#and then ofc in rtte snotlout's more comfortable with being a dragon to the point where his hide is a proper cloak with a clasp

[razzle-zazzle]

(Long winded anon from before) Hiccup doing a loud double take at Snoutlout being alive is gonna make me cry. these guys are such jerks to each other but man do they care deep down. hiccup's so happy that snotlout made it :') if only they had a better relationship i'm sure they'd both be able to relate to the idea that their bodies don't feel quite the same or even fully their own anymore.

(btw i love your nuanced spitelout take from the tags. i think he's really interesting both as a character and as a figure who's really messed up his son, he needs studied for how efficiently he's a bad father tbh.)

honestly the Snotlout mental breakdown my brain gave me was kinda a mess so sorry if it doesnt make sense.

but i imagine that snotlout was really raw after the heather report 1&2. first cause heather stole the scales (which even if he hates them low key they're HIS), then because he didnt even get a choice to tell everyone. their biggest enemies in the moment found out and then his five closest friends, bad order for any reveal honestly.

yeah it worked out and they got Heather and her family out of there and safe again. his friends even took the shifting thing okay but the fact that this part of himself that he feels deep shame for is out in the open feels like something that would only make him crank the obnoxious attitude to a thousand.

thus making everyone's ability to do math about his trauma ten thousand times harder. also i dont know that he'd realise that no one realised yet that he was the dragon in the arena. he'd be on pins and needles waiting for someone to mention it again making him go through it not realising that by worrying about it he was alreadying reliving it without them even mentioning it.

To me his emotional constipation was part of what made the scene in my brain so devestating, cause everyone would be talking about the events of the movie with hiccup super curious about his toothless bonding not realising that every time they talk about the arena and that 'missing strange nightmare' that its him. untill of course astrid does the math and tries to talk to about with him.

Astrid may of course also be emotionally constipated but she understands that this might be a personal thing for him. so i think she'd try to apologise for busting his hand up pretty bad only for Snotlout to brush it off agressively.

also i think fishlegs would make a dig or two about it it uninentionally. cause in rob and dob he goes through an arc where he becomes more confident but also lowkey hates snotlout for while so he probably wasnt being careful with his words, plus without knowing that snotlout was in the arena him mentioning the 'weird nightmare' he wants to study could easily sound like a threat.

to me it'd be the twins that accidentally pushed him into the semi public breakdown in front of the friendgroup. they'd make one to many jokes about his weeks 'surviving in the woods' and snotlout thinking that they are mocking him would snap. cause i think he realised how paper thin that story was too. it makes sense when you dont think about it or don't know he can shift but the second they all learned he could he probably felt like the dragon was out of the bag so to speak.

in my brain he just had this huge emotional word vomit about how none of them respect him. and how they all dont care about him and that clearly they just want the firepower for the team. not him and in general i think he'd just be shouting at them for awhile about how he feels but in the way he does in not lout where he just says stuff like 'i wont be on the streets!' without telling them AT ALL how he came to that conclusion.

OUGH AUGH OUGHHHHH I AM EATING THESE WORDS UP OW OW OUGHHHHHHHHH

Hiccup was definitely surprised! Flabbergasted, even! And also a little (kind of a lot) thrown off by how out of character Snotlout is. He definitely walks away from that interaction going "o... kay..." before refocusing on the task he originally set out to do.

(I really do think exploring Spitelout as a person is way more interesting than reducing him to "Snotlout's shitty dad". He sucks and I want him away from Snotlout but he's also still a character in his own right. and I can use that suckage to my own ends >:]]]c)

I mean, breakdowns do tend to be pretty messy, don't they?

And yeah Snotlout is SO UPSET after "The Heather Report II", yeah he kind of finally gets the hang of flying but like. Ohhhh you hit the nail on the head he is NOT having a good time! And also this is the point where he realizes that damage to his scales will hurt him!

IT DOESSSS HE GETS SO OBNOXIOUS ABOUT IT. Initially he's blustering about being fine and snapping at everyone to drop it when they try to bring up the shapeshifting, then he's bragging about how awesome it is to be a dragon even as he's angrily stuffing the scales back into a satchel. He's so so obnoxious you're right.

Hiccup recognizes that Snotlout's the small arena nightmare right away! Though immediately after stating this he asks if this is the reason why the small arena nightmare refused to do the hand trick: because Snotlout was messing with him? And Snotlout snickers because he does think it's pretty funny that every time Hiccup tried to connect with his dragon form Snotlout's outright ignored him just be a shit. Which of course derails the conversation away from the kill ring!

OUGH. AUGH. Astrid does realize that if Snotlout was the small arena nightmare, and if she broke the small arena nightmare's wing-claws, then -> she's the one who broke Snotlout's knuckles, and she does try to apologize, but Snotlout cranks up the obnoxiousness so bad because he doesn't want to really confront the memory that Astrid's bringing up. He uses her apology as an excuse to flirt and she knocks him on his ass. Neither of them learned a thing from this encounter.

Fishlegs makes less comments about Snotlout's dragonself and more general comments about how Snotlout sucks. He probably does at one point make a pointed comment about how Snotlout's "an insult to the intelligence and strength of dragons", though.

Post-reveal the twins spend a LOT of time trying to goad Snotlout into turning into a dragon for various schemes (or just because they wanna see it). This is both incredibly annoying for Snotlout AND feeds into his ego, as the twins are wont to do. And AUGH AUGHH THE TWINS MAKING JOKES ABOUT SNOTLOUT'S "TIME IN THE WOODS" OUGHHHH

OUGH AUGH. OH I CAN SEE THAT. MAYBE NOT IN RIDERS BUT DEFINITELY IN DEFENDERS I CAN SEE THIS BREAKDOWN HAPPENING. OUGHHHHHHHHHHH