12MoF: The One Where the Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen:
Prologue
March: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters
April: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT

Shh, this totally still counts as May. At least, I came up with it in May. Okay, so technically speaking I came up with the idea on June 1, but hey, I was with my family and then I was exhausted and on a bus and then I started working nights for this ushering thing, so. SHH. TOTALLY COUNTS AS MAY.

We're going a little more old school this month. If the first month was a producer's edit — tightening the vocals, dropping a useless chorus, adjusting the bass — and the second month was a cover, then this month is more like a mash-up. And specifically, mashing it up with an older version of the tale of the Snow Queen, where we've got heart-hardening shards of ice and kidnapping, except then I mixed in sisters and bad parenting and kissing. I can do this because the older story and Frozen are still in the same key, which is the key of epic quests and love fights all. Also, I ditched Frozen's chorus of heterosexuality.

Possibly this music analogy got a little out of hand somewhere.

On a different note, I think I’m beginning to understand how and why the writers of Frozen over-villained the story, though. When you’re plotting out one of these things, it starts to get really easy to think, “But is this too boring? Let’s put some more action in there,” until you’ve crowded the story so much that none of the characters have room to breathe. I keep worrying about not being compelling enough. This is why scripts for big blockbusters theoretically go through an editing process, though.

On another different note, this month we have illustrations! Two of them, to be precise.

We start with Anna and Elsa as little kids, playing in the snow. Elsa is telling Anna a story, with frequent interjections from Anna, and using her snow magic to help her act it out as she’s telling it. The story is the Story of the Snow Queen, or at least a story of the snow queen; the details of the story don’t matter very much, and can be super-ridiculous, but the gist of the plot is that when the beautiful and powerful Snow Queen was off on some trip around the world, she ended up with a shard of ice in her eye, and  ever since, she’s seen the world as a cold, unforgiving place — and so she, in turn, decided to inflict their corner of the world with the snow that was perpetually inside her heart.

Elsa grows herself some icicle-spikes all over her body, it’s pretty cool.

Anna, after she’s done being delighted by the story, sighs and asks, “But will we ever be warm again?” which is how we realize that yes, Arendelle is actually cursed, and nobody knows how to stop it.

“But look,” Elsa says, trying to cheer Anna up. “I’ve been practicing this.”

She raises her hands, palm out. When Anna does the same, Elsa carefully presses their hands together and small flames shoot out Elsa’s fingers. Most of them fly together to make a slightly larger hovering flame, bur one of them rolls off and Elsa has to track it down and stamp it out. When she lets go of  Anna’s hands, the other flames disappear. “I’m still working on it,” she admits sheepishly, but Anna is delighted.

Like this, except in my version, Anna and Elsa are still not white. [Gif by disneysfrozensisters.]

Alas, all playing must come to an end, and when Elsa is making Anna laugh by sliding them around pathways made of snow, the Parents come out and quickly bundle them both inside. The parents don't even technically have to be royal in this version.

"Elsa, where's your coat?" Mom whispers, and Elsa tries to protest that she doesn't need one, she's not cold. But the Parental Units are freaking about more than just the cold; they're worried that if anyone sees Elsa using her magic, or wandering around without a coat like it hasn't been negative infinity degrees for the last few years (Elsa is 12, Anna is 8 or so? the snow's been around for 3-4 years), they're going to associate Elsa's powers with the Snow Queen. And, as you might be able to guess, nothing good happens when scared people associate small kids with something that scares them.

And the Snow Queen scares people. She doesn't take children very often — it's more a case of, "Don't wander up into the mountains or the Snow Queen won't give you back" — but she's powerful and unmerciful and has irrevocably changed their world, and that's a scary thing. It's like... blizzards are scary, but we have to accept them because they're weather, ergo just an uncontrollable part of the natural world. When the blizzard becomes a person with agency, that's scary in a way that makes people afraid and angry, deep down inside.

And hey, you're smart, ducklings. You know that fear is dangerous. Yoda told us so and everything.

This is probably as good a time as any for a song, akin to "Belle" or "Reflection" except for how it's also a MONTAGE. Okay, yes, anyone who knows me probably knows that I have a thing about montages and how they're one of film's most glorious achievements, but to be fair, songs are really good for montages.

Anyway, Elsa and Anna are growing up, and Elsa — like many Disney animated characters, and indeed, many tiny girl-childs among us — is singing about how she'd like to have a place where she can belong, or maybe she'd just like to have her powers removed so that she doesn't have to deal with the horrible things that the villagers say about the Snow Queen, except she likes her powers. It's just that she's not really allowed to use them, and trying to squash them is really, really hard.

