#⌈ BORN OF COLD AND WINTER AIR ⌋ ( elsa agnarrsdotter. )

[timeshuffles]

the cold never bothered me anyway

( outfit began as a mashup of denver & broadway monster and then mutated halfway through into a more period-realistic take on the costume change in the middle of let it go.

& listen.     elsa growing locs like her dad? spectacular. )

as an aside here. i’ve never liked the ice dress.   ( the broadway design is stunning and an awe inspiring work of craftsmanship, but i still don’t care for the dress as it relates to elsa herself. )   it’s so...

hm.

when she changes her dress during let it go, elsa symbolically casts off the frightening responsibilities and difficult expectations imposed on her as queen of arendelle, and embraces the lonely freedom of magic and self expression instead. but... is dressing her in a sleek, tight-fitting, fashionably contemporary ice gown truly the best way to visually represent this internal shift? 

i mean. look at this dress. 

nothing about this dress is designed for comfort or freedom of movement. elsa does plenty of moving in this dress in the film, but that’s animation — the broadway dress has the exact same cut, and the only thing caissie does in it is walk up and down the stage during let it go. because broadway is real, and you can’t animate your way out of restrictive clothing.

for literally everything else? they have her in pants.  ( or a lighter, softer wrap dress with a much looser skirt, back in denver. )

like, hell, even the way elsa MOVES in this gif — that is not. how people walk. disney has her strutting like she’s on a goddamn runway bc this is a shot about how good elsa looks. & like —

i feel like prioritizing sex appeal  ( they. even. fucking. animated. her. boobs. jiggling. )  over character and narrative really undercuts the symbolism of the costume change... 

who is elsa performing for, here? she’s completely alone. 

why would she make herself a dress so constrictive she can barely walk in it? five minutes ago she sprinted to the top of a mountain and built herself a palace while gleefully singing about testing the limits of what her magic can do.

come the fuck on.

on the other hand, elsa literally just stripping to her undergarments, loosening the stays, and making some ice boots™ and running around like that, plus whatever scraps of pseudo-fabric might form out of fog / snow / ice / wind... 

it’s practical, it’s comfortable... 

it fits neatly with the symbolism of the costume change... 

elsa’s first instinct upon leaving civilization being to take off all her clothes is an indirect callback to young anna’s line about how “running naked in the breeze” is one of the things we can’t do in public and underscores how elsa and anna are still very similar in some ways despite having been separated for eleven years... 

like it. works. on every level.  fuckin fight me, disney.

[timeshuffles]

EVEN MORE thoughts on elsa’s magic

( first post here, second post here )

i’ve touched on this before but: elsa’s magic is alive, and existed before she did and will continue to exist independent of her after she is gone. how she ended up with it is largely a matter of coincidental timing with her having been born at just the right time for the magic to... “adopt” her is the best way to phrase it, i think. it’s its Own Thing but it has also made itself intrinsically part of her and that connection cannot be broken, ever, by any means, until she dies. ( see here for the fancy ~mythological~ version of that. )

as for WHY it did this, by itself the magic... it’s alive, but it’s also essentially just a disconnected Id—it’s wild and unrestrained, but lacking the force of will and executive processes required to meet its impulses in a satisfactory way. by itself, it can’t do much beyond storming endlessly in the void—unrestrained and free but also unnoticed, uncared for, and completely alone. “adopting” a human in the way that it adopted elsa means sacrificing a little freedom in exchange for a... host? with willpower and imagination and feelings that can shape the magic into something far greater. 

so.

what this means for elsa is that the magic is content to subordinate itself to her will, if and only if she lets it out and Does Things with it. in this sense she doesn’t and will never have absolute control over it, because Not Using It simply is not an option. assuming favorable weather (ambient temperatures below ~5°C), she can hold it in completely for about two days without issue; after that, it gets restless. and no matter how hard she tries to suppress it, it will eventually tear free. ( see: the coronation. )

( if it’s warmer than about 5° she pretty much has to let it out at least enough to ice over her skin and chill the air around her, or else she’ll overheat because her resting body temp is roughly freezing. why? because she spent twelve years of her life trying to suppress the magic and it changed her, gradually, over the course of those twelve years, until arriving at a point where her body is so cold that she needs her magic to thermoregulate effectively. )

ideally, the magic wants to be doing Big, Impressive, Difficult things, and it wants to do them in such a way that it is Noticed and Admired or Feared. and it cares about elsa and wants her to cherish it in return. all the stuff that happens during let it go? bringing a snowman to life, the gravity-defying bridge, the raising of a giant ice palace balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff? or the teaser for frozen 2 that’s just 50% Elsa Fights The Sea? that’s the sort of thing the magic really wants to be doing, all the time. and if elsa doesn’t oblige in giving it that sort of thing to do often enough it just kinda defaults to iM bOrEd LeT’s fReEzE aReNDeLLe —

so after the coronation disaster is resolved and all the fallout of that is dealt with elsa’s biggest challenge vis a vis her magic is really finding the right balance between the times when, for political or safety reasons, she really needs to hold it in, and the sort of casual/mundane everyday use required to prevent it from fighting her, and the bigger, grander exercises it needs to be happy.

