I’m a singer-songwriter. The two lines I’ve put in every song I’ve ever sung: “spread your wings and fly”, and “you deserve to be a champion”.

To be a show that I truly internalize, that I love with my whole heart and will watch when I am sad and will write fic about and preach the wonders of far and wide, to be that kind of a show to me, you can’t be a cynical show.

In order to understand this, I need to say…I’m not an edgy person. I’m downright boring when it comes to the things that really get me, intellectually and emotionally. Once upon a long time ago, I thought I needed to change this about myself - that I should learn to embrace irony and cynicism and casual meanness in the way so many people in my age group seemed to. The way so many people seemed to in general. But that’s just not me, guys! I am a big earnest dork. I’m sincere, I have little patience for flowery, needlessly complicated stuff. Sometimes I’m a jerk, but sometimes everyone is a jerk. My very roundabout point is that in my heart of hearts, there is really only goo.

So, okay. This fits into my entertainment preferences in this way: I cannot marry a narrative in the eternal kingdom if it isn’t sincere and somewhat idealistic. I just can’t! There are some shows I totally adore that I just cannot take the last step to connect to on an emotional level because they’re too cynical. And they can be HILARIOUS for this reason. And sometimes I wish I could connect with them, despite knowing it will never be! 30 Rock, for one, although I doubt anyone can really ~*~emotionally connect~*~ with 30 Rock so that is a terrible example. But like, Dexter. Dexter is one of my favorite shows, but it can never be one of the narratives of my heart, because it’s not a wide-eyed child inside. It’s me, not the show. It’s me and all of my nerdy feelings.

The biggest way this manifests itself in my viewing preferences is that I will always have issues with shows where people don’t like each other. Often, that’s the one big gap I can’t bridge. Even if there are a few people who like each other, if the larger group dynamic is one of discomfort, I’m not there. Conversely, if a show is about a bunch of people who are affectionate and friendly and come together as a makeshift family or some shit, that will almost always sell me. I LOVE IT. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. It’s like my crack, that trope, and it always has been.

Take The Office and Parks and Recreation. They are both great shows, or at least, there was a time when The Office was a great show. And I love Pam Beesly as much as a lady can love a character, so it’s not like I didn’t have a foothold (which I must always have, a character to latch onto who I love the very most and makes me go *___*). But nobody likes each other! Nobody is friends, and everyone is sad. That’s what makes The Office what it is, and I wouldn’t want it to change, but when Parks and Rec came along - similar in so many ways, but different in so many other important ones, I realized what I ~*~truly needed~*~.

The Parks Department have each other’s backs, and basically, every episode is in some way about how they have each other’s backs. And this is what will keep me compelled no matter what the overarching disaster is. They waited for Leslie to light the Christmas tree. Ann wants to be friends with April, even though April hates her. Mark helps Ron with his gross wood shop. That’s the shit that keeps me in, and the same is true of Community, which I wasn’t expecting to the degree I’ve received it. The same is true of HIMYM in perhaps the most relatable way out of all of these shows, which is why HIMYM is the true winner in the Show of My Heart contest, even if this season has been icky.

I like it when a show shares my ideals. That even when things are crappy, people can be there for each other and because of that they will get better. I like it when characters of all kinds also have gooey centers like my gooey center. And perhaps that is not the most adult way to look at TV or at life, and maybe it is sad for me, because I will never connect with many beautiful works of HBO art on a deeper level or whatever, but I am fine with it. It has been a useful revelation.

And I feel like I should mention Avatar and Planetes really quickly, even though this post has been about live action TV and the idealism of many animated shows (and how this is true in different ways of anime and western animation) vs. the different viewpoint of much of live action is another post for another time. So. AVATAR AND PLANETES!

In conclusion, F IS FOR FRIENDS WHO DO STUFF TOGETHER.

(I would like to preface this with some fax: I have never read The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, nor do I know…anything about it besides the bare bones, really. So in a sense I’m judging this almost like an original story.)

