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me as a writer

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Two witches chilling on separate mountains kiamo ko apart cause they’re not gay.

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peeta tried to save him and katniss by saying she had a baby, because he knew that would pull at the capitals heart strings. In a dystopian society, peeta mellark knew the capital would care more about a fetus than the real dying children . this sounds oddly familiar

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It's Trans History Week! Meet Dr. James Barry.

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Elphaba being an idealist while Glinda is a realist always gets to me. Like you would expect the girl who’s been ostracized all her life for being green to be cynical and think that the world can’t change. But no, Elphie is all starry eyed and hopeful that she can change the world. That she can fix its wrongs and create a better future, not just for her but for every citizen of Oz.

Meanwhile Glinda, the girl who’s had everything, admiration, money, etc, knows how the world is. She knows that the world is led by those who are popular despite their talent or lack thereof. She knows how to play the game, knows the rules of the game, and knows that not playing by those rules will make you an outsider. She’s already resigned to the world as it is.

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and this is why they both fell for her

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love that in the wickedverse, this poor 12 year old is just stuck in the middle of the most insane dyke drama Oz has ever seen

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I dusted off my old blog to write about Wicked and CPTSD

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a version of the “Prophesied Chosen One” archetype the way Wicked does it.

For centuries (millennia?) it’s been said that someday this one person will come along and bring magic back to Oz. Then one day a very confused man shows up in a giant balloon, learns about this prophesy, and dupes THE ENTIRE WORLD into believing it’s him just by repeating the name of his hometown a bunch of times while staring at this ancient book. THEN the actual Chosen One shows up and the whole world shuns and (almost) literally demonizes her until she gets murdered by some random child who - funny enough - could have told everyone what “Omaha” actually means. But no one asked and now the Wizard is gone and Oz is in the same position it was in before he arrived, except without the richness of Animal culture or the hope of magic returning a second time.

The Chosen One archetype has existed for actual millennia and I can’t think of any other versions where people fuck it up this badly.

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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a version of the “Prophesied Chosen One” archetype the way Wicked does it.

For centuries (millennia?) it’s been said that someday this one person will come along and bring magic back to Oz. Then one day a very confused man shows up in a giant balloon, learns about this prophesy, and dupes THE ENTIRE WORLD into believing it’s him just by repeating the name of his hometown a bunch of times while staring at this ancient book. THEN the actual Chosen One shows up and the whole world shuns and (almost) literally demonizes her until she gets murdered by some random child who - funny enough - could have told everyone what “Omaha” actually means. But no one asked and now the Wizard is gone and Oz is in the same position it was in before he arrived, except without the richness of Animal culture or the hope of magic returning a second time.

The Chosen One archetype has existed for actual millennia and I can’t think of any other versions where people fuck it up this badly.

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the funniest part of part two is gonna be that, from the Wizard's pov, anyone that he tries to set Glinda up with immediately becomes an enemy of the state

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I do love seeing the various reactions to the new Wicked title because the people who are unfamiliar with Act 2 of the musical are like “ok cool” or “why isn’t it part 2?” or “it should be (insert thing that doesn’t make sense)”

And the people who ARE familiar with Act 2 saw it and heard the music over the announcement and are like “THEYVE DECLARED WAR. THEY ARE GOING TO KILL US. THEY WANT OUR BLOOD”

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Things to Never Say to Someone Who Just Came out Wicked Edition:

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Okay I want to talk about this moment between Morrible and Glinda for a sec because it adds such a wonderfully sinister layer to a scene that is otherwise a triumphant defining moment for Elphaba, and it sets up the dynamics for Part 2 so perfectly.

At this point, we are in the thick of “Defying Gravity.” Everyone’s attention is on Elphaba - and rightfully so, she’s up there declaring war on the Wizard, displaying incredible feats of magic, of course everyone’s attention is on her.

…Everyone, except Morrible.

Morrible has realized that Plan A was a bust, but rather than panicking, she’s already worked over Plans B through Z in her head and has realized that Glinda, not Elphaba, is actually the key figure here. Glinda is actually the best thing that could have happened to them.

Mind you, Morrible hates Glinda. She thinks Glinda is vapid and attention-seeking and completely without talent. It would be extremely easy for her to brand Glinda as an accomplice to Elphaba, have the guards drag her off, imprison her, never have to deal with her again, nice and neat.

Instead, while everyone else is focused on Elphaba, Morrible only has eyes for Glinda. She zeroes in on her, releases her, and comforts her, because she understands what no one else understands, which is that yes, that’s great that the Wizard now has an enemy to unify his people against, but they also need a symbol of hope, something that is the exact antithesis to Elphaba, something to keep everyone at extremes. 

The Wizard himself can’t really be a symbol of hope, because the key to his success is that he remains shrouded in mystery, and yes people think he’s wonderful, but there’s a level of uncertainty and intimidation to him. He is Oz the Great and Terrible, and everyone’s preeeeeetty sure he’s a good guy, but if you have someone like Elphaba out there - who Morrible knows from experience is very smart, very articulate, and has her own sort of magnetism - there’s a potential that she could turn at least enough people against the Wizard to make things very inconvenient.

So what they need, now that they have an enemy, is to have an equally magnetic figurehead representing the Wizard who embodies all these one-dimensional ideas of goodness, someone for the public to adore and fawn over so the association between Wizard and Goodness is crystal clear.

And by bringing Glinda along, Elphaba has unknowingly served that figurehead up on a platter.

Glinda is everything Elphaba isn’t, from personality, to appearance - Morrible has already set Elphaba up by calling her green skin an “outward manifestorium of her twisted nature,” which paves the way for Glinda, who is the perfect conventional beauty, to be an “outward manifestorium” of pure goodness. 

