#hellodawling

[avannak]

I am just waiting for you to write what you thought about hiccup and toothless’s relationship tbh. It was off for me the whole movie and then I later found out that “toothless had forgotten his old life in berk and hiccup (in the ten years-later reunion)” in an interview. Felt like a slap in the face.

Outside of a couple moments where I thought Toothless could have been a little more protective over Hiccup (though I acknowledge they’re both Big Boys now) I thought their interactions were stellar.

So the “forgetting about Hiccup” thing…at first, yes, that came as a slap in the face. Like, no. They don’t go from platonic soulmates to forgetting in ten years.

But then I grudgingly played with the idea that Toothless is not human. He’s highly intelligent, but he does not have a human brain, and he’s gone completely feral. And it was by design.

Hiccup made sure to wait ten years. He cut Berk off from dragons cold turkey… outside of rescue missions to free any stragglers. Not only to help Berk disassociate from dragons, but to further ensure Greedy Humans™ wouldn’t stumble upon the Hidden World. The war lords are still grasping, searching. Across the world there were hunters: those seeking trophies and glory.

So Toothless is immersed with dragons again, and this time not as a slave. The first couple years he’d venture out looking for stragglers (parallel to what allied humans were doing) and ensuring they could follow the call back Home. Then he sends others. He’s king. He’s mated. Little by little he’s swallowed by instincts that had gone dull.

When he first senses—then sees—a human ship, centuries of Ancestral Instinct (books!) rear up screaming danger!.

He leaps to the stempost of the ship for a confrontation, rattled by the alpha instinct to protect.

When Hiccup first holds out his hand, if you look, you’ll see Toothless’s pupils dilate for a split second, as though the flicker of a memory is triggered.

Then, all it takes is a sniff—a secondary source of sensory information—and it all comes back. It was buried, not forgotten. Perhaps an AI that he’ll pass down genetically; that humans are capable of good and can be worthy of trust.

I like to think that those first ten years were the longest Hiccup had gone without seeing Toothless in his life (not including his first fifteen). He and Astrid were the only two humans to ever see the Hidden World, as far as anyone knows, and they keep it in the family. They make it a family legacy to visit, and protect, the entrance to that world. And to tweak up the Dragon King’s tailfin every now and then.

Even now, today, there could be the sheltered remains of that lineage who still know the entrance, having it passed down from generation to generation.

Maybe, like the books, it was only for Toothless. That each generation of Hiccup’s descendants would continue to look after Toothless’ tailfin.

I 100% think Zephyr’s the first to take on that role.