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alfvaen · 1 year ago

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Novel Battle

Last month I did a roundup of books I read, and it looks like I managed to do it again this month, woot. It's not quite the end of the month yet, but there's only day left in December 2023 and I don't think I'll be getting anything else finished this month (and I finished my 100 books on Goodreads), so I might as well do it now. (I have been trying to not leave it all to the last minute, writing bits of it during the month, which may be an effective strategy.)

Actual books under the cut--possible spoilers for Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Michelle West's House War series, and maybe C.J. Cherryh's Atevi series, though I'm trying not to.

Michelle West: Battle, completed December 6

This is a slot for a female (or non-male) "diversity" slot author. It almost feels a bit cheating for me to use the slot for Michelle West (a.k.a. Michelle Sagara), who I've been reading for a long time now, and is somebody I'd read anyway, but her books are pretty thick and I have a tendency to fall behind on them, so I'll take whatever will get me to actually read them.

Back when I first read Michelle Sagara, I was heavily into Canadian SF and wanted to read everything that was eligible for the Aurora Awards every year, if possible. (It soon became clear that it was not, for all practical purposes, possible.) So I saw her on the list with her first series, The Sundered, and read them all. It's a series where the good guys lose at the end of the first book, and our protagonist ends up imprisoned by a demon lord type who is also her main romantic interest. This kind of dynamic has turned up a few times in her other books, to some degree or another. Later she came out with the Sun Sword series under the name Michelle West, a series of six quite thick books. (And, it turns out, there had been a previous duology, Hunter's Oath and Hunter's Death, set in the same world and featuring some of the same characters.) And after that, she started coming out with her Elantra series (a.k.a. the "Cast" series, since the titles are all like Cast In Shadow or Cast In Courtlight etc.), again under the Sagara name; slightly lighter, and thinner, fantasy novels featuring a guardswoman named Kaylin Neya living in a multiracial fantasy city (and by multiracial, we have like hawk people, lion people, dragons, elf-types, and telepaths, and probably others I'm forgetting). And after that, she started coming out with the House War series, which was designed to tie up some loose ends from the Sun Sword series. (She's also got another series, a YA-ish urban fantasy series called "Queen of The Dead", but I haven't tried those yet.)

So at the moment I'm reading both the Elantra series and the House War series; I try to get through one of each a year so that maybe I won't fall further behind. Battle is, as one might guess, in the House War series, which, as a series, is a bit odd. The first three books in the series are really their own trilogy, since they take place before The Sun Sword entirely (and one of them overlaps with Hunter's Death). And then comes Skirmish, which takes place after The Sun Sword, and continues on with Battle, Firstborn, Oracle, and War. (Firstborn and Oracle were not part of the original series listing, so I assume that the series stretched as she was writing it.)

The central character of the House War is Jewel Markess ATerafin, who I believe was introduced all the way back in Hunter's Oath and may have been in all of the Michelle West books to date. She started out as a street kid, leader of a "den" of orphans and homeless kids, until she gained the attention of the powerful House Terafin, and managed to win entry for herself and her den; later it turned out that she was a rare "seer-born", and she grew in power and influence. She is a fundamentally nice person, though, who would be happy if everybody just got along and nobody got hurt, so she's not comfortable wielding her power--something she may have to overcome by the end of the series, I suspect. (And, unlike some of Sagara/West's characters, she seems deeply aromantic-coded. Not even a hint of romantic feelings in any of the books to date.) Also, in these books it seems like any random character can turn out to be a retired assassin with a dark past, or a troubled immortal, or a secret mage, or some other such archetype. It works better than it has a right to.

So what is the House War? That's a good question. It's not, fundamentally, a struggle within House Terafin, or between any of the Ten Houses, at least as of yet. It seems more like a struggle of House Terafin, or all of human civilization, against outside forces, quite frankly. Battle has relatively little battle in it, in fact; it still feels like we're readying for the battles to come.

