#from the fucking hunchback of notre dame he looks like frollo
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Thoughts so far (Ikevil)
🄲🄾🄽🅃🄴🄽🅃 🅆🄰🅁🄽🄸🄽🄶: This is nothing but just a ramble, a bit suggestive, op is clinically insane.
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Okay so I finally tired out Ikevil and I just wanna say....
I'm in love with William. I have known him for no longer than an hour but I'll commit war crimes for him. Wtf how can someone be so lovely??? How can someone be so captivating that other people become this obsessed with them?
I can't even begin to fathom what I'm feeling right now.
I'm so confused and intrigued because usually, the recommend suitor tends to be really cold or the route turns out to be boring. Basically they tend to be the golden cow.
But William is an anomaly. He's not cold or rude or harsh or as morally gray as others.
He seems quite level headed, polite and morally good.
At least from my impression of him so far.
Also Harrison is so 😍😫😩🙌🙏😫😭💀🤔🤤😓😬🤒🤗😘😚😡🤬😤🤯🧐😳🙄😳😳😳😍 🙇♀️🤰💃💃🏃♀️👀👁👁👀👁👁💦🔥💦😻😫😖
But I still didn't pick his route for now. I'll probably go for him after William.
Strangely enough, Liam doesn't interest me in the slightest bit in the romantic aspect. But I do want to be his friend, if that's even possible, cause he seems to be suffering.
Also Harrison gives off traitor vibes which is even more 😍🤗😍😳🙌😩
April 24... I'll keep it in mind and see for myself.
I don't know what it is I like about Ellis. Maybe it's just that I'm into size kinks and he's one tall goofy little goober. Also the fact that he wants to make you happy 😏 HUEHWUHEHEHEH
Jude Jazza. Is giving frollo vibes. Idk why IT'S GIVING FROLLO FROM HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. Also he has a resemblance to Silvio. The tone, the 'woman', the hair, the face, the attitude.
I'm sorry but Elbert is giving FUCKING MAGPIE VIBES. It's kinda adorable. Until he steals your jewelry.
Idk what to feel about Roger. What's even more unsettling is the uncanny resemblance with Tray from Twisted Wonderland. I associate Tray always with good things but Roger gives off none of that and that clash makes me feel unnerved and queasy.
Victor... I don't know what to feel about him. His carefree and easy going nature makes me even more weary of him.
I don't like Alfons. Period.
He just radiates toxicity. He looks like he's an avid player of mind games and I do not wish to participate.
Yeah... That's about all of them for now.
ALSO KATE
KATE KATE KATE
I think I'm having another gay moment here cause goddamn is she beautiful and do I feel for her. I might just make another oc and ship her with Kate... For science..
I have bearly started the route but I'm already in love with William.
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𝙰𝚕𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝... 𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞. :)
#ikemen series#ikemen#ikevil#ikemen villains#ikemen villains jude#ikevil victor#ikevil jude#ikevil william#ikevil harrison#ikevil liam#ikevil ellis#ikevil elbert#ikevil alfons#ikevil oc#ikevil discussions#pointless rambling
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Honestly, after watching the trailer stolas as a villain would make the story great, but as a 'nice' guy he creates so much cognitive dissonance. It's like watching the hunchback of notre dame and at the last minute the movie tells you to feel bad for frollo because everyone is so mean to him.
Yeah ?? It just confuses your mind! I cant believe he gets to sexually harass, chain up, strangle, stalk, scream at, command, and put cigarettes out on people, and he’s allowed to do it because his wife is mean and crying is his favourite hobby. That’s horrendous. That scene of blitzø covered in the sheet looking shattered while stolas cries and sings a melodramatic pathetic song, about how hard his life is and how much Blitzø sucks, then dares to make more sad eyes at him for more sympathy from him and us ??
I’m supposed to be cheering stolas on and saying fuck blitzø for….being sexually obnoxious, full of insecurity, full of pain, and accusing stolas of the racism he very much does have —- but the energy is just this scene from Hunchback
Leave him alone fuck sake haven’t you done enough???
#helluva boss critical#idk man seeing someone with a fragile inflated ego be completely shattered and made to feel tiny and hateful…fuck stolas#there isn’t a kind bone in his body
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Why The Overhaul Arc Matters
Strap the FUCK in I just realized the actual narrative significance of the Overhaul arc.
Eri-Tomura Parallel
At a surface level, Eri and Tomura have obvious parallels, right?
Visually, they look very similar with light hair and red eyes. Quirk-wise, they both have incredibly powerful, devastating Quirks that caused a fatal accident with their real families.
Eri hated herself because of the poison that Chisaki put in her head. Tomura hates himself for the same reason but with AFO.
They both were groomed to feel fully responsible for their traumatizing childhood accidents and for their only self-worth to be related to being useful towards their manipulative abuser and his goals.
Their parallels have been discussed at length by many people, so I'm not going to go into it except to say: no, they aren't literally blood related like some people argue. I also don't think AFO gave either of them their Quirks. Did AFO give Decay? Analysis Thread
Overhaul-AFO Parallel
That leads me to my next point: Overhaul and All For One are the same character.
As leaders, they prey on vulnerable people and buy their unquestioned loyalty (the Shie Hassaikai, Dr. Garaki, Machia, etc)
They will use these people for their purposes and then discard them at will, without any emotions or ethics to consider.
Their relationship toward their charge is NOT exactly parental. There is zero affection or even pretended affection towards Eri or Tomura and, in fact, others are doing their actual day-to-day care (various Hassaikai members, Kurogiri).
They speak in the same way to and about their charges. "You're a cursed human." "Another death on your hands." "Symbol of Fear" "You have within you the impulse to destroy that even you can't control." A huge part of their abuse is based in manipulating their charges to despise themselves and think they're inherently evil, so said charges give up on being a regular human. Further literary parallel: Claude Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Deku's Connection
AND FINALLY, my point: the Overhaul-Eri situation is directly responsible for Deku's current empathy toward Tomura and drive to save him. When Deku saw AFO take over Tomura and use his body for his own purposes during the war, especially with what he saw in the vestige realm, I think the parallel with Eri clicked.
Tomura is what would've happened to Eri if she hadn't been rescued. I fully think that if Eri had survived to adulthood without being rescued, Overhaul would have groomed her to live entirely for his benefit with full live-or-die loyalty for him (like the rest of the Shie Hassaikai, but stronger due to manipulation from childhood onwards). She would have grown to hate society for not saving her AND for being against Overhaul's goals. I honestly think she would've been even scarier than Tomura since Tomura at least had Kurogiri (who has been show to genuinely care for him on some level) rather than random gangsters as his primary caregiver.
Don't you see? It's all connected to Deku's endgame: pulling Tomura away from AFO and saving someone else who has been damned because of their Quirk and abuser. Of course, saving Tomura, a grown man who has committed A LOT of violence, is going to be much harder than saving a wholly innocent little girl, but the SEED was planted during the Overhaul arc.
I believe this is also WHY Deku chooses to see the Tenko that still lives inside Tomura.
Final Thoughts
This might be super obvious but I'd been scratching my head for MONTHS about how the Overhaul arc is significant to the narrative since the Quirk bullets storyline went nowhere and I'm not a fan of the "Eri rewinds the villains or the whole world!" take. I was so quick to discard the Overhaul arc as unimportant when the bullets didn't impact the story much, but I just completely missed the big picture.
I SAW the Eri-Tomura and Overhaul-AFO parallels but I couldn't quite figure out how the pieces went together beyond the surface parallel of two similarly abused children and two abusers. Understanding this connection also fixes what I had considered to be a huge logical plot hole in the story: why did Deku have a sudden 11th-hour change of heart and shift his focus from defeating Tomura to saving him?
Overhaul-Eri to AFO-Tomura is a direct link for Deku's endgame and the total themes of the story, I just couldn't see it before.
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Paquette la Chantefleurie and Rollo Flamme similarities rambling
I just finished reading Notre dame de paris yesterday in just 4 days because I was too into it and I noticed how Rollo's backstory, character, personality is really leaning more into the characters in the novel (esp. Frollo in this case) more than the Dsney adaptation and here's my incoherent lowkey short rambling below about Paquette or Sister Gudule and Rollo. Obviously, this has spoilers for the novel so if you don't mind that then feel free to read.
Who is Paquette La Chantefleurie?
Paquette or Sister Gudule as known by others is Agnes or Esmeralda's biological mother. After the Romani kidnapped Agnes as a baby (which they replaced her with baby Quasimodo), the people believed that they cannibalized baby Agnes which lead to Gudule believing that she was dead and thus creating this hatred towards those people not knowing that her beloved Agnes is growing to be one of them (which she also showed hatred towards Esmeralda too when she first met her.) Anyways she has a tragic end which I won't dive into much.
Rollo and Gudule? What's the similarities?
After Agnes's disappearance, Gudule lived a life of seclusion (hmmmm.....) and holds great disdain towards the Romani. Familiar? While Rollo's hatred towards magic users might look like how Disney Frollo's hatred towards the Romani stems from, I feel like if we base it on the novel, it all stems down towards Gudule more than Frollo (cuz Novel Frollo is so into alchemy that people believe he's a sorcerer lol and he's really just a solely Esmeralda hater rrrr. He never looked at them the same extreme ways as Disney does and Novel Frollo's actually very tragic in the novel... rip.)
So how are they similar then? As I thought a lot lately, Rollo's hatred for magic only stemmed when magic took his brother the same way the Romani took Gudule's only beloved daughter. Rollo then grew up to be the thing he despises (being a magic user) and Esmeralda grew up to be the someone that Gudule despises. Rollo's hatred isn't because he's straight up evil like Disney Frollo is, but because there was an even deeper reason like Sister Gudule. (It's so hard to put it into words but that's it. That's ittt!)
Rollo's brother and Esmeralda
Now it finally stems down to this. Rollo's brother, while surely base on Novel Frollo's brother, Jehan, obviously does not take his rebellious personality. In fact, base on Rollo's flashbacks of him, he cares alot about Rollo and really shows him magic because... well, Rollo enjoys it too... even with minimal description I feel like Rollo's brother, if Rollo = Sister Gudule would be Esmeralda/Agnes.
Also I'd love to note how we know how twst characters aren't particularly always base solely on their counterparts, Rollo also has Esmeralda's features (green eyes), the goats being drawn to him and all (lol), and if he were to choose goats over anything else i'd even say he'd have Pierre Gringoire's silliness.
Additional random rambling
I swear to god Novel Frollo >>> Disney Frollo in terms of who Rollo is. Understandable since Yana base a lot on the musical which leans more into the Novel. Hjihsjssjd gosh when Jehan died in the novel tho, that's where Frollo really snapped and went, "fuck this I've got nothing to lose anymore." So yeah
For those who read here, here's one of the concept art of Claude Frollo from the Art of Hunchback of Notre Dame i've been reading on my school library lmao
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I find it so annoying when homophobes want to hide their homophobia but also be openly homophobic so they just sort of act like they're talking about the overall concept of sexuality and think that fools anyone but themselves.
I heard someone unironically say with their whole ass chest that cartoons used to be essentially aromantic and asexual until Steven universe opened the floodgates for them to suddenly become obsessed with sex and romance. You know, Steven universe, a show that came after Regular show, after adventure time. after batman TAS, and after hunchback of Notre dame.
You know... regular show, where:
Mordecai has a crush on one girl for several seasons and there are constant episodes about/references to it all, and he stares at her ass and he is teased for being “friends without benefits” with her, then he gets a girlfriend after being rejected but then the first girl comes back and it’s a whole annoying drama with way too many episodes.
Outside of that there are jokes like Rigby laughing about a ballroom holding "huge balls" or clearly misinterpreting the term "muscle man's package" and multiple jokes about "dropped balls". Not to mention the line "What kind of lose would want a bunch of chicks tearing their clothes off?" or lamenting that a girl in a movie will be talking about her feelings "fully clothed" and stuff. And Muscleman talks about a love of "lady pecs” and “guests with breasts" and may or may not have had sex in a bag… on screen.
