Red Design's Red Designs

we see two of hiccup's inventions in the first movie: first, the mangler, which was built, designed, and operated with the intent to help his village, to hunt dragons, to be like everyone else. it is dismissed outright, he is dismissed outright, and later, it is crushed under the foot of a monstrous nightmare that intends to kill him. we don't ever see it again, it is never thought of or acknowledged again, and i can just picture the wood rotting apart, the metal sinking into the earth until no trace remains.

then we see toothless's tailfin. everything it represents is contrary to what the mangler was; it does not help the village, it does not hunt dragons, it makes hiccup even more of an outlier than he already was. it is the only of hiccup's inventions thus far to have been taken seriously, the only thing anyone else has ever put value in. we see gobber, at the end of the first movie, with a tailfin he constructed for hiccup, for toothless, from hiccup's destroyed design and what must have been his notes, because it is the only invention that they have ever cared about, the only one they have bothered to take a closer look at. it comes, in turn, with the arrival and acceptance of dragons.

following that, we see so many, countless, of hiccup's creations. i wont even delve into the shows, because i could be here for hours.

in the second movie, we see his glide suit, his sword, his leg. even little things, like where he stores his map, his little compass, and the tailfin, which carries over from the first movie, with improvements—every single one of these once again revolves around toothless and dragons. every one is important when it comes to saving berk and the dragons from drago's clutches.

his glide suit, we later see, is furthered in the third movie, and by then, each of the "main gang" has their own flight suit. it's vital in defeating drago and outsmarting/outmaneuvering him. it is something hiccup so clearly adores, something he needs toothless to use and something that furthers the connection between them. he uses it to fly alongside him, he uses it to soar the skies, he uses it like a pair of prosthetic wings.

his leg, too, is so entangled in what has become him-and-toothless, that it is specifically designed to be different to the walking attachment when he's flying with toothless. there was no need to make it different, and yet, flying and dragons and toothless are so important to him that they have their own spot, their own design, their own piece of themselves in something hiccup cannot live without. it's like a key in the lock that is toothless's tailfin; they cannot fly without this specific, unique design of hiccup's prosthetic leg. this specific, unique design of hiccup's prosthetic leg that serves no purpose other than flying with toothless.

this brings me to my original thought: his sword. Inferno.

It is a blade, yes, but like everything else hiccup has made since the first movie: it is so entangled in everything that makes dragons dragons that it is almost inseparable. Zippleback gas and Nightmare gel are what make it Inferno and not a mere skeleton of a sword. except it's not infinite, and it's not forever, and with no dragons around after the third movie, he will run out of gel, and he will run out of gas, and inferno will become a skeleton of itself. something that no longer works like it should, like hiccup designed and built it to.

what do you think happens, when that day comes?

hiccup is so entangled in everything that makes dragons dragons that they are almost inseparable. what do you think became of him, in those days and weeks and months and years after? do you think he broke down every time he had to give up one of his creations? do you think he became numb, despondent, as he watched so much of his hard work become unusable? useless, once more, like he had been? do you think he fell back into the boy he once was, before dragons? do you think he felt worthless? Hiccup, the dragon master, without dragons? do you think he struggled?

I do. I think it was horrific, and excruciating, and enough to break a lesser man.

i think he used that blade until the day he ran out of gas and gel. i think he couldn't bear to use it after, strong as it still may be, because it didn't work right. it didn't work like he intended it to. i think he hides it away, because he can't bear to look at it, but he keeps it close, under his bed, maybe, or in a chest that's always closed, because he can't bear to be apart from it, either.

I think he used his scale armour until it broke apart, reached for shedded scales to grind to paste and fix it and instead scraped fingernails against the bottom of an empty bucket.

i think he ran his fingers over his glide suit, over every one of toothless's prosthetic tailfins over and over and over again until he realized they were wearing beneath his touch and the oil from his hands, and then i think he hid them away, so he'd never be tempted to touch them again. so he could never lose them, so he could never ruin them. so they'd last forever, even though they'd never be used again. i think he can picture them, perfectly, in his mind, every single detail and every single second he spent making them, but he's terrified that if he touches them, if he ruins them, he'll forget, and he'll have nothing left.