But at least she still has her sister! Her adorable little sister who, sure, can be a pain sometimes, but is also funny and smart and loves her unconditionally, but also (as we may or may not have seen during the montage) has something of a taste for adventure.

Which is how Anna gets captured by the Snow Queen.

Elsa is about 18-19 and Anna about 14-15, by now. Anna has no reason to be afraid of other people like Elsa does, so she has no reason to stay hidden like Elsa does; as they've gotten older, she's gone further and further afield, climbing trees and meeting new people. Meanwhile, Elsa quietly envies her ability to meet new people without sizing them up as a potential threat. Elsa follows after her sometimes, gets her out of trees and snowbanks, reminds her that she can see her new friends later and it's time to come home for dinner, and makes her hot chocolate when Anna stumbles in the door, pink-cheeked and freezing because of course, she forgot her mittens again.

Anna! Look, I never pretended to be able to draw, okay.

But one day, Elsa and their parents are having a quiet argument, of the sort where neither side would really admit it's an argument, and Anna takes the opportunity to escape the house and go on a nature walk. Except she gets distracted by a bird she's never seen before, and then all of a sudden there's a blizzard and she gets completely turned around, and then she falls down the side of a mountain. Whoops.

Meanwhile, Elsa is pacing in the living room, accidentally freezing the fire because it's late and Anna hasn't come home yet and there was that horrible storm, and blah di blah di blah the point being that she packs her bag and packs the mittens that Anna has, inevitably, left at home, and she sets out at first light. It's still storming, but that's never bothered her. A little snow has never bothered her.

Her parents are worried for her, almost as much as they're worried for Anna, but they still have to remind her not to use her powers. Which makes the journey a bit of a slog at first, because she's crunching through the snow and trying to ignore the ice blowing in her face, but once she's out of sight of the village, she quickly gives up on that and starts walking on top of the snow and using an ice shield to keep off the worst of the snow and wind.

Then she falls down the side of the mountain exactly where Anna did. Thanks to her powers, though, she makes an ice sled for herself, and when she tumbles to a halt, she lands at the feet of a more-than-moderately astonished girl approximately her own age.

(((HINT: SHE IS GOING TO END UP KISSING THIS GIRL EVENTUALLY, AND IT WILL BE GREAT.)))

Also, wow, I've spent a lot of time on pure build-up here, because this is when Act 2 kicks fully into gear. Beauty meets the Beast, Mulan goes off to war, Aladdin heads to the Cave of Wonders and meets the Genie...

To make a long story short, after some light banter/Elsa cautiously trying to figure out if the girl saw her use her powers/but mostly it's early-stage-flirting though, Elsa eventually asks if the girl has seen her sister Anna. (Let's call the girl... Kai, for exciting gender-swap call-back-y purposes.)

Kai seems very nervous, and Elsa eventually gets her to admit that yes, she does know where Anna is, but they'll have to go really quickly if they want to get her and she's not sure it's a good idea. Obviously, the former comment far overshadows the latter to Elsa, and they run off to go find Anna — except they weren't quite fast enough, because hey, there's the Snow Queen.

As you might imagine, the Snow Queen didn't build herself a giant "Screw You" castle in the middle of the freaking mountains because she was jonesing for company, and thus she is Less Than Pleased to see Elsa sneaking around her castle with Kai, whom she treats like a servant. When she starts to threaten Elsa, though, Elsa flinches and reflexively builds herself a wall of ice — and the Snow Queen stops short.

Think of it like a lightbulb, "Holy crap, it's a mini-me!" moment.

Kai, apparently, isn't worth much time and energy because she doesn't have any powers except being impervious to the cold and magic, but Elsa? Elsa could be an apprentice. Elsa has the power that makes her worth something in the Snow Queen's eyes.

Not just Elsa, but snarky Elsa.

Elsa, of course, just wants her sister, but the Snow Queen brushes that off — tells Kai to make sure that Anna is treated well, but she's obviously not even paying much attention. When Elsa is still more focused on Anna than on their shared powers, though, the Queen pulls out the big guns.

Don't you want to be somewhere you don't have to be scared all the time? Don't you want to be able to enjoy your powers? Don't you want to have more than the life that you're being forced into by small-minded idiots?

That's right, guys: "Let It Go" adapts to become a proper villain song, sung by the Snow Queen to tempt Elsa into a life of magic and isolation. And it sort of works. Elsa doesn't outright forget about Anna, but... she wants to stay. It doesn't feel like there's anything at home for her, and she likes the idea of practicing her magic in a place where she doesn't have to constantly be on alert.