Around this time we had adventure time, where:
Finn has a one-sided crush on an adult woman who turns into a teen for one episode and kisses him but then becomes an adult again and then he gets a girlfriend and they stay together for multiple seasons until he gets so obsessed with the wet dreams caused by watching her fight the ice king that he ruins his relationship with her. Then Jake has kids with his girlfriend who he never marries for the entire show, meaning he had like 8 kids out of wedlock on a kids show, and the show goes out of it's way to confirm them to be not married at one point.
And when he's in a funk over losing his arm he decides to make out with every princess in Ooo, and even brings home a girl who looks like both his ex girlfriend and his old crush because he's not over either of them. He is implied to have had underage premarital sex with LSP, and it was implied to be at the very least questionably consensual. This is a kids show.
Not to mention the joke where the bounce house princess acts like a pervert, tries to convince Finn to get inside her, and opens her flaps for him, or the time he was forced to power a whole troll city with "sexy fun dancing" around a pole, or the comments LSP makes about Finns butt like calling it "tight" or asking if he does squats, or the time she has a vision in a dungeon of Finn coming onto her by taking his shirt off.
Then we get to Batman TAS:
Harley quinn emerges from a giant pie ass-first with tal well defined asscheeks showing through the pie, looking very naked, singing an impression of Marylin Monroe's birthday song to the president, asking joker to "take the night off and play" and asking him if he "wants some of her pie" because she's "sure he'll ask for seconds". If a gay man did this in a kids show republicans would literally stop the rotation of the earth.
I haven't seen that much of the show, but I'm sure there's going to be more of this as I keep watching.
And as for hunchback:
The whole male cast wants to fuck Esmeralda. She does a whole sexy dance and spins around a spear at one point, and Frollo's whole thing is that he's super horny for her but thinks it's sinful to be so he just sort of sniffs her hair all creepy and demands she "choose him or the flames", and sees her dancing sexily as a demon in his fireplace in one scene. Phoebus ogles her while she dances. I was surprised at how little there was of this movie because this was the sex disney movie, but I am comparing a movie to a TV show so yeah.
There is no way to avoid the sheer extreme horniness of all of these properties and the only way you make statements like this is if you literally just fucking lie.
Make no mistake of it, these people are fucking lying. Maybe they don't realize it but that's what they are doing, but they just are.
Cartoons never have and never will lack a focus on relationships, or a focus on sex. It will always be a thing. Most queer representation is actually very chaste, even at it's horniest. You're never going to see the "bootyquake" scene from sym-bionic titan in a modern queer cartoon. You're never going to see a homoerotic version of Esmereldas dance. You're certainly never going to see them do shit like Harley Quinn emerging butt naked from a pie. Even Megara's seduction routine would not fly.
The fact that anyone considers this point valid enough to even say aloud is fucking ridiculous.
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had a dream i was watching hunchback of notre dame with some of the people i know from uni, and i was like "i've never seen this before, i just know it gets kinda fucked up." (this is true, i've genuinely never watched it.)
then the one guy goes "oh, just wait for the spaceship." i was like !?! because of course, why the fuck would there be a spaceship in this movie!? but lo and behold, at the end a car-looking spaceship rescues esmeralda and quasimodo from frollo. he had them backed up against a cliff, but then the ship appeared and they took their chance. they get away, safe and sound, and frollo dramatically goes "no.. why? why!? WHYYYYY!!?????" on his knees in the rain. i was like... uh... well that was certainly unexpected! also, the movie was only 30 minutes long.
and now I have Hellfire stuck in my head (by virtue of it being the only song I know from the movie).
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You know I just can't get over how detailed the backgrounds and cards are. I have a lot of fun searching for the hidden mickeys and just looking at the details. My current favorite is the halloween background from Idia's dorm. The tree shadows have Pain and Panic hidden in them. Do you have any favorites or cool details you have noticed?
omg yesss ;u; the hidden Mickeys were one of the first things I learned about Twst, and until now, it's still so endearing. I vividly remember my friend and I trying and failing to find the hidden Mickey in Riddle's dorm card shortly before the pandemic started. I know some people who could spot the Mickey just from seeing the card in the in-game news, which is really small. I admire the kind of eyes they have o_o
Ooooh, the Ignihyde Halloween background is always a really good one! Pain and Panic being shadows there was really exciting to see. Hmmmm, for me, right now, my favorite detail isn't in the background but rather it's in the story structure of some main story episodes. I find that in some way, the story of a main episode can be interpreted as the original movie played backwards. I plan to talk about this further in a future post, but I'll try to illustrate it using Glorious Masquerade as an example since the event has a similar beat to main episode arcs.
Hunchback of Notre Dame essentially went like this:
Bells of Notre Dame plays
A family member (mother of Quasimodo) was killed
We learn that Frollo has a hatred for the Romanian people
We find Quasimodo in the tower, and see the toxic dynamic between him and Frollo
Quasimodo wants to go down the tower and attend the festival, against Frollo's wishes
He joins the festival of fools
Esmeralda dances in the festival and entrances Frollo
Quasimodo is mocked, Esmeralda helps him out of the festival
Esmeralda seeks sanctuary in Notre Dame
Frollo is attracted to her
Esmeralda and Quasimodo become friends
Quasimodo helps her escape
Frollo gets pissed as fuck and starts burning down all of Paris to find the Romanian people
Quasimodo and the captain guard find the hiding place of Esmeralda and her people
Frollo finds them and captures them; he's gonna burn Esmeralda
Quasimodo saves Esmeralda
Frollo goes wacko
He falls to his death
It ends happily
Meanwhile, Glorious Masquerade is kinda like
It starts out happily
The boys tour around City of Flowers
Festival happens
Cue hellfire in the form of flowers meant to suck out magicians' magic
The boys race up to the tower
We find Azul, Malleus, and Idia up in the tower against Rollo
We learn that Rollo has a hatred for magicians because he blames them for the death of his brother
Bells of Notre Dame reference is made (Malleus voice) yes you can lie about not being the one who caused the flowers but you can't run or hide from the eyes of the bell of noble bell college)
It still ends happily
I . I hope you can see it BDFSKJFBJKDSJK essentially, where HoND starts with Quasi up in the tower and he descends it eventually to rescue Esmeralda, Glorious Masquerade had the boys go up the tower to solve the conflict.
It's a really interesting find I found, and I promise to be able to talk about it soon because I really want to ;u;
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I ended up seeing a performance of Hunchback of Notre Dame at my old high school last night, and every time I see a play in person, it's just amazing.
I think I've seen Eurydice, Matilda, and this one. Although I might've had a school trip to see a High School Musical play back in elementary school? But I don't count that since it's been so long.
But just, the play was amazing. It's the first time I've really experienced the story of Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it did not disappoint.
Although, I think it's different from the Disney movie, since Disney went for a happier ending according to the pamphlet they gave us about the play.
The one thing that I really feel the need to comment on is their actor for Frollo. When I first saw him I wasn't sure about it, but the way he carried himself and just the expressions on his face, he was so good as Frollo.
And the ending, it really fucking hit me hard. Like...man, that was not a happy ending.
And I've tried looking up some of the songs from it, but they really just don't hit the same outside of the play. Namely, I tried looking up Hellfire and Bells of Notre Dame.
I went to their rendition of Matilda earlier this year, and this felt just as good.
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k but like im still hung up on how jehan frollo went from being quasi's half brother to his biological father. and the interesting thing is, it actually changes the story a LOT. like, in the book, quasimodo just kind of shows up and frollo adopts him out of fear that that could have been jehan, and he sympathizes with that. more so, quasimodo in the book is more of a representation of the soul of notre dame rather than a character of his own. he exists to serve notre dame, in a way. jehan's just the drunken spoiled younger brother who goes to his brother for money instead of getting a job and living independently. florika doesn’t exist, jehan never gets kicked out of school, and he doesn’t have a child he can’t take care of. it takes away from TONS of the motivation the musical ends up having for the big “what makes a monster and what makes a man” message.
in the musical, as mentioned before, jehan falls in love with a roma woman, they get kicked out and have quasimodo, who jehan, in a last ditch effort, hands over to his brother to take care of. the tone of this action varies from actor to actor. lucas coleman’s jehan seems to give quasimodo away genuinely out of a want for the child to have a successful, good life, and he knows that frollo might be able to give him that. now contrast that with jeremy stolle’s jehan who gives quasimodo to frollo because even on his death bed, he continues to go back to his brother for aid. he perpetuates the notion that jehan was constantly dependent on others up until his dying breath.
regardless of how the action is played out, it’s important that it happens because it sets us up for like...the entire story of hunchback of notre dame. if jehan doesn’t give his newborn child to claude frollo, there’s no story. i think in frollo’s eyes, quasimodo is seen as a sort of “second chance”. he sees how his brother kind of fell from grace and turned to a life of “sin” in the eyes of the catholic church, and how that almost definitely means he’s damned to hell. and remember, that’s his brother, the man he admits to loving the entire time at the end of the show. frollo’s seeing his brother go against everything they were ever taught and to him it results in his death and damnation. that’s insane.
aha, but the child. look, it’s my brothers child that’s kind of fucked up, and comes from (in frollo’s mind) two fucked up parents, maybe i can save him in the way i couldnt save my brother.
jehan frollo being quasimodo’s biological father allows the hunchback of notre dame to begin its entire plot, and gives most of frollo’s motivation for raising quasimodo the way he does which in turn motivates quasimodo to leave the cathedral and the whole thing falls like a domino effect all because jehan frollo gave away his child. the entire action in itself sets up the “what makes a monster and what makes a man” message, and i think that’s something that’s completely lacking in the book.
like ok, i understand that the book was never about social justice, it was about architecture, but if you’re going to make all of these awful characters, i think you should at least give them a solid reasoning for it, because they’re clearly motivated by something, we just never know what. as much as i don’t, and don’t want to, you can’t even put the blame on esmerelda, which you shouldn’t, because she didn’t do anything, but even if you were to try, you couldn’t, because everything that happens to frollo is the result of his own actions and feelings and thoughts.
i’m rambling now and getting off track, but like bro i just wanna know how we got from point A to point B and how that affects the story, and why that change was chosen and implemented.
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i need to get this off my chest. its been months. dualscar from distantquest really, really really looks like frollo
#im SORRY im sorry idk idk idk#idk ive seen people. like#call him a DILF and i j#i hgj h#he LOOKS like#FROLLO .#he looks like frollo.#from the fucking hunchback of notre dame he looks like frollo#what am i supposed to do with this information#are there people who call frollo a dilf#so sorry to the artist . you do have incredible art but you did also make dualscar look like frollo#my post#dave speaks#homestuck#orphaner dualscar#distantquest
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What your favorite Member of the Bat Boys Says about you: WILD ACCUSATION/ROAST EDITION.
(also disclaimer, this is meant to be a joke. If you send hate I'll only be mildly amused and then contemplate whether to share your hate or delete it based on how much traction I think it'll earn me. I understand these are a lot of y'all's comfort characters but considering the fact no one throws more hatred and criticism against these characters than the fans themselves. I figured why not join in.)
Dick Grayson
You are either inconceivably horny on main for this man, usually stemming from a childhood attraction to him from Young Justice, Teen Titans if you're old, or the Batman and Robin movie if you're even older, and also gay.
Or you're a puritanical hypercritic who wants to burn down DC Comics if they have one more character comments on his ass in a way that would make Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame call you an extremist. AND you're also horny as fuck for him on the DL.
You call yourself the mom friend and secretly hope everyone else will call you the mom friend, but the only person whose life is falling apart worse than yours is Dick Grayson under Devin Grayson's penmanship.
You somehow find a way to hate and nit pick every detail of a comic of one of the most consistently written characters in DC (and that's saying something) and I don't know whether to compliment you or look mildly aghast.
It applies to all the bat boys but how's your relationship with your father? Answer the question. I said answer. The question.
