#Fiyeraba

[iwasbored777]

I HATE HOW HARD I LAUGHED

[gaylorvader]

They're bi4bi4bi in my head. All of them are dating.

who’s ready to talk about how wicked is one of the few examples of a love triangle that is actually a triangle

[eurydicees]

book!fiyero's death is like. fucking devastating man. like...having a conversation where elphaba says bystander deaths are acceptable and him disagreeing then, later, her telling him she loves him and thus his death, despite being one of those innocent bystanders, is unnacceptable. aka her realizing she's not willing to pay the price of innocent lives for the sake of the revolution. and him--the one person she wanted to protect, the person who made her realize the value of life--fucking dying anyways. maybe she's not willing to pay the price of civilian lives, but not everyone feels that way and so fiyero dies. fiyero, who challenges her rigid sense of morality, who poses the ultimate question of what she's willing to do in order to do what's right, who gives her the answer that there are some things she's not willing to do, who gives her the hope that she can love and be loved. fiyero, who gets killed because of how he's affected her, changed her, loved her. god. im like. he's present in this book for 1.5 sections and im distraught.

[princess-posting]

sometimes i laugh because fiyeraba is lowkey just the crack ship that made it 😭

they are proof you should never give up on your non-canon rarepairs !

[knitordeath]

Look at this idiot all set to go in and flirt his way out of trouble only to have to RAPIDLY decide if he is hallucinating or not. And then he STILL chose the "flirt" option.

WICKED (2024) dir. Jon M. Chu

[voidscreechingonathursday]

I can't wait for part two I needed it yesterday

[lunadove]

I love the added depth they gave to Fiyero's character bc it really hammers home just how much his "Dancing Through Life" mindset is an act right from the start.

He's someone who realizes how bad things are in Oz, how even darker things are coming, and feels helpless to stop them. "Dancing Through Life" is his way of coping - if nobody else cares, then why should he? Why let yourself feel hurt and pain, if you can't do anything about it? He's frightened of the future, so he turns away from it and pretends it isn't there.

Meeting Elphie doesn't make him less shallow (he was never shallow, he was just desperately trying to be), it instead makes him realize that there are other people who recognize the injustices in Oz. That moment with the lion cub is so pivotable bc he realizes that there are actions they can do to help others.

[gamorahww]

Fiyero & Elphaba rescuing the lion cub (x)

[aidede-camp]

But we should also discuss the fact that it doesn’t really make sense to have Elphaba leave with Fiyero either. Not only is it not very satisfactory for their arcs as characters, it just doesn’t feel right for Elphaba to just straight up abandon her cause and dip with this boy? Sure, you can say there wasn’t much else she could do, but to be quite frank, that sounds like a cop out. It’s literally taking a strong activist and watering her down to something along the lines of a “performative ally”. They leave when things actually get tough. And we KNOW that’s not who Elphaba is bottom line. When you get down to it, book Elphaba actually dies with several failed attempts at helping the Animals, but she never just decides it’s better to jump ship?

As for character arcs, look a little ways down the line. If you really look, no one will end up truly happy except maybe Elphaba. And that’s pushing it. Fiyero doesn’t suffer from loneliness like Elphaba does. He suffers from an existential crisis. That, by definition, can not be solved through the presence of another person but in one’s self. He needs to find his purpose in life through other means in order to truly be satisfied. Perhaps switching places with another person who does suffer the same affliction as our green heroine?

None of this is to undermine Fiyero and Elphaba as a couple, but there are better ways to have ended this story, full stop. Ways that keep the characters true to themselves and their plights. True to what they are suppose to represent.

In conclusion, all of these characters deserved better. Fiyero deserved to be loved by all in a way that was meaningful to his internal struggle. Glinda and Elphaba deserved to find the one person who made them feel truly whole again. Instead we got Glinda suffering alone mostly in silence, Elphaba having to play the part of filling a whole in Fiyero that shouldn’t be her responsibility to fill, and Fiyero never really truly understanding that there is more to himself and life than being in love with someone.

That’s a tragedy for ya’.

But that’s just my take on it. Plenty exist and all are valid!