So now we are in the middle third-ish of the movie! It is an exciting middle third-ish but it is getting somewhat late at night and I am starting to guiltily feel like I should be starting to wrap this ish up.

Hey, remember when I said "to make a long story short"? THAT WAS A REALLY FUNNY JOKE, YOU GUYS.

Here some important things that happen in the middle third-ish of the movie:

• The Queen trains Elsa to be a super-awesome-mega-badass with her ice powers.

• The Queen explains, briefly, that she was driven away by people who were scared of her powers, and that nobody is trustworthy.

• Kai and Elsa become friends!!! The Queen only sporadically has time for anybody, but Kai is always around, and half the time the Queen has trapped them in an ice room or something.

• The Queen keeps a close eye on Elsa, but she and Kai manage to get Anna out of the cell eventually. Which is nice, even if they just have to hurry her up to a tower room where the Queen is unlikely to find her. Elsa tries to get Anna to go home, but Anna refuses to go home without her, even when Elsa says that she might be happier here than she ever was at home. If Elsa is going to stay, then fine, Anna will stay right along with her. Even if the castle is mostly made of ice and Anna is freezing.

• Elsa does her little "I'll touch you and then make fire happen from my fingers, and you'll be warm for a little while!" thing. This is crucial. Elsa and Kai might have to have a conversation about this, just so the audience knows how important this is. Elsa doesn't know why it only happens when she touches Anna, but she and Kai decide to practice and try and figure out why.

• Elsa is, in fact, kind of tempted to stay. Learning her powers! Feeling free to breathe, like out in the mountains she isn't a disappointment! A really really cute new friend who has a really good sense of humor and seems to legitimately just want to run around and play in the snow with her!

• Of course Kai also has moments of glumness where she gets a little snappish and won't explain why. Elsa figures it sort of has to do with the way the Queen can be dismissive of Kai sometimes.

• The writers get to figure out how to show Elsa and Kai falling in love! Elsa needs someone who'll appreciate her but not need her to be A Good Daughter or The Responsible Sister or The Obedient Student, and Kai needs to love someone and have them love her back, and they have similar senses of humor and know what it's like to be a little disappointed by someone you love (I'll get to that in a moment) and Elsa has the spine of steel and Kai has the generous nature and they both have absurdly overdeveloped senses of personal loyalty.

• TALE AS OLD AS TIME, BASICALLY.

• But between Kai and learning about her powers, and still getting to hang out with Anna, Elsa's motivation to get out of the mountains has dropped to pretty much zilch. She and Anna have a tiny fight about that, because Anna tries but she doesn't always understand why it was so miserable back home, and Elsa finally has to explain that this, how Anna feels now — trapped in a small space and hiding from someone dangerous who may or may not be malicious depending on the day — that's how Elsa feels all the time back in the village.

• So now we have Elsa, in the middle, and on either side we have Anna — who wants, for loving reasons, Elsa to do something that might not be healthy for her — and the Queen, who wants, for unloving reasons, Elsa to stay safe but completely isolated.

• Elsa just wants to learn about her powers and maybe kiss Kai a lot, she really wishes that this weren't so complicated.

• Kai hears some of the argument, and she and Elsa have a heart to heart. Probably. Elsa talks about knowing that her parents love her but are still a little afraid of her, and Kai explains that the Snow Queen is actually her mom. And it's hard, loving someone who barely remembers that you're her daughter but she's always been too scared to leave because she doesn't want to admit that her mom doesn't need her, and she remembers better days. 

• Wow, that suddenly became a downer. Anyway, then they probably sing a song. (THE LOVE DUET. A DISNEY CLASSIC.) About wanting something new! Something that can be just theirs, without society's baggage and family baggage and all that jazz. POSSIBLY THERE IS KISSING NOW?

• The Queen decides that the next step in Elsa's training is for Elsa to ice over her own heart, because how will she ever master ice if she's not ice inside and out? 

• Elsa mentions this to Kai, and Kai flips.

So now we get the full story of the Snow Queen! She was happily with Kai's... dad? Dad, I guess. I know, I know, yet another straight couple, but I'm more okay with fridging (read: killing off for the sake of another character's emotional anguish) a dude than another lady. Plus, I'm not sure whether I want the Queen to be an Evil Lesbian, but I'm open to discussion on that point.

Anyway, she was happily with Kai's also-magical dad and the not-very-magical Kai, and then... well, you can probably guess at this point what happened next. People found out about the powers, they blamed things on them — blizzards, crop failure, etc. — and they killed Kai's dad.

