powers;

[thalassas]

snowdays and snowmen
- a closer look at Jelsa and their powers -

So the first thing people latch onto when they see Jelsa is "oh, pft, they have the same powers." This can lead to several lines of thinking, from the anti "that's such a shallow reason to ship them" to "they're the only ones who can be together intimately because they're immune to each other" and "Jack can help her understand her powers", which, to be honest, is my favorite line of thinking.

But just how similar are their powers and can Jack really help Elsa with them? How far can their powers influence each other? I'm listing down facts and putting in some opinions as well, so join me and let's share ideas on this.

[I am not a native English speaker so forgive me if I make any grammatical errors on this (that or I am running on five hours of sleep.)]




- origins -

The origin of Jack's power source is clearly shown to us at the movie. He died as a human after saving his sister-- an act of true love if you want to put it that way ( ;) ) and the Man In the Moon brought him back as Jack Frost. Based on supplementary material to the film, the ROTG-verse has spirits as well (of the mountains, hostile ones Pitch met during the Dark Ages, and several more) though it's not confirmed if some or all are also spirits by natural means, or if the Man In the Moon meddled with them. It's safe to say then, that Jack's revival was a special one, that the Man in the Moon intended to make him into a Guardian all this time, even if the call wasn't made immediately after he was revived. The nature of how he died (by his determination to save his sister) and the purpose of his revival is already a big hint on how his powers work, and we should keep this in mind as we go along. His powers' origins, in a sense, came from a pure and positive force.

Elsa, on the other hand, is a bit more interesting. Jennifer Lee, one of the directors of the film, stated outright in an interview that they simplified the origin of Elsa's power in the movie to not complicate it. A quote from the interview:

Jennifer: "At times we had a narration by a troll, who used to have a Brooklyn accent for no reason other than I miss Brooklyn. You know, no reason. But, we had this whole explanation like when Saturn is in this alignment with such-and-such on the thousandth year a child will be born and blah, blah, blah. And then –"

John: "Ultimately you almost throw it away with one line. So, the line is just like, “Was she born with the powers or was she cursed?. And it’s born with it and that’s the last piece of it."

But is that it? That can't be it! What about context clues in the movie itself? As the interview implies, they did away with details and went with the "born with it" route. Alone from this we can deduce that there might be a way for someone in the Frozen-verse to get powers from being cursed, and it can be from being born as well. But, this isn't the end of it! Someone went out of their way to translate the rune book King Agnarr was reading at the beginning of the movie.

To quote the article, the first line is interesting in that it goes roughly "stone brought forth by powers of the moon sky." The line is really unclear, but the rest of the context of the paragraph of the book talks about the trolls. Now the "stone" indicated in the passage could refer to two things. This stone could (as the translator notes) potentially be the main power source of the royal family, a curse that fell from the moon and a "wound" that came from cold. And the only ones that could heal it, as seen in the movie, were trolls, though as the theory goes on, the magic might not have been lifted completely, and some magic remained in the Arendelle royal bloodline.

Alternatively, the passage refers to "stone" as the trolls itself, as they are stone beings, and going down this path, the statement "stone(s) brought forth by powers of the moon sky, the trolls from the dark mountain realm have healing hands" means that the trolls' healing powers came from the moon as well.

The passage is not the perfect answer to the origin of Elsa's abilities, but given what facts we had, perhaps we can headcanon some form of connection between the magic of both the ROTG and Frozen verses :) and as we head down this tangent, Jack's powers coming from the moon, and moon magic related to the Frozen-verse as a potential healing/hostile source, I cannot wait for people to play around with this.

TO SUM IT UP: The origin of Jack's powers came from the moon, and they are born from positive things. Elsa's origin of powers are still a solid unknown but born into her, and in their universe, powers can also be obtained by being cursed. The moon is also involved but it is unclear if it is a negative force (like the translator theorizes) or as a positive one that gave trolls the healing magic.


- form -

Naturally, from two different sources, Jack and Elsa's powers, despite having control of the same element, vary. First aspect is appearance.

Notably, Jack's magic appears in a lightning like light that scatters. Almost like fireworks. He never seems to have full control of the blasts, and they always go as a long, spiky chain anytime he targets things. Elsa's, on the other hand, being a Disney Princess, has a bit more curve, a bit more ~*sparkle*~ in hers. The Making of Frozen has animators admitting the spirals of power Elsa makes are inspired from Norway's rosemaling, which is primarily seen everywhere in the movie: on wallpaper, flags, posts, dresses...



Another difference is the form of their frost; Jack's has a very signature look to his, fern-like and has this distinct way of creeping on things. Elsa's doesn't have a set pattern to them. Arguably, this could be a difference of tech (ROTG has better ice tech, but Frozen has superior snow tech) but interesting nonetheless.

