Wait could you go more into Salem being glinda? (<- person who is bad at allegories but loves your metas)
step one is to clear out everything you’ve ever read about rwby’s ozian allusion from your brain because this fandom keeps trying to make it about the wizard of oz and it’s… nnnot about the wizard of oz. the book we’re going to be talking about as the primary text of reference is the second oz book, ‘the marvelous land of oz,’ which is about what happens after dorothy and the wizard go home.
the reason nobody can figure out who rwby’s “dorothy” is is… there is no dorothy. she’s in kansas and not really relevant to this story except insofar as her journey through oz resulted in the wizard’s departure and the end of the wicked witches of the east and west. she’s The Backstory. and—actually as i write this there, um, there IS a dorothy and now i have to go stare at a wall for a little while.
at the end of the first oz book, ‘the wonderful wizard of oz,’ the wizard leaves and glinda, the good witch of the south, tells dorothy how to return home to kansas with the glass slippers (which fall off her feet and are lost forever whilst carrying dorothy home)
(the classic film makes something of a mess by combining glinda and the good witch of the north into a composite character, creating the problem of why glinda would not simply tell dorothy how to use the slippers right away. in the book, the good witch of the north sends dorothy to the wizard, who is secretly a fraud, and after he inadvertently leaves dorothy behind she is advised to travel south to consult with glinda instead.)
now, the wizard was the ruler of oz, so his departure created a political problem that he attempted to solve by appointing the scarecrow to rule in his absence. that choice is what ‘marvelous land’ is chiefly about because, you see, before the wizard came along, oz was ruled by a king named pastoria, who had an infant daughter named ozma. then the wizard deposed pastoria, and princess ozma disappeared.
the book’s protagonist is a boy named tippetarius (tip) who’s been raised all his life by the bad witch mombi. tip is in fact ozma, stolen by mombi and transformed into a boy to secure the wizard on the throne of oz. he has no idea; he just knows that mombi isn’t very nice to him and he wants to leave.
when he runs away, he takes with him jack pumpkinhead—a fellow tip made by carving a jack-o-lantern head for a wooden man, animated by mombi’s magic. their relationship is quasi-parental (jack calls tip “father” but tip is, you know, a boy and not especially fatherly). they’re joined by a living saw horse en route to the emerald city. the trio is briefly separated, with jack and the horse rushing ahead and being received by the scarecrow while tip is waylaid and meets general jinjur, who is leading an army of revolt to the emerald city to overthrow the scarecrow.
that happens. jinjur wins more or less by default because the soldier with green whiskers, who guards the emerald city’s gate, is too cowardly to fight them and simply lets them into the city. the scarecrow flees, along with tip, the sawhorse, and jack. this motley crew heads west to winkie country, once the domain of the wicked witch of the west, now ruled by nick chopper—the tin man. en route to winkie country, the scarecrow mentions to jack that pumpkins rot and jack spends the remainder of the story in a state of ever-present existential dread over his imminent decay.
anyway, nick accompanies them back to the emerald city, along with the woggle-bug—a very large, knowledgeable bug whom none of them like particularly and whose backstory involves transformation by a professor, an incident about which the woggle-bug has ambivalent feelings—whom they meet along the way. they’re hindered by various illusory traps mombi throws at them because she’s trying to get tip back under control.
reclaiming the emerald city from jinjur does not Go Well. they’re forced to flee again, briefly end up stranded in an inhospitable place on the far side of the desert and attacked by birds. the woggle bug saves them by using a silver wishing pill to repair their means of transportation so that they can reach glinda’s home, in southern quadling country.
they want glinda to help them restore the scarecrow to the throne of oz. glinda has other plans, because she’s spent all this time trying to find ozma and set right the wizard’s various injustices. she’s narrowed it down to mombi as the culprit, and upon learning that the witch has hidden herself in the emerald city, she… um, immediately lays siege to the emerald city to “starve it into submission” and flush mombi out, then chases her to the impassable desert at the edge of oz, ties a rope around her neck to silence her magical powers, and bodily drags her back to the emerald city to account for her wrongdoing on pain of death:
Glinda had been carefully considering what to do, and now she turned to Mombi and said:
"You will gain nothing, I assure you, by thus defying us. For I am determined to learn the truth about the girl Ozma, and unless you tell me all that you know, I will certainly put you to death."
