Poppy Fields

Elphaba: "Can I say one more thing? You could have walked away back there."
Fiyero: "So?"
Elphaba: "So no matter how shallow and self-absorbed you pretend to be—"
Fiyero: "Excuse me, there’s no pretense here: I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow."
Elphaba: "No you’re not. Or you wouldn’t be so unhappy."
Fiyero: "Fine if you don’t want my help—"
Elphaba: "No, I do! ... His heart is pounding. I didn’t mean to frighten him."
Fiyero: "What did you mean to do? And why was I the only one you didn’t do it to?"
Elphaba: "Oh look, you're bleeding...it must have scratched you."
Fiyero: "Yeah...or maybe it scratched me or something."

I saw Wicked again on Saturday, and then spent Sunday in a coffee shop finishing off this drawing that's been in my drafts for about 6 months. It was actually one of the very first illustrations I did of Wicked, and spent ages as a hastily sketched thumbnail on my phone. I'd been working on it intermittently to get it finished recently, but seeing the show gave me the push I needed to get it completed. I'm trying to clear out a lot of my backlog as I have so many ideas lately and not enough time to see everything through to completion! Which isn't a situation I'm complaining about in the slightest, after the amount of art block I've had it feels great.

I really love this scene in the musical. I have a lot of feelings about Fiyero, and as much as I love it the musical really does him a huge disservice. I kind of get that they don't want to spend much stage time developing him as he's not the focus of the narrative, but there's no reason to make him a bit of a jackass at the beginning. In the book he's a tribal person of colour seeking an education so he can integrate better with the people of Oz and help his people in the modern age, and is generally a fish out of water who doesn't feel comfortable at Shiz and gets picked on for being brown and having tribal tattoos. And as much as Dancing Through Life is a bop, it's kind of insulting that he got reduced to a spoiled rich kid bouncing from boarding school to boarding school. And I like this scene because they make an attempt to tear that image down a little and show that he's a bit deeper than he seemed five minutes ago, and hint at the deep connection he and Elphaba share in the book.