#Frozen memories

[virtual-winter]

It's been 10 years since I first watched Frozen!🌻❄️⛏️☃️🦌

(Swedish DVD-copy of Frozen)

November 20th, 2014. It seems like forever ago. I remember watching this movie through my desktop ASUS PC (remember when computers used to have actual DVD-drives?) on a by today's standards pretty crappy Philips monitor. It didn't matter. The movie was like nothing else I had seen before. Even though I don't even have a sibling and can't fully relate to the conflict, Anna and Elsa's adventure is IMO one of the best stories ever told💕

I was 22 back then. A young man and totally in love with this Disney movie. Now I'm 32 and it continues to be among my favourite movies of all time. Even now, ten years later, I still live and breathe Frozen every day! It is a part of who I became and it is the way I wish to remain 😄

I have become a devoted fan of all things Frozen and I'm trying my best to be a part-time Frozen-analyst, mapmaker, worldbuilder and collector. I'm also known for using too many emotes and exclamation marks!

Below, I have tried to summarise some important and meaningful keepsakes and events from the past ten years. I hope you enjoy scrolling!✨✨✨

I believe this was the first ever Frozen-related pic that I saved (it's the oldest in my album) (April 2015)

I was equally in love with the OUAT Frozen arc and no one can tell me Georgina and Elizabeth were anything but perfect for their roles (April 2015)

🥹🥹🥹

(March 2015)

In just a couple of years we saw the franchise grow (did anyone else prefer the original logo for the musical?) (February 2016)

The official announcement we'd all been waiting for (April 2017)

The architect in me loved the castle! (2017)

I mean, who could ever forget this moment? (December 2018)

AJHFSJASJFKAGKJFGSKFDSGSJF!?!?!?!?!?!? (February 2019)

What are those????? (February 2019)

My first piece of "big" Frozen merch (April 2019)

I made a custom calendar just to count down the remaining days to Frozen II (I also avoided spoilers for the last 6 1/2 months) (December 2019)

🥹🥰😭

(December 2019)

Perfectly balanced, as it should be (February 2020)

Me collecting stuff! (February 2020)

Me going crazy saving as much Frozen content as possible 😅 (August 2020)

I joined r/Frozen (June 2021)

I started my deep-dive into Arendelle's geography in 2021 which ultimately lead to "An odyssey through Frozen geography", the first of many fandom projects! (July 2021)

Together with a group of equally dedicated Frozen nerds fans, I helped building the @arendelle-archives server and later tumblr-blog! (2021)

Collecting more things! (October 2021)

A Frozen comic writer responded to my reddit post?😲(December 2021)

I started developing ideas for a Frozen fanfic (2022)

Frozen III-announcement! Finally! (February 2023)

My Norway-trip of 2023. Without a doubt one of the most beautiful destinations on Earth and a must-go for anyone who wants to visit the real Arendelle!!! (July 2023)

I continue to delve into more map-related stuff in Wonderdraft (May 2024)

Together with the rest of the wonderful folks over at @frozen10fanzine, I helped create and design a fanzine summarising the memories of Frozen fans from the past decade! (July 2024)

A slice of my current Frozen collection! Some figures were very kindly donated to me by @yumeka-sxf 🙌 (July 2024)

And lastly, from today: the first snow of the season❄️🩵

If you made it this far, thank you for scrolling😅

Finally, a little shout-out to friends and acquaintances I've made through the likes of reddit, discord and tumblr in the past few years:

@bigfrozenfan @yumeka-sxf @greatqueenanna @queenritaofarendelle @saiten-gefroren @snowflaketale12 @cloudberriesforaqueen @theartoffrozen @secretsofthestorymakers

A big thank you also to the whole @arendelle-archives and @frozen10fanzine - teams! Y'all continue to inspire me!

[supereffectiveartblog]

Year of D&D 2023

This year, it was difficult for free time to line up for me and my friends. In last years "Year of D&D" post, i started by complaining about how infrequent our play was that year, but this year, we played even less. Mostly because of scheduling issues, but also because its difficult to plan as a DM. The scheduling issue has become more difficult partially because all of our current campaigns have more regular player characters. In 2020, we played with 1 DM and 4 players, but now most of our campaigns have at least 5 characters, one had 6, but one dropped out, and I DM'd a campaign that briefly had 8 player characters. Finding free time that lines up for 8 people is very very difficult. But as I'll discuss later on, we might've come up with a solution to this.

Here's the stats for this year:

In 2023, our group played 4 different adventures, a combined 12 sessions.

I made 13 session arts (1 extra one being the Meet the Party art for Princes). This was compared to 22 sessions and 21 session arts the previous year.

I was a player character in 2 campaigns, and the DM in one campaign and one Oneshot.

