Terrible classic lit au: crossover between Victor Hugo’s and Oscar Wilde’s writing style where there isn’t even a story it’s just going on and on and on about one small backstory detail for 200+ pages

Terrible classic lit au: crossover between Victor Hugo’s and Oscar Wilde’s writing style where there isn’t even a story it’s just going on and on and on about one small backstory detail for 200+ pages

Frollo with baby Quasi

After bingeing the stage recording and watching the movie again to jog my memory, I’m 100% more understanding of why my six-year-old self was traumatized by the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame and now I’m lowkey obsessed with this ridiculousness.

Just in the introduction alone you get:

WHO GREENLIT THIS MOVIE FOR CHILDREN

Weelll… the book is even worse. In an effort to go easy on the kids they decided to split the main antagonist into two. The friendly rotund priest? Yeah, that’s Frollo, too. Least in the book. Quasimodo was taken in, raised and educated by the priest, who was wellrespected and friendly up until he fell for Esmeralda. Then he more or less turned into the spindly Judge Frollo type person. Eliminating anyone who stepped in his way (just a short reminder that HE WAS A PRIEST, there was no sex for him to be had unless you count his hand… though masturbating was also on the naughty list). The book goes the extra mile by having him kill his rival by STABBING HIM THROUGH THE BACK WHILE HE IS HAVING SEX with Esmeralda, then turning on her, accusing her of said murder and having her executed. Yepp, in the book, she dies… well most main characters die, because it is a Victor Hugo novel and that guy loved his tragedies.

In essence this is the “nice” guy gets rejected and turns into a murderous duchebag story. Today he would probably haunt Incel boards (though the story plays in 1482, he was a catholic priest, he took the vow to live in celibacy, so the definition does no quite fit here).

Yeah, this book should not have turned into a kids movie. The songs are ok, but the hackjob they did on the story to eke out a halfway happy ending are attrocious.

You ask who greenlit this

I ask WHAT WERE THEY SOMKING TO THINK ABOUT PITCHING THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE

I submit the intro for Hunchback of Notre Dame beats Circle of Life raw.

Especially since the former doesn’t have flocks of pink birds that immediately make me think, “Sure, Disney, you weren’t influenced at all by Osamu Tezuka. Tell us another one.”

This movie was surprisingly hardcore for a Disney retelling of Victor Hugo’s really screwed up story.

It also did a ton of great stuff with God and religion and Catholicism that somehow managed to still be about people and not bring “Why Religion Sucks” into the whole thing, which is aces.

One thing that surprises me is how well the animation has aged. Strangely enough, it looked weird at the time; we weren’t really used to traditional animation blended with computer backgrounds. But now that pretty much everything is computer animated, you can really appreciate how effin’ gorgeous the Cathedral backgrounds are.

Also, God Help the Outcasts is the most honest song featured in a Disney movie. “Honest” meaning it doesn’t feel manufactured specifically to be played in a suburbanite van ferrying kids to McDonalds. It’s raw, open, and genuine.

(Needless to say, there is nothing suburban about Hellfire, ho ho ho. Will we ever again see a Disney villain essentially sing, “Help me Mary, I have an unholy erection?”)

“Average person writes 3 pages about the sewers of Paris per book" factoid actually just a statistical error. The average person writes 0 pages about the sewers of Paris per book. Victor Hugo, who died & wrote over 10,000 pages per book, is an outlier and should not have been counted

i said it once and i'll say it again: no more unnecessary plot lines unless they're relevant to the sex scenes.

Me writing porn: FUCK I can't believe I need to talk about the sewers of Paris for this blow job to proceed

Please don’t haunt me ghost of Victor Hugo…

I’m trying to make myself draw faster, (which means letting go of some perfectionist tendencies which is haaard) so I came up with a little challenge for myself, to make a comic under a certain amount of time that I had to post, no matter how bad it looked. Well I went way over that time, but at least it’s under a day, so it’s a start. Thus, voilà! this shitty comic. 

The next Ugly Club comic’s like 50% done, so stay tuned.

IMMMMMMMM

(here’s the link btw)

Oh my God y'all

She’s doing the Vicky pose.

@kafkastan

"make love to Notre Dame"

ok ok ok ok ok ok can I just have a quick lil moment of your time?

This shit.

So Hunchback is far and away my favorite movie from Disney’s Renaissance, and it always makes me so happy that yes, people seem to appreciate it, people seem to love it, but I’mma go into exactly WHY it’s my favorite, and WHY I think it’s so crucial, and WHY I think it should be required viewing for young boys specifically.

We all know that a huge bulk of the media we’ve grown up with consistently has that one frustrating message:  Being the hero means you’ll get the girl.  Many boys let this mentality bleed into reality.  We have “nice guys,” who feel that their niceness entitles them to romance, when obviously that discredits a female’s personal choice.  We all get this, we all know this, and a lot of us get that it’s a toxic message.

So check out our hero.

He’s an incredibly good person who isn’t conventionally attractive.

Check out our lady.

Super good person, conventionally attractive.

The movie so deliberately builds up Quasi’s hopes.  There’s a whole fucking song about it.

But Esmeralda, who is her own person with her own motivations and preferences, chooses another man, who is also good and also attractive.

A lot of people criticize this aspect of the movie, the fact that Quasi doesn’t get the girl BECAUSE of his appearance.  But my argument?  This is the best damn message a movie could ever send.

Because when things get dicey, when Esmeralda’s life in in danger, when Quasi would be putting his own life on the line, he knows that romance is no longer within the realm of possibility.  He knows he won’t be “getting the girl.”  He knows this, and he allows himself a moment of bitterness, he risks falling prey to the “nice guy” trope, and he almost succumbs.

“She already has her knight in shining armor, and it’s not me.”

BUT THEN HE DOES THE RIGHT THING.

He has NO ulterior motive for saving her life.  NO ulterior motive for opposing the man who raised him.  And he doesn’t know that he’ll get any reward, he knows he could straight up get killed for his actions, and yet he still acts.

And there’s no bitterness. There’s still so, so much love between him and Esmeralda, pure awesome platonic love, and love between him and Phoebus, and just fucking love all around, it’s amazing.

I’ve heard so many people express distaste at Quasi not ending up with Esmerelda.  Like he was cheated out of some kind of reward.  But have they watched the ending?

Does that look like a man cheated of his reward?  Does he look like he “lost” to Phoebus?  No dude, that’s a man who has everything he ever wanted, and that’s also a man who didn’t “get the girl.”

If that’s not an essential message for young boys to hear, I don’t know what is.

So true!!

And still posts like this always remind me how much Disney changed all these characters...

“I wish Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame movie didn’t make Frollo so evil. While he’s still the antagonist, his character is more complex and sympathetic in Victor Hugo’s original book. For example, in the book the baby Quasimodo is abandoned at the church and Frollo takes him in on his own, caring for him and raising him like a son.”

And I'd wish they didn't make Phoebus all good and golden! In the book he was an a**hole..