Application for entranceway (with additional info for re-app)

[coldhardy]

Name: E
DW username: investigative
E-Mail: sevenagencies@gmail.com
IM: sevenagencies
Plurk: detectivefiction

Other Characters: N/A

Character Name: Elsa, Queen of Arendelle
Series: Frozen, plus the official tie-in book A Sister More Like Me
Timeline: The end of the film
Canon Resource Link: http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Frozen
Character History:

(Note: While I've used the suggestions that are made about the girls' childhood in A Sister More Like Me, I'm also willing to work things out with Anna's player to any extent necessary for us to be on the same page. I incorporated those elements in this app because they fill in some confusing/unrealistic gaps that the movie suggests, and they do it in a way that makes sense to me, but being flexible for castmates is important, too.)

Elsa and Anna are the daughters of the King and Queen of Arendelle. Until they were eight (Elsa) and five (Anna), they shared a bedroom in their family's castle. Elsa had been born with magical powers relating to ice and snow, which manifested more and more as she grew older. It was a family secret, one which her parents disapproved of.

One day, Anna woke Elsa up at dawn to play. Elsa wanted to go back to sleep, but she couldn't resist Anna's suggestion that they "build a snowman."

This involved sneaking into the castle's large, empty formal ballroom, where Elsa shaped a snowball from the air, then sent it up towards the ceiling, where it burst like a firework. As snow began to fall, Elsa stomped her foot on the wooden floor, causing ice to spread and cover the surface. The room was soon a winter wonderland, and the girls built a snowman together. Elsa mimicked the snowman saying, "Hi, I'm Olaf, and I like warm hugs!" She also used air currents to push Anna, Olaf, and herself around on the frozen surface of the floor.

The problem came when the sisters tried to play in hills of snow, with Elsa creating a new hill for Anna to leap onto just as Anna leapt off of the last one.

Anna had both natural exuberance (a trait she carried into adulthood) and childish carelessness. She didn't notice that Elsa had slipped and fallen onto the ice while trying to keep up with her leaps, and didn't hear Elsa begging her to slow down. The result was that the next snow pile wasn't ready for Anna to land in it, and in trying to create it, an alarmed Elsa accidentally shot a spark of her magic through Anna's head. Anna immediately developed a white streak in the hair that grew from the spot where she'd been hit. She fell unconscious, and thick frost began to form around Elsa.

When their parents burst into the ballroom, they found a terrified, regretful Elsa embracing Anna and crying. They chided Elsa for what had happened, telling her that the situation with her powers was getting out of hand.

On the advice of an old book from the royal library, the family rode out of the city into the forest to consult the trolls and ask them for help in healing Anna.

Pabbie, the leader of the trolls, answered the King's plea. He was able to heal Anna, but doing so required rewriting her memories so that she no longer had any knowledge of Elsa's abilities: while she could remember that they had played together, all her recollections were altered to have happened outdoors in natural snow. (Later, she also thought that she had been born with the white streak in her hair, but remembered dreaming that she had been kissed by a troll.) He commented that it was lucky that Anna's heart hadn't been hit. He then told Elsa that her power would grow, that there was both beauty and great danger in it, and that she needed to learn to control it, because fear would be her enemy. As he spoke to the family, they saw magical visions in the sky that depicted Elsa being attacked and obliterated by figures representing "fear."

Unfortunately, Pabbie's prophecies, while wise, were also vague and ambiguous, even to him. The "fear" that would have spelled disaster wasn't outside fear of Elsa's powers followed by violence against her (as the vision could have been interpreted to suggest), although that did turn out to be a factor. The greater danger came from Elsa's fears of herself, which included fears of hurting others and eventually fears of losing control of her powers if angry or physically or emotionally on the defensive. Her parents only grasped the first possible interpretation, that Elsa might be treated as a monster and killed if her powers were known to the outside world.

The King and Queen made the decision to limit Elsa's contact with others. The castle staff was reduced, the gates to the castle were closed, and Elsa was given her own bedroom and instructed to keep her distance from Anna.

Over the years, her emotional support came primarily from her parents, who were doting but worried. Her father instructed her to wear a pair of gloves at all times, as a barrier for her hands, and tried to train her to hide and repress her powers, which tended to break through when she was under emotional stress. "Conceal, don't feel," became Elsa's mantra, and she comes to rely on the gloves.

It emerges through the course of the film that this was the wrong way to go about things, but it's indicated that both Pabbie and Elsa's parents had good intentions and did the best they could. However, Elsa's control of her powers at this time had actually been excellent, and it's obvious by the end of the story that encouraging her to continue to learn finer control of them would have been better than treating them like a leak that needed to be completely blocked. Anna was not injured when they were children because Elsa lost control: she was injured because she was excitable and not paying enough attention to notice that Elsa had slipped and fallen.

A Sister More Like Me fills in some of the gaps of the girls' childhoods. Anna was boisterous and carefree, while Elsa was studious, refined, and mindful of her duties as a princess. Anna preferred picnics and had a messy room, while Elsa was fastidious in her personal habits and loved high tea. It wasn't that they never saw each other. It was that Elsa withdrew from Anna emotionally, and that their contact was rare and impersonal and never happened at important times. "I was still your older sister, but I couldn't be your friend." Both the book and the film indicate that Anna grew to think Elsa was uptight.

