

A few months ago, I made a post sharing the majority of my ideas for an Amity-centric story that I’ve been working on since the start of this year. In that post, one of my ideas involved coming up with a new character to serve as the story’s main villain. However, since the post was getting too long as it was, I decided to save this new character for their own post and explore my ideas for them in just as much detail. Unfortunately, due to a combination of work and slight writer’s block, I’ve yet to get around to making more progress on this post. However, I still wanted to give everyone who read my initial post an update, especially with the end of the year approaching, so I’ve decided to put together a quick preview of-sorts to give you a general idea of what I have planned. This will mostly be a brief overview of my ideas for this character’s personality, role in the story, and dynamic with Amity and the other characters, which I’ll explore more thoroughly whenever I can finally get around to finishing the longer post.
If you haven’t read my Amity spin-off concept post yet, I’d recommend perhaps giving it a quick read first, as this one might be a bit confusing without the full context. Now, onto my ideas for a new antagonist for Amity…
Just to quickly get this character’s name out of the way, I eventually decided to name them “Zoma”, which a portmanteau of “zero” (a placeholder name from when I first began work on them) and “soma” (an alternative name for “Chandra” - the Hindu god of the moon).
My general idea for Zoma is for them to essentially be a dark mirror reflection of Amity. Initially, they would just like Amity was: as a haughty, stubborn, overachieving young witch with a need to constantly prove their own worth, with them having been pressured to train to be the most skilled and powerful witch amongst their peers by their strict and overbearing family, which made them secretly terrified of falling short of those expectations and prone to putting down others to prop themself up. However, unlike Amity, Zoma’s condescending, arrogant demeanour would turn out to just be their actual personality, and they would fully embrace their family’s toxic ideals (even outright using them as an excuse for their actions) and fulfil the goal that they chose for them, despite being given the chance to change their ways by Amity and the other characters. Essentially, Zoma could be what Amity could have become if she not only didn’t have anybody to help her become a better person but was also unwilling to make the effort to change herself.
Since this story will take place on another Titan island and feature some more Collector lore, I decided to make Zoma a Titan Trapper and bring the group back as the story’s main antagonistic force. Initially, they could come to the Boiling Isles to try and kill King again, but quickly decide to follow the main characters to the new island and try to find the Collectors’ artefact before them. I even decided to bring back Tarak as a secondary antagonist, with him being Zoma’s father and/or mentor, and give him his own arc of slowly abandoning his people’s ways (which could be a fun subversion of this type of story where, this time, it’s the parent who gets the redemption while their child becomes an even bigger monster than them), though I’ll elaborate on this more in the longer post too.
As for Zoma’s relationship with Tarak, it would be somewhat similar to Amity’s relationship with Odalia, with Tarak constantly pressuring Zoma to fulfil their goals and beliefs. However, despite scolding them whenever they fail him, Tarak would also be shown to genuinely care about Zoma and not just view them as an extension of himself, with most of his actions being out of ignorance and being too absorbed into his people’s beliefs himself. Whereas Tarak would eventually begin to put his old ways behind him, Zoma would ultimately betray him and take the Collectors’ artefact for themself. The irony of the situation would be that, despite Zoma turning on their family, they’re still set on fulfilling the goal that they already planned for them, instead of forging their own path like Amity. Meanwhile, as for Zoma’s relationship with the other Titan Trappers, they could be respected for their magical and combative prowess but disliked for their pompous attitude or dismissed for being in their father’s shadow, which could parallel Amity’s own struggles in this story that I mentioned last time.
