because galinda upland killed my grandma, okay?

(and mind you, we had a bit of a bright spot between 2018-2020 but I really feel as though post-covid, things once again took a turn for the worse)

watching 3x16 of the 100 as a closeted 16 year old made me completely distraught. I distinctly remember watching the episode with my dad and then locking myself in my room and crying in bed. seeing Lexa die really felt like watching hope die.

watching gay cartoons like She-Ra and The Owl House went a long way in healing my inner child, but with toh being cut short prematurely due to homophobia, the wilds & warrior nun being canceled, it wasn't til wicked (2024) that I felt like I could enjoy a piece of queer media again and not have to worry about anything 'bad' happening - because I knew the story of the musical and where to place my expectations as it pertained to wicked for good (2025).

and even though I didn't expect much, Jon, Cynthia and Ariana were able to knock it out of the park with the material they had to work with (I really do think they could've improved upon the messiness of part 2 had Dana been given more leeway writing the script but I digress)

gelphie is a combination of my favorite things when it comes to relationships in queer media - they're drawn to each other in spite of their differences, they hold contrasting opinions and clash, they're morally complex individuals whose biggest weakness is one other, they're character foils, they challenge each other to be better people, etc etc.

and even though they're technically doomed yuri - they're doomed moreso by the narrative than what good they could be/do together, which I find really beautiful and tragic in the most delightful way possible

as for cynthiana.... it's just really fucking refreshing to have mattfleck but for sapphic women. yes I know they're their own people with a very wholesome friendship but I don't think I've ever experienced back to back press tours where it's just two women having the most yin-yang dynamic possible in a very delightful, yuriful way.

and I'm really glad their friendship has persisted through all the bullshit the world has thrown at them. it's a really beautiful thing.

Glinda, with no malicious intent, she’s just being herself, says “well I had to get some kind of physical affection, Elphie, don’t be so judgmental.”

Little does Glinda know, she’s sent Elphaba into a crisis because what do you mean the only way Glinda got any kind of positive, physical comfort for the last seven years was her pretending her fucking blankets were a person.

Glinda mistakes Elphaba’s silent spiraling as judgement so her response is to elaborate on her reasoning, which just makes things worse. She literally won’t stop talking, saying stuff like, “whenever I actually slept it was the only way I could sleep, everyone has a preference” and “surely you’d want some sort of positive touch in my position, Elphie” and Elphaba’s had enough.

“Glinda never wakened from any sleep, not even the luscious damp sleep that follows rousting sex...” (p. 33)

Your mileage may vary, but I personally don’t picture Glinda having ‘rousting sex’ with Lord Chuffery. If you know what I mean.

“On came a line of dancing girls with high-stepping legs, bare to the knee and venturing quite a bit of thigh. In the porphyrous barnyard, General Cherrystone’s soldiers roared and applauded the arrival of this squadron of hoofers. Well, they were cheery, Glinda had to agree.” (p. 56)

and my personal favorite:

i love them 🥺

i couldn't remotely sleep

neither can i

Procreate, April 2025

essentially i think what makes gelphie very complicated is that the wicked years series establishes them as clearly romantically linked but never establishes them as queer, or makes an attempt to establish queer women as a legible class with complex relationships to gender and society. I think they arguably do for queer men--for example Sarima refers to Crope and Tibbett as "inverts" and Trism mentions that gay sex isn't accepted in his social class. They also mention that there's a tradition of men playing the role of the female fairy Preenella during celebrations so there's also a history of drag. It's also clear that crope and tibbett approach gender in a way that's linked to their sexuality. but at the same time Trism balks at the idea of dressing like a woman, so gender fluidity isn't universally accepted. There were also a couple different instances where male characters cohabitated in what was implied to be a romantic way. that tells me that queer men exist in the wicked universe, that they're socially recognizeable and legible to other characters, and that it is possible for average people (or Animals) to make a life with each other.

at the same time, we don't really get that same degree of clarity with queer women. someone calls elphaba "a woman who prefers the company of other women" in the opening and like 3 books later someone tells Rain not to get too attached to female teachers. But there doesn't ever seem to be any evidence of how "a woman who prefers the company of other women" is recieved in the world. what is their relationship to gender? what's their social station? there are a couple characters besides glinda and elphaba who are implied to be queer (oatsie manglehand and lurline/preenella) but they're never really discussed as a social class. their queerness is never legible to other characters. also the hints of homophobia that elphaba and rain experience (see above) are never applied to Elphaba and Glinda's relationship. Nanny says that Frex and Turtle Heart are "flirting like schoolgirls" or something like that, but she only says that Elphaba was "devoted" to Glinda in a way that never registers to her as strange.

I think the first book especially is dedicated to exploring the different ways someone who is nominally a woman can be considered evil. queerness is ostensibly one of them, but the social impacts of queerness are never addressed, so it never really makes sense. why would it matter if elphaba had gay sex if we never find out what people think about women who have gay sex? we hear a lot about what Glinda thinks about basically every aspect of society (including "theatre people") and a lot about how people interpret her, but her relationship to elphaba as a specifically taboo relationship or her attraction to women is never something that comes up at all, even when she's talking to other queer characters. And that's the crux of it all. Glinda and Elphaba behave in ways that are queer (and this was done knowingly, and with intention) but they don't understand themselves as part of a class of queer women (even subconsciously, ie "I know what I feel is wrong/different") and neither does anyone else.

And yet when queer women talk about those characters, they not only identify the characters as queer but speak specifically to how their sexuality affects their relationship to society. ie in the movie Cynthia, Marissa Bode, and arguably Ariana are all very invested in the characters' sexuality. Cynthia and Ariana have made it clear that they view Elphaba's queerness is related to her sense of otherness and Glinda's queerness as part of what motivates her need to perform. they were also conscious that queer women as a social class would respond to the characters in a specific way for those reasons.

I also think that legibility is VERY important to queer women generally because a major way that bi women and lesbians experience homophobia is as erasure. For example when pluribus was airing, people were very frustrated that news outlets never identified Carol as a lesbian, because that label is important for people because lesbianism as an identity is so often erased or disputed. or I just finished reading A Desolation Called Peace (also written by a queer woman) and even after two female characters have made out twice, one of them asks the other if she actually likes women. OR how the bridgerton showrunner (a queer woman) talks about the sapphic bridgerton couple is very direct in a way that's very different from how gregory maguire talks about gelphie.