We Little Guys Have To Stick Together

Another piece of Zootropolis/Zootopia fanart for you all. This is one of my little headcanons about what happened after the film was over.



As some of you may know, despite what Dawn Bellwether does in the film, I personally think that she's one of the more three dimensional and more sympathetic of the Disney villains (on my 'Are Disney Villains Better Now Than Ever?' Duckyworth's Edits I'll upload soon, I'll mention why I'm actually liking the plot twist element - especially in this film with the 'can't judge appearances' theme Zootropolis has), and like with Callaghan from Big Hero 6, I can personally think it would be highly possible if she would reform after the film. True, some people may say 'she was just a racist despot', but I personally see more to her in how her hatred of predators was caused in the first place - she's pretty much like Judy if she let the neglect and bullying from predators get to her and cloud her judgement. In fact, throughout the film, I was thinking LIONHEART was the worse one here - he was the one who was a big cause of Dawn's prejudices in the first place - it felt a lot like his prey sympathising and adopting Zootropolis' slogan for his own was more for publicity considering how he treated Dawn..... 
Even in Big Hero 6, Alastair Krei may have committed rash decisions, but he showed a clear conscience to his actions more than Lionheart did, I personally think.

I can see a lot of similarities between Dawn and Lionheart and the Professor Layton characters Clive and Bill Hawks here - Clive is the main villain in his game, but Bill Hawks is more evil by being the cause of his actions in the first place - using some illegitimate means to gain power and prestige. True, Lionheart didn't do anything as bad as Bill Hawks did, but I still found what he did to be unforgiveable.  And it's nice to see a villain BEFRIENDING the main character - this is one of the only cases where a villain and the main hero BEFRIEND each other early on - again, like Professor Layton and Clive. And Dawn has no doubt seen many other cases of prey being endlessly pushed around by predators and feeling the only thing a bully understands is force and their cities need to be rebuilt from the ground up to prevent little people from being pushed around in the name of progress - once again, like Clive's motives.

Long story short, I can imagine that Nick and Judy, while not denying the damage Dawn caused, would appreciate how prejudice against her would cause her to do something rash - much like they had both done in the past. So, here's a picture of Judy comforting Dawn in her prison cell, with Nick standing by outside. I can imagine Dawn may still not be too trusting of predators at this point, so they'd be easing her in to accepting predators like Nick again. Actually, I once took issue with Dawn simply looking angry during the end credits of Zootropolis - but I have a theory. She may be angry that with her plans foiled, nothing has changed to stop the reason why she committed her crimes in the first place. But Judy has brought her a book on gardening for sheep, and Nick bought her a wool brush. Nick is sitting outside the cell because I thought that Dawn would need more time with trusting predators again (I can imagine Officer Clawhauser would be good for that, as he's the kindest predator on the police force ), and remembering what Dawn said to Judy at the start of the film at the police ceremony, I can see Judy being more willing than anyone else to help support Dawn, as I saw them as friends before Dawn's true colours were revealed.


I actually looked up something about true stories of criminals reforming in fantastic ways and using their skills they learned while committing crimes for good use (I read that one man who was a computer hacker set up a security firm after he'd served his sentence in prison - he'd definitely know what to look out for!), and I was thinking that, considering some of her knowledge of growing night howlers in that drug laboratory she and her followers had set up, I can imagine her possibly becoming a gardener after reforming - or maybe just taking it up as a hobby. Does anyone else have any theories on this?

I know I said in the past that I approved of the BellHopps ship , but I made this drawing to be seen either way.
(Also, I had fun with animal puns in the books - Nick is reading a book on Paw-p Art, and the book Judy got for Dawn is written by S.H.Eear.