#zootopia worldbuilding

[melonthesprigatito]

After the release of the mini series, I've started to slip back into my dormant Zootopia hyperfixation, and boy let me tell you, it's one of THE HARDEST fandoms to find content that interests me.

Why?

Because 97% of it is just Judy Hopps/Nick Wilde shipping. All of it. Fanart, fanfics, it's just the shipping.

What drew me to Zootopia was the worldbuilding aspect and the animals who live in that world. Just... this entire city filled with so many different species that was architecturally designed to fit ALL OF THEM no matter what climate they're from or size they are. That just fascinated me!

Yet all the fanfics don't really explore all that. I can count the number of fanfics I've read about regular people on one hand. There's the one about the therapy sessions for the animals who got affected by the Savage Predator crisis, the one about the tiger and the rabbit single mom who had several chance encounters and became friends, and........ actually, that's it.

I dunno, I guess I'd rather read about a mouse being roommates with an elephant or something, how would that work? What are their lives like? Or maybe I just want to read something about the struggles of the leopard who runs a small cosy coffee shop having to compete with the Snarlbucks across the street (yes, that is the canon name for Starbucks in the Zootopia universe. That's another part of the worldbuilding I like, all the brands have animal pun names and I find it unreasonably hilarious) Or maybe an animal moving to one of the districts that is NOT a climate they can comfortably live in and having to make do with it, all because they put the needs of their best friend (aka an animal that does live in the climate they moved into) above their own.

Just simple slice of life stuff.

I have this entire slice of life fanfic idea in my brain that I'll probably never get around to writing that has pretty much zero canon characters in it at all. It has an entire cast of OCs just because I liked daydreaming about how the regular citizens of Zootopia of all shapes and sizes live their lives.

[zootopepo]

City States and Unions

This began as a comment in robbertfiddler's amazing headcanon about "countries in Zootopia": http://robertfiddler.deviantart.com/art/My-Zootopia-Headcanons-Number-3-637902662 I just couldn't stop thinking about it. So, I the Zooniverse, there are no countries like we know in our universe. Instead, there are great City-States, populated by species who coexist in a certain ecosystem. Bunnyburrow, for instance. A city-state of rabbits mostly, with some sheep, and a handful of predators. Zootopia City is an outlier. An odd place where nearly ALL species exist. So, what's with the "Federal" thing? It's because these City-States banded together to form Unions. Not a tight, constitution-based union like the USA, but a looser confederation based on multilateral agreements. Think Soviet Union without the military annexation. Or the CIS (Confederation of Independent States). In the Union Agreement, there are clauses that dictates what aspects of nation-building will be shared. Most Unions in our universe share at least a Defense Force (and Intelligence)... and taxes. This is what was meant by "Federal": Some Union-wide organizations shared between all member City-States to provide a common service in accordance with the Union Agreement. And due to the undoubtedly heterogeneous composition of species in the Zooniverse, Unions are the norm to the Zooniverse. Quite unlike our Earth. Since City-States mostly band together only with Union Agreements, loyalty (or fealty) is very liquid. That's also the reason why war, or a wide-ranging "World War", would be relatively infrequent: A Union cannot ensure that its member states will still "stick together" until conclusion of the war. Member States who disagree with the war can separate, ultimately reducing the might of a Union's military force. This is why the most powerful armed force we have seen so far is the Zootopia Police Department. Because the ZDF (Zootopia Defense Force) is relatively small. And probably mostly manned (mammaled?) by reservists. The fluid allegiance also ensured that a form of democracy would also be commonplace: The Unions need to keep their Member States happy, so the Union would have Representatives of the Member States to influence the Union Policies. Within each City-State, however, various forms of government are available: Hereditary, Meritocracy, Democracy, etc. Hmm... this impacts my Fanfic greatly. I have to rethink everything.

[zootopepo]

Are you aware that one of the directors of Zootopia confirmed in a tweet that Zootopia takes place in an entirely different world and thus doesn't have our continents?

No, not really. But in-movie evidences already indicated that, though.

Consider the coordinates of the traffic cam on Vine & Tujunga: If you map the coordinates to our earth, you will find out that the location is somewhere near Burbank, CA.

And the lay of the land in CA is totally different from the lay of the land of Zootopia City.

So yeah, I have guessed -- based on strong evidences -- that Zootopia happens on a planet whose landmasses are different from our Earth; the “Zooniverse”.

That doesn’t mean we can’t use the general geographic location of the continents on Earth to do a worldbuilding of Zooniverse, though :-)

[zootopepo]

Hi, I really liked the post on City States and Unions you did and I have a question about wider world building; what did you do for continental names? Do you simply use contemporary names (America, Africa, Asia etc) or do you have completely original name sets or have you done something else entirely? I really enjoy all the world building speculation you’ve done and speculation of the world beyond Zootopia is a huge interest of mine. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, if its no trouble.

Actually... I haven’t thought that far 😅

I think I’m going to borrowing heavily from paleo-geological names such as “Laurasia”, “Gondwana”, etc.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supercontinents#Prehistoricals

SInce these paleo-geologic “supercontinents” would later on break apart to form the current continents, we can kinda analogize them with the current continents. For example:

Africa 🠆Gondwana

North America 🠆Laurentia

Australia 🠆 Vaalbara

etc.

.

[zootopepo]

A glance at the Climate Wall Heat Pumps.

[adragonwithablog]

So Zootopia

So a thought, if Judy and Nick were to end up together they could never have babies. Since Fox’s and Bunnies are different species and nature says no! Right? Or it’s that they could make babies but then those babies can’t have babies, like mule’s. 

Unless! They evolved past the point where inter-species offspring is possible. MAN DISNEY GIVE ME MORE WORLD BUILDING!