TL;DR - Viv made ZP a convoluted and character filled mess instead of what should've been a focused main character-driven story.
Zoophobia the webcomic was honestly one of the biggest wastes of potential I've ever seen in any piece of fiction. It was such a shame too because the intro,
here to
here, in terms of setting up a world and getting you invested in it, is honestly pretty brilliant - and yes I still stand by that. It sets up the main concept excellently, introduces a bunch of characters to you that you'd want to know more about, and has a pretty good balance of comedy (Cameron reacting to the world around her), mystery (the woman with the apple) and drama ("So I'm stuck here?"/the bit towards the end with Zechariah comforting Cameron).
So imagine, you're an impressionable teen and you're blown away by said introduction. You're hooked, and can't wait to see more of the adventures of this zoophobic counselor in the crazy world of animals. What's the next story arc gonna be?!
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A high school couple.....with the male forgetting their....anniversary? First of all, this is not how teenagers work. Secondly, weren't we just following Cameron a second ago? It is here where the main problem of ZP starts to rear its ugly head: a complete and utter lack of focus.
One minute, OK, we're following Cameron again, good. Next minute we're with the kangaroo again. Huh? Next minute we're with the demon kid (whose name is Damien, real original there Viv), and he has a robot...companion? Who can transform or some shit?
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And finally, we're back to Cameron again. It’s frustrating that ZP hits on a genuinely interesting story in Cameron, but doesn’t seem committed to it, instead plopping us in with a bunch of characters with no proper introduction and no reason to care about them (again, doubly frustrating considering Chapter 1 got it so right). Somebody could take the key components of
Zoophobia and make a genuinely good story without having to discard many of them. It needed better pacing. It needed to better understand the story it was telling and be more aware of where it needed to go. There is a decent comic buried here, but it occupies about 25% of its run. I’d never, ever recommend it to another human being, but if you were forced to read it you’d likely find bits to enjoy.
Somewhere, in another universe, Cameron is the main character in a great story about overcoming your fears, meeting new people, and finding your place in the world. Maybe it was the project that put Vivienne on the map, maybe it wasn't. If you do end up reading
Zoophobia at some point — maybe because you're interested in Viv's past work — pay attention to the bits involving Cameron. See her interactions with the people around her. Her dialogue. There’s a character there that Vivienne Medrano brought to life in spite of the script, in spite of the comic, in spite of anything going on around her. Pay attention to Cameron. Because she's exactly where the real ZP's buried.
A kangaroo complains that a purple and orange whatever-the-fuck forgot their high school anniversary while a pink demon robot nanny dukes it out with a bunch of police officers because her demon brat got in trouble. That's the
Zoophobia we got.
A young, neurotic woman slowly but surely overcomes her fears while meeting all sorts of exotic, memorable characters and uncovering the mystery of the world she unwittingly finds herself in. That's the
Zoophobia that we should've got instead.
