sakurabraches

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Movie Glinda is a cis person with a deadname and white person with Asian mom trauma…how does she do it?

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defending glinda: yeah, she's done some pretty bad things, but you have to understand she's a morally complicated woman and her entire arc is about her shedding her privilege and selfishness and moving past her desire for attention and praise to ultimately become glinda the good, and her love of elphie is what drives her to consistently be better and eventually be the change that oz needs

defending nessa: idk those munchkins deserved it

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THIS 100%!!!

I'd just like to add that my problem with Fiyero's characterization in the play is that he largely exists as a foil to Glinda, and a model of what Glinda should have done earlier, but his relationship with Elphaba and the moral implications of a lot of his actions aren't as flushed out or interrogated as hers are within the text of the play, making him often feel very hollow to me

We're shown how the mentality in Popular (it's not about aptitude, it's the way your viewed), while not intended to be political, can have massive political consequences and hurt the people Glinda cares about. But we're never shown how the DTL mentality (life is fraughtless when you're thoughtless) effects Fiyero. Post-Lion cub scene, his nihilism doesn't really affect or challenge him anymore--he basically finishes his growth by before the end of Act I

He takes his position as Captain of the Guard to find Elphaba, but we never actually see what he does with that, besides standing around being angry about the whole thing. I suspect and hope the movie will remedy this by showing him directing the guards away from her, and maybe even helping some Animals (i think JB's alluded to this in interviews). I think this still raises some questions about the ethics of working within a corrupt and violent system to do good, but at least he'll be shown trying to move the needle in a positive direction outside of helping the woman he likes

His decision to go with Elphaba is ultimately framed as entirely good (which i would mostly agree with). And even though he hurts Glinda in the process, I don't really think the musical wants us to take that as a moral fault on his part because it wants us to root for Elphaba and Fiyero as a couple. She's framed as the obstacle to the ideal romantic pairing, and is kind of expected to just suck it up and be okay with the prospect of her fiancé leaving her for her best friend who she's probably in love with

And what makes Glinda's arc so good is that by time she realizes she's going to lose Elphaba if she keeps going on like this and tries to stand up for her, she doesn't because she can actually do more good by staying in power and using her influence to change Oz for good. At this point, Glinda doesn't want popularity anymore, she just wants to save Elphaba, but she puts her own wants aside for Elphaba's wants and the good of Oz, making this a powerful conclusion to her character arc

Fiyero basically only wants Elphaba for the whole play, so while he gives up a lot for her, it's nothing that he truly wanted, so his decision to go with her is both selfless and an act of love and self-sacrifice, but also selfish because she's the only thing he's ever wanted. And if Fiyero follows the same general arc as Glinda (going from apolitical/uncaring -> having his eyes opened by Elphaba), his decision to leave Oz behind with her feels less satisfying because he's not sacrificing anything he cares about, and we don't see him meaningfully doing good or making positive change

His character is very singularly focused on Elphaba, and while Glinda's often is, too, her relationship with Elphaba interacts with the world around them in a way I don't really see with Fiyero. It sucks cuz he's so much more interesting in the books, and I like the charm and energy JB especially brings to him, but narratively he doesn't exist outside of being Elphaba’s “knight in shining armor," as you said, his actions and their consequences aren't really critically examined the way Glinda and Elphaba's are, and I feel like that's a waste in a play that asks us to examine the true nature of goodness and wickedness

Ugh I hate it when people act like Glinda shackled Fiyero to herself. Yes springing a marriage onto him was fucked up and wrong of her but the rest of their relationship was mutual.

They liked each other at first and their relationship was happy for a while until Fiyero realized that he had feelings for Elphaba then he led Glinda on for years (about 4-5 I believe) but he still chose to be with her during that time. Glinda was pining for Elphaba though she may not have realized that her own feelings were romantic until much later. So she even if they both weren’t happy, they were still together by mutual decision until the engagement was thrust upon him.

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the Glinda chapters in Out of Oz are kind of crazy like what if you were an aging widow trapped in occupied territory in a house that was slowly being cannibalized by the invading army day by day. And when you were a girl you made up a fake illness for your governess and she caught it and died and you blame yourself for it for the rest of your life but now every day the military captain who has repossessed your house makes you write down the name of another person to be “dismissed” who always ends up mysteriously dead as the army takes over more and more of your house until you only have one room left…

And they’re building something in your barn that you can’t see but you know it’ll be something terrible so you start praying to your best friend in college who you’ve transformed into a holy figure and whose name you won’t speak out loud (out of respect? Or because the things you say are cursed to come true?) and she sends you messages in your dreams. And the whole thing is written like a Victorian comedy of manners. It’s like a surreal feminist psychological horror movie. And then the pov changes and now its a book about an 8 year old hanging out with a lion

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Wicked really does only make sense if they were lovers. Or the books at the very least. And now I've had some distance from it all I really do think the crucial unknown in the series is actually not so much IF they were lovers, or even if they were aware of the precise nature of their feelings for each other, but whether or not they realized they were having sex when it was happening

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ok so about the lesbian flag behind her...

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Just Glinda and her maidens against the world

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Likely place for her to be.

