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My other style for the roach boy
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Cosimo Galluzzi
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@silverrepost
I drew them too, but Im the version of laziness
My other style for the roach boy
blelelelel
this is so dumb brother
Your enemy that does WAY too much
OK NOW. I have to lock in comms! Take this 🫡
I don’t mean to be rude; but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, does anyone have any examples?
Supernatural
Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)
Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)
Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.
A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.
Arguably Game of Thrones.
If we broaden it outside of television…I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can’t help but think of every band that’s ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.
In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want–and think they deserve–the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.
They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don’t want us. And they don’t really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience’s demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.
And like any other spoiled brat, they will break their toys before they share them.
It goes all the way to the top for kids shows. Toy sales will crash a show. Makes sense, but if those toys are gendered for boys instead of the female viewers, they won’t usually switch up the marketing and move them to the girl aisle. They cancel the show outright.
Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn’t perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn’t a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.
And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn’t necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.
Young Justice
Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs don’t want largely female audiences
#WhereIsRey (initial)
#WhereIsRey (ongoing)
The older, male generation of 'Star Wars' fans may be losing interest in the franchise, but female fans are stepping up.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was designed to be the opposite of The Last Jedi
You’re all sitting on the hot take of the decade tbh
And yet when they fond out that boys were watching MLP:FIM in droves, they had NO PROBLEM with it.
#SONS OF ANARCHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!#LITERALLY SONS OF ANARCHY IS THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF THIS LIKE EVER#kurt sutter wrote that show for MEN and ended up with an overwhelmingly female audience#because he’s actually a good writer and knows how to develop characters well and wrote excellent female characters#but once he realized that his audience was almost entirely women he literally took it out on tara and gemma in the show#but like tara specifically#he resented her character for being a huge draw for female viewers so he tore her development to shreds and killed her#in the most brutal gut wrenching way possible#kurt sutter you will pay for your crimes#i actually wrote a manifesto about this on one of my old blogs i should try to find it sldkjsldfjsdljf#long post (via@m-oonknight)
OMG YES. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy, especially the women and then I got to season 6 and it was like - everything was just tossed in the trash? And like, why did Sutter hate that Tara drew tons of attention? That should have been a good thing! He should have been like “Hey folks, this girl’s getting us more viewers, let’s put her in more scenes!” It just doesn’t make sense to me. MEN don’t make sense to me.
The 100 too. I’ll never forget how Jason Rothenberg would attacked female fans on Twitter and mock them in interviews, and then post links to male fan discussions on Reddit to praise and thank them. In his goodbye letter to the show he SPECIFICALLY thanked Reddit and it was so disgusting.
Star Trek from TNG on was also a boy’s club, even though the TOS fans were mostly women. Women, in fact, who literally created modern fandom with their zines. But after TNG it was all, “Women don’t understand Star Trek, only smart men hur dur.”
I think it would be harder for us to find examples of when this DIDNT happen than when it did. It happens all the time.
Doesn’t stop it from boggling the mind
(though it could probably start to make some sense if you follow the money past audience bases to maybe a couple of investors or like a rich patron … 🤔)
Stooooop I just wrote a masters thesis on this shit. Media creation and distribution is a means by which dominant power structures consolidate their hegemony. Dominantly situated creators get upset when the audience they attract isn’t the audience they wanted, because they view the whole creation and sharing of the fiction as an exercise to sustain kyriarchal conditions that benefit themselves. When the audience is Other, they see it as a failure of those efforts and lash out.
Simply, they’re trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. It’s not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. It’s that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.
(anyway if anyone wants to read 35k words of philosophy about this, hmu)
I think a lot about an interview I heard with Bo Burnham a few years ago, where he talks about this phenomenon with his own work. He gained a large audience of teenage girls, and people in comedy spaces would look down on him for that or say what a shame it was, but he responded differently:
“The real truth is, I would perform my show and I would meet kids after and young girls would come up to me and they understood what I was expressing in that bit onstage way more than guys my own age. Way more. So if there was a bridge between us that I had to cross to write the movie [Eighth Grade], it was built to me by them. I felt understood by them before I presumed to understand them.”
Instead of trying to change his comedy, he decided to lean into and celebrate the audience that he actually had by making a movie specifically about the experiences of a teenage girl. It’s fascinating to hear him talk about how he got there, but also to acknowledge how rare that reaction is.