I’m thinking about Wicked tonight, specifically why Elphaba ends up with Fiyero instead of Glinda in the musical despite Elphaba and Glinda having the more well-rounded relationship.

You could chalk it up to the writers wanting a heteronormative ending (and I’m certain that’s part of it) or the fact that Elphaba and Fiyero had a love affair in the book. But I think there’s a bit more nuance to it.

The whole point of Glinda’s character is that she upholds the status quo of Oz. No matter how much she loves Elphaba or sympathizes with the plight of the Animals, she will always align herself with the current system and those in power. And as long as that remains the case, a relationship between her and Elphaba is futile because Elphaba will not give up her cause.

Elphaba and Glinda represent to different ends of a spectrum. Elphaba resists the oppressive forces in Oz, while Glinda upholds them. But Fiyero is somewhere in the middle. He starts out privileged and carefree like Glinda, but quickly turns to Elphaba’s side. He does become Captain of the Guard, but only to find Elphaba and help her evade arrest.

And therein lies the difference between Glinda and Fiyero as love interests to Elphaba. Glinda would never sacrifice her title as “the Good Witch” and all her power granted from the Wizard, even if it meant helping Elphaba. Fiyero, on the other hand, does give up his privilege, his title, and even his human form for Elphaba. Glinda clings to what the status quo gives her, while Fiyero ultimately rejects it.

Yes, the writing around Elphaba and Fiyero’s romance is a bit rushed and doesn’t have the same gradual development that Elphaba and Glinda have. And yes, I have no doubt heteronormativity played a role in giving Elphaba a male love interest in the end. But I see a lot of people write off Fiyero and his relationship with Elphaba and I just don’t agree.

Why does Elphaba end up with Fiyero instead of Glinda? Because Fiyero makes the sacrifices that Glinda wasn’t willing to.

[zonezyo]

it’s just that— i fell in love with a war, and nobody told me it ended

[jbaileyfansite]

Little tease of a deleted scene between Fiyero, Elphaba and the lion cub that is going to be released in the digital version of 'Wicked' on December 31.

[wickedly-mindless-and-careless]

can't wait to watch the wicked movie as many times as I want once it's out on streaming/physical platforms 💚🩷💙

[reblog-spam-assassin]

No truer have been spoken.

Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in WICKED (Part 1)

[incorrectgliyeraba]

Fiyero: Are you okay? Elphaba: I'm fine. Fiyero: Is "I'm fine," Elphaba for "I'm really not fine at all,"? Elphaba: Why do you ask? Fiyero: Because I'm fine too.

[silvasteel]

Fiyero + Fae

[eurydicees]

oh dont apologise i loved your essay 😭 and i 100% agree with everything. Theres such a innate theme of choices and consequences in wicked the musical and its so fascinating to me how choices made by all the characters have such profound consequences at the end. And fiyero’s choices are no different in the way they alter the trajectory of multiple characters.

He is really the only one i can think of who sacrifices everything for elphaba and does it all willingly. How do you like elphaba and then dislike the one character who was ready to give up his whole life and everything that came with it for her 😭

Twitter is very binary in that regard honestly, and its such a shame that they miss out on some pretty interesting character analysis about their favourite characters bc they decide to be so rigid and weird about other characters who had an impact on their faves. Couldnt be me lol, making multiple threads about a character you hate. I also think something else is at play here but dont wanna say it publicly lol but given your other responses i think you’d probably agree.

And yes totally agree about dividing the film in two parts - i can only hope the film watchers stick around for part 2 and see fiyero’s whole arc

thanks for the ask! also i wrote another fiyero ted talk. if i were like charles dickens or whoever and i was getting paid by the word to write about fiyero, i could be so goddamn rich btw.

anyways, choices and consequences!!!!! like that's the whole thing!!!!!!! and the way our choices affect and change other people!!!! fiyero isn't an exception to any of that!!!!

you're so right that fiyero is truly the one who makes the ultimate sacrifices for elphaba. like glinda loves elphaba, she absolutely does. but she isn't able to take on the work and life that elphaba chooses in defying gravity.

