Some thoughts upon How To Train Your Dragon, upon rewatch.

How To Train Your Dragon came out on October 15th, and Dev and I watched it the next day. My original review is over here, for the curious—I loved it then, and have precisely the same opinion now: it's a marvelous film, predictable sure but full of clever dialog and bursting with heart, and so very beautiful. It is a singular pleasure to watch.

What I meant to share then, but never did; what I sit down to write now, is this: perhaps what I love most about the film, if I had to pick one single aspect, is that Toothless is not Hiccup's pet—but his friend. The film underestimates this in itself, and Toothless is called a pet twice in the script, but the interactions between the character is so far from that. On of the best moments in the film is at the very end, ( where there's a spoiler )

which reminds us that he is equal to Toothless. How To Train Your Dragon isn't about domestication. It's about two people, and their friendship. It's about two cultures discovering each other, and the fact that they are different than previously believed, still quite unique, and also surprisingly similar.

Dragons lack speech (as far as humans can understand) and have more animalistic behaviors (at least by human standards), but in most other ways Toothless is as communicative, social, emotional, and even humorous as Hiccup. After all, it's ( another spoiler )

, and even if we don't know how dragon intelligence compares to human intelligence, it takes something like knowledge, social instincts, humor, and self-confidence, to do that. Toothless emotes and interacts with the same complexity and depth as the best-realized of the human characters (and far more than the supporting cast!). He's not a human being, but he's just as much of a person as the humans are.

It irks me that in dialog, the film insists on using the word "pet"—it undercuts so many of its own developments, it insists that because Toothless and other dragons look and act different, because they look like animals, they can't be people. I wish Hiccup corrected assumptions and named Toothless as a friend and, as such, an equal. Because he doesn't, the visible parallel between Hiccup and Toothless at the end of the film is a wonderful and necessary addition to the other interactions between the characters. It dismisses the lesser word, and reminds us of that essential equality. I appreciate it also as a message that disability doesn't mean inability, I acknowledge it again as idealized, and I don't think it should be interpreted as a sign that Hiccup and Toothless, or the cultures they come from, are identical—after all, the characters hardly are. But oh, I love the message it sends: they are equals. That means so much.

Truly a beautiful film, though, by the bye. Not only did I love it in all the same ways as I did when I first saw it, I cried in the same places too. Good tears. Beautiful tears. Just as I mentioned before: Dragon's aren't really my thing. Dragon flight has never really intrigued me. But oh, I understand the beauty—I understand the beauty now.

Oh, yes. Look, how apropos, again! Dragons:

Another cycle of back pain, depression, and Tramadol.

You've read this post before.

These last few days I've been feeling particularly depressed and spacey, the type of depressed and spacey that makes it hard for me to do or care or feel any joy, the type that makes me a little pissy and a little hard to live with. Yesterday my hands started trembling and my neck was almost too stiff to move. Yesterday evening before bed I took Tramadol. During the night I woke (as always) to those singular side-effects which fill me full of white noise: tingling fingertips, itchy cheeks and nose, surprisingly pleasant static in my head. Those side effects persist this morning, but they're fading. And, magically, I feel alive again. My muscles are squishy (Devon says it feels quite strange) but my mind is freed too—I've had things which I've wanted to say, but trying to find the energy to say them was exhausting and depressing and so I just turned on another TV episode and tried to disappear out of my own thoughts for another hour more. Now ... I can speak.

You've read all this before because I keep doing this, goddamnit. My back problems these days are sometimes the sort of thing you would expect: tight muscles, aching, stiffness, spasms. But it seems like when they get bad, really bad, there's almost no pain at all, none that I feel. I just grow increasingly miserable and unmotivated, and I don't know why—I know my back is bad but then it's always bad, and it doesn't feel worse than usual—l just feel worse than usual, I, me, my entire mind and self. Then the pain gets so bad I start to tremble, and Devon finally makes me take something, and miracles occur.

I know why it's so hard for me to recognize this pattern as the persistent issue that it is. I don't believe the brain crazies are real, still, even though I know they are; I only half believe the back problems are real, and when they don't seem to cause physical symptoms it's even harder to believe in them. I think it's all in my head (even the shit which is, well, in my head) and so I can't take it seriously and treat it earlier—but whether or not I admit it, it is serious, and the longer I go without treating it the worse it gets.

I like to think of myself as tolerably bright. This chronic inability to learn from my own experience is starting to get on my nerves.

The upside, though, which in this moment is enough to counteract all of my frustration, is how much better I feel now. Perhaps I am getting a bit of euphoria off the Tramadol (I hope not, because I don't look forward to crashing when it wears off), but oh: to come out the other end, to be able to move without whining and to think without growing discouraged. It feels good. It feels so good.

Book Review: Terror by Night: Classic Ghost & Horror Stories by Ambrose Bierce, ed. by David Davies

Title: Terror by Night: Classic Ghost & Horror Stories
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Editor: David Stuart Davies
Published: Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2006 (1871-1912?)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 292
Total Page Count: 93,453
Text Number: 268
Read Because: author mentioned in The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan and general interest in horror short fiction, purchased used at a local bookstore
Review: Ghosts and haunted houses, dying Civil War soldiers and attacking beasts, things unseen and terrors imagined: this volume collects 51 of Ambrose Bierce's short stories. It's not an imprint which you pick up for its own sake, but rather because it's the Bierce collection closest at hand. The introduction is adequate but awkwardly written and hardly comprehensive; the collection itself is not all of Bierce's short fiction, and the arrangement is adequate—never poor or jarring, and sometimes aiding the flow between stories. It isn't a volume that I recommend outright, but if it does happen to be the Bierce collection closest at hand, then do pick it up—because Bierce is worth reading. He's a deceptively simple writer: his tone is straightforward and his penchant for twist endings can grow predictable (and, the danger of a collection, may grow repetitive as well), but in that straightforwardness hides understatement. Dry wit, insightful irony, startling human perception, and no lack of horror—some human, some otherworldly, all of it crossing the boundary between the two in the impact it has on those involved—are all presented in a bare style that mimics simplicity but is actually skillful subtlety. Bierce's dark humor is delightful, and his horror is both intriguing and chilling, both as fearful pleasure and something outright unsettling.

For all of this, Bierce is not my new favorite short fiction author, in part because I do find his twist endings repeditive, in part because not all of his themes—family issues and human folly, ghosts and the Civil War—appeal to my own personal interests. But his voice and style do appeal to me, and as they are short, finely crafted, and often intriguing, I found Bierce's stories both addicting and supremely satisfying, and enjoyed this sampling of his short fiction. "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge," "An Imperfect Conflagration," and "The Damned Thing" were my favorites, but few stories disappointed me. Give or take this specific collection, but I recommend Bierce—to fans of horror and of short fiction, for he excelled at both.

Review posted here on Amazon.com.