Zootopia Fanfiction Thread

Nice to see everyone hard at work! I'm pretty hard at work in real life, but in the meantime, have this! Thanks for the inspiration, Pres.

You're most welcome! I didn't even notice you had posted here. :V

It's interesting that you made Zooniverse!Nakhta a pred-focused fashion designer/executive/execusigner. I suspect her doing so would be seen as a statement, but if she made clothes for, say, mammals of a certain size, then nobody would bat an eye. It'd just be a business decision. :V

I've noticed by now that I seem to enjoy writing about size differences in the Zooniverse; they were explored in the movie, to be sure, but then they ultimately got eclipsed by pred/prey division. Of course, there's even more potential levels of societal discord beyond that. It undoubtedly gets quite complicated at times, which can make things interesting. Mice and rats will squabble amongst themselves but band together against cats; do they team up with the cats against the cows for being bigger, or do they team up with the cows against the cats because they're predators? Or perhaps the mice go with the cows and the rats go with the cats, since rats and cats can relate over a 'disreputable' reputation. And so on and so forth.

For one thing, mustelids are disproportionately represented in the Zootopian criminal underworld, if you go by my writing. :/ Then again, Mrs. Otterton is a mustelid as well, and I made her the mayor.

edited 23rd Mar '17 7:58:24 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

It seemed the right place. X3

Indeed, this is a calculated move on her part. De Renaud was always discreetly oriented in that decision, but she decided to make it part of their official business statement, in part to make it stand out, in part as a surprisingly genuine statement of solidarity, and in part as an unspoken middle finger to those smug cusses at Preyda. And while she may not be drawing up designs herself, she insists on helping decide which lines will actually be sold, because she prefers paws-on management even of the seedier side of the group. That said, yeah, size difference would just make it more of a question of what size equipment to primarily use and how much fabric to buy...

I actually thought that was one of the more interesting subtle social divisions in the film, always present even if attention isn't always drawn to it as in Little Rodentia. From the sheer size of elephant ice treats to Judy's inability to sit at a standard desk normally, to, simply, the train design. It was one of the details that really made Zootopia feel like an actual functioning city where others were just generic standins for human cities (since in real life no, say, mice citizens would be happy trying to go through the same main entrance around the hooves of llamas and such, realistically). And it's an interesting metaphor for being "the little guy", yeah!

Well...stereotypes, but yeah, they are potentially just right for it, and you know labeling theory...

Intriguing; I'm honestly curious what evil, fashion-related plots she might indulge in. :V

I definitely agree with you on that one. I have a few headcanons that relate to that, further. I figured that living costs for large mammals are higher than they are for smaller ones, and so to 'level the playing field' and encourage inter-species interaction, mammals are taxed depending on size. Larger mammals make up a minority of the city's overall population, so these taxes wouldn't be so high as to be completely unsustainable, but it'd still be a point of contention for rodents and the like, and a big reason why rodents are statistically more likely to tax dodge or turn to the black market, even if the majority of rodents are law-abiding citizens.

I also figured that the skyscrapers in Downtown are size-segregated, with smaller mammals being housed on the upper floors and larger mammals towards the bottom, in order to simultaneously cut construction costs and fulfil health and safety regs; though sufficiently wealthy large mammals might pay extra to have their penthouse reinforced against their added weight. :V

As for the mustelids, I did think it'd mostly be a result of labelling. Same deal that Nick had. And partly Dmitry Minsko here. He came to Zootopia on money he raised dealing catnip to tourists in Marmow, but he wanted to go legit and sell imported full-dairy organic yoghurt. Problem was, full-dairy products are subject to strict regulation since... well, the dairy providers are sentient. Unfortunately, he couldn't get the necessary permits because everyone mistook him for a weasel, forcing him to illegally smuggle the yoghurt into the country. And then he realised that he could make a lot more money if he just started smuggling catnip instead. And then he started hiring thugs to rough up his competitors, and THEN he diversified into harder drugs to make even more money, and so forth.

edited 23rd Mar '17 10:02:26 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

I love that trope just because of the sheer absurdity it can lead to. Well, it's not like it's, appropriately enough, Zoolander, but she has lots of shady things going on. In addition to the usual, expected corporate espionage and sabotage, there's lots and lots of smuggling of all kinds, probably sweatshops somewhere with plausible deniability, and perhaps even discreet ties to certain groups (but she's totally not a closet pred supremacist!). And whatever else I can come up with.

That does sound like something they'd do, well-intentioned but Innocently Insensitive as the government seems to largely be. Also, remember that Jumbeaux refers to "fox ice cream parlors"—what if they're segregated not just out of speciesism, but for sales tax purposes as well? I can definitely see that angering them, since their things are definitely the easiest to manufacture, so they would feel that they shouldn't have to pay more things pointlessly so they can help support people who don't even like them.

