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That's a beautiful story, I admire your bravery. Thank you for sharing!

Art by @shes-an-iso – commissioned by me and posted here with permission

Realization.

It is ten years ago and I am watching Frozen.

It is ten years ago and I am watching Elsa transform herself into her truest self, watching her spin threads of blue around herself, seizing power for herself – radical self-actualization.

The glint of Elsa’s ice dress reflects in my eyes as I watch Elsa strut into the sunlight – and I do not have words for why I am so moved.

I do not have words, but the shimmer stays.

It is ten years ago and I am choosing to become a part of the Frozen fandom.

I have lurked in fandom circles before, but never posted a thing, never made an account.

It is my first time being part of an online fan community – and, as awful as fandoms can be at times, this fandom – for me – ten years ago – is truly a community.

I begin to make friends in the Frozen fandom.

Some of these friends are trans.

The gleam of Elsa’s hair in the rose-gold dawn shines again in my eyes, and shyly, I begin asking questions of my friends.

Realization is nothing without the words to process it – and my friends give me words, my friends help me to understand.

I am a trans woman.

It is in this online space that I first take the name Liza for myself, since this online space is the only place that I can allow myself to be.

I build for myself. My blog is my own ice palace. What I cannot sculpt in daily life, I carve within online spaces – offering my writing, my thoughts, my edits, my soul to the world.

Everyone here knows me as Liza.

Even as I’m in the closet to my family for years, in here, I am Liza. My friends know me as I am, and as Liza is all they will ever know me.

But I am in the closet. For years.

(It’s why Do You Want to Build a Snowman still breaks me.)

In the closet more out of some misplaced sense of duty to my family than out of dread, though I am scared. Always scared. And then in the closet because I feel it’s better if I bury this. Not better for me, but for them. If I’m bleeding inside, it doesn’t matter. I can put on a show. I have fine-woven gloves. Well-taught decorum. Be the good girl you always have to be, etc.

(Maybe it’s my fault I’m in the closet for years. Anons on this site have told me that in the past. I don’t have it as bad as others in the closet, I’m just a coward, the fault is mine, the fault is mine…)

Fuck off.

(People blame Elsa for the thirteen years in the same way, placing the blame on her and not the tutelage that trained her, because her parents loved her, you see, and love becomes a convenient means of shifting blame to the victim.)

In June 2016, after the Pulse shooting, I make a post about how I’m never going to come out. I am terrified, heartbroken, mangled by grief – but my friends are there for me. My friends send me messages of support, of compassion.

I still cherish the memory of those.

Years pass. When I finally come out to my father, I can barely say the words, barely look him in the eye.

It is ten years since Frozen and I have come out to my family – far too late. I have been on HRT more than a year now.

(My dad still misgenders me when he thinks I’m out of earshot. He resents when I get frustrated with him over this.)

It is ten years since Frozen and I am Elsa on the North Mountain, staring into the whirlwind of an uncertain future, defiant and scared.

And I know – I know – that I didn’t process I was trans because of the film – it was because of the friendship of fellow trans people, trans people who happened to be Frozen fans a decade ago – but my journey of self-realization, my time in the closet, my creation of a sense of self, are so entwined with memories of Frozen that I can’t help but think of it when thinking about my own transition…

Can’t help but think of Elsa, hips swaying, arms outstretched, flashing, radiant –

Happy tenth anniversary, Frozen.

And thank you. Thank you.

(This is okay to reblog. In fact, please do. It is a sliver of my soul that I offer to the world.)

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Frozen

Art by Ami Thompson

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Ten years after Frozen's release, I just want to say again that the Elsanna ship was and is a beautiful thing, that it had and has a positive impact on scores of people who have created fanart and fanfiction over the years - that this ship has inspired stories that move me - and that, especially a decade ago, it was a safe haven for queer folks figuring themselves out.

It was and is and will remain beautiful and I will die on this hill.

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This is long overdue, (and I really apologise for that, @j-peters0n ! ), but I just had to finish this piece I started half a year ago. It took me nigh 6 months just to colour in the last piece because I barely survive every night I come home from work. I hope you like it, and guysss you really should read J’s fic, Technicolor.

As an artist, I hope that any nuance I add to a picture can be understood the people who see it, but anyways. The idea was that when they kiss Anna’s colour leaks to Elsa’s previously dull and dreary world. That’s why Anna (as seen in Elsa’s PoV) is monochromatic, and why Elsa (as seen from Anna’s PoV) is so rich in colour. And I really love this concept, as it gives me a chance to play with super bright and fun colours. Added quotes from the original story, repurposed to fit in this short comic strip version. =D

(CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’S ALMOST BEEN 3 YEARS SINCE FROZEN CAME OUT THOUGH???) ///

back to obscurity for me.

