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coldhardyOUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Elizabeth
Are you 16 or older: Yes!
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
detectivefiction, or pm to ryuuzaki
Current Characters: L (ryuuzaki)
Tag: elsa (or whatever the previous elsa's tag was -- if it was elsa of arendelle, that's fine too!)
IN CHARACTER
Name: Elsa of Arendelle
Canon: Frozen (also, for more background, the tie-in storybook A Sister More Like Me, and for projection of future development, the short film Frozen Fever)
Canon Point: After end of film.
Age: 21
History: Elsa at the Disney Wikia
Personality:
All of Frozen, not just the coronation scene, is the story of Elsa's "coming of age."
She begins as an incredibly insecure and frightened young woman who craves intimacy but feels too tainted to have close, affectionate relationships with other people. She is a public figure, but only reluctantly and out of a sense of duty.
Eventually, all her worst-case scenarios come to pass... and are reversed, so that everything is fine again. She learns to throw off learned shame, to like and trust herself, and to trust the people around her to love her for who she is.
Much of the central conflict comes from the fact that Elsa has been forced to repress her true abilities and therefore her true personality, but the themes of familial love and accepting both oneself and others are hammered home over and over throughout the movie, sometimes in scenes that are only tangentially related to Elsa herself. For example, the trolls sing a song called "Fixer-Upper" to Kristoff and Anna, and while it appears on the surface to be encouraging them towards a romantic relationship, it contains 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.
As a queen, Elsa's public personality would most likely always have been regal, reserved, dignified, and practical. However, she also displays an aloofness (mistaken for coldness and even unkindness) which would not be a significant factor if she were comfortable in her own skin and happy with her life. It's actually shyness, and it's a manifestation of intense anxiety and shame, and the sadness that comes from fifteen years of feeling that way with no hope for change in the future.
Elsa cares about others in a broad, abstracted way. She is also capable of deep love, but she expresses that love through learned avoidance, and believes that she's unloveable. She has not experienced physical affection ("warm hugs") since childhood. The loss of her parents meant, to her, the loss of the only people who knew what she was capable of and loved her anyway. Anna is initially ignorant of Elsa's powers, so she can't understand why Elsa seems to reject her, nor does she grasp that it's not truly a rejection.
It's very important to note that Elsa never needed to be taught to repress her powers to begin with. Anna was not injured because Elsa couldn't control her powers; Elsa's control of them was excellent. Anna was injured because Elsa slipped and fell and Anna was too excitable to pay attention. Her parents interpreted Pabbie's vague, well-intended prophecy in the best way they could, trying to protect both of their daughters, but it's obvious by the end of the film that encouraging Elsa to learn finer control of her abilities would have been better than treating them like a leak that needed to be completely blocked.
Privately, the true Elsa is still elegant, but she's also gentle, playful, kind-hearted, and proud of what makes her unique. She's a beautiful person, inside and out, who's capable of creating beautiful things. These aspects, hidden for most of her life, are reconciled with her public persona by the end of the film. She learns that in spite of her shame and the "eternal winter" incident, people love and accept her, and her shyness vanishes.
Sisterhood
Through everything that happens, from childhood on, Elsa adores Anna, even when she also finds her behavior profoundly frustrating. Shutting herself away from Anna wasn't easy for Elsa, whose teen years were lonely, especially after their parents died. It was done for Anna's protection.
Spending time with Anna seems to be what she looked forward to most at the coronation party. While Elsa is polite to the guests, charming in her diffident way, it comes off as professionalism. She shows little active interest in talking to anyone but Anna, insisting that Anna be placed on the dais next to her, and initiating friendly conversation.
Later, it's still all about Anna when it's not about Arendelle. She begs Anna to leave her ice palace, not wanting her to be hurt, but Anna is hurt anyway when she doesn't listen (a repetition of past events, with much higher stakes). When Anna turns to ice after shielding Elsa, Elsa collapses in devastation, embracing her younger sister. And when Elsa understands that Anna's sacrifice was the required "act of true love," she's touched in a way that enables her to regain control of her powers... the control that she'd had when they were close.
Learning Confidence
In spite of her outward composure, her beauty, her reserve, and her regal poise, Elsa lacks confidence in herself and trust in others. Most of the film depicts her developing it.