It seems unrealistic that a young girl could be raised to lead a country with no contact outside of her parents, nor is it stated that Elsa did, only that she didn't see many people outside of a few faithful servants and, presumably, a few tutors.

Much of this period is also covered in a different way in the film in Anna's song, "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?", which shows her loneliness as she begs Elsa to be her friend again at what turns out to be several crisis moments for Elsa. The song is not from Elsa's point of view, although her reactions are shown: each time, she's as lonely as Anna is, but turns down Anna's entreaties due to her parents' orders and her own desperation at her inability to suppress her powers at will. It grows worse over the years, and by the time she hits puberty, Elsa will no longer even let her mother and father hug her, out of fear that she'll hurt them.

When Elsa was around 18, her parents went away on what was supposed to be a two-week journey. Instead, their ship sank in a storm and they were lost at sea.

Elsa's inability to control her powers at times of emotional stress meant that she couldn't attend their memorial service, and instead stayed locked in her bedroom, which frosted over as she wept. Anna went alone and didn't understand why she and Elsa couldn't grieve together: why Elsa seemed indifferent to her pleading. She couldn't see that Elsa was determined to spare others the potential consequences of her genuine heartbreak.

Three years passed, during which Arendelle probably had a trusted regent who didn't have designs on the throne. Elsa continued to grow into an elegant, dignified, practical young woman whose outer poise and commitment to fulfilling her duties masked her deep insecurity about herself and about her ability to do what she had been raised to do.

Elsa's coronation came on a beautiful summer day when she turned 21. The castle gates were opened for a huge celebration, with guests from everywhere, both inside and outside of Arendelle.

Anna thought mostly of her own excitement at being able to attend a party, one where she hoped that she might meet her true love. Elsa was more concerned with getting through the day without being overwhelmed with her emotions, looking forward to being able to close the gates and go back to a quiet, safe life the next day.

It was hard for Elsa to get through the ceremony. The part where she was forced to take off her gloves to hold the orb and scepter was the most daunting, but it had religious significance (royal orbs generally represent a monarch's ceremonial position as a guardian of their faith), so it had to be done. Because her private rehearsals hadn't gone well, she was relieved to make it through the real thing.

At the coronation ball, Elsa's interactions with others were cordial and professional, but her real interest was in spending time with Anna. Elsa had Anna placed on the dais next to her, then tried to initiate friendly, awkward conversation with her. Anna appeared to appreciate the uncommon amount of attention from Elsa, and they began to discover some common ground in the form of their mutual love for chocolate.

The sisters were then approached by the Duke of Weselton, a foreigner with economic designs on Arendelle. He asked Elsa to dance, but she declined, and volunteered Anna in her place. The dance turned out to be as strange and silly as the Duke himself, amusing to watch, and when Anna came back, she told Elsa that she wished "it could be like this all the time." Elsa agreed, wistful and momentarily tempted, but then firmly told Anna that it couldn't be. Anna asked why not, and Elsa refused to provide any further reasons. Anna ran from the party in tears.

Elsa spent much of the rest of the evening at the party alone on or near her throne, watching her guests dance and have fun. Meanwhile, Anna bumped into Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, the youngest of thirteen sons, a charming young man she'd met briefly earlier in the day. They ran all over the castle environs, dancing and chatting, and came back to the party to ask Elsa's blessing for their impulsive engagement.

Elsa was blindsided by Anna's desire to marry a man she'd just met, initially showing her practicality by basing her objection on their short acquaintance. However, her resistance to the idea became stronger when Anna began to discuss the wedding, the idea of Hans moving into the castle at Arendelle, and the possibility that his twelve brothers might visit.

In spite of Elsa's request to talk to Anna in private, the discussion devolved quickly into a public confrontation between the sisters in front of a ballroom full of people. Elsa firmly declared that there would be no weddings; Anna told her that she knew nothing about true love, because she only knew how to shut people out. Elsa was stunned and hurt, but held her ground and tried to excuse herself and end the party.

Anna pursued her, yanking off one of her long gloves, which Elsa repeatedly asked for, holding her bare hand protectively against her body. Elsa moved towards the door, but Anna shouted after her, insisting that she, Anna, could no longer live such an isolated life. Elsa told her that she should leave.

Anna, cut to the quick, tried to confront Elsa about her ongoing refusal to engage with her. "What did I ever do to you? Why do you shut me out? Why do you shut the world out? What are you so afraid of?"

Finally, Elsa lost her temper, whirling around just before leaving the room. As she said, "Enough!" to Anna, she gestured in frustration with her bare hand. A circle of spikes of ice around 4-5 feet high shot up from the floor, close enough to the guests and Anna that most of them had to pull back to avoid injury. The Duke of Weselton murmured an accusation of sorcery, and Elsa took off.

She ran from the castle out into the courtyard full of happy citizens who were thrilled to greet their new queen -- not something that Elsa could handle at that point, so she tried to dodge her well-wishers and get away however she could. Cornered and panicked, she was backed up against the edge of a fountain, and gripping its edge caused its central plume to freeze in mid-air. Even Elsa seemed startled by the extent of her powers.

