Review responses for "In the Light of Day: A FROZEN Epic"

[GeorgeGlass]

SailorNemesis 2015-01-20 id # 3000070122

Clever work with Elsa's powers. Just wanted to say that.

Thanks!

Unfortunately I am not a big fan of M/F Frozen, I ship Elsa x Anna always.

You are not the first person to tell me that. But I'm hoping that the story itself will be strong enough to keep readers interested, even if it doesn't feature their favorite 'ship.

[GeorgeGlass]

Belfry 2015-01-28 id # 3000070149

At least Elsa gets a choice with her parents gone. The royal bedrooms of Europe kept the peace in Europe for hundreds of years!

That's why being a Disney queen is better than being a Disney princess.

Obviously, a marriage to Prince Hypatios would be a POLITICAL marriage, not a SEXUAL marriage.

Until the kid hit puberty, anyway; I don't think age of consent was really a thing back then. But yes, the potential political advantages of such a marriage are Herringholtz's chief reason for inviting Prince Hypatios to this event.

[GeorgeGlass]

TheallmightyUltimix 2015-01-29 id # 3000070152

That ending killed me. I like how you always manage to stay faithful to the characters while slowly expanding upon their characters.

Thank you! This is the first time I've written a fanfic about a movie rather than a TV show; the fact that it's a single story and not a series provides a lot more latitude for developing the characters beyond what we see in the source material. But, of course, I try to develop them in ways that are logical and believable.

By the way, are you planning on writing any more Phineas and Ferb fics? They were my favourite out of all of your work.

I've got a couple more in the works: "Tri-Date Area," in which Candace, Jeremy, and Stacy decide to give having a three-way relationship a try (wackiness and hot, sweaty group sex ensue), and "Queen for a Day," in which Isabella, zapped by a random green ray from the sky, is suddenly treated like royalty by everyone--including a certain pointy-faced boy from whom she's craving some lovin'.

[GeorgeGlass]

Ambrosia 2015-06-17 id # 3000070647

I have to say, not only is this the ONLY Frozen story worth reading on this site, it is GREAT writing with a full cast of well-rounded characters (I still think the Littlest Prince is the best)!

Thanks! The movie really only has 3 central characters (sorry, Olaf and Sven), so it seemed like there was a lot of room to add new characters to the mix. And yes, little Prince Hypatios is one of my favorites to write, because his age sets him apart from the other princes in a lot of ways.

Keep it up and update soon, I want to finish reading this! I was disappointed when I came to the last-chapter-so-far!

Don't you worry, there's plenty more to come. The plot has only begun to thicken!

[GeorgeGlass]

Intrigued 2015-07-16 id # 3000070715

Came for baser reasons but stayed for the interesting story that is unraveling, eagerly awaiting more.

I always love hearing that. Thank you.

More unraveling to come!

[GeorgeGlass]

TheallmightyUltimix 2015-07-27 id # 3000070741

Finally! Ten chapters of thinking "Will you two just fuck already?!"

Yeah, well, this is why I'm calling it an "epic."

Can't wait to see how the next chapter is going to be.

It's going to be...Was I saying something?

[GeorgeGlass]

WARNING: Major spoilers for chapters 10-12 below. Select text to read.

busi 2015-09-04 id # 3000070851
Wow poor Elsa, I wonder what will happen to her and Toma?!
That bastard Otto, deserves to die, hope the fire Prince can save them.

Must...not...spoil...next...chapter...

And Anna got her self some action, from Kristoff

There's been a lot of angst between those two since the story began, and I thought it was time they "let it go" in a big way. Of course, now they've got new things to worry about.

I can't wait for the next chapter, thanks for the quick update

You're welcome. Because I tend not to write things in order, a lot of chapter 12 was written while I was working on earlier chapters. This is part of why the pace of my posting has been so uneven: Each time I posta chapter, the next chapter may be close to or far from being finished.

[GeorgeGlass]

Anon 2015-10-08 id # 3000070948

Excellent writing! Please continue to post, excited for the next chapters!

Thank you!

Don't worry about my continuing the story--this thing is going to make me keep writing it until either it's finished or I am.

[GeorgeGlass]

busi 2015-10-23 id # 3000071000

[Spoilers trimmed]

Ok I know to many question, it's because this story is so Good.

Can't wait for the next chapter

The answers to your three questions, in order, are you'll see, you'll see, and you'll see.

I'm glad you're enjoying the story, and thanks for taking the time to comment. I've had to take a short break from this story to work on a few others, but I'll be back at it soon.

[GeorgeGlass]

busi 2016-01-16 id # 3000071176

[spoilers below]

Wow Elsa is back with Vengeance, I can't wait for the damage she gonna course Ottos.

Remember that Elsa is recovering from being poisoned--she's not quite back to her full strength yet. Nonetheless, things are about to get interesting.