#Also see Joss Whedon#All the feminist talk but really we all know now#Look what he did to Charisma Carpenter#Also speaking of similar and the mention of The 100#How apparently Jason Rothenberg rewrote parts of the last season to include the protagonists onscreen daughter dying#Like JUST after the actress had an actual for real miscarriage and had her kill the character that is her canon love interest in the books
Invader Zim got a bit of this as well. IZ has a big queer/female fanbase and ZADF/ZADR is the backbone. But Jhonen thinks people who want them to be friends/romantic are missing the point that the show’s supposed to be cynical, so he wrote that Chammy Wamboo comic to make fun of them. Meanwhile Eric Trueheart noticed that 99% of Dib cosplayers he meets are girls and says he thinks that’s great. And he wrote the Lil Meet Man comic and the Brother Simulation comic that fans adore for the subtext of Zim not being as incapable of love as Jhonen claims.
I’m not joking about the JV thing btw.
I’ve been in the Invader Zim fandom since 2005. And even back then JV was vocally unimpressed by his fanbase. Heck while the show was AIRING he would take things the fanbase wanted to see and actually do them but like in a monkey’s paw kind of way.
“Zim should have a love interest!” JV introduces a female Irken who Zim tries to woo when he thinks she’s a human girl just to make his disguise more believable. She ends up being someone whose life Zim ruined and her entire goal is to murder Zim. They end up hating each other’s guts.
“Zim should have a human friend!” JV introduces Keef. probably one of the most terrifying characters in the show as he obsessively follows Zim around and becomes stalkerish and possessive in a way that starts bordering on being too real to be funny.
“Zim should find out his mission is fake” Enter the Florpus happens
JV is not only against the ideas and tropes his fandom has asked for but literally gives the fandom the exact opposite in some cases. Or when he doesn’t give the exact opposite he makes fun of common tropes in the fandom. Zim and Dib being friends a big one.
And although there are fans who come and go or who many years later will still be annoyed that JV doesn’t give them what they want, it’s been going on so long now that the long time fans have reached a point of
“LOL That’s our Vasquez!”
Seeing JV make fun of his own fanbase and troll them without outright being viscous or hateful towards them is just what being in the fandom is. And it works because of the nature of IZ in the first place. It’s a cynical, dystopian dark comedy that parodies modern American culture. Every character gets the short end of the stick at some point and the humour comes from how stupid everything is, often due to the character’s own faults. So having a fanbase where the most favourite tropes are what gets turned onto its head and made fun of? That’s perfectly on brand with the entire tone of the canon itself.
And honestly? I really adore this. A fandom of “Don’t ask JV what the canon for this one idea is because he’s gonna tell you the most anti-climactic answer on the planet. Just make up your own headcanon.” or “Zim and Dib are friends in this comic/fanfic and I don’t give a fuck I just wanna write it lol. It’s not canon at all but honestly who cares.”
There’s very little argument about “how canon” something is because it’s either canon or its completely not and not even pretending to be.
Also compare this to how several shows have suffered in the age where Twitter is a thing and you can directly communicate with show creators.
You get My Little Pony. a show that started out being about friendship and lessons about inter personal relationships told through funny humour and likeable characters. It attracted an adult audience by accident, especially a young adult male audience, who then as time went by more and more and more wanted focus on the LORE. On background characters. On the MYTHOLOGY of the world. And as time went on the show devolved into a mess of memes, pandering to the fans, references to other pop culture until it just became a mess of trying to solve world shattering events and wars with “we should all be friends” type logic.
You have Steven Universe which has a lot of writing problems, and when fans point out the problems have the writers try and EXPLAIN why the problems weren’t actually problems because see there’s actually this behind the scenes thing that happened and we’re showing it in a NEW episode that completely justifies the original problem! Which as a result ends up creating a community of “Theory crafters” so obsessed with what they’re NOT getting told because what is being given to them doesn’t explain things properly. With then theories getting taken as canon and so when the actual show doesn’t MATCH the theories those who liked those theories end up pissed.
You have shows like Star Versus the Forces of Evil which actively tried to bait its audience with different ships across its seasons and actively putting shippers against each other, while yoyo-ing the characters back and forth between potential love interests just to keep a certain aspect of its own audience invested in the romance side of things until it inevitably crashed and burned in its finale.