Jason Todd
I have yet to meet a single person who says Jason Todd is their favorite Bat Boy and they weren't some combination of 1. LGBTQIA+, 2. Below the age of 30, or 3. currently dealing with some form of mental trauma/illness.
I understand that a lot of y'all are bitter and upset over the fact Jason had the setup to be the perfect villain to Batman, one who could even outpace the joker. But hearing y'all complain about his characterization every. single. time Jason even makes so much as a cameo is like watching someone trying to mop the Titanic.
Oh, you hate Scott Lobdell? That's a very agreeable opinion nowadays considering all that he's done. By the way, there's a rather large collection of JayRoy and Jaytimas reblogs on your Tumblr dash, can you tell me what that's all about?
As hypocritical as it is for me, a Jason fan with Jason as their profile picture, if someone doesn't tell you that they think Jason Todd is a genuinely awful person after they tell you Jason Todd is their favorite, that's not a red flag, that's literally the most direct metaphor for someone pointing a gun at your face and telling you to run.
Tim Drake
How's the victim complex my friend? No seriously, as much as I love Tim all of the bad things that have happened to him as Robin happened because he fucked around with being Robin and found out that his family was killed because of it.
You either are a brand new infant to the fandom because Tim came out of the closet back in August (although we've done been known for literally decades now) or you've been with this fandom so long that it's self cannibalism and toxicity completely doesn't phase you anymore.
I'd argue that Tim fans are the least toxic of all the fans of the Bat Boys only because DC Comics, up until recently, kind of hasn't touched Tim all that much, so people have kind of shoved him to the wayside.
That being said, the literal shipping wars this literal fuckboy of a vigilante whom everyone swears is their small uwu precious string bean has caused is on par with the ALTA/LOK/V*ltr*n Fandoms.
Damian Wayne
So you hate how people write Damian and you have a literal fight response anytime anyone criticizes Damian because he's a minor? Tell me how's your favorite Damirae/Damijon fanfiction? Answer the god damned question.
I'll give Damian fans their credit because at least 90-95% of them recognize that yes, Damian is a child, but he's one of the most horrific and abjectly abhorrent assholes to ever be written into comics (but that's also a large reason why you all like him)
To the 5-10% who think Damian is their perfect precious murder baby who has done nothing wrong, how does it feel to know you are objectively worse than even the Jason Todd Stans/Kinnies?
I haven't met anyone yet who is a Damian fan/someone who says Damian is their favorite who wasn't chaotic. And not the good kind of Chaotic.
I also have seen someone issue actual death threats to an artist over a characters skin tone exactly 3 times through fandom, for SU fans, for V*ltr*n, and for Damian Wayne.
Duke Thomas
I don't understand how you, a Duke Fan, have stuck with this fandom for so long considering I think he's appeared in like 2-3 canonical comic runs, but like good on you for making the most of it.
Understandably you all are the least problematic of the bunch because again I think there's maybe 2-3 comics where he's featured.
I guess my bigger concern is do you exist? If so would you like to be perceived as a Bat Family fan? Are you sure? Are you certain?
#jason todd#batman#red hood#dick grayson#nightwing#tim drake#robin#red robin batman#duke thomas#damian wayne#i woke up and chose chaos
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‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ at 25: An Oral History of Disney’s Darkest Animated Classic
Posted on Slashfilm on Monday, June 21st, 2021 by Josh Spiegel
“This Is Going to Change Your Life”
The future directors of The Hunchback of Notre Dame were riding high from the success of Beauty and the Beast. Or, at least, they were happy to be finished.
Gary Trousdale, director: After Beauty and the Beast, I was exhausted. Plus, Kirk and I were not entirely trusted at first, because we were novices. I was looking forward to going back to drawing.
Kirk Wise, director: It was this crazy, wonderful roller-coaster ride. I had all this vacation time and I took a couple months off.
Gary Trousdale: A little later, it was suggested: “If you want to get back into directing, start looking for a project. You can’t sit around doing nothing.”
Kirk Wise: [Songwriters] Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty had a pitch called Song of the Sea, a loose retelling of the Orpheus myth with humpback whales. I thought it was very strong.
Gary Trousdale: We were a few months in, and there was artwork and a rough draft. There were a couple tentative songs, and we were getting a head of steam.
Kirk Wise: The phone rang. It was Jeffrey [Katzenberg, then-chairman of Walt Disney Studios], saying, “Drop everything. I got your next picture: The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Gary Trousdale: “I’ve already got Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. You’re going to do this.” It wasn’t like we were given a choice. It was, “Here’s the project. You’re on.”
Kirk Wise: I was pleased that [Jeffrey] was so excited about it. I think the success of Beauty and the Beast had a lot to do with him pushing it our way. It would’ve been crazy to say no.
Gary Trousdale: What [Kirk and I] didn’t know is that Alan and Stephen were being used as bait for us. And Jeffrey was playing us as bait for Alan and Stephen.
Alan Menken, composer: Jeffrey made reference to it being Michael Eisner’s passion project, which implied he was less enthused about it as a story source for an animated picture.
Stephen Schwartz, lyricist: They had two ideas. One was an adaptation of Hunchback and the other was about whales. We chose Hunchback. I’d seen the [Charles Laughton] movie. Then I read the novel and really liked it.
Peter Schneider, president of Disney Feature Animation (1985-99): I think what attracted Stephen was the darkness. One’s lust for something and one’s power and vengeance, and this poor, helpless fellow, Quasimodo.
Roy Conli, co-producer: I was working at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, doing new play development. I was asked if I’d thought about producing animation. I said, “Yeah, sure.”
Don Hahn, producer: The goose had laid lots of golden eggs. The studio was trying to create two units so they could have multiple films come out. Roy was tasked with something hard, to build a crew out of whole cloth.
Kirk Wise: The idea appealed to me because [of] the setting and main character. I worked with an elder story man, Joe Grant, [who] goes back to Snow White. He said, “Some of the best animation ideas are about a little guy with a big problem.” Hunchback fit that bill.
Gary Trousdale: It’s a story I always liked. When Jeffrey said, “This is going to change your life,” Kirk and I said, “Cool.” When I was a kid, I [had an] Aurora Monster Model of Quasimodo lashed to the wheel. I thought, “He’s not a monster.”
Don Hahn: It’s a great piece of literature and it had a lot of elements I liked. The underdog hero. [He] was not a handsome prince. I loved the potential.
Gary Trousdale: We thought, “What are we going to do to make this dark piece of literature into a Disney cartoon without screwing it up?”
Peter Schneider: The subject matter is very difficult. The conflict was how far to go with it or not go with it. This is basically [about] a pederast who says “Fuck me or you’ll die.” Right?
“We Were Able to Take More Chances”
Wise and Trousdale recruited a group of disparate artists from the States and beyond to bring the story of Quasimodo the bell-ringer to animated life.
Paul Brizzi, sequence director: We were freshly arrived from Paris.
Gaëtan Brizzi, sequence director: [The filmmakers] were looking for a great dramatic prologue, and they couldn’t figure [it] out. Paul and I spent the better part of the night conceiving this prologue. They said, “You have to storyboard it. We love it.”
Roy Conli: We had two amazing artists in Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi who became spiritual leaders in the production. They were so incredible.
Gaëtan Brizzi: [“The Bells of Notre Dame”] was not supposed to be a song first.
Paul Brizzi: The prologue was traditional in the Disney way. Gaëtan and I were thinking of German expressionism to emphasize the drama. I’m not sure we could do that today.
Paul Kandel, voice of Clopin: They were toying with Clopin being the narrator. So they wrote “The Bells of Notre Dame” to open the movie.
Stephen Schwartz: [Alan and I] got called into a presentation, and on all these boards [was] laid out “The Bells of Notre Dame.” We musicalized the story they put up there. We used the pieces of dialogue they invented for Frollo and the other characters. I wrote lyrics that described the narrative. It was very exciting. I had never written a song like that.
Kirk Wise: Early on, we [took] a research trip with the core creative team to Paris. We spent two weeks all over Notre Dame. They gave us unrestricted access, going down into the catacombs. That was a huge inspiration.
Don Hahn: To crawl up in the bell towers and imagine Quasimodo there, to see the bells and the timbers, the scale of it all is unbelievable.
Kirk Wise: One morning, I was listening to this pipe organ in this shadowy cathedral, with light filtering through the stained-glass windows. The sound was so powerful, I could feel it thudding in my chest. I thought, “This is what the movie needs to feel like.”
Brenda Chapman, story: It was fun to sit in a room and draw and think up stuff. I liked the idea of this lonely character up in a bell tower and how we could portray his imagination.
Kathy Zielinski, supervising animator, Frollo: It was the earliest I’ve ever started on a production. I was doing character designs for months. I did a lot of design work for the gargoyles, as a springboard for the other supervisors.
James Baxter, supervising animator, Quasimodo: Kirk and Gary said, “We’d like you to do Quasimodo.” [I thought] that would be such a cool, amazing thing to do. They wanted this innocent vibe to him. Part of the design process was getting that part of his character to read.
Will Finn, head of story/supervising animator, Laverne: Kirk and Gary wanted me on the project. Kirk, Gary, and Don Hahn gave me opportunities no one else would have, and I am forever grateful.
Kathy Zielinski: I spent several months doing 50 or 60 designs [for Frollo]. I looked at villainous actors. Actually, one was Peter Schneider. [laughing] Not to say he’s a villain, but a lot of the mannerisms and poses. “Oh, that looks a little like Peter.”
James Baxter: I was doing design work on the characters with Tony Fucile, the animator on Esmerelda. I think Kirk and Gary felt Beauty and the Beast had been disparate and the characters weren’t as unified as they wanted.
Kathy Zielinski: Frollo stemmed from Hans Conried [the voice of Disney’s Captain Hook]. He had a longish nose and a very stern-looking face. Frollo was modeled a little bit after him.
Will Finn: The team they put together was a powerhouse group – Brenda Chapman, Kevin Harkey, Ed Gombert, and veterans like Burny Mattinson and Vance Gerry. I felt funny being their “supervisor.”
Kathy Zielinski: Half my crew was in France, eight hours ahead. We were able to do phone calls. But because of the time difference, our end of the day was their beginning of the morning. I was working a lot of late hours, because [Frollo] was challenging to draw.
Kirk Wise: Our secret weapon was James Baxter, who animated the ballroom sequence [in Beauty and the Beast] on his own. He had a unique gift of rotating characters in three-dimensional space perfectly.
Gary Trousdale: James Baxter is, to my mind, one of the greatest living animators in the world.
James Baxter: I’ve always enjoyed doing things that were quite elaborate in terms of camera movement and three-dimensional space. I’m a glutton for punishment, because those shots are very hard to do.
Gary Trousdale: In the scene with Quasimodo carrying Esmeralda over his shoulder, climbing up the cathedral, he looks back under his arms, snarling at the crowd below. James called that his King Kong moment.
As production continued, Roy Conli’s position shifted, as Don Hahn joined the project, and Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney in heated fashion in 1994.
Roy Conli: Jeffrey was going to create his own animation studio. Peter Schneider was interested in maintaining a relationship with Don Hahn. We were into animation, ahead of schedule. They asked Don if he would produce and if I would run the studio in Paris.
Don Hahn: Roy hadn’t done an animated film before. I was able to be a more senior presence. I’d worked with Kirk and Gary before, which I enjoy. They’re unsung heroes of these movies.
Kirk Wise: The [production] pace was more leisurely. As leisurely as these things can be. We had more breathing room to develop the storyboards and the script and the songs.
Gary Trousdale: Jeffrey never liked characters to have facial hair. No beards, no mustaches, nothing. There’s original designs of Gaston [with] a little Errol Flynn mustache. Jeffrey hated it. “I don’t want any facial hair.” Once he left, we were like, “We could give [Phoebus] a beard now.”
Kirk Wise: The ballroom sequence [in Beauty] gave us confidence to incorporate more computer graphics into Hunchback. We [had] to create the illusion of a throng of thousands of cheering people. To do it by hand would have been prohibitive, and look cheap.