And that would also make sense! I can just imagine an office full of rhinoceroses above the Lemming Bros. offices and the resulting carnage otherwise...but to some people it'd feel like a literal manifestation of the problems with the city, no doubt. (Incidentally, I put the offices of the company here◊ in my headcanon map!)

Ooh, nice backstory! Very nice. Actually reminiscent of that one part of BoJack Horseman, too... This just makes me want to see a serious drama series set in the city from Netflix or something. And sad but true, looking forward to more of that at FF.net! My turn, I guess. Well, Nakhta's great-grandfather established the company in The Old Country, but her grandfather brought it to Zootopia when her father was a young cub. There was an Arranged Marriage between him and his distant cousin who was already here, and they had five kids, three tods and two vixens, Nakhta being the youngest. All of them were in some way mentally unstable, conditions not helped by being rich enough to do whatever they wanted and having parents too preoccupied to bother getting them help. Nakhta has developed into an intensely paranoid but quite arrogant person who puts on a good poker face when required but loves nothing more than being able to go, "I know something you don't know!" She pretty much had to pick up the criminal elements of the organization when she took over, not that she minded. As for why she took over, her entire immediately family—both parents, four siblings—were killed in a boating accident a couple years back, which she had nothing to do with! No, really, she actually didn't.

Incidentally, if anyone was curious about her name, since I love linguistics, let me break it down. Her family in both realities claims descent from a heroic King Arthur-as-a-trickster figure. He was originally, if he ever really lived, a *Welshman named Rhenydd, which the *Romans wrote down as Renatus. The *Saxons turned that into Reinart, which evolved into *English as Reynard and *French as Renaud.

edited 24th Mar '17 8:18:58 AM by TheGreatUnknown

Re: Taxes: Very true; I didn't even think of that (I think). I figured that, since Zootopia prides itself on its diversity, the whole point of the tax policy would be to encourage different species to mingle and do business with each other, while discouraging self-segregation and businesses catering to overly-specific demographics to the exclusion of everyone else. Of course, this would be faced with opposition, and not just from plain old speciesists; some might prefer safety with their own species or size group (e.g. Little Rodentia^note though it might not be a good idea to compare them to real-life groups that choose to live amongst themselves, since rodents have legitimate safety concerns with regards to living with larger species, which humans obviously lack).

And then some might argue that the tax policy accomplishes the exact opposite of its intention, as there's no practical incentive for large mammal businesses to cater to smaller mammals because they logically wouldn't have enough money to afford their products anyway (and that's assuming they even had a need for them), so in practice everything just gets biased in favour of large mammals. Whether you agree with them or not is a different matter, but it serves as a reminder how grey and complicated politics really is. :/ I figure that when Mrs. Otterton was running for mayor, one of her top campaign promises was to abolish the 'size tax' completely and replace it with a 'universal tax'.

Re: Nakhta: Interesting stuff. I figured she'd have to be a little crazy. Nice way you worked the classic Royally Big, Screwed-Up Family into a modern setting. Makes me wonder if she has a Complexity Addiction. Minsko likes to plan ahead, but generally prefers Boring, but Practical 'single-step strategies'; things like 'kill that witness', 'bribe those cops', and so on. Nice twist with the genuine accident for a change, also. :V

Re: Renaud: You know, I always knew it had something to do with foxes, but never imagined it had any connection with King Arthur. TIL.

edited 24th Mar '17 8:02:37 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

Not exactly fic related. But in terms of fanart I think I started a small shipping war yesterday when I dared to draw Nick going out on a date with an otter that asks him out on the phone game

Oh yeah, I've seen that screenshot XD

For reference the otter in question, she really knows what she wants◊. I have to say she is a smooth customer

I remember seeing that. I find it interesting how some shippers seem to get angry on the character's behalf, because Judy herself seems totally cool with it. Probably taking it in good humour as she knows Nick won't actually fall for the otter. :V

edited 24th Mar '17 4:37:36 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

All I know is I woke up this morning to 500 notes and a good 50% of those are varying levels of unhappy shippers.

But I have to say Judy as Nick's wingman is my favorite thing and if anyone knows of anything fitting that description fic wise please inform me.

Oh, I actually do know something that might fit the bill, depending on where it goes! I don't remember the exact name, but it's on Deviant Art under Ruffu. The potential love interest in question is named Megan Fawkes, for the reference...

Remind me to make a big response to Pres in the morning!

edited 24th Mar '17 6:54:27 PM by TheGreatUnknown

Remind me to remind you to post a big response. :V

I've read that one and so far it is delightful!

Orrrr it could take a while. X3 Sorry, it's...been stressful. (At least I don't have the stress of worrying about probably non-canon anyway shipping charts, haha.)

