myyyyyyy least favorite thing that people did especially back when the florpus influx of fans came around is the soft babyification of everyone but also especially especially skoodge (i say as though i liked skoodge when florpus came out). even if there were people that miraculously recognized that zim wasnt a perfect sympathetic victim it was still somehow impossible for them to do the same thing for skoodge (whenever his existence was actually acknowledged)
and a lot of that is probably due to how silly he is and how limited his screentime is (and probably because of his fat. since people tend to be more inclined to label fat characters as "soft huggable babs." im not an expert on that particular subject though so disregard this)
but guys..,,, even with his limited time. he makes it verryyyy clear what hes all about.
one of his first spoken lines in battle of the planets are "so that no irken boot has to come into contact with any unsavory alien filth" when talking about literally laser-ing blorch's surface.
like. planetary extermination.
cmon. he could not have made his stance any more obvious.
if you want skoodge without xenophobia then you dont want skoodge. you want this
you want an invader zim with likeable characters who have no bad qualities? no problematic subjects?
it boggles me a little bit how many people are really truly convinced that zim, tak, and on rare occasions skoodge either do not discriminate towards other sapient species or outright like them. tak called the earth a nasty rock. skoodge referred to the inhabitants of blorch as alien filth. i don't think zim's expressed a single positive sentiment towards humans in words or actions during his entire time on their planet
It's been ages but I just had to revisit my beloved Vatez and Aziz! Just some design touch-ups, nothing too crazy and what their human disguises/version would look like!
Once again I am begging you to remember Irkens are not human. Irkens come pre-packaged with an entire Wikipedia of knowledge in their head with their souls in a backpack riding a meat suit. They do not care about how long the physical meat suit has been functional. They have stages of life but that doesn't mean they're OUR stages of life. Irkens have smeets and functional members of society. That's all. That's it. No babies, no toddlers, no kids, no teens.
The closest thing they have to maturity is breaking the surface, and what "age" that is, as far as human understanding, is completely up in the air. That's before we even begin to consider the bizarre nature of time in space. Tak trained on Devastis "fifty years ago", but at the same time Sizz-lorr was trapped on Foodcourtia for "twenty years" during the same amount of time Zim ditched his post. As a cute bonus, the PAKs may as well make them immortal. Time means jack-dookie to these guys.
When work begins literally two seconds from birth, it's highly arguable Irkens fully understand the concept of childhood at all, and if they do, it's not the way humans know it. I'd say it's more akin to Tutorial Mode than anything else. Yes, Zim uses the word. Yes, Zim understands the basic idea, but that does not equate to a lived experience.
Can you argue that smeets are infants and Zim is what we understand as a "child"? Yes. Can you argue that smeets cover "infancy" and "childhood" and all Irkens past the surface are "adults"? Also yes. And both claims, I think, would be valid interpretations of the show because like. We don't know. Based on evidence from the source material and only the source material We. Do. Not. Know.
Remember, even for humans, the idea of childhood as this exceptional time of innocence and fun that has to be protected at all costs is like two hundred years old, tops. The concept of "teenager" barely existed in the 1920s and didn't really come into fruition until the 1950s. You had humans and smaller unexperienced humans, or maybe if you had money, smaller humans got special privileges.
Irkens don't have that gap for learning to be a person, it's downloaded immediately. What they need is a bigger size and training experience. Irkens don't have children. They have new employees who need to build resumes. They have homegrown low-level players who need XP. Zim's age is Zim. (Or perhaps Doom.)
This might not look impressive at first glance, however
1. the robot is about twice his size
2. and made of metal, which is heavy
3. and he’s dragging it FAST.
Here he is carrying someone nearly his size over his head like she’s Styrofoam.
There are ways you can use someone’s momentum against them to send a person three times your weight flying onto the floor without having any special strength.
However, her weight and energy were going backwards (she was yanking back on his wrists trying to get the controller away), and he threw her forwards, which implies that unless Zim is really good at martial arts and does really fancy stuff, which is doubtful, he didn’t use her momentum. He just threw her. Against her backwards momentum. And she is quite large. Plus, he’s standing on one foot there, which should send him pitching backwards along with her UNLESS HE’S A FREAKY ALIEN.
It’s confirmed in the Zimvoid that Zim can lift more than three times his body weight. We’re never told the upper limit, just that it’s “more than three times his body weight”
There’s just something about the fact that Zim reads as So Autistic. Like, both in the sense that it’s easy to map his experiences as an alien secretly living on earth to Autistic experiences:
A lack of understanding of social cues and conventions
The Anxieties of feeling like you have to fit in some arbitrary social standards or Something Bad will happen
Unusual sensory sensitivities
Pickiness about food
General alienation
Even the whole ‘fully grown alien disguised as a human child but he’s so immature he basically acts like a child’ shtick can really resonate with a sort of Growing Up Autistic Feeling of… being both far too mature and childish for your age at the same time.
