Httyd 1 - Blog Posts
*insert witty caption*
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.
I’m actually on a roll today drawing him lol <3
SOMEONE SAVE HIM!!!!
Snotlout dying in a glue trap
During HTTYD 1:
Snotlout: We can’t tell you because you’re not a member of the club.
Hiccup: What club?
Snotlout: The hating Hiccup club.
Hiccup: …The fuck? I should be the leader of that club!
HTTYD1 Astrid: I’m really glad “fight me” has replaced “sue me” in the common vernacular because I don’t have money, but I do have fists and I am always angry.
Something I like specifically about Hiccup’s ‘being different’ story is that it actually makes sense.
There’s the cliche of ‘I’m not like everyone else and I get bullied for it’ trope where the character tries to ‘be like everyone else.’ Than discovers that no matter what anyone thinks, they should anyways be themselves. And while that is a good message, it’s not very applicable to certain situations.
Hiccups story is a bit different and I think it works and hit harder than any of those stories.
And it’s for a specific reason.
They don’t take into account the culture of a place.
The reason hiccup is ostracized is not because he’s ’quirky and weird’ (mostly) but because he doesn’t fit the societal beauty standards of his culture. Hiccup is very much culturally a Viking. He’s just tiny. And because of that he doesn’t fit into the mold.
But he doesn’t try to fit in by becoming the strongest or by being an axe wielding master. Hiccup never tries not to be true to himself.
Hiccup never needed to fit in, the village needed to fit him if that makes sense.
Hiccups a Viking in the sense that he’s socially and culturally like them but isn’t able to follow that culture because of his stature.
The outlier of this is the fact is that Hiccup will never have the guts to kill a dragon. This is evident in the first movie as well.
His story is very similar to Luz’s from The Owl House in the sense that they never tried to be something that they weren’t. (They’re also both neurodivergent coded but most characters in both shows are so it’s less about being different because of that)
Not my best analysis but it’s very late and I’m sleep deprived.
Httyd1, Riders/defenders of Berk and RTTE are the only canon httyd content in my mind 🙁🫶🙏