Anna is tactic genius, hope she finds a way to win this war.

I told a friend recently that I think of Anna as the Batman to Elsa's Superman. Elsa has her powers, but Anna has to rely on--and develop--what wits and talents she has.

Glad you are continuing to enjoy this story. We're in the home stretch now, so there's plenty of excitement to come!

[GeorgeGlass]

Author’s notes

—The initial inspiration for this story came from two sources. The first, obviously, was the movie Frozen itself, which I watched out of curiosity in January 2015 when my cable company had a weekend of free access to the premium channels. I found the movie charming, visually impressive, and most importantly, unpredictable; I loved the way that it subverted some of the standard Disney-movie tropes to surprise you.

The second source of inspiration, oddly, was a comment made by somebody on Tumblr about the lack of people of color in the movie. The comment reeked of political correctness, but it got me thinking about the various parts of the world that could be represented in this story—hence the various places of origin of the seven foreign princes.

—The name Rajiv means “lotus flower.” It also contains the word “raj,” meaning “king.”

—“Hjalmar” is an Old Norse name meaning “helmeted warrior.”

Regarding the various kingdoms mentioned in the story:

—“Sundara” and “Hermosa” mean “beautiful” in Hindi and Spanish, respectively. Sundara is based very loosely on Kerala, India’s southernmost state.

— “Dianisia” means “blessed islands” in Greek.

— “Mianyoka” means “a hundred snakes” in Swahili.

— “Lainn” is a name I pulled out of the air because it sounded Gaelic, but it turns out that in Scottish Gaelic it means “of the sword.”

— “Nordland” was simply meant to sound like some Scandinavian word for “north land.” Nordland is a fantasy stand-in for Sweden in the way that Arendelle is for Norway.

—“Rekya” means nothing, to my knowledge; I just chose it because it sounded kind of Slavic. I also realized that I had originally spelled it “Rekja” in chapter 2; I went back and changed it to “Rekya,” which is the more phonetically logical spelling.

The following notes are about specific chapters of the story. Warning: Spoilers!

Chapter 3: The Love Goddess

—On tvtropes.org, Hildy (introduced in this chapter) is cited as an example of the “All Women Are Lustful” trope.

Chapter 4: The Snowman and the Falcon

—This chapter’s title is a play on the title of the 1985 spy movie The Falcon and the Snowman.

Chapter 7: The Trader

—In this chapter, Kristoff mentions to Ajay that, on the fateful day of Elsa’s coronation, people kept bursting into song for no obvious reason; when Kristoff asks whether this ever happens where Ajay is from, the Sundaran sailor replies, “My boy, you have no idea.” This is meant as a reference to the popularity of movie musicals in India.

—Shortly after Frozen was released in theaters, some homophobic nutjobs accused Disney of promoting “the gay agenda” in the movie because of the scene in which Oaken waves at several people—including an adult man—in the sauna, shouting, “Yoo hoo! Hi family!” (Never mind that Oaken never claims them as HIS family, or that there appears to be an adult woman in the sauna next to the man.) I rather liked the idea of Oaken having a husband and a bunch of adopted kids, so that’s how I wrote him. Thanks, nutjobs!

Chapter 11: The Accountants

—It is a complete coincidence that the chapter titled “The Accountants” is chapter 11 (the law that American corporations often use to file for bankruptcy).

—On tvtropes.org, Anna’s bumping into the coffer that is supposedly filled with gold coins and almost knocking it over—thereby deducing that it can’t actually be full of gold—is mentioned as a subversion of the “Hollywood Density” trope, in which gold and other dense substances are often portrayed as being much lighter than they are in real life.

—The horse-riding accident that Elsa and Anna's mother, Queen Iduna, describes in her letter to the Duke comes from my own experience. While on a ranch owned by an amateur rodeo rider, I was riding one of his retired rodeo horses in the ring, and when I nudged the horse to accelerate from a walk to a trot, it broke straight into a gallop instead and went charging toward the fence on the other side of the ring. I pulled back on the reins, the horse stopped abruptly, and I kept going and landed on the ground. Thankfully, the dirt in the ring was nice and soft (by design, I’m sure).

—The quote “Good judgement comes from experience, and experience mostly comes from bad judgement” has been variously attributed to Rita Mae Brown, Will Rogers, Bob Packwood, and the Sufi Mullah Nasruddin, among others.

Chapter 12: The Goatherd

—Tomas’ name is a nod to Tom Canty, the impoverished boy who switches places with a lookalike prince in Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper.

Chapter 13: The Reindeer

—Admiral Ostergard’s name was inspired by the name of Admiral Westergard, a character that appeared in an early draft of the script for Frozen. Westergard was written as Anna’s love interest but later morphed into the charming but sinister Prince Hans when the decision was made to make Elsa a sympathetic character instead of the villain. Frozen scriptwriter Jennifer Lee has said that (unofficially) Westergard remained Prince Hans’ last name, so I didn’t want to use that name for the admiral in this story. Instead, I exchanged “West” for “Ost”—the Norwegian word for “East.”