Oh, I don't think we need to reach very far for that one. We've already seen in our own world busing and related concepts designed at mingling. When it goes well, it's all good, but they don't always work as planned. It does get trickier when there are good historical and simply physical reasons to fear integration, admittedly, but the allegory still holds pretty well.

Good point, and again, it does seem to be that way! Reminds me of a story I heard back in elementary school about a janitor clearing snow for a bunch of able-bodied kids and one boy in a wheelchair. "I'll get the ramp after the stairs," he says. "But if you clean the ramp first, we can all get in," says the handicapped boy. I guess a lot of manufacturers would think like that, only it's lazier here—many smaller species such as bunnies can use mid-range size products even with some discomfort...but obviously there have to be several size categories. That's a good choice for mayor, by the way! I may be biased in favor of Ms. Canidae, however. X3

It takes someone a bit insane to succeed in business, or so she tells herself if she ever actually bothers to think about it. And you'd be right! If you gave Nakhta the option of accomplishing something via pulling a lever or manipulating someone into pulling it instead, she'd always go with the latter; something to do with a deep-seated need to prove that she's the smartest, and also a fear of being directly associated with a scandal even when there's no conceivable risk. She can definitely appreciate those who take the more direct route, though, and she works well with them (as long as they don't mind potentially being a fall guy!).

Yeah, it's actually taken from the Roman de Renart, so influential that it actually changed the French word for fox, among other things. This is just a linguistic drift for this world, and of course he may have actually existed (in a different capacity, of course). The best part of having a huge open world like Zootopia, too, is that everyone can potentially be right!

Chapters 1-3 posted for In Darkness I Hide - OC centric fic set in the Zootopia universe.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12412542/1/In-Darkness-I-Hide

I posted some more things! First time I've split a chapter for a long time, but you know you're gonna have to do it when you're nearing 15,000 words and you're not even halfway through covering everything you originally intended. :/

Apologies for the double-post, but while trying to open the next chapter, I ended up inventing a headcanon for where Zootopia's power supply comes from. And how the Rainforest District is covered in humid vapours. I think I may have to cut the passage in full since it's a bit too heavy on the exposition.

You may notice when looking at a picture of the city that all the skycrapers in the centre are built on some kind of tiered hill, with streams of water coming off the top and down the sides. I reckon this isn't just for decoration; it's actually an inert volcano that sits right above a vast, underground reservoir where most of the city's wastewater is dumped.

Some of that water (after being purified, obviously) is converted into vapours and ejected over the RD, the rest gets spewed out the top - the 'Watering Hole', a place of great symbolic importance to the city - and dribbles down the side before settling into canals and rivers. It also passes through some hydroelectric dams along the way, and the filtered-out waste product gets converted into fuel.

Furthermore, the whole thing was funded mostly by private bodies in exchange for the privilege of hosting their offices there, anticipating that Zootopia would become an international multispecies business hub. Hence the flashy skyscrapers.

I was going to say more about the politics behind this, but it basically boils down to Capitalism 101 :V. The Zootopian government needs taxes from the businesses to keep the system running at peak efficiency, the businesses need to pay these taxes so the system won't implode and drive away all their customers, and both sides have to play a balancing act. Though real-life businesses don't have to contend with multiple species that live in different biomes, so again, you can't really make a perfect real-life comparison.

edited 26th Apr '17 9:24:04 PM by PresidentStalkeyes

Interesting idea, and it makes a lot of sense, too—Zootopia is definitely all about green energy and efficient use of space. I'll accept this headcanon.

This does, however, raise an interesting question: When was all this built? Obviously, the modern Zootopia, especially Sahara Square and Tundratown, could not be possible without technological innovations that are recent in our own timeline. Considering that it features "CD technology being outdated", smartphones, and an Uber reference, we can assume it is in fact set at the time it was released. Ergo, Zootopia's infrastructure cannot be very old. What was it like before then? As Judy says, it is (at least in legend) the very first place a predator-prey pact was formed, and thus some sort of settlement there is probably very old indeed. That means there should be a lot of natural sprawl, and yet there's not. Was it gutted by some sort of natural disaster in the relatively recent past, do you think?

But there is a lot of natural sprawl; just look at all the run-down-looking areas shown in the latter half of the movie, like the place where Duke does business, the place where Finnick lives, and the old bridge where Nick goes off to. Not to mention, the city's road layout looks far too 'organic' to have been a completely planned city. I doubt that Cliffside Asylum was built in the recent past, either, given the city's progressive attitude.

These are the same reasons I gave over on the main Zootopia thread as to why I think there was a pre-existing community there before Zootopia as we know it was built. Before the climate wall and all the other technology came into being, all the 'biomes' were just bits of the city where foreign mammals lived; like Tundratown was not always an actual tundra, as opposed to just 'Little Alaska'.