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boop!

when your first friendship is so homoerotic you dont know if thats normal or not?

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hot take(?) but i wish that in adapting wicked the novel into a musical, they had nessa be the third main character instead of fiyero

don't get me wrong i actually really love fiyero i think he's fun i love DTL and ALAYM. i actually think he and nessa are the two characters whose writing suffer most in the book -> musical adaptation and getting shoe-horned into primarily romance focused plots. but i personally think an adaptation that was written more around nessa would've ultimately been a bit stronger

there's this scene in the book where morrible's talking to all three of our future witches abt her plans for their future, and i think building a musical around that (while still focusing primarily on elphie ofc) would have been super cool. we watch these three women with very bright futures all end up in very different places and all have differently tragic fates, their love and ties with each other serving as the throughline of the narrative

elphaba's family life plays such a big role in her mentality in the musical. we know she feels responsible for her mother's death, and she's been raised being told that it's her job to care for her sister, even though nessa doesn't need help. it's also clear in the movie how nessa and elphaba do really love each other, even if nessa doesn't stand up for her. elphaba's decision to leave nessa behind in act ii, cutting herself off from the last of her family is one of the most significant moments for her character. her guilt, especially her family related guilt, is such an important part of her character

nessa's death is also not given proper weight in the musical imo, which is weird to me considering it's arguably one of the most famous deaths in american film, after her sister's, of course. it's the driving force behind the events of the woz, and the www is most famous for wanting the ruby slippers and her conflict with dorothy. in the wicked book, it's the thing that pushes elphie over the edge mentally (along with glinda's giving away the shoes). instead, the musical has glinda and elphaba bitch slapping each other over a man right next to the sight of nessa's death. wtf

so i've never really loved how so much of NGD and elphie's crashout in the musical revolves around fiyero. is death in the books is also a significant driver of a lot of her decisions, but it also happens much earlier than nessa's. i'm not trying to dismiss elphaba's love for him, but i think it was a mistake to make her relationship with a man the driving force behind her truly leaning into her wickedness (let all oz be agreed i'm wicked through and through / because i could not succeed, fiyero saving you) when her first lines in the 1939 MGM film are "who killed my sister? who killed the witch of the east?"

i also think her death could've hit a lot of the same thematic points fiyero's did in the musical, given that he was white-washed and the racial commentary of his death is absent. especially if they kept the plot point of nessa seceding from the rest of oz and opposing the wizard (even if she was high key a power hungry dictator in the books) it would've hit the "no one is safe standing up to a fascist regime" thing that fiyero's death in the musical does. obviously a lot would've had to be rewritten, but i also think nessa would've been a more morally complicated and interesting actor than musical fiyero, thus fitting the theme of "we're not entirely good or entirely wicked" message a little better

nessa and glinda also have such interesting parallels--they're thrown into leadership roles post-DG, they both make bad decisions that drive people (elphaba) away and perpetuate their loneliness, further leading them to do bad things, both want to be loved but also want to be recognized as powerful. in book, glinda basically becomes nessa's surrogate sister after elphie leaves, and she's actually the one who enchants her shoes. her leaving flowers at nessa's grave is honestly one of my favorite moments in the musical, and the fact they never once directly interact makes me so sad. giving their relationship a little more substance would've made glinda's (somewhat accidental) betrayal all the more gut wrenching

given that the musical's subtitle is "the untold story of the witches of oz," nessa receives not enough screen time. in a story that's about the origin of these women who are so important to the woz, i just think making it about their relationships with each other and how they ended up in such different places is a little more interesting than focusing so much of the second act especially on a sorta contrived love triangle. nessa's been haunting the narrative since 1900, and i think her death being the thing™ between elphaba and glinda, rather than fiyero, would've worked so much better

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forcing nessarose thropp into a romance subplot with boq was actually the worst decision the wicked musical made. like, no, that woman is a batshit crazy dictator and her seceding from the rest of oz is genuinely one of the most interesting parts of the novel and they shove her into a romance plot with fucking boq

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How does Wicked: For Good having used generative AI in the backgrounds of their posters make you feel?

is that why all the posters this cycle have lowkey sucked and looked a little off?

i mean, obviously generative AI is bad because it's ugly and bad for the environment and putting artists and graphic designers out of jobs and it genuinely sucks that this might very well become the norm in the industry and that makes me sad

but also it's weirdly on point for the background of the glinda poster to look fucking ugly. no excuse for dropping the ball on the elphaba posters, though

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glinda's giving nessa's shoes to dorothy in the books is such an illuminating character moment cuz on one hand her reasoning for doing so is actually fairly sound--dorothy needs to get away from the political turmoil of munchkinland, the wizard may know about her home, and the shoes offer her protection. on the other hand, it's peak glinda because it was the decision that required as little effort from her as possible, and her best "motherly instincts" were sending a child off on some long quest by herself. on the other other hand that woman should not be trusted to care for another living thing so it's probably for the best that she didn't adopt dorothy

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hi *hits you with the repressed horny lesbian stare*

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ive hired these sad gays to stare at you with their pathetic sopping wet boba eyes

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Ever since I saw his crusty funko I wanted to correct that vision 🦁

[sakurabraches]

When apart | When together