I've started supporting the author on Patreon, mostly because she was working on a new book in this world, Hunter's Redoubt, which the publishers passed on (possibly because she couldn't guarantee it being a reasonable length, or maybe the series just wasn't selling well enough for them), and I've only got three more House War books after this one, so probably by 2027 I'll get to reading it.

Ian Fleming: For Your Eyes Only, completed December 8

Feeling a little behind on my Goodreads challenge after the length of Battle, I decided to scan my shelves for something somewhat shorter, and less fantasy. And Ian Fleming is what I came up with.

I remember James Bond from an early age, between the HBO we (probably illicitly) had when I was a kid, and the promotion for the movie "For Your Eyes Only" (including the Sheena Easton song and the Marvel comics adaptation). These days "FYEO" is considered a lesser entry in the Bond canon, but I have a soft spot for it. I watched and rewatched a lot of the movies over the years, and at some point I started reading the original novels. They're not bad, though of course a product of a different time with all sorts of deeply-ingrained sexism (and probably racism too).

For Your Eyes Only the book is actually a collection of short stories. The first one, "From A View To A Kill", is perhaps the best, a straightforward but engaging story of Bond outwitting an embedded spy nest in France. (Little or nothing in common with the "A View To A Kill" movie.) The title story and "Risico" are the two that the "For Your Eyes Only" movie was built around--the former a story of an off-the-books mission where Bond avenges a pair of M's old friends (with the aid of their bereaved archer daughter, who became Melina in the movie), and the latter being the story of double agent Kristatos trying to set Bond against rival Colombo; the stories themselves are pretty good. Then there's "Quantum of Solace", which also has nothing to do with the later movie, and hardly anything to do with James Bond, being mostly a story told to Bond about a relationship that went sour, and "The Hildebrand Rarity", which oddly didn't get any movies named after it, about a horrible person who comes to a bad end on a boat on the Indian Ocean, and good riddance. While uneven, it was actually a bit refreshing to see Bond in different contexts and shorter pieces.

Jim Butcher: Warriorborn, completed December 9

Next, I wanted another male author, and still probably a shorter book. The Olympian Affair, the latest Jim Butcher novel, had just come out, and was devoured by several members of the household; this e-novella was kind of a precursor to it, and my wife had recommended I read it, and I decided it might be just the thing.

I have a read a lot of Jim Butcher--almost all of the Dresden Files (saving only a few of the more recent stories), the Codex Alera, and The Aeronaut's Windlass, the first Cinder Spires book (to which The Olympian Affair is the sequel). It's been some time since his last novel, Battle Ground, and quite frankly, that one left a really bad taste in my mouth. A lot of that was due to a particular character death which I really did not appreciate, but I can't tell if it's just that or if I've gone off him completely. So I have deliberately been avoiding the last few Dresden Files stories, and I wasn't sure if I was going to read any more at all, so I guess this was also a way of giving him another chance.

I apparently didn't remember The Aeronaut's Windlass that well, because I did not remember the main character of the story, or the whole Warriorborn class at all (they seem to be humanoid but part cat or something?). I remembered actual intelligent cat characters, but not these guys. Anyway, there was a story, it was mildly exciting, and it only took me a day to read it. I'm still not sure if Butcher has redeemed himself, but I did put The Olympian Affair on my to-read list, even if I probably won't actually read it any time soon. He may not be "don't read ever again", but he hasn't earned his way back up to "read as soon as the hardcover comes out" yet by a long shot.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Ethan of Athos, completed December 12