Finally is the actual ice itself. Who isn't familiar with Elsa's wonderful Ice Palace? Which was inspired from Elsa's main snowflake; a straight, symmetric shape, all sharp lines with no curves. Jack's ice is rarely used in the film, but the one time it is, it could be influenced by Pitch's sand, but it's frozen in a way with curves still.

"Nothing special, the forms of their powers are different, so what, Kris?" you ask. Jack's already has a brand of wildness/naturality to it. Elsa's is more rigid, uniform. Their powers and personalities are connected.


- abilities -

The best way to compare their strengths is by the following analogy; Jack's powers are more suited for physical activities, Elsa's is for mental activities.

Jack's powers come with flight. This allows him to basically move everywhere and go anywhere he wants. The affiliation to wind also seems to boost his fighting skills, as most of it relies on parkour and flight. He's all for snowball fights, for wild sled rides, skating or not. whoops for anything fun that can be done outside.

Elsa's power relies on the creative side of snow and ice. Giant ice palace? No sweat. Instant skating rink? Watch that perfect heel stamp down. Need a dress makeover? Ice dresses and glitterfy-ing them is her thing! Snowmen? She's got you covered. Speaking of which--



Both had, in a way, created a life form from their powers. Although Elsa's arguably took it to eleven. Jack only had his frost creation, a rabbit he had drawn out of frost, that he had jump out to help Jamie into making him believe in the Easter Bunny. Given it acts like a real bunny, it must have some form of sentience.

Elsa, on the other hand, has Olaf, a completely self aware, talking snowman born from her and Anna's childhood personalities; Marshmallow, who, not as talkative as Olaf, but is very much alive as well, and finally, Elsa's multitude of snowbabies with Jack snowgies she had sneezed during Frozen Fever, who all communicate in squeaks, but seem to have a hivemind over one goal nonetheless, and are more hyper and naughtier than their older brothers.

Elsa's powers might seem stronger by this point, but this is the creative side. Jack's powers still excel by far on the combative and active nature.



Whereas Elsa could only push and shove her assailants with a fight-or-flight instinct using her powers, and has to create a giant snowman bodyguard, Jack has more mastery over combat using his powers in fighting to his advantage. Which would be quite fitting for a Guardian. You could debate that experience and their personalities could be a factor into combat, but again, Elsa's shoving away abilities are more defensive than offensive. We haven't seen her fight offensively with purpose, or maybe her powers weren't built for it. Jack can though, and will blast you with lightning ice if you in so much as harm a hair on a kid's head. Or you know, beat him in the tooth race.


- "center" -

Here we go. The main meat of this post. Strap yourselves in, folks. We going in.

Jack's power is aligned on the positive. We've only seen a few instances of negative emotions indirectly interfering with his powers. Despite the fact that he's the purveyor of all snowdays and funtimes, any time he feels down, a slight snowfall will start raining down. This is more apparent in the beginning when Jamie passes through him and another one arguably (given it can also be just a side effect of Jack blasting Pitch's sand into ice and smashing it) is after Sandy's "death."

Otherwise, any weather manipulation Jack has is all about the snow days he makes for the children. And if you can take into account whatever noodle incident happened during the blizzard of '68 that pissed Bunny off royally, Jack has free reign to make these snow days as big as he want them by choice. As mentioned in origins, Jack's power's was primarily already set for his task as a Guardian. At the very core, his snowballs and snowflakes can be imbued with his own unique magic to make people have fun. The only time it's strong in a lethal way?

Fighting against fear.

Again, this is lethal without being hostile as he's using his powers to fight off evil. This is what his powers were made of. To provide fun for children and help protect them. By the time he becomes a Guardian, and has actual believers, his powers would have been most likely been boosted by the belief of the children.

Jack is literally held together by a magic designed to protect others and make them happy, and is empowered by the positive feelings of innocent children. He has three hundred years of experience with his powers and hardly has problems with control.



Elsa though, owns the accidental and emotional department. To put into scale of how disastrous her powers could be, someone tried computing how much force Elsa could have used to freeze the fjord and cause winter and the answer is that it has equal the strength of a NUCLEAR BOMB. All in a space of a few days or so. And to think this all came from being upset over her powers finally being discovered, and progressively accumulates as events happen.

Her powers are primarily fueled by her emotions, especially since she hasn't practiced them, and a good chunk of her years have been spent in isolation, fear and anxiety. This has been rehashed a lot of times now, but there's no arguing that Elsa's powers feed on negative emotions for a big part of the movie. The only time she uses her magic under a positive influence is when she was young, when she's free in making her ice palace, and when she finally has love to back her up.

