Designing the Good Witch of the North better known as "Glinda" as a possible character in my VN - The Trial of The Wizard.

Witches of Disney

A picture I commissioned from the artist twisted-wind from Deviantart. It features Disney characters as the witches of Oz: 

Wicked Witch of the East - Mad Madame Mim (The Sword in the Stone) Wicked Witch of the West - Magica De Spell (Ducktales [2017]) Good Witch of the North - Fairy Godmother (Cinderella) Glinda, the Good Witch of the South - Elsa (Frozen)

Fashion in Oz: the Good Witches (2)

Given I couldn't find any pictures of the Good Witches in the 1902 extravaganza, I'll immediately jump to the MGM movie and its Good Witch, Glinda. Which is a fascinating case - because this character is the literal fusion of the original two Good Witches, bearing the name of the Good Witch of the South (Glinda) and yet holding the title of Good Witch of the North, and fulfilling the role of the two witches successively. And it is interesting to see that, in Glinda's costume right here, we have a fusion of visual elements taken from both of the literary characters. Indeed, the Good Witch holding a magic wand as tall as her (so a sort of magic staff) and having her dress covered in sparkling stars does come entirely from the Good Witch of the North - with the change of the stylized "N" at the top of the staff being changed here for a silvery star. Meanwhile, the fact that Glinda wears a sort of tall crown is taken from Glinda's depictions, as we saw earlier - though here Glinda's crown is larger, silvery and with stars at the top (to keep the whole "star" aesthetic). Of course, no need to point out that Glinda's headwear is also here to mimick and oppose the Wicked Witch's own hat. Interestingly, we find back here the curly red hair of Glinda in Baum's original description of the Good Witch of the South, even though here Billie Burke, while beautiful, plays a more mature Glinda than the original "young sorceress" Baum depicted her as. And... well I said red hair, but to be fair it is actually more of a venitian blond/strawberry blond kind of color, given how Burke's hair can look a deep blond depending on the lighting. We could almost say that the fact Glinda's dress is pink was maybe also lifted from the book illustrations of Glinda - as we saw before, John R. Neill added reds to the white of Glinda's outfits (or at least the red was added in the colorization of her dresses), and often it resulted in pink outfits. After all, pink is a "soft and feminine" color, isn't it? It might be a nod to these illustrations... or it might simply be the movie crew's very own invention. After all, they wanted to depict a "good witch", they wanted to depict a feminine character that was kind and gentle - and pink would certainly be the color to go. Overall, what the MGM movie did was also insist on a true... "fairy" aesthetic, or "fairy tale" vibe for the Glinda costume. The fact her magic staff has a star on top is made to make it seems more like a fairy magic wand (which is usually depicted with a star at the end) ; having her be in a pink costume with a heavy star motif also works in this "fairy" concept ; while her puffy dress is very... princess-like, a feeling that is reinforced by the "crown" she wears. All in all, without a doubt, we can say that this costume is one of a "fairy-princess". In fact, look carefully at the puffy, translucid sleeves. The way they are placed is no mere coincidence - they are not here to cover the arms, they are here to ornate the shoulders. And the way these "transluscent puffs" were shaped is clearly meant to evoke insect wings - or to be more precise, fairy wings. In fact there is a true irony when we look at the color palette. In the MGM movie Glinda gets all the silver (it is her main color patterns, silver and pink) - while in the original book it was the Wicked Witches who were associated with silver (silver shoes, silver whistle). And in reverse, in the MGM movie the Witches got a strong red pattern (red shoes, red smoke, red hourglass), while in the books red was the color of Glinda's lands and people. EDIT: Re-watching Glinda's scenes, I actually missed a detail in her outfit... She doesn't just have a star pattern on her dress, she also has a butterfly one! If you look carefully, she wears on her clothes small, silvery, shining butterflies. There is one around her neck, another by her left shoulder, and a third on her belt. It clearly reinforces the "fairy vibe" they were going with for this character