Pokémon Oster was the only returning campaign from last year, with sessons 1-5 happening in 2022, and sessions 6-9 this year.

Princes of the Apocalypse is our new core D&D module campaign, continuing from our DM of Tomb of Annihilation and Ravnica. We played 3 sessions this year.

Call of the Netherdeep was my first try at a module campaign, taking place in the world of Critical Role. We have 5 core players that will play every time, plus 3 "guest" players that play as the rival party, and I only intend to join us when they're needed or free.

Frozen Memories was our Halloween One-Shot for the year, and like Call of the Netherdeep, was pre-written. In my opinion, following someone else's work made it flow better than last year's Halloween One-Shot.

Darryl Fisher returns from last year as my player character in Pokemon Oster, our Pokemon Tabletop United campaign. Since last year, there's been no siginificant change in his playstyle. He fights alongside his Pokemon when facing some Wild Pokemon and ruffians, but respects league rules against regular trainers. Darryl is a mono Water type trainer, and his team consists of Piplup, Buizel, Carvanha, Magikarp, Wooper, and Tympole. He embodies everything a water type trainer would be, he is a swimmer, a fisherman, and even a diver, interested in buried treasure. I play him as a blokey bloke, and a bit of a bogan, but he has a good heart, and steps up to the plate when needed.

The Pokémon Oster campaign has no sign of stopping, so we will see more of Darryl next year.

Lilith Maddox is my player character in Princes of the Apocalypse. Lilith is my second attempt at a morally grey character (after Nevaeh), but one who i hope to play on a redemption arc on. Lilith is an Eloquence Bard, meaning I can expect most social interactions to go my way, and although i havent had much of a chance to play her, I want to use that as part of her personality and arc. Her father was an incubus, and this means that Lilith's aura naturally puts people at ease, and more likely to agree with her. Because Lilith usually gets her way, this means she has developed a bratty complex, with the secret fear that actually maybe nobody likes her for real. I want to play her to help get over my own imposter syndrome.

Lilith has also been the artistic bane of my existence this year. Perfecting the look of a character that is both snooty and reserved, with an outfit that speaks Bard and Succubus, but not in an inappropriate way, has been almost impossible for me. What I've presented here is what I hope is my final take on Lilith, but who knows when I'll next come upon a design idea I want to incorporate into my most incomplete D&D character.

This year I also took to DMing more. In previous years, I was DMing a campaign I wrote myself called Rise of the Lich Queen, and it wasn't fantastic. So this year, I've put the Lich Queen on hiatus to make an attempt at a following a prewritten campaign, Call of the Netherdeep. The campaign pre-bakes a rival party into the story, and instead of just using the pre-written rivals, i thought it would be interesting for real people to play them. Since the rivals aren't there every session, their players wouldn't need to be every session either. The necessity of having all character present at the start of the campaign did make scheduling difficult, and we only organised 4 sessions. It is on me to schedule as the DM for this campaign, so hopefully, we will find the time for more of this campaign this year.

Our first year of D&D featured a Halloween Oneshot, and we missed out on that 2021. So i've strived to take the reins and make it a yearly tradition again. Last year I wrote my own OneShot, and it had an interesting gimmick, but was poorly written. This year, like my core campaign, I followed a prewritten adventure, Frozen Memories. Having lore and set pieces already written for me allowed me to flesh out specific moments and better write character moments.

What I think was the better take away from this OneShot however was what DIDNT happen. I ran a couple session zeros to help with character creation and to set the stage for the setting, and at one point, all 8 of my closest friends had drafted up a character idea. But when the year started to run out, I decided I needed a cut off, and one weekend, just ran the adventure for who was available. I think I want to use this format going forward; running shorter adventures and changing out the players depending on who is free. I don't know if it will always be OneShots, but I think flexibility for scheduling will make sessions more frequent.

So if I only played as two characters this year, how was I going to fill in the space on my Year of D&D poster for this year? Well this year I played a videogame called Baldur's Gate 3. And BG3 is basically D&D 5e as a videogame. Since first playing the game, I have beaten the game with 3 different characters, and I based each of them on past and present D&D characters. I have a couple more characters in mind that I will play into next year, but there's not a lot to the game that I haven't experienced in my first three playthroughs.

I did write ups for all these characters in a previous post so if you wanna read up on those, Here is the one for Hawthorne and Lilith, and Here is the one for Nevaeh. I really enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3 and it is 100% my game of the year. It scratched an itch brought upon by a lack of D&D, and I appreciate it for that.

As I mentioned above, I'm hoping for TTRPGs next year I can better take advantage of one-off and short adventures that do not require the entire table to be present. Hoping the pattern of less tabletops each subsequent years does not continue. Here's wishing for more D&D with friends next year. If you want to see specifics on individual sessions, I have a very complex system of links on my Pinned Post.