Some confidence in herself comes when she feels that she's able to fully use her powers without worrying about being judged or hurting anyone, but at that point, she still doesn't trust herself, because she doesn't understand how to restrain her abilities when she's upset, or how to reverse their effects. Her worst fear is still that she will fatally injure someone in some way in an unguarded moment; the nightmare scenario is that that person will be Anna.
Confidence in others starts when a combination of a lack of control of her emotions and bad circumstances causes Elsa to come close to losing her sister. Anna knows 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 forces Elsa to understand that Anna's love and support is unconditional. The worst thing happened, but it didn't make Anna love her any less.
Elsa learns to trust both herself and her sister. At the end, she acts with self-assurance and a much greater degree of openness, having Hans sent back to his brothers as a prisoner, severing trade ties with Weselton, and rewarding Kristoff for his help, then continuing to leave the castle gates open for the happier life that she's craved.
Duty
Elsa begins as a dutiful princess, trying her best to do what she believes she's supposed to do even though it comes at great personal cost, but she doesn't know how to fulfill that duty without fear, and she therefore feels that she's been forced into an impossible role. She is a public figure who's convinced that she needs the deepest privacy, due to her fear of hurting others with her powers and her fear of being exposed. If she's exposed, she expects to be rejected at best, murdered at worst. While this is resolved by the end of the story, it's still significant in terms of her development.
In "Let It Go", Elsa decides to abandon her duties both for pleasure and because she feels that it's best for everyone if she's on her own. While it's her big character song, it's not the final statement on her personality or growth, nor is the attitude she expresses in the song particularly mature: it partly comes from feeling like she's out of options. She has a basis for believing she no longer has any other choice and is making the best of it, but she's still running away instead of confronting her problems.
At that time, Elsa wasn't sure anymore about what "duty" meant. She'd gone from thinking it was her duty to be a perfect, controlled, emotionally even princess, then queen, to thinking that self-imposed exile was both her duty and a good solution to her problems. The one point in the past at which she'd seriously shirked her duty -- when she skipped her parents' memorial service -- was also attributable to her understanding that her emotions were too affected to allow her to suppress her powers.
The impulse to isolate herself when she feels crushed, and when she can't maintain her composure to the degree that she wants to, is tied into her strong sense of duty, but also trumps it. Her self-imposed exile might seem like the best thing for everyone, but it's also a rationalizaion, a way of metaphorically "hiding away in her room." She didn't even return from the mountain to the castle voluntarily.
It's suggested at the end of the movie that she's learned to change this behavioral pattern, that she's found a balance and can fulfill all her duties in an active way rather than just by giving up, but the audience has no way of knowing whether or not it will be tested in the future.
The Snowmen
A discussion of Elsa's personality would be incomplete without discussing the snowmen she creates, each of whom are imbued with important aspects of it.
While Olaf definitely has a separate existence, to the point of being an appable character in some games, it's worth noting that Elsa is Olaf: that is, she created him, and there's nothing in him that isn't in her. His yearning for "summer" is a yearning for "warmth" (greater emotional closeness with others, especially Anna), and everything about him is a reminder of the happier moments of Elsa's childhood. It's significant that he's the one to rescue Anna from the cold room that Hans locks her in.
At one point, he states 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.
(Note: this isn't my observation. It's an intentional metaphor that people involved in the production of Frozen have mentioned in several places.)
Marshmallow, the guardian snowman, is large, imposing, and inarticulate. He behaves like a bouncer at Elsa's ice castle; his few lines are things like "Go away," and he roars when he's angry. He represents not only Elsa's fear and insecurity, but how predominant, simple, and primal they are at the point in the film when she creates him.
Contracts:
Elsa is motivated to return to her kingdom for several reasons. One is a sense of responsibility for it -- and a new belief that she may be able to fulfill those responsibilities without being the target of mass hysteria due to her powers. Without her, Arendelle is vulnerable to people like Hans and, to a lesser degree, the Duke of Weselton. Obviously, this sense of responsibility did not motivate her through the entire film, but I think it would at her pull point, especially when her other choice is to be abandoned on a strange planet.
More importantly, she is motivated to get back to her sister to continue to strengthen their personal ties.
