Making of

I wrote this making of, because I was strongly criticized for the way Hiccup and Astrid act in my story. Therefore I want to give you an insight to why I wrote things the way I did.

Many, many definitions of "personality" exist, but basically all of them see personality as something, which gives us a relative stable affinity to act and think in a certain kind of way, e.g. an earnest person tends to be more often serious. One of Hiccup's more prominent personality traits is his peaceful nature. How do you make someone like him act in an aggressive manner without creating a completely new character? This question is the challenge that this story had to solve.

First of all it is important that "having an earnest personality" doesn't mean "a person, who is earnest all the time". An earnest person doesn't have to be serious every minute of the day for the rest of their life. This would be impossible. That person has only an affinity to act serious, but there are other things that influence the way we act beside our personality. For example: Imagine a joyful person, which tends to be very happy. If this person gets cancer, it is possible that they act for a very long time everything but happy. That doesn't mean they act out of character, it only means that other circumstances override their usual behavior. If this person gets healed from cancer it is possible for them to get back to their usual happy self.

You can find countless examples for this. Even in HTTYD. For example when Hiccup screams at Toothless in HTTYD 2 after he was controlled by the bewilderbeast. Usually his deep friendship to the night fury would've prevented Hiccup from doing something like this, but because of the circumstances he acted vastly different (get it? Vastly? *snicker*). This different acting isn't acting out of character, because it is what Hiccup would do, if you put him under these specific circumstances.

The problem I had to solve for "Self-Defense" was the following question: Which circumstances are strong enough to make Hiccup act the way I wanted him to act, but without causing a complete change of character?

Point 1: Hiccup had to suffer. (1+5)

For Hiccup to think of suicide or even murder he had to be in a situation, which on one hand made him almost unbearable suffer for a very long time and on the other hand had apparently no solution (at least from his point of view). For this I wrote the first and the fifth chapter, which describe the pain of his daily life and the indifference from those around him. I probably could've made this part much bigger and more detailed for better effects, but I like neither reading nor writing things like this and therefore made it as small as possible and as big as necessary.

Point 2: The thoughts of suicide (1-3) and murder (4-5) had to be developed in a believable way

Suicide is something that is heavily frowned upon and not only because of the death itself. Many religions see it as a sin and many people consider it as cowardly or see it as a simple problem with ones attitude. This was the reason why I chose to write a story in a story for chapter two, because in the legend of the heroic viking chief Haggard Hiccup finds a cultural legitimization for his thoughts about committing suicide, which were already implied at the end of chapter one. Chapter three finally makes this lingering idea of suicide explicit by describing how it slowly changed in Hiccups mind from a stupid and crazy thought to his only solution.

The idea of committing a murder was a little harder. Firstly it is something that happens very rarely. I'm sure the number of people killing themselves because of heavy bullying is much higher than the number of people murdering their tormentors. However I don't think the reason for this is that people rarely think of it. It's probably more of a practical issue. If you gave every suicidal victim of bullying a button, which would kill their tormentor without getting themselves into trouble, many of them would probably push it (not all of them, but at least enough to be noteworthy). The difference between the button and reality is that the button is without effort and without risk. The point: Murdering someone isn't a far fetched idea, but needs in some way determination and bravery to actually be done (as stupid as it sounds). Hiccup has both of these things.

Secondly to commit a murder a person needs to be able to actually do it. However in my story nobody actually dies, which means Hiccup hasn't to be able to commit a murder, he only needs to think he is. For me this was the most difficult point of the whole project. Are there convincing circumstances, which could make Hiccup believe he could do something like that? In the end I affirmed the question. I combined three factors:

1. I changed Hiccup's view on the actions of Snotlout and the twins. He starts to see them as actual attempts on his life, because he blames the three teens for his thoughts about suicide (chapter 4, see also the next paragraph). In his eyes the teens turn into murderers and therefore resemble more the dragons, which are at this point in time still just murderous beasts for him. The comparison with dragons allows Hiccup to dehumanize the teens and to dull his conscience. Btw.: During the POV in chapter 6 Hiccup has pretty strong doubts, which shows that he isn't as cold toward the fate of the others as he makes it seem in his journals, where he tries to push all doubts out of his mind (similar to the scene in HTTYD 1 in which he yells: "I am a viking!").

2. Hiccup doesn't get the idea to view Snotlout and the twins as murderers completely out of nowhere. He has this thought while studying viking history (chapter 4) and not only that, but he finds also a legitimization for actually committing a murder to protect oneself. Once again he gets indirectly supported from society.

3. After chapter 4 Hiccup is forced to react the way he does, because in his mind his situation is the same as if Snotlout and the twins would directly attack him with a knife to kill him. From Hiccup's point of view it is truly a case of self-defense. Btw: The question if this fits the reality isn't important in any way at this point, because his doing is only influenced from what he believes to be true and not from what actually is true.