Given I have started looking into MGM's Glinda (or North-Glinda), who is a very unique character breaking the usual Good Witches pattern, I'll take a look at other incarnations of her before moving on to other adaptations of the original Good Witches (Locasta and South-Glinda). The most recent would be this incarnation, from "Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return". We keep here a heavy MGM influence - the curly venitian blond hair (though it is a darker/browner shade of strawberry blond than the original MGM movie), a large, puffy, princess-like dress entirely pink, puffy shoulder pieces and a high crown... However this design changed significantly several details. Such as the skirt - quite "simple" in the MGM movie, here we have several levels piled on and wrapped up around each other, for a more complex and... "regal" I guess effect. The addition of numerous pearls on the lower part of the skirt notably enhance the feeling of "royalty" or at least "wealth" this Glinda produces - I wonder if the pearls on her dress are meant to evoke the "pearl of truth" Glinda is said to wield in "The Marvelous Land of Oz"... Other details include the puffy shoulder pieces losing the "translucid fairy wings" effect to become more traditional puffy, elbow-long sleeves, typical of "old-fashioned" dresses  ; the crown, which is here actually a high diadem/tiara instead of a full circling crown, or even how the silver-and-pink palette becomes here white-and-pink. But the most significant change would probably be the change of Glinda's pattern. Here, no more stars. On her dress and in her tiara, what you see is flowers - and even her sleeves and collar are shaped like petals. Oh, and of course the size of her star-topped staff got massively reduced, now becoming just a simple "magic wand".

Another North-Glinda incarnation comes from the cartoon series "The Wizard of Oz". No, not the recent thing for little kiddies that is posted everywhere on Youtube nowadays - I am speaking of the unfinished 1990 cartoon, supposed to be a sequel to the MGM movie. Their version of Glinda was based on the MGM character, but they added numerous design changes. Most notorious being that Glinda suddenly turns blonde for some reason. The star pattern of Glinda's dress is still present (with a bigger, golden star on her cleavage, to represent the North star which, in this cartoon, she is the mistress of), but the dress herself has a drastic color change, with only the torso part of the dress being pink and the rest, skirt plus sleeves, becoming pure white. Glinda keeps the strange high pink crown of MGM's Glinda, but the jewels on it go from random silvery jewels to deep purple ones actually shaped in a given pattern - you can see a crescent moon on the crown. As for her wand, while still longer than a traditional magic wand, it is still not as long as the MGM character's original staff, and if you look closely you will notice that a purple pattern appears on the star at the top - a crescent of moon seemingly passing in front of the sun (a motif that Owl House fans will recognize without a doubt). You can see it all in detail here:

Given the show's disdain (or ignorance) of the original books, I doubt the addition of purple in this Glinda's designs were supposed to be a hint at the Gillikin country. A last addition by the cartoon is the apparition of a few butterfly-shaped ornaments on Glinda's dress: one on her belt, a second on her shoulder, and a third around her neck. EDIT: Okay I got something completely wrong. I thought the butterflies in Glinda's dress were invented by this cartoon but actually NO! I checked back and the butterflies ARE on the original MGM Glinda's dress - silvery and shining. It is just that I never noticed them before. So my bad

A painting I did of Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Ariana Grande as Galinda/Glinda Upland of the Upper Uplands icons in Jon m Chu’s Wicked Movie.

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

Dorothy, glancing down at the Wicked Witch of the East’s corpse: I think I’m a little more morally gray at this point…

Your honor they were in love.

Prints will be available on my website after April 10th, but will also be for sale at Anime Boston 2023

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Glinda/Witch of the North - Emerald City (2016)

I don't always improve upon my art

But when I do it's either through WLW witches or lion-fied MLM superheroes

Arriman the Awful

Might as well continue the self-indulgent train. One of the middle-grade (-ish) illustrated books I really latched onto as a youngin was Eva Ibbotson's "Which Witch". I received this book, "The Island of the Aunts", and "The Secret of Platform 13" as a box set gift. Magic/Witch/Wizard British humor for kids published in 1979. (Just in case you wanted to add another author to the list of people Jokes Rowling was "inspired by" in the tradition of female UK authors writing about eccentric witches and wizards hiding/going unnoticed by regular citizens. So check out these three offerings and "The Worst Witch" series by Jill Murphy ((1974)) if you're looking for magical books for kids that won't support monetarily a certain someone.)

