I remember a recent convo (last ten years) regarding an elderly British couple talking about the rise of LGBT+ issues in politics,
HUSBAND: It’s actually refreshing to see the young people openly talking about it. WIFE: I don’t think we’ve ever known anyone like that. Do we? HUSBAND: Dear, I was in the navy for ten years.
If you think about it, it’s very much a thing in parochial schools as well.
I believe that it’s a team of four people, each with strengths and weaknesses who are on a common journey and have teamed up against the elements and a vengeful antagonist while on a journey to meet a common consultant.
I can’t speak for Scarecrow and Lion, but in the book the tin man absolutely had prior business with the WWW that didn’t end well.
All four of the travelers had a problem with no clear answer and were going to ask the Wizard who might have some sound advice. So it’s a road trip for folks with a common destination
Also the flying monkeys were their own people and geased to obey the amulet, which WWW possessed.
Also, the solution really was the friends they made along the way. If I were Dorothy, I’d rather be there than Kansas.
What freaked me out were the IV drug dispensers that dialed into wifi for app control (and yes, they’re less secure than your roomba).
It’d make a great fictional assassination story if one was commandeered to kill a VIP by morphene or insulin overdose. No such incident has occured yet IRL. But I’m sure it’s worth like 20 cyberpunk dystopia points when it does.
I’m remined of the Freikorps militia groups of Weimar Germany that would become the meat-and-potatoes recruits for the Sturmabteilung and early Schutzstaffel of the SS. On their own, The Freikorps served as law enforcement and peacekeepers, typically by disposing of town undesirables and locals in disfavor with the business class. In exchange, they got room and board and pretty much anything else they wanted (including the local womenfolk) since it was a really bad idea to deny them something they wanted.
This was a Donald Duck comic when I was a kid in the 1970s. The smart inventor (Ludwig Von Drake) was trying to mine gold from the ocean, but the energy cost was too great and so it was done at a loss.
We try this once in a while, and it’s still too expensive.
As I have had a really bad run of terrible dentist experiences, bridges are scary and implants are expensive, I’d really like this to work well, and be reasonably priced.