when it comes to the things that are most important to her, glinda prioritizes comfort and reputation over, like, morality and principle. and the thing about glinda is that she actively makes this choice. she chooses not to go with elphaba. she wants elphaba to succeed, but she's not brave enough to join her. in order for glinda to find the bravery to take up the work elphaba starts, she has to lose everything that actually matters. and she has to be complicit in her own losing of those things.

fiyero loves elphaba to the point of sacrificing all of those things that glinda can't resist. the day with the lion cub, and elphaba's general influence on him, changes fiyero profoundly in a similar way that she affects glinda, but fiyero finds the bravery to act on all of that. the difference is that he doesn't get the choice to go with her until mid-act 2 after wonderful.

in thank goodness, there's that one exchange between fiyero and glinda where they say smth like "you just can't resist all of this" "well who could?" "you know who could, and who has." and he's talking about elphaba, he's talking about how she had all the love she ever wanted at the tip of her fingers when she met the wizard, and she chose to let it go because she saw the ugly parts of the wizard's world. and this exchange is so clearly boiling it down to "elphaba resisted the temptation of being universally/publically loved and glinda did not." which tbh is something so in character for a person who has never had that, and a person who has always had that and thus doesn't want to leave it behind.

ok i was going somewhere with this but i don't remember where. just. fiyero isn't a perfect character. and for SURE the choice to erase gelphie's romantic subtext from the book when adapting it for broadway was an act of homophobia. but if we're just looking at musical canon, fiyero is brave enough to give up everything first to save elphaba, then to go with her, and then to protect her. and so-called elphaba stans don't think that's good enough. which is CRAZY to me.

also like. he's literally not the comphet love interest. sorry you didn't mention that but i keep seeing people throw those words around and like that's not what's happening here guys. elphaba loves him. she sings a whole song about it. multiple, even.

comphet implies that she mistakenly thinks she loves him because society has molded her into believing that's how she should be (fyi if anyone's experiencing that, it's glinda but i digress). elphaba, who notably has never been able to comply to the mold society makes for women, because she's never been pretty white woman enough to be afforded a place in that society? you mean that elphaba?

guys elphaba just...loves him. that's all there is to it. she loves him when she realizes he's more than he thinks he is, more than the airs he puts off. she loves him when she feared he might have changed, she loves him when he proves he did change--for the better. she loves him when he sticks by her, when he chooses her. she loves him when he's a fucking SCARECROW. ("go ahead, touch, i don't mind" "you're still beautiful" lives in my head rent fucking free).

when she has her breakthrough "okay. fuck this world that has never been good to me, if you want me to be wicked, i'll be wicked" moment, it's because she loses fiyero. she gets betrayed by nessa, and she fails dillamond, and she loses fiyero--and it's then that she loses sight of what good she had begun fighting for. it's a love for fiyero that drives most of no good deed (broadway songs of all time btw). like sorry but you dont sing someone's name like that if you don't love them. that's just musical theatre rules. trust me i was a theatre major.

anyways. sorry for that detour. back to the point. twitter treats everything as so black and white which is crazy because this is a revisionist musical about how evil isn't black and white. like?????? whatever. imagine being so bitter about a character you dislike that you want to change fundamental pieces of your favorite character so that he isn't relevant.

look. gelphie is great doomed yuri and i support that so hard. but dont try to tell me fiyero isn't deeply important to elphaba and to understanding elphaba's character. tbh the love triangle here isn't fiyero choosing between glinda and elphaba. it's more like elphaba choosing between glinda and fiyero and what either of them represent to her (glinda and working within the system, or fiyero, and abandoning it).

and hot take maybe but like ultimately--as someone who has never been conventionally accepted, as someone who has been hunted down to be murdered, as someone who has been the victim of a smear campaign and propaganda against her character/intentions, all of which was in part driven by glinda--she was always going to choose fiyero.

i respect gelphie shippers, i do. in another world, maybe one without the wizard, they could've been so happy together. i'm with y'all. but given canon, even if all others fall, i will be the last fiyero defender standing. god i hope movie-only fans watch part 2 and at least learn to RESPECT him. at the bare minimum. please. please. please.