Abilities/Skills:
The "rules" of Elsa's magic (and therefore the limits of her powers) are a little bit difficult to define, largely because the majority of Frozen is set over the course of a few days, and because a major point of the plot is that Elsa is running rampant.
However, she's unlikely to do anything game-breaking, both because her personal journey in her canon is related to not doing that, and because I'm conscious of power limits as a player.
She 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 and ice 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 a multitude of small, mischievous snowmen called "snowgies" if she catches a cold and starts sneezing. This is involuntary.
- 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.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Strengths include not only her powers, but also the greater part of her personality. Elsa is smart and pragmatic, and when she's not falling apart due to her anxiety and insecurity, she's even-tempered and kind. A Sister More Like Me shows her to be studious and educated, especially with regard to geometry, and both Frozen Fever and deleted scenes from the film itself show that she's a well-liked figure in the community around the castle. Diplomacy seems to be another of her skills, when she's in full command of herself, and seems related to her pragmatism.
Weaknesses include her tendencies towards insecurity, anxiety, and depression and related tendency to isolate herself as a coping mechanism, and the possibility that she could lose control over her powers again if pressed, even if the loss of control isn't as complete as it is in the film. She's also not so even-tempered that her love for her sister couldn't be used against her in some way: it's feasible that someone might find a way to exploit Elsa's powers for bad purposes if Anna were around. (Blackmail with threats against Anna, that kind of thing.)
Elsa can be a powerful fighter when she wants to be. However, her refusal to intentionally injure or kill others in most situations could be a strength or a weakness, depending on the specifics of the scenario.
Items:
Coronation outfit, including cloak, gloves, and small tiara/"Snow Queen" outfit
(Note: these are the same outfit: Elsa can apparently make the "Snow Queen" outfit out of whatever she wants, or probably out of thin air. The only parts of the Coronation outfit that aren't part of the Snow Queen outfit as seen in the film are the gloves and the tiara.)
Small, round, decoratively painted trinket box (contains a few inexpensive personal jewelry items -- brooches, etc. -- and a couple of hair ribbons)
Candlestick
A carrot
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
Hello, everyone. You've all been so kind and helpful, and I appreciate that, but I need your help again.
[She picks one thing up in each hand, clamping them firmly between her pale, delicate fingers and holding them up beside her face so everyone else can see them. To Elsa, they don't mean much... oh, sure, they sort of resemble something she's seen before, but she hasn't seen these specific things. The sidelong look she gives them is half-puzzled, half-amused.
They're troll dolls. One has a shock of pink hair; the other's is bright royal blue.]
Have any of you ever seen something like this before? I'm trying to figure out why they were sent to me. They came through the Ingress.
They're kind of cute, aren't they?
Oh, and, ah, even if you can't tell me anything about these... I know some new people have been arriving. I'm always watching for my sister: she's about my height. Her name is Anna and her hair is red. If you see her, please let her know that I'm here and I'm looking for her.
[Her half-smile widens into a real one, which is sweet and a little bit shy.]
Thank you.
Prose/Action Sample:
Elsa stands at the edge of the swimming pool, ready to walk on water.
So many other people here admit to having powers that she's satisfied that it's relatively safe to openly use her own. The events of the previous month have even convinced her that what she can do, what flows in her, can be useful. Her abilities are interesting, and she's discovered that they're fun for her, and she knows from painful experience that they can be destructive, but until she'd stopped the beast from attacking the child, she'd never known them to be life-saving. She liked the feeling.
Her plan today is only to make a place to skate and to invite people to join her so that she can get to know them a little better. Openness had been her new policy before she had been brought here, hadn't it? She has no responsibility now other than what she elects to take on, and no thoughts of ruling everyone, but on this ship or back at home, she doesn't want things to be like they were before. Being too lonely makes that seem like a valid concern.
As she steps onto the water, the ice forms beneath her. She walks to the center, then stands there, concentrating, until she's sure it's thick. Then she walks around again, testing the surface for stability. It's all as it should be.
She hopes that it will be fun for everyone... everyone who accepts her invitation, anyway... but it has a dual purpose, in that it will remind her of home. Arendelle seems impossibly distant now, and her situation impossibly magical. There was a time when she would have run this far away if she could have, racing like a frightened white hare past the northern lights and into the stars, but that time is over.
Now, she only misses it.
