There is another artistically incredible thing I noticed abt the first Httyd movie.

The movie, it's from Hiccup's perspective. And it conveys his perspective throughout, in details both subtle and clear.

Like the Book of Dragons clip; Chilling and terrific with sound effects and feels induced exactly as Hiccup was imagining it. That scene alone gives me the shivers and the way it ends on Night Fury (I absolutely love the fear inducing Night Fury theme from the first movie). I've been noticing that every single piece of score fit the emotions and situation Hiccup was in, affirming his perspective, his experiences, conveyed through the movie as if they were the viewers' own. And that scene when Hiccup is listening to his father speak just before entering the arena to face Hookfang, the way the lighting and expressions and sound of Stoick's voice was set apart from everything and felt resonated, Hiccup's dread and anticipation and anxiety and worry and fear were palpable. He was planning to do the exact opposite of what his father, the one he's been trying to make proud his entire life, was hoping and oof that few seconds HURT!

And with how the background score and scenes were animated so splendidly, there's one very subtle but greatly well integrated detail I just have to mention

If we take a note of all the dragons throughout the movie, there's a gradual pattern. The movie starts and every dragon looks wild and dangerous and animalistic. Beastly and emotionless, except for displaying an urge to cause harm or look vicious.

Aside from Hookfang. Every other dragon didn't look nearly as expressive and clear in intention as Hookfang did. And if you notice, he was the only dragon in the beginning of the movie whom Hiccup made a direct encounter with and sassed at. We saw Hookfang being angry and vicious and even worried and scared when he ran out of firepower and got captured, he seemed to display emotions more clearly than any other dragon. But he was also the only dragon so far Hiccup had a direct communicative encounter with. The movie is from Hiccup's perspective and we saw Hookfang from Hiccup's perspective.

But! It gets better. If you notice or think about it, try to remember the details in the movie with respect to the dragons, all the dragons earlier on looked wild and deadly and nothing else. Just wild and dangerous and vicious, the opinion every viking has on them, the opinion Hiccup during those earlier moments had on them.

But then he met Toothless. And it all began to change. Notice how the dragons seem to become more and more expressive and emotionally intelligent or humanly as Hiccup and Toothless' friendship proceeds to grow. How the snappy Terrible Terrors would gradually start to look like small little dragons who are mischievous and naughty and silly little guys, how the quick and swift Deadly Nadder started to look like a playful and curious friend, how the once sneaky and scary Zippleback who seemed to set it's target on everyone and everything became expressive and displayed worry and fear, how the powerful and dangerous Gronkle gradually started to look more kind and friendly and sleepy etc.

This happened with literally every single dragon during the movie. The more Hiccup began to understand them and got closer to Toothless and realized they are living beings who have individual personalities and feelings and are misunderstood, the more these mighty creatures felt more alive and expressive to the viewers. And this was done without the slightest change in the dragons' models or designs. They conveyed Hiccup's perspective splendidly throughout the movie.

Point in case;

Httyd 1 is a cinematic masterpiece

my friends don’t understand that they may forgive their boyfriends for treating them like literal shit but i will neverrrr eveeerrrr forgive them or forget! i hate your boyfriends. i want them dead. i’m planning their execution. i never wanna see them again unless they’re in a photo with the gates of heaven in the background with the text “fly high” on it and even then i’m gonna say they should’ve died in a worse way.

I wish Kendra was around for longer. Like the entire show. She was really cool and interesting. When she is first introduced it seems she is a member of the Order of Taraka. We are not meant to trust her when she first appears on screen then we find out she is a slayer which defies logic as Buffy is still very much alive.

Kendra is the antithesis of Buffy. She takes being a Slayer seriously. She has trained her entire life for the possibility that she might be called and considers it a great honour. To her, being taken away from her family or not being allowed to have friends or go to school is a necessary sacrifice for the fight against the demons and the vampires. And it’s so fascinating because Kendra lives the life of every Slayer before Buffy, one of seclusion and loneliness. She is meant to protect the world and be forever alone.

But if she hadn’t died she could have learnt to be less of a She Giles as Buffy put it. Which in itself is an ironic statement. Giles only appears to follow the rules but he has extremely questionable morals; summoning a demon, dabbling in the dark arts and all that jazz. Kendra on the other hand does follow the rules whole heartedly; the world is completely black and white to her at first. She and the other humans are the good guys and the vampires are the bad guys.

