You Will Survive I Swear Funny Meme

It's rare you get to see a meme grow from the very start. On Wednesday, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (@Hello_Tailor), a writer at The Daily Dot, tweeted that they'd just discovered Borba's comic "I Will Survive". Since then, that tweet has gained over 6,000 likes and over 2,500 retweets. Other online news organizations like The AV Club have picked up on the story.

Then both the Twitter and Tumblr communities at large got their hands on it, and it has escalated to the point of being officially recognized by Know Your Meme. Even the youtube channel Behind The Meme has covered it. And Dorkly. More and more people keep reporting on this.

As I pointed out in our initial post featuring I Will Survive, this is undoubtedly the most controversial comic to have ever come out of the fandom, so for it to suddenly gain the attention of the internet at large has been… well, things have been mixed. On the one hand, it's great that so many people are discovering that there even is a sizable and dedicated Zootopia fandom that's separate from general Furry culture. We welcome those people and invite them to take a look at some of the other magnificent things we have created. In fact, here are a few of my personal favorites:

Music: When Can I Try Everything Again? – a Mashup of "Try Everything" and "When Can I See You Again" from Wreck-it-Ralph. It works WAY too well, and set the stage for Mashin' Jams slow mixing of Try Everything with pretty much every pop song ever. And they all work amazingly. Alternatively, check out Dance Every Feeling!
Comics: Sunderance– A HUGE Alternate-Universe take on Zootopia set in a version of the city where Foxes are actually dominant, rather than being the underdogs we see in the movie. It's dark, gritty, and packed full of action and political intrigue. This is one of many examples where Artists and Authors come together to make a truly masterful comic.
Fanfics: Fallout Zootopia – a crossover that makes no sense on the surface, and uses almost exclusively original characters, but blends the two franchises together beautifully until it becomes one of the greatest stories that the fandom has produced. Also comes in audiobook form, which is higher quality than most things I've heard from Audible.
News: Exclusive Interview with Byron Howard – The title says it all. Byron Howard, the Director of Zootopia, gave us an exclusive interview to celebrate the one-year anniversary of ZNN. It's one of the coolest things that we've ever featured, in my opinion.

And we have a LOT more where that came from!

On the downside, due to the controversial nature of the comic, its sudden meme status has sparked some rather heated discussions. I'm glad to say that for the most part people have kept it civil, but there are those who have taken to attacking Borba directly for his work. That's not cool. Give criticism of the comic all you like, but don't attack the artist over it. Please keep things constructive. And please don't judge the zootopia fandom as a whole by a single work. We have so much more to offer than that.

ZNN does not endorse Borba's views on abortion or any other topic that was brought up in I Will Survive (we are neutral on all topics of a controversial or political nature) but we do support artists who take risks. Borba took a big risk with the subject matter of IWS, and I feel that deserves some recognition in general- especially considering the massive backlash against it by fans and non-fans of Zootopia alike. Did his risk pay off? That's ultimately for Borba to decide. The Zootopia Fandom has already had these discussions months ago when the comic first released, so this is old news to us.

In the meantime, we live in a reality where I Will Survive has become a meme. And as is the case with all memes, some people have shown a real aptitude for creative and entertaining transformations of the original. Here at ZNN we focus on the good, so check after the break for some of the better edits we've seen the past few days.