At the end of Httyd 1, Toothless was inside the house and sitting there like he'd been there for quite a while and had gotten used to the place so chances are he never left Hiccup's side post the battle with Red Death for the time his best friend had been comatose. Also the fact that Stoick fully entrusted Toothless with Hiccup's safety and wellbeing that he would leave the house without worry.

Point in case, Toothless probably only left the house for brief moments and the villagers haven't seen him much (and they're too apprehensive to quell their curiosity because that's a freakin' Night Fury in there guarding their unconscious heir), ergo they haven't gotten used to him yet. Accepted the dragons sure but as the series told, not in an instant and not 100 percent. They trust the dragon in there but it's still something to wrap their heads around.

Now, a random Berkian's perspective to Hiccup and Toothless' friendship and dynamic post Httyd 1 would be gold.

The bewilderment at how those two seem to communicate like they've been together their whole lives, the mini heart attacks when Hiccup snarks at the dragon they grew up fearing and Toothless snarls or roars back with teeth out and... rolls his eyes?? Oh... they're just bickering, the boy isn't about to die, calm down. The fucking jumpscares when those two show up like they just materialized from the shadows WTF aaand it was just Hiccup hiding from the chief. The befuddlement watching the boy and his dragon having a debate over which notebook to buy because Hiccup wants the one with better paper quality but Toothless wants the other because apparently it smells nice.

The villagers gradually get used to Toothless and how he integrated so perfectly into Hiccup's life but while the fear and confusion is gone, the awe at how connected those two are, how they understand each other better than anyone can possibly hope, never goes away-

"Hey, no- Toothless, give me back my notebook! I still need to- Hey! GET BACK HERE!"

A black form rushes through the square and towards the Great Hall, being chased by his angry best friend who was refusing to get lunch because he wanted to sketch down an idea for some invention.

...............

(Don't tag as a ship)

Brain worm of the day: Christian symbolism without preaching Christianity.

Literally just that, Berk can write a book, with a Christian story (Lazarus) on the title cover, and carry that story metaphorically through the entire book, while never making me, a person with severe trauma due to Christianity, ever feel triggered.

Because it's just symbolism, it's just metaphors, and to be quite frank, sometimes it's fueling my religious blasphemy:

That's it, that's all you get for the day, they're good at what they do, and what they do is sometimes weaving Christian symbolism with Greek mythology with a fictional angel with a single episode of the fictional angels show with their own personal grieving process until you're not actually sure where one of those starts and one of those ends.

As always, the source is always more interesting than anything I have to say, so if you haven't yet, go read Lazarus Rises(amongst other things) and follow them on their Tumblr @icaruspendragon because they write so many cool things beyond just their published book.

One thing that I wished they kept throughout the franchise was Hiccup being the smallest Viking. I wish they kept him scrawny and stringy and shorter than Astrid and the rest of the gang.

Hiccup was ostracised by his entire community for many reasons, one being his weak build and small stature.

Snotlout may be shorter than Hiccup in the movies, but he's got bigger muscles and puffs himself up. He makes up for it by acting like a proper Viking, being loud and obnoxious and always ready to start a fight - that and he can actually lift a weapon.

The name Hiccup is meant to mean small and frail - the runt of a litter or the black sheep. I want Hiccup to be the absolute epitome yet antithesis of his name. I want Hiccup to be small and unassuming and shorter than the rest. But I also want him to be Great. I want him to be brave and stubborn and hard to kill. Awkward and sarcastic at the worst of times but still kind and friendly and always dependable.

I want him to be everything a Viking is and isn't. I want him to be a peacekeeper and a warrior, an adventurer and an inventor, the son of the chief and the hiccup of his tribe. Someone who can't wield the same weapons as his tribesmen so he makes his own. Someone who wants to uphold the traditions and culture of his people yet always thinks outside of the box. The representation of this new age that's fast approaching, the line in the middle where old and new clash.

I want Hiccup to dress like a Viking, talk like a Viking, eat, sleep and walk like a Viking yet be the very last thing anyone ever thinks of when they think of a Viking. And most of all I want there to be absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I wish they hadn't made him tall and appealing in the end. I wish they'd kept him the way he was. A Viking born too early and too weak in the middle of one of the harshest winters ever experienced by the barbaric archipelago. A Viking who beat the odds and survived. He's braved every terrible winter since his birth and lives in a place where it snows nine months of the year and hails the other three. He can endure bone-freezing chills and frozen oceans but never fails to catch the common cold. He's always been a bit sickly, ever since he was a child, but he always bounces back. He's got scars and a missing leg and his hands are filled with callouses, cuts and burns, but he's soft-spoken and loves to read and never skips a meal yet can never seem to get any bigger.

