Blog | We Have Dragons!

June 7, 2019 Fanart

HTTYD Fanart Gallery #1 – Theme: Best Friends Hiccup & Toothless

Hiccup and Toothless resting in beautiful sunlit forest

Woo-hoo! To kick off my weekly favourite How to Train Your Dragon fanart compilation, I’m starting with my favourite subject – showing the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless!
They’re such buddies, it’s adorable.

Hiccup hugging Toothless — Best friends: DreamWorks A.

If you’ve watched the HTTYD series, you will have seen all the dragon riders develop the friendship with their dragons, and learn to get along and work together. The thing I’ve especially kept my eye out for, were cute and friendly Hiccup and Toothless (HicTooth) moments – and the series had plenty.

Hiccup and Toothless, happy — Best buddies: DreamWorks A.

Well let’s get things started, and if you have some of your own HTTYD fanart that you’d like to show, or would like to nominate another artist, then by all means head over to the submissions page and send it my way! I’ll be putting older art into my favourite compilations, and posting the favourite latest art as it comes.
Maybe you could also sign up to the forum, and post your creative HTTYD goodies to the “Creative Wall” for other members to see.

May 8, 2019 Editorial

Basic Internet Browsing & Safety Tips

Basic Internet browsing and safety tips for kids, teens and adults that will help boost overall safety and privacy online.
I make an effort to only allow links to quality websites from this fansite, but there are still untrainable and unfriendly dragons out there, so it’s always good to be aware.
Hiccup loved dragons, but even he was mindful with new ones.

Due to safely working with (high-voltage) electronics and computers since I was six years old (without getting badly zapped) and Internet-stuff now being my profession, this is a pretty important and big subject for me; I want to share some good advice to help keep you safe as well. Safety is metaphorically, one of my middle names (along with “hairy” and “handsome” haha).

It’s best not let the few bad guys on the Internet make one overly cynical or too careful. Overall, the Internet is an amazing, useful and even fun tool. Learning from quality, balanced and independent sources of information about how to deal with the potential dangers, frees you up to enjoy the good things when you find them.

Sometimes it’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the warnings and advice out there, but there are some basics that almost everyone can agree on. Here’s some basic good advice from myself and by experts-in-their-field that I’ve collected, looked over and grouped, for browsing the Internet better.

April 4, 2019 Community, Editorial

Links to Other HTTYD Websites & Information

Hiccup and Astrid being affectionate to one another with a bright background and dragon flying in the sky.

Part of creating a nice fansite, is looking at the best of what fellow fans have come up with, and finding quality sources of information. Starting out as a curious fan myself, I’ve tried to find as many unique sources of Dragon-goodies as possible.

I’d like to share with you some of the most useful and interesting websites I’ve discovered, on my own journey to find out more about HTTYD (come back soon!):

April 3, 2019 WeHaveDragons.org Things

Planned Updates & Updates Log

It’s neater to keep a list of all planned website, blog and forum updates in the one place. Here they are:

February 25, 2019 Community, Editorial

Alternate Versions & Endings of HTTYD: The Hidden World [Potential Spoilers]

3D model of Toothless, looking overwhelmed and sad

The final instalment in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy has already hit the cinemas in most countries around the world, and passionate suggestions for alternate endings and even versions of the story, are surfacing within the HTTYD community.

The movie’s creators and Dean DeBlois (who wrote the movie’s script) were careful to prepare fans for the inevitable “goodbye” between the vikings and their dragons; a goodbye destined to bring the story told in the movies and several shorts and long-running TV series to its conclusion.
Fans of Cressida Cowell’s “How to Train Your Dragon” book series know that the book begins with an adult Hiccup, looking back on his life and saying “There were dragons when I was a boy.” Readers were “prepared” for the ending, before the story began.

After movie audiences witnessed such a strong and caring bond developing between the dragons and their riders – especially Hiccup and Toothless, it was clear that any ending to their friendship would need to be handled sensitively.

Way back in 2012, in an interview with the author of the original books Cressida Cowell, she mentioned that the Vikings and dragons would separate at the end of the third movie. (Source)

How did fans react to the dragon and rider friendships they’ve come to enjoy witnessing, finally coming to an end? Some fans are writing their own endings!

February 16, 2019 Dragons!

Real Dragon-Like Animals, and Their Homes!

Real dragon-like animals and places, where mythical dragons would feel at home.
So, the world doesn’t have fire (or scalding or icy water) spewing dragons (anymore), but there are plenty of creatures that are still called dragons by name: We have venomous “Komodo Dragons”, “Flying Dragons” (lizards of Southeast Asia and India), Leafy Seadragons, Bearded Dragons and more.