Stephen Schwartz: Michael Eisner started being more hands-on. Michael was annoyed at me for a while, because when Jeffrey left, I accepted the job of doing the score for Prince of Egypt. I got fired from Mulan because of it. But once he fired me, Michael couldn’t have been a more supportive, positive colleague on Hunchback.
Kirk Wise: [The executives] were distracted. We were able to take more chances than we would have under the circumstances that we made Beauty and the Beast.
Don Hahn: Hunchback was in a league of its own, feeling like we [could] step out and take some creative risks. We could have done princess movies forever, and been reasonably successful. Our long-term survival relied on trying those risks.
One sticking point revolved around Notre Dame’s gargoyles, three of whom interact with Quasimodo, but feel more lighthearted than the rest of the dark story.
Gary Trousdale: In the book and several of the movies, Quasimodo talks to the gargoyles. We thought, “This is Disney, we’re doing a cartoon. The gargoyles can talk back.” One thing led to another and we’ve got “A Guy Like You.”
Kirk Wise: “A Guy Like You” was literally created so we could lighten the mood so the audience wasn’t sitting in this trough of despair for so long.
Stephen Schwartz: Out of context, the number is pretty good. I think I wrote some funny lyrics. But ultimately it was a step too far tonally for the movie and it has been dropped from the stage version.
Gary Trousdale: People have been asking for a long time: are they real? Are they part of Quasimodo’s personality? There were discussions that maybe Quasimodo is schizophrenic. We never definitively answered it, and can argue convincingly both ways.
Jason Alexander, voice of Hugo: I wouldn’t dream of interfering with anyone’s choice on that. It’s ambiguous for a reason and part of that reason is the viewers’ participation in the answer. Whatever you believe about it, I’m going to say you’re right.
Brenda Chapman: I left before they landed on how [to play] the gargoyles. My concern was, what are the rules? Are they real? Are they in his imagination? What can they do? Can they do stuff or is it all Quasi? I looked at it a little askance in the finished film. I wasn’t sure if I liked how it ended up…[Laverne] with the boa on the piano.
Kirk Wise: There was a component of the audience that felt the gargoyles were incompatible with Hunchback. But all of Disney’s movies, including the darkest ones, have comic-relief characters. And Disney was the last person to treat the written word as gospel.
“A Fantastic Opportunity”
After a successful collaboration on Pocahontas, Menken and Schwartz worked on turning Victor Hugo’s tragic story into a musical.
Alan Menken: The world of the story was very appealing, and it had so much social relevance and cultural nuance.
Stephen Schwartz: The story lent itself quite well to musicalization because of the extremity of the characters and the emotions. There was a lot to sing about. There was a great milieu.
Alan Menken: To embed the liturgy of the Catholic Church into a piece of music that’s operatic and also classical and pop-oriented enriches it in a very original way. Stephen was amazing. He would take the theme from the story and specifically set it in Latin to that music.
Stephen Schwartz: The fact that we were doing a piece set in a church allowed us to use all those elements of the Catholic mass, and for Alan to do all that wonderful choral music.
Alan Menken: The first creative impulse was “Out There.” I’m a craftsman. I’m working towards a specific assignment, but that was a rare instance where that piece of music existed.
Stephen Schwartz: I would come in with a title, maybe a couple of lines for Alan to be inspired by. We would talk about the whole unit, its job from a storytelling point of view. He would write some music. I could say, “I liked that. Let’s follow that.” He’d push a button and there would be a sloppy printout, enough that I could play it as I was starting the lyrics.
Roy Conli: Stephen’s lyrics are absolutely phenomenal. With that as a guiding light, we were in really good shape.
Stephen Schwartz: Alan played [the “Out There” theme] for me, and I really liked it. I asked for one change in the original chorus. Other than that, the music was exactly as he gave it to me.
Gary Trousdale: Talking with these guys about music is always intimidating. There was one [lyric] Don and I both questioned in “Out There,” when Frollo is singing, “Why invite their calumny and consternation?” Don and I went, “Calumny?” Kirk said, “Nope, it’s OK, I saw it in an X-Men comic book.” I went, “All right! It’s in a comic book! It’s good.”
Stephen Schwartz: Disney made it possible for me to get into Notre Dame before it opened to the public. I’d climb up the steps to the bell tower. I’d sit there with my yellow pad and pencil. I’d have the tune for “Out There” in my head, and I would look out at Paris, and be Quasimodo. By the time we left Paris, the song was written.
Kirk Wise: Stephen’s lyrics are really smart and literate. I don’t think the comical stuff was necessarily [his] strongest area. But this movie was a perfect fit, because the power of the emotions were so strong. Stephen just has a natural ability to connect with that.
Will Finn: The directors wanted a funny song for the gargoyles and Stephen was not eager to write it. He came to me and Irene Mecchi and asked us to help him think of comedy ideas for “A Guy Like You,” and we pitched a bunch of gags.
Jason Alexander: Singing with an orchestra the likes of which Alan and Stephen and Disney can assemble is nirvana. It’s electrifying and gives you the boost to sing over and over. Fortunately, everyone was open to discovery. I love nuance and intention in interpretation. I was given wonderful freedom to find both.
Stephen Schwartz: “Topsy Turvy,” it’s one of those numbers of musical theater where you can accomplish an enormous amount of storytelling. If you didn’t have that, you’d feel you were drowning in exposition. When you put it in the context of the celebration of the Feast of Fools, you could get a lot of work done.
Paul Kandel: The first time I sang [“Topsy Turvy”] through, I got a little applause from the orchestra. That was a very nice thing to happen and calm me down a little bit.
Brenda Chapman: Poor Kevin Harkey must’ve worked on “Topsy Turvy” for over a year. Just hearing [singing] “Topsy turvy!” I thought, “I would shoot myself.” It’s a fun song, but to listen to that, that many times. I don’t know if he ever got to work on anything else.
Paul Kandel: There were places where I thought the music was squarer than it needed to be. I wanted to round it out because Clopin is unpredictable. Is he good? Is he bad? That’s what I was trying to edge in there.
Kirk Wise: “God Help the Outcasts” made Jeffrey restless. I think he wanted “Memory” from Cats. Alan and Stephen wrote “Someday.” Jeffrey said, “This is good, but it needs to be bigger!” Alan was sitting at his piano bench, and Jeffrey was next to him. Jeffrey said, “When I want it bigger, I’ll nudge you.” Alan started playing and Jeffrey was jabbing him in the ribs. “Bigger, bigger!”
Don Hahn: In terms of what told the story better, one song was poetic, but the other was specific. “Outcasts” was very specific about Quasimodo. “Someday” was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Kirk Wise: When Don watched the movie, he said, “It’s working pretty well. But ‘Someday,’ I don’t know. It feels like she’s yelling at God.” We played “God Help the Outcasts” for him and Don said, “Oh, this is perfect.” That song is the signature of the entire movie.
Don Hahn: “Someday” was lovely. But I had come off of working with Howard Ashman, and I felt, “This doesn’t move the plot forward much, does it?” We ended up with “Someday” as an end-credits song, which was fortunate. ‘Cause they’re both good songs.
Kirk Wise: It was all about what conveys the emotion of the scene and the central theme of the movie best. “God Help the Outcasts” did that.
Everyone agrees on one point.
Stephen Schwartz: Hunchback is Alan’s best score. And that’s saying a lot, because he’s written a whole bunch of really good ones.
Gary Trousdale: With Hunchback, there were a couple of people that said, “This is why I chose music as a career.” Alan and Stephen’s songs are so amazing, so that’s really something.
Paul Kandel: It has a beautiful score.
Jason Alexander: It has the singularly most sophisticated score of most of the animated films of that era.
Roy Conli: The score of Hunchback is one of the greatest we’ve done.
Don Hahn: This is Alan’s most brilliant score. The amount of gravitas Alan put in the score is amazing.
Alan Menken: It’s the most ambitious score I’ve ever written. It has emotional depth. It’s a different assignment. And it was the project where awards stopped happening. It’s almost like, “OK, now you’ve gone too far.”
Stephen Schwartz: It’s astonishing that Alan has won about 173 Academy Awards, and the one score he did not win for is his best score.
The film featured marquee performers singing covers of “God Help the Outcasts” and “Someday”. But one of the most famous performers ever nearly brought those songs to life.
Alan Menken: I met Michael Jackson when we were looking for someone to sing “A Whole New World” for Aladdin. Michael wanted to co-write the song. I could get a sense of who Michael was. He was a very unique, interesting individual…in his own world.
I get a call out of nowhere from Michael’s assistant, when Michael was at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York. He had to [deal with] allegations about inappropriate behavior with underage kids, and the breakup with Lisa Marie Presley. He’s looking to change the subject. And he obviously loves Disney so much. So I mentioned Hunchback. He said he’d love to come to my studio, watch the movie and talk about it. So we got in touch with Disney Animation. They said, “Meet with him! If he likes it…well, see what he says.” [laughing]
There’s three songs. One was “Out There,” one was “God Help the Outcasts,” one was “Someday.” Michael said, “I would like to produce the songs and record some of them.” Wow. Okay. What do we do now? Michael left. We got in touch with Disney. It was like somebody dropped a hot poker into a fragile bowl with explosives. “Uh, we’ll get back to you about that.”
Finally, predictably, the word came back, “Disney doesn’t want to do this with Michael Jackson.” I go, “OK, could someone tell him this?” You can hear a pin drop, no response, and nobody did [tell him]. It fell to my late manager, Scott Shukat, to tell Michael or Michael’s attorney.
In retrospect, it was the right decision. [But] Quasimodo is a character…if you look at his relationships with his family and his father, I would think there’s a lot of identification there.
“They’re Never Going to Do This Kind of Character Again”
The film is known for the way it grapples with the hypocrisy and lust typified by the villainous Judge Frollo, whose terrifying song “Hellfire” remains a high point of Disney animation.
Gary Trousdale: Somebody asked me recently: “How the hell did you get ‘Hellfire’ past Disney?” It’s a good question.
Alan Menken: When Stephen and I wrote “Hellfire,” I was so excited by what we accomplished. It really raised the bar for Disney animation. It raised the bar for Stephen’s and my collaboration.
Stephen Schwartz: I thought the would never let me get away with [“Hellfire”]. And they never asked for a single change.
Alan Menken: Lust and religious conflict. Now more than ever, these are very thorny issues to put in front of the Disney audience. We wanted to go at it as truthfully as possible.
Stephen Schwartz: When Alan and I tackled “Hellfire,” I did what I usually did: write what I thought it should be and assume that [Disney would] tell me what I couldn’t get away with. But they accepted exactly what we wrote.
Don Hahn: Every good song score needs a villain’s moment. Stephen and Alan approached it with “Hellfire.”
Alan Menken: It was very clear, we’d thrown the gauntlet pretty far. It was also clear within our creative team that everybody was excited about going there.
Don Hahn: You use all the tools in your toolkit, and one of the most powerful ones was Alan and Stephen. Stephen can be dark, but he’s also very funny. He’s brilliant.
Gary Trousdale: The [MPAA] said, “When Frollo says ‘This burning desire is turning me to sin,’ we don’t like the word ‘sin.’” We can’t change the lyrics now. It’s all recorded. Kinda tough. “What if we just dip the volume of the word ‘sin’ and increase the sound effects?” They said, “Good.”
Stephen Schwartz: It’s one of the most admirable things [laughs] I have ever seen Disney Animation do. It was very supportive and adventurous, which is a spirit that…let’s just say, I don’t think [the company would] make this movie today.
Don Hahn: It’s funny. Violence is far more accepted than sex in a family movie. You can go see a Star Wars movie and the body count’s pretty huge, but there’s rarely any sexual innuendo.
Kathy Zielinski: I got to watch [Tony Jay] record “Hellfire” with another actor. I was sweating watching him record, because it was unbelievably intense. Afterwards, he asked me, “Did you learn anything from my performance?” I said, “Yeah, I never want to be a singer.” [laughing]
Paul Kandel: Tony Jay knocked that out of the park. He [was] an incredible guy. Very sweet. He was terrified to record “Hellfire.” He was at a couple of my sessions. He went, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen when it’s my turn? I don’t sing. I’m not a singer. I never pretended to be a singer.” I said, “Look, I’m not a singer. I’m an actor who figured out that they could hold a tune.”
