Log in
Avatar

Untitled

@certaineggghostcroissant-blog

PostsLikesFollowing
certaineggghostcroissant-blog
flightmare-kid

Analysis Of Why The Dragons Had To Leave Berk (Part 2/3)

Because apparently a whole lot of people haven’t found peace about this yet and I’d like them to see what I can see :)

Let’s jump right in, friends :)

I am going to look at three aspects of this:

a) The context of Httyd in the book!verse and the real, historical world

b) Dean’s 15 reasons why the dragons had to leave

c) And finally, why not everything makes sense to everyone and how the way it made sense to me personally may help you to make it work for yourself. Yep. I just put the yep there because I can. And because this is the part of my analysis that I look most forward to :D

Quick note: If you find it too long to read everything, just read the sentences I highlighted in bold. Of course I would appreciate it though if you read the whole thing :) Have fun!

Let’s move on to b) DEAN’S REASONS.

Well, to connect the movie with the books again required some lateral thinking. Because the movie plot was that different from the book plot, and now Dean had to come up with his own reasons for making the dragons leave. Thing is, there is more than one. In fact, the movie is stuffed with reasons of varying importance. I will be talking about the cause and effects of that later, but for now, I’d like to introduce to you a full list of the explanations he gave us as to why it was better for the dragons to leave than to stay. Yes, that’s right. A full list. Loosely following the chronological order of the movie. Here we go.

b1) The Dragon Riders relied so much on their dragons to save the day that they didn’t know how to defend themselves anymore. But to these vikings, who went up against the most vicious of people, fighting skills were essential to survival and could not be afforded to lose! Keeping dragons around to save them made them vulnerable. Just look how Drago ended up without his Bewilderbeast. Or Grimmel, who relied on his Deathgrippers. Both were nothing without their dragons when they encountered the Berkians. But the reason the Berkians still were someone when stripped of their dragons, was due to the fact that they were constantly reminded of a life without dragons by the villains who took them! They still knew what they were capable of on their own, but this time they came dangerously close to forgetting!

b2) Berk was hopelessly overcrowded. The dragons needed more space (see the Crimson Goregutter accident) than the village could offer them, and the Berkians honestly imagined a simpler life for themselves (”Less crowded, more sanitary”). Notice how the same problems with the dragons came up as when the dragons were still new (see RoB). That was ages ago.

b3) By gathering all the dragons in one place, Hiccup basically handed all the money- and power-hungry traders, trappers, sellers and conquerors of the world a winning lottery ticket. People were greedy. Commanding dragons was the key and currency to power in the Barbaric Archipelago. And all one had to do was to go to Berk and pick’em up freely by the hundreds, instead of trapping them one by one under great effort in the woods. And Hiccup gave up on hiding this reality.

b4) Hiccup did not only rob a few bad people like Drago and Grimmel of their ambitions and fun by freeing dragons. He also robbed simple people of their livelihood, and didn’t even waste a thought on giving them another. What about the other thousands of trappers who had earned money under Drago’s rule like Eret? Way to make himself quite a number of enemies. No, the flood of opponents wasn’t gonna end. One day they were all gonna come for Hiccup, and even moving away wouldn’t stop them from finding him and the dragons again.

b5) There was an imminent threat to Toothless’ life by Grimmel, a dragon trapper so intelligent that he was able to bypass Berk’s guards. He had every possible motivation to go after Toothless, so he was sure to be relentless. To see how this affected all dragons, go to b15).

b6) Chaos was obviously ruling both Hiccup’s missions abroad and his village back home. He had only been Chief for a year, and he had visibly taken on too much. Gobber wisely suggested Hiccup should be getting his affairs in order first before continuing to save dragons. Domestic before foreign politics.7

b7) Hiccup had a new chapter opening up in his life when Gobber told him to marry. The awareness of responsibility for his own tribe suddenly returned to him, as he had forgotten it over the responsibility he felt he bore over the dragons, which was not his to carry, but Toothless’. He also began thinking of his own happiness and his future with Astrid, which he had totally neglected.

b8) It is not to underestimate that Hiccup was also still grieving, but he never really took his proper time to mourn. He happily let anything dragon-related distract him, which was not a good base to build his early Chieftainship on.