In fact, around the world there are lots of fierce and interesting reptiles that look like they could be mistaken for a distant cousin to our mythical reptilian dragon friends (and enemies).

Of course… maybe these mythical dragons were just based on such animals to begin with, by those who imagined them in fairytales.

February 2, 2019 WeHaveDragons.org Things

Where to Start!

Hiccup holding treasure map and showing Toothless

You’ve found the Dragons treasure map! This fansite is all about the cool things which the How to Train Your Dragon fans around the world want to show off.
The original HTTYD books, as well as the movies and TV series have inspired lots of creativity.

The fansite has three main sections:

Web Pages
An overview of the official HTTYD stuff you can read, watch, listen to and play with. You’ll find tips on where and how to buy or borrow it, and also links to other useful websites.
Blog Pages
My favourite and newest HTTYD goodies go straight here: fanart, fanfiction, news, Dragons-related topics to discuss, related community events and more!
Our Friendly HTTYD Community Forum
Where Dragon Riders and fans can register and talk about everything HTTYD, as well as post their own fanart, fanfiction and other related goodies.
Any comments and discussions made on the blog posts also go there automatically.

January 7, 2019 Community, Editorial

Name the Light Fury, From HTTYD: The Hidden World

Toothless getting brushed over the head with a toothbrush

What name should we give the Light Fury, from the “Hidden World” movie? We know that the Light Fury was intentionally not given a name, from interviews with the movie’s creators. This is what the screenwriter said in regards to her name:

“The Light Fury is a species name given to her by Hiccup and Astrid. We deliberately didn’t give her a personal name, because we wanted to keep her wild. She isn’t a Night Fury, she’s a variation of the species with her own traits and abilities. Unlike Toothless, she is not the last of her kind. — Dean DeBlois”

This of course didn’t stop fans from giving the Light Fury a name! The most popular one so far seems to be “Luna”, followed by “Nubless” and then “Toothpaste”.
Personally, of those three I like “Luna” the most, as “Luna” is the Goddess of the moon in ancient (Roman) religion and myth.
The Light Fury, while mostly white, certainly has blue hues that can resemble a moon’s bluish appearance at times. The name “Nubless” and “Toothpaste” are good for a laugh, but probably not something one would like to call out loud with other people watching: “Toothpaste, where are you?!”

January 6, 2019 Editorial, News

Review of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” – The Hidden Shrek?

Toothless holding up the script to "HTTYD: The Hidden World" and saying "What the hell is this?"

Only a very few minutes of this final HTTYD (The Hidden World) movie, make sense in the context of the entire story up to this point, starting from the first movie in 2010.

Futurama's Fry and HTTYD's Hiccup with attached Brainslugs — Montage. Hiccup, Brain Slug. DreamWorks Animation

Whatever remains, appears to be dedicated towards somehow legitimising unusual personality changes to the Viking and dragon characters.
These personality changes, appeared to have been required in order to push an unusually large amount of modern-day mainstream-media-style themes that simply don’t fit into a “mythical Viking and dragons story from long ago”.
An entire hour of this movie, is spent watching the Dragon Riders either running away like panicked insects and leaving their ancestry, friends, lives and livelihoods behind, or farewelling their dragons.

In the real world, the toxic compromises and concessions the characters of this movie make, would mean the collapse of the society that gives in to them.

The Dragons TV series used to be officially described as the events between the first and the second movie. Unfortunately, the unusual changes in this final movie appear to be so major, that now the TV series was “supposedly” never canon (not part of the official “universe/story”), after all.
Even ignoring the TV series, doesn’t help in explaining the now frequently daft and nonsensical actions made, by this movie’s Berkians.

Editorial, News

Review of “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” – The Hidden Shrek? (Bewilderbeast Edition)

Sign above toilet, warning not to flush kitchen rolls, sanitary pads, solid objects, live fish and dragons.

The Hidden Shrek? Or: How to Flush Your Dragon?

Living in Australia, I managed to see the movie when it was first released to theaters here on January 3 2019. One of my first impressions was, that it was made so blatantly clear in the film trailers what the story was about, that there weren’t too many surprises left. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as anything new that wasn’t revealed in the trailers did keep the story chugging along, and also helped prepare the devoted big and small fans for the so-called “bittersweet ending” that we were told would happen.

At the end of the movie, around a third of the children in the cinema on the day were crying and inconsolable.

Along with the predictably positive professional reviews for this movie, at the time of writing this review (January 5), there are already several glowing moviegoer reviews on the biggest movie reviews and information website.
The reviews were mostly from people with accounts that are apparently many years old, but they had never left a review for any other movie or made any other real contribution to the movie information website. I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but let’s move on…