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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
We've gone through a third of 12MoF thus far (a third! halle-frickin'-lujah), and this whole time, I have stubbornly refused to include Kristoff. If by "stubborn" we mean "he was pretty extraneous to the plots I was writing, and also I don't feel any particular sense of regret about this," anyway. But no matter, because this state of affairs ends today!
Interestingly, in a certain sense, this month's offering — very abruptly made up because the two other versions I was working on weren't cohering in time — is actually very similar to certain things about Frozen that I was ambivalent about the first time. Heavy on the Anna+Kristoff action, ambiguous Elsa, trolls... This is just a different spin on those things.
But I drew the line at making Kristoff a cis/straight dude, because screw that.
And because I was having a conversation about this just now: for the record, the reason why the last two 12MoFs have featured a central queer romance, and the reason why I'm planning to have multiple trans Kristoffs, is because the central thesis of this entire project is "working within certain limitations, how could I remake the elements of this story in order to make it work better for me?" And writing an outline for a kid's movie that features LGBTQIetc. characters works better for me than writing yet another cishet romance. Because when I was a kid, if I had seen a movie aimed at me where a girl fell in love with another girl, I would've watched and re-watched that VHS until it died a grueling electronic death.
This is a selfish project at heart. As with most things that I release into the world, it's just a selfish project that I hope other people will like.
Unlike the other months thus far, we don't start with our main characters as children. Instead we jump right in: Anna and Kris (a female Kristoff) are in their late teens, and Anna is ecstatic because Elsa is finally coming home. She was doing some sort of magic-studying thing, apparently — Anna is hazy on the details, but Elsa's been gone for ages, ever since they were kids, and Anna's missed her a lot, and now she's coming home! There is an element of ~~mystery here, in Anna's inability to remember when Elsa left, but Anna doesn't care. Probably she sings a song.
Kris is a little warier. Not that she's not excited about Elsa coming back — she likes Elsa, and it's hard not to be excited when Anna's so happy about it — but Anna made some vague comment ages ago about Elsa studying up in the mountains, and the Hearteaters live in the mountains. The trolls said so, and the trolls are usually right.
Anna doesn't entirely believe that the trolls exist, no matter how long Kris has been talking about them. And she really doesn't believe that the Hearteaters exist; she thinks it's just a sort of village superstition, this idea of giant snow monsters that steal your heart, freeze it, and take it back to a giant cave in the mountains where they can eat it at their leisure. And everyone knows, when your heart is frozen and eaten, you can't feel anything anymore.
Anna is also excited about the fact that Elsa coming home will take a little pressure off from her parents. Elsa's the heir, but the longer that she's gone, the more that their parents seem to forget that they already have a queen-to-be and that Anna, as perpetual princess, shouldn't have to do things like study taxes or think about getting married yet.
"Married?" Kris asks, her eyes widening. Anna is very outwardly dismissive of marriage, but over the next few scenes, she and Kris keep flicking each other these little glances while the other isn't looking, and so all we very-intelligent viewers can tell that they're cute and bantery and TOTALLY IN LOVE. They're just both convinced it's unrequited, because they're pining doofuses.
(Honestly, I'm a little surprised it's taken me so long to work pining-best-friends into this series. Making up for lost time!)
BUT!!! It starts snowing more and more heavily, and several days of blizzard-ing go past after Elsa was supposed to come home, and they still haven't heard from her.
Anna, anxious, drags Kris pretty much all the way back to the castle. Her parents have received a scrawled note via messenger bird just saying 'Don't expect me.'
Cue, you know, the freakout. Anna insists on going to find Elsa; their parents, who definitely know more than they're saying, are like, "Oh, hell no"; Kris isn't going to outright tell Anna that she can't go but is super-nervous about the Hearteaters.
But of course, Anna is intensely stubborn, and so she sneaks out. Kris, who is less stubborn but knows Anna really well, meets her in the courtyard with a pack of supplies and, sighing, comes along with.
To make a long story short(ish), they meet Elsa, and she spills the beans, probably via song. Well, okay, there are a lot of beans to spill. Namely: oh, yeah, she got sent away to study because her parents didn't know if she was cursed or magical, and either way, they weren't willing to take the chance that they might wake up one night with icy toes. And not just that, but when they were kids, she accidentally hurt Anna (made some ice, Anna slipped on it), which is part of why their parents sent her away, and she's been tormenting herself ever since. It's easier when she's away at magic school with a few other people, but the closer it got to the day of her scheduled return, the more scared and nervous and anxious she got.
Spilled beans part two: all this made it really easy for the Hearteaters to swoop in when she was vulnerable and worried about coming home. YES, THEY'RE REAL.
That's a lot to sing about. Maybe the song is just about the Hearteaters and being miserable and scared and suddenly feeling like maybe having your heart iced over so all your feelings are muffled wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Maybe being alone and not loving someone is okay if it means you don't hurt them, and it's nice not feeling much anymore.