It takes a while for her to warm up to the concept of Angel being a friendly vampire. Which is why it’s such a big deal that Kendra is the one to help Buffy pull Angel to his feet in the church. She learns to see there can be good in dark places.

Kendra would have learnt to be more of a person and less all I am is my destiny as a Slayer. And she would have taught Buffy to take her duties as a Slayer a little more seriously. They would have balanced each other out because only they understood the uniqueness of their situation. And Buffy wouldn’t have gotten so cold about making Slayer decisions in later seasons I think.

Also, Kendra’s mere presence would have forced the show to explore Slayer lore. How was Kendra identified as a Potential as a child? Her culture knows about Slayers so does that mean the Watcher’s Council knows all the Potentials and picks a Slayer at random? Why did they send Kendra to a Watcher and not Buffy? Or did Buffy have a teacher that was a Watcher in disguise? If we knew a little more about Potentials and Slayer lore then the Potentials storyline in S7 would have been set up so much better.

And did the council just not communicate?How could they not know there were two Slayers? They let it happen twice.

And the Watchers could bond or clash over how to “watch” properly and the dangers the girls were getting in.

Now for cannon. Kendra dying the way she did was so unnecessary. She was the only POC on screen and they just offed her even though she had a great dynamic with the Scoobies. Dru could have stabbed Kendra in the stomach or something, there same effect and Kendra has a chance of surviving.

The death ends up feeling like a POC’s suffering which occurred only to fuel a white character’s arc which is such a disservice to Kendra because she is a Slayer in her own right. She was killing her own big bads too.

And can you imagine Kendra interacting with Faith? Pure gold

Kendra would have been the non judgemental friend Buffy needed because she never had a friend. And Buffy would have been the right dose of chaos Kendra needed in her life to learn to break the rules.

just wanted to sketch billowy shirt hiccups

Hey tumblr maybe instead of flagging queer people’s posts you could take down ai art of celebrities nudes which they did not consent to, from the TRENDING page.

If you do this you should kys, I don't care because these are real people who are being violated. AI is advancing to the point where the line between 'this is fake' and 'i'm not sure if its real' is getting thin and this shit is becoming more and more accessible. This can ruin someones life.

And if you think "well we can tell its fake" okay congrats you missed the point. They didn't consent to having a near perfect replica of their likeness pieced together to form your ideal image of a nude body by a program with stolen art and photographs REAL people created.

Just because you're chronically online doesn't mean other people will be able to recognize AI art btw. If we normalize this happening to celebrities, you think it wont happen to everyday people? Wake up, it's already happening and mainly to women.

If you are a victim of revenge porn:

As an adult

As a minor:

I love being a hater but I also love being an Enjoyer, so what I like to do is enjoy something so aggressively and deeply that I come to know everything about it, and bc I know everything, I can find (minor and major) things to complain about. as a fun activity. enrichment. but then I do that, and people think I actually hate this thing. they’ll be like, oh, good to know about (flaw), I was gonna check that thing out but now I’ll steer clear. you don’t get it. I’m complaining because I love it so much. hey wait come back. I’ve got some more stuff to nitpick 

fyi

from the article above:

USE FIREFOX

tuffnut officiating ruffnut and fishlegs’ accidental marriage that turns out to be unofficial + the astrid hiccup snotlout trio getting into axe retrieval shenanigans all in one episode im losing my mind there’s never a normal day at the edge

spider pronouns it/ze/bit/xe

fun how tumblr staff ignores the terfs and right wingers on here but the second somebody criticizes anything on the site or anyone running the site they suddenly can go all scorched earth on blogs and posts

tumblr staff when you report somebody for saying slurs and not in the reclaimed way:

tumblr staff when someone mildly criticizes their new feature of the week:

reblogging in honor of the blog which posted WHY not to use tumblr live because of some data shit and got deleted TODAY while terfs and shit are still on here harassing people.

Love local coffee shops. your “refugees are welcome here” sign goes really well with the one that says “bathrooms are for paying customers only”

You’ve clearly never had to deal with people doing hard drugs in the grocery store bathroom and it shows.