"Oh, no! Don't do that!" exclaimed the Tin Woodman. "It would be an awful thing to kill anyone—even old Mombi!"
"But it is merely a threat," returned Glinda. "I shall not put Mombi to death, because she will prefer to tell me the truth."
"Oh, I see!" said the Tin Man, much relieved.
"Suppose I tell you all that you wish to know,". said Mombi, speaking so suddenly that she startled them all. "What will you do with me then?"
"In that case," replied Glinda, "I shall merely ask you to drink a powerful draught which will cause you to forget all the magic you have ever learned."
"Then I would become a helpless old woman!"
"But you would be alive," suggested the Pumpkinhead, consolingly.
[…]
"You may make your choice," Glinda said to old Mombi, "between death if you remain silent, and the loss of your magical powers if you tell me the truth. But I think you will prefer to live."
Mombi cast an uneasy glance at the Sorceress, and saw that she was in earnest, and not to be trifled with.
thus mombi is forced to tell the truth, remove the curse she placed on tippetarius (turning him back into ozma), and take glinda’s potion to strip all of her magical power away.
here are some facts about glinda:
she rules over quadling country—in the oz books, the cardinal kingdoms are all color-coded; northern gillikin country is purple, eastern munchkinland is blue, western winkie country is yellow, and quadling country? red. (glynda goodwitch’s purple is the first hint that she is not glinda, but rather the good witch of the north who believes in the wizard’s power. her absolute faith in ozpin is the second hint.)
glinda is, despite her youthful appearance, implied to be thousands of years old, and by any measure the most powerful sorceress in all of oz.
in demeanor, she is always calm and collected and resolutely truthful; so great is her dedication to the truth that she has no power over mombi’s magical deception and illusions, hence the need to force mombi to undo her own curse. she always knows when she’s lied to, but she can be fooled (fleetingly) by powerful illusions. and she can be utterly ruthless in pursuit of what she believes is right for oz.
she, as noted in the last post, is responsible for freeing the flying monkeys from their enslavement by the golden cap.
the allusions rwby is making to ‘marvelous land’ are really very straightforward—much like cinder and cinderella or salem and maiden-in-tower stories. it is impossible to read the book with rwby in mind and not see the connections:
the god of light is mombi.
ozma is ozma; as ozpin, he has become the wizard (complicit in his own cursed imprisonment), and within oscar he’s tippetarius (a boy who’s lost his true self).
oscar is jack pumpkinhead, ozma’s heir (thus, symbolically, his “son”), brought to life at least symbolically by light’s power (he’s in the story at all because he’s ozma’s vessel), and preoccupied with existential dread inspired by the looming immediacy of his spiritual death.
qrow is the scarecrow, left to carry the symbol of ozpin’s authority in ozpin’s absence and forced to flee beacon, the “emerald city,” by
summer rose, who is general jinjur, holding beacon academy while she searches for the crown. (jinjur spends a considerable portion of the story trying to get the royal crown.)
lionheart is the soldier with green whiskers: not the fearful but truly courageous lion, but the cowardly old soldier who all but hands jinjur the keys to the city in his terror.
ironwood is the tin man, ruling over a land once subjugated by the wizard’s bitter enemy (pre-war, fascist mantle) now remade into a shining and prosperous kingdom under the command of the wizard’s ally (atlas)—and it is he who gives sanctuary to the scarecrow and tip’s party after the emerald city falls, and he who leads the failed first attempt to take the city back by force.
