Gonna need everyone to go rewatch the beginning of Gift of the Night Fury because this exchange between Hiccup and Toothless where Hiccup imitates dragon noises is the cutest goddamn thing I've ever seen.
I love Astrid in gotnf so fucking much it's insane.
Like, fueled by some kind of manic behavior caused by Stormfly's absence, she fixated on making 'new holiday traditions' to distract herself from the fact her best friend is gone help the village, and basically got the pre-httyd1 Hiccup treatment.
She just wanted to help, and instead accidentally set the village on fire and blew up houses, got mocked by Snotlout and the twins, and was (probably for one of the first times ever in her life) looked at with nothing but disappointment from the adults.
(Only difference is she was actually trusted to clean up the mess she made whereas Hiccup was not due to fear of him accidentally breaking something even more)
While she was fixing the roofs she was probably thinking to herself 'I just wanted to help, but all I did was make things worse.' And I wonder if she realized this must be exactly how Hiccup felt for years.
I finally watched Gift of the Night Fury and I gotta say this is my favorite characterization of Astrid ever. Like I have no hate against her she’s always just been a yeah she’s cool kinda character to me but her being so optimistic in gotnf bordering on manic is so good to me. Her trying her best to forcefully bring cheer during sad times is so entertaining and gives her the chaotic touch that I always felt her character was missing. And those moments when it’s apparent that she’s really bad at comforting people sometimes is so funny to me it makes her feel a little more real.
Also I think the art style really helped I don’t know how to explain it other than it feels like they syringe fed like two tiny droplets of Tim Burton into it - it gives all the characters a slightly insane look in their eyes favorite animation style for em yet <3