The Duke pursued her from the party, calling for her to be stopped, and in begging him to stay away from her, she accidentally shot a wintery blast in his direction. It knocked him and his bodyguards off their feet. He responded by pointing and calling her a monster.

The mood of the crowd turned to fear and confusion, but Elsa found a way out by running down to the banks of the fjord on which the castle was situated. If anything she touched turned to ice, including a fountain, it meant that she could escape over water. A solid path formed under her feet as she went, and she was able to create any bridges she needed as she ran off into the wilderness.

Elsa didn't stop to look behind her, so she didn't realize that the fjord never stopped freezing. Ships that were in the harbor for her coronation became locked into the ice, and it began to snow... and snow... and snow.

Anna told Hans that it was all her fault for pushing Elsa, and set out after her, leaving Hans in charge of Arendelle. She never questioned how agreeable he had been with her, how quickly he had proposed, and how readily he took on the responsibility of being the temporary regent.

Alone in the mountains, heading for the especially high North Mountain, a dejected Elsa began to reflect bitterly on her isolation, unhappiness, and failure. However, she also understood that she had tried as hard as she could to fulfill her duties in the way she was taught to do, and that it had ultimately been too much to ask of her. Once she was in a place where she could freely use her abilities without fear, where there was no one who could see her or be hurt, she began to revel in them, declaring that she no longer cared about anyone else's opinions and would leave the past behind her to live as she pleased. "The cold never bothered me anyway." An impossible role had been forced on her for many years, but now, a great weight had been lifted, and she was relieved.

Her powers were impressive when they were openly expressed, even to her. Over the course of just a few minutes, she created a snowman (more on him momentarily), a towering ice palace, and an entirely new look for herself. After discarding her cloak and remaining glove, she used her magic to change her practical, high-necked coronation dress into a beaded silken mesh gown in shades of pale blue with a sheer trailing cape decorated with snowflake motifs. Likewise, she changed her hairstyle from a refined low bun to a long, full braid decorated with snowflake-shaped crystals. She only had to run her hands through her hair to do this. For the first time in many years, Elsa was enjoying herself.

(The previous two paragraphs describe the "Let It Go" sequence. It's worth mentioning here that Elsa was originally intended to be the villain of Frozen, and "Let It Go" was going to mark the point where she turned fully evil; the plot of the film was changed relatively late in its development to make Elsa a sympathetic deuteragonist, but they kept the song.

The result is that, while it's her big character song, it's not the final statement on her personality or growth. Self-imposed exile represents a possible solution to the conflict between her abilities and her duty, but not a particularly mature one. It's also a rationalization, a metaphorical way of "hiding in her room." Once reality breaks in, the next time she's onscreen, she can't maintain the happy confidence that she expresses in "Let It Go". The palace she builds is almost literally a castle in the air.)

The film doesn't cover what Elsa did in her ice palace for the first few days she was there. Most likely, she spent the time learning to relax, coming to terms with her decisions, and enjoying the new expression of her powers. It doesn't appear that she needed to eat or drink anything, or sleep (to be honest, sleep doesn't seem to happen for most of the characters during the main events of the story). We never really see any furniture in the palace. We also never see anything that looks like a room Elsa is actually living in.

Because Anna traveled in Elsa's wake, and because she was unable to create convenient bridges for herself, she was forced to deal with extreme snow conditions and unfavorable terrain. This meant that it took her almost two days of travel to make the trip that Elsa had probably made in around six hours. Anna was assisted in her quest by Kristoff, an experienced young woodsman, mountaineer, and erstwhile ice salesman who she met at a trading post (and who eventually turned out to have been raised by Pabbie's troll family), and his reindeer, Sven.

They also met Olaf, the snowman Elsa created during her trip up the North Mountain. In personality, if not in age, he was the naive and good-natured Olaf of Elsa and Anna's childhood, the one who liked "warm hugs." In many ways, Olaf is Elsa, or at least a side of her. Because she created him, there's nothing in him that isn't in her.

Olaf told Anna and Kristoff of his yearning for summer, without understanding that a snowman could never survive it; this is a metaphorical representation of Elsa's desire for closer relationships with others, especially Anna. He also helped them find Elsa's ice palace. At one point, he stated that Elsa must be "the nicest, gentlest, warmest person ever." The line is played for a joke in context (Olaf's body is immediately impaled on a horizontal icicle that formed in Elsa's wake), but it's accurate about the bulk of Elsa's true personality. It represents what she would be without her fear and insecurity.

Anna's plan, such as it was, involved having a heart-to-heart conversation with Elsa. She asked everyone else to wait outside. "Just... give us a minute." Olaf promptly began to count to 60.

Anna entered the palace and was stunned by its beauty and grandeur. The main hall incorporated a circular double staircase, and when Elsa appeared at the top, Anna complimented her on everything she had created, her new look and her new home. She also apologized for what had happened at the coronation.

Elsa tried to deflect the apologies and send her away, explaining that if she was alone, she could be who she was without hurting anyone. She was visibly physically uncomfortable with Anna's presence, wrapping her arms around herself to try to keep her hands covered.

