12MoF: This Is The End

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse
October: The Other One With the Curse
November: The Curse, 3.0
December: One More Curse for the Road
January, better: Whatever, Let's Just Talk About People's Feelings

I meant to start this one earlier, so I could actually finish in February instead of March. I didn't. (But I did start on the last day of February.) I would apologize, ducklings, but I can't actually bring myself to be sorry. There have been a lot more... ups and downs, I suppose, during the past few weeks, and the problem with the up bits is that you feel like you can do lots of things but only a few things seem important, and the problem with the down bits is that you feel like you can't do anything and nothing seems important.

So it's March, now. I think we'll all live.

For this month I wanted to bring us back around to the beginning; I've done a lot of experimenting over the past few months, straying further and further from the original movie, but there were some things in Frozen that I thought could've been more interesting, and I explored them a little in my original posts, but there was always a story it seemed like I had left too late to give the proper attention to. But this is the last month, and even if I've still left it too late, as per usual, this is really the last opportunity.


Also, sidenote, actress/musician Zendaya showed up at the Oscars looking stunning in a white dress and ever since, I keep visualizing her as Elsa, so here, have a pic:

AP Images

And the dreadlocks whipping around in the ice and wind would be AMAZING.

Anyway.

12MoF: Eleven-point-five, or: "Whatever, let's just talk about people's feelings."

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse
October: The Other One With the Curse
November: The Curse, 3.0
December: One More Curse for the Road
January, part the first: The Eleventh Hour, or, The One Where Anna Has Powers Too

I did realise, somewhere in the middle of those last few paragraphs, that I had a better way to structure my 11th month plot (I would call it my January plot, but let's be real, that one was posted on Feb 1 and my ostensible December story was posted on January 3, so) and that was was as a YA novel.

As it happens, I'm a big fan of YA novels, so maybe that's partially my own comfort zones showing. It could be a miniseries/show, maybe, as long as that show is okay with having a ton of flashbacks. Lost and OUaT level flashbacks.

So this is a rewrite, basically, of eleven-point-zero, aka the mess that I posted on Sunday. I'm not always a perfectionist when it comes to this series, but I really couldn't let that one stand.

12MoF: The Eleventh Hour (...Month)

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse
October: The Other One With the Curse
November: The Curse, 3.0
December: One More Curse for the Road

It's the eleventh month, guys. Just one more month to go. Lord knows what I'll do after this is done.

Fun fact, guys: this month is a mess. Just. A mess. I don't recommend it. The best I can say is that it has interesting moments and I could probably tighten it up into slightly less of a mess? Maybe I'll try that sometime later.

12MoF: One more curse for the road

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse
October: The Other One With the Curse
November: The Curse, 3.0

I did, actually, consider writing a non-curse episode this month. (Last month.) Really I did. There was going to be Betrayal, and Daring Escapes, and Other Powers, and Exciting Magic Ice Communication, and all sorts of other exciting things, but I still need a little more time to work the details out on that one. Also, I like curses. Obviously.

12MoF: The Curse, 3.0

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse
October: The Other One With the Curse

So it turns out I really like curses. WHATEVER. YOU DON'T OWN ME.

Credit where credit is due: like half of this idea is entirely because of my sister, who very kindly let me bounce ideas off her over the course of our entire four-hour bus ride back home and (FOR ONCE) (just kidding) (mostly) was very helpfully like "Yeah, you cooooould do that... or maybe instead you could do this other thing that actually makes sense." THANKS BABE YOU'RE THE BEST.

This month we get The Curse 3: Now With Actual Villains! This is very exciting for all of us, since I am generally reasonably miserable with villains. This is also very exciting because I get to talk about how much the patriarchy sucks; I know you're all obviously looking forward to that.

Will there be more curses in upcoming months? MAYBE. WHATEVER. YOU DON'T OWN ME.

kenneth libbrecht over at snowcrystals.com

12MoF: The Other One With the Curse (aka, rom-com Frozen)

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper
September: The One With the Curse

As you may have noticed, dear readers, I am all about reusing themes from previous months in slightly different ways. Innovation is not the be-all end-all of creativity, here. I mean, I'm not in the "there are only really two stories in the world" camp, because that seems a bit... delusional (I mean, even if you're saying there are only two genres in the world, action and romance, you're missing out on things like the classic literary genre of "white dudes doing exactly nothing and then, presumably, dying eventually," which I have been informed is very important to people who are not me) but many glorious things have come out of people reworking and reinterpreting tropes and story elements with a long, long history behind them.

tl;dr look whatever this just has some stuff in it that didn't make sense in last month's version so I gave it its own month, okay.

[Edit: Okay, I SWEAR I meant to do this before the last day of the month. I started it like a week ago and everything. And yet! Somehow here we are again. Alas.]

[Edit 2: Also, then Halloween happened. Specifically, Halloweentown 2 and the fact that I had to drag myself out to Brooklyn. In case you're curious, although this was planned beforehand, most of it was written on the 2 train, which I guess is one argument for long commutes.]

[Not an edit but just so you know, this is the ROM-COM-IEST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN.]