Plus, consider the fact that City Hall and most government functions are located in Savannah Central, away from the core Downtown area. This suggests that Savannah Central is basically Zootopia's 'Old Town' (furthermore, it's pretty much the only part of the city that looks relatively 'normal'). Presumably, the existence of the underground reservoir I mentioned, plus the area's cultural significance, convinced the Gov't to start their 'project' there.

It also explains why all those run-down areas are run-down to begin with; because once the project was in full swing, a lot of mammals suddenly had new living options which were far closer to what they'd naturally prefer, and once the customers went, the businesses went with them (costing a lot of mammals their jobs in the process); and no new businesses came in to replace them, since they'd either go Downtown or to cheaper land that was popping up on the outskirts. Thus, the only mammals who stuck around were the ones who were too poor to move, further encouraging businesses not essential to their survival to stay away.

Not to mention, the poorer mammals who were living in the new biomes would soon find themselves unable to pay rent since the cost of land in the area would soon shoot through the roof thanks to the development, forcing them to move to these same run-down areas to get by. This enabled the city planners to demolish much of the former urban sprawl and install the biomes, like the dunes of Sahara Square, the 'trees' of the RD, etc.

edited 27th Apr '17 4:29:29 AM by PresidentStalkeyes

That is true. The Sahara Square's rundown district there (it's impressive the effect you can give just by presenting a few details like "tilted chain-link fences", makes it really feel like downtown New York or Philadelphia) has to be at least...thirty, forty years old? And hm, you're right, those are pretty organic "desire paths", sort of. Perhaps it was in fact similar to 19th-century London, Paris, or Vienna, when a lot of the old city centers were demolished to make way for new building projects. And I guess gentrification is a universal concept, even in a more upbeat fictional setting... Also, incidentally, if the Savannah area downtown was the old town, it would fit with it being the first setting for the interspecies pact (though that still doesn't explain the surrounding California-like scrubland...even if it makes sense that it slopes down to the Meadowlands up north). Also, it may not be officially canon, but do you think we might still be able to take this◊ concept art as deutero-canon and suggest that there might have been a streetcar system in place once?

Say, now that you mention it, pretty much all the abandoned locations do involve water in some way. The Cliffside Asylum of course has that inefficient waterfall draining system; the bridge is over a dry stream, and in the background the "Wilde Times" empty warehouse and crane suggest that it used to be a waterfront. Almost as if the need for a water supply had shifted at some point away from the river, or some water had been diverted...

Well the watering hole that the city was built around is still in the square, and I would assume most of the stuff just grew up around it, with all the districts being made as different types of animals started to move in.

I very much doubt that there was ever an actual savannah there; the surrounding geography doesn't match. I find it more likely that the first ever interspecies pact did happen in a savannah... on a completely different continent, or at least a different country (IIRC, Judy only said the first pact happened in Zootopia in that play when she was a kit; she probably misremembered what she'd been taught at school and got them mixed up, especially considering how enthusiastic everyone was about Zootopia at the time). And Savannah Central was only named as such in honour of the savannah, particularly because a large portion of its founding population were savannah animals. Probably imported all their Baobab trees, too. :V

None of this is to say there wasn't another pact or truce of some description that took place where the city is; just that it wasn't the very first one.

I could believe there used to be a streetcar system in those areas. One of the many public utilities that fell victim to government cuts once gentrification happened.

That's probably how the original settlement started out, yes. Though they wouldn't have been able to build everything around the watering hole in question since it was at the top of a relatively steep hill. Assuming you mean what's in the middle of all the towers. You can still see the hill, if you look closely; it's just been layered out to accomodate all the towers.

edited 27th Apr '17 10:04:10 AM by PresidentStalkeyes

Hey, I forgot to mention it earlier, but the passing reference to "Gnu York" reminded me of another setting that used that pun in the same premise. That's not all it shared, either—does this plot point look familiar?

Now I want to see a fanfic featuring Zootopia's favorite superheroes, though I imagine they'd be Marvel characters because, you know...Disney.

Curious... I didn't invent the pun, though; I actually got it off this map, which means Gnu York is canon. :V (It's in the bottom left, if you're wondering, though you might have to squint your eyes).

as Captain Carrot a DC property, too, or was it an inter-company crossover? That reminds me, I think Star Wars apparently had a comic where they crossed over with Bucky O'Hare, too. Or maybe they just had an Expy appear, I can't remember. Oh yeah, and there was that episode of Duck Dodgers where Daffy Duck got a Green Lantern ring. ...This happens surprisingly often. :V

That comic thing wouldn't be a bad idea, though when you say 'Zootopia's favourite superheroes', would they be entirely new in-universe pop-culture characters, or Expies of Marvel characters?

Reminds me of my pet theory that Jack Savage is basically the Zooniverse equivalent of James Bond; that is to say, he's a fictional character who's been played by multiple in-universe actors.