Before Anna could explain the snowstorm conditions in Arendelle, Olaf's minute ended, and he burst through the double doors to introduce himself to Elsa. Elsa was momentarily enchanted, surprised that she had been able to create something that was both alive and so sweet. Reality broke in when Anna suggested that they could be close again. Elsa, remembering how she'd hurt Anna when they were young, rejected the idea and again asked Anna to leave for her own protection, then fled from the room.

Just like at the coronation, Anna refused to respect Elsa's desire to be left alone. Instead, she tried to follow her sister, earnestly begging her not to keep her distance, explaining that she now understood why Elsa had isolated herself, and pledging her support. The discussion went back and forth a few times, but Anna finally reluctantly admitted to the other issue: "You kind of set off an eternal winter? Everywhere."

Elsa was appalled by the situation and her inability to change it: there was no way for her to be free after all. She hadn't just hurt one or two people, she'd hurt the entire country for which she was raised to feel responsible, and she believed that any attempts to go down and reverse what she'd done would only make it even worse. Heavy snow began to fall in the room. Anna continued to pressure her. Elsa's distress and terror then caused her magic to run rampant, shooting in a circle around her as she shouted, "I can't." One of the "darts" of magic went straight through Anna's heart.

The walls around Elsa began to frost over even more heavily. Kristoff rushed in to help Anna, who appeared, at the time, to be shaken, but fine. While Elsa was initially confused by his appearance, she decided that she didn't care who he was: the most important thing was for Anna to leave, and for her to understand that there was little she could do against Elsa's powers when she had none of her own.

Anna continued to refuse to go, and Elsa, frustrated, created another snowman. This one, Marshmallow, was large, almost monstrous, so much that even Elsa seemed a little afraid of him (she cowered as he formed). Like Olaf, he was an extension of her personality: the side that feared hurting Anna most of all. He tossed the unwelcome guests out of the ice palace. After this, an annoyed Anna instigated a battle with him, but it doesn't seem that Elsa was aware of it. At the end of the confrontation, he told the group not to come back.

After the battle, Kristoff noticed that Anna's hair had started to turn white. He took her to see the "love experts" who raised him, who turned out to be the trolls.

Back in her palace, Elsa paced in anguish, hands in her hair, telling herself to get it together, trying to return to her old "Conceal, don't feel" motto. It was worse for her than it ever had been before. The frost forming on the walls around her became thick enough to take the shape of spikes.

Down in Arendelle, Hans had been handling the crisis well, making sure the citizens had cloaks and a place to stay warm. This was over the greedy Duke of Weselton's protests.

Anna's horse, which had thrown her a day earlier, returned to town, and Hans decided to take a rescue party to find her. The Duke volunteered his bodyguards as members, but privately told them that they should "end this winter" if they encountered the Queen. (By this point in the film, it's pretty clear that the Duke is out to turn the situation in Arendelle to his own economic benefit in one way or another: trade can't take place in eternal winter, and if it takes Elsa's assassination to end it, so be it.)

Hans and his party reached Elsa's palace on the North Mountain at least a few hours after Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf were thrown out of it. Most of the party was forced to fight Marshmallow; this eventually resulted in the snowman's apparent destruction.

As a result of the battle, the Duke's men were able to get into the palace before the others, and Elsa was forced to fight them. One shot a crossbow bolt at her; she was only shielded by a panel of ice that sprang up in front of her as an unconscious reflex. She began to win the fight, with one man pinned to a wall and the other disarmed and being pushed towards the edge of her balcony.

Hans burst in, distracting her. He implored her not to "be the monster they fear you are." Elsa's reaction was to second-guess herself: she was angry and frightened, but not ordinarily a cruel or violent person.

The man pinned to the wall had not been disarmed; he took the chance when Elsa wasn't paying attention to him to aim at her with his crossbolt. Hans noticed, so before the man could fire, Hans grabbed his arm and aimed the crossbow upward. There was a "chandelier" directly above where Elsa was standing. Its connection to the ceiling was broken by the bolt, and it came crashing down. While Elsa was able to move quickly enough that it didn't fall on her and kill her, it did catch up with her and knock her unconscious.

Hans and the rest of the party began the journey back to Arendelle, Elsa in tow.

(While the audience is not yet aware of it at this point in the film, Hans is the main villain, one whose entire motivation is a plan to marry Anna and murder Elsa so that he can seize the throne for himself. While his motion looks like quick thinking that saves Elsa's life but results in an accident that knocks her out, there's no way of knowing how well-aimed the bolt that shot down her chandelier actually was: it's possible that he meant for it to fall on her. In trying to prove how helpful he is and arrange the situation in a way that's favorable to him, he acts as a catalyst for events that ultimately foil his plans. Elsa would not have returned home on her own.)

All this happened around the same time that Anna and Kristoff reached the home of the trolls. Kristoff's adopted family was delighted to see that he'd brought a girl home, and they sang a song called "Fixer-Upper" to the two visitors. On the surface, the song appears to be encouraging Kristoff and Anna towards a romantic relationship, and it is, but it also contains thematic references to Elsa and to the solution to the entire situation: the lines People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed/But throw a little love their way, and you'll bring out their best/True love brings out the best.

