#series reflection

Blog Post Series : Breaking Down Hiccup

Title : How to Start a Dragon Academy

Ep/Season : Episode 1, Season 1 (Riders of Berk)

Premise:

The HTTYD series begins after the events of the 1st movie. I reckon a couple of months after Hiccup recovers from the injuries sustained during the battle against Red Death.

Hiccup explains that the people of Berk are still adjusting to having dragons around and that this new way of life isn’t welcomed w opened arms by all Berkians. Cue in series antagonist - the old, odd-smelling, unkempt hair keeping, cantankerous Mildew. Like the fungus he is named after, he doesn’t relish change and prefers life before peace w the dragons. The village grumbler sees no point in changing their way of life - especially when he cannot get past seeing dragons as pests instead of pets.

Nonetheless, the dragons are testy and pesky. Untrained and wild, they roam freely aggravating the other villagers and making it easy for Mildew to stir up the crowd against them. Hiccup must find a way to train the dragons and convince his father that dragons and vikings can live together in harmony.

Character Development:

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III

I am very pleased with how the TV series fills in the gaps between the 1st and 2nd movie. And the growth, especially that of Hiccups, is well developed from the start of Season one to the Season eight finale.

LESSONS FOR A CHIEF : RESPONSIBILITY & ACCOUNTABILITY

In this first episode, you will watch Hiccup learn the meaning of responsibility. Accountability.

In the 1st movie, we don’t know whether a strong, mean Viking village like Berk would tolerate such a tiny, mousy heir to the throne as Hiccup was perceived to be at first. Maybe they would’ve, just out of respect and fear to whom his father is, but it is clear that his position and respect as heir is undeniably given after he killed the Red Death.

You will notice as the series progresses that Hiccup isn’t a scaredy cat, he was just insecure, and his need to do what’s right drives his courage into many directions. Building him into the man you see him become by the 2nd film.

I love that the series begins w Hiccup finding his way into some position of leadership. He is 15 years old, making him still a kid in the eyes of his father but old enough to handle the affairs of the other teens on the island.

He will learn, especially in this episode, how to adapt to change, and how to change to adapt. And this is particularly important, as a village will progress as far as their chief is willing to.

Hiccup Haddock & Astrid Hofferson

RELATIONSHIPS : HOW THEY CREATED THE PERFECT FROM FRIENDS TO LOVERS BLUEPRINT

We know Astrid barely took notice of Hiccup in the beginning of the 1st movie. We also know Hiccup has a major crush on her. However, Astrid didn’t like him because of his over zealousness to be something he isn’t, and also because what he was caused more trouble than good.

But she respected his decision to keep the truth about the Nest of the Red Death from Stoic and understood Hiccup in a way no one else has. She spoke in such a way that was honest and instructive. Hiccup trusts her. And she trusts him. She knows that his heart is good, and that if he trusts it to lead him enough he will do wondrous things.

Their first kiss happened in the 1st movie. You can tell in this episode that Hiccup is a little bashful around her. He still wants to impress her. We don’t know yet at the start of this series whether they’re an item. More likely than not, they aren’t.

But it makes sense, they’re so young. And I’m glad the series didn’t focus on their romantic relationship until time for it came. Because everything’s new to them. The learning curve of living w dragons, becoming the next generation warriors of Berk took precedence as adventures should at a young age.

Their competitiveness to be better dragon riders and warriors drives their relationship and that’s what made their friends to lovers story strong. They understood each other as equals first. Hiccup never looked down on Astrid because she was a girl, in fact, she will always be his “Right-Hand” person. And she didn’t look down on him, even though his plans initially go awry.

He reveres her and she respect him. They’re also extremely protective of each other. Which I love seeing.

Theme & Message

We’re still rooting for Hiccup. The creators do a great job in instilling in us this desire to see Hiccup achieve. A lot of the show deals w training Hiccup to become a better dragon rider, friend, man, leader and chief.

It centres around family, father-son relationships, competitiveness between peers and understanding the people around us.