Three books since my last reread, so it was time for another one, the next (chronological) Vorkosigan book, Ethan of Athos. It's an odd duck in the series--no Vorkosigans appear in it at all, but we do get Elli Quinn, last seen getting sent off for extensive facial reconstruction surgery in The Warrior's Apprentice, in which she had barely any screen time. The book's POV character, though, is the titular Ethan, from the planet Athos, a planet of a reclusive misogynistic society that bans women entirely and reproduces entirely through uterine replicators and ovarian cultures. But when the ovarian cultures start senescing, and their replacement shipment is hijacked, Ethan is forced to head into the big bad woman-infested galaxy and try to remedy the problem. Which brings him into contact and/or conflict with Elli Quinn, Cetagandans, and other forces. And ends up broadening his worldview ever so slightly, though he does return home at the end…with perhaps the biggest dangling plot thread that never got revisited in the entire series. I was lukewarm about it my first time through, but by now I consider it pretty fun, but inessential. It does give you a chance to see Elli as a full-fledged character before you see her back with Miles again.

Cecilia Dart-Thornton: The Ill-Made Mute, completed December 18

After three short reads in a row, I was now ahead again. It was time for another female author, and for "trying out" one I hadn't read before. When I'd first started doing this, I limited it strictly to authors where I'd picked up one book at random and that was it, but I later broadened it to include other authors, particularly ones where I'd picked up two books by them and not yet read either. And the one I happened to have sitting on my shelf was Cecilia Dart-Thornton's The Ill-Made Mute, which was both an interesting author name and an interesting book title.

It's an odd book in a lot of ways. The language is…well, you could say "rich", you could say "not afraid of using obscure vocabulary words". The setting is interesting--there's a metal that floats above the ground (not unlike something that they have in the Cinder Spires, actually), and some people use it to travel by floating ship or floating horse…which makes sense once you find out how dangerous overland travel is, because of all the wights (a.k.a. fairy folk, seelie and unseelie, many of which seem to be drawn from actual Celtic folklore, given the extensive references at the back).

Our protagonist is the mute of the title--stripped of their memory, speech, and name, disfigured by accident, and receiving only grudging kindness by their rescuers. Could be a more proactive character than they are, since they spend a lot of the time at the mercy of more powerful forces (and many capricious wights), but you do root for them to come through.

It turns out, by the way, that the other book in the series which I own, The Battle of Evernight, is the third book, not the second, so I guess I need to track down a copy of The Lady of The Sorrows sometime. Sigh.

C.J. Cherryh & Jane Fancher: Defiance, completed December 22

I only had three books left to read for the year, and 13 days to do it in, so I still seemed more or less on track, but maybe a shorter book would not go amiss--especially since we were planning to go out of town on the 23rd, something that I could finish by the 22nd might be a good idea. Female author still, and not high fantasy.

I often like to let books sit on my to-read shelf for a while; or, to put it another way, to not neglect forever the books that have been sitting there for a long time in favour of newer and shinier ones. But there are exceptions, for authors that I've read a lot of and am actually caught up on, where I try to keep caught up by reading their newest books.

I've been reading C.J. Cherryh for a long time--I started with her Morgaine books, after seeing her mentioned in Dragon magazine, and went through whatever I could find--Cuckoo's Egg, Serpent's Reach, the Faded Sun books, the Chanur books, etc. I fell behind for a long time, but the Atevi books (starting with Foreigner) helped, because I started reading them to my son. They're not kids' books, but he was a teenager when I read them to him so that was okay. (If it bothers you to think of a teenager still being read to by his parents, think of it as a "parental audiobook experience".) I had gotten about twelve books in on my own, but even restarting from the beginning, I was able to plow through the series (up to at least book 20) reading them aloud. (By this point he can read them on his own if he wants to, though.)

This is book 22 in the series, and while it seems to be starting out with recap (which was less useful when reading them back-to-back, but helpful now) it's probably not a recommended starting point. The length of the series is a tribute to the complex political situations that our characters get involved in, and she's probably not in danger of running out. This is her second novel, and first Atevi novel, crediting her longtime companion Jane Fancher as a cowriter, probably for reasons.

The Atevi series in general takes place on (mostly) a planet inhabited by a species called atevi, where a group of humans were forced to settle after a hyperspace accident left them unable to return home. After some initial friction, they are coexisting mostly peacefully, with one human (called a "paidhi") as a cultural interface. The current paidhi, Bren Cameron, ends up getting involved more deeply than usual in atevi politics, which is all I'll say in lieu of spoilers.

