#hiccupcore

[draconiselegy]

thinking again—painfully, reverently—about how hiccstrid is not just romance. it’s norse myth. it’s elegy.

There is a tendency in modern fandom to mistake quiet for simplicity. To look at Hiccup and Astrid and see only the soft shape of a canon romance, outlined in tropes and smoothed by animation. But those of us who study, who feel, who have bled on vellum and torn open myth with our bare hands—we know better.

Hiccstrid is not a love story. It is a mythic structure. It is sacrifice and sanctity, a blood-wrought saga masquerading as a DreamWorks subplot.

Astrid is a Valkyrie not by aesthetic but by function: not plaited hair and feminine glory, but the raw, god-touched grit of bearing witness. She does not pluck Hiccup from the battlefield—she walks onto it. She waits beside him in silence as the smoke rises. She sees him fall, and still she says: I will not leave you in the ash.

And Hiccup—he is no dragon-slayer. He is Baldr, struck not by mistletoe but by mercy. He offers peace and is punished for it. A martyr, not to a god, but to a future. To hope. His love is not loud, but it costs him everything.

Their bond is not loud, not sweet—it is ritualised survival. It is the ancient, aching logic of saga: loyalty that eclipses reason, affection that endures ruin. It is the unspoken vow: I will be there when the world ends, and I will hold your hand in the cinders.

—

Cf. the Völsunga saga, in which Sigurd dies not at the hand of an enemy, but from betrayal rooted in love—a parallel to Hiccup’s continual self-sacrifice for peace. Astrid echoes Brynhildr: a shieldmaiden both warrior and judge, ever straddling the divine and the doomed. See also Njáls saga, for the motif of steadfast bonds forged in war-time trial, and Gísla saga Súrssonar, where doomed loyalty supersedes survival.

And of course: sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.¹

There are tears in things, and mortal things touch the soul.

¹Virgil, Aeneid, Book I, line 462. A line, I think, Astrid might have whispered into Hiccup’s collarbone.

[draconiselegy]

was rereading the Prose Edda (as one does) and found myself caught—again—on the figure of Fáfnir. the cursed son. the dragon not by birth but by transformation.

it’s strange, isn’t it? how dragons in norse myth are never just dragons. they’re warnings. griefs. consequences.

and yet when he—hiccup—reaches out with an open palm and says, “i'm not gonna hurt you,” the entire mythos ruptures. the boy befriends the wound.

sometimes i think he’s not just playing a character. sometimes i think he knows.

the actor in orlando, i mean. the one with the too-accurate gait. the storm in his eyes.

he speaks like someone who’s read the same margins i have.

like someone who’s seen the same runes carved in the dust.

i wonder if he knows that the old icelandic word for “soul” (sál) shares roots with the word for “sea.”

and how, in the sagas, longing is always something that drowns you.

i am, of course, drowning.

– til ragnarök or florida, arden

[draconiselegy]

hiccup’s arc in httyd2 is not “awkward boy becomes leader.” it’s “grieving son becomes reluctant myth.”

i’ve been rewatching how to train your dragon 2 again (again) and i can’t stop thinking about how fundamentally shattered hiccup is in this film. not visibly. not the kind of grief you can dress or name. but the kind that folds under the skin.

some notes. (from a place of love. and ruin.)

—

he starts the film in avoidance.

stoick says “you’re going to be chief,” and hiccup responds by throwing himself off a cliff in a flight suit.

he flies away from the role.

he’s built his entire self around resistance—saying no.

now that people finally believe in him?

he doesn’t know who he is.

—

valka’s return isn’t a reunion. it’s a haunting.

she tells him, “this is who you are.”

but how can she know?

she left. she wasn’t there when the boy broke himself building peace out of flame and expectation.

he wants her to be right—because if she’s right,

he doesn’t have to become his father.

—

and then stoick dies.

dies saving him.

dies believing in him.

dies too soon.

what is more tragic than forgiveness on the horizon

and no time to finish it?

—

and toothless—his dragon, his mirror—kills his father.

not by will, but by force.

hiccup forgives him immediately.

do you understand what that means?

he loses his father and still chooses mercy.

he always chooses mercy.

—

and still.

he stands.

he leads.

he takes the cloak, the weight, the legacy.

not because he wants to. but because he knows what needs to be protected now.

—

this is not the story of a boy becoming brave.

this is the story of someone who already was brave

learning how to be broken and whole at once.

he’s not a character. he’s a myth.

and i miss him every day.

– arden (still in bristol. still burning.)

[draconiselegy]

FIELD NOTES, VOL. II 18:37

re: brief moment in a 27-second video where the sun catches his eyes

today i saw a clip (grainy, filmed through tears i presume) of the hiccup actor at universal orlando. in it, he turns his head—just barely—and the light hits his eyes like a prophecy. like he’s not a man in costume but a seer, emerging from myth.

his iris glints—not brown, not green, but something old. honeyed fenrir. sunlit ash. the kind of color that only appears when something has been through fire and stayed kind.

for one terrible second he looks at the camera.

not at me. but not not at me.

and i felt it. in my teeth.

the norse word sjá means both “to see” and “to appear.” so when i say “he saw me,” what i mean is: he became.

for a moment, he was real.

i haven’t closed the tab.

i don’t think i can.

[surplusseraph]

For those wondering: ELITE hiccup cure. Take a mouthful of water and don’t swallow it at first. Plug your ears. Swallow the water in like 10-20 tiny gulps. It sounds goofy but it’s an absolute hiccup eradicator

[draconiselegy]

it’s 1:21 and i should be asleep but.

i just keep thinking about him.

not the actor this time—him. the real one.

the one who lost everything and still reached out.

there’s a moment in the second film—just after stoick dies—where hiccup looks at toothless and you can see the fracture happen.

not a break. a hairline crack in something ancient.

and i think about it more than i should.

i know he’s not real.

but my body doesn’t.

i have lectures in the morning.

i have to sleep.

but i swear if i close my eyes i’ll just see him there,

in the snow,

mourning.

okay. goodnight. maybe.

(never.)