Kathy Zielinski: I listened to Tony sing “Hellfire” tons. I knew I had gone too far when, one morning, we were sitting at the breakfast table and my daughter, who was two or three at the time, started singing the song and doing the mannerisms. [laughs]
Don Hahn: We didn’t literally want to show [Frollo’s lust]. It turns into a Fantasia sequence, almost. A lot of the imagery is something you could see coming out of Frollo’s imagination. It’s very impressionistic. It does stretch the boundaries of what had been done before at Disney.
Kirk Wise: We stylized it like “Night on Bald Mountain.” The best of Walt’s films balanced very dark and light elements. Instead of making it explicit, we tried to make it more visual and use symbolic imagery.
Gaëtan Brizzi: We were totally free. We could show symbolically how sick Frollo is between his hate and his carnal desire.
Kathy Zielinski: The storyboards had a tremendous influence. Everybody was incredibly admiring of the work that [Paul and Gaëtan] had done.
Don Hahn: They brought the storyboarded sequence to life in a way that is exactly what the movie looks like. The strength of it is that we didn’t have to show anything as much as we did suggest things to the audience. Give the audience credit for filling in the blanks.
Gary Trousdale: It was absolutely gorgeous. Their draftsmanship and their cinematography. They are the top. They pitched it with a cassette recording of Stephen singing “Hellfire”, and we were all in the story room watching it, going “Oh shit!”
Paul Brizzi: When Frollo is at the fireplace with Esmeralda’s scarf, his face is hypnotized. From the smoke, there’s the silhouette of Esmeralda coming to him. She’s naked in our drawings.
Gary Trousdale: We joked, maybe because they’re French, Esmeralda was in the nude when she was in the fire. Roy Disney put his foot down and said, “That’s not going to happen.” Chris Jenkins, the head of effects, and I went over every drawing to make sure she was appropriately attired. That was the one concession we made to the studio.
Gaëtan Brizzi: It’s the role of storyboard artists to go far, and then you scale it down. Her body was meant to be suggestive. It was more poetic than provocative.
Brenda Chapman: I thought what the Brizzis did with “Hellfire” was just stunning.
Roy Conli: We make films for people from four to 104, and we’re trying to ensure that the thematic material engages adults and engages children. We had a lot of conversations on “Hellfire,” [which] was groundbreaking. You saw the torment, but you didn’t necessarily, if you were a kid, read it as sexual. And if you were an adult, you picked it up pretty well.
Will Finn: “Hellfire” was uncomfortable to watch with a family audience. I’m not a prude, but what are small kids to make of such a scene?
Kathy Zielinski: When I was working on “Hellfire,” I thought, “Wow. They’re never going to do this kind of character again.” And I’m pretty much right.
“Straight for the Heart”
“Hellfire” may be the apex of the maturity of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but the entire film is the most complex and adult Disney animated feature of the modern era.
Gary Trousdale: We went straight for the heart and then pulled back.
Kirk Wise: I was comfortable with moments of broad comedy contrasted with moments that were dark or scary or violent. All of the Disney movies did that, particularly in Walt’s time.
Don Hahn: A lot of it is gut level, where [the story group would] sit around and talk to ourselves and pitch it to executives. But Walt Disney’s original animated films were really dark. We wanted to create something that had the impact of what animation can do.
Will Finn: Eisner insisted we follow the book to the letter, but he said the villain could not be a priest, and we had to have a happy ending. The book is an epic tragedy – everybody dies!
Kathy Zielinski: It’s a little scary that I felt comfortable with [Frollo]. [laughing] I don’t know what that means. Maybe I need to go to therapy. I’ve always had a desire to do villains. I just love evil.
Don Hahn: Kathy Zielinski is brilliant. She works on The Simpsons now, which is hilarious. She’s very intense, very aware of what [Frollo] had to do.
One specific choice in the relationship between Frollo and Esmeralda caused problems.
Stephen Schwartz: I remember there was great controversy over Frollo sniffing Esmeralda’s hair.
Kirk Wise: The scene that caused the most consternation was in the cathedral where Frollo grabs Esmeralda, whispers in her ear and sniffs her hair. The sniffing made people ask, “Is this too far?” We got a lot of support from Peter Schneider, Tom Schumacher, and Michael Eisner.
Kathy Zielinski: Brenda Chapman came up with that idea and the storyboard. I animated it. It’s interesting, because two females were responsible for that. That scene was problematic, so they had to cut it down. It used to be a lot longer.
Brenda Chapman: I know I’m probably pushing it too far, but let’s give it a go, you know?
Kirk Wise: We agreed it was going to be a matter of execution and our collective gut would tell us whether we were crossing the line. We learned that the difference between a G and PG is the loudness of a sniff. Ultimately, that’s what it came down to.
Brenda Chapman: I never knew that! [laughing]
Don Hahn: Is it rated G? That’s surprising.
Gary Trousdale: I’m sure there was backroom bargaining done that Kirk and I didn’t know about.
Don Hahn: It’s negotiation. The same was true of The Lion King. We had intensity notes on the fight at the end. You either say, we’re going to live with that and it’s PG, or we’re not and it’s G.
Brenda Chapman: I heard stories of little kids going, “Ewww, he’s rubbing his boogers in her hair!” [laughing] If that’s what they want to think, that’s fine. But there are plenty of adults that went, “Whoa!”
Don Hahn: You make the movies for yourselves, [but] we all have families, and you try to make something that’s appropriate for that audience. So we made some changes. Frollo isn’t a member of the clergy to take out any politicizing.
Gaëtan Brizzi: We developed the idea of Frollo’s racism against the gypsies. To feel that he desires Esmeralda and he wants to kill her. It was ambiguity that was interesting to develop. In the storyboards, Paul made [Frollo] handsome with a big jaw, a guy with class. They said he was too handsome. We had to break that formula.
Stephen Schwartz: I [and others] said, “It doesn’t make any sense for him to not be the Archdeacon, because what’s he doing with Quasimodo? What possible relationship could they have?” Which is what led to the backstory that became “The Bells of Notre Dame.”
Don Hahn: The things Frollo represents are alive and well in the world. Bigotry and prejudice are human traits and always have been. One of his traits was lust. How do you portray that in a Disney movie? We tried to portray that in a way that might be over kids’ heads and may not give them nightmares necessarily, but it’s not going to pull its punches. So it was a fine line.
Stephen Schwartz: Hugo’s novel is not critical of the church the way a lot of French literature is. It creates this character of Frollo, who’s a deeply hypocritical person and tormented by his hypocrisy.
Peter Schneider: I am going to be controversial. I think it failed. The fundamental basis is problematic, if you’re going to try and do a Disney movie. In [light of] the #MeToo movement, you couldn’t still do the movie and try what we tried to do. As much as we tried to soften it, you couldn’t get away from the fundamental darkness.
Don Hahn: Yeah, that sounds like Peter. He’s always the contrarian.
Peter Schneider: I’m not sure we should have made the movie, in retrospect. I mean, it did well, Kirk and Gary did a beautiful job. The voices are beautiful. The songs are lovely, but I’m not sure we should have made the movie.
Gaëtan Brizzi: The hardest part was to stick to the commercial side of the movie…to make sure we were still addressing kids.
Kirk Wise: We knew it was going to be a challenge to honor the source material while delivering a movie that would fit comfortably on the shelf with the other Disney musicals. We embraced it.
Roy Conli: I don’t think it was too mature. I do find it at times slightly provocative, but not in a judgmental or negative way. I stand by the film 100 percent in sending a message of hope.
Peter Schneider: It never settled its tone. If you look at the gargoyles and bringing in Jason Alexander to try and give comedy to this rather bleak story of a judge keeping a deformed young man in the tower…there’s so many icky factors for a Disney movie.
Jason Alexander: Some children might be frightened by Quasi’s look or not be able to understand the complexity. But what we see is an honest, innocent and capable underdog confront his obstacles and naysayers and emerge triumphant, seen and accepted. I think young people rally to those stories. They can handle the fearsome and celebrate the good.
Brenda Chapman: There was a scene where Frollo was locking Quasimodo in the tower, and Quasi was quite upset. I had to pull back from how cruel Frollo was in that moment, if I’m remembering correctly. I wanted to make him a very human monster, which can be scarier than a real monster.
Roy Conli: We walked such a tight line and we were on the edge and the fact that Disney allowed us to be on the edge was a huge tribute to them.
“Hear the Voice”
The story was set, the songs were ready. All that was left was getting a cast together to bring the characters’ voices to life.
Jason Alexander: Disney, Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, Victor Hugo – you had me at hello.
Paul Kandel: I was in Tommy, on Broadway. I was also a Tony nominee. So I had those prerequisites. Then I got a call from my agent that Jeffrey Katzenberg decided he wanted a star. I was out of a job I already had. I said, “I want to go back in and audition again.” I wanted to let them choose between me and whoever had a name that would help sell the film. So that series of auditions went on and I got the job back.
Kirk Wise: Everybody auditioned, with the exception of Kevin Kline and Demi Moore. We went to them with an offer. But we had a few people come in for Quasimodo, including Meat Loaf.
Will Finn: Katzenberg saw Meat Loaf and Cher playing Quasimodo and Esmeralda – more of a rock opera. He also wanted Leno, Letterman, and Arsenio as the gargoyles at one point.
Kirk Wise: Meat Loaf sat with Alan and rehearsed the song. It was very different than what we ended up with, because Meat Loaf has a very distinct sound. Ultimately, I think his record company and Disney couldn’t play nice together, and the deal fell apart.
Gary Trousdale: We all had the drawings of the characters we were currently casting for in front of us. Instead of watching the actor, we’d be looking down at the piece of paper, trying to hear that voice come out of the drawing. And it was, we learned, a little disconcerting for some of the actors and actresses, who would put on hair and makeup and clothes and they’ve got their body language and expressions. We just want to hear the voice.
Kirk Wise: We cast Cyndi Lauper as one of the gargoyles. We thought she was hilarious and sweet. The little fat obnoxious gargoyle had a different name, and was going to be played by Sam McMurray. We had Cyndi and Sam record, and Roy Disney hated it. The quality of Cyndi’s voice and Sam’s voice were extremely grating to his ear. This is no disrespect to them – Cyndi Lauper is amazing. And Sam McMurray is very funny. But it was not working for the people in the room on that day.
Jason Alexander: The authors cast you for a reason – they think they’ve heard a voice in you that fits their character. I always try to look at the image of the character – his shape, his size, his energy and start to allow sounds, pitches, vocal tics to emerge. Then everyone kicks that around, nudging here, tweaking there and within a few minutes you have the approach to the vocalization. It’s not usually a long process, but it is fun.
Kirk Wise: We decided to reconceive the gargoyles. We always knew we wanted three of them. We wanted a Laurel and Hardy pair. The third gargoyle, the female gargoyle, was up in the air. I think it was Will Finn who said, “Why don’t we make her older?” As the wisdom-keeper. That led us to Mary Wickes, who was absolutely terrific. We thoroughly enjoyed working with Mary, and 98% of the dialogue is her. But she sadly passed away before we were finished.
Will Finn: We brought in a ton of voice-over actresses and none sounded like Mary. One night, I woke up thinking about Jane Withers, who had been a character actress in the golden age of Hollywood. She had a similar twang in her voice, and very luckily, she was alive and well.
Kirk Wise: Our first session with Kevin Kline went OK, but something was missing. It just didn’t feel like there was enough of a twinkle in his voice. Roy Conli said, “Guys, he’s an actor. Give him a prop.” For the next session, the supervising animator for Phoebus brought in a medieval broadsword. Before the session started, we said “Kevin, we’ve got a present for you.” We brought out this sword, and he lit up like a kid at Christmas. He would gesture with it and lean on it. Roy found the key there.
