User blog:DreamingOfDragons72x2/This is not a Helven Cousin blog

Sorry for the delay; I actually read How To Ride A Dragon's Storm weeks ago. It just...bothered me. I discovered that I don't like it when the hero gets a painful secret that could get him in serious trouble if it ever gets out. I mean, in a way Hiccup gets hurt when he gets that thing; he's practically getting branded, right? And yet he can't talk it over with anyone to get the pain of it out of his system, so it's left unresolved in the book it's introduced.. That's agonizing to me. Which is a little weird, since in one of my stories (not the Helven Chronicles) I have a character getting the same kind of secret; but when that secret comes into existence it technically happens long before the story begins, and we only find out about the secret and how much it hurt the character after he finally tells someone six years later. Not to mention the person he tells is totally innocent and doesn't see the painful secret as something to hate him or pity him over.

Anyway. What I think I'm going to talk about in this blog is my own empathy. Several books ago I discovered that if Toothless was my dragon, he'd better watch his little back: if he pulled on me some of the stunts he pulled on Hiccup (who I sympathize with), I likely would have clobbered him with my helmet. Of course, when I first got him I would have been sure to lay things out very carefully: "Toothless do good, good things happen; Toothless do bad, bad things happen." Then if he did in fact pull one of those stunts (going on strike, for instance; that was the worst one), he wouldn't be able to complain if I walloped him one because he'd been warned that his mistress had a nasty temper and wouldn't put up with obstinate disobedience.

I discovered a couple of days ago that not only can I not read super-sad moments without nearly falling apart, I can't even write them without fighting tears. In the first book of the Helven Chronicles, the hero gets a pet; later (either in the same book or in the second, depending on just how much I manage to write) something really bad happens to the pet. I couldn't write the aftermath without blinking back my tears. It wasn't just me, either - when my sister read that aftermath, she was crying too. Is that a sign of successful writing, when you can pen a scene that is supposed to be very sad and your editors cry over it?

I hope I can manage another Helven Cousin blog tomorrow: the next HTTYD book is on hold for me at the library, and I'm getting it today. Oh - and just in case anyone is wondering why I never do Helven cousins for the movieverse dragons, the answer is "I actually have made a couple; some of them are even purebred dragons." What I actually prefer doing is looking for relationships between existing dragons (the Thunderdrum, Whispering Death, and Smothering Smokebreath all look related to me; I originally thought the Screaming Death was on that list, but I'm no longer sure and holding that idea for until I see it in its introductory episode).