I love 10 Minutes to Doom Dib and Zib for equal but completely different reasons. Both are technically ‘Dib with Zim’s Pak’, but the appeal of 10MtD is that Dib REALLY DOES NOT WANT THIS, and ‘this’ is Zim’s brain completely taking over his body in brief spurts. He’s aware of what’s going on, but is horrified by his body being out of his control and is desperately trying to stop it. He’s the passenger locked in the backseat trying to reach the wheel.
Zib, meanwhile, is a Dib who willingly put the Pak on and forced Zim into submission, but it’s changing his essence from the inside out to be both more Zimlike and more Irken. He’s the driver, but doesn’t realize he’s gone off the road and is heading for a cliff.
The difference is in circumstance, timescale (ten minutes versus months/years) and willingness to have the Pak on. Fighting back versus embracing it. Knowing this isn’t him versus not realizing just how much it’s changing him.
I have never done anything like this before. There are so many things in this short video that I tried for the first time and to be honest, for 1/3 of the making I was absolutely sure, I would not be able to create anything presentable.
And even though I knew this would be a difficult project, I had to do it. Not short after I had joined the iz fandom, the remake of the “The Trial” episode was released and I was so sad back then because I would have loved to be part of it and when I found out about this project, where we want to remake the “10 minutes to doom” episode, I just needed to join. I would have been a big hypocrite if I hadn’t.
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And since I found out about this project through a post; if you want to join the collab as well then here is the info video for it!
#exactly #it’s fascinating #zib# Invader Zim #I would love to see these two meet up #just to see (via @melodyofthevoid on this post about 10MtD Dib and Zib.)
(Warning: Things don’t end well for one of them. Don’t want to say more bc spoiler but yeah, not a happy ending here.)
Read on Ao3
He had come in through a portal, like all the other Zims. But he wasn’t a Zim, and Zib had hopped off his throne to examine this turn of events closer after dismissing Number Two.
“You’re weak.” Zib quirked up an eyebrow. Dib’s eye twitched.
“Weak? You’re kidding. I’m not the one who- get that thing off of your filthy head, it doesn’t belong to you!!”
“No. I like it there. It’s useful.” Arms crossed with green fingers on the end, nails tapping against a worn-ragged coat. “You really can’t get him under control? I killed Zim weeks before putting the Pak on, and managed to fight what was left off within a day.” He leaned forward. “You’re a pathetic excuse for an alternate self.”
“You had a choice,” Dib said through gritted teeth, resisting the urge to activate the weapons and show how ‘weak’ he really was. He was roaring to skewer that thing through for the mockery it was making of irken anatomy! “You can’t not see how it’s- ghh-” One of the blasters was pointing directly at the Zim-Dib now, ah, how many seconds had he lost, only two, (how was it managing to maintain control, was he just weak, were they weak, how could it exist when he was tearing himself and Dib and Zim apart at the seams every second-) and Zib just snapped his fingers and a shield bloomed from behind his back to cover his entire body. Reluctantly, the blaster returned to its proper place.
“I wouldn’t try and threaten me. I have a lot more control over mine than you seem to over yours.”
“Yes, yes, well, Zim doesn’t like you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
“You’re an ab-b-bomination!” The word stuttered in Dib’s mouth, tasting like metal. “A patchwork disgrace, tainting the beauty of the irken form by mutating it with your disgusting human body! You were actually crazy to do it on purpose?”
That got a laugh, and Zib leaned forward, legs planted together in a militaristic stance like back on Devastis back in training back when he was an Elite. Did his hair just twitch?
“I’m the disgrace? You’re a joke! A Dib that can’t subdue his Zim, and a Zim who can’t manage to just take over that joke of a Dib as a new host. I took what I wanted, you’re a cosmic fluke. At least most Dibs who don’t win at least don’t lose like this.”
“At least I know I messed up!” Dib shot back. “Look at you! You’re green, you lost your nose and ears, your hair moves like antennae.” He laughed bitterly. “At least I know I’m going to die tied to a lunatic as a fool child who doesn’t know how to keep his big head out of things that don’t concern him! At least I’ll still have some of myself left. You? You’re not Dib anymore, you’re not even human!”
“A few altered traits to gain better compatibility with the Pak and control the tech-” he started, but Dib barreled forward.
“At least I still have moments where I’m myself! At least I’m not an amalgam that isn’t Zim or Dib, isn’t anything but an empty shell who thinks it’s something that it isn’t.” The Pak legs popped out, and Dib loomed over Zib, who was glaring at him and inching a gun out of his own Pak. “Back on Vort, they did tests where they hybridized irken DNA and blank, weaponless Paks with species planned for conquest to test obedience to the Control Brains and irken masters. Most never survived, but of those that did, the Irken DNA was corrosive- to our very blood, we are bred to conquer. Something as pathetic as a human would never stand a chance.”
Dib’s eyes were blank as his head lolled on his neck. “You may think you’ve had your revenge, but one day, you will wake up and what is left of your filthy Dibness will be gone, and you will be Zim.” A grin stretched across his face- too far, as if his lips and cheeks were made of rubber and his mouth was only teeth. “Irkens believe in death before weakness, but somewhere deep in the coding of your Pak, your Zim is waiting, and you will die.”
Dib cackled, arms outstretched and back arched to thrust the Pak forward, and Zib shot a stunning laser directly to his head. He crumpled into a heap of meat and bones and sweat and fabric, the Pak flashing pink. Zib reached out for it and caught sight of his own thin fingers and the way the pointed nails curved, just the slightest bit.
He tossed the body in the incinerator before it woke up. He didn’t want to deal with that drivel. He had work to do.
Rereading the 10mtd script... Zim knows where Dib was when he was heading to the lab, but not when they were at the Skool.
It’s possible that the connection is made only after the Pak dug into Dib? As in, with a new host, Zim’s ‘body shell’ was able to use whatever bits are ‘left’ in it to connect once the Pakbrain was ‘active’ again, and that’s why it dug into Dib besides for its own survival- as a way to signal to Zim where it was.