(The Snow Queen may or may not be an actual queen. Choose your own adventure on that one.)

And it was sad, and horrible, and miserable, and Kai was barely 8 years old, but Kai insists that they might've been okay if the Queen hadn't realized that she could numb her own grief. Magical ice, it turns out? Makes you stop feeling anything. But the problem is that if you ice yourself up for long enough, you start to forget all the people you once loved, be they your dead spouse or your still-living daughter. 

She couldn't ice Kai, because Kai is impervious to cold and ice of both the magical and non-magical varieties.

So that's where the Snow Queen's villainy comes in — not in malice, but in apathy. She just doesn't care about all the people she might be hurting because she wants to live in a perpetual snowstorm.

Kai liked Elsa first because she seemed to make the Queen happy, and part of Kai still wants her mom to be happy, even though the last 8-9 years of her life could only be be termed "abject neglect." And then she was hoping that maybe they could use Elsa's magical fire power to melt the ice in the Queen's heart, and then she started to really, really, really like Elsa just because Elsa is Elsa. But there's not a chance that Kai is going to let another person ice over her own emotions.

Plus, it turns out that as tempted as Elsa was by the idea of staying, "you'll have to lose your memories of your sister and your new really cute girlfriend/friend whom you really want to kiss" is sort of a hard no.

Castle Permafrost? Castle Vanilla Ice?

So Kai, the insanely loyal one who's never seriously thought about leaving her mom, the one who has not been subtle about maybe wanting Elsa and Anna to just stay in the ice palace forever, helps organize their escape from Castle Icebucket while she stays behind to try and distract the Queen.

(It's not actually called Castle Icebucket, it's got a much more ominous name. Obviously.)

So they run! It's a very exciting escape sequence. There's snow and flowing hair and panicked looks back over their shoulders and stuff.

And the Snow Queen doesn't really care about much, but she cares about her powers, and she's angry about how it feels like Elsa is throwing them back in her face. So she comes after them, and the villagers probably start to gather around from a safe distance, I guess. Elsa and the Snow Queen end up having an epic battle that's vaguely reminiscent of Elsa and Anna playing at the beginning of the movie — sliding over pathways made of ice, creating ice armor for themselves, except a lot scarier and more hostile.

"Love makes you weak," the Snow Queen tells Elsa. "Love makes you sacrifice. Love demands everything of you. Love ruins you."

And some idea sparks inside Elsa, and she realizes what you, gentle reader, may have realized already: that she can make fire when she touches Anna because she loves Anna. Also that you're prooobably not going to win an ice fight against someone who calls herself the Snow Queen.

"Sometimes," she says. "But sometimes it's worth it." And she grabs Anna's hand and shoots a jet of fire at the Queen.

The Snow Queen is surprised, but it was just a short jet, and she recovers. So Elsa beckons to Kai, who's been anguished on the sidelines, and grabs her, and then with Anna and Kai she can finally muster enough power to flame up the Queen...

...which, you guessed it, melts the ice inside her heart. It is as cheesy as a giant wheel of brie smothered in gorgonzola dressing and I DON'T CARE.

Even better, though: after all that's done and Kai has made sure that her mom's okay, she comes over to Elsa and asks her how she figured out what made the fire work, and Elsa is like, "Um. I figured that if I loved somebody...?" Kai just sort of stares at her, so Elsa adds hastily, "Or like! It could be like! Just, um, very, um, warm emotions, is sort of what—"

And then Kai dips her back into a kiss and it is VERY ROMANTIC AND EXCELLENT AND PERFECT.

Anyway, so after that, the movie's basically done. The Queen needs to recover and everybody needs some time to chill out, so they move the Queen into their village. Some of the people in the village are not happy at this idea, but Elsa's parents (feeling a little guilty) tell them to put up or shut up, basically. And then probably agree to take care of the Queen, because Kai's taken care of her for the last 8 years and shouldn't have to.

Kai and Elsa decide to stick around for a while so Kai can get to know her mom again and Elsa can hang out with Anna, now that the worst has happened — the villagers have found out — and it still seems to have turned out okay. And anyway, now she can be sure that her parents will have her back if there's any trouble, and Anna will definitely defend her to the death, and she's got Kai and even the Queen.

She doesn't want to hang out there forever, though, so eventually she and Kai are going to go traveling and see the world and it's going to be great.

Flash forward a few months, and we see Anna and Elsa and Kai running out into the woods to go skating, and maybe there are even a few other kids around, and it's great and they all live happily ever after, the end.