Gary Trousdale: Kevin Kline is naturally funny, so we may have [written] some funnier lines for him. When he’s sparring with Esmeralda in the cathedral and he gets hit by the goat. “I didn’t know you had a kid,” which is the worst line ever. But he pulls it off. He had good comic timing.
Kirk Wise: Tom Hulce had a terrific body of work, including Amadeus. But the performance that stuck with me was in Dominic and Eugene. There was a sensitivity and emotional reality to that performance that made us lean in and think he might make a good Quasimodo.
Gary Trousdale: [His voice] had a nice mix of youthful and adult. He had a maturity, but he had an innocence as well. We’re picturing Quasimodo as a guy who’s basically an innocent. It was a quality of his voice that we could hear.
Don Hahn: He’s one of those actors who could perform and act while he sang. Solo songs, especially for Quasimodo, are monologues set to music. So you’re looking for someone who can portray all the emotion of the scene. It’s about performance and storytelling, and creating a character while you’re singing. That’s why Tom rose to the top.
Stephen Schwartz: I thought Tom did great. I had known Tom a little bit beforehand, as an actor in New York. I’d seen him do Equus and I was sort of surprised. I just knew him as an actor in straight plays. I didn’t know that he sang at all, and then it turned out that he really sang.
Paul Kandel: [Tom] didn’t think of himself as a singer. He’s an actor who can sing. “Out There,” his big number – whether he’s going to admit it to you or not – that was scary for him. But a beautiful job.
Brenda Chapman: Quasimodo was the key to make it family-friendly. Tom Hulce did such a great job making him appealing.
Kirk Wise: Gary came back with the audiotape of Tom’s first session. And his first appearance with the little bird, where he asks if the bird is ready to fly…that whole scene was his rehearsal tape. His instincts were so good. He just nailed it. I think he was surprised that we went with that take. It was the least overworked and the most spontaneous, and felt emotionally real to us.
Kathy Zielinski: Early on, they wanted Anthony Hopkins to do the voice [of Frollo]. [We] did an animation test with a line of his from Silence of the Lambs.
Kirk Wise: We were thinking of Hannibal Lecter in the earliest iterations of Frollo. They made an offer, but Hopkins passed. We came full circle to Tony, because it had been such a good experience working with him on Beauty and the Beast. It was the combination of the quality of his voice, the familiarity of working with him, and knowing how professional and sharp he was.
Though the role of Quasimodo went to Tom Hulce (who did not respond to multiple requests for comment), there was one audition those involved haven’t forgotten.
Kirk Wise: We had a few people come in for Quasimodo, including Mandy Patinkin.
Stephen Schwartz: That was a difficult day. [laughing]
Kirk Wise: Mandy informed Alan and Stephen that he brought his own accompanist, which was unexpected because we had one in the room. He had taken a few liberties with [“Out There”]. He had done a little rearranging. You could see Alan’s and Stephen’s spines stiffen. It was not the feel that Alan and Stephen were going for. Stephen pretty much said so in the room. I think his words were a little sharper and more pointed than mine.
Stephen Schwartz: I’ve never worked with Mandy Patinkin. But I admired Evita and Sunday in the Park with George. He came in to audition for Quasimodo. When I came in, Ben Vereen was sitting in the hallway. Ben is a friend of mine and kind of a giant star. I felt we should be polite in terms of bringing him in relatively close to the time for which he was called.
Mandy took a long time with his audition, and asked to do it over and over again. If you’re Mandy Patinkin, you should have enough time scheduled to feel you were able to show what you wanted to show. However, that amount of time was not scheduled. At a certain point, I became a bit agitated because I knew Ben was sitting there, cooling his heels. I remember asking [to] move along or something. That created a huge contretemps.
Kirk Wise: Gary and I stepped outside to work on a dialogue scene with Mandy. As we were explaining the scene and our take on the character, Mandy threw up his hands and said, “Guys, I’m really sorry. I can’t do this.” He turned on his heel and went into the rehearsal hall and shut the door. We started hearing an intense argument. He basically went in and read Alan and Stephen the riot act. The door opens, smoke issuing from the crater that he left inside. Mandy storms out, and he’s gone. We step back in the room, asking, “What the hell happened?”
Gary Trousdale: I did a drawing of it afterwards. The Patinkin Incident.
Stephen Schwartz: Battleship Patinkin!
“Join the Party”
The darkness in the film made it difficult to market. Even some involved acknowledged the issue. In the run-up to release, Jason Alexander said to Entertainment Weekly, “Disney would have us believe this movie’s like the Ringling Bros., for children of all ages. But I won’t be taking my 4-year old. I wouldn’t expose him to it, not for another year.”
Alan Menken: There was all the outrage about Jason Alexander referring to it as a dark story that’s not for kids. Probably Disney wasn’t happy he said that.
Jason Alexander: Most Disney animated films are entertaining and engaging for any child with an attention span. All of them have elements that are frightening. But people are abused in Hunchback. These are people, not cute animals. Some children could be overwhelmed by some of it at a very young age. My son at the time could not tolerate any sense of dread in movies so it would have been hard for him. However, that is certainly not all children.
Don Hahn: I don’t think Jason was wrong. People have to decide for themselves. It probably wasn’t a movie for four-year olds. You as a parent know your kid better than I do.
If everyone agrees the score is excellent, they also agree on something that was not.
Alan Menken: God knows we couldn’t control how Disney marketing dealt with the movie, which was a parade with Quasimodo on everybody’s shoulders going, “Join the party.” [laughing]
Roy Conli: I always thought “Animation comes of age” would be a great [tagline]. I think the marketing ended up, “Join the party.”
Brenda Chapman: Marketing had it as this big party. And then you get into the story and there’s all this darkness. I think audiences were not expecting that, if they didn’t know the original story.
Kathy Zielinski: It was a hard movie for Disney to merchandise and sell to the public.
Gaëtan Brizzi: People must have been totally surprised by the dramatic sequences. The advertising was not reflecting what the movie was about.
Stephen Schwartz: To this day, they just don’t know how to market “Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.” I understand what their quandary is. They have developed a brand that says, “If you see the word Disney on something, it means you can take your 6-year old.” You probably shouldn’t even take your 8-year old, unless he or she is very mature, to Hunchback.
Alan Menken: We [Disney] had such a run of successful projects. It was inevitable there was going to be a time where people said, “I’ve seen all those, but what else is out there?” I had that experience sitting at a diner with my family, overhearing a family talk about Hunchback and say, “Oh yeah, we saw Beauty and Aladdin, but this one…let’s see something else.”
Stephen Schwartz: I did have a sense that some in the critical community didn’t know how to reconcile animation and an adult approach. They have the same attitude some critics have about musicals. “It’s fine if it’s tap-dancing and about silly subjects. But if it’s something that has intellectual import, you can’t do that.” Obviously we have Hamilton and Sweeney Todd and Wicked. Over the years, that’s changed to some extent, but not for everybody.
Roy Conli: Every film is not a Lion King. [But] if that story has legs and will touch people, then you’ve succeeded.
Kirk Wise: We were a little disappointed in its initial weekend. It didn’t do as well as we hoped. We were also disappointed in the critical reaction. It was well-reviewed, but more mixed. Roger Ebert loved us. The New York Times hated us! I felt whipsawed. It was the same critic [Janet Maslin] who praised Beauty and the Beast to the high heavens. She utterly shat on Hunchback.
Don Hahn: We had really good previews, but we also knew it was out of the box creatively. We were also worried about the French and we were worried about the handicapped community and those were the two communities that supported the movie the most.
Will Finn: I knew we were in trouble when the first trailers played and audiences laughed at Quasimodo singing “Out There” on the roof.
Kirk Wise: All of us were proud of the movie on an artistic level. In terms of animation and backgrounds and music and the use of the camera and the performances. It’s the entire studio operating at its peak level of performance, as far as I’m concerned.
Gary Trousdale: I didn’t think people were going to have such a negative reaction to the gargoyles. They’re a little silly. And they do undercut the gravity. But speaking with friends who were kids at the time, they have nothing but fond memories. There were adults, high school age and older when they saw it, they were turned off. We thought it was going to do really great. We thought, “We’re topping ourselves.” It’s a sophisticated story and the music is amazing.
Kirk Wise: The 2D animated movies used to be released before Christmas [or] Thanksgiving. The Lion King changed that. Now everything was a summer release. I always questioned the wisdom of releasing Hunchback in the summertime, in competition with other blockbusters.
Paul Kandel: It made $300 million and it cost $80 million to make. So they were not hurting as far as profits were concerned. But I thought it was groundbreaking in so many ways that I was surprised at the mixed reviews.
Kirk Wise: By most measures, it was a hit. I think The Lion King spoiled everybody, because [it] was such a phenomenon, a bolt from the blue, not-to-be-repeated kind of event.
Gary Trousdale: We were getting mixed reviews. Some of them were really good. “This is a stunning masterpiece.” And other people were saying, “This is a travesty.” And the box office was coming in, not as well as hoped.
Don Hahn: I was in Argentina doing South American press. I got a call from Peter Schneider, who said, “It’s performing OK, but it’s probably going to hit 100 million.” Which, for any other moviemaker, would be a goldmine. But we’d been used to huge successes. I was disappointed.
Peter Schneider: I think it was a hit, right? It just wasn’t the same. As they say in the theater, you don’t set out to make a failure.
Don Hahn: If you’re the New York Yankees, and you’ve had a winning season where you could not lose, and then people hit standup singles instead of home runs…that’s OK. But it has this aura of disappointment. That’s the feeling that’s awful to have, because it’s selfish. Animation is an art, and the arts are meant to be without a price tag hanging off of them all the time.
Paul Brizzi: We are still grateful to Kirk and Gary and Don. We worked on [Hunchback] for maybe a year or a year and a half. Every sequence, we did with passion.
Gaëtan Brizzi: Our work on Hunchback was a triumph of our career.
Kathy Zielinski: There are certainly a whole crowd of people who wish we had not [done] the comedy, because that wasn’t faithful. That’s the main complaint I heard – we should’ve gone for this total dramatic piece and not worried about the kiddies.
Gaetan Brizzi: The only concern we had was the lack of homogeneity. The drama was really strong, and the [comedy] was sometimes a little bit goofy. It was a paradox. When you go from “Hellfire” to a big joke, the transition was not working well. Otherwise, we were very proud.
James Baxter: We were happy with what we did, but we understood it was going to be a slightly harder sell. The Hunchback of Notre Dame usually doesn’t engender connotations like, “Oh, that’s going to be a Disney classic.” I was very happy that it did as well as it did.
Jason Alexander: I thought it was even more mature and emotional on screen. It was an exciting maturation of what a Disney animated feature could be. I was impressed and touched.
“An Undersung Hero”
25 years later, The Hunchback of Notre Dame endures. The animated film inspired an even darker stage show that played both domestically and overseas, and in recent years, there have been rumors that Josh Gad would star as Quasimodo in a live-action remake.
Alan Menken: I think it’s a project that with every passing year will more and more become recognized as a really important part of my career.
Stephen Schwartz: This will be immodest, but I think it’s a really fine adaptation. I think it’s the best musical adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel, and there have been a lot. I think the music is just unbelievably good. I think, as a lyricist, I was working at pretty much the top of my form. I have so many people telling me it’s their favorite Disney film.
Alan Menken: During the pandemic, there was this hundred-piece choir doing “The Bells of Notre Dame.” People are picking up on it. It’s the combination of the storytelling and how well the score is constructed that gets it to longevity. If something is good enough, it gets found.
Paul Kandel: I think people were more sensitive. There was an expectation that a new Disney animated film would not push boundaries at all, which it did. For critics, it pushed a little too hard and I don’t think they would think that now. It’s a work of art.
Gaëtan Brizzi: Hunchback is poetic, because of its dark romanticism. We have tons of animated movies, but I think they all look alike because of the computer technique. This movie is very important in making people understand that hate has no place in our society, between a culture or people or a country. That’s the message of the movie, and of Victor Hugo himself.
