend at least snagging a copy from the local library and forming your own opinions. For myself, I’m just going to sit here and hope that someone (Not Netflix. Preferably not Amazon either.) picks it up and does a knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark film adaption. Or it at least gets adapted into a nice graphic novel.

Book Review Rating System

Okay, we have 24 hours before my Book Review poll ends, but with all 5 current votes* being in favor, I don’t think it’s going to be shot down before the end of the poll. So! It seems like a good idea to let everyone know what my rating system looks like:

Five Stars – Wonderful! Perfect! One of the best things I’ve ever read! Please read it now!

Four Stars – I liked it! It was well written and did the things I expect from a book of that genera. Maybe not my favorite, but I would recommend it to anyone.

Three Stars – Objectively, this is an okay book. I may have liked it, I may not have. I might recommend it, I might not. Ultimately, though, I think you should make your own decision and be aware that even if I did like it and I do recommend it, it has some issues.

Two Stars – This sure is a thing I read. I don't recommend it.

One Star – Hated it. This is bad. The writing is bad. It fails at it’s genera. I might not even have bothered finishing it. If you love it, that's fine, but don't expect me to gush about it with you.

Zero Stars – I have never read something this bad. If anything ever gets this rating, you should definitely not read it, unless you want proof that something can be this bad.

And just so we’re clear – I will recommend things with a three star rating over the course of the year. I know, because I have a couple of books I’m quite fond of that I plan on re-reading and they’re solidly three stars. I will not pretend otherwise. But I grew up in a world where C was a satisfactory grade, so I have no issues saying I like a three start book and will not look down on other people for their three star favorites, even if I’m not a fan.

*plus mine, because I wanted to see results without a ‘result’ button. I flipped a coin.

Island Sandbox - Chapter 14

And apparently we're starting 2026 with the link function broken. Again. Ah well, at least we can work with it.

Anyway, typed up this little thing for @alex51324's Island last night and typed it up this morning. Seems an appropriate send off to the disaster that was 2025 and a hopeful start to 2026.

I hope you all had a New Year that was peaceful or fun or whatever you prefer.

Interest Check: Book Reviews

I used to be a voracious reader. Then I got a B.A. in English and have had difficulty reading anything of any length or substance since, especially if it's from before the 1980s. Maybe not even that. My brain is too keen on ripping things apart for me to get 'lost in a good book'. People keep giving them to me, though, and I do like them, so for 2026, I'm going to try to get myself to read in the evenings rather than spend time on the internet. If nothing else, not looking at a screen just before bed is supposed to be good for sleeping.

What I was wondering was if anyone would be interested in reviews? Given that Mum's been trying to keep her favorite independent bookstore open since the pandemic, I have quite a varied collection.

I don't need to return to work until the 26th which means...

...I seem to have survived.