#weecup

OK, Dean Deblois has said Stoick will appear in HTTYD 3, so expect some Weecup. The thing is though- what's he gonna do?

Before HTTYD, Hiccup was an untraditional Viking doing his utmost to be like everyone else and only putting himself deeper in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Stoick seemed to always be angry at Hiccup for getting himself into trouble. Why? Was it because Hiccup was a disappointment, a talking fishbone, the laughing stock of the village? No. Hiccup is too much like his mother for Stoick to bear losing him too. You all saw his face when he left the Great Hall after 'You're not my son'. That man was heartbroken. In that moment, he had lost everything, like he had lost his wife all over again. But a chief protects his own, so he fuelled his upset into anger. Red Death, big explosion, loss of leg, yada yada yada.

But how does this link to HTTYD 3? Well, Stoick has spent the majority of twenty years keeping his wayward son out of trouble, getting annoyed when Hiccup ventured out despite strict orders not to. If we really get Weecup in HTTYD 3, I suspect it will be in flashbacks to Stoick pulling Hiccup from danger, the exasperated look Hiccup would get, the scolding that often followed. Maybe Hiccup experiences nightmares of what happened, maybe that's how the film will open. We will see it from his point of view, see his best friend demonised, set for the kill, hear his father cry his name. "Dad, no!" The shove, the topsy-turvy, ears ringing disorientation, the swaying as he rises, "Dad!" He wakes up. Sees Toothless asleep across the room. Maybe Astrid will be next to him, waking to soothe him. Maybe he sits alone, shivering and crying, remembering every single time Stoick got mad at him as a child. Remembering how that all changed the day Hiccup lost his leg. His father hadn't yelled his name, Hiccup had become the Viking his father had always wanted him to be. An echo of Stoick's last word, the last time his son's name ever left his lips, the fear he would lose him all over again, the heartbreak swelling in his chest once more. Then nothing. Nothing, but pain and darkness. Distantly, a terrified voice called for him, a small voice. The last thing his mind envisions is his son, five years old, trying to lift his dad's axe and nearly losing his arm as a result. That sweet little grin, those bright, mischievous green eyes, innocent and guilty at the same time.

Hiccup loses sleep, we see this because of the dark circles under his eyes. He works hard, trying to be everything his father was before him. He is driven by grief, no-one can snap him out of it. Maybe the beginnings of post traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, depression...

I don't know how much Weecup will be in HTTYD 3, how much we'll see of Stoick, but I do know Hiccup will be struggling more than ever before. He could turn to his father for advice, so lost in his work, he forgot. Stoick was so excited for his son to become chief. Hiccup doubts Stoick had ever planned it to happen like this.

What if it wasn't just Hiccup remembering him though? There's Valka, Gobber, the villagers. HTTYD 3 holds so many possibilities for flashbacks and remorse, guilt and despair and yet... that will only be a small part of it. If the finale is to truly link with the books, then the dragons will disappear; Toothless may not survive long- 'a downed dragon is a dead dragon'.

“Shh!” Hiccup hushed the tabby.

Fiddlesticks wasn’t having any of it and mrowed again. The cat endured a  moment of being held before he wriggled free. He trotted on silent paws to the heavy, block door that kept him safe.

Hiccup would have followed him but something exploded not far from the house, loud enough to startle him and close enough to rattle the wall shields. He stayed at the foot of the table, with his whittling blocks and dulling blade, and silently begged the cat to return.

Fiddlesticks paced in the entryway, tail high, and meowed again.

Hiccup bit his lip and looked over his shoulder to where his aunt worked on her axe with a rhythmic shwing-shwing. She had a scowl on her face as she worked, and while half the size of his father seemed to fill his chair rather well.

“Just hold it,” Hiccup begged the cat in a whisper. “It’s almost over.”

Hiccup could always tell when a raid was almost over. The yelling outside would turn victorious and the roars would thin out.

Fiddlesticks meowed again at the address and kept scratching. Hiccup sighed.

“Aunty Frey,” Hiccup called, meekly. “Fiddlesticks wants to go out.”

Freda didn’t look up.

“Stay away from the door, Hiccup,” she said.

Fiddlesticks scratched again at the wood in the same place he always scratched--just left of the door, now pale and worn and a nail’s breadth deep.

Hiccup set his whittling knife down, peeked at his aunt once more, with her head bent, her thick brow pinched, her focus completely on the blade in her lap, and scurried in a crouch to his cat.

“Come right back,” he whispered to the tabby. Then, with two little hands, he yanked the door open.

Fiddlesticks slipped outside the slim crack and Hiccup shut the door just as quick. It creaked with its age, with the limited motion, but his aunt never once lifted her eyes to him.

Hiccup let out a breath.