[supereffectivemoonblast]

Frozen Memories

Halloween/Holiday OneShot 2023

For Halloween this year, I DM'd a OneShot called Frozen Memories (Guide Online), but because of scheduling issues, it had to be pushed back to the end of November. Given it is a winter themed OneShot, I guess it counts as a Chrismas adventure too.

The adventure began with a bounty. Elemine Hemlock, a famous monster slayer, has gone missing while on a mission in the north. This group of four heroes accepted the quest to retrieve Elemine alive, or if she was killed, find the thing that killed her and slay it. Here is the party:

Voradox, a Vedalken Necromancer. She goes super goth, and is somewhat regretting her outfit in this cold north. She carries a unique magic box, that allows her to carry corpses in her pocket for when she wants to reanimate them. She is inquisitive and curious, observing every detail with a fine-toothed bone comb.

Bronson, a Bugbear Bug Keeper Bow wielder. He is a master tracker, able to follow his quarry at range, sharpshooting with the help of his swarm of bees. Bronson feels most at home in the forest, but his sharpened senses help him to read the lies of men.

Herejana, a High Elf ice witch who serves a patron of glaciers and death. Her past connects her with the frigid north, and her haunting appearance wards strangers off her. Her imp familiar Brotis speaks for her patron, and he has a cheeky unhelpful streak in him.

Zorr, a Kobold sneak thief and trickster. The only member of the group that fights up close, but uses pack tactics to synergise with the summons of his magickly inclined allies. When not in the mood to be in danger, Zorr uses mind tricks and illusions to trick his foes.

The session begins with the group having travelled a couple weeks towards their destination, and are now a day or so away from the town she was last seen, Brumendall. Bronson finds a shortcut under the ice that could cut their arrival time down to a few hours, and then enter a cave. Awaiting them is an ambush of Goblins, led by a Hobgoblin. Thanks to a careful approach, the adventurers actually do the surprising, and a combination of Web, focused fire, and strategy leave the party victorious. Voradox takes the hobgoblins corpse for later.

When they arrive in Brumendall, all seems well. Their first stop is the local pub, where they book rooms for the night and query the barkeeper, Ruby, for rumours. As they get more info, they notice a strange lack of fire in what should be a respite from the cold, and patrons eyeing them suspiciously. Ruby gives the group a list of points of interest in Brumendall and they head out.

The main image was based on a joke in the session where Voradox stuffed the Hobgoblin into her mini casket.

The next stop is a curiosity shop, where they meet Rilke. This elf is not a native the area, but has her worries about the rumours. She sells Voradox 2 magic items and promises the party another job should they finish their current one. After that, the party head to the Apothecary, where they meet a nervous Gladessa, and her strange husband Armand. Bronson smells something strange, and Zorr spots a strange cauldron in the back. It is also way too cold in here too.

Satisfied with their initial investigation, they retire to the tavern for the night. In the middle of their sleep, Herejana and Voradox's room is invaded by what seems to be some of the suspicious characters they spotted in the tavern earlier. The other two are roused and begin a brief bout of combat that ends with the attackers collapsing into goo. Bronson saw similar goo in the cave before town and Voradox saw this goo coating the inside of the town well. The noises rouses Ruby who helps them move into another room, and starts to clean up the goo.

The next morning, the party discuss some possibilities about what this goo means, and after talking to Ruby once more, they decide she's probably in on whatever conspiracy is afoot. They leave town towards a small mountain, where Ruby and Gladessa say Elemine is likely to have headed, searching for a dragon's hoard. The first couple days are tense, but they encounter no trouble. The night before they reach the mountain, they are attacked by a large horde of green and red ooze monsters. Through the use of fire and illusions, they manage to survive the onslaught, and finish an uneasy rest.

At the base of the mountain, the group finds remains of a camp, and equipment nearby reveals this is probably Elemine's last stand. They gather what equipment of hers they can find and head up the mountain. At its peak is a few idols and shrines to various local deities, but no sign of treasure, and no sign of Elemine,=. Ruby had lied to them. Herejana happens to find a shrine to her own patron, and prays for some answers. She is told their quest will end back in Brumendall and that Elemine is no longer living. They conclude their attack the previous night was probably similar to Elemine's fate, and they need to end this infestation on Brumendall.

Their return trip to Brumendall is less dangerous, and when they arrive back, the residents they see seem to be behaving like nothing has happened. Herejana's familiar Brotis scopes the area for way into the tunnels under Brumendall, where they previously saw masses of slime via the well. One sneaky infiltration later, they are in the caves fighting more of the small red oozes.

