#How to Train Your Dragon 3 The Hidden World

[romancemedia]

Cartoon Romances + Family

[artist-issues]

Some Ambush doodles for the fun of it. Got lazy and didn’t bother shading them right. Her patterns are based loosely on a Clouded Leopard instead of Toothless’ panther designs and her shape is more axolotl in detail than Toothless’. She also has a more sharply defined snout.  Unlike the original Light Fury, Ambush loves to fight. The Fury Flock spends thirty years in the Hidden World, where they mate, and then migrate on the thirtieth year to Grimmel’s Archipelago. (This is about three weeks’ flight from the Barbaric Archipelago, where Berk is.)

The Fury Flock’s ancestral nesting place is on Grimmel’s home island. Usually they nest together in a big, protective group and lay eggs, which hatch and grow up on the surface world for around twenty five years. Then the Fury Flock migrates all the way back to the Hidden World to start the mating cycle all over again.

 However, in the year Hiccup was born, the Fury Flock returned to the nesting grounds to find a human settlement had sprung up. This started a war between Grimmel’s people and the Fury Flock. The Fury Flock managed to burn one of the villages on the island down and nest, but they spent the entire twenty-five years defending themselves from the other half of the island’s humans.  So basically, Ambush was literally born in a nest made from the ashes of a human village and grew up hunting people. She climbed the ranks of the Fury Flock’s social hierarchy, which is based on who performs the fastest on the hunt, thanks to her gifts in speed and cunning. To her, diving in and out of cloud banks to sink Grimmel’s People’s ships is a normal part of hunting. But to Grimmel’s people, the young, fast female Fury was a terror and became known as “‘Ambush.”  When Ambush meets Toothless on their long-awaited return journey to the Hidden World, she, like the other Furies, is interested in him because he’s new, strange, and a Night Fury. However, Ambush’s curiosity about Toothless turns to rivalry when he proves to be an even better human-raider and hunter than she is. Then it turns to suspicion when she catches glimpses of human gear and even a human rider during a few hunts.  One day Ambush pushes herself a little too hard trying to beat Toothless to the “first kill” during a raid and gets trapped by Grimmel’s machinations. Hiccup, who’d been observing Toothless’ progress trying to integrate himself with the Flock from safe hiding distances, revealed himself to help. After this, Ambush accepted that a human could be more than a hunting trophy or an enemy. He unlocked that curious half of her personality, and she became the human’s shadow, obsessed with his peg leg and helmet and gliding suit.  Like I’ve said in other posts, when Toothless is stripped of Hiccup’s help and his rider is captured by Grimmel, it’s Ambush who leads the other Furies in following the Night Fury to the rescue. 

[the-book-of-dragons]

Light Fury Design Rant Part 1

So I wanted to ramble about the odd design choice of the Light Fury from How To Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World. It comes off as the basic stereotypical making the female different from the males, and imposing human characteristics to animals.

So first off while the HTTYD series is fictional, especially with hexapod reptiles not existing in reality. But the series still tries to ground it's dragons by giving them shot limits and treating as well animals. Only needing you to suspend your disbelief a bit with size and behavior at times.

Continuing on just like birds and most notably reptiles, dragons throughout this series from the movies to the shows the dragons remained identical whether male or female. With no problem calling the Nadders, Gronkles, and the Red Death female dragons or ever needing to resort to changing their designs to be more stereotypically feminine. Dragons in the series don't really have a spectrum of dimorphic traits between male and female dragons like many actual reptiles. The only one that could exist based on birds and reptiles is sometimes the females are bigger than the males, or males having traits meant to attract mates such as color, though not exclusive to males and females.

So the Light Fury has shorter antenna which is what I'm calling it, less obvious scales, has rounder features, and is smaller than Toothless. This also isn't Night vs Light Fury adaptations because we see a male and female Light Fury in the movie with the male being larger, having longer antennae, and a less round appearance from what we can see. So the difference is definitely based on the fact they are a female dragon, which is disappointing since the series never did such things with any of the other dragons like Meatlug.