I’ve included some designs that I’ve made for Zoma, which show them both with and without their Titan disguise. I decided to make them the same age and height as Amity to suite their role as a mirror reflection of her, and I’ve tried to make their attire match the Titan Trappers’ as much as possible. Originally, I had considered keeping Zoma masked for the entire story and never revealing their face. However, I decided to show their face but have their face paint and tattoos cover the entirely of it, to convey the idea of them being fully absorbed into their people’s ideals and to parallel Amity using hair dye both to match her mother’s appearance and later break free of it (perhaps even unmasking them at the same time that Amity’s hair dye has mostly faded away, halfway into the story). One final note on Zoma’s design is that I decided to give them green eyes because green is generally a colour with negative connotations for Amity (her mother, her old bully façade, even her bullying of Willow) and I thought that it would fit with their role as an antagonist for her.
I decided to make Zoma an oracle witch to fit with them having a somewhat manipulative side to their personality and to mirror Amity’s own past traumatic experiences with this type of magic, with them using it on her in some similar ways to Odalia. However, I’ve also given Zoma a magic amplifier because I think that another way to make them a foil to Amity could be to parallel her hatred of cheating. Despite both of them being raised to be the best of the best, Zoma could instead use a magic amplifier to cheat their way through training and appear more gifted than they actually are. Since I’ve also decided to have them use oracle magic to read memories at several points, this could possibly be one of the abilities that they can only use with an amplifier. Aside from using oracle magic, Zoma’s main fighting style would involve using a dagger or other physical weapons, like the rest of the Titan Trappers. In contrast to Amity’s fighting style being more fluid and elegant, Zoma’s could be more brutal and erratic, almost animalistic. This could even extend to their general body language and mannerisms, albeit more subtly, in contrast to them speaking with the same soft-spoken dialect as their father.
As for Zoma’s actual dynamic and rivalry with Amity herself, since I suggested having a scene where Amity re-enters the Bonesborough Brawl, I think that this would be a great place to introduce it. With them both entering the brawl to test and prove their own abilities, Amity and Zoma would make it to the final round and fight each other, with Zoma winning by using oracle magic to exploit Amity’s insecurities before beating her physically. Since I suggested having Amity get weakened by losing her magic, I think that it would make sense to have Zoma be responsible for this - a good middle ground between this and Amity overworking herself could be for Amity to get injured earlier in the brawl, but she stubbornly refuses to pull out, which leads to her being unable to keep up with Zoma, who injures her further. From there, Zoma could taunt Amity over having pushed herself too hard and lost her magic while propping themself up, similarly to Amity’s own introduction in IWATA. Instead of having a dedicated second fight, the two of them would repeatedly clash several times before the climax, with Zoma initially having the upper hand before the fights begin to turn in Amity’s favour as she regains her strength.
In addition to the brawl, Zoma would also taunt Amity over her insecurities of being just an extension of somebody else and her guilt over her past actions, with them mockingly suggesting that she’ll never be anything more than a carbon copy of her mother and that she only changed for Luz, taking sadistic delight in her shame and depression. They could even take her regret at having followed her mother’s example and try to twist it into her trying to use her abuse as an excuse for her behaviour. This could even be an opportunity to include some flashbacks to Amity’s past, with Zoma using their oracle magic to access her memories and use them against her. Of course, Zoma would be doing this primarily to distract themself from their own insecurities, but there would also be a more personal element to it that I’ll get to shortly.
Initially, Amity’s interactions with Zoma could bring out her more fierce and competitive nature, with her being eager to upstage them after the brawl, as well as being enraged to discover that they won by cheating. However, after mellowing out towards the middle of the story, she could soon realise that Zoma is in a similar situation with their family that she was in and try to help them out of it, pointing out her own experiences. However, Zoma would angrily deny her help and that they were anything alike, revealing an element of their backstory that I alluded to earlier.