Eventually, Pabbie emerged from the crowd to try to help Anna. He told Anna and Kristoff that he couldn't remove the ice that Elsa had placed in Anna's heart, and that if it wasn't removed, Anna would eventually freeze to solid ice forever. The only way to reverse it would be an act of true love. Everyone jumped to the interpretation that it had to be a "true love's kiss," then to the conclusion that Anna would have to find Hans -- fast.

As Anna began to weaken and more of her hair turned white, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven rode hell-for-leather to get her back to Arendelle.

When Elsa awoke, she was imprisoned in the castle, wearing a special kind of shackle that completely covered her hands. Hans came to see her. He told her that he couldn't just let "them" kill her, that Anna hadn't returned yet, and he asked her to bring summer back. She explained that she couldn't, and that it was important to get her away from Arendelle. He said he'd do what he could.

Kristoff dropped Anna at the castle gates with instructions to get her warm and find Hans. He then rode away.

The servants brought Anna to Hans, who showed tender concern for his fiancee... until everyone left the room. When Anna explained what was wrong and that she needed a "true love's kiss," Hans acted as though he was going to kiss her, then stopped at the last moment, saying with mock regret, "Oh, Anna. If only there were someone out there who actually loved you." He explained his plan to her as he doused the fire, making the room as cold as possible to hasten her death, then locked her in the room alone.

While Hans left Anna alive, he told the officials and visiting dignitaries that she'd died in his arms after they said their marriage vows. His coup complete, he sentenced Elsa to death on a charge of treason.

As the guards came to take her to be executed, Elsa was able to break out of her cell, not completely of her own volition. She froze the door shut, then pushed ice into the spaces between the stones until she was able to create a hole in the outer wall. Her shackles didn't last long after that. Escaping across the ice of the fjord, she did everything she could to try to get away from Arendelle, but the severity of the winter weather increased as she went.

In the meantime, Olaf freed Anna from the chilly room that Hans had locked her in and lit a fire to temporarily warm her. They were unable to leave through the door because too much ice had formed in the halls, trapping them, but they escaped through a window. Olaf had seen that Kristoff was on his way back to the city, and had suggested to Anna that this might be the "act of true love" that would save her. (Because Olaf is in many ways an independent extension of Elsa's personality, but is not controlled by Elsa, it's significant that he's the one to rescue Anna. He almost melts in the course of the rescue, and tells Anna, with a look of affection on his face, that "some people are worth melting for.")

The ice covering the fjord began to break up as Elsa crossed it, creating truly perilous conditions. The wind became so strong that it was hard for anyone to stay on their feet, and visibility was poor. Anna and Kristoff tried to reach each other. Anna's fingers turned blue, then snowflake patterns materialized on her hands, then her hands began to harden. Hans, not knowing that Anna had broken out of her death chamber, tried to find Elsa to kill her. When he caught up with Elsa, he told her that she had killed Anna.

When Elsa heard this, she collapsed on the ice with her back turned to Hans, and the storm immediately calmed. This allowed Anna to see what was about to happen: Hans was creeping towards Elsa with his sword drawn and raised, and Elsa, defeated, didn't seem to notice or care.

In placing herself between Hans and Elsa when Hans was about to strike a fatal blow, Anna not only saved Elsa, she also seemed to doom herself: she had a choice of whether to run to Kristoff for a kiss, or to defend her sister, but she couldn't do both in the time she had left. She ran away from Kristoff. Hans's sword struck her and shattered just after she transformed into a solid ice statue.

Anna's choice was correct, though. Pabbie's second prophecy proved to be as ambiguous as his first one, and the "act of true love" turned out to be Anna's willingness to sacrifice herself for Elsa, not something as simple as a kiss from another guy she barely knew (even if he was a much better person than Hans, and someone who was probably actually right for Anna). In spite of everything Elsa had been forced to do to push Anna away for Anna's own protection, and in spite of how much that had hurt Anna since it started, Anna still loved her big sister more than anything.

Elsa, unaware that the spell had been broken, only thought that Anna had sacrificed herself. Elsa embraced Anna with her whole weight, unable to do anything but hang from her neck and weep -- marking Elsa's first time hugging anyone since childhood. Anna knew everything about Elsa, was hurt in the worst way possible by Elsa's fearful outburst... and still took a proverbial bullet for her. Anna's sacrifice forced Elsa to understand that Anna's love and support was unconditional. The worst thing happened, but it didn't make Anna love her any less. Tragically, Anna's condition meant that Elsa no longer had to worry about harming her.

At that point, Anna began to thaw from the heart outward. She returned to normal so fully that even the white streak that had been in her hair since childhood disappeared.

The situation was resolved quickly after this. Elsa was able to understand that love overcomes fear, and that it was the loving, benevolent, open side of her personality that would enable her to reverse the winter and control her powers. With a few moments' concentration on her part, the ice began to melt, flowers began to bloom again, and all the snow that was covering the city spiralled up into the sky. Elsa formed it into a huge snowflake, then exploded it into nothingness. (And when Olaf himself began to melt, she created a small winter cloud to ride over his head: his own "personal flurry" that would allow him to experience summer.)

An indeterminate amount of time, not more than a few days, passed before the movie's final scene. Arendelle's gates are open. Hans is shipped back to his brothers in the custody of one of Arendelle's allies, along with a letter explaining exactly what he did. The Duke of Weselton is also ejected from the country, and Elsa cuts off all business relations with his duchy in perpetuity. Kristoff's sled is replaced, Elsa names him Arendelle's Official Ice Master and Deliverer, and he and Anna kiss.