Continuing on it has been pointed out by others that the Light Fury's design has a while not obvious pink pattern on her, and in the center of her head it makes the shape of a pink heart. This alongside the sparkly looking skin and the rest of her design is meant to signify she's the girl dragon, while ignoring what has already been established in this world. All while playing into old and the best way to put sexist stereotypes.

Part 2

[flufflyskrill]

the twitter art meme 🛸🐉

[shellysketches]

Toothless vs Skrill

[norvyarts]

I think she's neat

[psychicpinenut]

How To Train Your Dragon (2010) dir. Dean DeBlois How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019) dir. Dean DeBlois

[thesillay]

FURIES IN LOVE REDRAW!!!!!!!! UHRHSAAGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

i gave toothless his patterns back and a more first movie skull structure instead of a rectangle, nubless didn’t get nearly as many changes as toothless but i did change some things ^_^

origional ss for reference!!

[thereweredragonshere]

Hi, sorry to bother you, I’m just curious why you dislike the light fury? /genuine question please i’m so curious I saw quite a bit of hate for the light fury that I just don’t quite understand

Thanks for the question! :D

I won’t go too in depth about why I dislike her, because I’d be here typing for hours, but,

I have several reasons for my dislike of the light fury, the main one being that she is a plot device.

Being a plot device on its own isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s the fact that she has no character at all other than ‘Grr I hate human, human bad I’m a female.’ This is the character I’m supposed to believe Toothless up and left Hiccup for and i can’t tell you anything about her other than she’s wild, hates humans and it’s kind of an ass.

The other main reason is her design. Bland, looks like a Pokémon and is unbearably feminine. Tiny feet that at some points are literally smaller than her pupils, smoothed out scales with little to no defined edges, smooth wing membranes (what the fuck??? Why are the parts of her that are meant to move the most so stiff???) no spikes because she’s a female!!! Can’t possibly have any sharp edges because woman!!!

Her entire character is being a girly dragon and her only purpose is to be Toothless’ girlfriend. It was a cheap ending to an amazing franchise and I will FOREVER be salty.

But I do like drawing light furies because I like making them look like they’d actually fit in universe

(And- no disrespect intended! If you like the light fury that’s great! I’m glad you do :)

[domesticatedpigeonsoup]

WHY DID THEY GIVE TOOTHLESS A BROW LIFT LIKE-

first movie:

cute reptile, peak creature design

THIRD MOVIE AND HIS HEAD IS A CUBE, THEY MINECRAFTIFIED MY BOY

HIS EYES ARE ABOUT TO CONSUME HIS ENTIRE FACE

he looks like he uses his forehead to traffic cocaine bricks allover the archipelago

[toothbrushfingers]

they’re sleepy

[classy-disaster]

This puts it into words!! I was so blindsided when the dragons left, it felt like the whole series just built up to nothing. And honestly, the light fury just seemed like such a half-hearted plot. Like, 'yay! Toothless got a girlfriend!' But why does he need one? None of the other dragons--to my recollection--had love stories, so why? It just seemed so pointless to me. It was as if they were like 'oh well, Hiccup is in a relationship, he's gonna be married at the end of the movie, that's gonna change their dynamic. How do we fix this? ...I've got it! obviously Toothless should be in one, too!' It feels so unnecessary.

Not to mention that literally everyone else was forced to say goodbye to their dragons. My heart broke watching Astrid take off Stormfly's saddle. Because she's always been the kind of person to do what needs to be done, so she said goodbye to her best friend, too. She and Stormfly had some of my favorite interactions throughout the series, from the scene in the second movie when they dropped Eret, to how they fought together in rtte 'blindsided'. Stormfly was the perfect match for Astrid. Watching them fight together, protect one another--Astrid taking a dragon root arrow to the leg so it wouldn't hit Stormfly, Stormfly's refusals to come after Astrid was blinded, etc.--was one of the best things about httyd for me.

And while I won't write a huge thing for each of the other riders, they were all helped by their dragons: Meatlug gave Fishlegs confidence, fighting with Barf and Belch gave Ruff and Tuff something to channel their chaos into, Hookfang gave Snotlout a sense of purpose. And they just took that all away, every single Berkian had to say goodbye to their best friend, and for what?

