Shikaru Made a Thing

She's got an animation degree, I know the art in Undertale gets underappreciated sometimes because it's trying to evoke an older simpler style, but the art in Undertale is legit amazing and without Temmie, none of Toby's ideas would have been able to be realized (without finding some other artist and animator)

The book mostly is told from the POV of Pierre, a self-insert who is failed author and, I cannot stress this enough, utterly pathetic 

Quasimodo damaged his hearing as a teenager from years of bell ringing and now uses sign language whenever he can

There is a scene where Quasimodo and a fellow deaf guy have to have a conversation without using sign language because they’re in a courtroom and the jury doesn’t know sign. It goes about as well as you’d expect 

Frollo has a little brother, Jehan, who he raised after their parents died. Jehan is now a frat bro in college whose hobbies consist of getting drunk and being mean to Quasimodo. In his first scene Jehan complains about college DEI because an Italian guy got a scholarship he wanted. 

Esmeralda is accused of witchcraft because she taught her pet goat Djali how to do math

Djali may or may not be sapient. He can and does imitate human mannerisms to make fun of people on purpose. He does this while on trial. 

Yes. They tried the goat for witchcraft, too. 

Pierre writes a whole play riding on the pun of dolphin/Dauphin. Nobody likes it. 

Frollo is an alchemist and has a secret mad science lab where he writes on the walls

Jehan literally pulls a “buy my silence” and frollo gives him money to make him shut up

There’s a trio of catty girls who bully Esmeralda like it’s Mean Girls

Quasimodo and Frollo literally have Cryptid Status— Parisians circulate rumors that Quasimodo is either a familiar, a homunculus, or the result of demonic mpreg, and that Frollo is a wizard with wizard powers and/or a ghost

There is a little old woman who lives in a hole and shouts slurs at people. She has a tragic backstory. 

There is a homicidal con man/king of thieves named Clopin Troillefou (surname translation: The Fool of Fear) who deserves tumblr sexymanhood.

Pierre learns how to carry chairs with his teeth 

There’s an entire chapter dedicated to the layout of the streets of Paris in painstaking detail

There’s another chapter that is a rant about interior design 

Esmeralda and Pierre get platonically married due to Clopin’s murderous shenanigans. Pierre tries to make a move in her but ends up being more emotionally attached to Djali the goat than to her. I think that should be grounds for divorce

There is a scene where Pierre has to choose between helping Esmeralda escape or helping Djali. He picks Djali. 

Frollo hides from his own brother by laying face down in mud and playing dead. Somehow this works 

There is a Plot Significant Tiny Shoe. A Tiny Shoe Chekhov’s Gun. And Victor Hugo will not stop telling you just how Tiny this shoe is. 

There’s a soap opera style plot twist that involves a false accusation of cannibalism and the woman in the hole who shouts slurs

Quasimodo makes up a stupid little song that doesn’t even rhyme to confess his love to Esmeralda, who remains oblivious

He then attempts to demonstrate his affection via convoluted metaphors that involve props. She doesn’t get it. Boy please say what you mean

Frollo pulls the classic discord groomer tactic of threatening self-harm if Esmeralda doesn’t give in. 

Jehan rolls up to a party/rescue mission scheming session in Clopin’s secret hideout in full plate armor (how did he get that???), drunk off his ass, and acts like he owns the place. Everyone finds this so ridiculous that they just let him

Hugo goes on and on about how innocent and naive Esmeralda is but then casually reveals that Esmeralda carries a dagger on her person at all times to fend off assault. When Frollo attacks her and Quasi intervenes, she takes Quasi’s knife and almost kills Frollo (fair!) but he flees. She contains multitudes?

Frollo has a psychotic breakdown in the middle of a field surrounded by chickens and hallucinates skeletons everywhere 

For the first half of the book Esmeralda is like 70% sure Frollo is a ghost, not helped by his aforementioned Cryptid Status

Jehan eats a moldy piece of cheese off the ground 

Frollo tries to send Pierre on a suicide mission in drag. Pierre objects to the suicide part but not the drag part  

Clopin’s preferred weapon is a scythe, he’s very good at using it, and he sings when he fights. Again: sexyman potential. 

Victor Hugo has a foot fetish. I initially dismissed it as Frollo having a foot fetish until Victor Hugo included a foot fetish torture scene without any Frollo in it. So I can only conclude that the foot fetish is authorial in nature. Unfortunately the foot scenes are important to the plot. 

Frollo is canonically 36, he just aged like shit and is bald. The narrator will not stop telling you just how bald he is.

Despite being in full plate armor, Jehan gets splatted like a bug

KOSA IS MOVING FORWARD IN THE HOUSE!

It's part of a package called the KIDS Act, filled with digital ID and age verification and censorship!

MAKE THOSE PHONES RING!! CALL YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ALL WEEK

202-224-3121 i HIGHLY encourage everyone to read the bills in the KIDS Act, because you will be doing more than 95% of people who read and introduce these bills

https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Asexual_spectrum

^ link to the flag, theres multiple & thought itd be easier to send with with my ask :] Stay Safe!!! Have a good pride month

ohohoh. ok first of all im not a linguist of course but i DO love talking.

so. jon definitely does not sound like a cockney. 'upper class' english would be much more accurate. so im with you!

there may be a littleeee bit of nuance here as jons accent does sort of change sometimes.

VERY early series jon is extremely formal, enunciating in a very 'posh' sounding way. another name for that sort of accent is 'received pronunciation' (or RP). this accent is associated with the south (particularly south-east) of england, but was also historically a sign of good (private) education (like the standard accent for the ruling classes/educated people, no matter where they were from).

something fun about the way early-jon talks is that its also pretty dated. like jonny is definitely hamming it up a little, exaggerating slightly old fashioned RP conventions - lots of vocal fry, and even at one or two points uses a 'tapped' r (like in the word 'various', allowing the tongue to tap the roof of the mouth when pronouncing the 'r' so that it almost sounds like a 'd'). like. that's some Edwardian shit. HES A MILLENNIAL HE HAS NO BUSINESS DOING THAT.

im probably giving way too much detail there lmao

but basically, thats as much a regional thing as it is a class and era thing. like yes, his accent sounds southern english, but cockney is ALSO southern english (albeit traditionally specifically london. Specifically working class. And also viewed as pretty "dated" as well. There are certainly people who call themselves cockney and many people who have a cockney-ish accent, but still, as a term it does sort of evoke Victorian era.)

anyway, jons accent early on feels really old fashioned at times. it feels like jonny was maybe using it to set the scene and create a 'spooky gothic horror crypt-keeper' vibe by evoking victorian/edwardian speaking conventions. plus i guess to characterise jon as pretentious.

but once time goes on a little and we get more of a sense of him as a person in the world who has to interact with other people, he gets a little less ✨dramatic with it. More natural, less affected. he still sounds pretty posh, just because he enunciates a lot.

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.