Additional Reference Help
Initially completely against finding the original clip where the audio was taken from, nearing the end of the animation I realized it could only help drive the emotions home, comparing to the performance I created to the original would have helped – and it did, even if minimally, because what I realized is that the facial movement in the original performance was minimal.
This made me realize another thing – realistically, facial movement IS minimal, eyebrows, cheek muscles, nose and lips during speech and dialogue and expressions all move incredibly subtly into poses we can however easily recognise and instantly read in the human face.
Leading to another realization – that therefore my animation could not be a REALISTIC identical to life dialogue mirroring – because in a 3d model as stylized as Mery, that would not be read well at all – and would look minimal and empty of emotions.
I instantly thought of Disney's portrayal of emotion in it’s 3d feature films, and given the striking resemblance between Mery and some of the characters in the feature film Frozen, I looked toward it as a point of reference for how speech was synced and emotion clearly expressed and driven to the audience.
I found that many of the emotions and facial expressions were pushed and exaggerated in order to be readable, and that majorly the eyebrows and eyes were what did most of the talking, and that the lips did not move to match every word and mouthshape (something I had previously learned, but was reminded).