At the end of the scene she tells them to go and summarily kicks them out of her house.
Anna is too stunned to even do anything for a moment; when she regains some semblance of sense, she expects Kris to drag her back down the mountain, but instead Kris takes her "where we should've gone at the beginning": to the trolls.
The trolls like Anna and tease the both of them mercilessly, while both are trying to pretend that they're totally not into the other. Finally, they all get down to business, and the trolls confirm that A) yeah, the Hearteaters definitely exist, was Anna just not paying attention to Kris all these years? and B) there's still hope for Elsa! The Hearteaters' prolonged dining schedule means that it takes them a while to eat the hearts they collect, so her heart is probably sitting on a shelf somewhere encased in ice. Also C) the Hearteaters are scary as shit, which is why the trolls have always had a policy of quietly running away from them.
Anna accuses the trolls of being cowards, because she's always been somewhat fiery and also she feels like if someone had tried to defeat the Hearteaters ages ago, then they wouldn't be having this problem now. The trolls raise their eyebrows and point out that they're kind of small, and while they're durable, they don't have quite the manpower needed to defeat a bunch of giant snow monsters. Sometimes, saving yourself instead of martyring yourself is an okay solution.
Anna and Kris set off again to go find the Hearteaters and try to save Elsa's heart, along with a few of the more adventurous trolls. Note: At this point in the movie people should be yelling at the screen for Anna and Kris to just get married already. They're very, very complementary opposites: Anna is the idea and Kris is the plan; Anna is the drive and spontaneity and Kris is the practicality; Anna makes sure that Kris has fun and leaves her comfort zone and Kris makes sure that Anna always has someone to ground her, a safe place, when she's upset or all over the place, which happens often. (But the opposite happens, too; when Kris is having a panic attack, Anna is there, etc. etc.) Also they think that the other one is super smart and amazing, and they have similar goofy senses of humor and banter-flirt a lot.
Anyway, along the way, they run into Elsa, who's leaving again; after all, there's nothing in Arendelle for her anymore. She clearly remembers when Anna was the most important thing in her world; it just doesn't seem to be that important anymore.
Anna hides her heartbreak at this and nudges Kris until Kris "casually" suggests that they travel together for a little while; Anna and Kris are also going in the direction to get off the mountain, and after all, Elsa hasn't spent much time on this particular mountain, and Kris is practically an experienced mountaineer. This is like 75% bullshit, but it works, and they end up traveling together until they run across the Hearteaters.
 |
| Yes, the Hearteaters happen to look like Marshmallow the Snow Monster. |
Elsa is like, "Screw this, I'm out," but Anna sneaks into the cave to try and find the hearts and save them. As you might imagine, she gets dramatically close! only to have the Hearteaters grab her and drag her out. She and Kris both start fighting them furiously, and the whole flock of trolls shows up to try and assist, but they're outnumbered.
Kris probably yells at Elsa, who is the only one who hasn't been incapacitated — not blaming her, but reminding her that she loves Anna, she doesn't want to let this happen, and telling Elsa all this stuff to help her remember. Probably she cribs some of the stories from the things Anna was saying at the beginning of the movie, and she mentions that Elsa was so scared of Anna being hurt when they were kids but now she's just standing there and letting Anna be hurt, and so what if Elsa's heart is covered in ice? She has snow magic, she should still be able to feel it!
Because, of course, the idea is that you can't let your fear of being hurt, or of doing something wrong, keep you from feeling things. Cheesy? Sure, but it applies just as much to Kris and Anna and their whole refusing-to-admit-that-they-like-each-other thing, and I'm a sucker for parallelism.
The biggest Hearteater pins Anna down and swallows Elsa's heart while Anna watches and screams. Elsa seems about to turn away, but then the Hearteaters are about to take out Anna's heart, and then a blast of snow comes out of nowhere and knocks them back. Elsa seems a little confused/torn about what she's doing, but something's happening in the stomach of the largest Hearteater: a sizzling sound, and a conspicuous melting. Elsa's heart is heating up, and it's melting not only the ice encasing it but also the Hearteaters, which are primarily made of snow. The more ice that melts, the more in control of herself Elsa is, and the battle between her and the Hearteaters gradually ramps up until she, Kris, Anna, and the trolls, manage to destroy them all.
They collapse, winded, and Elsa and Anna have a tearful reunion — Elsa tries to apologize for the heart thing, Anna tries to apologize for never realising that their parents had quasi-exiled Elsa because of her, both of them refuse to listen to the other because none of this shit was really anyone's fault. Then, as Elsa starts getting to know the trolls, Anna and Kris are forced to admit that they're stupidly in love with each other, and finally kiss. Probably they do it in some particularly charming manner, but it's like 2 am and I'm sleepy. (Is this my own fault? Yes. Do I care? No.)
The point is, they live happily ever after.
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