Jason Alexander: I think it’s an undersung hero. It’s one of the most beautiful and moving animated films. But it is not the title that lives on everyone’s tongue. I think more people haven’t seen this one than any of the others. I adore it.
Peter Schneider: What Disney did around this period [is] we stopped making musicals. I think that was probably a mistake on some level, but the animators were bored with it.
Don Hahn: You know people reacted to Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. They were successful movies in their day. You don’t know the reaction to anything else. So when [I] go to Comic-Con or do press on other movies, people started talking about Hunchback. “My favorite Alan Menken score is Hunchback.” It’s always surprising and delightful.
Kirk Wise: I’ve had so many people come up to me and say, “This is my absolute favorite movie. I adored this movie as a kid. I wore out my VHS.” That makes all the difference in the world.
Paul Kandel: Sitting on my desk right now are four long letters and requests for autographs. I get 20 of those a week. People are still seeing that film and being moved by it.
Alan Menken: Now there’s a discussion about a live-action film with Hunchback. And that’s [sighs] exciting and problematic. We have to, once again, wade into the troubled waters of “What is Disney’s movie version of Hunchback?” Especially now.
Jason Alexander: Live action could work because the vast majority of characters are human. The story of an actual human who is in some ways less abled and who is defined by how he looks, rather than his heart and character, is timely and important, to say the least.
Kirk Wise: I imagine if there were a live-action adaptation, it would skew more towards the stage version. That’s just my guess.
Stephen Schwartz: I think it would lend itself extremely well to a live-action movie, particularly if they use the stage show as the basis. I think the stage show is fantastic.
Kirk Wise: It’s gratifying to be involved in movies like Beauty and the Beast and Hunchback that have created so much affection. But animation is as legitimate a form of storytelling as live-action is. It might be different, but I don’t think it’s better. I feel like [saying], “Just put on the old one. It’s still good!”
Gary Trousdale: There were enough versions before. Somebody wants to make another version? Okay. Most people can tell the difference between the animated version and a live-action reboot. Mostly I’m not a fan of those. But if that’s what Disney wants to do, great.
Don Hahn: It’s very visual. It’s got huge potential because of its setting and the drama, and the music. It’s pretty powerful, so it makes sense to remake that movie. I think we will someday.
Brenda Chapman: It’s a history lesson. Now that Notre Dame is in such dire straits, after having burned so badly, hopefully [this] will increase interest in all that history.
James Baxter: It meant two children. I met my wife on that movie. [laughs] In a wider sense, the legacy is another step of broadening the scope of what Disney feature animation could be.
Kirk Wise: Hunchback is the movie where the final product turned out closest to the original vision. There was such terrific passion by the crew that carried throughout the process.
Roy Conli: It’s one of the most beautiful films we’ve made. 25 years later, I’d say “Join the party.” [laughs]
#long post behind read more#the hunchback of notre dame#hunchback of notre dame#notre dame de paris#victor hugo#interviews#disney#alan menken#stephen schwartz#quasimodo#esmeralda#frollo#phoebus#movies#movie history
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severus snape was not just a bully he was a literal racist and that did not change over the years unlike other characters' attitudes 🙏🙏🙏 what the fuck how are you pro-snape
hmmm. i feel there's an extremely back-handed compliment here. are you a lurker? are we mutuals? do i follow you or do you follow me? whatever the capacity, it feels silly to ask, but: are you new here? my bio, though novella in length because keeping things in a tiny, succinct packages is not my forte, clearly states at some point that Severus Snape is important enough to me to be mentioned a considerable amount. i'll be very sad if i follow you & enjoy the content you post because tbh this anon is super disappointing. the most common types i tend to receive are snaters who are too cowardly to tell me to my face they have nothing better to do than judge people doing the least harmful thing imaginable: loving/liking/appreciating a controversial, FICTIONAL FUCKING CHARACTER.
"he was a literal racist and that did not change over the years unlike the other characters' attitudes" ummm fucking WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT. what canon evidence do you have for this except your own warped headcanons?? Snape said the word "mudblood" fucking ONCE, as a teenage boy, while getting sexually assaulted by more than one person, in public, with no one there attempting to stop them. then Snape's one friend tries to defend him & Snape snaps something stupid because he was afraid & pissed off & ashamed. don't tell me YOU'VE never said something you're later ashamed of while in a temper or feeling cornered. don't tell me YOU'RE not allowed to make mistakes. that's right, it was a mistake, & he realized immediately so he tried to fix it & in the end his friendship wasn't worth it to her so he was alone, surrounded by people who won't help him, who let some other teenage boys get away with attempted murder, & adults who don't give a shit about him making him ripe for plucking. Snape fucking CRINGES then yells at Phineas Nigellus for calling Hermione that while the trio's on the run & Snape is an unwilling headmaster!!! have you forgotten this???? if anyone is racist it's Molly Weasley for her treatment of Fleur which was never given a legit reason why she behaved the way she did. i don't even want to try to count how many times Draco Malfoy calls Hermione a mudblood; are you harassing people with hateful anons for liking Draco? is he somehow more deserving of a redemption than Severus? if you think that, go fuck yourself.
Severus Snape made a mistake when he was very young. he was alone, traumatized, full of bitterness & anger. he first came over to the side of the light for selfish reasons but then so did Regulus & Narcissa & i never see people attacking THEM. Snape made a mistake & worked to atone for this & for 17 years most take for granted he was the puppet for two megalomaniacal masters, neither of whom gave a damn about his life (Dumbledore was worse in SO many ways). in the end, it seems like snaters feel like no matter what you do, no matter what is in your heart & everything you do to try to make it right, your mistake will always define you & death is all you deserve soduspsjapxjosn FUCK THIS SHIT. FUCK ANYONE WHO BELIEVES THIS.
"Severus Snape was not just a bully" yeah you're right he was also honorable, good-at-heart, brave as fuck, fucking brilliant, & while sharp-edged, was dryly hilarious. also, don't you get tired of this same fucking "argument"?? because Snape wasn't the only bully in canon. Molly Weasley is one. so is Dumbledore. so is Hermione. so is Draco, Crabbe, & Goyle. SO WERE THE MARAUDERS. Peter Pettigrew turned out to be one of the worst; do you ever anonymously bully anyone for liking them if they do? while not counting for taste, if anyone DOES like his character, IT'S NOT. MY FUCKING. BUSINESS. nobody is hurting me for liking that character. i am not hurting YOU for liking a character. it's just easier for you to pull this fucking performative, fake-woke, absolutely repulsive purity-culture enabling bullshit than to speak up about things that fucking ACTUALLY MATTER.
do you want to know some characters i like that are ACTUALLY disturbing/toxic/any negative thing you can think of?? i like Acton from the Doyle & Acton New Scotland Yard book series by Anne Cleeland & he is a LITERAL FUCKING STALKER who plays vigilante & takes advantage of his privilege to get away with his crimes lmao. i like Father Konstantin from the Winternight Trilogy even though (or maybe because of is more accurate) he's a younger, prettier, blonder Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame with his behavior towards Vasya who is very much an Esmeralda parallel. it drew me in immediately, their dynamic in that trilogy; so poisonous & twisted & depraved was his obsession with her but it was so PASSIONATE i couldn't look away. i like Krennic from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. if you've seen it, he's the smol, angry man who thinks seeing a planet with historical Jedi sites get destroyed by a previously unknown super weapon is BEAUTIFUL. he has no qualms against forcing someone against his will back to helping to build this weapon, even if it meant killing his family.
so there are just a few that i can think of at the moment who are considerably darker than mere shades of grey; do you send hateful anons to people who like Darth Vader? what about Sauron? Morgoth? what if someone likes VOLDEMORT?????? omg (spoiler alert: they exist, & some have created some of the best hp fanart i've seen, but that's not the point right now). do you attack people for liking other morally grey characters like Kylo Ren/Ben Solo or Lestat? snaters are pathetic. if you don't like Snape, that's perfectly fine; it would just be really cool if you can take your toxic, purity culture mentality & if unable to shove it up your ass at least go haunt the places dedicated to bland, rich white boy bully-loving spaces. go on with your horrid belief that all people who are enduring trauma are only allowed to process/handle it in a set way otherwise they are the Worst Person To Exist (or... not, in this instance, seeing as Severus Snape is a FICTIONAL. FUCKING. CHARACTER). do you not realize this says so much to people in your own life who may see some similarities between themselves & a character you believe makes you a superior entity for hating & judging?? do you not give people you care about another chance after making a mistake???
i'd rather continue loving this prickly, snarky asshole than attempt to "earn your good opinion" or some fucking similar codswallop thank you VERY much. cheerio & all that, & i hope you're able to find something to do you enjoy that doesn't involve judging people for things that really don't matter. if you have an issue with what i post you can always unfollow/block me. complicated controversial comfort characters make for better things to think about than fake wokeness. toodles~
#anon#Snape#Professor Snape#Severus Snape#gtfo snaters#this is not a marauder safe space#there WILL be marauder bashing#i love my feral northern boy#i love my fav morally grey characters#Acton#Lord Acton#Doyle and Acton#Anne Cleeland#Father Konstantin#Vasya#The Winternight Trilogy#Krennic#Orson Krennic#Rogue One#Rogue One A Star Wars Story#Ben Solo#Kylo Ren#pro Ben Solo#pro Kylo Ren#anons like these are the epitome of cowardice#gtfo with your asinine purity culture#morally gret character supremacy
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2, 4, 13, 20, and 49 from uhhh https://specterpants.tumblr.com/post/668049430960816128/some-oc-questions i am extorting you hi <3
2.) heheh, yeah its Ojernus probably lol. Shes def one of the coolest characters ive made right next to prime zealot, would like to make Aurence as interesting eventually! Woodlands Knight tho i def have given the most development by virute of him being part of a campaign w/ amazing party members to bounce off and a GM who fucking kills at character development and interesting character scenarios
4.) tough question, i dont talk about any of them terribly much and there are plenty concepts/ story slots that i need to think more on and fill. So i guess one that i have both a design for and general description for, is [ a tall cloaked monarch with chain hooks in their sleeves who suspiciously has close friendly ties to most of the worlds high profile warriors ], also one other but thats cuz i plan to talk more about her when i have all the stuff concrete on her which should be soon
13.) Tastra and [ A cowboy bug i havent thought out too much yet ]
20.) LOL good question almost all my OC/ story ideas come from music/ head amvs so most likely yes.
- Prime Zealot: prolly has a very preachy voice (obvs. example is Frollo from hunchback of notre dame)
- Ojernus: has a very robotic bellow-y voice but similar in singing to how the main singer of Fewjar sounds (specifically GAMMA)
- Aurence: im nooooot sure tbh, idk if hed sing even tbh? but not definitive
- Tastra: main singer of the pillows
- Ashtala: very likely doesnt sing im thinking lol
- Woodlands Knight: never ever ever around people, but he probably sings (somewhat well but w/ a few voicecracks) when by himself, always imagined his singing voice like Meredith Godreau (this has turned into songs and bands i associate w my characters but Wild West off in your dreams, and Grey Weather off Moeni & Kitchi are both songs i always hear him singing in my head)
49.) I know you want me to say Aurence and prolly true you are influencing how i see him a lot hfjshd. Woodlands Knight also would probably look at memes, but most likely cottage core facebook tier stuff (very 'normie' kinda shit). *looks at artfight page* shit Gamede is a character i havent done anything with, she would prolly too, a lot, i need to do more w/ her....
#yetanotherOCmeme#sorry i barely talk about these folks here ;-;#maybe in the future when i have the time to make reference for them#Deckard asking me about them makes me wanna draw them refs so hopefully#specter speaks#specters' ocs#anyways ty for asking deckard anyone feel free to ask more or maybe clarification#but also i get if not cuz i havent said shit about most of em
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disney’s ‘the hunchback of notre dame’, early 2000s kid nostalgia, and other midnight musings
“What the fuck, Stina? I thought this was a blog for book reviews!” you say.
