"I should've seen the signs" I feel like Stoick was basically reliving the way he lost Valka.
To him, after a lifetime of wanting nothing but to kill a dragon, Hiccup's suddenly and inexplicably changed his mind. To him, Hiccup saying he can't kill them is just like when Valka refused to and tried convincing others as well, then as a result was 'killed' by one herself.
To him, way Hiccup tossed his weapon and shield to the side then approached Hookfang while speaking about how dragons aren't what people think they are probably bares an uncomfortable resemblance to the way Valka put down her weapon and stared a dragon in the eyes and as a result was taken.
To him, attempting to do anything but preemptively defend yourself against a dragon will only end in tragedy, so he has to do anything he can to stop Hiccup before it's too late.
(And just like with Valka, he unintentionally escalated the situation by trying to protect Hiccup but only agitated the dragon, causing it to panic and react, inadvertently putting someone he loves in danger. again)
Stoick of course, wasn't acting rationally, but it makes sense when you think about how traumatizing Valka's 'death' must've been for him (and how much Hiccup reminss him of her); he watched her get taken, presumably killed, and couldn't do anything about it.
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Actually re: the last post about IDW Optimus and politics and moral grayness, if anyone here has read The Wheel of Time series, I actually compare IDW OP to Rand al'Thor in my head a lot. They have sort of the same background of "normal guy gets singled out by a person of Great Authority and put on a path to saving people" followed by a path to leadership hinging on "I became the Chosen One so even though I just wanted to save people, now I have to get involved in these bullshit politics where people are more concerned about securing their own power or spiting their enemies instead of uniting against evil."
Then there's a part of WOT where Rand becomes way darker and edgier, where basically as a result of a severe incident of betrayal and trauma, he goes "You know what, fuck you people, I tried to be nice and you just stabbed me in the back and tried to literally use me as a tool for your own ends" and he basically became a major hardass. To the point where I think there was at least one point (if not multiple) where after Rand extended some sort of diplomatic solution and got rejected, he was basically like "fuck you," fought an entire city on his own and won, then made himself the ruler and went "your armies belong to me and you're going to prepare to fight the Dark One like you SHOULD BE DOING." That phase is sort of comparable to Orion working under Zeta (OP flashbacks, Autocracy trilogy), in which OP's ideals are buried under disappointment and he's seeing these complicated, shitty political realities playing out where it seems like nothing is getting better and his attempts to work with the Decepticons only end in (from his perspective) being blatantly lied to and having his goodwill taken advantage of.
That's really what my ideal phase 2/3 story for Optimus would've been lmao. Still with the same idea of "gee you ARE fighting for the greater good but aren't you going a little far," but balanced out with a rightful dose of "I tried to be diplomatic and nice but no one listened, what else can I do but use force/politics/manipulation to make people see reason if they won't stop backstabbing and betraying each other in time to fight the Actual Evil Force who's going to kill us all."
WOT Rand even had a part of his character arc where he went so far into "humanity sucks, they would literally rather get slaughtered by the ultimate evil than set aside their petty bullshit long enough to work together" where he almost committed murder-suicide in a fit of despair that maybe humanity wasn't even worth saving at all. Only for him to be saved from the edge of despair by realizing "Wait, the world SHOULD be saved, because even though humanity sucks and so many people are evil, good still exists in the world and we can still fight to make the world a better place than it is."
LIKE IN A WAY RAND AL THOR IS BASICALLY IDW OPTIMUS in terms of the general shape of his character arc. Just the difference is that Rand got written as just a character with flaws and virtues coping the best he can under immense pressure and trauma. Whereas IDW OP got written more as "God the world fucking sucks and Cybertronians might just deserve to die bc we colonized people" and also everyone is constantly calling him a fascist and even the titles of his story are comparing him to an actual genocidal tyrant who killed 100 billion+ people. No joy or humanity just a scapegoat for evil living in a shitty world where everyone is miserable and "maybe our entire race IS doomed and we DO deserve to die" is like, a repeated motif of the entire story all the way to Unicron. As opposed to being treated as an obviously shitty worldview that the characters grapple with and go "no actually the world can be a good place and our society can recover from war and we don't deserve oblivion because of the cycle of violence we're trying to escape."
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(hot take mayhaps, but remus did try his best ((re: being there for harry and being around and checking in)) and his best just straight up wasnt what harry needed or good enough)
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this is the information that we had about D dog. that's the info on her page (put through a translator, but its accurate) regarding how she is with other animals, and during the interview reactivity was only mentioned as a possibility not as a known fact about this dog. only dog? no problem. no cats? even less of a problem. potential for reactivity? sure. it can happen with any dog. known aggression towards other dogs? why the hell are you waiting for people to apply and go through a fucking interview before letting them know a week later that they're not fit for this dog and that that's the reason why. all that does is give people false hopes and upset that could be avoided by clear, direct, honest communication of a dog's issues/challenges. i heard about the specific language/way of wording things shelters and rescues use but i had hoped it wouldnt be a universal thing, at least not something i'd experience myself. turns out i was wrong!
maybe im being immature and unfair to these people, they probably dont all have the same amount of knowledge of the dogs and communicating all that inbetween volunteers/workers/and us can be difficult. but im angry and im allowed to express that ffs.
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