Scandalacious Intentions

but no, for sure! she’s a feminist! for sureee she’s all about protecting women and girls. this one just asked for it, right? it was how she was dressed.

in other jkr news, from august in the uk trans people will be legally required to use the bathroom that adheres to their sex. that 70k jkr donated to the supreme court case? yeah. they’re starting to enforce that. legally.

I’d like to talk about something that’s has been bothering me since the movies came out. Throughout the 20+ years of this fandom existing there has been more or less a kind of unspoken tolerance between sapphic fans that loved the story being centered around two gay/bi women and the neurodivergent and disabled community that found a deep connection to the story as they saw themselves represented in Elphaba, or the supporting characters struggles. Because the story at the end of the day is not just “about the girls stupid” its a story about struggles of being othered and the toll it takes on someone that just can’t be…normal. Neurodivergence, depression, and disabilities both congenital and later acquired are thematically represented in their character arcs.

For many who her story resonates with, Elphaba losing, isn’t a study of how radicalism accomplishes nothing and she should have followed Glinda if she wanted to change things, its a completely relatable outcome to someone that has been there, who has the stakes set up so thoroughly against them just because of who they are and its something they can’t change, so they have to work 10x harder to prove themselves capable, and still lose in the end. For me as a early diagnosed ADHD-inattentive/OCD comorbid I feel for her struggles where you give 100% of yourself to something you believe in only to f*ck it up in planning or execution to where it spirals in the most self sabotaging way.

And before you go “oh girl your projecting onto Elphaba, you ‘outcast rebel weird girl” lets look at some of her qualities and why she’s so relatable to the neurodivergent community: Elphaba’s overly sincere, incredibly empathetic, irritatingly inflexible, and (more-so in the musical) emotionally volatile and can be seen as lacking emotional regulation, she also misses social cues, big ones….

These are qualities that have resonated with fans for decades before the movie was a thing, and since it came out we have lost something tragic in the fandom. The theater gays and the outcast weirdos who have loved this story since they were children were suddenly drowned out by some of the new fans that were either fans of Ariana, pink aesthetics, edgy bully gays here for Yuri and nothing else, or identified with popular influencer vibe Glinda radiates effortlessly, none of which is very compatible with the original community, and any push back resulted in social media dog-piling, reddit downvoting, and often popular backhanded think pieces that try to bury anyone that clashes with their own interpretation.

Also as a queer sapphic woman it also has been kind of upsetting to see some people treat Elphaba and Glinda's relationship as some kind of romantic story (because of the portrayal in this movie) when Glinda constantly chooses to sustain and lead a system that keeps a hateful rejection of Elphaba's otherness. There's no love there, only the preservation of the own privilege.

And from a disability perspective it even feels at points like she treats Elphaba like an accessory (which is very real to how some influencers build their fame on taking selfies with vulnerable communities, yet never actually do anything for them besides gaining more fame). All of these elements of the narrative felt very clear to me always, so it was surprising (in a sad way) to see how people missed them because they too, like the people of Oz, were charmed beyond empathy by Glinda's pretty dresses and singing voice. Which is not to say you can't love pink aesthetics and pretty dresses, I know I do! But it's also important to look with empathy and intersectional awareness far beyond that.

A couple days ago we were discussing Elphaba and Glinda’s uneven relationship dynamic and I said how I never liked the lyrics to Popular, I think we stirred a pot and got a few reactionary posts, one that had Glinda putting the flower in Elphaba’s hair with the caption “she’s being tortured, she being bullied, she’s being traumatized, ect…” I’m like ‘that’s the only friend/girlfriend she’s ever had she literally doesn’t know that she can be treated better’ She has had no experiences or personal relationships to know it can be any different.

Elphaba is a safe accessory, at least while she's at school and (relatively) harmless; "pink goes good with green". Galinda becomes her best friend because she realises that Elphaba is a useful ally. In one evening, her plan to foist Boq onto somebody else so she can both go dancing with this handsome prince and mask her cunning behind benevolence has also unexpectedly won her a place on the sorcery course she was so desperate to take.

Elphaba, swept up in the glory of being the roommate and best friend of the most popular girl on campus and completely unused to navigating this kind of relationship, is being love-bombed throughout "Popular".

Because Galinda (Glinda, too, but especially the young woman on the cusp of graduation and freedom) needs this friend. Elphaba is both classically undesirable and eternally grateful for her friendship, which makes her a safe port in a storm. Elphaba can be told her darkest secrets because if she spills the tea, absolutely nobody is drinking that up when Galinda tells them it's poisoned. Elphaba can be trusted around boyfriends because surely no man would find her more adorable than Galinda. Elphaba can be brought down as quickly as she raised her up.