Bro I literally manage a coffee shop with an open restroom policy, and I prioritize enforcing that policy and making sure everyone feels comfortable. I’ve dealt with everything from the easy end of the spectrum (people quietly doing hard drugs) to a lady ripping all her hair out and setting it on fire in the sink. I clean up after this stuff day after day and I still feel VERY strongly about the fact that human beings should be allowed the basic decency of a place to poop. Yes, I very frequently end up having to kick someone out of the bathroom for doing drugs, and when I do I always offer them a cup of water on their way out. Because they’re a person and I give a shit…

It’s safer for people to do drugs in (clean) public restrooms than it is for them to do it on the street. It’s also ableist to deny someone the use of a bathroom. There are countless gastrointestinal disorders that cause bathroom urgency and potential incontinence. There are other conditions, like pregnancy, that necessitate quick and easy access to restrooms.

also what makes you think a paying customer wouldnt misuse the toilets in some way, and a person using it without buying something would?

contrary to popular beliefs people with money do drugs, and homeless people need the toilet just like the rest of us

Having a sharps container “for medication injection” in our bathrooms has dropped the amount of needles I find in the bushes and planters down to a whole 2 in the past 4 years since we rolled them out. I used to find them so often I got in the habit of wearing cut resistance gloves in 90 degree weather in case I had to pluck napkins out of the landscaping.

I read a lot of the notes and I really can’t say enough how the “you couldn’t pay me to clean up other people’s shit” comments kinda piss me off. It is not that serious, it’s really not. You dump a bunch of Triade III on it, let it sit for 10 minutes, wipe it up.

If it’s watery you throw absorbent on it like you do throw up, we use a kitty-litter type clay based absorbent. You put a trash bag in the dust pan and sweep it all into the bag.

Takes me 15 minutes to clean an absolutely destroyed bathroom stall in a place that sees THOUSANDS of people daily. It’s a shopping and restaurant area that opens up into a nightlife location after 5pm, with some bars opening at 3pm and several restaurants becoming full nightclubs after 9pm. You pay for parking, but anyone can walk in off the sidewalk and not pay a dime and just hang out until 2am.

On a busy night I cover 3 location’s restrooms (2 venues have multiple rr) but on slow days I’m covering around 7. 7 buildings, thousands of drunks, I get a LOT of bio spills.

Our sharps containers are toolbox-looking things that hang on the wall with a flap that allows things to go in but not come out, ever (rip to like 5 phones that I know of), when full it gets closed, locked, and sent to be incinerated. I literally never touch a needle anymore. If I find one on the ground outside we have sharps shuttles which are long plastic tubes that look like giant tampons with a flip top, you put it on the ground, step on it to hold in place, and sweep the sharp into it. Takes like 20 seconds.

The answer to this entire issue is to TREAT SANITATION WORKERS BETTER not make going to the bathroom a fucking ordeal. Pay me I will clean your bathrooms, let homeless people piss with dignity!!!

It's crazy that these strikes are happening given that all the writers and actors are asking for is less than 0.3% of the revenue these studios make.

This is what gets me. The writers and actors aren’t asking for much but these CEOs are digging their heels in

It's because it sets a precedent that the CEOs are terrified to set. That they will acquiesce to worker demands if the workers are resolute enough.

Because in an ideal world for these rich fucks, the workers give up, and the CEOs win, and its reinforced in the collective public mindset that all a strike does is "disrupt the economy, deprive people of valuable products, and waste people's time". The goal is to maintain the assertion that Strikes Don't Work. I don't think they genuinely give a shit about 0.15% of their revenue. What they care about is the OPTICS.

They cannot back down, for the exact same reason that WORKERS cannot back down. Because if the workers win, it shows people just that bit more that The Poors have power and ultimately we can make the rich do what we want if we put our fucking minds to it. And that, to the rich, is bad news bears to the highest degree.

The thing I don’t like about the Thawfest episode is that it’s solely Hiccup and Snotlout based—like for one, why didn’t Astrid win the axe-throwing contest? How did Hiccup manage to out-log-run Astrid and the twins? Why did the twins not finish the sheep lugging race when they showed no struggle of carrying their sheep? Why are none of the other riders’ talents shown enough for at least one point?

if you are ever out here w the take "society LOVES feminine men and masculine women what about the poor feminine women and masculine men" I need u to know you have entirely submersed yourself in niche online communities and have lost touch w the very real world we live in and you owe every masculine woman and feminine man $100

yk sometimes i feel like the fandom forgets that hiccup is quite literally disabled.

like canonically, he’s not only missing a leg but also a pre-me. missing a leg comes with all sorts of side effects: the inability to walk without his prosthetic, chronic pain, phantom limb pain, trauma, etc. and being born premature also has its own health issues and is likely the reason he has such a small stature in comparison to all the other vikings; he probably has asthma (which would explain why he always sounds out of breath) aswell as poor eyesight among other things.

and in my own personal headcanon (as well as a few good handfuls of other people’s) is that he probably has tinnitus, nightmares, autism and/or adhd, and probably some other kind of physical health issues (possibly bone or connective tissue related)

now maybe i’m projecting but what’s a blorbo for if you can’t project all of your own issues onto them?