Elsa stands in the castle courtyard. For the excited populace, she does a more sophisticated version of the same routine she had done for Anna when they were small. She stomps her foot on the ground. Ice forms beneath everyone's feet, then travels up the walls, creating delicate decorative patterns. The fountains freeze again, but they freeze in an elegant curve that Elsa can control. Elsa makes it snow over the area, and people begin to skate.

It seems that she is fully loved and accepted by her subjects, and her poise is genuine, not the product of rigid self-discipline. Now that she has real confidence, she can show the playful, gentle, affectionate side of her personality, and take pride in her powers without having to hide them. The Queen of Arendelle has truly come of age.

Anna tells Elsa that she likes the open gates, and Elsa confirms that they'll never be closed again (a statement about Arendelle itself on the surface, but metaphorically about their relationship as sisters). Elsa creates a skating rink in the square/courtyard and causes a pair of fancy gold-embroidered white satin skates to appear on Anna's feet. Anna protests that she doesn't skate, yet the story ends with Elsa pulling Anna around on the ice while other citizens have fun around them.

A coda to the film shows that Marshmallow, the representation of Elsa's fear, did indeed survive the battle with Hans's search and rescue party. Alone in the ice palace, he found the tiara Elsa had thrown away during the structure's creation. He put it on, and was contented.

The implication is that, while Elsa can't stay in the ice palace, and no longer needs to, the frightened part of her that she's learned to leave behind can still be as happy there as she'd thought she might be when she created it. Elsa is happy in her real home.

However, there's no way of knowing what challenges might come in the future....

Abilities/Special Powers:

Hoo, boy, this is a doozy. The problem with Elsa's powers in the film as related to RP is that they are both elemental and very ill-defined. The film depicts what she can do, and it depicts several external effects on her powers, but it doesn't depict any limits for them at all: she never reaches a point where she's tapped out in terms of needing a supply of magical energy to use her powers, or where they've gotten as strong as they possibly can and she can't go any further. Also, the story takes place over only a few days, and it depicts a period where her powers are running rampant.

As such, while I do think a "colder than you like it in Wonderland" player plot might eventually be fun in this game, I'm cool with any limits that mods want to set on her abilities, or with a request for me to come up with limits myself (I have a list!), as long as she can still defend herself and do a few fun things.

Elsa can:

- Freeze the surface of a body of water by stomping her foot, creating a frozen path that allows her to walk on the surface and that can quickly expand to cover the entire body. Shallow, confined, artificial bodies like fountains and pools may freeze solid, but natural flowing bodies like fjords or seas will only develop a solid ice surface a foot or two thick.
- Create an icy surface where there's no water to freeze. There is no indication that Elsa is only freezing atmospheric moisture; rather, it's suggested that the ice more or less comes from nowhere. There's far too much of it for her to merely be drawing and freezing water from the air. She can do this with hand gestures or with a stomp of her foot.
- Direct the icy surfaces that she's created so that they form stable structures. Elsa builds a multistorey hexagonal castle for herself in the film, and she's able to do it almost as quickly as she can imagine it.
- Create snow with gestures.
- Control air currents in a way that allows her to direct and move snow and ice. She can lose control of this at times of the highest emotional turmoil.
- Create snowmen that are imbued with aspects of her personality. She can only partly control this. Once created, they have an independent existence.
- Create fabric and possibly small amounts of metal: she's shown creating gold and white ice skates for Anna, and a silky, glittering gown with a long, sheer cape, shoes, and small crystals for her hair (as well as a new hairstyle) for herself. These items appear to be heat-resistant and made of real substances, so it seems to be a second form of "creation magic" rather than "items made of ice and snow." However, it's suggested that her creations will have dominant "ice" colors like pale blue or white. It also seems possible that she has to transform another item to do this, but that seems questionable, given that the items she creates involve substances that were not part of the items that disappear when she creates them.
- Shoot "ice magic" into the head or heart. Head shots seem to be curable if memories are manipulated. Heart shots are only curable with "an act of true love"; otherwise, the victim will eventually turn into a rock-hard ice statue. Any ice magic shots to the body cause the victim's hair to progressively turn white. Elsa has never done this voluntarily.
- Elsa is extremely cold-tolerant. The extent isn't explored in the movie, but she's comfortable in situations where a normal person would have died of hypothermia.
- There's no indication that her ice powers come with a corresponding elemental weakness: in other words, while heat can melt her ice the way it normally would, it doesn't seem that Elsa herself has any kind of abnormal intolerance to heat.
- To what extent she can create water is also not well-defined--that is, what would happen if she created ice chips for someone to suck on, or if her ice powers could be used to help circumvent a shortage of potable water. The fact that she has to "gather" all the snow and ice from Arendelle, send them it into the air, and "explode" it suggests that it would melt into water, but it's hard to say because the result of her action isn't rain.
- Weirdly, she doesn't seem to need food or water while she's fully using her magic (living in her ice castle): it's like she becomes a fully magical creature. This may just be an effect of the film's running time.