Josiah Bancroft: Arm of The Sphinx, completed December 27

I also picked this one largely on page count--I was planning on reading it in 5-6 days, which would cover the days when I was visiting my mother for Christmas. In a slight deviation from my normal tactic, I ended up allocating reading pages so that the two travel days (it usually takes us about six hours to do the drive) required fewer pages, and it worked pretty well.

The first book in the series, Senlin Ascends, involved Thomas Senlin and his young wife travelling to the Tower of Babel, the wife getting abducted, and Senlin going into the tower after her. The details of the world aren't particularly clear--there is a Tower of Babel but there's also steampunk technology and people with European names, and there's no map of anything besides the Tower itself so I don't worry about it too much.

In this book, the second, we have more an ensemble cast rather than just Senlin, and I think the change is quite effective. Senlin is a reserved gentleman thrust into unfamiliar situations, and sometimes he's a little bit repressed, so having more viewpoints was helpful. Plus it allows us, the reader, to learn things without Senlin necessarily learning those things as well.

I'm hoping that we'll shift our plot from "Senlin looking for his wife" to something with slightly larger stakes about the fate of the Tower itself, and the world. Because it's beginning to seem like Senlin and his wife may not have the most successful, loving reunion. We haven't seen much of her at all, really, and I hope that when we do, she'll have a stronger character than just "damsel in distress".

There's two more books in the series, which of course may be out of print by this point, but I think the odds of my finishing the series at all have definitely gone up.

Lois McMaster Bujold: Borders of Infinity, completed December 30

And then it was time for another read, another Vorkosigan book, whose placement may be a little bit controversial. It consists of three novellas, the first of which, "The Mountains of Mourning", takes place between The Warrior's Apprentice and The Vor Game. The others do take place between Ethan of Athos and Brothers In Arms, but in this book there's also a framing story that takes place after Brothers In Arms. (In the more recent omnibus editions the novellas are rearranged, and the framing story disappears entirely. There's not much to it, so it's not a huge loss.) But there's no spoilers from BIA, it turns out (Miles is in the hospital with broken arms from an unchronicles adventure that happens after BIA, and while its events are alluded to, all that really comes up is that they were on Earth). BIA in fact takes place directly after "Borders of Infinity".

"Mountains of Morning" is probably the most affecting of the three novellas, as Miles has to investigate the murder of a baby in the backwoods of his district, with characters that show up again in Memory. "Labyrinth" is my least favourite of the three, though it's still good. It is the most novel-structured of them, with subplots and multiple settings, and its events serve as setup for the events on Jackson's Whole later in Mirror Dance. "Borders of Infinity" is a tour de force showing how Miles can accomplish his goals after stripped of pretty much everything, and also a good example of how to hide things from the reader that your viewpoint characters knows.

And that's December, and the end of 2023. Next up it will be a book from my dwindling supply of male "diversity" authors, Siege of Mithila by Indian author Ashok Banker. I also got a copy of the nonfiction book Paths of Pollen, written by my very own brother, that came out a month ago.

#books #Lois McMaster Bujold #Vorkosigan Saga #Michelle West #Ian Fleming #James Bond #Jim Butcher #Cinder Spires #Cecilia Dart-Thornton #C.J. Cherryh #Atevi #Josiah Bancroft

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she-posts-nerdy-stuff · 2 months ago

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Wicked the movie thoughts - spoiler version

I went to see Wicked today! If you want to read a spoiler free edition of what I thought you can do that here but otherwise below the cut I am going to talk in a lot of detail about the show and share my thoughts - they're overwhelmingly positive!! I loved this movie, I love this musical, and I have a lot of thoughts to discuss, I'm welcoming conversations about things I say or about stuff I didn't say but that you want to talk about let's absolutely chat, and this is all the way through going to contain spoilers for the plot but also for specific details, scenes, acting, etc, of the new movie so be warned if you don't want to read that