vacuo is the nest of jackdaws where the party ends up stranded, far from oz—they cross a desert to get there and i suspect the point of theodore is to signal that vacuo isn’t “in” oz but rather standing in for the deserts and the lands beyond. because dorothy is in kansas, you see. (he’s not the Real Dorothy, though, we’ll get there momentarily).
the woggle-bug is raven, the maiden of knowledge who knows the secret that will bridge the impassable divide between vacuo and salem; her knowledge of what summer did is the silver wishing pill which, incidentally, poisons tip when he tries to use it.
and salem is, of course, glinda: ancient and aloof and coldly ruthless in her pursuit of the truth, searching for ozma (<- note the congruence here with rapunzel searching for her prince in the wasteland!) and ready to GO TO WAR to bring the god of light to account for what he’s done. i really must emphasize the GOING TO WAR bit: the glinda of the books is not the soft, mistily benevolent lady the classic film makes of her. she has an extremely well-disciplined standing army which she marches on the emerald city with the explicit intention of delivering a siege to “starve it into submission.” mombi looks this woman in the eye, sees death staring back at her, and surrenders with a whimper. glinda is ruthless.
so it isn’t even “glinda would go to war if she thought it necessary” it’s that glinda does in fact go to war and rwby is, with salem, taking glinda’s decision to go to war to achieve her ends very seriously and putting that in a context where salem isn’t revered as a protector and loved by all. the only difference between salem and glinda is that glinda is beloved by the people of oz!
but i also promised you dorothy. so:
allow me to direct your attention back to what glinda does to mombi after ozma’s curse is lifted. mombi is made to drink a potion that causes her to forget all the magic she’s ever learned, leaving her to live as an ordinary old woman—but she is not left alone to suffer afterwards, because ozma makes arrangements to provide for her indefinitely.
this is, of course, what’s in store for the god of light. he’s going to ascend—that’s obvious—and the fairytale ‘the two brothers’ hints quite strongly that he’ll come back as a man (i’d wager a faunus specifically), leaving his power and memories of divinity behind and given a peaceful life in return. mombi’s resolution in ‘marvelous land’ offers a direct 1:1 comparison to ascension.
but what about the god of darkness?
dorothy doesn’t appear in ‘marvelous land’ and she has no presence in the book whatsoever except as one of the two characters whose departure at the end of the last book created the circumstances that allow this story to occur: it is dorothy’s adventure that convinces the wizard to leave oz, and then she leaves too. the wizard—through mombi, the real power behind his throne—retains his influence and authority over the land of oz until she is forced to undo her wrongs, but dorothy is simply… gone. she went home, she’s remembered fondly by her friends, she has nothing whatsoever to do with this story, and the silver shoes that bore her home at the end of the last book fell from her feet and were lost forever.
(she does eventually make it back to oz, in a roundabout way, by accident. but for rwby’s purposes, and within the context of ‘marvelous land’ taken in isolation, dorothy is Gone Forever.)
afterans refer to the tree as home; they think of ascension as returning home to rest and find renewal after a long journey through the world outside. at the end of her journey through oz, she asks glinda to send her home, and glinda tells her:
“The Silver Shoes," said the Good Witch, "have wonderful powers. And one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in the wink of an eye. All you have to do is to knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go.”
and, as i noted, the shoes carry her home but are lost in the process, never to be found again.
glinda teaches dorothy how to go home. likewise, salem is a repetition of jabber—the argument between the brothers comes full circle—and through this experience dark realizes that he needs to “go home,” i.e. ascend. he’s been trapped in this same disagreement for thousands of years and nothing has changed; nothing will change unless he tries something new. he shatters the moon on his way out and, unlike his brother, there’s nothing to suggest he’s still present in this world or relevant to this story as anything but backstory… because he ascended and became something new.
(the spirits in the relics.)
(which in terms of the ozian narrative, represent the golden cap, which glinda receives from dorothy before she gives it to the king of the flying monkeys to set them all free, so the symbolic through line between dark-as-dorothy becoming the spirits-as-flying-monkeys through his and their relation to salem is relatively straightforward.)
