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askdawnandvern · 5 years

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Save Bellwether on Twitter

(In the interest of getting this the best optics possible, I will be forgoing answering asks this week to keep this at the top of the page for the entire week. We will return to your regularly scheduled Dawn And Vern content next tuesday!)

For those of you who have read my story on Fanfiction.net, or follow my AskDawnAndVern blog, you may be somewhat familiar with this idea I proposed a few months back, and referenced it in the journal on my FA entitled 'The end of a road; and looking ahead.' But since I didn't post it everywhere, I suppose I should fill you in with a sort of...short version. At least to give you an idea as to why I guess I care at all about the Dawn Bellwether character, and why I started writing for her in the first place.

I was kinda dubious about Zoot when it was coming out. Both with Disney's storytelling track record with big budget films around the time, or because I preferred 2-D animation because I'm apparently a huge snob. Whatever the case, as it got closer to release I started to get more drawn into it, but Dawn sealed the deal for me. Her design was cute, and her support character roll was endearing. About a month before the film came out, leaks of the children's book revealed Dawn to be the big bad twist villain which left me kind of heartbroken. I was miffed that once again we had a ‘person you least expected' type villain, which at this point is totally cliche, but I was also upset because she was the character I liked the most, and now I knew she was set as the primary antagonist. And while I still enjoyed the film when it came out, Dawn's characterization up until the villain reveal made it that much worse. Honestly, I would have probably been better off if they gave less of a visible motivation for Dawn's actions in terms of her relationship with Lionheart. Had she simply been completely evil for the sake of it, like most Disney villains, I could have just written her off and latched on to a character like Sharla or something. But if that had been the case, I guess we wouldn't be here.

That's basically what ended up getting me to write my fic about Dawn getting back on the straight and narrow, and well...that's how we got here. And while I'm pretty happy with my little established AU, I can't help but feel slightly nervous about Zootopia 2. With the movie doing well enough to get a sequel I should be excited. But Disney's track record when it comes to storytelling, especially when it comes to sequels, always seems to decline with each installment. Characters are kept the same for familiarity's sake, and a familiar face with an ax to grind is an easy route to take for the plot of a would-be sequel. In fact, we've seen it many times in Disney's back catalog of films, and that has me all the more worried Dawn is just going to pop back up in Z2 as a lazy, revenge plot villain. And so that sort of re-stoked those fires about Dawn's future in cannon Zoot, and if there was anything I could try to do in regards to it.

And thus I came up with this hashtag. #SaveBellwether. In my initial announcements I mentioned we were going to be workshopping many of the elements, but that is the hashtag that stuck. What is the purpose? Well to simply show Byron Howard, as well as the rest of the folks that may be working on Z2 as well as other Zoot fans that there is a surprising amount of fans who want to see a better Bellwether in Z2. Even in as much as a blink and you'll miss it moment. If not for anything else then to avoid a lazy retread of the same tired old 'revenge ploy' plot that may or may not be in the works.

'My initial part in the plan is very simple. I'm simply going to tweet Byron Howard a string of tweets. Professional and as short as I could make them. That simply touches on the idea and expresses the sentiment among us Bellwether Fans as clearly as possible. In the interest of transparency, I will share the intended tweets here.

Dear @ByronPHoward, I, like a surprising number of Zoot fans, really loved the Bellwether character, and were kinda crushed when she turned out to be the villain.

With a sequel probably soon to be underway, I just wanted to ask if you had any plans of bringing her back as anything other than a 'revenge villain', perhaps working to reform.

I know I'm not the only one who'd like to see her character make a turnaround. After all, if Gideon could change, she certainly could. And I think it would make for a more compelling story element.

I would just hate to see a Zootopia 2 where she comes back as an antagonist because it's easy, and see the Zoot series go down the same route of almost every other franchise out there.

On Behalf of the Bellwether fans, I thank you for listening. I hope you'll consider redeeming her. If not, hey I tried. There's always Fanfiction after all. #SaveBellwether #Zootopia #ZootopiaFans #AssistantMayorBellwether'

I will also append one of my Bellwether drawings to the post, which is the lead-in for those of you interested in supporting the idea as well as the tag. Once the tweets are up, I'd like those of you who share my sentiments to join the conversation, sharing your own opinions and art of Dawn along with mine to show Zootopia's creators and fans just how many of us there are. Whether that be just a statement, art, a cosplay, stories, or whatever, just sharing shows that there is support for this idea as well as a great deal of care about Zootopia 2's possible plot quality. And perhaps the great show of love for Dawn will persuade them to make Dawn less evil in future Zoot projects. Obviously, we don't want to badger anyone or make it seem like we are brigading them, but I think a support hashtag might let them see that there is something to the idea.

I hope there are as many of you out there as enthusiastic about supporting this idea as I am, and I hope you'll join me in using the hashtag to see if anything manages to come of it. Even if it ends up doing nothing in terms of shaping Dawn's future in Zoot, at the very least it will be a great way to spread positivity and connect to other Bellwether fans. So why not at least give it a try? If it doesn't work we'll always have out fanfictions, and the friends we met along the way.

On one last little note, this isn't necessarily about my specific Dawn story, or anyone's for that matter. I'm not aiming for Disney to hire me and use parts of Rehab for Zoot 2. (Although that would be amazing). I just want to see the character get a better deal, and I think we all want to see that.

I look forward to seeing your own twitter posts, as well as the art and other media you share under the tag. And here's hoping for the best.

Thanks for listening,

-WT

#Zootopia #dawn bellwether #Assistant Mayor Bellwether #zootopia 2 #savebellwether #zootopia fandom

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