Aesthetically, I really did like the movie; the trilogy's animation never ceases to take my breath away, and I loved the musical scores, but when I think about httyd 3 the only thing I can really say I loved is the wedding, and I'm still disappointed that we only got like three minutes for it. I know it wasn't the point of the movie, but come on, it's Hiccup and Astrid! We watched them grow together through six movies and TV shows for a three minute wedding? They set the standard for so many kids as what to look for in a healthy relationship, including myself, they are iconic to this day, more than thirteen years after we first watched them soar on Toothless with romantic flight playing. For a three minute wedding? I understand animators and screenwriters only have a certain amount of time, but I would have loved to see more of a celebration.

I’m going to say it.

I don’t think How to Train Your Dragon 3 was good.

Not when you compare it to literally either of the other movies. Certainly not as a conclusion.

I mean, the first movie was about a boy who manages to understand a hostile dragon species and bring peace to two warring factions, which is a parallel for his relationship with his father. The second film was about how sometimes, peace has to be fought for, and Hiccup’s whole identity was in contrast with that—because while his mother ran from conflict and his father leapt at it too eagerly, he had always been the one to stop the fighting. Then he has to learn that the things we love are worth protecting. 

And after he learns that humans and dragons can learn to understand each other and coexist—after he learns that it isn’t enough to run and hide or fight out of fear, but instead you must protect the things you care about—

After those two natural, powerful progressions are clearly worked for in the first two movies—

How to Train Your Dragon 3 comes along and says “‘No actually, sometimes all it takes is one madman whom you defeated with no loss of life to convince you that the things you care about should just crawl into a very pretty hiding hole, because you don’t feel like spending the rest of your life fighting for them.”

And I can say more. Below the break. 

Keep reading

[gayhenrycreel]

How To Train Your Dragon, and the trap of a bad faithful adaptation

spoilers for httyd, films and books

i hated httyd 3.

Toothless got reduced to a silly pet, Lightfury has a horrible design (i dare say misogynistic design, but other people have already discussed this), and Grimmel was so uninteresting that i legitimately forgot he was even in the movie a few weeks after watching.

the worst thing? its attempt at being a faithful adaptation.

unfortunately a lot of people don't know about the book series the films are based on. this is quite sad really because unlike the movies, the books increase in quality over time.

the end of the book series follows a sea dragons war on humanity, who have been enslaving dragons for centuries.

yeah so the books are about eugenics, slavery, and genocide.

the sea dragon, known as Furious, was the adoptive brother of Hiccup the Second 100 years ago. Hiccup II was murdered by his father when he found his birth family. its not too relevant to my point, but this father was the king of vikings.

now Furious is the king of dragons and is still angry about what Hiccup II's dad did.

my absolute favourite scene is Hiccup the Third, now a king, trying to stop the war by talking to Furious, hoping that he will understand that it was a singular person who killed Furious's brother, and humanity as a whole is able to improve. Furious cant bring himself to kill Hiccup, and sees his lost brother in him.

Furious has a bit of a freak out, saying its too late for the world to change, or possibly too soon. he concludes that its definitely not the right time.

this one line is why the ending is so good.

the dragons and humans cant coexist, because its the wrong time. just like Furious said, its not the time for coexistance.

the dragons go into hiding.

httyd 3, the film, tried to do this same ending, but absolutely butchered it because it didn't have a reason. it tries to justify it like "oh the vikings dont deserve dragons, so they all live in a cave now".

this completely misses the point.

in the books the dragons left because there was a mutual genocide happening.

in the films its because humans suddenly arent good enough now.

the whole point of the ending in the books is that its set in the past, and what was too soon back then is now the present.

so the whole book series has a message like this: "mistakes change the world. if you are a 'mistake' it means you stand out. this gives you the opportunity to help other 'mistakes'. it may feel like the world is not ready to accept mistakes (i.e, people who survived eugenics and saved the dragons no matter how much equality is viewed as a bad mistake), but now it is. those who are different can help the world accept difference. the time for equality is now".

