Famously private, the early years of Lady Glinda Upland’s life and career are shrouded in rumor and speculation, innuendo and outuendo. She has notably refused to speak about her connection to the Wicked Witch of the West.
Nor is a directionless journalist, struggling to reconcile her unknown past with her ambitions as a writer. On the eve of Lady Glinda’s retirement, Nor receives an invitation summoning her to Pertha Hills, the seat of the Upland Arduenna family.
To hear the entire story.
To know the whole truth.
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Canon Divergence AU. (Loosely) Inspired by The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Elphaba Thropp/Galinda Upland. Other Tags: Galinda Upland & Fiyero Tigelaar, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story, Slow Burn, Pining, Tragic Romance, Eventual Mild Sexual Content, SPOILER TAGS ON AO3
Rating: M
Chapters 1-19 now up (112k words)
Thank you to @festivating and @blackseablacksky for support with writing this chapter, and always @gayverlyearp for reading and feedbacking every single draft!
okay i admit i've been putting off reading nesting box bc i was daunted by the length but don't worry, it only took a week of ruining my sleep schedule and being off task at work for me to read it ☺️ i am officially obsessed with whatever these girls have wrong with them and am impatiently awaiting the next update
omg thank you for the message!! i hope your sleep schedule can recover quickly and im really glad you enjoyed it!!!! i too am impatiently awaiting when i can update again but i really want it to be good and to work the way i want it to be so sadly its gonna be a little bit still :(
nesting box commentary on the long weekend date? really curious what was going through elephabas head at the art museum and then at the park when they were talking about the nesting box. i loved this chapter sooooo much
ooh yes! so you are referring to two scenes as far as i can tell. but these scenes are part of my probably favorite sequence of the fic so far and im so happy to yap about them
the museum scene is one of my favorites and really i just wanted to spend a bit more time with them and also to establish that they work well on a more date-y level than they have previously been operating on. sort of in the sense of like... give glinda what she wants (consciously or unconsciously) and then have it develop into her facing the cold floor of reality etc (park scene).
i think that elphaba thought the museum might've been intended as a date. or at least she isn't sure! she probably put a lot of thought into her outfit and called nessa about it before. and i think part of her unease while they're at the museum is navigating that, but also trying to figure out what glinda exactly wants from her. like, usually she's hypercritical but does that offend glinda if this is her hobby/interest? does she even have anything meaningful to say about it? she's used to being an actual expert in her field and is a know-it-all so this is a bit of a departure for her-- especially because it's an area where so much is up for interpretation and she's really more intuitively connected to what she considers to be a more objective form of truth.
this exchange was also really important to me:
“And there’s no use in looking at art with me anyway—”
“Of course there is,” Glinda says, pulling back to frown at her. “You’re probably the most observant person I know, did you know that?”
Elphaba’s blush deepens, spreads to her neck.
“I mean it,” Glinda continues, and does. “You—you see things—”
because i sort of wrote it as glinda's validation that elphaba's observations and perspectives have inherent worth on their own, not just based on whether they coincide with what other people have said about it before.
the whole thing of being right/being knowledgeable vs. subjective interpretation of things also kind of thematically connected to the park scene, actually. in between there's car sex, which was kind of just self-indulgent bc i thought it was hot but also mirrors the recurring thing in nesting box of like. is this the place for this? is this the place for us? you know what i mean (hopefully), i am really tired lol
anyway. in the park scene i tried to have the dynamic play out as follows: glinda, too focused on her emotional needs and looking for validation that she's a good person, essentially, and elphaba focusing too much on the informational, pragmatic level of the exchange. but, of course, the end of it IS that elphaba is obviously right and glinda is looking for a band-aid solution, but at the same time glinda is, in a way, asking for permission to try, imperfectly (try for what, exactly, is up to interpretation) and elphaba shoots that down very quickly...
Whats up tunblr basically i just wrote this book with tons of dope fan fiction trope buzz woeds and gay characters fucking & sucking each other the entire book U will like it automaticaly i think since it has those blaze ths shit imediately🔥🔥🔥
I'm sure this has been brought up and probably discussed extensively, but seriously what the fuck was up with the "Fiyero. Even you." scene??? She says his name specifically and then we cut to a montage of them...technically being in the same place at the same time, but not interacting with each other at all.
This is what happens. In order. There's one more shot of them walking across the field which I didn't bother screenshotting because it's not much different to the first. Fiyero is maybe talking to Elphaba in the first shot? It's hard to say since we can only see the back of her head, but we do see Glinda's mouth move a bit so he could just as well be talking to her? It's incredibly odd for the flashback that's supposed to show Elphaba mourning the loss of her relationship WITH FIYERO feature Glinda much more prominently, and to position the person she's supposedly thinking about so far away from her. It genuinely feels like a mistake. And I'm not saying this in a "my ship is better than your ship we get more screentime so nyeh" kind of way, I seriously don't know why it's like this. Did they mean to film Elphaba and Fiyero doing something together and forget??? Was the line added too late in production for them to film something more fitting to insert after it??? Why didn't they just re-use the lion cub scene??? Did a studio exec tell them to make the film less gay and so they did this on purpose to spite them??? Why didn't they make the line something about Elphaba mourning the loss of her social circle as a whole or her more carefree younger days so the following montage would make more sense??? It raises so many questions.