Snow and ice that Elsa creates does not form instantly; instead, it "branches and plates" (if it's more controlled and structured), or seems to be in motion as it forms, like waves of ice (if it's a fast or defensive action). Think of it as something that "grows" over a second or two, rather than as something that just materializes at full size. (This does not apply to the "magical darts" that injure Anna both in childhood and when she visits Elsa's palace.)

Most of these things form from Elsa's "signature snowflake," which can be seen in the movie's logo, every time she stomps her foot to create ice, in the motifs around her palace and on her sheer blue cape, and all over Anna as she begins to freeze over at the climax of the movie.

The creation of snow and ice is not always under Elsa's conscious control, specifically when it's a response to a physical threat. Her instincts throw up small ice walls to block arrows. Also, when she's upset, the area around her tends to crisp over with frost. As her emotions run out of control, the weather becomes increasingly bad: the climax of Frozen takes place in a blizzard, where a whirl of clouds rotate high above Elsa's head and the thick, stable ice in the bay begins to break up.

Her control over all of these things should be better than it is in most of the film (comparable to her control of it in her first scene and in the last scene in the castle courtyard), but it might backslide a little if something bad happens to Anna.

NEW SAMPLES:

Third-Person Sample:

Elsa had never been able to have a pet as a child. The incident with Anna when she was eight had sealed it.

Although she might just have been allowed a cat or a dog, and she'd never had problems with horses, she would have refused to have a pet in her rooms on the grounds that she might hurt whatever unfortunate animal was given to her. Eventually, she'd tried to do without things to hug or love at all, wrapping her arms around herself instead of a doll or a pillow. She needed to be in the habit of calming herself: she couldn't rely on pieces of fabric and stuffing.

Things have changed since then.

Now, she sits in her dainty blue satin room in Wonderland, frowning dubiously at a small grey-and-white dog that seems to have decided that it's going to belong to her.

Its appearance had coincided with the complete disappearance of her powers — something that was initially terrifying and alien, because it left her feeling defenseless and because it robbed her of a part of herself that she cherished. But the situation had also been a little bit enjoyable. It had given her the opportunity to experience, if only for a few days, what it felt like to be normal. Her fear meant nothing, because there would be no tangible expression of it. She didn't have to worry that anyone else might accidentally wind up in the line of fire.

The puppy had trailed after her everywhere, and she had eventually allowed it to hop into her lap, where she had tentatively stroked its head and smiled at it. It was adorable, with its soft fur, and it made her feel less lonely, and it would probably be gone soon, anyway. She'd let it sleep in her room after it had scratched at the closed door for almost an hour. It had whined to be lifted onto the bed, and once it was there, it had curled up near her feet.

The trouble now is that it didn't go away when her powers returned, and she can't bring herself to be cruel to it so that it will leave her alone. What would happen to it then? Someone else would probably take it on, but the little dog would still be sad for a while. If someone didn't take it on, then it might starve to death. That would be absolutely unacceptable.

In this way, she's started to understand that, however wary she might be, she now has a pet dog.

What do you do when you receive the gift of a dog? She got a leash from the closet in her room, and it's beautiful: fine braided white leather with intricate metal fastenings. There's a collar to match. If something happens in the future that makes it so that she needs to keep the dog away from her for a while for its safety, she can use the leash to tether it, then ask someone else, maybe Once-ler, to look after it. She's fairly certain that there's no kennel-master in Wonderland who will train the puppy for her, but she suspects there will be books on the subject in the library if she's willing to look for them hard enough. She takes it for walks on the lawn and uses the weird little sacks that she found with the leash to dispose of the results (this task is disgusting, but polite, she thinks). It's tempting to freeze them before picking them up, but she's not sure yet that that's a good idea.

What remains is to give her new dog a name. What did they call dogs at home? She's seen fewer of them than most people would expect, and she ponders the topic, continuing to frown, until finally giving up with a shrug and a sigh. The name that comes to mind is almost the least imaginative one possible, because it's so common (the name of every dog in every book), but on the other hand, it reminds her of home.

"Trigg. I'll call you Trigg." She says this decisively, looking into the dog's eyes; Trigg bows his head to avoid her gaze. It's the name she might have chosen if she could have had a puppy when she was eight. "It means that you're a trustworthy friend... well, I'm not sure about that. You did come from Wonderland. But on the other hand, you seem to like me. Since you want to be my friend, I'll be your friend, too." She smiles, now that it's decided, and scratches Trigg behind his soft ear. Trigg responds by turning his head and licking her hand.

The puppy will be safest if she loves him. That isn't hard for her. A space for Trigg in her heart has been developing for days as he's pawed insistently at the door, so she decides to let him in.

First-Person Sample:

[VIDEO: It's Elsa, but not the Elsa anyone is used to.

The thing onscreen looks as if a talented sculptor has carved Elsa out of blue ice -- but the translucent statue can move and talk. Decorative snowflake designs cover its surface. Its arms are wrapped around its torso. When it opens its mouth, the regular cavity you'd see on almost any human being isn't there, just a smooth and shallow concave surface that functions as an artistic replacement for anatomy.

Elsa speaks urgently, sounding miserable, like she's about to cry.]

I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. A lot of you are in this state, and I think it's my fault. Believe me, I never would have let this happen if I'd had any idea it was coming, or of how I could stop it.

