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.
–
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!
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instead of "people pleaser" it might be better to think "disapproval fearer" if that's the emotional stick that's motivating action; important to consider at least three reasons to do something:
it's a good thing to do
I want to do the thing
people will be mad if I don't do the thing
and if 3. is the most weighty reason then that's a potential problem.
the problem with tumblr spells is all of you lil sluts are casting and not giving it time to charge so you're all casting cantrips and not 9th level death spells. everyone wants to be the one to take them down no one wants to be the one who assists
My version of "doomscrolling" nowadays is just going to iNaturalist, browsing pictures of animals and fantasizing about where I would introduce them outside of their natural range if I was some kind of ecology-focused evil scientist. I do this when I'm depressed. I don't know if it helps.
-red pandas in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. they can live in those you-pick orchards and delight tourists, and in the winter the big ones can be harvested by the farmers for food and fur. america also has native bamboo, as well as plenty of escaped invasives.
-koalas in southern california. we already have a lot of feral eucalpytus in the state and it makes our wildfires way worse. let's put koalas in there too. coyotes can hunt them like dingos do.
-cheetahs in colorodo, wyoming, nebraska, and oklahoma. we had cheetahs here once, that's why pronghorns are so fast. let's give them something to really haul ass about.
-spotted hyenas in texas and new mexico. did you know there's actually a shit ton of oryx already roaming around new mexico? they were brought in for a game preserve. oryx can fight off lions, but spotted hyenas are actually superior pack hunters with some of the highest kill rates of large cooperative predators in the world. we might have a problem with ranchers, but like: fuck ranchers. they already decimated the mexican wolf populations. they deserve hyenas.
-pangolins. i would drop these guys in arizona honestly. everyone in arizona hates and fears fire ants. i think entire neighborhoods would throw ecstatic parades for pangolins (which smell much better than giant anteaters) at least until a pangolin dug straight through their pasteboard condo.
-new zealand's little penguin in louisiana. they burrow into mud and sand banks during the day and tolerate quite hot temperatures! i think they'd do fine, and louisiana is sliding into the gulf anyway. let's have penguins there. i'd also try them out in new england in case lousiana is just too swampy for them. i feel like new yorkers would go insane with pride over having penguins around. they would act like they invented the whole concept of penguins. we should let them.
-water buffalo. georgia and the carolinas. i just think it would give everyone there some interesting new problems.
-i firmly believe that asiatic elephants would do great in the southeastern united states. it's a subtropical climate that's only going to get swampier as things heat up, and there's plenty of kudzu and tall grass species for them to munch on. they're also smart enough to learn to navigate and negotiate with people, and to follow set routes around human farms rather than tromp through them, so disruption to existing human infrastructure would be minimal but occasionally hilarious. i think it would be so cool to have an american subspecies of elephant. if i ever win the lottery this IS what i am going to be doing with my millions.
We've had enough of your fucking rabbits and foxes. Here, have a huge badger type thing that can destroy cars with its arse. It'll outcompete your badgers and where will you be then. Haha.
Asia: Wombat
We've had enough of Indian camels ruining our deserts. Here's something to ruin your terrain for a change.
North America: Wombat
We've had enough of United States tourists with no manners. Here's some tourists with even less manners.
South America: Wombat
WE'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR FUCKING CANE TOADS. WOMBATS FOR YOU.
Africa: Wombat
The feral ostriches aren't actually all that much of a problem right now, but in revenge for the problem they will probably become in the future, have some fucking wombats.
Antarctica: Wombat
I'll take it right back home and warm it up I promise I. I just really want to see a wombat walk and dig in the snow.
Australia: Wombat
The populations of all three species of wombat are dangerously low.
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Look, I'm glad to see more Asian representation in media, but this hype over the Wasians (mixed white-Asians) is making this Asian borderline uncomfortable 😬
Firstly, Blasians (mixed Black-Asians) don't get this much hype for being mixed and we all know why 🤡
Secondly, media and the public almost always put on a pedestal a very specific type of mixed Wasians, those of East Asian descent. I don't see as much hype for the Wasians of South Asian, Southeast Asian or West Asian descent. And of course, we all know why 🤡
Like I thought we had this discourse back in the early 2010s criticising how Asian representation in YA fiction tended to be Wasians?
Bring this back cos no one talks up the Asian heritage of the Blasians like Anderson Paak, H.E.R and Saweetie or the Latinasians like Bruno Mars. No one raises this much hype for the mixed white-South Asian actors. No one includes Olivia Rodrigo (white-Filipino) in the "Republic of Wasia"
Precisely. We need to kill this phenomenon of the Wasian nation memes dead. Wasians are literally being used as a trend, at the expense of dehumanising themselves and erasing/ignoring mixed race Asians who don't pass the paperbag test.
God forbid non-white mixed Asians and monoracial Asians criticise the recent hype around Wasians and talk about proximity to whiteness, antiblackness and colorism, or butthurt Wasians will flood their comments sections accusing them of being divisive or complaining about how they are excluded by the Asian community. Babes, Blasians actully get excluded a lot from the Asian community becos of antiblackness, these feelings of not belonging and alienation aren't exclusive to Wasians 🙄
The Wasian meet-ups are just boba liberal bs. Becos yall were so annoyingly loud with your damn meet-ups during AAPI month and acting like victims when yall get called out by other mixed Asians and monoracial Asians for centering your whiteness. Nolan Wells is literally mixed Asian with a Blasian mother who's grieving him, they're from your community as well, but yall are staying mad quiet about his murder and the harassment his mother is receiving 🤡
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🔥🔥🔥
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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.
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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