i think he did the same with his notebooks and designs, filled to the brim with sketches of not only his inventions, but of dragons, of toothless, of his tailfin, of every gear and mechanism he used, because he's terrified of losing them. he's terrified of forgetting how he made it, of just how long each metal boning had been, of how he fastened the leather, the angle of the curve it needed to be to fit perfectly against toothless's tail without chafing or being too loose. i think that it stays in him, in his hands and in his bones and in his mind, instinctively, that even five or ten or one-hundred years later he could still make that tailfin with his eyes closed and his hands behind his back and i think that it would be perfect, but i also think that he is more terrified than anything that he will forget how to. i think his breath stutters when he works with pulleys, and i think he has trouble wrapping leather around metal for the rest of his life.

i think that one day, with the wear, and the tear, and the strain of use, that his leg breaks. i think it shatters apart as he gets out of bed one morning, because his hands shake when he tries to check on it, when he tries to maintain it, and he hasn't been able to do more than oil it in quite a while. i think it breaks apart like glass, with metal strained and torn and weak, and i think that he falls apart when it does. i think he doesn't move, for a long, long time, fallen to the floor without anyone to catch him like there used to be, and he holds the pieces in his hands like they're more precious than gold, than anything else, because to him, they are. i think he tries to piece it back together, but the important parts are shattered, and it keeps falling apart and he doesn't have enough hands or fingers to keep it from doing so. i think that he stays there until someone finds him, and i think it takes hours even then, while someone holds his hands in their own to stop them from shaking, until they get gobber, and I think gobber makes his new leg for him, because hiccup can't.

i think gobber makes his new leg with a flight attachment, i think he makes it exactly the same as the previous one, because he can't imagine anything different. i think he does it because he's scared of what it'll do to hiccup if he doesn't.

i think that at the end of the third movie, so much has been taken from the village, from the people of berk, and from the dragons, but i think it takes and takes and takes even more from hiccup. how many things, do you think, he has made, that he holds and sees and touches after, that are rendered useless? how many things was he working on? how many designs are in his notebooks that will never become real? that he will never get to test and try and experiment with? how many ideas do you think he had, waiting for the right moment, that he now can't even bring himself to write down?

how many ideas does he have, after? how many times do you think he starts reaching for his notebook, for a piece of metal in the forge, for a hammer, before he realizes, what for? What's the point?

hiccup is capable, we have seen. of that, i do not doubt. he is the chief of berk, and he is the leader of his people. but how does he survive, how does he live with his soul torn away so? 

in the second movie, we see him, as the very first thing, before anything else, flying with toothless. we see him use his flight suit. we see him in the air, soaring the skies, with so much joy that it is impossible to keep from grinning just as he must be beneath the helmet. we see him explore, we see him map, we see him discover.

you mean to tell me, that after the third movie, he will never do this again? he will never touch the clouds again? he will never feel the wind in his hair at a speed only a dragon in flight can muster? how can a soul survive without what it was meant to do?

i don't think it can. I think hiccup withers, like a flower without light.

in much the same way as his creations, everything he is and was as a part of hiccup-and-toothless is rendered nonsense. Everything that has driven the beat of his heart and his soul itself becomes irrelevant, unused, purposeless.

Every bit of what defines hiccup’s worth to himself revolves around dragons. In the first movie, we see him discarded, dismissed, we see how he views himself as a disappointment. 

Excuse me, barmaid, I’m afraid you’ve brought me the wrong offspring! I ordered an extra-large boy with beefy arms! Extra guts and glory on the side! This here, this is a talking fishbone!

We see him try to prove himself, we see him pushed aside before he can even attempt to. In the beginning of the first movie, Hiccup Haddock is worthless to every single person he comes across. The first time we see hiccup and his father interact, stoick doesn’t even address his own son. He defers to others to know better than hiccup about hiccup’s actions.

Hiccup?! What is he doing out aga—?!

The very first time we begin to see hiccup as more, the very first time he sees himself as successful is in the dragon ring. And why? Because by this point, hiccup has found toothless, and he has learned things through this new bond he has with the very creature he is supposed to kill. 

Hiccup’s first moment where he is seen, really, comes as a direct result of his first step towards friendship with toothless. It comes as a direct result of trying to restore a dragon’s ability to fly. It comes as a direct result of doing the most opposite thing he could to the way he has been raised and the way his people have been living for over three hundred years. 

