#WE ALL KNOW GELPHIE IS PRACTICALLY CANON

[victoriously-wicked]

Okay no big deal, Jade and Tori only went and dressed up as LITERAL GELPHIE in the April Fools episode. Totally not a big deal at all . . .

[palukoo]

OKAY so... some of y’all may remember me from my wicked days back when I was youknewmyelphie, and I still post about it some but. there’s something I talk about A LOT in the tags whenever I see it so we gonna finally make a post about it because I am Heated.

so we all know that theater n musicals n shit are stereotypically gay (at least for men but that’s a whole different conversation) so it makes sense that wicked would make like pride posts and stuff, and they do

which is all well and good. please support us. but. but they get a disproportionate amount of praise for it, praise that they do not deserve. part of it is the whole “corporations make pride products for sales without really supporting us” thing, but to me at least, with wicked (the musical) it’s particularly egregious

(note: im not saying fuck anyone who makes wicked pride stuff or like the actors doing it, and honestly some of it is just timing and the show has already been written and they can’t super just rewrite it now [they could but i get why they aren’t] i just have problems with it)

because wicked, the musical, for as much as i talk about it being gay, is like, canonically straight pretty much. which, you know, i guess wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it wasn’t based on the books it’s based on. 

so if we’re talking about glinda and elphaba here, they are not technically canon in the books. they say i love you and kiss (elphaba kisses glinda’s face is basically what it says i think) and it is heavily implied that they were each other’s most important relationship but it’s not canon (and beleaf me the way greg did it bugs me too but anyways) even though it’s hinted at (see interview with gregory macguire below, sorry i dont have the link i screenshotted this literal years ago)

so yeah, this isn’t like,,,, great canon wlw rep, BUT the musical (and yes, it is shorter but still) takes out A LOT of the subtext between glinda and elphaba (in part because of how it completely changes their characterizations but i digress) which... already really doesn’t sit right with me

but let’s just forget gelphie for a moment, let us instead talk about crope and tibbett. which, again, their book characterization and means of representation is.... flawed, but. okay, its been a long time since i read the books so i went to my good friend wiki which says this:

“Crope and Tibbett are two characters exclusive to the novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of The West. Both are friends of Boq, who he meets while working a summer job at the Three Queens Library. It is implied that they are both gay and may be a couple. They are both from the Emerald City, are flamboyant, and enjoy wearing costumes.”

I feel like it’s pretty explicit that they are gay because it talks about them swooning over men and there’s other stuff but anyways. Look, Winnie, Stephen, i’m not saying you should have made them main fucking characters but in the book they are there about as much as like pfanee (sp?) and co so you coulda just had them being there, being gay, which also isn’t like great queer rep, but YOU KNOW, at least it’s fucking something

but no. you know what the wicked musical really does for the community? the representation it really gives us? fucking nothing. 

and that, on it’s own, is enough to piss me off, because this is fucking musical theater, i would argue they should ADD gays, there’s practically no risk to the show (theater’s gay history [okay with women it’s different because there are like 4 musicals that even mention wlw BUT], the general liberal-ness of theater compared to other media (in some ways, at least), the gay history of wizard of oz via judy garland, etc) AND IT WAS ALREADY THERE, WRITTEN FOR YOU

i still wouldn’t like it, but i’d get not making gelphie explicitly canon, but you really went the fucking extra mile and took away the majority of the existing subtext

so fine. that’s fine. that’s fan fucking tastic live your lives write your shows like fuck you for it but i can’t stop you

BUT THE NERVE, THE GODDAMN AUDACITY

of after screwing us as a community over so spectacularly in terms of representation and then acting like you fucking support us? acting like you’re fucking allies? acting like you’ve done a damn thing for us? i’m sorry that’s too fucking far.

i understand it, i do. you look at the fans, a lot of us are queer. you look at the fic, at least on ao3 for book and musical it’s mostly gelphie. you want to appeal to your base, so you market pride stuff and make pride posts and all that. it works. we go crazy for it.

but you don’t get that right, okay? because the way you wrote this show, it doesn’t feel like you’re fucking proud of us, okay? i don’t feel like you’re defying any fucking homophobia or hate or whatever, and i’m not even gonna start on the irony of making elphaba a racism metaphor while whitewashing fiyero. it feels like you don’t wanna deal with the consequences of actually defying anything, you want to get and know keep you’re cushy long running show status and you throw us these meaningless marketing bones that the average person won’t see and so it won’t impact their experience with the show and you act like you’re helping us when you really really aren’t, you’re not even giving us fucking scraps you’re taking them away

get off your meaningless rainbow high horse wicked and admit that you fucked up and then we can talk. you can get my fucking respect for your “ally” ship and pride posts when you’ve earned it. until then, fuck you