I know you must be freezing, but if you've turned to ice, please, please stay away from the fire... you could melt. Everything will be back to normal in a few days, we just have to wait it out.

[Her gaze drops to the floor. An eager little snowman is pressed against her ankles, but that can't be seen on the video. The expression on her blue face is profoundly unhappy.]

At least, I hope it will.

[What if they aren't freezing? She isn't sure, but she can't take the risk; she makes the emergency warning before taking the time to find out, because she knows that Anna had been very cold before her transformation and had tried to warm herself near the fire. Elsa herself has never been cold, not even for a second -- she doesn't know what it feels like, she only knows that it's supposed to be very unpleasant, eventually painful.

What has happened makes her want to throw up. She feels the nausea, but that's as far as it goes -- she's nothing but solid ice with roiling emotions attached to it. No hunger, no heartbeat, no ability to produce real tears... only the frozen surface representation of the self that she usually presents to Wonderland, which can currently see right through her.]


OLD SAMPLES:

Third-Person Sample:

Elsa is furious tonight. Nobody has ever been able to leave? Nobody with her powers has ever been held in Wonderland, except the time she's heard of herself being there, the time of which she has no memory. She doesn't know what she might have tried during that lost previous visit. Maybe she'll keep having the same ideas, trying the same things, never knowing that she'd already learned it was futile. On the other hand, she might discover the right method this time. Maybe that was how she'd been able to get out before.

Tonight's idea is to go to the beach, set out across the water, and try to find out what's down the shore or on the other side. Eventually, there has to be something, and what will it be? A wilderness, a castle, a town, a little village? When she finds it, she can return for Anna, and they can leave together. It's a risk, but she knows she can survive it in one way or another, so why not try it? She assumes that she can go farther this way than anyone else has ever been able to.

The water under her feet cooperates, making a path for her that's as good as pavement. As she goes, she begins to fume about her situation.

What right do these queens, either of them, have to keep her or Anna prisoner, or involve them in their fight? Elsa is a queen too. She has responsibilities she can't fulfill because of this abduction.

She's relatively confident that she can now hold her own in conflict with other heads of state, but she would prefer not to be in conflict with them at all. She could rightfully have executed Hans of the Southern Isles for his attempt to steal her throne, but she hadn't; sending him home to whatever justice his older brothers saw fit had seemed like the most politic choice, and also the one that sat best with her. She couldn't think of a time when she'd ever want to execute anyone, even if a day might come when she would be called on to do it -- just thinking about it made her wince a little. Nor could she think of a reason to hold innocent people prisoner, especially fellow royalty. Maybe if they hurt someone she cared about, but maybe not even then.

She doesn't want revenge... what would that make her?... but she does want freedom and safety.

The Queen of Hearts isn't a good queen, for so many reasons. She doesn't wield her powers responsibly, or accept a duty to abdicate if she can't.

Elsa's thoughts continue in this vein as she stalks across the ocean's calm, blue surface, freezing it as she goes. She can perform the trick without concentrating too hard, now that she's on the move. Her footing never slips.

She's been walking for a long time when she realizes that she's still in the middle of the water, no change in the horizon. She walks more, but not with the same agitation, the determination to do something to change her situation and get herself and her sister to safety. Hours have passed. There's nothing down the shore in either direction, nothing across the seas. Nothing. She remembers how her parents drowned, now, and there's a flutter of nervousness in her stomach, but she keeps going.

Finally, a shore creeps up on the horizon. A dock. Palm trees. Boats.

She's completely sure that she had been heading away from Wonderland, but she's back where she started. The ice that she'd left behind her, spreading outward from the beach, is gone. It shouldn't have melted, but it must have melted hours ago. Nothing should be this way. It seems impossible.

Her heart sinks, and her steps slow as she approaches the shore, the flowing water freezing again. This had seemed like her best chance.

When she reaches land, she turns around, focuses, tries to be calm, and attempts to remove the ice that had been left in her wake. It's harder than it should be.

Then she thinks of why she'd taken her long walk to begin with, and that makes it work.

[Note: This might not be what would actually happen if she tried to freeze the ocean to escape! Elsa could presumably keep walking and freezing the ocean for days without exhausting herself: it doesn't seem like she'd ever get dragged under by the current and wake up in the pool. "The ocean doesn't freeze for her" or "it doesn't stay frozen too far behind her and she gets stranded" or "she eventually has to give up due to exhaustion and turn around and take the entire trip back on foot, with naps on the ice" are other possible ways this scenario could go down, but that's up to the mods... I just used artistic license for this scenario.]

First-Person Sample:

Has anyone seen my sister? She told me she was going to try to skate down the stairs, and that was the last I saw of her. I haven't had any luck finding her since then.

Here's the thing: Anna likes to try new things, but she can't skate on her own. Normally, she wouldn't even make the attempt, so I think this place might have given her the idea, and I'm afraid she might get hurt. Or worse.

Please stop her if you come across her before I do! You can tell her it was my fault, and I'll explain it to her later. She'll understand.

[There's a moment of hesitation, and then Elsa admits, with a hint of reluctance and uncertainty, and affectionate helplessness,]

-- You might not be able to stop her.


13 April 2014 | 8 August 2014