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This blog is for all things Wicked
(Gelphie- and Cynthiana-centric)
Ao3 | Ko-Fi
My Posts | My Writing | My Art
Main Blog | Writing Blog
If tagged with “personal,” please do not reblog. “Midori speaks” is fair game.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Six months later and I've finally finished the alaym gelphie series 😅 (you can probably read this as a standalone bc tbh I wrote this without even re-reading the others lol)
WICKED: PART ONE (2024) // WICKED: FOR GOOD (2025) dir. JON M. CHU
"Did you hear what I said?"
Wicked: For Good
everyone who's ever hurt her needs to die
Not with your eyes. With theirs.
WICKED (2024) x WICKED: FOR GOOD (2025)
i fear i gaf really really bad
"they stole glances at each other, the green girl and the queen of oz... they could not cross the carpet to take each other in their arms. maybe someday, but not today... the charmless future would show them if, and when, and how"
all roads lead to that gelphie post-canon reunion
Someone said they can’t wait for for good to come out so that the “annoying” gelphie hype calms down, as if gelphies haven’t been surviving off of musical and book canon for decades
"gelphie hype calms down", good one
This getting notes again and yes I am still here just in a different form
warning for #wicked book spoilers but I genuinely deeply dislike the theory that Glinda died in jail and is hallucinating Elphaba in Oz heaven or what have you. First of all the series has been implying that Elphaba isn’t actually dead since book one and SECOND OF ALL it flies in the face of the entire spirit of wonder of the wizard of Oz.
At the beginning of the book everyone tried to tell Dorothy she hallucinated Oz and the book takes Dorothy’s side and sends her back. And people keep saying that there’s no way Ozma can still be alive and people are stupid for believing it but she IS still alive. The point is that the books reward faith instead of punishing conviction. Meanwhile Glinda keeps telling people Elphaba is still alive and they’re just like “okay grandma let’s get you to bed.” And I don’t think it’s the kind of series where after all that we’re genuinely expected to be like “oh yeah all this shit happened but stupid dumb fuck Glinda was just tripping balls in jail.” Not even Glinda deserves that imo
Like on a fundamental level this is a series written by a gay person and it is politically dark and tongue in cheek but it isn’t needlessly cruel. I also think very few gay people (except maybe some intellectually bereft tv showrunners) especially those making art that actively engages with the aids crisis would intentionally end an entire series on the note of “this thing that you fervently believe is true and everyone keeps telling you is impossible and makes you delusional actually isn’t true and the best your life is ever going to get is when you join your prematurely deceased gay lover in the afterlife.”
I’m honestly so sad I’ll never get to see lencia’s elphaba 😔
i think NPLH as a song has this weird tension between the space it occupies within the story of wicked/what it's trying to do for elphaba as a character, and the wider political message it's trying to send to the audience. and this creates a somewhat awkward situation where it's a song kinda built around the irony that elphaba will eventually have to leave oz behind, but also it wants to be an uplifting rallying crying for #activism or whatever, and these two things can't really work together
obviously wicked has always been political; you'd be really fucking stupid to try to argue otherwise. and obviously this extends to the music. the worldview galinda presents in popular--that popularity and external presentation, regardless of substance, is all that matters--has clear political implications. this is taken a step further in wonderful, which in the og musical is probably the most overtly political song in the way the lyricism critiques. the change in the first verse from musical -> movie is likely a result of the shifting political climate, and the song moving from a critique of bush to a critique of trump
so NPLH being a song about current issues isn't inherently out of place, but i do think it's the most overtly 'about current events' song in the sense that it's the only song i heard for the first time and was like "oh they're gonna love playing this at the no kings rally." and while wonderful is political in the sense that it pokes at that kind of dishonest, populist politician and has little references to charlie chaplin's the great dictator and bush's war on terror and trump's 'i could shoot someone on fifth ave and not lose any voters,' NPLH is political in the sense that it's meant to be a rallying crying. like, the Animals basically serve as an in-universe surrogate for the audience so elphaba can deliver a 3:52 long psa about fighting for what's right and standing up to authoritarian strongmen
now, putting aside the fact that i just don't think the song is particularly good and i find the in-your-face way schwartz delivered the message more preachy than anything and not particularly engaging or empowering i saw on insta NPLH was featured in my high school's MLK day programing for some reason and that makes me irrationally angry, i can at least appreciate the intentions here. ultimately, it's a good message to send to people, and one more people should probably internalize
the problem, though, is that within the context of the story, elphaba's rallying crying to stay and fight for what's right is ultimately shut down by her having to flee oz. and part of why NPLH was written was to emphasize the sacrifice elphaba is making when she decides to leave; she loves her home, she wants to stay and make it better, but atp she's burned all her bridges and the best thing she can do for oz is leave it behind and trust glinda will make everything better and fulfill her heart's desire. elphaba's curve is a tragic one--she ultimately has to recognize she's limited and can't make the change she wants
