1088: Just Another Jelsa Story – Chapter 1

 

Title: Just Another Jelsa Story
Author: JacktoSquareOne
Media: Film
Topic: Frozen/Rise of the Guardians/Cinderella
Genre: Romance/Humor
URL: Chapter 1
Critiqued by Ghostcat

 

 

Heartfelt greetings, dearest Patrons!

I’m here with a perky little fic that’s a crossover between Frozen and Rise of the Guardians and features the fan favorite pairing of Jack and Elsa (AKA Jelsa). You can tell all of this from the title, because the author put absolutely no thought into coming up with a name for this fic. That’s a good sign, right?

Let’s take a peek at the summary.

Once upon a time, there was a young queen, forced to have a ball to find her future king. There was a winter spirit, sold as a slave to a woman by the Nightmare King. They’ll each go through some ups and downs, but they just might be able to make the others’ lives okay again. Sound familiar? Of course not, but this is still… Just Another Jelsa Story. Jelsa. cinderella!au

Of course this sounds familiar – it’s a genderbent Cinderella, with an added explicit slavery element. The traditional tale does have Cinderella as a virtual slave to her stepmother due to the restrictions placed on her gender at the time, but this is actual “paid cash money for his ass” slavery in a fic designated as Humor/Romance. I try to keep an open mind in regards to story elements, but I have my doubts about this working. We shall see.

To the fic!

Yay! A random story I’mma write. I’m estimating this will be around 3-5 chapters, so yay for that~

Oh, goody – an Author’s Note. Fabulous.

These two sentences tell me a lot about the fic; the author has put no thought into it and is just writing it off the cuff, and that they will be posting the chapters as they go. As we have often seen in the Library, both are recipes for disaster.

Ugh inspiring things everywhere.

… Wait, you’re upset because you’re inspired? Or are you upset because you’re inspiring others?

Yeah, this’ll be fun. :D

For you, maybe. For your audience – not so much.

Don’t get me wrong, I love brainstorming; but that’s just the first step in a very long process. Just writing out whatever pops into your head and then slapping it up as a finished product is not a good idea.

Hope you all like it~

I find the concept intriguing, but I don’t hold out much hope for something thrown together without much planning.

Rated T for pretty much everything that happens in a romance fic, minus the M-rated things.

Swenia and Glasses are going to be so disappointed.

Oh and minor language. :P

They’re going to speak in baby-talk?

I should really just work on my other stories, rather than write a new one…

Oh well.

So not only is this being written on the fly, but it is nothing but a time-killer the author is using to avoid working on other fics?

So. Many. Red flags. And I haven’t even gotten to the fic itself yet!

Disclaimer: I don’t own Rise of the Guardians or Frozen.

Really? Color me surprised.

Act I- Jack Frost & His Magical Ice Cube

Maybe it’s the lingering after-effects of my previous riff, but that title seems dripping with innuendo. Poor Jack, the cold is not kind to menfolk.

My name is Jack Frost.

Oh, no – it’s first person.

SHINOBI-SAN!

:ninja appears:

Shinobi-san, it’s time to sedate Lyle. Send that new girl, she seems efficient.

:muffled whispering:

Well, then; just hold it for her! You big baby. It’s not like the thing is going to crawl out of the jar and attack you.

:muffled whispering:

That’s true; sensei does like to tinker with them. Meh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.

I became the spirit of winter roughly one hundred and forty-five years ago.

Technically Jack is a winter spirit, he’s associated with winter and cold weather, but he isn’t the only winter spirit. Winter existed well before Jack fell into that pond and froze. And North, with his associations with a winter holiday and the North Pole, could be considered a “spirit of winter” as well.

And my life is miserable.

Great, another fanfic author who takes Jack’s melancholy and drives it into the frickin’ ground.

Twenty years ago, I was kidnapped by a man named Pitch Black.

If Pitch is just a regular guy, how was he able to contain someone with Jack’s abilities? Hell, how was he even able to see Jack?

You may know him as the Boogeyman. Or the Nightmare King. Or a pain in the-

I’m confused.  If he is just an oddly named human, then he shouldn’t be able to see Jack. – but if Pitch isn’t human and is instead the canon Boogeyman, then he should be banished at this point in history. And he doesn’t create the Nightmares until modern times, nearly a century and a half into the future from this point.

Anyways, after keeping me in hiding for eighteen years, he sold me as a servant to some no good, rotten-

woman. She’s a woman.

Pitch somehow ensnared a powerful spirit like Jack, but the only thing Pitch did with him was stick him in storage for eighteen years and then sell him off like an unwanted futon? That’s a terrible misuse of evil resources.

Her name is Carolina.

I’m just going to assume this is the name of someone the author doesn’t like and that she will be focus of much character-bashing.