—White irises are not poisonous. I completely made that up.

Chapter 14: The Trolls

—Anna’s growing powers of observation are a nod to the TV series Veronica Mars, whose mystery-solving title character was played by Kristen Bell, the voice of Anna.

Chapter 15: The Duke

—Greek fire was developed in the 7th century AD and was used as a weapon of war by the Byzantine Empire for three centuries. Thereafter, the formula was lost (although Leonardo da Vinci claimed to know it).

Chapter 16: The Saboteur

—The various fire-related puns Olaf makes to Tomas in this chapter were taken from a comment posted on Hentai Foundry by ThatGuyWithTheFace in response to the ending of chapter 9 (in which Rajiv bursts into flames). Because the comment was so spoilerrific, I asked him to take the comment down, which he kindly did. But I am happy to provide his full list of puns here:

Guess someone's a little hot under the collar.

Boy that Rajiv sure is a hot head.

Does this mean that Rajiv has a hot temper?

Things are heating up.

Nothing like a heated argument.

No wonder Rajiv has no interest in Elsa, he's flaming.

Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Sweet only two more elementals and then they can summon Captain Planet.

Chapter 18: The Traitors

—Royal sommelier Jean-Pierre mentions two wines in the castle’s wine cellar that he is determined to protect from being guzzled by the Dianisian invaders: the ‘38 Menzelle and the ‘51 Chateau d’Ehstiffe. “Menzelle” is an homage to Idina Menzel, the voice of Elsa in Frozen. “d’Ehstiffe” is a phonetic nod to my friend and beta reader Eh Steve.

Chapter 20: The Ice-Man

—Throughout the story, I made an effort to make Baron Herringholtz alternately sympathetic and suspicious. In the end, though, the needle-nosed Herringholtz is confirmed to be a good guy, because I wanted to subvert the “Attractive people are good, ugly people are evil” trope in the same way that Frozen itself does.

—Baron Herringholtz wears a red jacket throughout the story because he is, ultimately, a red herring.

Epilogue

—This is the first story of mine to conclude with the words “THE END.” Because Disney.

Edited April 22, 2016 by GeorgeGlass

[GeorgeGlass]

ramblingrobin 2016-04-25 id # 3000071510

I can tell I'm going to like this. You write the characters very well and the little injections of humor are great.

Thanks! I love to write comedy, and I always feel that a fanfic ought to contain about as much humor as the source material does.

I will remember to stay away from Helga when she's drunk. Xoxo Robin

So you'll need to avoid her from noon until about midnight. Best, George.

[GeorgeGlass]

New review for In the Light of Day: A Frozen Epic from Fairy-Slayer

 

It's simply overwhelming trying to express everything that I love about this story, and even that would be insufficient to thank you for the clearly-tremendous effort and amount of time you put into writing this.

 

Thank you! I suppose I could consider In the Light of Day to be my “training novel.”

 

First off, this didn't need the explicitly erotic scenes at all to be a fantastic story, though your original character (OC) Hildy adds quite a bit of charm to the story while earning it a PG-13, in the most fun way possible. It had elements of the stately with great humor – never too silly though – that turned into drama, intrigue, and superb action. It's also great how it works in subtle tidbits about various topics that are key to the story without sounding like lessons, and then it's even more fun to find the valuable clues within (or sometimes without) as the mysteries keep piling up.

 

In writing the story, I had to keep making notes to myself like, “Drop a hint about X in chapter Y.” I also did a lot more in the way of outlining than I do for most of my stories.

 

Another great feature is that in a story necessarily full of diverse OCs to drive the story, each one was so well developed that it was easy to keep them straight throughout the story: their actions, distinctive ways… and their entertaining peculiarities (“Did someone say snakes!?”) made them all memorable while adding a lot of charm while driving the story. It was great that you included so many cultures and races, giving an exotic richness to the cast though without it being overwhelming.

 

Thanks! With so many of them, I had to make them as distinctive as I could.

 

Of course, then there were the spectacular surprises that still blew me away even though I was already expecting something big by the time they happened. I felt a twinge of excitement every time I caught some little tidbit that made me realize some of the characters didn't have Arendelle's best interests at heart.

 

The hard part was remembering to have enough red herring-type activity to keep readers guessing while also making sure there were enough hints about the real bad guys.

 

Spoilers

It was clear that Prince Rajiv held a special place with his and Elsa's hostility towards each other at first. I knew they were opposites, but exactly how much took me by complete surprise. It was a wonderful twist, especially since Rajiv himself didn't know.