I was eight when I saw The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the first time, or I guess I must have been, since I’m working on the assumption that the one time I ever saw it before now when it first came out in theaters.

I didn’t like it. I remember that much - I was actually angry, because the soundtrack wasn’t what I expected, and the movie itself seemed too dense and sad and different from the sort of Disney I wanted. So I just forgot about it, except for the occasional thought over the years that hey, maybe I should watch it again.

Well, I finally watched it again! And…wow. Wow! Of course past!Meredith didn’t like it! I can’t imagine any eight year old liking this film! It is sad, and it is dense, and it is extremely disturbing. It is not a perfect film by any means, it is certainly not a Perfect Disney Film*, but looking at it within the scope of what Disney is actually allowed to put out into the world, it is kind of astounding for a bunch of reasons. The largest of which is it is so tonally different from the rest of the animated canon. I feel like this movie was somehow slipped under the radar, like the creators were allowed to do their own thing for a surprising amount of the time, which is the same way I feel about Lilo and Stitch (for which it was actually true - I don’t know if it was for Hunchback).

Obviously it is still a typical Disney film in many ways. We have all the stock characters, the good vs. evil plot, and the songs. But if the Gargoyles (who are obnoxious) were taken out of this film, there would really be nothing For Children. The thing that stuck out the most, to me, is how much It’s a movie about ugliness. There’s still the Disney moral of Finding the Good and Beauty in All Things, and eventually Quasimodo achieves that to a degree, but there is so much leftover that can never be made beautiful and it is not hidden from us that it never will be.

He saved everyone, sure, but he was also deified in the Feast of Fools and then almost killed. I don’t think the film wants us to forget that, although that might be me giving it way too much credit.

I’ve heard people complain that the adult themes in this film are glossed over, and of course some of them are - but again, it has to be looked at within the context of Disney and what they are allowed within their own brand. And in that regard, it does spectacularly well. We’ve got: rape, prejudice and racism which is actually dealt with (even if it is heavy-handed), religion, destruction, death!

The religion is definitely what interested me the most. Just the fact that it’s so, so blatantly there. ALL THE TIME, IN EVERYTHING. We’re watching an animated Catholic Church, there’s no reading between the lines. And said Church is, within the narrative, doing as much bad as it is good. I kept being like: THIS IS A DISNEY MOVIE I AM WATCHING? O-OKAY. YOU JUST KEEP SINGING, JUDGE FROLLO, I…WILL JUST BE OVER HERE, FEELING EXTREMELY DISORIENTED.

More superficially: the animation is fucking gorgeous. Seriously, eyegasmy, fucking gorgeous. The movement, the colors, the CITYSCAPES. This wasn’t just churned out quickly. AND THE MUSIC. HOLY SHIT, THAT CHOIR! I can’t even be calm and analytical about the music. Which I think is TOTALLY FAIR.

So it is not my favorite movie - the plot is kind of thin as Disney plots sometimes tend to be, I’m not as emotionally invested in it as I could have been, because it was honestly not hitting a lot of my narrative kinks, and also because blatantly idealistic Disney will always be where my deepest heart lies. But it is so worthwhile, and I am enormously glad I gave it another chance. And enormously glad I waited until 21 to do so.

Hunchback is most impressive to me as a vision, even if it’s not fully realized, of just how interesting it could be if Disney was allowed to go as dark as they wanted to, finally letting out all of the stuff so easily spotted under the surface of other, more outwardly cheery films.

Also, you know, Esmeralda? IS AWESOME. SO AWESOME. THE AWESOMEST. So there is also that.

*In my mind, The Most Perfect Disney film, in terms of capturing exactly what is Quintessentially Disney, is Beauty and the Beast. I don’t mean it’s my favorite, I just mean it does what it does within that template very well.

When I consume media, I invariably have ~*~many thoughts~*~ about what I have just consumed, but no real place to gather them all. So! This is a place where I will talk about things I watch and read.

Sometimes it will be about feelings, and sometimes it will be about analysis, and sometimes it will be about simply wanting to share awesome things with you.

Mostly, it is about stories being my favorite.