She has natural red eyes (I know freaky right?)

:THWACK!:

Is that an Author’s Note? Because there’s no way Jack would use that colloquialism in the late eighteen hundreds, when this is supposed to be taking place.

and ginger hair that I’m pretty sure is fake.

Looks like I was spot-on with the character-bashing.

She lives in the thriving kingdom of Arendelle, which is led by the most beautiful queen you could ever see.

Thus it is instantly established that Jack has a thing for Elsa. Very subtle, author.

(And for the record, the Princess of Arendelle has strawberry-blonde hair, but if you consider that ginger, then her hair is a pretty ginger. Carolina’s is ugly ginger.)

:THWACK!:

I can’t tell if this is supposed to be an Author’s Note or an aside from Jack; the voice remains constant, so if it is meant to be an Author’s Note then this whole fic was written in the author’s “voice” and not Jack’s. I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be the case anyway, it’s one of the pitfalls that plague a first-person fic.

The queen’s name is Elsa, and it is widely known that she has ice magic, so to speak,

So to speak? Elsa either has ice-based abilities, or she doesn’t. End of story.

and Pitch and the Guardians of the Children are very convinced I cursed her.

How? He’s been held captive for most of Elsa’s lifetime. And I don’t think he even has the ability to do that.

No. No. No. No.

You can tell he’s serious because he uses all the formatting.

I did NOT curse her I swear to the Man in the Moon she was born like that!

See? I told you so.

I wouldn’t curse someone so magnificently beautiful!

You aren’t even together yet and I’m already hoping she dumps you.

Oh, the Guardians of the Children? They’re kind of important.

Really? I couldn’t tell; I thought it was just one of those overly pretentious titles they give people to make them sound important, like calling a janitor a “sanitation engineer”.

They protect the hope, dreams, memories, and wonder of the children. They are St. Nick, the Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Kangaroo (although he insists he’s a bunny. Or a rabbit. I don’t really pay much attention to him. He’s mean.)

:THWACK!:

Stop that!

That’s a dense little info-dump, the author managed to name drop all the Guardians and their areas of expertise; not in any corresponding order, but that’s what happens when you rush things. And they got North’s name wrong, so there’s that.

Technically, I’m seventeen (y’know the whole immortality thing) but according to human standards (aka Pitch’s stupidity) I’m twenty-three.

:DOUBLE THWACK!:

Bwa? What the hell kind of whack-ass math are you trying to use? I get that he would physically appear one age but chronologically be a different age, but the way this is worded makes no sense. The only reason to muck about with Jack’s age like this would be to make him closer to Elsa’s age, but there’s a problem – no matter how to jigger his physical age, Jack’s really close to two hundred years old. As much as I like this pairing in theory, that’s really creepy.

And why would Pitch have anything to do with human standards? If he’s the Boogeyman, then he isn’t human.

Carolina isn’t exactly rich, nor poor. She’s middle class. But according to her I’m less-than-lower class.

This woman is middle class, yet was able to buy a winter spirit like Jack from Pitch? Was Pitch having a supernatural yard sale?

Ugh can I kill her yet?

:record-screech:

I’m sorry, what? Are you suggesting that Jack Frost, who gave his life to save his sister and spent centuries watching over people who couldn’t even see him, wants to murder this woman?

Ummm… No. Hell no.

Well, Carolina has two sons.

Since this is a Frozen crossover, I can guess what their names are.

Their names are Kristoff and Hans.

I knew it.

Kristoff is the nicer one of the two. He’s also the older one. He’s got blonde hair and brown eyes. He’s got a bright smile, and he’s quite a good friend of mine

Sweet mercy, that’s a daybook description. This isn’t someone talking about a person they know, it is more like listening to someone read a missing persons poster.

(okay maybe my only friend shut up.)

:THWACK!:

Maybe if you weren’t so bitchy, more people would like you.

Hans is the mean one. He’s got brown eyes and his mother’s ugly ginger-ish hair. He’s got a crooked smile.

So out of the two characters that have been described in any detail, the audience has the exact same information about each of them – how nice they are to Jack, eye color, hair color, and how they smile – delivered in exactly the same way. The order’s even the same!

He’s handsome I’ll give him that, but he’s not a perfect ten. He’s not even a six if I’m being honest with you.

If he’s about a five out of ten, that makes him statistically average-looking.

And between me and you, they both like Princess Anna. Haha!

…

…

…

…

…

Don’t tell them I said that.

:facepalm:

This is not how you show that your character is pausing. I blame that hack Meyer, with her “blank pages to show the passage of time” bullshit.

Okay, where was I? Oh yeah.

:shrugs:

Hell if I know. I’m not sure this one-sided conversation ever had a point.

