Title: A Chance Encounter
Author: R-dude
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Drama
Status: Complete
Library Category: Misc.
Pairings: Hiccup/Elsa
Summary: Hiccup is lost. Elsa is looking for something. A chance encounter between them has far-reaching consequences.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10171267/1/A-Chance-Encounter
The WBA thread.

DLP has a terrible habit of not putting things up for review when we've been reading them in WBA. You'd think we'd have figured out a better way to do this by now.

So I've owed @Republic a review on this for a while, and I figured this is the best way to do so. The blending of the two worlds is excellent, and Rep manages to masterfully walk the tightrope that is integrating disparate powers/systems. Hiccup and Toothless are dangerous without being overwhelming, even in the face of someone whose powers are as bullshit as Elsa's. The characterization is solid, and it is honestly one of the best romances I've read in fanfiction. I enjoyed the interplay and progression of their relationship, and how the realities of their stations hung over it all like a sword of Damocles.

The combat is decent enough, and the conflict makes sense for the most part. I was particularly frustrated by the fumbling internal politics of Arendelle, but it feels like it'd make sense in universe.

At the end of the day, I've reread this story four or five times as it's been written and now that it's completed, it should at least have the chance to be in the library without Rep having to stoop to reccing his own stuff.

4/5

 

Alright chumps lets do this.

The first chapter is basically all I got through, by the time I got to the second one I really did not feel like reading anymore.
The fight scene between Elsa and Hiccup felt horrible contrived. Like, it was all series of misunderstandings that felt as though it had no real point. It established that Hiccup was a good dragon rider and was skilled with his bow and that Elsa had little experience fighting but her magical prowess more than made up for it. The entire opening chapter felt like it could've just been Hiccup saw Arendelle and decided to set down there for supplies. Elsa and guards show up because there is a fucking dragon landing in her city. badabing badaboom. It accomplishes the same shit. Other than showing that Elsa is a witch, which could be done by Hiccup talking to some foreign merchants or any of the townsfolk.

Overall I give it a 3.5/5 rounded up to a 4. One because its technically sound and is probably more interesting people more invested in those fandoms.

 

This has the dubious honour of being the first victim of my desire to pound out some of them thar reviews.

First of all, I love the idea of How to Train Your Dragon and Frozen mixing. They both have similar themes - the frozen north, protagonists isolated by and struggling with the contrast between who they are (viking, queen) and what they are (scrawny dragon-loving nerd, Daphne Greengrass). There's a lot of potential here.

With that said, it never quite amounts to much. There are some ideas which could have been great which just aren't well executed. For some examples:

The poor justification for the fight at the beginning. Some soldiers escorting a queen just happen to come across a dragon and they decide to attack it just because it's there? Pfft. No. A dragon hunt is a great idea, but there's neither build-up nor payoff. Have reports come in from the countryside of a dragon terrorizing the peasantry. Show us Queen Elsa in all her glory, begged by fearful and adoring liege lords to come defend them. Show us the beginnings of later plot points (building of dragon-killing ballistae, etc) here rather than having them introduced later after Elsa and Hiccup have begun to form a friendship. Show the fear of what a dragon could do to the kingdom, and only then have them set out to hunt down the fell beast in an epic showdown between flame dragon and ice queen.

The assassination attempts. Random mooks just spontaneously ambush Hiccup? No. That's lame. And evocative of one of the issues with this fic: it feels as though things happen to the protagonists when the protagonist should be the thing happening to the world around them. If instead of being the victim of a limp deception you'd be much better served if Hiccup was taking a proactive role in foiling an assassination attempt himself. Showcase his cunning, engineering skills, ability to react to a threat, take ownership of a situation and fight like a viking. Getting jumped by some nobody in the street is like a random encounter in an RPG.

I was also incredibly frustrated by one constant punctuation error - the constant incorrect use of capitals in dialogue tags. Every time I read " "Dialogue." He said." it interrupts my reading as if my subvocalisation has a stutter. Usually it's a deal-breaker for me but I ignored it as best I could hear because I've heard this spoken well of before around these parts.

Eh.

Most definitely this is one of the best in either fandom, but that's not saying much. I didn't have much interest in the romance side of things so perhaps others would enjoy that more, but the action-oriented side of the story had as much dramatic tension as a laundry list, which really let down some ideas which could have been incredible if they'd been executed with a bit more panache.

This is a pretty definitive 3/5 for me.