Skrillaphobia? Cured.

For a rather interesting, personal post concerning frightening events both in HTTYD2 and in my own strange and silly fandom life, please click the "read more"

If any of you have read my blog consistently, you'll know that for a very, very long time I've had the peculiar fear of the Strike Class dragon known as a Skrill. There is a reason behind that. Some of you may also know that reason, so I'll try to be brief in my explanation. I read Inhonoredglory's FANTASTIC web novel. It is a stunning piece of literature, and one of the main antagonists is a Skrill named Skari. In one chapter, Skari gets a hold of Hiccup and carries him off. I'll try to avoid giving spoilers, but when Skari does this Hiccup starts to panic, and we get to see what is going on in his head. He worries that Skari is carrying him off in order to... to, well, eat him. As soon as I read that line in her story (knowing full well how malevolent and cruel this Skrill was) I got this super sick and terrifying mental image of Skari stooping over the half consumed corpse of Hiccup. I was so disturbed by the image that I pushed myself away from my desk and groaned loudly, much to the interest of the class whose test I was monitoring. I mentioned this reaction and mental image to Glory, and she wound up... through a series of (un)fortunate events making the painting you see on the left up above. It drove me mad, I was literally a sick ball of shivers after seeing it. There were so, so many reasons why it bugged me, and I slightly analyzed these reasons to Glory. At first, I think the image was sort of supposed to tease me, but upon hearing my analysis it bugged her deeply as well, so she wrote a short story in which the event pictured above happens, but it is RESOLVED by the end. Spoiler alert, Hiccup doesn't die, but it gets freakishly close. Ever since reading that I have dreaded, DREADED Skrills. I'd get nightmares about myself lying exactly where you see Hiccup lying, I'd see toys or images or art work, and it would make me stop eating for half a day. I was genuinely terrified of a dragon from a kid's cartoon. If you don't believe me, then you can read some of my older blog posts (like last year's Halloween one). You'll discover just how much of a nervous wreck I could become! I claimed I had Skrillaphobia: an unnatural and unreasonable fear of Skrills

Then I saw HTTYD2. Two nights before seeing it I was spooked thinking about the Skrill. But everything changed. I saw HTTYD2, and my fear of Skrills vanished almost altogether. The night after seeing HTTYD2 I spent three hours shaking in disturbed fear, but it most certainly was not of a Skrill... it was of Toothless.

So, just getting scared by something shouldn't really stop you from getting scared by something else, right? What happened? Why suddenly does the Skrill feel so mild? I believe the reason is in the thematics... though even I didn't realize how potent a certain theme was in the Skrill story until seeing it trumped in HTTYD2. The thing that, I suppose, scared me so much about the Skrill was that it was a Strike Class dragon, intelligent, fast, powerful, lithe, and in so, so many ways very much like Toothless. The fact that a dragon was killing Hiccup, and killing Hiccup in a completely impersonal way made the Skrill story BUG me bad. It was unsettling to see a dragon, the very creatures Hiccup wants to make peace with and matters so much to, killing him. And he was nothing more than a meal. The Skrill was completely cold. He wasn't particularly cruel... he was just efficient and emotionless. In the story the description of his eyes just killed me, the fact that they were so devoid of care. Seeing a dragon that was very much like Toothless killing Hiccup in such an uncaring way was the real gut punch of the story for me. It was like a nightmare version of what Hiccup and Toothless had. Instead of a relationship where Hiccup means everything to a Strike Class dragon, we have a relationship where Hiccup means so, so little to the Toothless-like creature... nothing more than a pathetic amount of nutrition. I felt sure that that story was the scariest believable tale I had ever read concerning the HTTYD universe.

I imagine many of you can see where I am going with this. I would get asked by people when I told them why I found the story so scary, "Well, what if Toothless killed Hiccup, wouldn't that be scarier?" To that question my RAPID answer was, "That, THAT could never happen. That is just ridiculous, and it is so ridiculous and unbelievable that it isn't scary." Well, I was wrong. Because what happened in HTTYD2 was exactly like what the Skrill story was... but it was worse. Toothless turned on Hiccup, and in an utterly emotionless, utterly uncaring way he stalked his boy into the corner. Toothless, the dearest and most beautiful of creatures, very nearly killed Hiccup. Suddenly the Skrill story's power was gone. If any of you have read my Dsplash Chronicles, you may know about Sardilic and how he would put characters into the most terrible nightmares they could ever experience. Many of the nightmares he gave Hiccup were so, so, sooooo much like what happened in HTTYD2. But, just like the Skrill story, I felt sure that this was all safely in the realm of fan fiction. My upsetting imaginations could never play out in cannon. But then they did. Hiccup was not worth anything to Toothless under the Alpha's control. Of course we don't know how much of Toothless was there... how much he could actually think or how his thoughts were effected, but the point still stands, Toothless physically tried to kill Hiccup. He wasn't cruel about it, he didn't draw it out making evil dragon chuckles... Hiccup wasn't even worth being cruel to. Just like in the Skrill story, Toothless's eyes were without care, they saw nothing in Hiccup other than a target, a bit of prey needing to be killed. So, after seeing that I really and truly was cured. The thematic that the Skrill story hinted at actually came to be. Toothless, not a dragon who was like Toothless, turned on Hiccup and nearly cost him his life. There is no worse death than what Hiccup nearly experienced... to be snuffed out in a moment by his best friend.

