Author
I have chosen to remain anonymous, writing under the pen name Pawthorne on AO3, FanFiction.net, and Wattpad.
Background
The last time I wrote fanfiction was for American Dragon back in 2007. These days, I do the boring kind of writing — papers and policies trying to make the world a better place.
I worked in emergency services for several years. In a past role, I handled counter-terrorism and local security for visiting heads of state, including the President of the United States. There's quite a lot of real-world influence in how the crisis sequences play out, particularly in Season 5.
I hope I didn't War Thunder anything.
The Writing Process
This series was originally created for my own consumption. I skipped work (then took a sabbatical) to write it, discussed it at meetups, pulled all-nighters. This got on my boyfriend's nerves very quickly — to him, I apologize.
The original work was 121 episodes long, rewritten from scratch into the 104 episodes before you. Some parts may feel rushed as a result.
I use Notepad++ and Git for writing. I'm too lazy to use Fountain, especially since it won't give me a format friendly to the places I'm uploading to, and I'm not going to buy Final Draft because Disney used up all my money.
Part of this series was written while I was physically in Zootopia — sitting in the streets of Zootopia at Shanghai Disneyland, sporting a lanyard with a Better Zoogether pin from Disney's Animal Kingdom, eating a pawpsicle and taking photos with Nick and Judy. Can't get more immersive than this.
A Personal Note
S04E15 "Radio Silence" has roots in my own lived experiences. Some time after leaving emergency services, I met my current partner, who then entered the field and went through training.
I knew academy training is safe, having gone through it myself. But for weeks I couldn't let go of the dread of what if things went wrong — especially on days where it was radio silence. It was a dark time for me, and what helped were the many friends who noticed something was wrong, to the point that there was an active roster of babysitters (literally) looking after me.
On AI
The worldbuilding, plot, characters, and development were all made by me. However, AI assisted in the writing of this story, particularly with research (especially on legal matters), proofing, expanding, or reducing sections of the work.
I understand that AI is a dirty term to those in the creative industry who do this kind of story writing professionally, and I don't want it to seem like AI can replace these people — especially as I look up to them.
I will not engage on this matter whatsoever. If you are allergic to AI work in any degree, don't proceed. My hope is that by reading you will realize this is not a story that AI is capable of coming up with.
Unpublished Content
There's an additional batch of post-S05 content that I wrote as breaks while working on the series — explicit episodes, what-if scenarios, some very raunchy and kinky. Unless people really want to see them, they'll remain unpublished.
I also have an entire meta series called CUT that I made to bridge myself off the headspace of being in the series. It takes place in a Zootopiafied version of our world, where I play a director trying to bring forward the narrative of Zootopia by bridging several TV series together — working politically to get rival networks to cooperate.
It culminates in the S05E21 shooting of the siege in Reptile Ravine. Fictitious versions of Iger, Cavanagh, Langley, and Cramer — representing Disney, Universal, Amazon, and many other showrunners — come together to make my director dreams come true. They shoot a TWDC production at Universal's Falls Lake, complete with cameos all over the place.
Contact
I don't know why you'd ever need to contact me, but if you do...