 Hello, my darling extra trust reels. I am Kim. This is Dustmoked and Velikor, and when the trailer for the third How to Train Your Dragon movie dropped, I was reminded how much I love the How to Train Your Dragon movie franchise, and oh, aren't those based on a series of books? And I was like, oh, maybe I'll just dip my toe in, and then I got totally swept away. There are no fewer than 12 books in Crescent of Cowles, outrageous, hilarious, epic saga. Each one takes you on a crazier, more hair-raising adventure alongside Hiccup horrendous Haddock the Third, the unlikeliest of Viking heroes. And each one teaches an important lesson to Hiccup and to you, mostly via shenanigans. I had the immense pleasure of listening to the audiobooks as read by David Tennant, so that's a thing. The names are silly, see Hiccup's uncle baggy bum the beer belly as a salient example. The dragons are rated on a multi-point scale that includes disobedience. The villain is literally named Alvin the Treacherous, but people keep trusting him for some reason. And Hiccup is constantly having to think his way out of impossible situations. Sorry, there's no such thing as impossible, only highly improbable. That's one of the lessons you learn. There are several massive differences between the movie slash TV series universe and the book series. And in a lot of cases, I think the movies did the right thing. In the book, Hiccup never loses his leg. Instead, Alvin the Treacherous over the course of the entire series loses his arm, his hair, his leg, his eye, his nose, and you know, his soul, but that's really neither here nor there. Huge red flag here, it's called disability coded as villainy, and I'm sure most of you know what that means, but in case you don't, it's a trope found throughout literature and film, basically putting a big neon sign over anybody who's not obviously normal and marking them as this is the bad guy. It teaches children and our society as a whole a suspicion if not outright fear of people with disabilities. The movies took this in another direction and made the logical leap of, hey, the people of Burke have been fighting dragons for generations. They probably have some scars to, hey, let's give gober the belch a peg leg and a prosthetic arm that he designed himself. And then had Hiccup's adventures have actual consequences which led to him losing his leg. Everybody has scars in the movie verse, not just the villains. Also in the movies, all dragons are wild. In the books, dragons are kept as pets and beasts of burden. They help with hunting and fishing and herding, and the larger ones serve as riding dragons. Some dragons bond very closely with their masters and don't want to leave, but not all are treated kindly, and some wild dragons view this as slavery. There are ideological differences about having human and dragon slaves, and it's a huge part of leader books. I digress. Consequences aren't really a thing in book Hiccup's world. Children are referred to as young heroes and are expected to go off on daring quests and be missing for months on end. There are several times when Hiccup's tribe believed him to be dead, but he always staggers back somehow, usually via highly improbable circumstances, crazy plans, and a bizarre amount of luck. But honestly, that's part of what makes these books so enjoyable. You know, without a shred of doubt, that Hiccup's gonna make it through. No matter how many things go wrong, no matter how dire the circumstances, Hiccup's gonna make it through. He might not prevail, but he's gonna make it through. He doesn't do it alone either. He is always accompanied by his best friend Fishlegs, who is equally spindly, equally nerdy, highly allergic to dragons, and pretty much everything else, and really, he just wants to be a bard. Their other human friend is Kamikaze, the heir to the Bog burglar tribe, and the answer to the question, where are all the girls? Kamikaze is a thief and a lockpick, a sword fighter and an escape artist. And while she steals yourself from inside a locked cage and beats you in a sword fight, she will insult you, your mother, your grandmother, your grandfather, your whole clan, and you again until you cry. It's great. Kamikaze is kind of comparable to the movie character Astrid, but also not really. She's from a different tribe. There's no romantic plot line between Hiccup and any character in the book series whatsoever, and Kamikaze is really much more of a comrade in arms, so points there. Toothless is very different in the books as well, mainly because he can talk. The dragons in the book series speak a language called Dragonese, which Hiccup learned as well, and he's a total nerd for learning it. Also, it's kind of illegal. Hiccup's considered a huge geek for learning all of these things about dragons and learning their language, and he gets bullied for it, but he gets bullied for pretty much everything, so at this point he's used to it. Also, Nightfuries are a thing that the movie created. In the books, Toothless is the smallest, most common type of dragon there is. A common or garden dragon. He is disobedient. He is prideful. He is arrogant. In the first book, Hiccup is trying to train his dragon using a method other than just yelling at them, which is the predominant wisdom at the time. At one point he has to say, if you go catch me this fish, I'll tell you a really good joke. It's like Toothless goes and catches the fish because he wants to hear the really good joke. Is that how toddlers work? Like, hey, if you brush your teeth, I'll tell you a really good joke. I'm adding the series to the list of books I want to read to my kids one day, maybe when they're five or so and have a decent grasp of that eyes of. We'll watch the movies too and nerd out over how awesome dragons are. And we'll read the books to learn how to be a hero, which we do need more of in this world. I went into this video thinking I was going to make a gush, but I ended up making it compare and contrast, and that's fine. That's how things go sometimes. We got to go with the flow. You got to tell me, though, what is your favorite bit about the How to Train Your Dragon universe? Like the books, the movies, the TV series, the comics. There's a lot of How to Train Your Dragon stuff out there. I'll tell you right now, I'm probably going to cry when the movie comes out. I definitely cried when the trailer came out, and that was embarrassing. Anyway, if you enjoyed my rambling opinions, make sure to hit the subscribe button because I promise you there will be more like this down the road. And come talk to me about books. A viento!