b9) Okay, this is going to be a really, really hard point, and some of you might not like me for saying it. But Hiccup and Toothless’ disabilites? The strong symbol of their unbreakable friendship? The fact that Toothless entrusted Hiccup with his tail, and Hiccup entrusted Toothless with his leg? The dependency they willingly gave to each other to prove that their love was mutual? It was becoming a burden. They both couldn’t go anywhere without each other anymore. At some point, they had to go beyond that and trust each other with their independency.

b10) A new chapter opened for Toothless as well when he discovered the Light Fury. After being the only Fury dragon around for like forever, she was his chance to finally share life with a dragon who was as close to his likeness as it could ever get. It is true that both the need for “someone like me” and the need for a romantic relationship next to his healthy, platonic friendship had never been expressed by Toothless before. But it is noteworthy that once these two opportunities presented themselves to him, he wanted to take them. Regardless of the deep fulfillment he already received out of his bond with Hiccup. Regardless of his heckload of responsibilities as the Alpha dragon. He may not have felt the need for romantic love before, but when met this girl, he suddenly  discovered what it was like, and turns out it was a beautiful thing, so he wanted to pursue and keep it in his life. This is legit. Toothless needs no further justification. However, his decision to add romantic love to his life meant spending less time with his best friend. Toothless didn’t love Hiccup less than before (”am I not enough?” seriously, Hiccup? You get to have Astrid, but your friend can’t have a partner?), but a day only has so many hours, and if Toothless wanted to add some high priority to his day, he inevitably had to cut somewhere else. This is pure logic, guys. You don’t love your BFF less the day you get a boy- or girlfriend, and still you’ll spend more intimate time with your lover from now on. This is just what happened to Hiccup and Toothless too. Now of course they shouldn’t have had to go separate ways because of this only. After all, in healthy relationships, your BFF usually still stays in your life for a great deal of time. Here comes the real reason.

When Toothless met the Light Fury, he wanted to enjoy getting to know her. But this was always interrupted and spoiled by overly excited Hiccup who depended so much on Toothless that he followed him around everywhere. On the other hand, Toothless depended so much on Hiccup that he let him talk into his courting ritual, which turned out to be unhealthy. As stated in b9) already, both of them were really almost addicted to each other, when all that Toothless wanted and needed was to have some alone time with his new love.

b11) Hiccup never realized he wasn’t allowing Toothless and the Light Fury their desperately needed alone time. However, he did realize that flying on his own was something Toothless needed to gain a future with her, and so he built him the new tail. The thing is that Hiccup didn’t place much importance on it. He said something along the lines of “well, it’s only until he brings her back [to New Berk]”. Toothless’ reaction tells us another story. To him it was suddenly super important to be able to fly on his own, and this shows us that Hiccup had begun to misunderstand the very essence of what a dragon is: An intelligent, decision-making creature capable of friendship with a human, yes. But also a flying animal whose home is the sky. In the past, Hiccup had always understood this. In the first movie he proved it by crafting Toothless a tail in the first place, and in Gotnf he proved it again by crafting him a tail which allowed him to fly on his own. But now, Hiccup had forgotten that there was a part of Toothless that he mustn’t dare to control. That he had let go of in the past and that he would always have to let go of again. And you know what? Toothless had forgotten it too. He had forgotten what real flight meant. He had forgotten his wildness, yes, his whole dragon-ness. He had truly become as dependent on Hiccup as a pet. And it took the Light Fury to remind him and Hiccup both that the foundation of their friendship had always been to find some common ground by looking past their differences, and not by pretending their differences didn’t exist. And after this long, long time of beautiful sacrifice for the sake of their common ground, they both had to start paying attention to the individual half of themselves again. Their friendship was consuming them. Hiccup needed to see that he was more than his bond with Toothless, and Toothless needed to see he was more than his bond with Hiccup. I dare to say that even though it may look like the Light Fury “destroyed” Hiccup and Toothless’ friendship, I think she actually saved it. Because both of them had started to neglect their own needs because of their friendship, as already stated in b9) and b10), and over a continuous period of time, it would have resulted in bitterness for Toothless to choose Hiccup over a mate and for Hiccup to choose to live in Toothless’ shadow over personal achievement and self-confidence. Compare their story to Valka’s. As Toothless was a dragon living among humans, Valka was a human living among dragons, and she had become bitter. It took the forgiveness of her family to restore her, and after that she didn’t hesitate to come home “where she belonged”. In the same way, it was really necessary for the Light Fury to “lure” Toothless away to show him that he couldn’t deny how his wildness was still a part of him. And it was important for Hiccup to see this too so he could learn to let go once more (gosh this one was hard to write).