There’s this huge ball coming up and I’m excited! I’m going to try and sneak my way in with Kristoff’s help.

Jack’s excited that there’s going to be a ball. Really?

AND MAYBE I COULD MEET QUEEN ELSA AND MAYBE JUST MAYBE SHE’D CHOOSE ME TO MARRY HER AND THEN WE’D-

:falls over backwards:

Sumbitch! Warn a girl before you yell at the top of your lungs, would you?

I mean.

Yeah, I’d be cool with it if she chose me to marry her.

Haha.

You’re fooling exactly no one, fanboy.

Cool. No pun intended I swear.

I didn’t think it was a pun until you drew my attention to it, and now I think it was supposed to be a pun and the author felt the need to draw attention to it so that everyone in the audience would know how clever they are.

Well now that you know about me and my…err…dream, I might as well let you know what’s gone on today.

:groans:

It’s a literal frickin’ daybook!

I had to sweep in the parlor, dust the cabinets, wash the dishes, tend to the animals, clean Hans’ room, clean Kristoff’s room (granted Kristoff nicely helped me) and mop the entire house.

This seems appropriate;

Depending on what kind of animals needed tending to and how big the house is, that really isn’t a terribly strenuous schedule. I’d expect Carolina, as a commoner with pretensions, would be working him to the bone as she tries to emulate the life of the highborn.

Right now I’m cleaning up some mess made by Hans with said mop.

How do you make a mess with a mop? It’s sole function is to make things clean.

An old dirty mop that I think is made of Carolina’s real hair. No seriously.

Her real hair is dreadlocks made of low-grade absorbent fibers?

Thankfully, I had just finished.

“Oh thank heavens.” I said, leaning against the mop as if it was my staff.

:sirens blare:

Hey, I have a mop as well! I’m going to go show it to the DRD agents.

And by “mop”, I mean “flamethrower”.

—SCENE REDACTED DUE TO EXTREME VIOLENCE—

Who wants s’mores? Just pick off the melted Kevlar.

In case you’re wondering, this whole chapter has been like that; there’s a carriage return after nearly every. Single. Sentence.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I MISS MY STAFF BY THE WAY IF ANYONE FINDS IT RETURN IT TO MEEEE! I PROMISE I’LL GIVE YOU A BIG HUG!

:falls over again:

Baka! Anta wa urusai!

Is that why Carolina got him at such a bargain, because he’s missing his accessories?

Yeah Pitch stole my staff and won’t return it which makes me hate him even more than I already do, which makes a lot of sense because I wish death upon him even if it’s physically impossible.

That … That doesn’t make any sense. At all. Did Pitch take away Jack’s staff after he imprisoned the boy, or did it happen before the imprisoning? If Jack still had his staff, which he uses to control his abilities, then how was Pitch able to enslave him? There’s no coherent timeline here.

“Oh, no rejoicing yet, Frost.” Hans’ stupid voice was heard behind me. “You’re not done cleaning?”

Is he asking Jack a question, or what? The wording is very odd for a question; it’s more of a statement, really.

And we get it, author – you don’t like Hans. No one likes Hans. He’s an asshole. Hans does have compelling reasons for being an asshole, but most people tend to focus on the “asshole” part.

I groaned, before raising an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” I slightly whined.

:sigh: What is it with fic authors and their love of doing things half-assed? Everything’s “slightly” for some reason!

Hans smirked,

:checks Designated Smirkers List:

Okay, you’ve got a pass for being a smug jerkass – but I’m watching you!

walking to the bucket of mop water, kicking it down. It’s contents spilled all across the floor.

Oh, no – there’s dirty water all over the floor! Too bad Jack doesn’t have some sort of cleaning implement, maybe some kind of bundled absorbent material with a long handle attached, that would allow him to clean it up.

I glared at him. He’s lucky I don’t actually have my staff or I’d freeze his butt into next Tuesday.

If you had your staff you likely wouldn’t be a slave in this house, nor would Hans treat you like that because he wouldn’t want you to freeze various portions of his anatomy.

“Oops.” He girlishly giggled. He walked out, and into his mother’s room.

Wow, what a bitch.

Kristoff poked his head out of the kitchen. “Hey Jack!” he called.

AHHH! Another character popping out of the Formless Void suddenly (and possibly from behind)!

I looked at him, catching the towels he threw. “Thanks buddy.” I said.

That was nice of Kristoff to give Jack a two-second warning before lobbing towels at his head. How did he even know to do that, though? Hans just tipped over the bucket, so Kristoff didn’t really have time to see the spill, go get towels, and then bring them to this spot. And why is he in the kitchen in the first place? That’s servants’ territory.

“No problem.” Kristoff responded faintly.