Now, do I have Toothlessaphobia? Heck no! I saw what happened in the film, and I saw the power of love that eventually conquered the power of Drago's Alpha. I'm not scared of Toothless, but that doesn't mean I don't think he can be scary. The second night after seeing the movie, I tried to walk into a dark basement, and as soon as the door shut behind me (plunging me into pitch black) my imagination conjured Toothless as plain as day in front of me... and he wasn't acting charming. Far from it, he was doing just what he did while under the Red Rage, and he was coming towards me. I twirled on my heels and left the room! The movie gave me Toothless jeebies for days afterwards, and I really did leave the theater in shock after seeing it. I think it is because one of, if not THE, thing I love most in Toothless was his unshaking faithfulness, his undying loyalty. You knew that even if he had to die, even if the whole world turned against his boy, Toothless would protect Hiccup at any cost. So, though I know it was the Alpha's doing, seeing Toothless stripped of that faithfulness... forced to betray Hiccup... it felt like he betrayed me as well. I had so often imagined Toothless around me as a source of comfort when I felt alone or abandoned... he was kind of the buddy I could always think about and trust, and suddenly he's doing unspeakable things! So, that is why I spent the first night just shuddering. A great friend of mine described me as "Being in shell shock from seeing Toothless go all reptile eyed on Hiccup", and it was an accurate description! I really couldn't believe how hurt I was... I was so hurt that when Toothless approached Stoick I felt exactly how Hiccup felt. I wanedt him to get away, wanted him to vanish. He could come back later, but seeing him touch the man he had just killed made me bitterly unhappy, and I was sadly in agreement with how Hiccup acted. I don't feel like that now, but my initial reaction was very strong and very emotional. So, I don't fear Skrills, and because I love Toothless I could never have a phobia of him... but boy can he give me the occasional scare!

Not to draw the post out, but I should also note that the Red Rage scene was terrifyingly well done. This of course played into making it trump the Skrill story and cure me of my phobia. The music was so eerie, and I was already crying when the Alpha began to take over Toothless because I guessed what could happen in an event like that. I wasn't thinking of Stoick, though I felt dreadful after seeing him perish, I was so immersed that I felt sure that something truly could happen to Hiccup. The music is the same as what was used in the Downed Dragon scene when Hiccup is about to kill Toothless... and it was also used in the Kill Ring scene when Toothless nearly kills Stoick but is captured (is that not a awful parallel or what?). The bagpipes where so blood freezing, and the entire scene, using everything from lighting to camera angles, really convinced you that everything was hopeless and that Toothless was unstoppable. But, aside from the music, I really want to point out a particular use of the camera! DARN. This might be the thing that scared me the most. When you see Drago walking away, it shows the scene from that angle twice, and from that angle you can see Hiccup backing into the ice with Toothless prowling after him. Why is that a big deal? Because by the end Hiccup is practically unseen by the camera... while Toothless is not. Hiccup is vanishing from our sight, but we know he is cornered. The thing that is so terrifying about that is animated movies so, so, SO often obscure a character's death by putting them offscreen. If Hiccup can't be seen by the audience, all we have to do is see Toothless fire, hear a final shout, and we'd know Hiccup had been killed. That is what keeps these movies PG... and so since they were subtly putting Hiccup in a position with the camera that made it where his death was possible, almost able to easily be envisioned, that really added potency to the scene. Then of course the animation of Toothless, the pitiful, awful cries of Hiccup... the whole scene was absolutely heart stopping. It made me leave the theater in shock... maybe a little traumatized. They really made me think that Hiccup could have been killed... by Toothless, and my brain often works in worst-case-scenario-is-most-likely kind of ways. So, that scene sealed it. I doubt I'll ever be as emotionally disturbed or frightened by any other film. The character I trusted most and loved most for his loyalty turned on my hero... and I really did think he could have killed him. The fact that dear Stoick died just punctuates how serious and costly that scenario was... and having Toothless breathing in that messed up way afterwards was just twisting the knife in the wound (though a recent comment by Inhonoredglory made me see the messed up breathing in a slightly different light). I'll never forget my reaction to that scene, and I still have a hard time believing it happened.

So, that is how I got Skrillophobia and was cured. I love Toothless still, and I'm sorry if the last couple of posts I've had have been depressing, but being scared of Skrills was, I suppose, sort of a comically defining thing for me in the fandom, and now that is gone because we experienced something so much more thematically terrifying.