Morrible realizes they need these two lightning rods of Absolute Evil and Absolute Good in order to manipulate people - fear alone isn’t enough; the only way to effectively radicalize the populace is to make sure there is no gray area whatsoever, no room for question: you're either good, or you’re evil. And the Wizard alone isn’t a strong enough representation of “goodness” when by virtue of existing, he has to remain in the shadows. Glinda on the other hand? With her looks and her charm and her openness and her ability to expertly win over a crowd? Perfect for the role.

Now the tricky part for Morrible is taking into consideration that Glinda and Elphaba love each other. But we also know from earlier scenes that Morrible is a master at manipulating emotions. Right from the start when Elphaba is having trouble with her magic, Morrible casually brings up the “Animals should be seen and not heard” disturbance from class, spoon-feeding her just enough to get Elphaba upset, triggering her magic, after which Morrible makes sure to give her assurance and praise to keep Elphaba optimistic about her power.

She’s also aware that Glinda does have quite a bit of influence over Elphaba, because when Elphaba flees, Morrible immediately tasks her with winning her over, rather than simply relying on the guards or even going after Elphaba herself. She knows if anyone has a chance at roping Elphaba back in, it's Glinda.

Obviously, Glinda isn’t successful in getting her back, but while this puts a dent in Morrible’s plans to get control of Elphaba, it does give her an extra weak spot to exploit in Glinda.

So now, at the height of “Defying Gravity” when Elphaba has officially taken her stand against them, Morrible sees Glinda, and Glinda is at her most vulnerable, her most emotionally fragile. Not only is she heartbroken and in shock, she’s also just witnessed in real time exactly how easy it is to turn an entire nation against someone. She’s scared, she’s powerless. She’s just lost the love of her life her only friend, she has no one to turn to - Morrible has definitely picked up on the fact that even though Glinda has countless people who fawn over her, none of them can be considered a true friend except for Elphaba, which means Glinda is completely isolated. Glinda also has a very limited understanding of the bigger picture of what the Wizard is trying to accomplish, and because she’s never been a victim of the system the way Elphaba has, she is still desperately clinging to the idea that everything will be okay as long as she plays by the rules of the people in power.

She has been perfectly primed for Morrible to begin manipulating, not through violence or intimidation, but by offering her comfort when no one else would - when not even Glinda’s only friend would - when no one else is even paying attention to Glinda, because they have the very real and present threat of Elphaba quite literally hanging over them. In this moment, Morrible chooses Glinda, which Glinda has been striving for since the beginning. Elphaba has chosen her principles, the Wizard has chosen his enemy, but Morrible has chosen Glinda, and in this moment of being so alone and so afraid and so betrayed, that makes all the difference.

We also get kind of a parallel shot too - Elphaba really sealed her fate the second her hand closed around the broom. But here, Glinda seals her fate when she gives in and reciprocates Morrible’s hold on her.

THIS is the moment that sets us up for Part 2, with Elphaba and Glinda as our lightning rods for Absolute Evil and Absolute Good, but more to the point, it makes it clear that they’ve BOTH been used, they’ve BOTH played right into these respective roles Morrible and the Wizard need in order to be successful - even if it wasn’t how Morrible originally planned for things to go.

I just love it, because “Defying Gravity” is Elphaba’s song - it’s triumphant, and it’s heartbreaking, and it’s everything a defining moment should be for a character. But by injecting this little moment between Morrible and Glinda into the scene, we also get an underlying current of dread because we know we’re about to see the consequences of Elphaba’s defiance versus Glinda’s compliance and how both serve to benefit the Wizard/Morrible’s propaganda.

TL;DR - when I said "I want to talk about this scene between Morrible and Glinda for a sec" I clearly meant "I'm gonna write a whole essay. Like a nerd."

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Wicked is very gay and it's fun to read it that way but it's also important not to let that overshadow the experiences of marginalization in a lot of these "gay moments". "What is this Feeling?" is fun to read as gay, but it is essentially about the consequences of white woman tears and how it rallies people into hatred that dances around the real reason for their discrimination by never saying "we don't like her because she's green", but instead they create reasons to hate her because a white woman feels uncomfortable around her. You can take away how "I'm Not That Girl" has a level of comphet in it, but don't let that take away from how it's about Elphaba's struggle with fully internalizing that she will always be excluded from being desirable due to her features.

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It’s so funny to imagine Wicked from the perspective of one of the normal students at Shiz. There’s this girl and she’s weird and an overachieving nerd and no one likes her, but then the popular girl becomes best friends with her overnight so you guess she’s chill now. They might be sleeping together but no one’s really sure. They’re also low key dating the same guy but you’re not clear on if it’s a polycule situation or a love triangle. Whatever. You’re just trying to study for finals. Your history teacher gets arrested and no explains why. You just hope this won’t effect your grade in the class. The weird nerdy girl gets a letter from the president inviting her to come see him. Wow, that’s exciting. She and her maybe-girlfriend go off to the capitol and you go back to homework and dorm room parties. One day later one of your professors is on the national radio saying that the weird nerdy girl, who used to be her favorite student, is now a terrorist, has stolen the nuclear codes, and is on the run from the government. You are still expected to show up to class tomorrow.

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Wrong answers only: name/describe one or both of the new songs that will be in Wicked: For Good.

I'll start: Pfannee and Shenshen are transported to 1930s Kansas. They are utterly bewildered that everything is sepia-toned and everyone is straight, which they express in a powerful, moving, yet hilarious duet called "Under the Rainbow."