Anyway, Arriman the Awful, Wizard of the North, owner of Darkinton Hall just outside of Todcaster has gotten a little tired of his Dark Wizard routine, and after noticing grey hairs in his curse curl he decides it's time to find a way to retire. He has his fortune read and it's good news, a New Wizard of the North is prophesied and Arriman settles in to wait.... only.... no Wizard arrives. It is then suggested that the Heir to Darkington... might be more literal than they had assumed, and to do that...marriage to a suitable Witch would be involved. Arriman is horrified at the prospect, but agrees to go through with it. Thus beginning an official competition for the Todcaster Witch who would be his future wife. (Inspired by his assistant's admiration of the Miss World's competition, but not dissimilar to a humorous Witch-y version of The Bachelor, which it predates by multiple decades)

I am the artist!!! Don’t repost without permission & credit! Thank you! Come visit me over on: https://instagram.com/ellen.artistic

Maisie Peters San Diego, CA - September 10, 2023

Fashion in Oz: the Good Witches (3)

To end this look into MGM's Glinda and her heritage, we need to stop by the recent "Oz: The Great and Powerful", aka the unofficial MGM sequel done by Disney. An interesting take here because here Disney didn't try to recreate the MGM design as closely as they can while still making it different enough to not be sued (like they did with the Wicked Witch of the West). Here they decided to reinvent the design of Glinda, to have their own thing, very different from the MGM version. Gone is the puffy, pink, shiny princess dress - now we have a simpler, body-fitting, white dress (not a nod to the original Oz books I think, here they just delved into the "white is good while black is bad" dichotomy), more fitting for a "serious" (cough cough) and action-focused (cough cough) story. Its still quite silvery in design though, mixed with the white (the sleeves in particular are very silvery). The hair is now straight and blond - I do believe that they made Glinda blond as a nod to the "Wicked" incarnation of Glinda/Galinda. The crown is still here, but now turned into a regular-size tiara, of a dim golden color - and a very distinct "Art Deco" feeling to it. (It does make sense as in "Oz the Great and Powerful", there is a strong presence of the Roaring Twenties aesthetic in Oz, such as Evanora's outfits which are clearly 1920s party outfit-inspired). Also very interesting is that the linear and angular pattern on the diadem, beyond just being Art Deco, also evokes the idea of light, rays of light - which is one of Glinda's symbolic elements here. No stars here, but feathers - feathers on the... how do you call that? Bodice? *Google checks* Yes bodice. So feathers on the bodice and shoulders (the other dress of Glinda in the movie also has feathers on it, so it is a recurring thing in Glinda's design). The feathers represent two things here - on one side, it does point out how Glinda's magic is tied to "celestial" and "aerial" elements (bubbles, mist, light...), but it also is here to present her as opposed to Evanora, who also has feathers in her design, but black ones. Another interesting detail I noticed - while MGM's Glinda went for a "fairy princess" aesthetic, and subtly introduced a fairy imagery ; here, we actually have an angel subtext. I mean consider it... a blond woman dressed in white, with feathers and a "crown of light"? That's a very "angelic" design right there

I actually forgot one last "MGM-Glinda" incarnation, that must be talked about: the Glinda from the 2011 musical "The Wizard of Oz", adapted from the MGM movie, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. I had the chance to find an extremey high-def picture of Glinda's costume for the original incarnation of the musical. As you can see we have another heavy reinvention of Glinda's design. While there is still a large and ample dress, gone are the pink thrills and puffy sleeves - we have a sleeker, shoulder-revealing dress that doesn't have a star pattern on it, but is still covered in littel glistening crystals shining under the light. The great staff is still here, with a stylized star at the top, and now Glinda's color palette is mostly a deep blue - in the show, it makes her match with the almost all-blue environment of the Munchkin (because despite being based on the MGM movie, the show's crew decided to add some elements of the book, including the all-blue Munchkins). We'll probably talk about the "blueness" of the good witches at a later point, with the Wiz. And no crown here, but rather a strange, pointy-beehive of blue hair swirling on its own. A specific hairstyle that, as you note, is also shared by the Wicked Witch of the West - here we have a double symbolism, as the hairstyle is meant to evoke a tornado, while also imitating the idea of a pointy witch hat (similar to for example Mary Sanderson' hairstyle in Hocus Pocus). And in the hair you might notice similar glistening crystals to the one on Glinda's dress. In fact, the "Good Witch of the North" having little shining white crystals all over her blue or dark-blue outfit seems to clearly evoke a starry night sky. Interesting fact: You can find behind-the-scenes videos of Emily Tierney (Glinda actress) putting the wig, makeup and cristals to "transform" in Glinda. It is in three parts. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55oMUoen2Y Part 2:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgzXArXaN6o Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw4tWnD_dK8

Very funny to think at the same time the supernaturals of New Orleans are bickering about who should be in charge and how to get more power, the Mystic Falls lot are fighting against the literal unravelling of all magic in the world

Another painting of Ariana Grande as Glinda