And then you have JV. Who doesn’t give a single fuck about what his fandom wants or thinks and if you try and bother him about it he will actively do the opposite of what you want just to spite you. Resulting in a relationship of very clear distinction between what is canon, and what is not. And not being bothered if your Zim and Dib Friendship fic could happen in canon or not. Because it can’t and it won’t. And you don’t care you writing it anyway.
This is why the Invader Zim canon has managed to remain recogniseable as itself despite the internet and social media becoming what it is. Because JV has no interest in placating fans. And at this point, the fans have no expectation for him to do so.
And although there is still discourse and bullshit and arguing and antis and fights… at least Invader Zim as a cartoon, movie and comic, is still 100% Invader Zim.
And that’s why JV being such a troll to his fanbase is something I honestly love.
Week 1 of Zadr Inktober
You ever just think about how ASTOUNDED literally every Irken ever would be to find Zim living domestically? Like, this unstoppable force of utter destruction and chaos who managed to take out two Irken leaders, cause multiple blackouts on tech reliant planets, and just generally fuck shit up right out of the smeetery? Zim is a brutal force of nature that cannot be contained.
And he's just laying on the couch with Dib, napping while Dib pets his antennae and scrolls through supernatural forums to start fights in the comment section.
GIR and Dib are literally the only two people that are able to calm Zim down enough for him to think clearly, and even that happens sparingly. I like to think that, once Dib's older and learns how to handle Zim a bit more, he's able to coax Zim down from a rant or tantrum or full scale killing spree with like, maybe a few words and gentle touches.
And any Irken who ever witnessed it would just--lose their shit. Shock. Awe. Reverence. Fear. Who is this creature that can tame the untameable? That can order chaos? What type of power does this human possess that he's able to handle ZIM?
And it's not just being nice to him. Skoodge and Keef were nice to Zim and Zim got so damn paranoid about it that he ended up trying to kill them both. It's about gaining his trust, his respect, his attention. And Dib has managed to gain all of it.
10 reasons why a poorly adjusted adult Dib is a Valid headcanon
1. Dib is/was a neglected child
Dib doesn’t have a parent that he can lean on and go talk to for advice, his father is frequently out of the picture and doesn’t give a shit about the thing that Dib cares about. Dib is actively encouraged by his neglectful father to give up on it, actually. I believe this would make Dibs stubborn streak really bitter and spiteful. Most people reading this are LGBTQ+, I assume I don’t need to explain how a fucked up an isolated upbringing, or being unable to be yourself around a parent, hurts you in the long run.
2. Dib is bullied for the things he is passionate about, and being bullied heavily colours your perception of other people
The world of Invader Zim is not kind, Dib is frequently harassed by his classmates/superiors/family for his outbursts/lectures/overall investigator shtick.
Now you might say “but, Screaming, wouldn’t Dib learn to tone it down as he got older?” and YEAH. Probably! But does that mean that he would just forgive all the people that made his life horrible before that point? Or who socially ostracized him for the things he’d done in the past? No. No one is under any obligation to forgive anyone who hurt them, and I think Dib wouldn’t even try to forgive someone he saw as intellectually inferior
3. Dib is a selfish rich kid
Dib is selfish. He wants to be the protector of earth- but he doesn’t do it for earths sake. He’s clearly doing it as a cry for attention/ a reason to eventually be vindicated for being spit on by his own kind. I don’t think he would have genuine empathy for other people. If he did have it, it’d have to be something he had to work really hard at. However, I don’t see Dib putting much effort into understanding other humans.
Dib is rich (probably). This one being more of a headcanon- in the series Dib wants for no material object, he wastes technology on his explorations like it’s something he can just pick up from the dollar store, his father is a world renowned scientist with access to crazy technology and the ears of world leaders. I think he’d feel entitled to one or two things
4. Gaz is not her brothers keeper.
She’s not responsible for his mental health, she’s not responsible for keeping him in line and “normal”. Most of the time she doesn’t want a damn thing to do with him. If we’re going by the standards of the IZ tv show, the only times that Gaz interfered with Dibs paranormal investigations were when Professor M. Was also involved. Either she wanted to see her dad and Dibs antics were getting in the way (forcing her to intervene), or she was directly ordered by their dad to keep Dib out of trouble. Sure, you could argue that she would beat the shit out of Dib for doing something she didn’t like- but that wouldn’t “fix” the mind of a very stubborn person. It might even make them dig their heels in even deeper out of spite and bitterness as a “fuck you I’m right you’re wrong”
Furthermore, as Gaz gets older she’s going to have her own life to worry about and might stop tolerating the way Prof. M uses her as a middle man to deal with his “poor insane son”. She’s under no obligation to fix any of the phases Dibs life might go through. If Dib was unpleasant enough, and Gaz had the resources to leave, I think she might just bail on him.