First of all, the genuine love and care that was put into the show and that can be seen not only in the acting but in the set, the music, in every aspect the care and the adoration for the theatre production was so clear, it was so lovingly crafted from the word go. I also felt like not only Wicked the musical but also Oz, in the original Wizard of Oz novel, in the Wicked novel, in the world and in everything that Gregory Maguire brought to the world, and so on and so forth was being treated with such care and being genuinely revered whilst also balancing well enough that I didn't feel like I was only ever seeing rehashes of existing material or a carbon copy of the past

Even as I was watching and thinking this, and thinking how well they had captured the feeling of watching something on stage, I was still wondering how they were possibly going to execute the Emerald City and the One Short Day performance because it's so iconic and so distinct in the musical but genuinely I was so impressed with the success of that scene. It both captured the essence of One Short Day on stage and added something new to it without taking anything away from the original and they deserve so much praise for that. I'm going to talk a little bit about the nail salon scene later when I discuss propaganda in Wicked (this is gonna be a looooooong post y'all buckle up) but other than that for One Short Day I just need to address, because how could I not, IDINA MENZEL AND KRISTEN CHENOWORTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I didn't know they were going to be there!!!!!!!!!! I was losing my goddamn mind you guys omg

I was genuinely astonished. Like I'd seen them doing press and stuff but I assumed that was just because their names are so synonymous with Wicked I didn't realise they were actually going to be there!!

I really enjoyed the small stage production about the Wise Ones and the Grimmerie it was brilliant in concept and execution for worldbuilding and lore but KRISTEN AND IDINA OMG wonderful oh my gosh. Now was it on the nose? Absolutely. But I don't think that it felt forced, I thought that if you didn't know who they were then even when Chenoworth was singing to Grande and Menzel was singing to Eviro then it still wouldn't have felt strange or out of place, but of course I'm looking at it through the lens of a fan receiving fan service so generally speaking even though I know it's fanservice I'm still going to enjoy it and it's possible that through another's eyes it would feel different. I thought it was brilliant though and nothing will take that away from me

I think it's fair to say that the pacing of Wicked is kind of messed up and I have heard concern that because of that the act 2 movie will struggle; pacing of act 2 does get messy, but I cannot fault them in any way for splitting it into two movies ok because this was spectacular and I would not want to cut a single thing from it so yeah that's kind of all my thoughts on that point; I think that even if act 2 is harder to bring to screen that it can still be done in a high quality and successful way and especially after watching part 1 today I absolutely trust that this production can do that

I'm gonna now hop right back to No-One Mourns the Wicked (the pacing of this post is gonna be worse than the pacing of wicked). I was slightly concerned that Ariana Grande's intense recognisable-ness was going to take something away from the show because it would be hard to see the character she was playing rather than just Ariana Grande singing, if that makes sense, but from as early as No-One Mourns the Wicked my concerns were alleviated. Glinda is not an easy character to play, in my opinion, and she's not an easy character to play because she acts incredibly melodramatic in everything she does whilst her genuine emotions are incredibly subtle. What I saw in both Grande and Erivo was how fantastic their micro-expressions are and how much they can tell the audience with one or two features, often the eyes, alone. In No-One Mourns the Wicked , Galinda genuinely believes and will presumably continue to believe for the rest of her life that Elphaba is dead. And throughout her performance of the song, I more than once found it visibly notable that Glinda was on the verge of tears. She was smiling, she was singing, she was moving gracefully with her typical accentuated and dramatic movements, but the pain in her eyes was remarkable. This was a woman who believed that the only person she had ever had a genuine emotional connection with was dead, a woman who had lost not only someone she had manufactured a relationship with (Fiyero) and convinced herself that she was happy with what she knew was a false pretence of love to receive from, but also the only person in the world who had ever shown her real love and was finally being confronted by the fullest extent of the choices she had made but having to keep everything light and cheerful because of those very choices. Did that make sense? I hope I'm not just spouting nonsense. One of the most emphasised moments of this for me was when this massive effigy of Elphaba and one of the munchkinland residents hands Glinda the torch to light it; there's this blink and you miss it moment where Glinda looks at the torch, at the effigy, then back to the man who held it out to her, who's watching her expectantly, before she turns and tosses it on with a sense of urgency. Not only is this alone powerful, but I also think it's powerful that she throws the torch instead of standing at the effigy and taking care to set it alight firstly because she may not be able to bring herself to do so but also in a way that may be reflective of their relationship and the story: Glinda does not outrightly attack or harm Elphaba but she makes the choices that she makes, she throws her torch and whatever burns will burn.