12MoF: The One With the Curse

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears
August: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper

Somewhere outside my room, Roommate A (as opposed to Roommate 1) is talking about falling down the rabbit hole that is the Mexican Revolution. I have no idea what that means.

Anyway! Hurry up and get beneath the cut tag, nerds; this month, we're talking curses.

Picture of ice crystals shamelessly yoinked from Steve Truett's website. But hey, I'm crediting.

12MoF: The One Where Elsa is an Accidental Kidnapper

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.
June: I Go It Old School, Take Two
July: A Wild Kristoff Appears

I am a little late on August. So it goes. In life, we must accept the things we cannot change, ducklings.

Anyway, happy halfway-point to all of us! You for sticking with me, me for... only posting these a little late, I guess. To celebrate, we're going to shake things up. I get bored astonishingly easily for someone who hates change so much. So today, ducklings, we get to talk about how I would write Frozen as a webcomic. With illustrations, even! Well, okay, one illustration and one set of stick figures, but whatever, good enough.

12MoF: A Wild Kristoff Appears

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
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.

12MoF: I go it old school, take two

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
May: The One Where The Snow Queen Isn't Elsa. Also, Lesbians.

Short post this month, ducklings, because I am sick and don't want to think too much.

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.

12MoF: The One Where Elsa is the Snowman NO WAIT HEAR ME OUT

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen: 

Prologue 

1stMoF: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send a Lot of Letters

I'm not going to lie: this idea came out on the spur of the moment, as part of an instinctive reaction of "You want Anna to be the main character? Fine, I'll GIVE you Anna as the main character, and it'll STILL have more Anna&Elsa interaction. Because I can."

Just so you know where this is coming from.

As mentioned previously: Anna and Elsa are still ladies of color. Just in case you forgot. Also, for the sake of having some variety between the Disney princesses, I'm going to go ahead and say that they're both short and have waists larger than an inch.

(Also you should go check out this redesign of them as Inuit, because it's really cute.)

Because this is now officially Anna's Movie, we don't see Elsa at the beginning — instead it's like the beginning of, say, How To Train Your Dragon, where we frontload some of the important info right off the bat in a voiceover or song. Key points: Anna's parents died a few years ago, her sister was lost, and their land was cursed with perpetual ice and snow, which understandably has been not so great for things like inter-kingdom trade. Not that we're really going to get into how the import/export business suffers when your major travel routes are prone to avalanches, but we get the idea that Arendelle, which used to be a thriving hub of people, has suddenly been thrust into a forced, and painful, isolation.

The song/voiceover is Anna's way of making all this into a sort of story, something she could be telling to one of the paintings — a form of abstraction to help her think about it without breaking down. Not a fairytale, because she's ambivalent about fairytales, but a history, because she loves history. 

12MoF: The One Where Elsa and Anna Send A Lot of Letters

Previously on 12 Months of Frozen: Prologue, aka I talk about why I'm rewriting Frozen twelve times. Also, I accidentally deleted this entire post and now I have to rewrite it, so... Joy.

Setting: A fictional kingdom which we're going to continue to call Arendelle for the sake of simplicity, although as I previously mentioned, that doesn't mean it has to be Scandinavia Lite. It could be, say, Fake Japan. Doesn't matter. It's a fake country with a fictional history, so as long as we're not racist or appropriative (that is a VERY IMPORTANT CONDITION and one I honestly don't trust Disney with), we can give it the scenery and architecture we want. Feel free to insert your own.

Really the only relevant thing is that we're just going to go ahead and imagine that all of the characters are POC. Except Hans, I guess. Hans can be white. Either way.

Story: We skip the ice-logging scene and just go straight to Anna dragging Elsa out of bed to build a snowman. This goes about the same way it does in the movie — which is to say, initially awesome, subsequently less so — except that instead of running to the trolls, the king and queen go straight to the royal healer and their most trusted royal advisor guy. Cue all the same type of "oh dear, this is very dangerous, people will be scared, she needs to get that ish under control ASAP, blah blah blah" exposition, the only difference being that the king and queen decide to send Elsa away instead of, you know, everyone else in the castle. Because they don't want to be responsible for laying off hundreds of people, and also nobody wants to go down in history as a country's first Hermit King and Queen.

(Although, the advisor admits, magic isn't his speciality. Most knowledge of magic left the country when the trolls did. Ooh, I wonder if that'll come back to be important later?)

A Whole Year of Winter: Twelve Months of Frozen Rewrites

I’ve been meaning to write this post pretty much since I first saw Frozen (...a month ago? Yeah, sounds about right), and just never got around to it because I’m lazy and, you know, lazy. I think it’s time, though, particularly because I can’t step out of my apartment without tripping over a pile composed half of ice and half of very dirty slush. Anyway, I’m trying to work on my follow-through.

[Sidenote: the prevalence of blogs on the internet is weirdly reassuring in terms of opinion posts. I’d normally worry about people reading the things I think, but seriously, who but my friends is going to read this? More importantly, who the hell is going to care? Much like Elsa fucking off to be alone in the middle of the mountains, it’s sort of liberating.]

[Not-a-sidenote: This post is definitely going to have spoilers for Frozen. Like, a lot of them. Almost immediately.]

So, Frozen was okay.