Point 3: Astrid had to become his target too. (5-6)

The whole plot circuits around the big conflict between Hiccup and Astrid, but to create this conflict she had to do something bad enough to become a target for him (but not too bad, because I didn't want her to be a second Snotlout). This was a new difficulty, because at first it seems pretty out of character for her to just not care about Snotlout breaking Hiccup's rib. Once again the viking culture was the solution.

One of Astrid's most prominent personality traits is her internalization of the viking way of being a warrior. Most fanfictions describe her as someone, who tries to hide feelings like pain and sorrow, because she doesn't want to seem weak. In the movies and series we also see that honor is important for her, which results in things like glorifying battle scars or risking her life for her family name (e.g. the thing with her uncle Finn).

However honor itself is an empty word, which needs to be filled with social norms. More innocent people than anyone could count got murdered because of honor, which shows that different people or cultures have different definitions of the word. What is a plausible filling for the viking definition of honor? Starting from the "hide your weakness"-thing I concluded that weakness was a sign of dishonor (e.g. freezing in fear like uncle Finn). Acting dishonorable is morally wrong at least in most cultures. Therefore if Hiccup gets beaten up for being weak, he gets what he deserves for his wrongdoing.

From this point of view Astrid is doing the right thing in ignoring Hiccup's beating up and even Snotlout isn't doing anything wrong. Astrid and Snotlout both act according with society, which means they don't even need to have evil ulterior motives. They just do what is normal for them. This is why Astrid didn't even remember the situation, why Hiccup seems to despise the viking society during my story and why Astrid thinks about becoming less of a viking and more of a good person (chapter 6).

Point 4: Hiccup needed a plausible reason to spare Astrid and the teens.

This was actually pretty easy. Remembering the part in point 2, where I spoke about Hiccup dehumanizing Snotlout and the twins (and later Astrid too)? Hiccup does basically the same thing with the teens that he did in HTTYD 1 with Toothless. He creates a situation in which they are at his mercy and thinks he will be able to actually kill them, because his victims are just murderous beasts. However as soon as he tries to murder them, he sees himself in them, which results in him saving them and feeling ashamed for what he did. Hiccup sees himself in Astrid while she's lying in the water, because he thought about killing himself that way, and while he his hands are around her neck, because someone tried once to strangle him too (chapter 3).

Btw: If one wants to argue that Hiccup's behavior in chapter 6 is out of character then this person should rather argue that Hiccup's dehumanization of Snotlout and the others is out of character, because the way Hiccup treats a murderous beast is 1:1 taken from the movie and therefore in no way out of character.

After Hiccup sees himself in Astrid and spares the teens they "turn back into humans" for him and he finally realizes what he tried to do. Facing his incredible guilt, he decides to rather die than becoming a murderer. He finds back to his usual peaceful behavior and in some way even puts the life of the others over his own. The whole journey of Hiccup is him trying to turn into something different: a cold hearted viking that crushes his enemies with everything he has – like society seems to expect him to be. In the end however he realizes that he would rather die than becoming like this. He holds his ground and keeps true to his nature. There is no change of personality.

Point 5: Hiccup and Astrid had to reconcile.

Well, there isn't much to say to this point. The journal shows Astrid the circumstances that made Hiccup act the way he did and tells her that she did something to him (or at least let it happen) that almost killed him. Yet he forgave her for it (so why can't she?). Both things considered seem to be enough for me to make her forgive Hiccup. The only reason why I didn't let it happen to 100% is the feeling that it's a too short amount of time for Astrid to calm down all her raw emotions (hence the many crying at the end).

Personally I liked the ending. Astrid uses the same wording to ask for his state of health and for his feelings after the journal is gone, because both his arm and his past are wounds for him. Despite all that happened at the end the only thing the ocean swallows is the reminder of Astrids' and Hiccup's suffering and their guilt towards each other.

Epilogue

Some of you might not understand this, but I'm very pleased with how this story worked out. It was really challenging to find convincing reasons for Hiccup and Astrid to act the way they do and personally I think I did a pretty good job at it.

Nevertheless the story could be much better with an editor. Therefore, dear future reader, as long as you can read this paragraph I'm still searching for someone to help me to correct this story. No matter how old this post already is when you read it, I still would gladly accept your help, if you're interested.

To the reviewers: I know that some authors use the beginning or the end of each chapter to answer on reviews from the previous one, but I won't do something like this – not here and not in my other stories – because as you can see some things are just to complex for it. Therefore if you want me to actually answer on a comment from you for this story or any other one, you'll need a registered account, because I can't write a pm to guests.

However I don't care for your opinion, if you aren't able to write it without being rude. I doubt that anything smart can come from someone, who doesn't have the intelligence to understand why a basic level of politeness is necessary. Shortly after I posted chapter six I activated the option to moderate guest reviews and deleted several reviews after reading only the first few words, because they were plain impudent.

In the end I'm happy that I wrote this story and I'm glad for everyone, who like it.

Goodbye

TheWatchingEye