I also felt that she captured the comedic elements of Glinda fantastically, with one of my favourite moments being when she melodramatically collapses kneeling in front of the bed as though she is sobbing into the quilt but just sits there perfectly still and the camera just stares at her for a few moments before she peeks up over her shoulder to see if Elphie's looking. The difference we can see between these two sides of Glinda's character was very well executed and I think we also see something of her more vulnerable side in some of these comedic moments, because ultimately she does (I'm going to talk about this later) feel unloved because of how shallow all of her relationships are and even in melodramatic, foolish or naive moments like the throwing herself on the duvet cover she is actively seeking attention because she equates attention to love - she so desperately claws her way to attention and popularity because she feels unloved and she thinks that this is love, so when it doesn't give her the feeling she was searching for she becomes convinced that it was because she doesn't have enough of it yet and she needs more. I thought that she was incredibly well captured and presented from all angles with her very many layers being well laid out.

Again with the insane jumping around but let's just dive headfirst into a couple of little details that I noticed whilst I'm thinking about them - during the Wizard and I when Elphaba is imagining her success and her dream she runs through a cornfield!! As though she is running towards Fiyero!!! I loved it. Like it's so tiny, but I love it. Another tiny one - loved the silver shoes for Nessa as a hark to the original book wherein the magic slippers were silver, but then in Popular when Glinda is going through her wardrobe and pulling out all these different options she gives Elphaba a pair of ruby red slippers and then decides against them and throws them away again!! Loved it as a teeny little reference. I also really lovedddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd and this one is more meaningful to the story but when Elphie has her magic outburst at Shiz right at the start where she sends Nessa into the air and stuff gets thrown everywhere, there's a statue on the wall of the Wizard that gets smashed. When it smashes, it's briefly visible that beneath the statue the wall was originally painted with a mural of animal scholars!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVED this detail, I was BUZZING. Like you saw it long enough to see what it was, there were three animals with a bear in the middle and I think the bear was wearing maroon robes and they were all clearly scholars

My personal theories on this is that either they were highly valued intellectual alumni of Shiz or that they founded the school, however there mya be lore standing on them that I am unaware of I started reading the book a long time ago and never finished it (I really want to read it but I haven't got around to it yet. I read enough to know what happened to Dr Dillimond in the book but I don't remember a lot after that)

Speaking of Dr Dillimond, I'm not sure if I just missed a detail or something implicit but I wasn't sure that they gave any real explanation as to why the poppies didn't knock Fiyero out????

On Fiyero: Johnathon Bailey understands Fiyero so well and it was brilliant. His performance very much took in the different layers of the character and the split between what he presents to the world and the intensity of the emotions he hides. Fiyero experiences emotion so intensely and feels such an intense response to others' emotions as well, and I think that you could really tell that whilst not feeling like anything was being taken away from the charismatic charming persona that you knew he was putting on. One of my favourite moments between him and Elphaba in this was when she siad something along the lines of 'you aren't as shallow and self-loving as I thought' and he replies something along the lines of 'how dare you? I genuinely love myself and I am deeply shallow' and I love this not only because his humour is enjoyable and his defence mechanisms are interesting but also because she immediately breaks through and says no, you're unhappy.