Otherwise her magic is out of control ice spikes born from anxiety and fear, to the point that she curses her sister twice with them, once in childhood, and a shot to the heart when they're grown up.

Not to say that Elsa's magic is evil, as it has shown it can be good when her emotional state is well, but it's definitely dangerous when piloted by negative emotions, which, let's admit it, she does a lot of. Once in that tangent, it can easily go haywire and out of her control, and she doesn't have the experience to reel it in. Her powers almost seem to have a mind of their own. Laid side by side together with Jack's powers, their powers, despite having control over the same element, could actually be a foil against one another.

A lot of fanworks depict Jack helping Elsa out of her more stressful power related problems, but if we take into account everything so far, would it really be a good idea? This could lead into interesting situations because Jack would be trying to help Elsa with a brand of magic that is foreign from his, born from an aspect similar to what his powers are assigned to combat. It's a paradox, but an interesting one. You could almost say that for example if Jack had been hit instead by the frozen heart curse Anna was hit with in the film, it won't freeze his heart because it's already frozen, but it could be, to a certain degree, toxic to him and might produce a similar effect as a direct torrent of black sand into his system. Jack is not fully immune to harm from Elsa, and could potentially be one of the more vulnerable to it.

But then again, love thaws, right? ;)



So, there you have it. Little facts/observations about these two and their powers. I really want to see what other people think regarding this though :) Feel free to point out any mistakes, opinions, headcanons or what have you.

edit: also want to add! I did not use Once Upon a Time or the Guardians of Childhood into this given I consider them separate canons from the original animated films.

TL;DR THEY COMMAND THE SAME ELEMENT BUT HAVE DIFFERENT POWERS NONETHELESS

Comments

[therentyoupay]

I TRIED TO READ THROUGH THE WHOLE THING IN ONE SITTING, BUT then I got too excited and had to pause and re-read. I am going to go through the whole thing sometime this weekend and respond with comments in separate threads to further explore some of the points that really caught my attention, I AM PUMPED.

[thalassas]

I'M SO SORRY IT GOT LONG orz;;

[angel_gidget]

Wow, thorough!

While I do find it interesting when folks try to draw connections to tie canon together so Jack and Elsa can coexist in the same universe, in my own head, being from different worlds helps explain some of the differences in their powers.

While not discussed in detail, I feel like they come from different magic systems.

While the way Jack and Elsa manifest their powers is with Elsa emphasizing control with concrete shapes and creatures, and Jack emphasizing something more sporadic with sparking blasts and winds, I think of the actual ORIGIN of Jack's magic being of a controlled nature while Elsa's is the wild one.

I think in Elsa's world (also, to my thinking, Rapunzel's world) magic is a wild-growing resource, popping up in random amounts in both places and people, thriving with it's own rhyme and reason like a proverbial dandelion. And like a wild plant, it has no alignment of good or evil on its own. People can be "cursed" or "blessed" by those who harness magic, like people who can use any talent or resource for good or bad, but the magic itself simply grows as it will, and Elsa was simply unlucky that she was born into an environment unprepared to deal with it. She probably would have had a much easier time of things if she'd been raised directly by the trolls, imo.

Whereas in Jack's world, there are deity-like entities such as the Man in the Moon who consciously distribute magic, ready-set with a certain alignment. The automatic alignment of Jack's magic is what keeps it from spiraling out of control. Something intrinsically meant to protect can only swirl up into a devastating storm if the wielder purposefully drives it to that level.

So I can see Jack maybe losing his temper, and maybe conjuring a bit more precipitation in the air than he intended, but then expertly channeling it into a relatively harmless construct. He could teach Elsa how to kind of do the same, but he'd be out of his depth with the wild aspects. The way the surges can come EXPONENTIALLY bigger than intended, and even without intension.

So perhaps the sky's the limit for both Jack's powers and Elsa's, and they can both make anything they can dream up. But Jack's powers are limited to his consciousness. While Elsa's tap into her subconsciousness, which is what makes them so frighteningly limitless.

[thalassas]

(this was in no way thorough orz;;)

Jack's powers are limited to his consciousness. While Elsa's tap into her subconsciousness

Aaaaah thank you for putting it in better words ♥♥♥♥

Elsa could have really used more guidance in growing up with these powers, and it makes me sad that her parents' immediate thought was "let's lock her up until she learns to control them" and now I really want an AU where she could have time to get to know her powers better under the guidance of beings who knew magic because they're right there. They already visited the trolls.

He could teach Elsa how to kind of do the same, but he'd be out of his depth with the wild aspects. The way the surges can come EXPONENTIALLY bigger than intended, and even without intension.

I've always pegged Jack to be a free spirit, and he wouldn't know much about actually holding back on powers because he's so used to just letting it out, which is a stark contrast to Elsa's "conceal, don't feel it, don't let it show" mindset during her younger, tumultuous years.

