I can pinpoint the exact moment I became obsessed with dragons.
I had a couple obsessions before it. Prior to my dragon phase, I was a major horsegirl. I was different than most horsegirls, I think. Horses fascinated me as creatures, beasts, not as pets or companions. They still do. Learning about all the different horse breeds tickled my brain the same way learning about dog breeds did - it was so cool how much variation a single animal could have.
I often wanted to be a horse. Or another animal, it shifted frequently. Naturally, when playing house with other kids, I always wanted to be the pet.
In elementary school I was going to this weird extracurricular thing organised by the school psychologist. I don’t think it was therapy, but we learnt about how to manage our emotions, for example. I don’t really remember how I ended up there, but I was a bit of a problem student… (I had bitten people a couple times ❤️)
There I met a girl, in the same year as me. We quickly became close friends, reading “Dragonology” and similar books that we borrowed from the library together; talking about how vividly we can imagine having a snout, a tail, wings, paws; drawing the coolest beast we could think of…
One time, she asked me if I had seen “How to Train Your Dragon”.
I had seen it, though I originally didn’t think much of it - I was only 7 at the time and I think I didn’t process much of the plot - didn’t help that i saw it IN 3D! and was mostly preoccupied with the visuals of cool dragons flying directly towards me.
“Yeah, I have.”
“There’s a TV series airing based on that movie… And it’s freaking awesome!!!!!”
And thus began my close connection to the How to Train Your Dragon franchise.
We would discuss the TV show as new episodes came out, speculate about the upcoming second film, and so on. We were hooked.
I, hungry for more, even went and read the book series, and regularly played School of Dragons, an MMO game based on the franchise. All I drew was dragons, and occassionally human characters from the series. HTTYD was my life. And it is still a series I hold very dear to my heart. I fundamentaly would be a different person without it.
All of this is what led me to become a dragon, I believe. I really liked that girl, and I’m starting to wonder after all these years if it’s all because of her. If I wanted to be her dragon.
We became distant even before we graduated from elementary school. Those last few years, when passing by her, every time I wondered: “Do you remember?”
We drifted apart, but a dragon I remained.
Thanks forest (of swiftyshq) for proofreading!