I wish they could have kept Hiccup the way he was. I wish they didn't have to change him in order to have him become a worthy hero.

I wish the entire village could look at their little runt of a chief and still crack jokes about his long-overdue growth spurt. I want them to look at him and be filled with pride, cause despite the fact that he hasn't grown an inch since he was sixteen, there isn't a single person on Berk who can look at him without seeing just how far he's come.

Hiccup Aesthetic ✨️

Astrid Fishlegs Snotlout Tuffnut Ruffnut

OMG SO AMAZING!

(source)

Hiccup: Astrid, it seems Gobber invited some guests to celebrate our engagement

Astrid: Really? Who?

Hiccup opening the door to reveal the entire population of Berk: Berk

Compiling some designs for fic purposes.

Berk:

Berserkers:

Outcasts:

Drago:

Hunters:

Flyers:

okay headcanon Hiccup's interest in cartography started when he was a kid and nobody picked up on it. mapmaking is how he got into drawing. he used to map out different parts of berk and shit. toothless gave him the ability to explore and create maps nobody had ever seen before.

Never actually paid attention to Berk during this part of the battle, which is when Hiccup and Toothless have disappeared into the clouds along with the Red Death.

They're so worried for the boy's safety. They honestly just wanted him back with them safe and sound. They didn't want him up there in the clouds, battling this dragon not even Berk's collective strength could kill.

Also Gobber's concerned face is just heartbreaking.

The fact that throughout 3 movies and plenty show seasons we NEVER find out where the Kaiju-sized dragon from HTTYD1 came from is… really spooky. Like, they documented history for ALL dragons, but this one just… is.

THEM, YOUR HONOR <3

does anyone else find it slightly annoying that even though “it snows 9 months of the year” on berk, we never really see snow on berk..

i mean there’s the gift of the night fury, and theres httyd 2 (but that’s cuz the bewilderbeast not nature)

other than that i can’t think of another single time we’ve actually seen snow on berk

(i know about the few eps in rob/dob you can stop commenting that thank you tho)

Brain worm of the day:

The way Berk uses difference in punctuation specifically between poems as a whole.

So in a previous post I did an incredibly overly detailed babble of words into how Berk uses capitalization for individual words that provide not just emphasis, but sometimes change their entire meaning from that of a verb to a proper noun/entity.

This isn't the only way they use capitalization though. Berk's poems in Lazarus Rises seem to follow a couple different levels of grammatical rule breaking basically. Some of their poems follow basic grammar sentence structure:

What I mean by that is that capitalization occurs in the same way it would for normal sentences, with the first letter of a sentence and all I's being capitalized, as well as with periods concluding each sentences.

Sometimes they follow a form of normal sentence structure:

Their I's are still capitalized and they still use periods, but the beginning of sentences aren't capitalized. Not only that but the sentences themselves don't follow a normal sentence structure in the form of subject-verb-object, they seem to begin and end wherever emphasis or a spoken pause would be needed.

Sometimes though they completely throw the rules out the window:

In the case of this poem they don't capitalize a single letter or use a single period until the very end of their poem:

Now here's the thing, this could all be Berk just messing around with style (they're entitled to playing around with it but honestly a lot of the ways Berk writes seems entirely too well thought out and specifically chosen for that to make sense to me). This could be Berk just deciding the shift key was too heavy that day (which I would argue is in itself a choice that would carry through to your poems). This could have no greater meaning to it (press x to doubt).

But regardless of whether this was all intentional (and I very much would argue it is, at least subconsciously) the fact that Berk writes in this way provides more layers to gain from their poems.

In the case of their poem X. periods hold a significance whenever they choose to use them. They provide emphasis that might not have otherwise been given, they provide a dictation for how their poems might be read aloud, they provide another layer of meaning.

The same can be said for their lack of capitalization.

"One day, I will move on from my grief." is incredibly different from "one day, I will move on from my grief." The first case could be seen on a hallmark card honestly. It's not wrong, but I kind of immediately want to throw it away in annoyance at feeling misunderstood.

But in the second case?? You can literally feel the exhaustion.

This second line means something to me. This second line comes from someone who actually gets what it's like to grieve, who gets that to put it into polite terms, is really fucking hard.