I promised thoughts on Dancing Through Life so whilst we're on Fiyero -> I don't at all intend to say that Bailey isn't a good singer because he is, I just thought that to some degree his voice didn't stand out from the chorus' voices in the same way that Erivo's and Grande's do and so the song did necessarily have the same bite to it as some of the others did/ That isn't to say that it wasn't a fantastic scene, because it was, and I loved the choreography and I was obsessed with the spinning bookshelves and all of it, the bringing the beat of the song in through the movement of the books was brilliant, and again he is a good singer and I think that having the actor's own voice in the movie is almost always the right decision

Okay I am going to make a post on its own about this as well because this is really long and I am so deeply obsessed with this I want to give it a chance to get proper discussion but one of my favourite propaganda-related details of this movie was Elphaba's nails. Yes, you read that right. Her nails.

In all of the imagery and posters of the 'Wicked Witch of the West' she is very often leaning forwards with her hands strangely position in the foreground and then her face behind them so your focus is drawn very quickly to the hands. In these images, her nails are always presented as extravagantly long, sharp, and claw-like. So in a world where animals are discriminated against and being used as the common enemy long before Elphaba is used as that enemy it's so fascinating that the dehumanisation of Elphaba has emphasis on her hands appearing strange or 'unnatural' and it makes me think of the line in Something Bad 'It's enough to give pause to anyone with paws' because that's where the emphasis on this distinction lies with no-one but humans having limbs that resemble hands - having Elphaba presented effectively as though she has claws in a world where animals are discriminated against and actively silenced, especially since she advocated against that silencing. And something I really enjoyed after having noticed the long nails in the posters during No-One Mourns the Wicked is that throughout the movie Elphaba has unapologetically long, beautiful nails that in a truly wonderful subtle aspect of Erivo's acting we get the sense she cares about even though they are never discussed. When she and Glinda go to the Emerald City we see this montage of their day during One Short Day and one of the things they do is go to a nail salon and we see Elphaba excitedly showing off to Glinda her long pretty nails that she loves so much and that make her feel pretty. Again this is such a massive testament to Erivo's acting skills because there's no dialogue about it but we know that she is so excited and we know that this is one of very few times that Elphie has felt pretty, she loves her nails. And they get used so horrifyingly against her. The nail salon is such a brief, subtle moment but it's so very well executed. There's also an earlier scene where she's alone with Madame Morrible practicing magic and when she reaches out to make the hand movements the camera cuts to show the shadow of her hand and it creates this emphasis on the length of her nails and how because of the shape of her hand midway through the movement the image looks like a claw or like a very stereotypical evil witch hands sort of thing. I also think that this moment is particularly powerful bc she's alone with Morrible and everything that Elphie does under Morrible's instruction is perfectly natural but what is seen on Morrible's stationary on the desk below her is representative of the propaganda that Morrible will turn the actions that she forced Elphaba to do into.

Also more propaganda stuff I could talk about the use of the word 'witch' for all goddamn eternity so I'm not going to hark on about it now but I will say that a piece of media like this one cannot be created today without acknowledgemnt of the difference between the word 'wtich' and the word 'wizard' and how they are presented, and I think that this was really interestingly handled in the word 'witch' not being said in the prequel aspect of it until Morrible labels her 'this Wicked Witch'.

