I, like many, came to love the world of Vivziepop’s unfinished webcomic, Zoophobia (and especially its awesome characters), so I’ve decided to give the comic an ending like it deserves, starting with a rewrite of the current chapters and leading to a resolution. Maybe with a minor cliffhanger that leaves “running room” for more plot (like the original might have done, since there were multiple books planned), but I haven’t decided on that yet.
“But Acacia, why a rewrite?”
Excellent question! I’ve chosen to begin with a rewrite for two reasons:
One: I do not know where the story was supposed to go from the point where it ended. I can’t tell what the plot was building towards, which means it would be difficult for me to continue this story under the current circumstances. So I will need to change the story in order to give myself a logical progression of plot beats.
Two: I personally have some criticisms of how this story was written, and as a perfectionist, it would be hard for me to leave them as they lie. Therefore, I’ll be making some changes to make this a more cohesive story.
Something important to take note of here: in this process, I will explain my analytical criticisms of this comic’s writing, sometimes using passionate language. Know that these judgments are solely about this work as it was written at the time, and not a commentary on the creator’s current writing ability.
Full disclosure, I do not think that Vivziepop is a good writer or a good person based on what I know about who she is today, and I certainly do not support her actions, but my commentary on her old work is NOT my reasoning for any of these opinions, and this is NOT the place to try and convince me to change them.
Anyway.
It will be a while before I get around to writing this as prose (I would make it as a fancomic but I’m not great at drawing and don’t have the patience for it like I do for writing). And I’m going to be laying nearly everything out here, so if you don’t want to get major spoilers for the story version of this, just be aware that those are around here.
This blog will mostly be to jot down my ideas! These will be separated by #world building, #character, #relationships, #plot, and #misc.
Some might have misc and another category if they’re only tangentially connected to that category in some way. I’m also gonna throw all those tags onto this post so you can use them to search this blog! Because I take the “Wile E. Coyote method” to organization.
This brings me to another thing about the nature of this project: it’s meant to be a balance between predictions about what Vivziepop may have wanted for this story and my own ideas for how best to convey that. Basically, it’s my best guess at what she wanted for her story, told the way I would have written it.
Asks with questions or suggestions are welcomed and encouraged!
This AU will be called “Fearless Phony”. It’s named after one major change in the plot: Cameron doesn’t tell anyone about her zoophobia right away because she doesn’t yet trust anyone enough to be honest about it. Her attempts to hide it are semi-successful… people can tell she’s nervous most of the time but they think it’s just her personality or something else is bothering her.
Actually, there will generally be more secrets in this version. Some of those subplots had potential, and ending them right away gave us net zero information about characters in some cases.
“Acacia, this story is over a decade old, why do you care about it enough to do this?”
Honestly? Because ZP in its current state is a writer’s dream. It’s exactly the right amount of unfinished that there’s a lot of room for creative freedom, but with enough world and character building that I don’t have to do too much additive work to it to make it a decent story. It’s honestly the most entertaining source material to write fan fiction for that I’ve found yet for this reason. I’d recommend doing something with it to anyone trying to ride that “fanfic to original work” pipeline.
Plus, I enjoy sassily analyzing media. So there’s that ;)
If you want to read ZP and see for yourself, here’s the link to the comic itself on the internet archive, and here’s the fan wiki, where I’ve found a lot of my sources for stuff that wasn’t included in the comic.