[Note: The network sample is original and the prose sample is reused!]
Are you 16 or older: Yes!
Contact:
ryuuzakiCurrent Characters: L (
ryuuzaki)Tag: elsa (or whatever the previous elsa's tag was -- if it was elsa of arendelle, that's fine too!)
IN CHARACTER
Name: Elsa of Arendelle
Canon: Frozen (also, for more background, the tie-in storybook A Sister More Like Me, and for projection of future development, the short film Frozen Fever)
Canon Point: After end of film.
Age: 21
History: Elsa at the Disney Wikia
Personality:
All of Frozen, not just the coronation scene, is the story of Elsa's "coming of age."
She begins as an incredibly insecure and frightened young woman who craves intimacy but feels too tainted to have close, affectionate relationships with other people. She is a public figure, but only reluctantly and out of a sense of duty.
Eventually, all her worst-case scenarios come to pass... and are reversed, so that everything is fine again. She learns to throw off learned shame, to like and trust herself, and to trust the people around her to love her for who she is.
Much of the central conflict comes from the fact that Elsa has been forced to repress her true abilities and therefore her true personality, but the themes of familial love and accepting both oneself and others are hammered home over and over throughout the movie, sometimes in scenes that are only tangentially related to Elsa herself. For example, the trolls sing a song called "Fixer-Upper" to Kristoff and Anna, and while it appears on the surface to be encouraging them towards a romantic relationship, it contains 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.
As a queen, Elsa's public personality would most likely always have been regal, reserved, dignified, and practical. However, she also displays an aloofness (mistaken for coldness and even unkindness) which would not be a significant factor if she were comfortable in her own skin and happy with her life. It's actually shyness, and it's a manifestation of intense anxiety and shame, and the sadness that comes from fifteen years of feeling that way with no hope for change in the future.
Elsa cares about others in a broad, abstracted way. She is also capable of deep love, but she expresses that love through learned avoidance, and believes that she's unloveable. She has not experienced physical affection ("warm hugs") since childhood. The loss of her parents meant, to her, the loss of the only people who knew what she was capable of and loved her anyway. Anna is initially ignorant of Elsa's powers, so she can't understand why Elsa seems to reject her, nor does she grasp that it's not truly a rejection.
It's very important to note that Elsa never needed to be taught to repress her powers to begin with. Anna was not injured because Elsa couldn't control her powers; Elsa's control of them was excellent. Anna was injured because Elsa slipped and fell and Anna was too excitable to pay attention. Her parents interpreted Pabbie's vague, well-intended prophecy in the best way they could, trying to protect both of their daughters, but it's obvious by the end of the film that encouraging Elsa to learn finer control of her abilities would have been better than treating them like a leak that needed to be completely blocked.
Privately, the true Elsa is still elegant, but she's also gentle, playful, kind-hearted, and proud of what makes her unique. She's a beautiful person, inside and out, who's capable of creating beautiful things. These aspects, hidden for most of her life, are reconciled with her public persona by the end of the film. She learns that in spite of her shame and the "eternal winter" incident, people love and accept her, and her shyness vanishes.
Sisterhood
Through everything that happens, from childhood on, Elsa adores Anna, even when she also finds her behavior profoundly frustrating. Shutting herself away from Anna wasn't easy for Elsa, whose teen years were lonely, especially after their parents died. It was done for Anna's protection.
Spending time with Anna seems to be what she looked forward to most at the coronation party. While Elsa is polite to the guests, charming in her diffident way, it comes off as professionalism. She shows little active interest in talking to anyone but Anna, insisting that Anna be placed on the dais next to her, and initiating friendly conversation.
Later, it's still all about Anna when it's not about Arendelle. She begs Anna to leave her ice palace, not wanting her to be hurt, but Anna is hurt anyway when she doesn't listen (a repetition of past events, with much higher stakes). When Anna turns to ice after shielding Elsa, Elsa collapses in devastation, embracing her younger sister. And when Elsa understands that Anna's sacrifice was the required "act of true love," she's touched in a way that enables her to regain control of her powers... the control that she'd had when they were close.
Learning Confidence
In spite of her outward composure, her beauty, her reserve, and her regal poise, Elsa lacks confidence in herself and trust in others. Most of the film depicts her developing it.