I’m writing this review following a third viewing of the show. And all I can say is… well…

Welcome to Berk, Friends.

zambia has gold. this is not a new discovery. it is a geological expectation — in terrain types well understood from adjacent and analogous regions — that has not yet been systematically tested at the scale that modern gold exploration demands. the artisanal miners of mumbwa and eastern province have known this for decades. the pre-colonial trade routes that carried zambian gold to the indian ocean coast knew it for centuries. the colonial geological surveys that noted gold occurrences and set them aside because copper was dominant knew it a hundred years ago.

what is new is not the gold. what is new is the inquiry.

the gold price is not a minor detail. gold above USD 3,300 per troy ounce — central bank buying at 1960s levels, geopolitical fragmentation, structural supply constraints — transforms the economics of every gold deposit in zambia. deposits that would not have been worth developing at USD 1,200 per ounce are worth developing now. the window is open. windows close.

the governance argument is the series' most important contribution. the DRC comparison — same geological heritage, radically different governance outcomes — establishes something that cannot be argued away. zambia has what the DRC does not: political stability, functioning regulatory institutions, an established mining legal framework that makes responsible gold development possible. a genuine competitive advantage in a global gold market under enormous ethical sourcing pressure. an advantage zambia has not yet systematically leveraged.

the artisanal community argument is the series' most human contribution. the men and women panning zambian rivers for gold — before the exploration companies arrived, before the licences were filed — are not a problem to be managed. they are the foundational tier of a gold industry that, properly supported and formalised, would generate revenue, protect health, and preserve the social fabric of the communities closest to the resource.

the ghana comparison is the series' most actionable contribution. a deliberate policy decision in the 1980s. approximately 800,000 ounces per year today. USD 2.5 billion in annual gold export revenue. the decision took time. it produced those results. the model is available.

what the gold series leaves open — deliberately, honestly — is the question of when. not whether. the geology has made whether unavoidable.

the gold is not new.

nineteen posts. one belt. one argument.

we began in the geology — the tri-junction of talc-magnetite schist, pegmatite, and biotite schist. we moved through history, through the restricted area, through the gemfields era and the named stones. we traced the chain from the kagem auction in lusaka to the cutting workshops of jaipur to the retail rooms of geneva and new york.

we established the value addition gap. we looked at colombia and tanzanite and government policy and the employment numbers and the ethical sourcing movement and the auction house prices and the mbewe pit and the depth question. we built a ten-year vision.

what nineteen posts have established:

zambia is the world's most productive emerald nation. not a significant producer. not an important source. the most productive. by volume. by the scale of individual finds. by the documented consistency of extraordinary production from a single geological formation over fifteen years.

and zambia captures the smallest portion of the value that distinction generates.

not because the geology is inadequate. not because the stones are inferior. because the cutting, the certification, the setting, the branding, and the marketing of zambian emeralds happen in other countries, in other hands, with the benefit accruing to other economies.

the series is not ending here. it is pausing. the posts that follow will address the specific initiatives, the specific policy decisions, and the specific investment cases that could begin to close the gap the series has documented. nineteen posts built the case. what follows addresses what to do about it.

before we move forward — this series was not written for a mining audience. it was written for zambians. for the people of kitwe and lufwanyama and lusaka and chipata and every part of this country who deserve to understand what their ground produces, what happens to it, and why the gap between those two things matters for the country they are building together.

the emerald under the ground of lufwanyama district belongs to the zambian people. what is done with it — now, in the decisions of this decade — will determine how much of its value the zambian people actually receive.

Ten posts. one mineral. one question that kept getting larger.

When i began the quartz series i was not certain that silicon dioxide would hold people's attention. a mineral most associate with watch batteries and windowsill crystals. not, on the surface, urgent.

what the series revealed — to me as much as to anyone reading it — is that the most important conversations often begin with something people think they already understand.

people thought they knew quartz. what the series did, post by post, was reveal the full depth of what silicon dioxide actually is. not just a beautiful stone or a precise timekeeper. the foundational raw material of the semiconductor industry. the solar energy transition. the fibre optic internet. the global electronics economy. a material whose strategic importance in 2026 is matched by very few others on earth.

and then it asked the question that i think is the most important question any zambian mineral education series can ask.

what does this mean for us?

the answer the series arrived at: zambia has the geological conditions for high purity quartz formation across multiple provinces. those conditions have not been systematically evaluated because the question has not been systematically asked. the policy designation that would make the evaluation happen has not been made.

not a gap in the geology. a gap in the inquiry.

that phrase — which is the central finding of the series — is not just about quartz. it is about the broader pattern of how zambia relates to its mineral endowment. a country that has spent a hundred years asking the copper question with extraordinary thoroughness, and that has other questions — about quartz, about gold, about what its geological formations fully contain — that have barely been asked at all.

the quartz series was ten posts. the conversation it represents is much longer than that.

Memoirs of Madness – Stories from the Edge of Change Some stories ask to be written. Others sit beside you for a long time and wait until you’re ready to listen. Stories from the Edge of Change wasn’t planned as a series. It started as a single image: a man sitting on a bench, cold coffee in one hand, a life’s worth of weight in the other. I didn’t know then that his name was Jake. I didn’t…