| “ | Welcome home, Miss Cameron. | „ |
| ~ Zechariah showing Cameron the Peace Spirits. |
Zechariah is the overarching protagonist of Vivienne Medrano's webcomic Zoophobia.
A member of the Peace Keepers guarding over the fantastical hidden realm of Safe Haven, Zechariah is a cheetah with an enigmatic past and the vice principal of Zoo Phoenix Academy, where he has to watch over bizarre students and sometimes even crazier staff.
The new addition to said stuff will be the human counselor Cameron Walden, who Zechariah is sad to discover was tricked into accepting her new job. Zechariah will one of the main supporters in Cameron's journey in this new, magical world of supernatural creatures and grave secrets.
What Makes Him Magnificent?[]
- He is a mysteriously charismatic figure who, according to supplementary material, keeps his past a complete mystery to students and colleagues alike, who come up with their own crazy stories about his background.
- Appearances-wise, he is a very elegant-looking giant cheetah who, according to Word of God, speaks with a Nigerian accent, all complimenting his calm and sophisticated attitude.
- While being arguably the most subdued and no-nonsense character in the webcomic, and far less wacky than some of his staff, such as Jackie and Alanzo, he still provides some laughs by being comically serious, such as telling an horrified Cameron with a deadpan tone that all sorts of folklore monster inhabit Safe Haven, but then dismissing the existence of aliens.
- Like most vice principals, he is the one who truly calls the shots within his high school of Zoo Phoenix Academy compared to principal Willis, who is never even shown to be able to communicate.
- He runs ZPA with efficiency, giving his staff watches with which to have remote communication at all times, such as during emergencies when Zechariah has to be informed by the teachers or vice-versa.
- While needing to protect his students (as well as all other denizens of Safe Haven) from monstrous threats, he is not a xenophobe and will even allow demons to attend his school or even join his staff if they prove themselves harmless (examples include Damian Beelzly and the creature studies teacher Carrie respectively).
- On top of running ZPA, he leads a double life as one of Safe Haven's Peace Keepers, guarding over it.
- After she falls unconscious from fear, he takes the fraudolently hired Cameron to the medic ward and then calmly fills her in on her sad situation (which he almost immediately picked up on) and then summons Jackie to give Cameron a tour, hoping the former's cheer will help put the latter at ease.
- He consoles a rightfully distraught Cameron and, to make her feel better about her situation, shows her the beautiful Peace Spirits that fly through the Safe Haven night sky, a sign that all is well.
- When Zill leads the monsters Venganza and Simon into the school and after the teachers Carrie and Fabian have wrestled them, Zechariah shows he can do more than just give orders and neutralizes Simon by capturing him with his prehensile tail, and later imprisons him so that he and his teachers can interrogate him themselves on how he bypassed the barrier.
- Tells Cameron to take an injured Zill to the med ward.
- He has Salvia explain the true nature of Safe Haven to an impatient Cameron after deciding she deserves to know.
- While he doesn't do as much as other Magnificent Baddies in the story, he still established himself as a competent, collected leader and even a capable fighter in the little screentime he had, as the comic was inconclusive and ended 5 chapters in.
What Makes Him a Baddie?[]
- By keeping Chastopher as the school nurse for his students, Zechariah is somewhat endangering them as Chastopher is blatantly insane, outright believing his stuffed unicorn Willis is alive and talking to him. In his first appearance in the comic, Chastopher tries to use a dangerous drill on a rightfully terrified Cameron before she escapes and, even more worryingly, his operating room has a poster reading "Smile, it's almost over", giving off dark implications of what Chastopher is capable of inflicting.
- However, Chastopher has been shown to be able to do his job even with his insanity, such as properly evaluating Zill's wound, so it's not too bad a case of endangerment as he is not always dangerously insane and at least there's the reasonable Keiko to usually keep him in check.
- In early supplementary comics, Chastopher was an outright villain who had murdered his wife and was much more blatantly torturous (and even lethal) towards the students. However, that was from an older canon before Zoophobia was rebooted with a much lighter tone, so his evil actions towards the students there do not matter in Zechariah's Baddie scaling, and Chastopher's crime of uxoricide was probably retconned too.
- He has basically imprisoned Cameron in Safe Haven by forbidding her to return to the Human world, as the magic of the barrier protecting Safe Haven would be slightly weakened if she left. While for the good cause of keeping the barrier as strong as possible and the denizens of Safe Haven protected, this still amounts to keeping an innocent woman trapped in a world she is horrified by (as she's a zoophobic surrounded by magical animalistic beings) and that she was fraudolentely sent to.
- This is made somewhat worse by the fact that, by Chapter 3, it's revealed that an evil force is somehow able to bypass the barrier, making the excuse for Cameron not being able to leave hold even less weight, as the barrier is already failing anyway.
- On top of that, Word of God (as well as some of the bullying Mackenzie is shown receiving) states that the people of Safe Haven hold some fantastic racism towards humans, making Cameron's situation worse.
- However, since Zechariah does significantly help Cameron in getting accustomed to life in Safe Haven, this Baddie action is somewhat weakened, while still having to be taken into consideration.
Trivia[]
- Zechariah is, so far, the only Magnificent Baddie from a canon Vivziepop work.
- Zechariah, much like MBs such as Bayverse Optimus Prime, is an example of an "unintentional" Magnificent Baddie, as he only manages to qualify as a Baddie due to some actions of his coming off as morally dubious enough, despite it not have been the creator's intentions.
- In original concepts, Zoophobia was a much darker series, as alluded to when talking earlier about Chastopher's original characterization: Zoo Phoenix used to be an elementary school rather than a high school and, in it, murders and death would occur on a daily basis without it really being a big deal. If Zechariah had already been conceived by Vivienne in those early stages and planned to be the vice principal of that much more gruesome version of ZPA, it would've made him a much more evil character, possibly even too much to qualify as MB.
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- Zechariah on the Zoophobia Wiki.