Some confidence in herself comes when she feels that she's able to fully use her powers without worrying about being judged or hurting anyone, but at that point, she still doesn't trust herself, because she doesn't understand how to restrain her abilities when she's upset, or how to reverse their effects. Her worst fear is still that she will fatally injure someone in some way in an unguarded moment; the nightmare scenario is that that person will be Anna.
Confidence in others starts when a combination of a lack of control of her emotions and bad circumstances causes Elsa to come close to losing her sister. Anna knows 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 forces Elsa to understand that Anna's love and support is unconditional. The worst thing happened, but it didn't make Anna love her any less.
Elsa learns to trust both herself and her sister. At the end, she acts with self-assurance and a much greater degree of openness, having Hans sent back to his brothers as a prisoner, severing trade ties with Weselton, and rewarding Kristoff for his help, then continuing to leave the castle gates open for the happier life that she's craved.
Duty
Elsa begins as a dutiful princess, trying her best to do what she believes she's supposed to do even though it comes at great personal cost, but she doesn't know how to fulfill that duty without fear, and she therefore feels that she's been forced into an impossible role. She is a public figure who's convinced that she needs the deepest privacy, due to her fear of hurting others with her powers and her fear of being exposed. If she's exposed, she expects to be rejected at best, murdered at worst. While this is resolved by the end of the story, it's still significant in terms of her development.
In "Let It Go", Elsa decides to abandon her duties both for pleasure and because she feels that it's best for everyone if she's on her own. While it's her big character song, it's not the final statement on her personality or growth, nor is the attitude she expresses in the song particularly mature: it partly comes from feeling like she's out of options. She has a basis for believing she no longer has any other choice and is making the best of it, but she's still running away instead of confronting her problems.
At that time, Elsa wasn't sure anymore about what "duty" meant. She'd gone from thinking it was her duty to be a perfect, controlled, emotionally even princess, then queen, to thinking that self-imposed exile was both her duty and a good solution to her problems. The one point in the past at which she'd seriously shirked her duty -- when she skipped her parents' memorial service -- was also attributable to her understanding that her emotions were too affected to allow her to suppress her powers.
The impulse to isolate herself when she feels crushed, and when she can't maintain her composure to the degree that she wants to, is tied into her strong sense of duty, but also trumps it. Her self-imposed exile might seem like the best thing for everyone, but it's also a rationalizaion, a way of metaphorically "hiding away in her room." She didn't even return from the mountain to the castle voluntarily.
It's suggested at the end of the movie that she's learned to change this behavioral pattern, that she's found a balance and can fulfill all her duties in an active way rather than just by giving up, but the audience has no way of knowing whether or not it will be tested in the future.
The Snowmen
A discussion of Elsa's personality would be incomplete without discussing the snowmen she creates, each of whom are imbued with important aspects of it.
While Olaf definitely has a separate existence, to the point of being an appable character in some games, it's worth noting that Elsa is Olaf: that is, she created him, and there's nothing in him that isn't in her. His yearning for "summer" is a yearning for "warmth" (greater emotional closeness with others, especially Anna), and everything about him is a reminder of the happier moments of Elsa's childhood. It's significant that he's the one to rescue Anna from the cold room that Hans locks her in.
At one point, he states 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.
(Note: this isn't my observation. It's an intentional metaphor that people involved in the production of Frozen have mentioned in several places.)
Marshmallow, the guardian snowman, is large, imposing, and inarticulate. He behaves like a bouncer at Elsa's ice castle; his few lines are things like "Go away," and he roars when he's angry. He represents not only Elsa's fear and insecurity, but how predominant, simple, and primal they are at the point in the film when she creates him.
Contracts:
Elsa is motivated to return to her kingdom for several reasons. One is a sense of responsibility for it -- and a new belief that she may be able to fulfill those responsibilities without being the target of mass hysteria due to her powers. Without her, Arendelle is vulnerable to people like Hans and, to a lesser degree, the Duke of Weselton. Obviously, this sense of responsibility did not motivate her through the entire film, but I think it would at her pull point, especially when her other choice is to be abandoned on a strange planet.
More importantly, she is motivated to get back to her sister to continue to strengthen their personal ties.
Abilities/Skills:
The "rules" of Elsa's magic (and therefore the limits of her powers) are a little bit difficult to define, largely because the majority of Frozen is set over the course of a few days, and because a major point of the plot is that Elsa is running rampant.