b12) The Berkians were just not made to move into the Hidden World. Although they clearly loved their Chief, they also persistently showed reluctance to follow him to a place they could not see. The excitement Tuffnut sparked among them was short-lasting. This is because they weren’t dreamers and travelers like Hiccup. They lived in the Here an Now, not in the future that their Chief was able to envision. They were used to slower historical change than what Hiccup had pulled over the last couple years, and they were tired. They needed a tangible, solid place to call home and settle on. A boring day-to-day life with no unpleasant surprises. As sturdy as they were, Hiccup needed to compromise his best intentions with their present needs.

b13) Hiccup realized that the Hidden World belonged to the dragons, and the dragons alone. Humans were not welcome there, so his solution faded. He didn’t have a Plan B. The Hidden World was all he had. Letting the dragons live there without the humans was the only option left.

b14) Hiccup was naturally confronted with a lot of insecurities in his early reign as Chief. Everyone who takes on a big task asks themselves at some point whether they’re the right person for it. But instead of facing these insecurities, Hiccup relied on Toothless to fix them and to complement him where he failed. This is a very real and a very human thing to do. It’s the easier way to choose when in an overwhelming situation. And that was okay for a year. But at some point, Hiccup had to quit relying on someone else to fix his issues, start learning from trial and error, and finally become a strong person himself who owned his Chieftainship instead of allowing others to run it.

To be fair, people didn’t make it easy for him to build up a solid self-assurance. Hiccup was questioned and doubted by people on every corner. Tuffnut’s worst pep talk attacked his outer appearance. Grimmel attacked his very identity by mocking his name. Snotlout and Stoick’s memory made Hiccup wonder whether he lived up to his father’s legacy. And it took Astrid to make the people of Berk even listen to his ideas. That was all very demotivating.

But I’m not done yet. Hiccup also made grave mistakes, and he knew it. He allowed Stoick’s tale of “dragons bursting through the roof” to happen to him as well. He swore to himself he would never underestimate an enemy again, and yet he did. Hiccup’s raids almost failed twice because he had to defend himself without Toothless (see b1)). All that made him feel the need for Toothless’ presence in his every decision of course even greater. Because Toothless carried him everywhere he went and caught him every time he fell. Because Toothless’ natural authority gained him the respect and order of both dragons and people. As Hiccup concluded at the end of the movie, Toothless had made everything easier. But it was time for Hiccup to realize who he was and what he could do on his own, and this he could only learn without a Night Fury’s backup. And by the way, as natural as I said this journey is, we’re also talking about a journey that naturally takes years. To firmly stand on his own, Hiccup had to break away from Toothless for at least a few years. Believe it or not, this is healthy. Every young adult moving out from their parents’ home knows this.

b15) THIS IS THE SUM OF ALL THE REASONS STATED ABOVE. The individual matters of Hiccup and Toothless directly affected the fate of their tribes. Like, everything. Their every joy down to their deepest struggle was directly mirrored to the Berkians and the dragon flock. And that’s why Hiccup and Toothless needed to learn that their first responsibility was to their kind. This is also very inconvenient to say, but they really had to pull themselves together and learn to put their friendship in second place behind their chieftainships. Understand that Hiccup and Toothless were not ordinary people like you and me. They both had to answer for the wellbeing of several hundred beings, and they were both still figuring it out! They were in leading positions that called for the hard choices. These were not decisions anyone can make. Remember Stoick? He was a Chief first and a friend to Gobber second. Yes, Gobber lived on Berk as well, but he was no Chief himself. Had he been, those two had met once every tribe council meeting and that’s it. Two Alpha personalities on the same island? Not a good idea in the long run. See where I’m trying to go here? They made the right call just before everyone’s semi-patient mood about their united rule could shift. Yes it was hard. Yes it was unfair. But to make such sacrifices is the routine of leadership, friends. Sorry to disappoint you.

Read Part 1 | Part 3 

@howtodrawyourdragon @corona-the-nightcutter

Avatar
certaineggghostcroissant-blog

They are all welcome here .I have three dragons of my own