5. Dib is arrogant
He’s gonna do what he thinks is the best course of action unless you physically stop him from doing so. He comes from a place of thinking that he is right, the opinion of anyone else is secondary. Dib will do “what needs to be done” for “the greater good”. Whatever he thinks that “good” is. He wants to play the white knight at any cost. He cannot be in the wrong, or that bravado towards being righteous in the end crumbles. I think Dib would subscribe to a “the ends justify the means” mentality
6. Dib would harm another person to get what he wanted
In a room with a moose, Dib debates letting himself die just to take his entire class down with him. In the unaired episode “return of Keef”, he co-operates with Zim in an attempt to make Keef explode, because he thinks Keef is irritating. Dib used Gaz to test out an ancient spell book, cursed Gaz to only taste pork, and then only helped fix the problem when threatened with physical violence. This could be the kind of thinking that gets worse over time as more people mock his attempts to save and protect them. Why care about people that don’t even give a shit if they live or die? Dib is a smart fringe personality in his world, and the otherness that he feels for that could lead to a sociopathic way of thinking if things went bad enough
7. Dib does not care about other peoples personal space
Dib hides cameras in Zims house. Dib ran right past the front gate at NASA Place, Dib chased a baby big foot up a radio tower. Dib bullied Zim physically on the playground using his known weaknesses against him. Dib would do anything to get the evidence he needed to prove what he wanted to prove, and that would get him in trouble. Repeatedly
8. Antisocial tendencies (like spending countless hours fused to a chair, or most of your young adult life spent hunched over a desk at a computer screen) make it difficult to smoothly socially integrate, and the world of Invader Zim is fuckin’ mean
You know the world he comes from is mean. However, assuming Dib did find community somewhere, who’s to say they would agree with him? Or like him? Maybe one of them would cause problems for him that were bad enough he’d have to leave. I’ve always found that the IZ portrayal of earth to be like this funny cynical parody of a dystopian police state america. If we’re going by “what can go wrong will go wrong”, Dibs social integration wouldn’t get easier without a bunch of effort on Dibs part. Maybe Dib would have to pretend to be somebody unlike himself just to get by in his day to day adult life. If we see Dibs country of residence as a police state, the world Dib grows up in would encroach heavily on his personal privacy, and that might make him even stranger via paranoia
9. Sadistic tendencies towards anything paranormal (obsessed with the act of dominating and exposing the unknown)
Dib is a fucking jerk to Zim (rightfully so), but Dib is a dick to pretty much every supernatural thing he comes across. Either out of an excess of enthusiasm, or using a supernatural being to further his own plans, or from an invasion of privacy, or being an irritant to the entity he’s dealing with. He LIKES to be mean to them. He wishes to have mastery over knowing how they work. (maybe it’s more fair to say Dib is a voyeur?)
This is more headcanon than anything, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he might also want to control the paranormal for his own purposes. If Dib could say- catch a ghost in a jar so he could show it to everyone, he’d do it. If he could trick a werewolf into transforming on stage in front of a large audience? He’d do that.
10. Dib is created to be Zims equal
Dib is as “evil” as Zim is and vice versa. Neither of them is good, or pure, or morally justified. It’s a nice little grey dynamic. Both characters think they’re entirely in the right when they act. That they often aren’t in the right is fun because then you get to write/draw/ think about how they’d react to the consequences. Dib could still totally be a hero in his own mind, despite setting an apartment block on fire to flush out a coven of litches.
The reverse of this is also true, Zim can do nice things, and occasionally be good as Dib can be good. I figure the Zim/Dib dynamic changes for everyones interpretations at least somewhat. Having Zims terrible actions rub off on Dib as their battles escalate is a really fun way to go about exploring their relationship
11. I like the it
There is no right or wrong way to enjoy a cartoon character! Live to make yourself happy in fandom! If you ever thought you needed permission to create rancid content, I’m sorry you felt pressured not to do it.
You want to make a serial killer Dib?? You want to make a basement dwelling depressed zit covered Dib?? You want to make a Dib who struggles with his trauma through substance abuse?? Go HAM!!
BEAT UP MASTER DAY
charlie brown!dib available if i ever get the rights
Listen idk