the films ending is more like: "we are failures at creating equality and look what youve done the dragons (who are supposedly an allegory for various marginalized groups) have all left and the right thing to do was to outcast them all over again because you both have girlfriends now and Toothless cant possibly be a friend to humans while also apparently being in heat or something".

so... httyd 3 is a film about romantic relationships not only being incompatible with unrelated platonic relationships, but also so important that a marginalized demographic is unable to exist with another society because the king (who is literally just a regular guy with unexplained superpowers that ruin tension compared to literal mind controlling scaly mountains) has met a woman 5 minutes ago that he has barely any screen time with.

imagine how unhinged it would be if a real demographic cut off its ties to other cultures because a famous person got married.

this is extremely bizarre especially considering how the books had near zero romance (Hiccup has no love interest throughout the whole series and the focus is on love in general, particularly platonic and familial).

the weird addition of romance to the seperation plotline has no connection to the source material. the writers were just pulling this out their asses like 2017 tumblr arophobes.

the books do such a good job of showing that romantic love is a type of love, just like any other form of love. its there and its important, but its specifically important because it involves people caring about each other, which is also achieved through other forms of love.

its ironic because httyd 1 and 2 do this too. Astrid and Hiccup are important, yes, but Toothless and Hiccup are equally important.

why does the third film even exist? the answer is in Toothless or whatever they did to his character. hes silly but not respectful of Hiccup (he goddamn nearly electrocuted him to death and keeps trying to eat his prosthetic leg), hes clearly in heat or something and suddenly doesnt even give a fuck about the guy he has risked his life for multiple times (i guess hes in an alpha rut. you know how alphas get), and even visually there are signs.... of capitalism.

in the first film Toothless can be adorable. hes a panther, which of course is a cat. httyd 1 doesn't forget that a cat is still a predator, and Toothless can be terrifying.

by httyd 3 his eyes are bigger and closer to the front of his face. its kinda uncanny and is clearly to make him exclusively cute.

what happened to the big cuddly dragon that i was once told looks like hed eat other dragons?

hes no longer a character.

hes a marketing tool.

httyd 3 is a cashgrab. we can see it in Toothless becoming a sidekick. we can see it in the hideous weird beluga thing that is the result of normies trying to imagine a sexy dragon (come on guys, Cloudjumper is right there). we can certainly see it in, and i hate bringing this up, Dragons: The Nine Realms. that show need not exist, its literally just because its a popular franchise, which is actually quite funny because i only know about nine realms because of angry critics in my youtube feed screaming about it in videos that last over 2 hours.

if your spinoff is only known to critics who will gladly insult your show to death and superfans who by the looks of it are the same critics, there is a serious problem.

i knew something was wrong the instant i saw the characters dressed like ugly action figures. it only makes sense for Snotlout, he thinks he has perfect taste. this could have actually been funny if Snotlout was the only person dressed like a low budget furry and everyone was like "why the fuck are you dressed like that", but no, the people (children who will grow up to realise this film sucks ass and will despise it) want rpg video game movies that dont have rpg video games.

question for httyd 3. how did you get the idea to make the main cast furries? could you not hire an actual furry to design their fursuits? because fursuits are not typically that painful to look at and they certainly arent usually made of what appears to be plastic in a film set centuries ago which definitely has the resources to have textures other than plastic. ever heard of scalemail? it looks great in DnD art.

its almost like a dreamworks employee caught wind of the furry fandom but didn't actually look into it and in the process picked up something about horny dragons.

i have legit seen dragon scale inspired armour designs better than that as real life furry cosplay.

no one wants to see Fishlegs looking like some sort of very large beetle. its weird and doesnt match anything else in the movie.

httyd 2 had Hiccup with his own gear, textured leather and a wing suit that looked plausible and immersive. httyd 3 has everyone as weird beetles that could not possibly stay aloft because they are seemly wearing plastic dragon suits.

its like.... almost funny. it could literally be an avengers parody.

i want stories that have consistent themes. i want stories that follow their own rules (remember how httyd 1 and 2 involved actual research on flight mechanics).

and i want some respect for the furry artists that clearly were not involved in the fursuit designs.

