Interviewer: Can you please dive into what exactly is Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons?

VS: A movie franchise that pretty much raised me. To be shorter, we can call it ROTBTD. It’s a mix of the movies Rise of the Guardians, Tangled, How To Train Your Dragon or HTTYD, and Brave. I honestly don’t think there’s any crossover between the movies, but they came out around the same time and have similar story lines with shared themes and animation styles. OH! And Frozen is sometimes included in there too, but isn’t a main one enough to change the fandom title.”

Interview: Ok, so interesting fandom them for such a random reason…how did the fandom grow and spread? Did people just know to watch them together, or where did you see it?”

VS: “Well I just knew haha, but that was through my older sister. She was old enough around then to have Tumblr and Twitter and read it through there. She would show me and my brother and just laugh, it was all so creative, honestly. The movies came out and people saw the similar styles and made this awesomely random connection to put them together.”

Interviewer: “What kind of things would you see?”

VS: “Ha it’s kind of what wouldn’t I see to be honest. There were edits of them – both photo and videos, Wattpad fanfics, AU stories on Tumblr of them all together in high school. People would ship the characters as well. It mainly revolved around the big four, like Rapunzel, Merida, Jack Frost, and Hiccup. I think Frozen came into it because people loved to ship Jack Frost with Elsa…rip Jelsa, that was a peak ship. Those edits were before AI and always edited so scarily accurate, like they were in the same room. Also, Rapunzel showed up in a blury background in Frozen during Elsa’s coronation scene. That’s pretty much the only part where Frozen’s in the ROTBTD fandom, it mainly consists of the big four.”

Interviewer: “Is it still a thing?”

VS: “Not as big as before, but it comes back sometimes, especially on TikTok. It’s very nostalgic.”

Context: My friend and I were watching YouTube videos together and saw the creator, Danny Motta (a movie and TV show reacter), had started a series on Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons. We started watching his videos on the subject and started reminiscing about it from when we were kids. I was aware of the Jelsa part on the internet, but VS knew the true lore and crossovers of everything.

Analysis: This truly shows the power of fandom and that it can emerge from anything. These were four movies that seriously have barely anything in common, yet people put them together, and it took the internet by storm. It became a true fandom with fanfics, edits, ships, and AU (Alternate Universe) stories of them hanging out. It goes to show the creativity and extend the fan will go to create something new entirely for others to enjoy, and ultimately create a community. These characters have never interacted, so everything made was completely from the fans’ imagination, and one fan would build off the content from another fan. Communities and fandoms can be made from anything.