- "If my child plays chess, they are seen as intelligent but if my child plays poker, suddenly I'm a bad parent."
Zoe Kirk-Robinson is an award-winning British writer, artist, blogger, vlogger and podcaster. She is the creator of The Life of Nob T. Mouse, Ink Proof Cannon, The Webcomic Builder, and Building Tales as well as co-creator of All Over The House and one fifth of The Webcomics Company. She works primarily in Webcomics, where she mixes humour with science-fiction, horror and surrealism, and on YouTube, where she mostly discusses law.
Her prominent works are:
- All Over The House (comic, 2009-present)
- Curse Of The Other World (novel, 2010)
- The Life of Nob T. Mouse (comic, 1996-present)
- Ink Proof Cannon (comic, 2011-present)
- Unholy Crusade (novella, 2011)
Her website is at zoerobinson.com, which is also her main pen name, and her Twitter feed is @zoekirkrobinson.
Zoë displays examples of:
- Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: She co-writes two webcomics; writes all five stories on an anthology webcomic; co-hosts three podcasts; has three YouTube channels; posts on a collaborative YouTube channel; runs four blogs; and studies for a law degree. Oh, and she has a full time job, too.
- Berserk Button: Watch any video where she discusses homophobia, transphobia or misuses of religion. Time how long it takes for her to start ranting. You'll likely not make it past the two minute mark.
- Catchphrase: At least two, from her YouTube videos:"Hello, Mousers!""I'm Zoë Kirk-Robinson, you've been watching a video, and I'll see you [tomorrow/next time]."
- Cunning Linguist: As her use of foreign languages in her work can attest, she understands a variety of languages, including: English, French, German, Latin, Japanese, Norwegian and Welsh. However, due to the fact that she is tone deaf
(and is now apparently losing her hearing entirely), her pronunciation of anything except English is appalling. - Deadpan Snarker: She is one.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: After speech therapy changed her accent and she started trying to get her old one back, she's a real-life example. Watch a few videos and you'll hear her go from English to some weird Scottish/Irish mixture, then back again.
Her work contains examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: Several episodes of The Life of Nob T. Mouse are parodies of Star Trek and Doctor Who. She has also written a short play parodying Star Trek.
- The Alcoholic: Dr Peter Rowe in Curse Of The Other World is on the wagon, but only just.
- Broken Bird: Gretl Lune in Unholy Crusade.
- Bilingual Bonus: She is not afraid of using multiple languages in her works, including several references in her comics to "Caecilius"; the protagonist from the Cambridge Latin Course used to teach Latin in British schools.
- Bio-Augmentation: Tom Carter appears to have several enhancements in him in The Scream of Eternity.
- Brain Uploading: Seren Oilean was uploaded into a digital city when she was five, in The Scream of Eternity.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Tesrin Stepford-Brown, from All Over The House, is a Barrister, a local Councillor, a Cloudcuckoolander and a Demonologist.
- The Cameo: Characters from All Over The House show up in The Life of Nob T. Mouse, and vice-versa. She also re-uses characters from her novels and short stories, presumably to create the appearance of a shared world.
- Cyborg: Detective Sergent Eric Ross is one in The Scream of Eternity.
- Dr. Jerk: Kate Barclay in Curse of the Other World is a somewhat mean-spirited jackass to everyone she comes across.
- Despair Event Horizon: It seems Seth Baron reaches one in Unholy Crusade.
- Eldritch Abomination: She seems to love this trope. There's at least one in The Life of Nob T. Mouse, All Over The House, Curse Of The Other World, The Final Report Of James Graham, Henry Carter'sJourney and The Night Shift.
- Fictional Document: Several. The main ones are:
- Wanderings by Mustafa Faisal, in Curse Of The Other World
- The Blobland Band series of books, films and TV shows by Hubert Schlongson in The Life of Nob T. Mouse and All Over The House
- The Book of Elbar in The Scream of Eternity.
- The Multiverse: Kirk-Robinson loves this trope. Not satisfied with linking her two longest-running comics together into one shared universe, she also links her prose stories. To top it all off, she also created the concept of "Quantum History"; a faux scientific theory that time is split into distinct quantum states that act as individual universes and our perception of the past and future is based solely on what was most probable at the time.
- Sociopathic Hero: As the early chapters of Curse Of The Other World clearly show, Kate Barclay is motivated to do good simply by boredom and a need for revenge.
- Surrealism: Kirk-Robinson studied surrealism as an art student and references it a lot in her art.
- Talking Pet: Averted. Tiddles the Cow and all the Gorms in All Over The House do not speak.
- Transhumanism: Shows up a lot in her blog posts, especially when she has been playing Second Life a lot.