Obviously the point of the Thawfest episode was to showcase a rivalry between Hiccup and Snotlout, but the lengths the show runners had to go to in order to make Astrid lose is astounding.

OOOUUGH the writing doing Astrid like this is by far one of my biggest gripes with the entire HTTYD franchise, despite the fact that it's one of my absolute most beloved.

Astrid never (or otherwise, rarely) gets to be genuinely badass in a way that actively impacts the plot.

We hear so much about how great of a fighter she is and she regularly throws Snotlout over her shoulder like he's paper or knocks someone out with one hit when the action is already over, but she gets the damsel treatment constantly and just randomly loses her fighting ability and prowess like 60% of the fights she's in if it risks 'derailing' the story from Hiccup's (and other characters' that are usually Hiccup's foils in that specific episode or in the narrative as a whole) story of triumph and growth. Because god forbid she has space in the narrative equal to her established ability- or.... something.

They don't want to make space for the intended powerful and headstrong female character from the first movie, because she would either triumph over the challenges and situations where the male characters 'need' the episode space to grow, where she would defeat them or their enemies and the plot would screech to a halt- so they write her out somehow, instead of rebuilding the plot to seriously work with Astrid and her full merits and flaws included.

HTTYD, I love you to death, but come on. Astrid really deserved so much better.

How To Train Your Dragon - Scenery

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

trope: 1) the use of figurative language for artistic effect; includes allegories, analogies, hyperbole, & metaphors, among others. 2) commonly reoccurring literary devices, motifs, or clichés. Includes things like the medieval fantasy setting, the Dark Lord, enemies-to-lovers, and the Chosen One.

theme: the reoccurring idea or subject in a work of art. Death, life, rebirth, change, love, what it means to be human, the definition of family, the effects of war, etc.

cliché: an element of an artistic work that has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even becoming annoying or irritating. (Most clichés are tropes but not all tropes are clichés.)

motif: a distinctive repeating feature or idea, such as the green light in The Great Gatsby. May overlap with tropes and is often used to further explore the theme.

archetype: a constantly-recurring symbol or motif; it refers to the recurrence of characters or ideas sharing similar traits throughout various, seemingly unrelated cases in classic storytelling. E.g. rags to riches, the wise old mentor. Again may overlap with tropes, clichés, and motifs, but they're not the exact same thing.

One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:

Hiccup and Astrid’s pre-relationship dynamic is just so great. There's the awkward crush stage. Getting embarrassed when the other catches them looking. Blushing when their hands accidentally touch. Doing literally anything and hoping that maybe when they're older it could work out. Laughing together over a stupid joke. Lying awake at night wondering if the other person is thinking of them too. Finding a piece of paper with the other's handwriting on it and keeping it as one of their most valued possessions. Feeling hurt when the other talks to someone else instead of them. Missing the other when they're sick but feeling like it would be too weird to check up on them. Awkward half-grins, eyes lighting up just a bit more when the other comes in.

Then you've got the RTTE stage. Fear when the other person is injured or dying, fear so unhinged they will do literally anything to save the other. Soft smiles exchanged across a room. Arguing like a married couple, but they’re “just friends.” Telling the other that they’re not making wise choices, or being brutally honest because lying to the other is impossible. Stupid inside jokes. Racing each other on their dragons. Being the sole two voices of reason at times, and giving each other the most tired looks. Thinking of the other when they’re alone, and then furiously whispering out loud that they are not in love. Unable to imagine a world without the other. Panicked, desperate hugs after a close call. Flirting without wanting to acknowledge that they’re flirting. Looking after the other when the other is sick or hurt to the point where it’s obsessive, and not even caring how in love they appear. Staying up with the other on sleepless nights. Being open and honest about their feelings, not hiding anything. “I’m not in love with them,” they say to those who ask. But there’s no other explanation that could possibly describe what they are.