Sometimes when I look at Elsa and Pitch, I can't help but joke to myself that a) the Disney animation/character design team knew what they were doing and b) that they're secretly team Pitch.
I mean, how else do you explain just how well Elsa both complements and contrasts Pitch in design?
— They both have something akin to eyeshadow, but given how there's no indication they put in on and they keep having it even when it would make no sense, or make no sense for it to be so pronounced or done the way it is... it's still there.
— Their clothes disappear into their skin, kinda', and also look party made out of magic. (ice or black sand...)
— Elsa and her story came out after Rise of the Guardians (and Pitch's whole "what goes together better than cold and dark?" spiel), and she's weirdly a perfect cold to Pitch's dark with enough angst to be slightly "dark" herself.
— Her colours both contrast and complement Pitch's very well. She's got a light colour palette to his darker colour palette so they stand out well against each other while also not clashing.
— Curiously, they don't at all get rid of any of these design choices in the second movie. In fact, they add to it, by giving her a horse companion, or Nokk. (made of water/frozen water, to contrast Pitch's sandy, dark mares)
— They then also make her the fifth spirit, which is a bit unsatisfying because ice is really just frozen water which makes that choice feel kinda' bs, especially for her to kinda "rule" the spirits, even when ice would clearly melt to fire, yadeeyadada blahblahblah... But it also allows her to be a spirit, so... potentially immortal, yet likely still capable of growing and developing on the inside... but we'll have to see with the next instalments to the franchise.
— She's referred to as "monster" in the first movie, I believe, and she certainly likely sees herself that way, which is also what Pitch refers to himself as, but also how the Guardians view him.
— Okay, so the trolls say that "Fear will be your enemy", but not only are the trolls obnoxious and not very good with kids, considering they just scared Elsa more with that line, which just makes things worse, but also that just encourages so much juicy irony if she were to get with her "enemy"... I mean, they're setting up a wholeass "fated enemies" to lovers arc here and they don't even know it (maybe).
— They both have a flair for being dramatic, kinda' sassy and definitely judgy/critical of others. "You're not one of them" and "you can't marry a man you just met", but also "the cold never bothered me anyway" with that sassy look and then Pitch's "no" to Jack after Jack's rejection of him, which is preceeded by that smirk, and then it fades and he says "no". As for the dramatic part, I mean, Elsa made a wholeass castle while venting and Pitch created a model of Sandman just to crush him... and then, basically everything else does is super dramatic as well.
— And then, as a slight contrast, one tends to put their hands behind their back a lot, while the other puts their hands in front of them a lot, in a similar fashion to one another.
— Also they both have this pacing habit. (Imagine them both pacing at the same time and then Anna just getting annoyed sitting on the couch, trying to read a romance novel and not being able to because she keeps hearing the two overthinking idiots walking about and being like "okay, spit it out, what's bothering the two of you?")
— Also, unlike Jack's ice magic which is generally played for fun even at it's most dangerous there are moments when Elsa's magic is definitely framed as dangerous and unpredictable, whereas Jack's maintains a whimsy, or is otherwise presented as this heroic, useful thing pretty much throughout the movie. So the nuanced way in which Elsa's magic is portrayed feels more complementary to Pitch's... but maybe that's just me. Very pretty, but also has the potential to be incredibly dangerous. (And this is also expressed in Marshmallow, her very unfriendly counterpart to Olaf.)
— Also, also, the preceding movie to this was Tangled (I think). Tangled had the love interest (Flynn) start out like someone who you'd think would be an antagonist/villain (i.e. a thief, and not one with a heart of gold until he starts caring about Rapunzel), who is enemies with both Pascal (Rapunzel's companion) and Maximus (who works for the kingdom) and is out to get the likes of Flynn. The relevence there is that I think Pitch would be the one most likely to have that dynamic with Olaf if he were dragged into Frozen, not Jack, who is pretty chill with the elves and yetis, and who only gets on Bunny's bad side because he's obnoxious and Bunny's a very serious person who doesn't much like the cold, etc. But he couldn't have that fun dynamic with any of Elsa's friends or family, because he's too much like them. Which also means he wouldn't be contributing as much to the group. And since everyone likes the Flynn x Rapunzel dynamic a lot (barring the age gap that can feel a bit oof), and a lot prefer it to the Anna x Kristoff dynamic (not that it isn't good, but it lacks the sincerity or development of the former pairing, and what makes it worse is that the second movie deleted the one song where the two were most sincerely and clearly mutually interested in one another... "Get This Right"). And if a dynamic ain't broke... so anyway, Pitch may not be roguish thief and Elsa isn't necessarily a ray of sunshine, but Elsa is an overthinking low-self esteem person to someone who, at least, outwardly is much more confident, and Elsa is more careful, whereas Pitch is... not really. So they still have that opposing dynamic, plus, he'd clash more with Elsa's companions. So, regardless of what any other creatives thought up for Elsa, you just get the feeling that someone was like "huh... if we do her this way we have a lot of potential for a dynamic as fun as what we got with Flynn, Rapunzel, Maximus and Pascal in future movies".
. . . Now, okay, granted. There is a-no-way that Disney can just waltz in and "borrow" the characters from a movie created and owned by DreamWorks. So a crossover wouldn't happen regardless. That's not to say creatives don't have their own ideas and opinions, including ones on crossovers. They might not be able to make them canon, but they can have fun with things like design and character arcs, and even be influenced by the ideas they can't make canon, to add things to the canon that they can get away with.
. . . It is mostly a joke, though, I genuinely don't expect Disney or Dreamworks to ever want to make that crossover happen, and known what the most popular ship is . . . frankly, I would hope that such a crossover never happens, because they would be pushed to submit to the overwhelming majority of shippers who, er. . . definitely don't ship her with Pitch; that's for sure. (Some of which are willing to straight up be douchey about it in comment sections, too.) Plus, a lot of people headcanon Elsa as aroace or lesbian (or a bit of both), and this would probably bother them because it'd feel like a betrayal from Disney who already censored and cut out and sanitized a lot of their stuff that had the potential to be much more inclusive and much more interesting. (Especially in their Pixar movies.) As a result, it would be a bad move to even give Elsa a canon love interest. My gal needs no man, and — for as much as I've referred to Flynn/Eugene and Kristoff as such — no man deserves to be reduced to just a love-interest, which is what sometimes happens in fandoms. (People have said it happens with Jack in some ships, for instance.)
Besides, us not getting a love interest for her canonically doesn't invalidate our choices for who (if anyone) we ship her with. (Nor does shipping her invalidate her as a character separate from the idea of romance, but it can and does happen to female characters in fiction and fandom too.) But it is fun to imagine that there is even just one artist/animator that is team Pelsa and is adding all these little Pelsa nuggets in there as subtly as they can while acting like it's nothing.
Still, clearly, there had to be at least one creative on the team who was a Pelsa shipper before they even knew it, possibly competing against another one that for some moon-forsaken reason was a Jelsa shipper from the get go while designing and animating Elsa, because COME ON. /j
Which now just makes me wanna read a one-shot/short where two creatives at the same studio have beef over the ships that inspire them to create and it's getting in the way of things, and ultimately it leads to them getting with one another romantically or something like that.
In other words, I got distracted again, whoops.