And also in the sense that even in the context of comparing him to other Irkens...
He has problems with volume control
And possibly audio processing
And definitely with emotional regulation
And is extremely impulsive
And uses very unusual wordings and turn-of-phrases
And experiences sensory overloads.
And these aren't even Alien Things. That's just Zim being Zim. So he can be read as a metaphor for being Autistic and also as just having the Irken Equivalent of Autism
AND ALSO
His human arch-enemy Dib also has SO MUCH AUTISM VIBES
Like being single-mindedly obsessed with a special interest from a young age
(The part where his interests alienate him from his peers at school and he only finds companionship with an assortment of fellow weirdos of various ages he met online is something I find especially relatable for my own experiences)
Also having problems with reading social cues
And a tendency to rant and info-dump
AND ALSO ALSO
There’s also Gaz
Who is ALSO single-mindedly obsessed with a singular subject
And it’s something that always gives her something to do with her hands
And avoid eye-contact
Which she generally prefers to avoid
And also seems to dislike any sort of physical touch
And either expresses her emotions in a way that is terribly understated or overstated
And it could also apply to their dad too, who’s been obsessed with science stuff from a young age
And also doesn’t seem to do so well with social interactions
Outside of just, like, me looking back at my Autistic-but-unaware-of-it middle-school ass imprinting on this show and being like “oh yeah, That Makes Sense” - it’s also kinda darkly hilarious how this show is basically about two autistic boys who just fucking hate each other to death (plus one of the boys' extremely autistic and extremely dysfunctional family). I mean, in the real world Autistic Solidarity is so incredibly important, obviously. But Invader Zim, a show that was everything to me as a lil autistic teenager is all about that sweet sweet Autistic Hostility.
My Favorite Random Inconsequential Invader Zim Headcanon has always been that Irk is considerably farther away from it's sun and thus colder than Earth. Mostly because:
Zim didn’t know that staring directly into the sun will hurt him
and his immediate assumption is that the humans ‘booby-trapped their Sun’ - meaning he thinks this property is unique to the Earth’s Sun.
And the one time he complains about Earth’s weather, it is the intense heat that bothers him
Now, the implication in ‘Door to Door’ seems to be that it was an unusually hot day
(Jeez, Dib, if you’re sweating so much, have you considered taking off that giant black trenchcoat?? At least Zim’s a brainwashed conformist alien soldier. You’re just doing it for the Aesthetic).
But Zim still seemed a lot more negatively affected than the humans considering, like, the hallucinations.
Meanwhile, Zim has also been to the goddam North Pole and has never once made a comment about the weather there.
Plus, since Zim was originally utterly unfamiliar with the concept of rain - I figured it might make sense if his home planet was so far away from the sun that all liquids are naturally frozen solid and there’s no ‘water cycle’ even with other non-water liquids. (Although maybe it’s just that all liquids native to Irk have a really low freezing point. That’s mother alternative explanation)
Irkens legitimately have one of the most interesting concepts I’ve seen from an alien species so far..angry green ants who work under a hive mind and usually only care about themselves unless it’s to serve their ruler, whose entire hierarchy is based on something as arbitrary as height. They’re encoded with a second brain from birth and to lose it would mean death. The Tallests they worship aren’t even in charge, they’re effectively hyped up wrestling announcers and little more than a figurehead for the empire while the control brains run the show. There’s so much we don’t know but there’s already a lot to work with here, and all of this came from a funny alien show in the 2000s.
Yesterday was Sunday Funday and I drew Dib. No clue why - but I've been into invader zim lately. I'm rewatching every episode and letting a random number generator choose for me. It's actually pretty fun.
Tbh, iz is one of those things that I'll always revisit and draw something for, probably because it's from my childhood. I'll be 67 and think to myself "hey let's draw dib." It's funny how my interpretation of him has evolved too, but that probably has to do with me getting older. When I was a teenager, my "older dib" was also a teenager. With these drawings I'm drawing him as an early 20 something who's a MAJOR shut in. Why go to college?? There isn't a major for paranormal studies. (not me listening to dorian electras gentleman and thinking "OOH DIB" SKDJGKFJHKFJ)
It was wild returning to my sketchbook after doing comms for so long. I kind of forgot what it feels like to draw loosey goosey, and it took me a while to remember how. I surprised myself and actually had a good time (and didn't psyche myself out 🥲)
yknow this gir animation?? I was looking at it and thinking man i wish i had this without the opening credits on top. (I was wondering if i could make it a discord sticker)
and then I realised, the resting frames between the movements is in the same spot... maybe i can cut around the credits?