Okay I think this is going to be what I finish off with but if you know this account you know that I LOVE a parallel and I was obsessed with the parallel drawn between family dynamics in Elphie's relationship with Nessa and her father, and then with the family that she's looking for and briefly thinks she could find with Morrible, the wizard, and Glinda. Yeoh said in an interview that Morrible's betrayal is realising that the mother figure isn't who you thought she was. Madame Morrible becomes Elphaba's maternal figure, and to her living memory realistically her only maternal figure, from very early on and this maternal view of her that we have through Elphaba's eyes is very much existent by the time we reach Sentimental Man, wherein the idea of the Wizard being able to offer her some kind of paternal love, that she has never felt because her relationship with her father is so fraught, is brought forth. Sentimental Man was very well performed in my opinion, it was the right decision to keep it low and subtle and close because it created this very specific closeness between Elphie and the Wizard and we felt what she felt, which was the exact manipulation that the Wizard wanted her to feel. When Madame Morrible enters the scene we then have both of these parental-style figures present telling Elphaba how precious she is, how amazing she is, how much they believe in her - essentially all these different things that she has been denied her entire life. What I find particularly fascinating about this is that what gets created here is exactly Elphaba's existing family dynamic - because Glinda is there too. This is what Elphaba always wanted - a motherly figure, a fatherly figure, and a sisterly figure - but it still comes at the expense of the sister. Glinda is being actively diminished and put down whilst Elphaba is raised and complimented for the purpose of manipulation and to be used for their purposes rather than existing for herself, just as her father diminishes and hurts her whilst complimenting and idolising Nessa but also manipulating her & never allowing her to live her own life. There's a moment where they're all stood around the grimmerie to get the four of them in shot with Elphie looking over the book, Morrible encouragingly at her side, the Wizard watching on from behind, and Glinda leaning over Elphie's other side to try and squeeze herself into the picture and I think that this still alone captures the entire thing so very well.

In a way, this is why Glinda turned round - without Elphie there, she gets love. When Elphaba had parental figures over her and no Nessa present to be better than her, she felt loved; when Glinda has parental figures over her and no Elphaba present to be better than her, she feels loved. The fundamental difference between them in the moment of choice is arguably that Elphaba's love for others, primarily Nessa, will always be stronger than her need for love from others, whereas Glinda's need for love from others will always be stronger than her love for others, primarily Elphaba.

In this moment, Glinda's warped distinction between love and popularity, as I discussed it earlier, is finally put to direct test and even though she loves Elphie and is loved by her in a way that she has arguably never been loved (we saw just how shallow her relationship with her parents was upon the arrival at Shiz. It's as shallow as her friendships at Shiz and romance with Fiyero.) she chooses popularity because she has somehow convinced herself that superficial love from many is better than genuine love from few. Elphaba's love for Glinda is probably the most genuine affection she's experienced in her entire life - but it doesn't come from authority. Elphaba's love isn't coming from someone who can raise Glina up or give her advantages and ultimately she is always seeking the approval of authority, possibly because she felt like she never received it from the authority that was her parents when she was a child, and she finds that feeling in Morrible and the Wizard, and arguably in the power that Fiyero's family could give her as well.

Okay super quick additions that i just remembered:

I loved loved loved the addition of her falling from the palace and seeing young Elphaba in the reflection and once again so freaking much could be said about the strength of Erivo's acting here it was truly beautiful and I found it like genuinely nerve-wracking even though I knew she obvs had to make it and the song wasn't over yk but yeah it was fantastic

When Elphaba's running from the soldiers & the flying monkeys just after the monkeys have been told to attack her and Glinda is chasing after her. They go through a narrow corridor of the palace lined by windows, and the wall are made of green brick. The sunset beyond casts pink light through every window. Every window is pink, all the walls are green. Elphaba is running and Glinda is following, trying to tell her to come back to the Wizard. As they run the flying monkeys start smashing the windows, so for every pace that they take THE PINK SHATTERS AND ONLY THE GREEN IS LEFT BEHIND. They are running towards Defying Gravity and for every step closer to it they become the less intertwined the colours are. The pink shatters and the green is left behind. It was visual poetry.

Okay I hope that this insane rambling made sense, I was partially transcribing this from voicenotes I sent to my friends when I got back after the movie and they actually got more than this so apologies to them and thank you for indulging me, and thank you to anyone who has bothered to read this lol I hope it was interesting - overall, excellent movie and I loved it!! Already can't wait for part 2

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