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The Pervasive, Semi-Problematic World of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Porn

Rule 34 of the internet states that if it exists, there’s porn of it, but this play on Dreamworks’ animated fantasy is a whole different reptile

It’s never surprising to learn that a certain type of porn merely exists. Rule 34 of the internet has long established that whatever porn you can imagine being available already is. What does continue to surprise me, though, is how many people are actually consuming some of these seemingly obscure porn concoctions. Case in point: a non-insignificant number of people are on the hunt for How to Train Your Dragon porn.

This isn’t itself a new phenomenon — just about every popular animated movie gets the pornification treatment from its adult fans, even if the movies are for kids (Frozen is particularly popular, for some reason). How to Train Your Dragon is just another prominent example, but it’s more active than one might expect. Since its debut, people have continuously been searching for NSFW fanart pertaining to the series’ characters, and according to Google Trends, interest in such smut peaked in 2014 but has still continued steadily through today. The subreddit r/HTTYDporn, which was founded in November 2018, currently has 6,800 members, too.

Much of the HTTYD porn on the market is split between two categories — that which focuses on the dragons, and that which focuses on the humans. Obviously, there’s a decent amount of crossover, too. Among the most popular content on r/HTTYDporn are images pertaining to a specific human character, Astrid. Pale, blonde and blue-eyed, she is said to be 15 in the first movie, ranges in age from 18 to 21 in the following three films and apparently matures in an epilogue where she’s 30. Per the Dreamworks website, she’s the “self-assured, competitive champion of the Dragon Races and Hiccup’s longtime girlfriend. Beautiful despite herself, she’s tough and rational, providing Hiccup with a blunt voice of reason while remaining his most outspoken supporter.”

With the exception of her age in the first movie, it makes sense that she would be a source of erotic fodder for fans — she was basically written as a Norse fantasy love interest.

The issue of Astrid’s age is seemingly a point of contention among fans of HTTYD porn, as is the fact that Astrid torture porn is a subgenre within the field. To address this, r/HTTYDporn has three rules: 1) no content where the characters are underage; 2) no rape/gore; and 3) no scat. Nevertheless, underage torture content has apparently been a problem elsewhere. “There needs to be more adult Astrid, and less of her getting tortured,” a post with over 14,000 upvotes on the subreddit r/Rule34 reads.

While torture porn doesn’t make major appearances on r/HTTYDporn, the post was shared on the subreddit as well. Across each, fans agree that both issues are concerning. Almost all of the top posts on r/HTTYDporn do indeed feature Astrid, but demonstrate her enjoying consensual sex or just posing erotically.

Considering how popular dragons are in various forms of illustrated porn, the dragons from the film naturally also make an appearance in people’s fan-made porn and on the subreddit. It presents ample opportunities for the various other niches common in the medium, particularly the element of gigantism and monster cocks. Some of the art features the dragons fucking each other, and some involves the humans fucking the dragons. One even shows the male human protagonist, Hiccup, transforming into a bimbofied, female stripper dragon.

It’s unclear exactly how old all of the dragons are supposed to be, with the exception of one of the main character dragons, Toothless, whom the Dreamworks website says is 20 in dragon years. Presumably, when someone draws Toothless penetrating Astrid, they’re illustrating an act between two legal, consenting parties. Perhaps underage content and torture have been problems within the HTTYD porn community in the past, but the fans on r/HTTYDporn seem largely interested in keeping things above the board.

As with porn writ large, that’s all anyone can really ask for.