When they throw away all grammar rules though???

Their poem XIII does this :

Tell me you didn't get to the end of that poem, and get knocked out of your chair. Look me in the eyes, and lie to me, because of course you're on the ground.

"You are not alone." hits you like a sledgehammer. Nothing else in that poem follows normal grammar. There is not a single other period or capitalized letter. So when you read that statement you can almost feel Berk trying to lovingly slam you with the idea of friendship and caring and sharing in pain together so that we are never alone again.

TLDR; Berk uses all available tools they have in the written form to knock you upside the head (/pos) with an emotion. Sometimes this is the words they choose to use, sometimes this is the way they fit those words together, and sometimes they make sentence structure their bitch in a way that I'm honestly in awe of.

As always, the source is always more interesting than anything I have to say, so if you haven't yet, go read Lazarus Rises(amongst other things) and follow them on their Tumblr @icaruspendragon because they write so many cool things beyond just their published book.

so the red death burned most, if not all, of the vikings' ships, right? which means while hiccup was unconscious, berkians found a way to collaborate with dragons in order to get home. hiccup was unconscious in berk at least long enough for gobber to craft his leg and toothless' tail and saddle. someone removed toothless' broken saddle. many vikings were on the backs of dragons. the work to start forging bonds wasn't left only in hiccup's hands. it needed his prompting, but humans and dragons were working at peace by the time he awoke. that's beautiful. isn't that beautiful?

KARDESLERIM| 1.99 — Berk professing his love for Aybike under the rain

Right Prisoner, Wrong Prison

(Spoilers for Defenders of Berk and Race to the Edge.) Here's something that has upset me for a while with what happened between Berk and Berserker Island: Dagur went to Outcast Island's prison. This is never actually addressed, but I don't think it's fair. I'll explain why.

The main thing is that Dagur broke no law with Alvin. He broke it with Berk by going against the peace treaty their tribes shared. So, they should have been the ones to arrest him for that. Sending him to Outcast Island is comparable to someone breaking a lease with an apartment and getting fined by a grocery store. It doesn't make sense because that store has no jurisdiction here. If Alvin and Dagur also had a treaty, then fine, it would make sense, but there is no legal backing to support Alvin taking him prisoner.

Next, it's Alvin of all people. The Viking who goes by "The Treacherous" as his moniker. I sure hope that's not warranted...oh wait, it is. According to Gobber (I think, or Stoick) in Alvin's first episode, he has been Berk's enemy for 20 years. Wow. That is a lot of time to essentially be a violent criminal. Hiccup himself has even referred to him as a "Murderous barbarian." Wow again. Clearly, they know he is evil and has been their foe for a couple decades. So, what right does he have to act as anyone's jailer? The last time he was one, it was when he trapped Hiccup. I get it that he changed, but did he? Now, if I go into RTTE, I would feel more confident in saying that he did. Alvin coming to Berk to help out after Stoick got injured was genuinely kind of him. He didn't have to do that. However, as of DoB, he didn't do anything that great. Yes, Alvin helped stop Dagur, but it benefited him too. It wasn't altruistic. Alvin lost his island and was practically on the lam at that point. The options were: stay in protective custody on Berk or stop Dagur and get your island back. Of course he chose the latter. That's not enough to make me think he's an amazing person. He just didn't want to lose his home and have it stay lost. So, the murderous barbarian of 20 years is able to become someone's jailer. I don't even think Dagur is 20-years-old yet, so Alvin very likely could have been villaining (let's pretend this is a word) for longer than the Berserker's been alive.

What makes this worse is the actual relationship between Dagur and Alvin. Hypothetically, if they'd both agreed to work together and then Dagur just decided to lie, I would support Alvin's decision. It would be messed up to do that, but this isn't what happened. Or at least not entirely. From Hiccup's perspective it is and I think this is what led to the imprisonment. Hiccup goes to Outcast Island and sees the two Vikings shaking hands. The next time he sees them, they're fighting and Dagur has the Skrill. Hiccup probably assumes that Dagur betrayed Alvin and then tried to kill him, which would be a fair assumption, but it doesn't make this true. Both parties were planning to betray one another, but an argument could be made that Dagur was lying. Alvin said that he'd learn what he could about the Skrill, then kill Dagur and his men. I believe that. Dagur said he'd use Alvin to get the Skrill, then kill him and his men. I don't believe that. Why? Because Dagur went and got the Skrill...then left.