 

Yeah, I knew Rajiv and Elsa’s mutual hostility was kind of a giveaway, so I tried to at least make the reason for their hostility a surprise.

 

Ajay provided good exposition, on top of being a pretty terrific character in his own right throughout.

 

I love Ajay. I always imagine him with John Rhys-Davies’ voice.

 

Others were interesting, and even touching, showing more depth than we'd first been led to believe as we discovered the down-sides of various princes throughout the first act.

Now, I'd been cheering for Prince Hypatios throughout mostly because anyone who immediately would give Olaf a warm hug got an automatic win in my book (and not *cough*just*cough*) because I wanted to see some shotacon action.

 

If you’re into that, I’ve got a dozen other stories that might interest you.

 

(It wouldn't have been so bad if Elsa had chosen him, as she could hang out with Prince Blackadder and his nine-year-old wife, Princess Leia of Hungary, without too much judgment.)

 

Did they have Jedi in Hungary?

 

Of course the twist involving him not being quite what he seemed was pretty awesome, and very heartwarming… at least for fifteen seconds until the hardcore action phase began and the drama was turned up to 11!

 

I figured that his not being the real prince would explain the fact that he acts more like a regular kid...which in turn would make him more endearing.

 

The transition to the full-on action of first the tremendously well-planned sabotage followed immediately by the invasion was spectacularly well done.

 

Thank you! Turns out planning an invasion is tough.

 

As if Elsa's incapacitation and worries about her near-certain death weren't enough, everything from Anna's realizations and frantic preparations to the first sighting of the invasion fleet was riveting; the ensuing battles on sea and land were quite exciting – even more so for being cringe-inducing as Lord Otos' master plan unfolded.

 

Otos’ having backup plans for backup plans was really an artifact of my having to make some changes to the sequence of events as the plot unfolded. My original plan was that Elsa would be back in the capitol when the first Dianisian ships arrived, and that she would freeze the harbor to keep them out--only to be foiled by their Greek fire. But it worked out that if things were going to go the way I needed them to go, Elsa wouldn’t get back until well after the ships had landed. So the Greek fire became the Dianisians’ backup plan in case Otos failed to take out Elsa.

 

Of course, the resolutions to the various problems were quite exciting, even if tragic as several new OCs found a special place in my heart moments before you went all  George R. R. Martin on them.

 

Disney or not, I felt like I couldn’t have a war without people dying, and they had to be people that readers cared about. There were a couple of characters that I considered killing off but didn’t: Varek’s attendant, Popov, and the boy Hildy counsels at the tea shop. But in the end, neither death really seemed necessary.

 

Ultimately though, their determination and sacrifices only showed how strongly the people of Arendelle felt for their Queen and Princess, on top of wanting to preserve their freedom.

 

Exactamundo.

 

In the end, most of the problems tied up rather nicely in the end, though there are a few things that felt a bit off:

For one, I really wanted to know the final disposition of Lord Otos – the spy who caused the deaths of so many soldiers and citizens, plus attempted murder of the queen herself – and the equally wicked traitor (unnamed) Minister of the Treasury. Even though you did work a strong anti-violence flavor into the story, especially with her mercy towards Dianisia in the end (thanks partly, no doubt, to her feelings towards Tomas), I would have liked to know whether they'd be put to death or spend the rest of their lives decorating the wall of a dungeon.

 

Honestly, I never fully decided what Otos’ fate would be, but I think Elsa would keep him alive for his potential intelligence value (in other words, in case I decided to write a sequel and needed him to provide some necessary background info).

 

The other issue was that, even though I love the tweest, the revelation of Hildy's father and her grander part in the good and helpful schemes did seem a bit out of the blue. (Not quite deus ex machina though it kind'a is ;)). It was certainly humorous to a degree but perhaps felt like a lot to take in at the very end of the story.

 

Yeah, I probably should have put a bit more of that in earlier parts of the story, rather than back-loading most of it. Hildy’s involvement in her father’s schemes was largely meant as a way to explain some of her suspicious behavior early on (like her armed encounter with Kristoff in the woods). And all of that was mainly because I wanted Hildy to have more of a role in the story than just that of Anna’s BFF.

 

Still, those issues don't make it any less awesome of a story. It's truly fantastic work.

 

Thank you!

 

As a matter of fact, after tweaking some of the speech parameters and removing my standard "TIME TO DELETE THIS LEMON!" reminder at the end of each chapter, this story will have a permanent home on my MP3 player. Thanks a million for your effort and dedication to bring this story to life.

 

I am honored to have my words immortalized on your device, and you’re welcome.

 

P.S. Your extended author's notes (in the review-reply thread) are terrific too. I especially loved the jokes – my favorite being: "Sweet only two more elementals and then they can summon Captain Planet."

ThatGuyWithTheFace is no slouch when it comes to bad fire-jokes.