D:: -sympathy high five- (but seriously, trying to decipher if the runes are just gibberish or if they actually put in some effort is hella cool)
also, if the post before this one didn't make this clear, I likewise have a really, really, really good memory for useless facts.
fuck, I should rewatch this movie, it was so good! right when it came out, when I was significantly smaller, I made a fleece toothless hat with ear flaps and wings and a tail with one fin replaced with red, it was really cute.. hmm, wonder where it is. now I want to go listen to the soundtrack again, though. it's so good!!
Also aren't cockatrice ironically like shit-terrified of the crowing of cockerels? Or is that basilisks?? (What's the difference in non-harry potter mythos???) BUT YES HELLO I am here for nerdy dragon riding. Toothless is just SO gorgeous. He kind of reminds me of my kitty Lupin when she was younger - playful, cuddly, and much, much, smarter than easily given credit for. I just wanna pet him all over! (I feel like he'd be super soft the way snakes are? I wonder if dragons shed in patches like giant lizards or flakes like mammals?) The second film made me BAWL LIKE A BABY YOU DON'T EVEN. (Do I need to spoiler tag it??) That bit with the singing in particular made me just like excuse me I got something in my eye it's probably dragon snot I swear XD (I totally don't have a dragon-vet OC no siree I don't)
That's basilisks. From my understanding what happened is that first there was the basilisk thing, then people conflated the monster and one of its weaknesses, and that's where cockatrices came from. So in terms of the lore, how basilisks and cockatrices relate to each other and where the line between them is drawn (if i is) is super-hazy. Tiny Tez was so excited on reading CoS, because I was already tiny mythology nerd and THERE'S A BASILISK I LOVE BASILISKS AND THE AUTHOR DIDN'T GET THEM WRONG. :::PPP On topic: One of my favorite things about the original movie is how much research into animal behavior they obviously did with Toothless. Like the eye contact thing.
(she also definitely does not ride a razorwhip dragon, that would be totally ridiculous and probably OP!)
I KNOW RIGHT! That scene where Hiccup is making friends was literally me with every not-instantly running away or sick wild animal ever. Like you are so beautiful I want to be your friend I don't want to scare you though please here is some food *soft gasp* omg thankyou for letting me touch you this is an honour. I also like that they didn't base Toothless on just one critter! I mean I can see hawk, cat, and horse in his behaviours and body language? It's so cool XD
so discussion of my OC inspired me to try and draw here here is really terrible sketch of OC (dragon will be in eventually but is not presently in there. I don't know how to draw dragons I tried help) (also I know the hands are trash pls to not judge I can't draw fists help) Spoiler: spoiler because big and also maybe bright colors
Has anybody read the books the movies were very loosely based on? The plot and storyline are WAY different (like, Toothless talks and training the dragons are integral to the viking life from the beginning different), and a lot of the characters in the books (Camicazi, for example) were nixed out and replaced with unrelated characters (Astrid replaced Camicazi as the female deuteragonist...because....reasons, I guess.), but omg they're so cute. Toothless in the books loves chocklush snik-snaks (dragonese for chocolate chip cookie) and (other various dragon language words here)
Speaking on a purely objective point of view, how strongly do you feel that they could have changed the names of all the characters/places and still come out okay? It's clearly related to the book by namesake only, and that was one of the things that frustrated me the most. (Especially considering Movie Toothless isn't toothless...He just has hidden teeth). Or they could have done a Before-the-book-plot sort of event story, when vikings hadn't tamed dragons yet. Idk. Y/N?
It was definitely clearly a totally different story - and I loved that different story, I enjoyed it more than the books which I admittedly read a long time ago, but I see why people who really enjoyed the books would be frustrated.
I enjoyed the movie more than the books too! But also, the books were geared towards little boys (with all the excess of literal potty humor and funny names *ahem big boobied bertha cough*), so while I enjoyed the movie more than the book series, the heart of the plot for the books was probably on par with the plot of the movie, considering how deep into it the books sometimes got. My frustration mostly stems from the fact it literally is not the same at all and they could have just used entirely different names and no substance would be lost. Granted, some of the dragon designs got used from the book (esp. the monstrous nightmare and why snotlout owns one), which is why I would have been more receptive to a "before the tale began" story, talking about Hiccup/Stoic's ancestors taming a dragon and learning their ways. Maybe dragons got so tamed that people assumed you had to yell at them really really loud to get their attention (throwback to gronkle pan smacking and disorienting them) and the story could pick up where the books left off, far into the franchise. In the book a bunch of the movie-adapted dragons are dog or cat sized, it would have been neat to see how vikings selectively bred certain species of dragons and made them compact