Dagur didn't even need to make an agreement with Alvin if he wanted to kill him. He has an armada of 50k Vikings. Alvin has probably a hundred men. He's a strong Viking, but he's not "I can kill fifty thousand attackers" strong. So, Dagur could have immediately come and attacked as soon as he saw the Skrill was in his possession. Instead, he agreed to work together (even though he didn't plan on doing it for long). Again, after this, he left. What was stopping him from using the Skrill to attack Alvin and his people then? It wouldn't make sense to return home only to go right back, so the idea of that being his plan seems unlikely. I don't think he was going to attack. He said he would (just like he let everyone think he killed Oswald). Dagur was a new, young chief with problems. They didn't have faith in him, but if he seemed dangerous and scary, even if they lacked trust, they could have fear. That was enough for him at the time. If he's let his people believe he'd do something so violent as patricide, I can believe he'd let them think he'd kill Alvin. Yet, when the time could have come, Dagur took the peaceful route, which is precisely why Hiccup would believe that he didn't. It's surprising that he did, so it's more likely to believe he was the one attacking.

Alvin was actually the one to initiate the fight. Dagur was on his way back home, but Alvin tracked him down and said he'd "Cut [him] to pieces." That sounds like a death threat to me. At this point, Dagur using the Skrill is self-defense. He does try to kill Alvin, but he's still Dagur and is still going to be a violent person. It's not helping that he was attacked first. So, this is the bad blood between the two of them. Somehow, Alvin gets to be the one who was actually going to kill Dagur and also the one who is in charge of him in prison. That is some cruel fate.

Even looking at the actual time in prison makes it bad too. How long was the sentence? It's never stated. It's probably never stated because Alvin was never going to release him. I think Heather later says that she'll bring Dagur back to Outcast Island so that he can spend the rest of his days rotting in a cell. That's what was planned for him. It frustrates me how little is discussed about his time there. Why does he have a haircut? Why does he have that gnarly scar??? That is by far the most gruesome scar of any other character. They all have one over their eyebrows or dragon claw marks (or lava burns later).

I have spent an unhealthy amount of time looking at Dagur's scar because I wanted to understand how this even happened. Just check this thing out. It's not something that could be done in a simple slash. The longest one is from the temple to the chin, there's one around the cheekbone, over the eye, and the last one is sort of under the eye and down. If it was a blade, it would have had to have been made with 4 slices and I've also heard the theory that it was a whip. Ow to either. I don't buy that Dagur would do this to himself. He was way too cocky to self-mutilate. Maybe hair is a status symbol for Vikings of the Archipelago, so Alvin chopped that off and then gave him that scar. A horribly sad headcanon which I've seen many writers have (that I share) is that he was assaulted in prison as well. It's probably true. We see him in a cell on his own, but that could've been after he killed his cellmates. I also wouldn't put it past the guards. Either way, I think it's a bad case of Dagur being the youngest and smallest person there around a lot of touch-starved Vikings. As good of a fighter as he is, this could have happened because he was outnumbered, maybe he had on restraints at the time, or the guards even could have threatened to go after his Berserkers if he fought back.

Admittedly, this part is speculation. We don't know if that happened. Realistically, it probably would have, though, and you can look at him to see that he has not really been sleeping these past 3 years. I don't think there's another character with bags under their eyes like this Berserker. Plus, the one time we see him sleeping, he wakes up like it was some horrible nightmare. I'll concede again that the reason behind this is up for theorizing. What we do know is that he went in, got that scar, and broke out. Only, I think it's a shame that he was put there to begin with. If he had gone to Berk's prison like they sent Alvin to in Cast Out, maybe he wouldn't have gotten so bad. Dagur became noticeably more violent and evil after breaking out of prison than he was before going in. Afterwards, he killed just for the sake of killing. I remember him getting annoyed with Savage for not knowing that they were going to kill the merchants after taking their weapons instead of just paying for them. That Dagur would have killed Alvin to take the Skrill, no questions asked. So, it really is pretty sad that someone who already wasn't necessarily okay to begin with was turned into so much more of a threat. Maybe Dagur would have been able to turn over a new leaf sooner and start fresh if he'd stayed on Berk. What we got was basically a representation of mentally ill people being arrested and not getting better because they're forgotten about and further traumatized by the experiences of prison instead of actually receiving the therapies needed to help them. I suppose that I should get off the soapbox now. If anyone's interested in these ideas being in a story, I wrote one called Rehabilitation on AO3 and Fanfiction.net. Hope you enjoy if you check it out!