“Stay away from the door,” Freda repeated. She ran the whetting stone up her blade in the same, practiced movement.

“Sorry,” Hiccup said quickly. He hastened back to his blocks, hoping that the noise outside would continue to dwindle so that he could hear Fiddlestick’s call to come back in.

Stoick returned as he often did from raid nights: with a smoldering cloak and a wet axe. He took his helmet off at the door and set it on the table aside Freda’s propped feet.

“Got a Zippleback and two Nadders,” he announced with a wane smile.

“’N I got an unbloodied axe.” Freda returned. She pulled her feet down and stood. Her well-whetted axe gleamed in the hearth light as though harboring its own dissatisfaction.

Stoick nodded, tapping the table with a thick finger. “‘Appreciate it, Freda.”

“Next time ask ‘Lout.”

“‘Course I will. Thank you. Was he, er, any trouble?”

Freda ran a finger over her clean blade. “No. Played on the floor mostly.”

Stoick nodded. “That’s good--”

“Dad!” The call came from the top of the stairs, where Hiccup hopped down from the loft above, step by step.

“Hiccup!” Stoick looked between his son and Freda, who strode out of the house. “What are you doing up? What are you--stop!”

He caught the boy by the nightshirt as he leapt for the open door.

“Where’s Fiddlesticks?” Hiccup asked, reaching for the handle. Stoick swung it out of reach and the door slammed shut.

"No--no--don’t go out there.”

“But Fiddlesticks--” Hiccup begged. “I let him out--”

“If I hear him, I’ll let him in,” Stoick promised.

“He’s been out too long!”

“He’s hiding, son,” Stoick assured, knowing that the cat never strayed far from the house and it never spent long outside. “Cats do that when there’s a raid. He’ll be back in the morning.

Fiddlesticks hadn’t been hiding, and Hoark the Haggard hadn’t been quiet in his laughter as he told his peers how he nabbed a Gronkle as it turned its sights to a cat.

Hoark hadn’t killed the Gronkle before the Gronkle killed the cat.

Stoick hoped Hiccup would forget in a few days time. He hoped he would assume the cat decided to go feral and live in the forest. But Hiccup was smart and Hiccup knew as well as Stoick knew that Fiddlesticks was a completely domestic, human-reliant cat that preferred Hiccup’s company above all else.

He came home to his son sitting in a pile of sticks and stringy wool with what resembled half of a crude cage between his legs.

I’m making a trap,” Hiccup said brightly. “I think he’s lost. I just need to find him again. I’m putting Fiddlestick’s favorite food in here, and he’ll walk in, and eat it, and BOOM! He’s safe in the trap!”

For a moment, Stoick was stunned. Hiccup was seven and couldn’t swing a toy axe, but he could design a contraption before breakfast.

Stoick set his helmet on the table, as he always did, crouched by his son, and gently pulled the wool from Hiccup’s hands.

And then Stoick had to have one of the hardest conversations with his child ever have. He’d explained warriors deaths before--adding glory and Valhalla and some good that came from a sacrifice. He had never explained a pet’s death before and the words would catch in his throat before he knew what to say.

The smile fell from Hiccup’s face with “I’m sorry”. And his eyes brightened at “gone”. And the tears crested over his cheeks as Stoick slowly spoke of what happened, of witnesses and a quick death.

And when he asked why--when his child asked why this happened, why to Fiddlesticks--Stoick finally found it easier to speak.

“That’s what dragons do son,” he said, feeling more sure of himself than he had in the past moments. “It’s in their nature. They don’t understand value or love, they don’t care how much something means to you or if,” he took a breath, the sort that rattled in the throat and made the jaw seize, “or if it’s family. They just...

“They just take.”

A doodle at class of RPNAU Hiccup!! :DD sorta..kinda..

I have this headcanon in my head where Hiccup used to be a huge nerd like Jack in the 7th grade or whatever grade that comes into your mind before puberty smacks him in the face with a brick wall and become our Punk hotcup that we all know and love :D

Ooh, that's a good question!

I don't think they told him she was a Great Dragon Slayer or anything, though I do believe there was a lot of lying by omission.   Obviously, the village loves and respects Stoick, and they saw how much he loved her, how devastated he was by her "deat".  So out of respect they spoke only of her kindly. 

"She was a beaut!"

"A tall lass.  Surprisingly strong."

"She could... well, she was stubborn as any good Viking, I can say that!"

I don't think Valka was constantly hated, but I do think she brought on a lot of sour attitudes towards her... on and off.  

I think that's what Hiccup grew up hearing.  Nothing too detailed, nothing too striking.  Just that his mother was another casualty of the Dragon War.  That she was tall and stubborn and outspoken--all things he grew up thinking he could never relate too, all things that had his mind filling in the blanks with another Viking figure.