[flufflyskrill]

give meatlug her edgy punk bf <3

context:

[shellysketches]

Toothless sketch

[howtodrawyourdragon]

I'm gonna say it; Hiccup did nothing wrong. We're treating him as the biggest problem of THW when literally his worst crime in is somehow losing his freckles and that's not even something he has control over. Oh and that kind of incredibly stupid plan of literally moving an entire people by going "let's just fly straight until we hit something :) even though I, Hiccup Haddock, somehow don't believe the world is round."

The entire rest of the movie is everyone else around him being horrible and out of character.

Berk is a mess in the beginning of the movie, yes. But it was also just a year ago that his father was horribly murdered in front of him because Draco Bloodyfist-Or-Whatever decided to sent his mind controled best friend after him. Everybody expects Hiccup to be put together and solve all problems immediately and remain a Dragon Rider when he should be buying a therapist a mansion and a yacht with all those billed sessions.

Then there is being told more than once that he's putting Astrid second when he literally isn't. And told he should meet her standard.s

There is all that stuff about how he's been a horrible pet owner to Toothless when he had legitimate and real fears about Toothless not making it out in wild and about the Light Fury turning on him and about him not coming back. (Like... he's a disabled dragon, for Gods' sake??? Toothless will literally NOT make it without human intervention)

He's called out for not embracing change when his name was literally synonymous with change before THW and every bit of change he proposes in the movie is met with backlash unless Astrid, their not-chief, says it's okay.

His mother, who abandoned him for 20 and came home with him after the traumatic loss of his father spends most of the movie not being the mother she promised him to be in the second movie and even advocated for the Riders to be less dependent on dragons when she was with dragons for the entirety of those 20 years.

And then there is all the bullying. Making fun of his voice, telling him- a disabled person- to LOSE THE LIMP, telling him he's not worthy of Astrid the warrior goddess (completely forgetting how Hiccup is both parts warrior and diplomat in at least the previous two movies, let alone the movies and the shows) and these three things are all said by Tuffnut! "Forgets he has a sister in THW" Tuffnut!

And let's not forget Snotlout's "who died and made you chief?!" when Snotlout was literally crying at Stoick's funeral. And then proceeds to hit on the dead man's wife and his best friend's mother while also putting said best friend down!

Like... none of the things said to him in the first movie were as bad as some of the things said in THW.

The entire movie is also basically Hiccup being pulled from one direction to the other.

It's "You're a bad chief because you're not changing anything" yet it's also "how dare you make this change!"

It's "you should step up as chief" yet it's also "we will only listen if Astrid says it's good."

It's "you were literally keeping Toothless captive for 6 years :/" yet it's also "Uuuhhh, time to cut the umbilical cord, don't you think? 🙄"

It's "you let Toothless go free, what did you expect?" yet also "uh, you let him go???"

It's "you are literally nothing without Toothless, sorry :/" yet it's also "Toothless only showed you what was already inside."

It's "you should put Astrid first for once" yet it's also "I, Hiccup, will literally listen to every single word you, Astrid, says even if it's hurtful."

It's "I, Astrid, will suggest to you, Hiccup, that we go find Toothless in the hidden world" yet it's also "I, Astrid, will blame you, Hiccup, for deciding to go to the Hidden World, making the Light Fury, who you have no control over, to follow us back home"

It's "hey man, can you help me with this dragon tail? :(" yet it's also "I will literally not listen to you when I'm about to break this branch that I and the dragon tail are on."

I mean, my God! I'd sent the dragons away if I had to listen to that for the past year after I watched my father die a gruesome death.

And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is Toothless abandoning Hiccup for the most shallow reason there is; chasing dragon tail that doesn't even want anything to do with him unless he does something that impresses her when he's the king of the dragons.

So yeah, probably an unpopular opinion, but besides one bad plan, Hiccup did nothing wrong besides listen to what all the people around him were saying, no matter how much they contradict themselves.

Really, what he needs is a hug. A Real one. :(