i do like the idea of having a song in the beginning of act ii that shows why elphaba keeps fighting and where her headspace is at that moment. NPLH is similar to TWAI in that sense, because they both show a naive and optimistic elphaba who still believes everything can turn out okay. but this can't also be a rallying cry/activism song. part of what makes TWAI so good is the dramatic irony of elphaba dreaming of working with the wizard and all of oz celebrating her when the audience just watched the ozians celebrating her death. and this exemplifies the tragedy because you're endured by elphaba's dreams and ambitions but also haunted by the knowledge that those dreams will get crushed
NPLH also attempts to underscore the tragedy of elphaba's eventual banishment from oz, but there's none of the tongue-and-cheek lyricism of TWAI. it's played very sincere, and the message of "stay and fight to make your home better" is very direct. rather than building a sense of foreboding because you the audience member know she will eventually fail in her quest to change oz and flee into the desert, you're supposed to just listen and nod along to elphaba's 3:52 activism psa. you're supposed to hear her and agree there's no place like home and feel compelled because oz belongs to you too, but then we watch elphaba go back to colwen grounds and get spurned by sister, culminating in her cutting ties with her only remaining kin. so it's like if TWAI was about the power of a liberal arts education and didn't address the fact everything is about to blow up
and this is made worse by the fact that the movie doesn't fully commit to the tragic tone the ending of the musical takes on, and leans far more into the "elphaba escaped and found her freedom" angle and the "well, she had to leave oz behind, but she has this man so really it's a happy ending." i'd argue her ending is still tragic, but the movie undoubtably takes a more upbeat, hopeful tone. personally, i think this decision was a bad one for a variety of reasons, one of them being that it cheapens the tragedy that NPLH was supposed to exemplify. the movie/musical also doesn't really explore elphaba's decision to leave oz between NGD and FG, outside of her finding out fiyero's alive, which is a disservice to her character imo cuz elphie's ties to oz are so much bigger and more substantial than her relationship with that man, but whatever
but even if you can accept elphaba's ending and it's framing, it still clashes with NPLH. are we supposed to feel inspired to fight for what's right, as the song seems to want us to, or are we supposed to read the lyrics with a touch of irony, knowing elphaba will have to feel? should we fight for our home when others try to cast us out, or is leaving when things get bad enough an acceptable recourse? is there no place like home, or is going off into the desert with a scarecrow you don't actually know that well a viable alternative because male validation amiright?
and these contradictions give the whole thing a similar sort of energy to the 2016 DNC fight song rendition: a hollow, soulless attempt at political messaging that misses the mark, further dampened by the additional knowledge of what the future has in store
to the untrained eye, this is just galinda being mean again— but to me, a yuri enthusiast, it’s one of the gayest lines in the book
“I used to want three children,” Glinda began, “and then my eyes were opened to how fucked up everything is and then I was put into place to fix it all by myself and then I never gave thought to my imaginary children again.” She lifted the seafoam-not-green cup. “All three were blond, but only one had brown eyes, surprisingly.”
-It Was Today (and Not Tomorrow) chapter 1
Glinda always gets exactly what she wants. It's her curse but maybe this time it's a blessing? (Not a blessing for me and Elphaba though bc we have to put up with her until she gets what she wants)
thank you thank you thank you @mid-sweettalk for bringing the girls' girls to life 💜
I'm a public figure now. People expect me to...Be encouraging.
THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) || WICKED: FOR GOOD (2025)
The thing about Glinda "marriage-trapping" Fiyero is yes it's kind of insane of her but also... It's basically just a boomer wife joke. Like "This is an engagement party?/Surprised?/Yes!" is the follow up to "Fiyero and I are going to be married/Oh, he doesn't know yet." And in both cases the joke is "haha overbearing woman."
the glinda the good scouts or whatever are so funny to me as a concept because glinda's absolutely horrible with children. one of them probably called her outfit cringe and frumpy and she smiled through it but internally she was fuming. they say things she doesn't understand and then she gets mad. she hates when they touch her expensive clothes. they ask her if it was true she used to kiss the wicked witch of the west and if she tasted like spinach and that's just glinda's final straw
Your response about fiyercrow reminded me of a poll I saw the other day asking how many kids they (Elphaba and Fiyero) would have post-wfg and the most popular response was 2-3 kids and I was. So shocked. Sososo shocked because, 1) he does NOT have a functioning penis, 2) I cannot imagine a situation where Elphaba would want a child in the Impassable Desert, let alone TWO TO THREE?? Let alone with FIYERO???? Like the logistics of it all are completely baffling to me
Listen, unless Fiyero is planting LITERAL seeds from his corn body into the soil of the Impassable Desert and watering them and overseeing their growth until they blossom into little anthropomorphic corn children with Elphaba generously agreeing to co-parent from afar, AIN’T NO WAY there’s a 2.5-child-having nuclear family with a white picket fence situation happening out there. Procreation logistics aside, please don’t make Elphaba give birth to burlap and cornstalks, human childbirth is horrific enough.
Also like…can we give Elphaba like five minutes where she isn’t having to be someone else’s caretaker? Like can we give my girl some rest? Can she just chill for a bit? Just have some Elphaba Only time where she can catch up on some reading, knit herself a new sex cardigan, maybe fly over to the Emerald City every once in a blue moon in order to continue her illicit and morally reprehensible sex affair with former rightwing-media-darling-turned-woke-socialist-tyrant Glinda Upland?
Like why are we making Elphaba raise corn children in an empty wasteland? Let my girl live. In Pfannee’s words…she’s been through. She’s been through.