Maybe someone somewhere has given an official explanation for this, but if I'm perfectly honest I can't be bothered to look it up. Write in if you know.
just finished reading the inn au, and in the author's note there was a thank you to you for the lighthouse scene and the proposal. I don't know, it just felt like a sign, yk? 'cause I started reading it because I was missing nesting box and had no idea what to read. anywaysss, just wanted to say thank you for your part in that and say that I miss nesting box a lot and your glinda 🥹🥹
ohh this is so sweet, thank you 🥺 i miss them too! I'm trying to get them back as soon as possible. Also you are soo welcome all the effort I put into convincing @blackseablacksky was soo worth it
at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you
at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.
at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly
at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.
at some point in your life you will be adding a small pasta to a soup and you will think "that is not enough small pasta." this is the devil talking. the pasta will absorb the stock and expand. this is how you end up with a soup that is a solid mass of soggy ditalini.
At some point in your life you will be adding garlic to a dish and you will think "that is not enough garlic." These are angels speaking. They are correct. Add more garlic.
I saw a tiktok video about lesbian pigeons and immediately thought, "this is something dr upland would send to dr thropp after seeing it on Oztok (?) TikOz (?)".
On very random note, I accompanied my mom to a dermatologist and she's so pretty + has glinda's hairstyle. I was hallucinating dr upland the whole time and was tragically pulled back to reality when another doctor randomly mentioned that she's married to a 'dashing man'
Oh well, not my luck (lol)
Hopefully you're having a much better time at work and life in general, and when things aren't so good, I hope at the very least you can get a nice rest and little joy here and there!
thank you! I am definitely trying to rest and joy etc it has been difficult but hopefully it'll get a bit easier soon (i say delusionally)
also i do find dermatologists are disproportionately attractive (also pediatricians in my hospital for some reason? like ok whatever) and I love that you were hallucinating dr upland. Did she have the short hair???? this is very important information #tome
just finished reading the inn au, and in the author's note there was a thank you to you for the lighthouse scene and the proposal. I don't know, it just felt like a sign, yk? 'cause I started reading it because I was missing nesting box and had no idea what to read. anywaysss, just wanted to say thank you for your part in that and say that I miss nesting box a lot and your glinda 🥹🥹
ohh this is so sweet, thank you 🥺 i miss them too! I'm trying to get them back as soon as possible. Also you are soo welcome all the effort I put into convincing @blackseablacksky was soo worth it
Hi!! I was just rereading ch 22 of nesting box and I was so struck by this line
But Elphaba’s phone is quiet, somewhere unseen; Glinda’s flight out is before noon tomorrow; Elphaba wants to be fair and good and generous and Glinda loves her. It’s her conflict of interest, that disastrous wanting, it keeps her hips sliding forward and her legs screaming from the tension of it all.
I really adore the way you let it slip through glindas stream of conscious that she loves elphaba ugh it’s soooo good and so Glinda in all versions!! I’m rambling but it’s a detail I notice every time I read it and I am such a fan of how detailed you are with the characterization of the girls.
And also. “ it’s her conflict of interest, that disastrous wanting” just wow. You are so talented.
Anyways. That was a lot. Just having a #gelphie feeling tonight.
oh thank you so much ♡ it was really important to me to have glindas like... realization about loving elphaba be kinda piecemeal and subtle and i always love it when glinda has self-awareness about her character flaws. I love them Too is what I'm saying
hi!! i only found The Goodness of Glinda Upland recently and i’m absolutely obsessed 😭 i binged the whole thing in like two days and i haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
i noticed it hasn’t been updated in a while, so i was just wondering if you still have plans to continue it? absolutely no pressure at all!! i just wanted to let you know how much i loved it.
thank you so much!! ugh the goodness of glinda upland my beloved. nesting box is definitely closer to done so that is my priority and then i have some other stuff I'd like to loop around to, but I do want to finish the goodness of the glinda upland at some point! I know this is an unsatisfying answer i am sorry
can you give directors commentary on one of your favorite sections of nesting box or provide insight of Elphaba’s perspective in any scene you like
yes of course :))
one of my favorite moments of elphaba perspective is actually in chapter two:
Dr. Thropp is here already, of course. Standing behind the podium, she wrings her hands together. “Oh,” she says as Glinda approaches, instead of hello or hi or anything else a normal person would say. Instead of continuing with how are you? or gosh, this is a great turn out, she glances up and down at Glinda’s outfit. “You’re not wearing scrubs.”
“I would never wear scrubs to hold a lecture,” Glinda hisses, suddenly self-conscious of her dress pants, the cream-colored blouse she ironed at 5 A.M. What, is it not buttoned high enough? Dr. Thropp’s eyes, ticking down towards her neck, seem to confirm her worry. “I won’t change now, so stop gawking.”
glinda thinks elphaba is judging her for not buttoning her blouse up higher. elphaba is actually just checking her out and she's flustered bc glinda looks hot.
she is a loser.
(more director's commentary under the cut)
also fiyero is at the first lecture to ask elphaba out but she fucks off immediately and he never gets the chance. sucks to suck straw boy
i really enjoyed writing this sequence because it gave me a good bit of insight into both characters. elphaba tending towards rigidity, glinda tending to being delusional about everything just working out magically. but when they actually sit down and think of things TOGETHER it works out.
also the scene where biq-boq contaminates glinda's sterile field is based on something that really happened to my coworker, but instead of an intern it was actually the patient trying to be helpful and then she had to completely redo everything :( if something falls off a sterile field let it drop people!