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Frozen Canon Talk - 4th Edition

Talking about Canon in the Frozen Franchise

It's been a long time coming, but here it is finally. Click on the link below to read the book.

-Frozen Canon Talk 4th Edition-

As I always say, if you see something that is confusing, if there are any mistakes, have information that you would like to add, or have any questions, do not hesitate to comment.

Please Enjoy!

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The Elsanna ship, ten years later...

When I think about the golden days of the Elsanna ship (circa 2013-2015), two images come to mind – this one… 

…and this one…

Both pieces of fanart were created to celebrate the legalization of gay marriage nationwide in the US in June 2015 – and both encapsulate the youthful energy, the innocence, the idealism of Elsanna shippers at the time. They might seem silly now to some people, but only because they are so earnest. There is an achingly earnest sincerity here because the Elsanna-shipping community was made up of a bunch of young, queer Disney fans. 

The ship wasn’t created by a bunch of creeps who wanted to “disregard or misunderstand the message of the film.”

The ship was created by a group of young wlw, young lesbians, young queer folks, who were drawn to the film because of its themes of self-acceptance and self-understanding (because they UNDERSTOOD the message of the film.) And they were drawn to the sisters’ bond because, in some way, it resonated with them – a connection between two people that was based on coming to an understanding of shared trauma and pain, a connection rooted in compassion for someone othered by society.

Frozen came out in 2013. Korrasami wouldn’t be canon for a while yet, things like Lumity and Catradora weren’t even a dream, and these naive, earnest, heartfelt kids wanted to see something that reflected themselves so much that they built a ship from the ground up.

I have seen people in recent years express bewilderment about why the Elsanna ship came into being, saying things like, “Why does this ship exist? Elsa and Anna aren’t in love; they’re sisters.” Which… duh. Obviously, they are not in love. Obviously, they are sisters. Such an attempt to say, “Checkmate, creeps!” ignores why ships come into existence in the first place. Non-canon ships emerge because there are aspects of two particular characters that the audience can relate to or project a part of themselves upon/see themselves in; and because there are elements of these characters’ dynamic/interactions that the audience can project upon/see themselves in.

And with Elsa and Anna’s dynamic together and connection throughout the film? There was A LOT that a young queer audience latched onto - NOT because these shippers felt the film was secretly espousing incest subtext, but because the characters were created to be broadly relatable to anyone with a difficult home life, anyone who felt isolated and ostracized from society, and so their narrative together lent itself to a queer reading.

Consider: on the one hand, there is Elsa – a character who exploded across the popular consciousness because so many people related to her individual story, many of them queer young people. Isolated for who she was, taught to repress her identity and her emotions, forced to conform to a society that could harm her. There hardly needs to be any more ink spilled on why Elsa struck such a chord with queer viewers – and the queer viewers who helped to shape the Elsanna ship were among the people who fell in love with her as much as anyone.

On the other hand, there is Anna. Anna’s story is different from Elsa’s, but bears many of the same marks of trauma. Anna is forced to live in a world where the rules feels arbitrary and uncaring, where nothing makes sense but no one will tell her why. Not her sister, who has been taught that she must shut Anna out. Not her parents, the authorities of the society she lives in who put the rules in place. Like many queer young people, Anna is forced to navigate a world where the rules are arbitrary and cruel. And, like her sister, she begins to internalize that pain. “What did I ever do to you?” she cries to Elsa at the coronation because, without the full context, she can’t rule out that this might be her fault – or at least, that societal forces around her tell her that this is her fault even when she did nothing.

There was so much in each character individually that queer young people resonated with.

When you factor in that their connection is something that the powers that be within the film attempt to forbid, that their connection is something that is at first treated as something that needs to be suppressed but that ultimately proves to be a positive force for both of them, then… yeah, it becomes clearer why so many queer young people aching to connect with something would see themselves in that relationship.  

I know of several prominent artists on this site who got their start in the Elsanna fandom, or who were happy to take part in the ship because they saw the way other queer young people connected with it (signatures blotted out to prevent potential harassment of artists over decade-old art):

People don’t like to remember it, but ten years ago, there were wlw fandom blogs on here that would casually make or reblog Elsanna art – not because they had some secret insidious agenda – but because the ship connected with them on an emotional level or because they understood why it did with others:

And there were shippers of other queer ships reaching out:

The Elsanna fandom of 2013-15 was a reflection of a group of queer young people (primarily wlw) – a reflection of their passion, their dedication, their craftsmanship, their creativity, and their longing to be seen. It was a group of queer young people using the pieces that a film they loved gave them to create something of their own, from their hearts, for themselves.

Create something of their own with their own spirit and hopes, reflecting their own aspirations and fears and dreams for the future.

