Httyd Analysis - Blog Posts

These three pieces of media have a trend

I love these movies and shows so much and I want to talk about just one reason I love them:

Autism.

The three main characters of all these franchises have a similar situation. They are all weird and friendless and they have a dream that no one believes that they can accomplish.

Izuku with his dream to be a hero. PO with his dream to be a Kung Fu warrior and Hiccup with his dream (at first) to kill a dragon (which turned into being friends with dragons).

They are all bullied and ridiculed. What I find really interesting though is there's The reason for them being bullied and then the hidden and (seemingly) more likely reason that they are bullied. Izuku is quirkless, no one thinks he can be a hero because he has no powers. PO is big, no one thinks that he has the body to be a warrior and Hiccup is small. As he says, he's a walking fishbone.

However from what I can tell, those are merely (horrible, might I add) excuses to hate on them. Like what gobber says, 'its what's on the inside that they can't stand.'

What I don't get is that in Mha, 20% of the population is quirkless. In a school of just 300 there would be sixty kids who didn't have a quirk. I know we didn't see much of other quirkless kids but I really do think that the bullying that Izuku received would have been much worse than everyone else. It seems to me that the main reason that they don't like him, (especially Bakugo) is because of his personality. Because he's annoying.

I think that a big reason they hated him was because they noticed autistic traits, didn't understand it was autism (or cared) and didn't like it.

(I can make a separate post about why I think all these characters are autistic)

Now with Kung Fu Panda. (I just want to say really quick that I do not mean to take away from the real situations and ridicule that plus size people receive. I know that it happens and I know it can be really bad and I'm sorry for anyone who experienced bullying. I think that Po does face a lot of discrimination just because of his body, I just want to highlight the underlining albeism that seems to be present)

Po in my opinion is so clearly Audhd. He has an intense interest on Kung fu and everything surrounding it. He knows everything about the five, and he misses a ton of social cues. He just blurts things out and doesn't realize how they can be inappropriate for nuerotypical standards.

When Shifu first speaks with him he is immediately unimpressed. Yes, he does bring up (if I can recall correctly) his 'flabby' body. But it was also because Po was so excited and he was speaking in a way that Shifu or one of the five wouldn't. He was describing all the artifacts and knew exactly what the pinky hold was.

In fact, to me, the movie wouldn't have happened if Shifu didn't accept Po's weirdness. Really, in the end, Pos's body shape wasn't a detriment at all and I think Shifu knew this. He's worked with so many different species before, he has to know that every type of body has their own value. He teaches a prey mantis for crying out loud.

And also, I don't think most of Po's insecurities came from his size. To me, he seemed mostly insecure about himself inwardly. (Though I haven't watched the movie in a few months) Come on though, the whole secret ingredient thing? I think there was a reason that when he looked into the scroll it only showed his face.

Yes, his size did help a lot in the fight and I love that part of the movie so much but his creativity and his differentness helped a ton too. He literally imagined the scroll as a comfort food to get to it first... I mean, are they even trying to hide it? (We know it's his comfort food cause he literally did the splits to get to them when he got upset)

I'll move on to How to Train your Dragon now. Hiccup had ADHD. Hiccup has autism. I think that's a universally accepted, right? I think most of the movie is a metaphor for nuerdivergence. The movies already have amazing physical disability representation but that came later. In the first few minutes, we already knew something was different about Hiccup compared to everyone else. He was impulsive, he didn't listen, once he was set on something he was going to accomplish it, he said things without thinking, he was terrible with socializing. Especially with those his age. Gobber said, and I loosely quote, "it's not what's on the outside, it's what's on the inside that he can't stand."

That boy didn't have any friends until he met the dragon that he shot down. I'm sorry, or is that not the most autistic thing you ever heard. It's like autisitic people and their animals. My dog was and is my best friend. Always will be. And a dragon is basically a giant cat/dog, and reptile.

He didn't get friends until his 'uniqueness' set him apart in a 'good' way. It wasn't until he was useful and cool that he got any human friends which is something I wished they touched on in Race to the Edge. Like, Hiccup has to have some insecurity surrounding that, right?

Anyway, my point is, whenever you see a character get bullied. Just remember that they are most likely nuerodivergent and that's probably why none of the characters like them. Peter Parker is included in this list.