#wlau

OK SO I have 3 fics that explicitly explore ace!Glinda (alongside all the other shit that goes on in my fics):

Walls of Sanctuary - A mash-up of Hunchback of Notre Dame and Wicked, but with my own spin on it. My first multi-chap fic of this fandom and my first dip into ace!Glinda to see how people would react to it.

Our Last Shimmer of Magic - lower-stakes AU where Glinda is losing her magic due to a heritable curse and she has to get along with the stoic forest witch (aka 'Fae') to try and get rid of it. Her aceness plays a role in her relationship with both Fae and Milla.

Wiretapped Life - the crown jewel of my work when it comes to ace!Glinda in my opinion. This is where I really said 'fuck it' and put so many of my book interpretations on full blast, including my deeply cherished ace!Glinda hc. Deep, deep, deep exploration of Glinda's demisexuality and how it affects her and her relationship with Elphaba.

Also I know I've been teasing for like a year about my multiverse fic (it's coming, I promise!) in which I will once again go rampant with ace!Glinda. God, I love ace Glinda!!!

Also shoutout to the wonderful @festivating who also hc Glinda as ace and explores it in her massive fic attrition. Love her and this fic!

I mean, you can read how I incorporate my Nor headcanons in my fic Wiretapped Life tbh

But I think most integral to Nor is how her sexuality and gender is intrinsically linked with her trauma. I mean, it's canon that she changes her name, stitched up her vagina and binds her breasts. And we also know that has to do with how she was forced into sex work when she was working for the resistance - and she never wants her body to be violated like that again.

I wrote her as agender and aro-ace in Wiretapped Life (a fic inspired by the history of Cold War Germany), although I never use those words. But since Nor's trauma started so young (thanks maguire...), far before even being able to explore her sexuality and gender at an age most people would start to, her gender and sexuality got tangled with that trauma. How could it not? It's part of her.

I mean, all the elements are there in the book, but I don't think Maguire even fully knew what kind of gold he struck when writing Nor. Because he paints her marriage with Brrr as tragic (it's not), solely bc they can't kiss or fuck due to anatomy. Bruh. Just because you're too allosexual to appreciate a QPR, doesn't mean it's not a satisfactory relationship. >_> Not to mention, Nor gets killed off-page and I've never truly forgiven him for that tbh.

Also, I read Wiretapped Life recently and I just!! I couldn't put it down, and at the end, I think I cried </3 It was really good!! I was really invested in the worldbuilding, and I just... It's a story worth rereading <3

And thank you for everything that you do!! Your writings, analyses, work, and effort are amazing <3

I am still working on it!! The first act is 13,5 minutes long and I've animated 7,5 minutes!!

Because of the pandemic and then me getting a job the project has been collecting dust for a while. But I put myself on a new deadline and I'm really excited to get to work on the project again!!

And ahhh!!! That's so lovely to hear that you loved Wiretapped Life :D I'm really proud of that story so I'm really happy so many people seem so invested in the worldbuilding and the story I created.

That's hard, honestly, because I'm proud for just writing and finishing a story in the first place. And each story helped me grow as a writer one way or another.

But I'll go with Wiretapped Life for the purposes of this, because I really pushed myself with that AU. It was a completely original story, where I meshed Cold War Germany history with the fictional world of Oz. It is also relatively compliant to the canon of the book as both Fiyero/Elphaba and Glinda/Chuffrey are a thing, and the headcanons I implemented are very much how I headcanon the characters in Maguire books.

I didn't back away from gelphie's more complicated aspects of their relationship and it was overall just a deepdive in Glinda's psyche and how I think she'd deal with Elphaba's disappearance and loss (and how I interpreted how she dealt with in the book. Which is to say, not well lmao). It also is my first (and only) fic that ever reached 100k.

Also this was the first story on AO3 that had Nor Tigelaar tagged?? I... sad.

I fucking love Nor. And I'm so happy to see that people started loving her too through this fic!!

*ASK ME A FANFIC QUESTION*

--

Oz is split in two after the Wizard’s departure. Like many others in the Ozian Democratic Republic, Glinda suddenly disappears. Little do people know it was her plan to be captured.

Because the only way to search for someone who might not even be alive, is to disappear too.

Start from beginning

The Wall that has divided and torn Oz apart for over a decade might be ready to fall any moment. Meanwhile, Glinda finds the courage to visit Colwen Grounds...

Glinda #28 - Stuff We Did (Up) composed by Michael Giacchino

She kissed her fingers and rested them on their grave. “I’ll never stop loving you, Elphie. But it’s time I move forward.” Glinda had her eyes closed and waited until the moment her hand was ready to withdraw.

Little backstory, but when I was still drafting three years ago, Wiretapped Life looked a whole lot different. Glinda was basically a passive hero and imprisoned the entire story until Elphaba busted her out. I didn’t like that, so even in these early stages her ‘prison break’ became part of the story.

While writing the first few chapters, I hadn’t entirely decided whether Elphaba would be alive at the end, waiting at the other side of the wall. I didn’t force myself to make a decision yet, because I figured my dubiousness would translate well into Glinda’s doubts.

It was this song, this moment in the film Up, that made me realize this wasn’t a story about long lost lovers reuniting. It was about healing and finding a ‘new adventure’. That was a ridiculously hard decision to make, because I—like Glinda—have a hard time accepting Elphaba’s death. That is a bit of a problem in this fandom, isn’t it? The book’s ending so thoroughly wrecked us that we’re pretty obsessed to give Glinda and Elphaba that ‘happily ever after’ after all. We need those stories too, by the way, I’m not talking them down. But what I’ve missed so far in fanfic is working through our collective (and Glinda’s) grief. Angsty fics where one of them die usually end abruptly and we never get closure. 

This is why the mystery of Elphaba’s disappearance is solved in the seventh chapter, and the other eleven remaining chapters is Glinda processing through this trauma. Healing is slow and tedious and necessary to move forward. It’s why it took half of the fic for Glinda to get to this point. To realize that she’s strong enough to move forward, despite how difficult it is.

It’s no coincidence that Nor and Glinda both carry the one lesson the other desperately needs to learn. Both sides of the story needed to be told so they can move forward on their respective journeys through life.

Oz is split in two after the Wizard’s departure. Like many others in the Ozian Democratic Republic, Glinda suddenly disappears. Little do people know it was her plan to be captured.

Because the only way to search for someone who might not even be alive, is to disappear too.

Start from beginning

Glinda is finally settling into her new life when Nor announces she’s leaving...

Oz is split in two after the Wizard’s departure. Like many others in the Ozian Democratic Republic, Glinda suddenly disappears. Little do people know it was her plan to be captured.

Because the only way to search for someone who might not even be alive, is to disappear too.

Start from beginning

Arriving at Apple Press Farm, Glinda gets unexpectedly confronted by her past...