My honest, most constructive criticism:
This isn’t going to work. At all.
1. Who is your target demographic? Antis? Furries? Children? Because no average joe is going to read this and have their minds changed about zoophilia and bestiality. The poor art quality (Why are the characters so wide from the back view? In an attempt to look suave, ZT just ends up looking overly smug and downright predatory at times. And wth is with the feral dragon on the cover? That does not fit with the general story AT ALL) and the fact that it’s about furries is really only going to attract kids and furries. And furries are just going to see this comic and hate it without question because it’s associating them with bestiality. And need I explain why getting kids involved with this site is a bad idea? Needless to say, this comic simply isn’t appealing to the average adult. If any of you had any basic skills in marketing, you’d know that. Put yourselves in the shoes of the general population for once if you want ANY progress. Think of influential works of fiction, how and why they worked. Because this is nowhere near the level of influential pieces that changed society’s perception of the norm such as Fredrick Douglass’ memoirs or “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Those works changed history for a reason. What do you think a poorly coordinated furry comic is going to do about a social norm that has held true for hundreds of thousands of years? Are you so naive to think that this will work?
2. “I am not Starfire” and “High Guardian Spice”. Both recent are self-insert works. Why don’t you look them up and see how well received they were? I’ll wait.
3. Why would you make them furries? That completely ruins the whole point of looking for zoophile acceptance. Because furries are animals. Nobody cares about anthropomorphic animals fucking animals because they’re not real. What society is against is HUMANS fucking animals. And you completely destroy whatever message you’re trying to convey with that alone. I get that maybe your artist can’t draw people, but that’s when you either hire a better artist (I’ve seen plenty of zoo artists that are more than capable) or you learn to draw people and actually put effort into this thing.
4. Literally nobody on this planet likes a comic that lectures them. Not in terms of politics, identity, not even education. Why? Because it’s condescending. It’s a huge straw man. Take comics such as Anonymous Asexual’s works: Nobody likes them because they attack PERCIEVED arguments from their audience rather than letting the audience keep their opinions, and subtly (BIG emphasis on subtly because I can already see that this comic has none) show them through the story why their arguments are either harmful and/or wrong. Either that, or show them why your argument is right. For topics such as this, the most effective way to go about it is to let the audience have an opinion and going from there. In short: SHOW don’t tell. It’s basic writing 101, and you fail at it in every respect. Some quick, basic research would have told you how to do that, but none of you are serious enough about this crap to actually put in that kind of work.
Rather than lazily using Chance as obvious representation of an anti audience and ZT as the “wise mentor figure” that info-dumps walls of random statistics and text to the audience, why not set up something more complex and engaging? It shouldn’t be that hard. Example: Chance moves into Zooville in order to investigate and expose zoophiles for some sort of investigative journalism. As he settles in, he encounters several friendly zoos and tags along with them in their normal, everyday lives. Initially, he looks to find the bad in them, but as time goes on, he develops intimate friendships with them, gets to know their mates, engages with the town, and eventually realizes that zoophiles aren’t as bad as the media makes them out to be. And so he is conflicted with the following question: Do I protect these people that have shown themselves to be nothing but kind, average people? Or do I betray them for the sake of my job and society’s approval? (Which is a very real question a lot of allies and even zoos have). Then you actually have a storyline. You have conflict, drama, engaging characters, etc. What you’re creating is (quite frankly) unengaging, “holier than thou”, and waaaay to simplistic an lazy for such a complex topic. This comic is not going to change minds. It is not going to inspire the general population to fight for our rights. It’s going to either put people to sleep or cause them to cringe from the poor quality in writing, art, and character development.
If you’re trying to show that zoophiles are just regular people, this isn’t it. Because even as a zoo, I’m cringing at how socially unaware and lazy this comic is. I can’t even imagine how an anti or just a regular person is gonna see this if even a degenerate like me can find so many flaws in just the cover alone. I wanted to like this, I really did, but it seems as though your team just isn’t acknowledging the full weight of this topic. This shouldn’t be some fun project. This is our future on the line. This topic is so incredibly serious and taboo that animals have been killed, zoos have been beaten, and countless others have been put into jail over this. This comic? It’ll be meme material for the antis at best.
Don’t take the burden and responsibility of fighting for zoo rights if you‘re not going to take it seriously. That’s how more of us get destroyed.
If @ZTHorse decides that a family pizza is tomorrow's necessity for further work regarding this cause, so be it. Everyone knows this before the donation, don't they?