Hiccup’s sense of self is directly tied to two things, by the end of the first movie: dragons, and doing the opposite of what everyone else does. He doesn’t conform to the endless war and ways of violence; he carves out his own spot in the world, after being rejected from the first one, and this spot is full of wings and scales and clouds and sky and fire. 

you mean to tell me, that after the third movie, this place he’s made for himself is gone? the spot he has had to fight and bleed and nearly die for is no more, dismissed so easily? dismissed so easily, as he used to be? the spot that he has had to defend, and defend, and defend again, from his own people, from drago, from grimmel, has been rendered... what? a passing fancy? is it really so easy to let go?

no, it's not. how could it ever be?

i think hiccup withers, instead, like a stony cliff face battered by endless, powerful waves, and relentless storm winds. i think that cliff erodes, so far, and a day comes where it collapses like pebbles into the sea.

i think every time he has to change, it chips away at him, little by little. but what does he have to change?

i think hiccup is so used to having toothless just an arm's reach away, to having dragons just an arm's reach away, that it affects the very breaths he takes. and i don't think he realizes it until after.

in the days after, Hiccup has to re-learn how to light fires. a piece of him cracks as he pauses, that first time, waits for toothless to set it aflame before he can even ask, and a piece of him falls away as has to do it himself. it takes him a long while, every minute chipping away at him, because he's forgotten how to.

he has to re-learn how to work the forge. the fires don't burn as bright, without grump there, they have no gronkle iron nor the power to work with it. he has to re-learn how to wield the heaviest hammers, how to keep the coals from dying.

he has to re-learn how to walk, without a dragon pressed to his back and to his side. he has to re-learn how to sleep at night, without the heavy breaths of a dragon just paces away from his bed. he has to re-learn how to get up in the mornings, without the promise of a rush of cold air and frosty clouds to wake him.

hiccup has to re-learn how to think. he has to re-learn how to see. he can no longer explore everchanging horizons, he can no longer see the movement of something in the shadows and think dragon. he can no longer see the movement of something in the shadows and feel safe. he can no longer think, maybe the island over has what i need. maybe someone across the seas can help.

so much has to be changed; is he truly hiccup, anymore, or has he become someone entirely new? can he become someone entirely new? would he be able to stand it?

and then, what is left?

i think that for a long time, possibly forever, hiccup has trouble with the wind. what does the wind mean? berk's ships are reliant on the wind for transportation. the strength of winds can mean storms, can mean heat, can mean so many things.

but what do they mean for hiccup? i think he's so used to bracing forward into the wind to keep it from ripping him out of the saddle that when it comes from behind, he has trouble keeping balance. i think he's so used to its incredible strength that he does not know a storm is coming until it is pelting hail above him.

i think that for a long time, possibly forever, hiccup has trouble being entirely human. Soul of a dragon extends itself in so many ways, after all—how many times, do you think, did hiccup have to stop himself from leaping from the edge of a cliff, forgetting, just for a moment, that there will be no one there to do it alongside him? that he no longer has wings of his own, and is grounded, forevermore, to the land and the sea? how many times might he have reached for the sky and found the clouds miles away instead of dripping between his fingers? how wrong do you think it feels to him, for years and years, to be stuck to his own two feet?

how torturous, do you think it is, for hiccup, who has so long loved exploration, discovery, documenting dragons and their habitats and their migratory patterns and their diets, their colors, the movement of their wings and the shapes of their horns, to be immobile? to look out into the world and see only clouds passing by and waves rippling across the seas?

how many times do you think he watches the same sea stack, off in the distance, and stares, and stares, trying to decipher whether the thing he sees at the top is a yak or a sheep or just a bush before he takes a boat himself, rows and rows and rows against the tides, climbs to the top even though his hands scrape and bleed and finds nothing. finds it to be a mirage borne of desperation to see something, something he can explore, and study, and learn something new about. how long do you think he sits there, after, watching the empty horizon, waiting for an island to appear, a ship, a flap of wings that belong to something other than a gull?

and when he returns, do you think he ever sets foot on a ship again? does he go down to the docks at all? to have something so close and yet so untouchable?

do you think he wonders, at night, staring into the recessed shadows of the roof, how many places there were left to discover? how many dragons?

do you think he dreams of them? of scales and patterns and forms and spiraling horns that don't exist? of islands and people and cultures that could be?