“Books, amongst other things. Hence the -ish suffix,” I say. “And all my mediocre ‘reviews’ are hit-or-miss in terms of engagement, so I’m pretty much free to post whatever the fuck I want.”
I toss my head. My hair whacks me in the face.
The first time I watched Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame was been circa 2006, in the ‘movie room’ of my preschool, huddled around a CRT TV with the rest of my five-year-old classmates. Not much about the film particularly stood out to me at the age.
Fast-forward fifteen years later; I’m cooped up in quarantine, hundreds of thousands of miles away from that first viewing. I’m living my best life, rejoicing in my introverted tendencies and having a laugh at the expense of all the suffering extroverts. I haven’t moved from my bed all day, except for the bare necessities, and I’m bingeing YouTube videos. All is well.
I discovered Lindsay Ellis’s channel quite recently- embarrassingly enough, through her videos on Omegaverse and the whole Addison Cain fiasco. I stumbled down the rabbit-hole of her channel, and here I am, a few dozen videos later, and I find her one on this film.
Which, of course, led me to want to re-watch the film, with the eyes and mind (supposedly) of an adult. And it went far beyond and above my expectations.
The film is dark, much darker than the average Disney film of today- not just thematically, but the graphics too. Except for the first parts with the Festival of Fools and the last scene, the rest seems to have a dark filter put over it all. Obviously, given its themes (I’m pulling these out of my arse; I’m a STEM major and I have zero to no knowledge about film) of freedom and equality, acceptance of those different from us, corruption and lust- all that good shit, in other words- you can’t exactly have sunshine and rainbows. But it’s such a stark contrast from what I’ve been accustomed to from Disney; Frozen has Hans about to decapitate Elsa, but the background remains bright and light; Simba sobbing next to Mufasa’s body in The Lion King is heart-wrenching, but a few scenes later, we have an anthropomorphic meerkat-boar duo singing about eating bugs and farting and all that classy stuff, so it’s not as traumatizing.
The themes are a lot more on-the-nose than a lot of other kids’ movies (forgive me if I err, I am aged and forgetful)- cue la Esmeralda saying, “What do they have against people who are different, anyway?”- you get what’s essentially the same ‘accept others regardless of their differences’, ‘prejudice is bad’ morals from, say, Zootopia, but having given the main characters fursuits makes it less obvious than in this movie.
(Or maybe I’m just a dumbass. I have no elaborate notes for this; I’m high on sugar and deprived of sleep so I might be spewing bullshit.)
Admittedly, the resolution is a bit… unrealistic. The citizens of Paris = sheep, essentially; they go from throwing fruit in Quasimodo’s face because the guards started it, to helping defeat them. Maybe there’s something about mob mentality in there, but I find it hard to believe that people who showed up to watch Esmeralda burn to death were suddenly totally cool with not getting what they didn’t pay for. But then again, this is a Disney movie, and you can’t make kids too cynical too early on. Let them have their innocence and ‘people will be with the heroes in times of peril because humanity is inherently good!’ before they realize that humanity kinda fuckin’ sucks.
The characters are some of the most human from those I’ve seen in Disney (other honorable mentions: the main characters of The Emperor’s New Groove, Moana, Tangled, Anna from Frozen). Quasimodo’s the main character (lol DUH, will I ever say anything not obvious?), and he’s so lovable, but not without flaws- he’s biased against gypsies in the beginning because Frollo’s the literal scum of the earth. To borrow from the K-pop fans’ dictionary: UwU he’s so pure!
Esmeralda sparks a bit of controversy because she’s another POC leading lady from a Disney film of the 90’s (a list including Jasmine, and, sigh- Pocahontas) who’s markedly more sexualized than the white Disney princesses. It’s not something I particularly noticed nor cared about until I saw it being brought up- I mean, the woman shows a bit of cleavage and then dances for a couple of seconds- but. I’m just putting that out there.
She’s an empowering heroine without having to belt in in your face (not me making a dig at Naomi Scott’s Jasmine from the Aladdin live action film), and I also love how her role in taking down the Big Bad doesn’t have to do with her ‘power of seduction’ (the scene in the animated Aladdin film where Jasmine kissed Jafar truly traumatized me as a kid).
Phoebus is… well, he exists. Kind of a Regulus Black archetype, but not exactly. The guy on the bad side who turns good and all is forgiven. Well, at least it’s not the ‘her love made him a better man’ trope. And he is a good guy. Even if he did spend a considerable amount of his adult years on the side of the bad guys.
Systemic oppression? Nah, it’s one or two corrupt baddies. But again, it’s a Disney film, we need everything to work out for the good guys in the end.
Let’s get the gargoyles out of the way. To reference Lindsay Ellis’s video (she’s a lot smarter than I am and breaks this down better than I ever could): yes, the comedy’s oft ill-timed and inappropriate… for an adult audience. And the primary demographic of Disney films, especially princess ones (obviously Esmeralda isn’t a princess, nor does she marry into royalty, nor is she included in the group of princesses in the dumpster fire that is Ralph Breaks the Internet, but I had a book imaginatively titled ‘Disney Princess Stories’ as a kid that included Esmeralda’s story alongside Belle’s and Ariel’s, so I’m calling her a princess), are kids. And kids love fart jokes.
Additionally, I have a theory-that-is-not-really-a-theory-but-a-pretty-obvious-thing-that-happens that the gargoyles are figments of Quasimodo’s imagination, and the, at times crass and ridiculous things they say are just the voices in Quasimodo’s head (THIS IS OBVIOUS, STINA, YOU HAVEN’T STUMBLED ACROSS A STARTLING NEW REVELATION); maybe what he imagines normal townspeople to act like.
And then we have Judge Judy Chrissy Teigen Frollo. This dude is the embodiment of pure evil. He’s bigoted and rapey and abusive and one of Disney’s most successful villains- even better than Mother Gothel, who previously held the crown. It’s rare that a villain genuinely terrifies me, especially a cartoon one. Frollo, unlike your typical fairytale antagonist who wants power/fame/fortune/to overthrow Olympus, is far more sinister; driven from deep-rooted hatred instead of plain greed. He’s so much closer to people in positions of power and authority even in the modern world, and that element of reality makes him so much better as an antagonist instead of a literal sheep who hates carnivores (seriously, Disney, enough with the twist villains- they’re not working out).
Also, Hellfire slaps. In fact, the entire soundtrack does.
Speaking about Hellfire, I love the contrast between that and Heaven’s Light; how Esmeralda is viewed by Frollo (an object to possess, “Destroy Esmeralda, and let her taste the fires of hell; or else, let her be mine and mine alone”) as opposed to Quasimodo (someone with free will, “I dare to dream that she might even care for me”).
Another argument brought up, and admittedly one I had as a child was, ‘but if the whole point of the movie is acceptance and love as opposed to lust, why didn’t Quasimodo get the girl?’ Which, years later, I realize is an extremely misogynistic way to look at it. As Princess Jasmine said four years before The Hunchback was released, she is not a prize to be won. Quasimodo is Frollo’s antithesis; he lets Esmeralda choose, and she chose Phoebus. And Quasimodo accepted that, because he is good and kind and sweet and loving. Severus Snape, take note.
On a sidenote, I’m always kind of caught out of left field when the plot in films moves really fast- I’m really not a movie-watching type; I prefer to read, and books usually indicate how much time passes from one main plot point to another, and there are little slice-of-life, filler parts that tie in to character development and moving the plot forward, but at a snail’s pace. So, whenever I’m watching a movie and it’s one important event after another, I usually haven’t had enough of a refractory period to process it.
Let’s pretend that I segued smoothly into the next part of this (already tedious and long drawn out) review.
The Hunchback is the darkest film I’ve ever seen come out from Disney. Re-watching it as an adult made me pause every so often and wonder why the hell I wasn’t traumatized by it as a kid. I mean, the whole movie kicks off with Frollo about to throw an infant down a well. And then there’s that horrifying shot of the stone renditions of the Israelite kings on the church walls. Frollo falls to his death into fire. I mean, good riddance, but still. I guess it’s because the kids’ shows of today are awfully censored and polished so kids don’t have nightmares forevermore.
Update: tried to watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2. Exited just as fast as I clicked on it. Disney sequels really ain’t shit (yes, I’m looking at you, Frozen 2).
#the hunchback of notre dame#disney#disney princess#victor hugo#disney movies#esmeralda#quasimodo#phoebus#frollo#frozen#frozen 2#lion king#movie review#aladdin#lindsey ellis#zootopia#emperors new groove#moana movie#moana#tangled#2000s kids#90s movies#90s kids#90s cartoons#disney renaissance
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the hunchback of notre dame characters and how much i would trust them with my drink at a party
quasimodo: 7.5/10 - off to a strong start, i just feel like quasi is assigned any task and hyper-focuses on it until its done. if you asked him to watch your drink he would almost definitely guard it with his life and clap anyone who asked about it at all, which is where he gets points off. he’s too protective sometimes, but its all in good intent.
esmerelda: 9/10 - another high one. i just feel like esmerelda goes to a lot of parties and is really good at gauging vibes and stuff and she’d just be really casual about it yknow? like you’d ask her and she’d take it and “yeah, of course? are you ok?” and scratch your shoulder or squeeze it or something. esmerelda’s the person at a party who i might not even know but i would feel comfortable hanging around if i knew i was getting too lost in the sauce.
phoebus: 5.5/10 - when i say this i mean musical phoebus specifically. like andrew samonsky phoebus is just a little bit too much of a noodle for me to be properly okay giving him my cup to hold. like i have this headcanon that if phoebus is staying sober, he’s the designated driver, he’s the best person to have around, like total dad, amazing i love him, but if he’s getting tanked? hes getting TANKED, and i just feel like he’d either forget why he’s holding it and set it down out of sight, or drink it himself, like he just wouldn’t be my first choice, but the one i had to give it too because i didn’t trust anyone else more. does that make sense?
clopin mfing trouillefou: somewhere between the liminality of 5.5 and 6/10 - first off, i wouldn’t be so sure that clopin isn’t the one putting shit in drinks. second, even if he’s not, i feel like he would accidentally spill it getting way too close up in someone’s personal space. however, i feel like if that did happen, he’s say some wack shit like “hey yeah it spilled so i got you another one” and it’s just an entire bottle of vodka, like it’s not what you had, but it’s still alcoholic, so really how bad is he? i think if he’s more sober, he’d be pretty chill about it, which is where the extra half point comes in. he’d set it down but keep an eye on it, let people know it’s his or something if someone tries to take it.
*gags* claude frollo: like???? 2/10? - and im not just saying that because i don’t like him. i just dont trust this guy, i feel like he’d hand it off to the first person that offered to take it from him, total disregard for the people around him please never ever give my drink to this man ever should he show his stupid face at a party at all.
jehan frollo :))) : 9/10 - ok please let me have a false interpretation of this man. like if you really wanted a realistic number, 5/10, i think he’d get really drunk and just not watch it, but my idealized version of the character is kind of akin to esmerelda, he asks if you’re ok, holds it close the entire time, and then when you come back he tops it off and offers if you wanna hang out with him for a while. god i’d kill to have a drunk conversation with jehan i feel like that would be so much fun. he’d take you and hunt down phoebus to safely drive you guys to like a fast food place so you could get burgers and sober up in an empty parking lot somewhere, holy shit watch me write completely separate headcanons for this.
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bonus!
pierre gringoire: 3/10 - first off, i don’t ever wanna go to a party with this guy jesus fuck he’d be so annoying, second, again, he would just like set your drink down and ignore it, and then get all whiny and bitchy when you get upset at him that it’s gone.
disney phoebus de martin: 6.5/10 - alright listen, disney phoebus does not get drunk and would hold your drink in the most neutral sense possible, but he’s also way more fucking hetero than musical phoebus so im taking points off for that, because you KNOW he’d stand behind esmerelda the entire time with a single breezer looking like he wants to either die himself or kill everyone who lays a finger on his girlfriend and he’d claim to support queer ppl but you as a queer person SEVERLY doubt that.
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