And sure, people now can say, “That’s disgusting! How could anyone do that?” In 2020, someone called out a lovely person on here because she shipped Elsanna nearly a decade ago (even though she HAD LONG SINCE DELETED ALL EA CONTENT FROM HER BLOG, even!):

This callout is dishonest. It claims that the individual “thinks shipping them is cute” even though, when this was written, the person had not shipped Elsanna in years. It also claims Elsanna is p/*do/ph/ilic when it is not. (It is incest, obviously, and that is inherently problematic.) It also tries to make a connection between the person wanting queer rep and shipping an inherently problematic ship, when those things do not correlate at all. You can ship something and never want it to be canon. You can ship something and not want it to be “representation” – and that’s what being in the Elsanna fandom of 2013-15 was like.

People didn’t want it to be canon. They didn’t want it to be “representation.” Everyone already knows that incest is wrong. People don’t have to ship something as a crusade for representation. But people DID ship it because they saw something of themselves in the ship – and they saw the opportunity to project something of themselves (their queerness, their sense of being othered and isolated by their families, etc.) onto characters that they loved. The ship provided the opportunity for these young people to explore their senses of self and explore their identities.  

And sure, as I’ve said in the past, perhaps that wasn’t ideal – the fact that these young folks were starving for anything that was like them and so had to make a feast from whatever they had available. But I find something BEAUTIFUL in the fact that so many people were able to come together and create such beautiful things because Elsanna inspired them. I know people who met their partners, met their wives, through this ship. I’ve seen firsthand the positive influence it has had.

Like Elsa on the North Mountain, we felt isolated, we were figuring ourselves out. And we built wonders with what was inside of us. The beauty of some of the art in this ship is akin to the beauty of Elsa’s ice palace. The writing I have seen in this ship can be as elegant as any elegantly-sculpted spire Elsa fashioned through her own magic and her own will.   

This ship was ours, is ours. 

We made it for ourselves, to reflect ourselves and our identities and share aspects of those identities with others, the same way people came to ship Elsamaren when F2 came out. It may have been new faces and a new ship, but it was part of the same idea, just for a different time. 

And when you look at the thousands of pieces of Elsanna fanfiction that have been written, and the thousands of pieces of fanart (especially the beautifully diverse styles of early Elsanna fanart) – you don’t get so many people expounding their passion and creativity on something unless it means something to them, and Elsanna meant something to so many people. Mattered to them. Look at the excitement and joy in people’s words in the early days of the fandom if you don’t believe me. 

And I think that’s beautiful.

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My favourite Elsanna artist 😭❤️

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Masterpiece xD

Sorry but I HAD to do this! XD

Hope you like,

Vago

#frozen #frozen 2 #Elsa #Anna #elsanna #so true

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OMG she's so gorgeous! Anna's new jacket suits her perfectly!!

Source: @r_dewantara on Twitter

http://twitter.com/r_dewantara/status/1251917059643936768

#Elsa #frozen #frozen 2 #exploring the North #Anna

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That's amazing!

“This is why we don’t play with fire”

Sword!Anna | For @the-awkward-feistypants  🎂🎉

Anna’s new outfit. That’s it, that’s the commentary. Literally my head has been completely empty except for thoughts of her new outfit– Heck, I even ended up loving her up-do when at first I wasn’t so used to it!  It feels so strange drawing them by themselves so I drew a little bonus as well c’: Do Not Separate ❄️🍁 Anna should be more careful when playing with fire and blades… — Have Sword!Anna, Fire!Anna and NewOutfit!Anna all in one! ♥ And again, happy late birthday to @the-awkward-feistypants 🥺 Sword!Anna will be a proper canonical reality one day! You deserve it c’:

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Sooo Anna's new outfit on the book cover inspired me so much that I was eager to draw some elsanna stuff!

I couldn't choose which filter I liked more for the second stage, so there are two of them

I know Elsa's sleeves in this outfit are different from what I've drawn, but just wanted to keep them this way x)

Don't repost, please! Reblog is welcome!

Hope you'll like it!

#inspired by Anna's gorgeous jacket #I'm in love with this jacket #I'm soooo gay for them both #Anna #Elsa #elsanna #northuldra #explore the North #Elsanna fluff #frozen #frozen 2 #BringElsaHome #AnnaIsHerHome #give Anna a sword and Elsa

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I neeeed content

My fellow stans, can you recommend me cool Elsanna fanfics youve read or reading? Any kind of AU is fine by me. Please and thank you!

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Like or reblog if you are still extraordinarily passionate about Elsanna.

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Hey, if you don't mind, would you give us a list of your favorite elsanna fanfics? Or maybe a long and good one if you're busy.

I actually have a ficrec in my blog, it is 6 years old so mind I could have changed opinion on most of them. But it is pretty long if you wanna take a look.

If some of them are not on FF.net try the google drive archive in the fandom or on AO3

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gotcha!

part 1

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A-KA

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CUTE CUTE CUUUUUUUUUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

artist Nyamo@iPad