The hell’s wrong with his voice?

“JACKSON!” I flinched at Carolina’s high pitched voice.

I turned to face her. “Yes?”

“Yes mistress.” She snapped.

I growled slightly. “Yes mistress?” I spat.

He’s awfully willful for someone who has been a slave as long as he has. You would think by now he would have learned to hide his sassy side to avoid petty punishments.

“Tsk tsk tsk.” She chastised me.

That’s not a chastisement, it barely qualifies as a scold!

“Hans, Kristoff, and I are heading to the Queen’s ball, and you have the entire house to clean.” She sneered, revealing she was in a long pink poofy dress.

Wait a second – Jack is facing her while they are speaking, but she doesn’t reveal her dress until after she orders him to clean the house again? How do that?

And she has an attractive slave boy with magic powers and the only thing she has him do is clean her house? What a waste.

I rolled my eyes in disgust. Kristoff walked out of the kitchen, revealing he was in a classic black and grey suit.

Which, given the time period this should be set in, would look like this;

Dudes be stylin’ back then.

Since this is a formal occasion, instead of a black and grey suit Kristoff should be wearing a dinner jacket with tails and a starched white shirt (or a tuxedo), white tie, and high heeled boots polished to a high shine.

Hans was wearing an outfit resembling a prince’s, which utterly annoyed me.

Well done, Google Image Search!

Oh, yeah – he’ll blend right in.

Carolina and Hans sauntered out, Kristoff grudgingly following. “See you soon Jack.” He waved goodbye, slowly walking out and shutting the door.

I’m detecting a strong bromance vibe between Jack and Kristoff; if this author was a different kind of fan, I could see this being a set-up for some yaoi action.

I glared at the soapy mess on the floor, before something cold started glowing in my pocket.

The cold is … glowing? I’m pretty sure neither light nor thermodynamics works like that.

I yelped and pulled out an ice cube, throwing it across the room in shock.

Jack Frost – “the spirit of winter” – is surprised by something cold. How could he be? He’s essentially made of cold, isn’t he? And how did he not notice there was a hard lump in his pocket?

Suddenly, the Kangaroo flew out of it, landing on his face on the floor. I snickered. “Nice to see you too, Kangaroo.”

That’s a weird remark to make. Bunny hasn’t said anything or done anything to provoke it. If anything, Jack should be thrilled to see one of the Guardians and be begging for Bunny’s help.

“Shut up, I’m here to help you smartass.” Bunny sassed, glaring and standing up.

Great! Pull out another one of those portal-cubes and get him out of there.

“Help me with what exactly?”

Gee, scooter; you were kidnaped, held hostage, and then sold into slavery to a family that treats you like dirt. What could you possibly need help with?

“North said I’m your Fairy GodBunny. He gave me some magic and weee~ here I am.”

Bunny already has the ability to travel via his tunnels, so why would he need North to set up this unnecessarily complicated ice cube thing? If they were able to plant this portal-cube on Jack, why not rescue him then instead of waiting for a plot-appropriate time to do so?

I snorted, before I started laughing so hard my eyes stung with tears and my sides hurt.

“Fairy GodBunny?” I asked, holding my sides.

Dude, it’s not that funny.

Bunny just knocked me over the head with a stick.

“Ow!”

I’m just disappointed that I didn’t get to do that. Wait, where did Bunny get a stick from? It that supposed to be his magic wand?

“Just grabbed the damn ice cube.”

Jack’s been held captive for a long time; I’m sure he’s grabbed his “ice cube” plenty of times, but I don’t think that’s really an appropriate action to take right now.

:frantic whispering:

Ooh, it’s the actual … Okay, that makes more sense.

There’s the first chapter and I must say I’m actually okay with how it turned out. :D

Really? Because I spotted a few issues that could be addressed.

Jack seems so childish which I like. :P

I find it very annoying, and completely wrong for his situation. The canon Jack does act a little childish at times, but it isn’t this extreme and he knows when to be serious. Jack isn’t behaving like someone who has been held captive and enslaved; he’s a cranky teenager pouting over his chores.

And I’ve got this all planned out! :D

Much shock. So surprised. To be fair; if you’re following an established template, like the story of Cinderella, it isn’t that hard to plan your fic. A lot of the plotting has been done for you.

This will be mildly acceptable!

You’ve set some really lofty goals for yourself, haven’t you?

Bye for now!

-IShipJelsabecauseImaJelsaLover

This is the author’s former username, and it is very fitting; of the eleven fics they have authored, eight are Frozen/Rise of the Guardians crossovers. The bulk of their favorite fics are also Jelsa fics. I admire their passion and dedication to their OTP, but I don’t think posting yet another hastily planned fanfic is the way to express that passion.

 

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