( the other big challenge for her is learning to wrangle her emotions in a healthy way, because her magic is highly reactive to her feelings. but that’s less about controlling the magic itself than about just Being A Healthy Person. ) 

& an assortment of other, less organized thoughts too: 

she talks to it. a lot when she’s alone, and occasionally muttering at it under her breath if it really acts up when she’s in public. likewise she uses a lot of gestures / physical movement to conduct her magic. both are things that she doesn’t, strictly speaking, need to do, but it makes it easier for her to communicate to her magic precisely what she wants. 

for skin-to-skin contact with other people she needs to freeze her skin first. basically just. covering any skin that will be touched by the other person in a thin, protective coating of ice. 

this ice doesn’t melt, and being magical ice it is supple and moves with her skin, and it feels... weird. to her. if you’ve ever had glue dry on your skin it’s basically like that. so it’s something she avoids doing unless it’s necessary. 

because of that, & because having a normal person touch her actual bare skin will legitimately burn her (see thoughts post #1 re: normal people are three times her body temperature), elsa is extremely particular about people not touching her without permission. 

and if she’s going to be in a situation where she’s touching people a lot, she’ll be in long sleeves and gloves for it. just easier that way.

she pretty much always has frost creeping over her skin, and often goes around in her own little spiral of cold breezes and sometimes snow. on especially warm days her clothes will frost over as well. only exceptions are 1) if the ambient temperature is below freezing, or 2) if for diplomatic reasons she really needs to avoid any visual reminders of I Could Bury Your Entire Country In Snow With A Snap Of My Fingers for a while.

the frost is different from the ice coating discussed above in that it’s pretty much just normal ice (ie: will melt on contact with, say, a warm hand), and it isn’t a solid barrier — it’s basically just her version of sweating. 

natural storms make her magic really antsy, and the bigger they are the more pronounced this will be. storms during the winter and storms that take place at night during new moons have an especially powerful influence. this in turn makes elsa... sort of cranky, and can really wear her out if it turns into a battle of the magic wanting to go outside and play with (read: intensify) the storm vs elsa Not Doing That. 

eventually she starts dealing with storms by excusing herself at the first opportunity and slipping off to the mountains where the magic can do its thing without hurting anybody

she can create gales strong and fast enough to carry her around. she does this by accident during the coronation disaster — it’s how she gets to the summit of the north mountain in a single night, her magic basically just picks her up and throws her there — but it takes a ton of trial and error and practice afterwards before she’s able to do it in an intentional, controlled way

( she’s very insistent that this is Not Flying. it’s totally flying. )

this is also something that her magic does To her if she fights it while it’s agitated, kinda just... tossing her around the room. big winter storms can get her magic to that point if she refuses to at least walk around outside, and it happened a lot during her teen years bc of how forcefully she was suppressing her magic by then.

after Numerous attempts to figure out the correct configuration of clothing and tack required to ride a horse without being uncomfortably hot at best or getting burned at worst, she just gives up and makes herself an ice horse. his name is røkkr. 

[timeshuffles]

some (more) thoughts on elsa’s magic: ouat version

specifically, the sketch of the differences between elsa’s magic and ingir’s:

in general elsa is both more powerful and has a much greater degree of control over her magic than ingir does. this is largely down to the different ways they tried to control/suppress their powers:

ingir relied on seiðr, a complex magical methodology practiced throughout fantasy scandinavia the northern regions; she used seiðr to create bindings which held her ice magic inside her body and actively weakened it — imagine being locked in a cell with exposed nails or broken glass embedded in all the walls, and what that would do to your hands if you frantically tried to claw your way out. that’s basically what ingir’s bindings did to her ice magic, sanding it back down every time it gathered its strength and tried to burst free. the end result is that her ice magic never really matured past what it was when she was very young and the first bindings were put in place.

on the other hand, elsa tried to suppress her magic by sheer force of will alone. her magic was never held in place by anything except the strength of her desire to keep it inside — so her magic was allowed to not only grow with her, but also to grow exponentially stronger than it would have normally due to the containment, as discussed in my other post.

likewise, these very different methods of suppression had a big influence on the degree of control they have over their ice magic.

a key thing about this magic is that it isn’t an intrinsic part of the wielder, but rather a shard of a much greater cosmic force bestowed as a gift; thus using it isn’t as straightforward as regular ouat style “focus hard enough on what you want and it’ll happen” magic. this is symbiosis, it’s communication, it’s a relationship.

ingir’s method of suppression in her youth was like locking the magic up and throwing away the key, then trying to forget it existed. elsa’s method was more like directly grappling with the magic in an open field to try to prevent it from running wild — even as she forced it down and refused to listen to it, she was still immersed in it, still in touch with it, still learning the “language” of its moods and whims and the things it wanted to do and so on.