I know there's a joke on tumblr going "on a scale of Jack to Elsa how well do you take having winter powers" and I guess that's another difference dangit I should have added it in that potentially influences their powers. Jack loved his powers, loves flying, loves freezing things. Elsa used to love them too until the accident with Anna and starting from that point, as her emotional state towards her powers deteriorated, so did her control over it.

On some similar notes...

[angel_gidget]

One character that is sometimes compared to Jack and Elsa, though not too often is the fairy Periwinkle from the Tinkerbell movie franchise. Periwinkle is very focused on a particular aspect of her ice powers: that casting frost over things can protect it from storms. I think it might be interesting sometime to see Jack, Elsa, or both explore that aspect of their powers. Elsa is so afraid of killing hurting somebody by freezing them, but it would be cool to see her use her ability to freeze somebody so quickly that she actually put them in stasis and preserved them.

On another note...

I remember in the 4th season of Once Upon a Time, they had a storyline about Elsa's powers not REALLY being quite as coincidental as her parents pretended they were. That her power actually did run in her mother's family, and came from her aunt. But said aunt was a taboo subject with her name stricken from the books before Elsa was even born. I don't remember too much beyond that, but since said 4th season is on Netflix now, I will do a re-watch of some of those episodes, and note how this might affect some of my headcanons.

But of course, since it's OUaT and not the movies, we can take it or leave it as canon backstory.

[thalassas]

Yeah, given after the Great Thaw, even if we're looking at several inches of snow, the plants in Arendelle seem to be okay????? In fact the greenery seems especially unharmed during Elsa' Winter.

And I'm awful but when you mentioned stasis and preserve them my mind went "you mean like Jack?" /badumtch

Ah, OUaT. As I mentioned above I consider it a completely separate canon by myself because they've already crossed over into a separate universe in that, and once we get Frozen 2, I doubt it would be even acknowledged, and I was trying to stick to the movie facts in this post. It would make for an interesting look at the origins of Elsa's powers, or at the very least some good material to work with in fanworks. I haven't been watching it due to the fact that long live action shows intimidate me and I tend to lose interest in them very early, and I also... heard that the Frozen fandom wasn't so pleased with how they worked with the Frozen canon? At least part of what I could see on my dash kept complaining about it D|

Also the aunt was apparently an ice cream stand worker so /uh

[angel_gidget]

"You mean like Jack?" just gave me a rather fun/disturbing thought: that if Elsa ever did master the reversal of her powers and went on a de-icing spree, could she take it so far as to un-freeze Jack when he's somebody who's supposed to be frozen? And would that undo his immortality? Hmmm.

OUaT is a rather separate universe. Some characters do seem to have popped directly out of their respective Disney movies (like Elsa, Cinderella, and Ariel), while others are drastically changed (Peter Pan, Hook, and "the Beast"). I don't expect it to be acknowledged in movie canon, but it does give us some extra fun ideas to play with (and I actually do feel that Elsa, Anna, and Kristof were pretty in-character as their movie personas throughout the episodes.)

As for their aunt working at an ice cream stand... a lot of the Disney kingdoms in OUaT are part of a realm separate from Earth and the starting plot is that the fairytale folks we know and love were cursed to live in our "magic-less" real world by the Evil Queen. So a lot of characters who were under that curse have mundane jobs in their other Earth life. Snow White is a school teacher. Prince Charming's the sheriff. Jiminy Cricket turned human and became a therapist, etc. Through different plot lines and flashbacks the characters end up going back and forth between our world and their magical Disney kingoms.

If you just wanted to skip right to season 4 when the Frozen characters show up, I think you could figure out the majority of what you need to know if you've got an "okay, I'll go with it" attitude. The key thing to remember is that everybody is related through Henry. If you're wondering why two characters haven't killed each other yet, it's probably because their both sparing each other for Henry's sake because Everybody. Is. Related. To. Henry. One way or another.

[zefluffletruffle]

I love, love, love, love, LOVE character analysis, and yours is just brilliant. Usually when I compare Elsa to Jack I don't think in terms of powers, as they both have the same powers on the surface. But you've definitely opened up my mind to how exactly they differ in terms of control and enjoyment. And I'm not sure if Jack could help Elsa with her power-related problems, since he himself hasn't had those issues, and he'd just be bewildered by the fact that her emotions, fear in particular, affect her powers. They'd probably clash over their different perspectives.

[thalassas]

In a way, they can relate to each other over having control over the same elements, but at the same time, their abilities and what their powers can do are quite opposite, especially if it's prethaw!Elsa we're talking about. Jack's emotions affect his powers to an extent, but not as much as Elsa's, where her emotions seem to drive her powers more.