Twitterpated

• 08:02 Did you know that secular universities are communists in sheep's clothing? Some dude on the radio said so! #
• 08:03 Seriously, that guy was working off a laundry list of conservative Christian complaints: Congress, MTV, premarital sex, Hollywood, etc. #
• 08:09 The health care bill has undergone so many changes that I don't know whether it's being passed by the House is good thing or not. #
• 08:10 Since no Republicans voted for the bill anyway, why not put the public option back in? Or are the Blue Dogs still a problem? #
• 17:18 I forgot to charge my phone today. #
• 22:33 Photo: Here’s a post about the giants of Oz. Pictured is Mr. Yoop. tumblr.com/xpy7q19rg #
• 23:01 @kattmoff Is that Dick Cheney's reaction? #
• 23:08 @3x1minus1 I'll be there! I can wear my @eehouls wig. #
• 23:14 @amandapalmer Yeah, Victoria would never go for it. #
• 23:25 @MikeConway I'd say it's better than trusting insurance companies, but we presumably still have to do that as well. #<
  /a>
• 23:31 @juliasegal Unless you've got power! #
• 23:37 @jfruh But after that, every other sandwich will be disappointing! #

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Don't Ogle the Ogres, and Don't Feed the Trolls

While giants like Mr. Yoop could reasonably be referred to as ogres, I'm not sure the word is ever used to describe them. There is, however, one minor but plot-significant character in Pirates in Oz who is specifically called an ogre. That's Og, the Ogre of Ogowon, whom Peter Brown releases from his enchanted prison by breaking an egg in a nest at the top of Mount Up. It turns out that Og had been trapped inside the mountain for 500 years due to a spell cast by a witch on the next island over, who thought the ogre snored too loudly. He helps Peter by blowing the becalmed Crescent Moon to the shore of Menankypoo, and claims that he'll escape the mountain by breaking through it. The mountain is the home of the Cascadians, people made of water who spend their time sliding down the side and then spraying themselves back up in a fountain, and it's not known what happened to them when Og broke out of the mountain. I assume they survive, but do they end up merging with the waters of the Nonestic Ocean, or what?

In a later story, actually the first chapter of her book King Kojo, Thompson reintroduces the Ogre of Oh-Go-Wan. But is this the same ogre, or a different one? Since the ogre in that story dissolves in salt water, it's unlikely that he would have lived on an island in the ocean. There's no reason why Og couldn't have also lived in Kojo's Kingdom of Oh-Go-Wan at one point, though. While he identifies himself as the Ogre of Ogowon, there's no indication that this is the name of the island where he lives, and a flag calls it Mount Up. So perhaps there's a connection between the ogres, but they're probably two different characters.

I'm also going to address trolls in Oz, but I don't believe there are any in the Famous Forty. Canonical authors Eloise and Lauren McGraw do, however, introduce a troll in their Forbidden Fountain. He's a Toll Troll, who lives at a bridge and demands that anyone crossing it pay him in honey. Trolls are also quite significant to the plot of Eric Shanower's graphic novel Forgotten Forest. His trolls, who dwell in a volcano near the Forest of Burzee, are nasty, but hardly ogrish brutes. In fact, they're notorious schemers, with their king having a long-term plan to seduce a wood-nymph named Nelanthe and use her to help destroy Burzee.