so ingir has ice magic that is stunted, damaged, and scarred, and a language barrier problem on top of that where she has zero fine control over her magic; meanwhile, after her coronation, once elsa starts listening to what her magic is telling her, she develops full control very quickly. (for example: ingir thinks “i’d like this room to be a little colder,” and BAM snow drifts everywhere; elsa thinks “i’d like this room to be a little colder” and the temperature drops by precisely three degrees.) furthermore, at the time the ouat frozen arc begins, elsa has spent about two years honing her control over her magic, whereas ingir comes out of the urn never having had control over it at all. so the difference is even greater than it would be if they had both been working with their magic for the same amount of time.

this is also reflected in the physical expressions of their magic — in general, elsa’s is very precise and detailed, ingir’s is rougher and sloppier.

elsa snow is composed exclusively of plane crystals — those flat, pretty fractals everyone thinks of when you hear the word “snowflake” — and feel light, fluffy, and rather dry because they don’t melt as quickly as natural flakes. ingir snow is a lot wetter, denser, a lot more rimy, and composed mostly of aggregate snowflakes — those are the big amorphous flakes you get when it’s really humid and not super cold so a bunch of individual flakes get stuck together — and can turn to slush fairly quickly once it’s done falling.

when elsa builds stuff out of snow, the constructs are smooth — think the texture of untouched snow drifts — and detailed, often with ice and frost filling out the really fine details. ingir’s snow constructs look more blobby and rough, like something actually packed together by a human being. (ingir also can’t bring her constructs to life, and if she could they’d probably just mindlessly rampage whereas elsa’s constructs have intelligence and consciousness and are able to do things like self-repair)

also, elsa favors ice over snow when making stuff, and her ice is very pure, translucent, and defined, with distinct edges and noticeable fractal patterns; ingir’s constructs are generally packed snow and less structurally sound — again, like if somebody went out and actually physically built a snow fort, that’s what ingir’s constructs look like.

in general — elsa’s constructs are more precise, more stable, hold their shape much better, and don’t melt unless she allows them to, whereas ingir’s basically function like normal snow.

[timeshuffles]

jane. [ @soughtbirthright​, ♥ ]

              It’s miserably hot in Auradon, as always, and neither the shaded pavilion nor the slushy drink cradled in her hand do anything to alleviate the heat. The cool breeze she’s coaxed in from the north does, a little, but — suffice it to say Elsa won’t be heartbroken when family day ends and she can return home to Arendelle, where the snow still lies inches thick. 

              Still — she wears a smile as she skirts the crowd, now and then pausing to exchange a polite word with those students she knows and keeping half an eye out for her own children.   ( Running late and, knowing Gustav, probably waylaid by a dehydrated plant somewhere. )

             “—–Hello there.”   An unavoidable detour around a tight cluster of guests has brought her into conversational distance with a student, and it seems impolite not to offer some greeting. Elsa hesitates, taking in the big blue eyes and rather worried expression. Familiar, vaguely so.   “...Jane, isn’t it? I don’t believe we’ve spoken before.”   She extends a hand, gloved despite the heat.   “I’m Elsa. It’s a pleasure.”

[timeshuffles]

ONCE IN A THOUSAND YEARS, when the stars are right, the moon is hidden from the Wolf, his eternal hunter, and the Wolf crawls down from the sky to stalk the earth for other prey. On such nights the world is ravaged by blizzards fierce enough to blot out all the stars in the sky, and the seas churn and froth with frantic violence…

It is said that if a woman bears a child on such a night, the scent of new blood will lure the Wolf to the birthing bed. He will bite the babe and and leave his indelible mark upon its soul. Thereafter the child’s spirit will be as the Wolf’s: savage and cruel, ravenous and aloof. Its blood will run cold as ice, and a fearsome storm will rage forever inside its beating heart.

One day a child of the Wolf will unleash this storm upon the world. The sky will grow black, the seas will freeze, and the land will be shackled in ice. Starvation will turn friend against friend, kin against kin; it will be an age of axes and swords, and even the gods will take up arms to die.

All will perish in darkness and snow. 

So say the oldest stories, and so it will happen in the end.

[timeshuffles]

"HELLO, QUEEN!" ( from oaken, @ elsa. i had to. )

“Hello—?” Subject feels like the logical response, and nearly trips off her tongue before she remembers her manners; she shakes her head a little, bemused, and says, “What can I do for you, Mr...?”

[timeshuffles]

mina. [ @secretparadisc​, ♥ ]

“miss murray?” elsa speaks aloud at first, thoughtlessly, then catches herself and lifts her hands with an apologetic wince. “miss murray,” she signs instead, shaping each letter with considerable care, for british sign is new to her, and she’s wary of getting it wrong. “thank you for meeting me. my name is elsa.”

she’d said as much in her letter, but it seems polite to say it again now that they’re meeting face-to-face.

mina murray is smaller than elsa had imagined, and for a moment elsa feels a flicker of unease about involving her in arendelle’s current troubles, but what choice does she have?

“i understand you kill vampires, miss murray.”

[timeshuffles]

was i a monster from the start? how did i end up with this frozen heart? bringing destruction to the stage— caught in a war that i never meant to wage...