holding space for gelphie

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.

ideally, when i choose a chapter title there are multiple instances of that type of cognitive bias/heuristic in the chapter and this is definitely a chapter where the title concept pops up several times. just for context, omission bias is the belief that it's considered less harmful to do nothing than to do something, even if the outcome is the same. it's similar to both the trolley problem as well as the ethical principle of nonmaleficience in medicine ("first, do no harm").

so this applies, amongst other things, to glinda staying in her room while nessa & elphaba are fighting, glinda not allowing herself to make a move on elphaba (probably appropriate, let's be real), the dilemma of elphaba and nessa's conflict around frex's end of life care, and, of course, elphaba not managing to tell glinda she is moving across the country until her hand is forced.

one of the things i'm most proud of is probably elphaba's struggle with her feelings towards her father's impending death and especially her not-so-unconscious fear that she's somehow willed it into existence. dr. thropp has a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder and this is a combination of magical thinking (having the irrational belief that unrelated events influence each other) and harm ocd (obsessions and compulsions centered around being a bad person and/or secretly wanting to hurt others or having hurt others and forgotten about it)

(by the way if you have any of these thoughts, ocd is very treatable but often goes undiagnosed for many years because people are so ashamed of their symptoms and don't know what it is. i would really encourage you to speak to a trusted healthcare professional about this.)

within the chapter, one of my favorite parts is glinda going into elphaba's apartment for the first time. i actually didn't actively make the choice to not have glinda go to elphaba's apartment at all before this but at some point i realized like... has she ever been there before? i like the idea that dr. thropp is just a very private person who doesn't invite others into her space lightly, and since glinda invited her over first she just always defaulted to going to glinda's. so not a choice per se on my part but i think it helped characterize elphaba in that sense and it ended up being congruent to my vision of her.

especially this passage was very fun to write:

Impossible, Glinda knows. A fine selection of science fiction, a bespectacled detective would declare, points to an inquisitive mind. Prodding at a spray or lotion—citrus, obviously. Studying a faded grocery list—the precision of the angles! A hand most controlled, nearly restrained— And none of it would suffice. None of it would be adequate preparation for the reality of her: Elphaba in her own apartment, in a faded cardigan with her arms crossed tight over her waist, the fine construction of her face and the depth of her gaze.

which is based heavily on the inner monologue of the main character from shirley jackson's novel hangsaman and a bit of an inside joke between @blackseablacksky and i because we both love shirley jackson.

this was put in to foreshadow elphaba's septum piercing in the emerald city (really important foreshadowing!):

“At least you can get your nose piercing,” Nessa mumbles. “Now that he can’t disown you anymore.”

this also ended up being an important chapter because there's also the reveal for the reason why glinda changed her name in this canon:

When it was finally published, she looked for her name in that row of authors and realized that the corresponding author had mistyped it, so that Galinda Upland, MD candidate, had become Glinda Upland, MD candidate. Without much fuss, she’d discarded the a.

this was not something i knew about her going into writing the fic. i think originally it was supposed to be a medical school nickname or something.

A nurse in garish orange scrubs—prison scrubs, Glinda thinks disdainfully, a strange choice for the palliative ward—is typing rapidly at the nurse’s station, but she glances up and nods at Glinda while she walks by. My condolences about the scrubs, Glinda almost says, but that’s clearly inappropriate so she nods back.

the nurse in this scene is @perigrin aka liv aka the author of titanic au. she wanted a cameo and she did choose the scrub color. i warned her that glinda would judge her and she still agreed.

Glinda looks for a trace of Elphaba in his features, but there is nothing. Nessa’s nose and the line of her chin, perhaps. But nothing of Elphaba.

i fully believe that even in nesting box canon frex is not elphaba's biological father. is it chief diggs? i do not think so. don't ask me who he is lol. it won't become plot relevant (i think)

also nessa definitely asked elphaba a LOT of questions on that train ride back and elphaba was not amused.