I am so gonna be crucified for this…
Boq is NOT a bad person. He is not a creep or a villain or anything like that that people always call him. My boy is TRAUMATISED by first being essentially enslaved by someone he stayed with because he didn’t want it hurt her feelings, having her literally try to cast a love spell on him against his will that was cast incorrectly and started shrinking his heart, and then his ex girlfriends sister transforms him into a body he hates, that can’t even get wet without locking up, that’s heavy and cold and empty, that has no physical heart in his chest, and is created from scraps just thrown together, OF COURSE HE’S MAD AT ELPHABA, as far as he’s aware, she took away everything from him; his body, his freedom, his humanity, his heart. He was exposed to propaganda against her for years, her sister practically enslaved him, he has every right to be angry, he doesn’t know she only changed him to save his life, he probably thought she was punishing him for breaking up with Nessa. I’ll admit he took things a bit to far, but in the Emerald city he would have been surrounded by hate and vitriol, and I have no doubt that he was egged on to kill Elphaba by Morrible, plus he probably saw it as not just revenge for all he suffered, but a way to help Dorothy and stop her from carrying the burden of another death on her consciousness.
Yes, he made mistakes, yes he isn’t perfect, but nobody is, and most people would act just like he did in such a situation, we need to remember that we’re seeing things from Elphabas side of the story, he doesn’t know what she’s suffered, what she’s had to sacrifice, even why she’s doing what she is. He’s uninformed, and we can’t judge him for things he doesn’t know.
Hell, even ignoring all that stuff after he was tinned, the way he treated his relationships made sense, he couldn’t help getting a crush over someone who was considered the pinnacle of perfection in-universe, and it’s clear from his very first line about his parents not knowing where he is that he didn’t have the best family situation, and from that it’s understandable that he was less experienced in the romance department, and as for Nessa, yeah, he shouldn’t have asked her out in the first place, but he never meant for things to go as they did, he was naive, inexperienced, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d never been in a relationship before, so he might not have even known what he was doing was wrong, and then his attempts to not hurt Nessa lead to him digging himself into a hole he couldn’t climb out of without causing her even more pain. Love and lust make people stupid, who hasn’t made mistakes in trying to impress someone? He was probably in his early 20s at the latest, you can’t expect him to be amazing when it comes to romance!
I think another reason people are so against my boy is because he’s such a different character to Nick Chopper, the original Tin Woodman, well, NEWSFLASH, Boq isn’t Nick Chopper, he’s got a different backstory, a different personality, knows different people, of course he won’t be the same as him, he’s a different person, just put in the same role, just like how Elphaba is a different person to the original Wicked Witch of the West, Fiyero is a different person to the original Scarecrow. WICKED WAS NEVER SET IN THE SAME UNIVERSE AS THE ORIGINAL BAUM BOOKS!!! It has always been an adaptation, a what-if, a fanfic quite frankly, so people need to stop saying Boq is a bad character because he has very much justified anger. Hell, even in the original Baum books, the Tin Woodman killed things to protect others, like the forty wolves, or the cat chasing the queen of the field mice, the Kalidahs trying to attack the group, yes he didn’t like doing it, but he would if there wasn’t a choice, and honestly, from Boqs point of view, killing Elphaba was the only thing that could be done anyway for the safety of not just Dorothy, but Oz as a whole. He was angry because it was easier to deal with than the terror and fear of his changed body, that’s not an uncommon coping mechanism, and he was never shown to be the bravest person.
Really, Boq is very much a victim of circumstances, that gave him incorrect assumptions that causes him to act the way he did, should he have maybe thought about things a bit more rationally? Yes! Absolutely! But you can’t exactly expect someone to think rationally when they’re dealing with the trauma of losing everything, being forced into a foreign body that they hate, trying to protect a child from not just the physical dangers of the world, but the political reality as well, all while struggling with adjusting to something they never chose, never wanted.
TLDR: Boqs actions are completely natural and understandable for all he’s gone through, and he shouldn’t be considered a bad person because of his understandable mistakes.
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