After this fight, they finally confront the cause of it all, two large red slime monsters known as Oblex. Each has used the memories of people they killed and absorbed to create puppets, connected to the main body by an almost invisible string. Their puppets included some of the bar patrons, Ruby, as well as Armand and Elemine. After a difficult battle, the Oblex and their puppets are destroyed. The party still find some of their smaller spawn as they're leaving town however, and work with Gladessa and Rilke to clear around the rest of the tunnels over the next couple days, ensuring the infestation will not rise again.

On the right is Official Art of the a Oblex from Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse

Although thankful the nightmare is over, the townsfolk wish the strangers to leave them to rebuild. They accept Rilke's job to escort a supply cart down south to get supplies for Brumenhall, then continue onward to their next adventure.

***

Originally when organising for this session, I had 4 more friends making characters for if they could join, but in the end we decided to just run for whoever could make it. Although I'm not constructing a greater campaign for this group of characters, I think my friends are keen to reusing them for more Oneshots in the future under a very loose canon. So hopefully sooner rather than later, we might see more of this group.

[karda]

the innate horror of google earth

[virtual-winter]

I'm honored to be a part of this amazing team 🩵 Full version of my map submission is coming soon!

/Winter

Memories from Water Has Memory

A Fanzine Celebrating 10 Years of Frozen

From Cry1ng Ch1ld and @virtual-winter for the Year of 2020

[haunted-xander]

GIVE ME MY BODY BACK

[whilomm]

oh okay heres one:

"sleepaway camp"= you go there for at least a few days, a week, sometimes several weeks, and sleep there, as opposed to a """camp""" where you go for the day and your parents or whoever picks you up afterward (those arent really camps, but like. idk when i went to "space camp" it was a weeklong but not sleepaway). in the U.S. at least, the typical image of a sleepaway camp involves staying in cabins, dunno how common it is/what it looks like in other countries.

for the first few i just mean like. not necessarily a stealth church camp, just like. idk, a camp where theres also an Assumption Of Christianity and just general vibes without being actually church camp. So, there might not be daily services and jesusy dedicatwd activities, but maybe theres still a prayer said over meals and shit. Which i assume might exist...

(oh and @reblogforsamplesize if u wanna)

[ghostofthegallows]

"You can't summon a dead fandom with one image"

....

[xenoanamorph]

John Shaw Torrington🩵 An attempt at a facial reconstruction.. I did this in 2020 and for some reason was very hesitant/shy(??) about posting it. To be fair, not much “reconstruction” was necessary since he was in remarkable shape at the time of his exhumation (and I assume he still looks fabulous thanks to that good ol’ permafrost treatment🧊).

Now some thoughts… because I’ve never articulated this online before..💭

I’ve had a fixation on him since I was 14 (I’m 29 now) and have attempted many times over the years to draw him in a more…well, alive state..

and I’ll just say it straight up; I think he has a beautiful, ethereal face. I’ve always thought that, even when I was a kid. If he looks that way in death, I can only imagine what that beauty was like when he was among the living. I tried to capture that in this drawing..

Anyway.. I could ramble on…

This, I think, is the most presentable drawing out of all the attempts I’ve done in the 15 years I’ve ‘known’ him— though it certainly won’t be the last. 🩵

I’m planning on doing similar portraits of Hartnell and Braine… I expect Braine will be difficult because he was not in good shape compared to the other Beechey boys..

** I’m overwhelmed by the positive responses this piece got! Tysm everyone!🥲🙏 It really makes me so happy to see JT get so much love— and I’m sure it warms his heart as well 🩵

[kogglyuffs]

happy 12 yrs of op blackout im totally not OLD

[aminetko]

Frozen brainrot sketch from memory

[virtual-winter]

Today is my 10th anniversary as a Frozen fan!

October 20th 2014 marked my first day as a fan of Frozen after watching Once upon a time season 4's first episode "A tale of two sisters" that starred Elizabeth Lail as Anna, Georgina Haig as Elsa and Scott Michael Foster as Kristoff.

As I've previously gone over in this post a long time ago, this series was my gateway into the Frozen fandom and which made me watch the movie a month later!

A big warm hug to all the friends I've made in the fandom in the past few years and here's for holdin' on tight for another ten! 😅

[wickjump]

btw this is crepic block me if you don’t get it (don’t do that i am an attention seeker because i was emotionally neglected as a child) (rambling in tags)

[virtual-winter]

I'm pleased to finally announce the launch of the blog-version of Arendelle Archives, an ongoing multi-faceted fandom project aimed at exploring, researching and analyzing the history, geography and lore of the Frozenverse!

Arendelle Archives will launch January 6th! ✍️

[puppyeared]

adhd is when you shoot for the moon but you forgot the rocket fuel and by the time you realize it everyones already on the moon and then you panic and crash into the sun and it explodes

[feral-ballad]

Victoria Chang, from The Trees Witness Everything; “The Wakening”

[Text ID: “I am cold and out / of memories. My heart is / made of snow.”]