so i did
enjoy
(another version with 4 big sips thats slightly choppier under the cut)
well kinda, in pure ability he’s likely one of the smartest irkens seen as he was one of the few irken scientists, he also makes most of his tools and upgrades his pak (which it seems like most irkens can’t do, requiring most of their equipment to be premade)
of course that’s already pretty obvious in the show, but my main point is that he knows what people actually think of him, the tallest literally said “i hate you” to his face and he just doesn’t actively acknowledge it
it seems like he knows (atleast somewhere deep down) it’s just that he despises to actually acknowledge it
there’s been multiple instances where he’s actually confronted with the fact no one cares but everytime that happens, he sees that people pity him and immediately snaps out of his depression (mostly shown in the movie and the quarterly)
(he’s literally going to CRY in this panel (irkens eyes do a water bubble thingy when crying))
he’d rather keep his ego intact than actually accepting some form of help
ANYWAYS back on zims bigbrain-ness
i think something similar is happening with how he acts on earth, kinda pretending to be naive/stupid for the sake of keeping his emotions together
he has destroyed/took over multiple planets SOME DURING THE DURATION OF THE SHOW, yet suddenly can’t think of a single way to successfully take over earth
he’s a extremely capable soldier, yet ‘struggles’ to kill a child
EVEN THE CHARACTERS NOTICE HES BEEN GOING EASY ON EARTH
it seems like he wants to stay on earth, even in the timeline where he successfully takes over the planet, he stays
earth and more importantly fighting dib gives a purpose in life
he NEEDS to have dib constantly thwarting his plans or else he just gives up entirely
it doesn’t seem like he actually cares about taking over earth that much, all he wants is approval from his tallest
he wants them pay attention to him, to care about him and invading in his eyes seems like the only thing left that he can’t screw up
he gets to see that in the timeline where he takes over earth, he actually gets that approval yet realizes how stupid it all is
it’s not enough for him to stop but it’s likely enough for him semi-give up on actually invading earth
with this, there ARE two people who will pay attention to him, that will care about him
Dib and Gir, their entire existence revolves around giving him something, gir with helping him and dib with thwarting him
(there’s also mini moose I GUESS)
part of the reason he’s defective is because he can love, and want to be loved
irkens are supposed to only care about the tallest, meanwhile zim literally says he loves mini moose and cares about all his robots (even giving the purely battle ones names “once you name it, you get attached to it”). he also cares about dib to a certain extent, choosing to save him when he doesn’t have to (this is shown in the comics more than the show)
uh1!1!2!!2!1 conclusion1!2!!3!2!1
zim intentionally has really stupid plans cus he doesn’t wanna leave earth
i know those other aliens were giving lard nar crazy side eye when he tried to form a resistance with them as if vortians werent besties with the irkens
zim’s age & difference between irken and earth years
so, what i had realised is that it’s highly doubtful that zim is older than dib, more so, it’s likely that he’s younger, to which extent - can’t say surely, but zim can be, like, almost half an age of dib’s, more on that in this post
first things first, in my opinion zim is clearly child-coded, besides that, we can’t actually say, that an irken that is adult or a child in human years is really on that level of development bc irkens are simply a different species that have different biology, psychology and different world order
it was originally planned that zim is 160-200 years old (this info is questionable, so take it with a grain of salt). in human or irken years? that is a good question, most likely in irken years, you’ll see why later
the next question is, which years are longer?
so, this is the question that is still unanswered by anyone (afaik)
and we couldn’t know for sure, if it was not for a small detail: episode «the frycook what came from all that space»
the thing is, the foodening lasts for 20 years, zim has left the foodcourtia right before previous foodening started. sizz-lorr captured him only before the next foodening, which means, that in between zim’s escape from foodcourtia and him spending some time (no more than one earth year) on earth, a little more than 20 irken years had passed
the question is, how much time had passed between zim’s escape and operation impending doom two, given that he could escape at any time? the answer is - a few minutes, he escaped literally as planet assigning already started (flashback from the same episode). given that foodening probably didn’t start immediately after his escape, it is possible, that 20 irken years have passed since he came to earth till some time before the episode takes place, which, may i remind you, is less than one year on earth
now, if we took that information in mind, we can conclude, that zim is around 8 to 10 in human years, but again, only if we consider that his age is an age that was originally planned
since zim’s age being 160 y.o. is highly doubtful, it’s ok to not agree on that part, but there is still some evidence, that zim is actually a child
that being:
zim as a human child in florpus
info from the show bible
and the fact, that zim being older than dib makes their rivalry simply unfair (if zim is younger this is not a problem, since irkens start to work and train at a very young age)
keep in mind that i could make a few mistakes along the way, would be glad if you correct me
i would be also glad to hear your opinion or counterarguments on my findings
thanks for coming to my ted talk, jhonen is an ass and we’re all gonna die! peace!