However, she's unlikely to do anything game-breaking, both because her personal journey in her canon is related to not doing that, and because I'm conscious of power limits as a player.
She 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 and ice 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 a multitude of small, mischievous snowmen called "snowgies" if she catches a cold and starts sneezing. This is involuntary.
- 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.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Strengths include not only her powers, but also the greater part of her personality. Elsa is smart and pragmatic, and when she's not falling apart due to her anxiety and insecurity, she's even-tempered and kind. A Sister More Like Me shows her to be studious and educated, especially with regard to geometry, and both Frozen Fever and deleted scenes from the film itself show that she's a well-liked figure in the community around the castle. Diplomacy seems to be another of her skills, when she's in full command of herself, and seems related to her pragmatism.
Weaknesses include her tendencies towards insecurity, anxiety, and depression and related tendency to isolate herself as a coping mechanism, and the possibility that she could lose control over her powers again if pressed, even if the loss of control isn't as complete as it is in the film. She's also not so even-tempered that her love for her sister couldn't be used against her in some way: it's feasible that someone might find a way to exploit Elsa's powers for bad purposes if Anna were around. (Blackmail with threats against Anna, that kind of thing.)
Elsa can be a powerful fighter when she wants to be. However, her refusal to intentionally injure or kill others in most situations could be a strength or a weakness, depending on the specifics of the scenario.
Items:
Coronation outfit, including cloak, gloves, and small tiara/"Snow Queen" outfit
(Note: these are the same outfit: Elsa can apparently make the "Snow Queen" outfit out of whatever she wants, or probably out of thin air. The only parts of the Coronation outfit that aren't part of the Snow Queen outfit as seen in the film are the gloves and the tiara.)
Small, round, decoratively painted trinket box (contains a few inexpensive personal jewelry items -- brooches, etc. -- and a couple of hair ribbons)
Candlestick
A carrot
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
Hello, everyone. You've all been so kind and helpful, and I appreciate that, but I need your help again.
[She picks one thing up in each hand, clamping them firmly between her pale, delicate fingers and holding them up beside her face so everyone else can see them. To Elsa, they don't mean much... oh, sure, they sort of resemble something she's seen before, but she hasn't seen these specific things. The sidelong look she gives them is half-puzzled, half-amused.
They're troll dolls. One has a shock of pink hair; the other's is bright royal blue.]
Have any of you ever seen something like this before? I'm trying to figure out why they were sent to me. They came through the Ingress.
They're kind of cute, aren't they?
Oh, and, ah, even if you can't tell me anything about these... I know some new people have been arriving. I'm always watching for my sister: she's about my height. Her name is Anna and her hair is red. If you see her, please let her know that I'm here and I'm looking for her.
[Her half-smile widens into a real one, which is sweet and a little bit shy.]
Thank you.
Prose/Action Sample:
Elsa stands at the edge of the swimming pool, ready to walk on water.
So many other people here admit to having powers that she's satisfied that it's relatively safe to openly use her own. The events of the previous month have even convinced her that what she can do, what flows in her, can be useful. Her abilities are interesting, and she's discovered that they're fun for her, and she knows from painful experience that they can be destructive, but until she'd stopped the beast from attacking the child, she'd never known them to be life-saving. She liked the feeling.
Her plan today is only to make a place to skate and to invite people to join her so that she can get to know them a little better. Openness had been her new policy before she had been brought here, hadn't it? She has no responsibility now other than what she elects to take on, and no thoughts of ruling everyone, but on this ship or back at home, she doesn't want things to be like they were before. Being too lonely makes that seem like a valid concern.
As she steps onto the water, the ice forms beneath her. She walks to the center, then stands there, concentrating, until she's sure it's thick. Then she walks around again, testing the surface for stability. It's all as it should be.
She hopes that it will be fun for everyone... everyone who accepts her invitation, anyway... but it has a dual purpose, in that it will remind her of home. Arendelle seems impossibly distant now, and her situation impossibly magical. There was a time when she would have run this far away if she could have, racing like a frightened white hare past the northern lights and into the stars, but that time is over.
Now, she only misses it.
[Note: The network sample is original and the prose sample is reused!]