My idea for Zoma’s backstory is for them to have already met Amity at some point before the story begins, with having previously been a victim of Amity’s bullying, though with Amity herself having long forgotten about them. Up until this reveal, Zoma would speak to Amity as if they’ve already met, which would initially be implied to the result of them using oracle magic to read her mind but would later turn out to be a red herring. I’ve considered a few scenarios for this, with them having either met Amity at some point before Luz came to the Boiling Isles, been one of Amity’s opponents in the last Bonesborough Brawl, or even having been Ghost’s original owner before she bonded with Amity instead. Since we don’t see when exactly Tarak came to the Boiling Isles, it could be possible for him to have come at any of these points and brought Zoma with him. Either way, in all of this scenarios, Zoma would have challenged Amity to a fight and boasted about their skill and reputation, only to be easily bested and humiliated, with her acting condescendingly and dismissively towards them before leaving (albeit to differing degrees depending on the scenario). This would cause Zoma to have a nervous breakdown about being seen as a failure, and would be what leads to them using a magic amplifier to enhance their abilities. Whatever the scenario, Zoma would use this to guilt-trip Amity further, seemingly blaming her for their debilitating need for validation and condescending persona, although it would still be implied that they were already like that long before they even met her. Of course, Amity would be horrified by this and immediately apologise for it, though Zoma would still refuse her help, which would only further fuel her insecurities for a brief time.
As for the other main characters, with Zoma being a Titan Trapper, they would also have quite a few interactions with King too. Like their fellow trappers, Zoma would view King as nothing more than a mindless and destructive beast to be hunted down, and would frequently taunt him with this idea. Since Lilith and Hunter will be main characters in this story too, Zoma would also interact with them as well. They would also taunt both of them with their guilt over their past actions and share some similarities to them too, essentially making them something of a mirror to all three of the show’s main reformed antagonists (albeit most towards Amity, though I’ll elaborate more on all of them later). If I wind up making Willow a part of the main cast, then Zoma could try to manipulate her into assisting them, based on her past experience with Amity’s bullying, with her refusing after realising that Amity became better of her own volition. In case you’re wondering about Luz, Zoma wouldn’t interact with her at all and mainly just bring her up while taunting Amity. I’d originally considered including a brief scene where Luz stands for Amity when Zoma first mocks her, inadvertently giving them more to work with, but I may wind up giving this to Edric and/or Emira instead.
By the time of the story’s climax, Amity would have gotten over her initial desire to find the artefact just to prove her worth, while Zoma would be fully consumed and driven by theirs. At the same time that Amity would try to talk Lilith out of taking the artefact from its resting place, Zoma would take the opportunity to take it for themself, ignoring their father’s pleas for them not to. After taking the artefact, Zoma would use it to assume a Collector form, similarly to Titan Luz, and leave to begin wreaking havoc upon the island. However, this would also be the point where Amity successfully achieves her abomination form and, after offering them one last chance for help, has to fight Zoma in their super form too. Ultimately, Amity would win this final fight (due to Zoma only having a fraction of an actual Collector’s power and her being able to smartly outwit them, with the latter being somewhat of an inversion of their first fight) and take the artefact back from Zoma, turning them back to normal. In another inversion of their first fight, Amity would end the fight by shattering Zoma’s magic amplifier, knocking them off their unearned pedestal.
As for how Zoma’s story could end, I’ve thought of two possible outcomes. The first of them sees Tarak reluctantly disown Zoma and banish them from their tribe, with them spitefully refusing Amity’s help yet again and fleeing to parts unknown. However, the second of them sees Zoma try one last time to kill Amity after both them revert back to normal, only to wind up falling off a ledge towards a pit. Amity would grab their hand at the last second and try to save them but Zoma would attack her, causing her to lose her grip and them to fall to their death. Personally, I prefer the second ending as I think that it would make for a more effective contrast between the two of them (Amity has fully grown out of her old ways while Zoma refuses to change) and I’m already planning for Zoma to just be a one-off character anyway.
So, that’s the broad strokes of my ideas for a new antagonist for Amity. I apologise if this was a little messy, and the longer post will definitely be more coherent and fleshed out than this, but this should hopefully give you a decent idea of what I have planned. For now, feel free let me know what you think of my ideas for this character and this story as a whole.