To quote Gobber in the first movie "Now, a wet dragon head can't light its fire..." and how Toothless took his time drying off before firing a shot at the Red Death... I just have to say, there have been a lot of underwater fire shots this season... Thoughts?
Any literary analysis of this sort can be analyzed two basic different ways. The first way is to analyze things within the universe we are given, taking all information within the universe as given fact, and then construct a best explanation linking together data points. This is how I usually write analyses. It’s fun because it discounts nothing; all it does is synthesize information and provide the best-possible-solution. The other type of analysis is looking at the universe from without, in a meta framework, where you study the source material as a work of fiction.
I’m going to do a rare diverging from my analytical norm and bring up both forms of analysis, the within AND the without.
From the insider’s look perspective: We could point out there is a disparity between what people say and believe versus what is actually true. What Gobber says in Dragon Training doesn’t have to be true. Human beings say incomplete or inaccurate things all the time. We can easily propose that what Gobber says in Dragon Training is not the full story. What Gobber says could be incomplete information in several different ways:
Gobber’s statement about wet dragon heads and lighting fire could be a generalized statement. Gobber knows that most dragons cannot light their flame when they are wet. He knows that there are a few exceptions to the rule, but what Gobber is doing here is laying out the general rule to his students. That’s one possibility.
Gobber could legitimately believe that all dragons fall under this rule. He believes there are no exceptions. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions, and it’s to note that the Hairy Hooligan Tribe has not studied the Night Fury up close before, and they aren’t all-knowledgeable about the other species, either. Scientists do have to rework information when they discover new data about what they’ve been studying. The Vikings, as far as they know, see dragons can’t light their flame when their head is wet. But there is actually more data out there that would put nuance to this claim: there are instances in which different species might be able to do this, or… better yet for what we see in RTTE… various dragons can do this in specific circumstances the Vikings don’t yet know about. Things like biological structure, chemicals used for the different types of dragon fire, and more could affect how good they are at firing when wet.
So what we can say is that Gobber’s information was incomplete and inaccurate. He probably believes what he is saying - he wouldn’t teach the information otherwise to the students - he wouldn’t mislead them - but what Gobber says is not the full story of the dragon world. In RTTE we see multiple dragon species make shots underwater, or shortly after entering water. This can be explained by saying that there is much more to dragons than the Vikings knew in the first movie.
It wouldn’t be the first time something like this happens. Changewings are initially believed to be able to camouflage themselves near to the ground but not in the sky. But then in RTTE, we see them capable of hiding in the skies. The comic book The Legend of Ragnarok has the youths admitting that the Changewings can hide in the sky, despite what they thought they initially knew about the species. As the Vikings learned more about this dragon, they learned more about its abilities and limitations. It turns out that their initial judgments of the Changewing’s limitations were wrong.
So Gobber could similarly be giving incomplete or incorrect information about dragons here, too.
Now as far as Toothless specifically shooting acetylene gas charges, and from what we know chemically of how that works and interacts with water… yes, we run into more problems. I’ll admit… as much fun as this would be to talk about and as much as I’d be entertained with the discussion… I’m not even going to try to address this. I’m a linguist, not a chemist. I took AP Chemistry in high school seven years ago… I wouldn’t be able to talk about this well at all, unfortunately. XD Haha, it’s probably best for me not to fumble around trying to explain a solution with a science that isn’t my expertise.
From the meta perspective, I will say this: the DreamWorks Dragons franchise has always been inconsistent about how it handles dragon abilities. Dragon ability statistics have been given numbers on Dragonpedia and video games like School of Dragons and Rise of Berk; these numbers have often contradicted each other between the media.
To give just one example:
In Dragonpedia, the Scauldron is faster than the Gronckle and has equal fire power. The Scauldron has a Speed of 6 and the Gronckle has a Speed of 4. Both of these dragons are listed as having a Firepower rating of 14.
In School of Dragons, the Scauldron and the Gronckle have the same speed: 4.2. And instead of having equal firepower, the Gronckle is listed as having a higher firepower value than the Scauldron, 7.1 versus 6.8.
Technically if you do some rounding, the values aren’t quite so contradictory, but it is to note that the statistics about dragon information can get muddled pretty fast across the DreamWorks Dragons universe. I could find better examples, but I’m not going to spend all my time fishing. ;) You get the point. I’ve seen things get muddled between platforms and shows and episodes and different media.
The DW HTTYD franchise has also given conflicting information with what we know about the dragons from other verbal, non-statistical information said in shows and movies. The numbers we are given for “dragon statistics” are basically useless and have very little real measuring value.
It’s also to note that the television series has long been inconsistent with information given in the first movie; we see dragons exceeding their shot limit, or dragons shooting fire when wet. The Night Fury is said to have a shot limit of six, but Toothless exceeds that in Frozen and several other DreamWorks Dragons episodes.
So from a meta perspective, people could say, “The information is inconsistent. The creators probably haven’t focused on creating fully formed attention to these details, or they forgot something when they were writing this moment.”
The first type of analysis I like because it gives us fans a way of constructing and interacting with our world. I think it’s the most engaging thing to do and fun for fandom postulations. It allows us to create a synthesized and coherent world for us to have fun in. The second type of analysis is not terrible to recognize when proper respect is still given; fiction is fiction and nothing is perfectly consistent. All stories have inconsistencies, after all. So the “easy” answer is, “they probably forgot about that line;” the more fun answer is, “Gobber’s information was incomplete.”