#peg membrane

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It took me 23 years to realize that "My Tallest" is the Irken equivalent of "Your Highness" and Jhonen thinking it'd be funny if that honorific were literal is probably the entire reason Irkens have a height-based class system.

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Everyone seems to headcanon Dib and Gaz's mom, if they even have one, as a scientist like their father. But what if she was a politician instead? The reason we never see her is because the show takes place during a period of time when she's busy in "Presidentland". She's just like Dib in that she's the only sane Congresswoman who sees the blatantly stupid/unethical policies her colleagues are trying to pass and gets no support from her own party when she tries to stand up for what's right because everyone thinks she's too radical for not wanting to compromise and appease the opposing party.

She comes home for one episode because she had to abide by her own principles and abstain from voting on a spending bill for federal funding that goes to the network that broadcasts Probing the Membrane of Science because it's a conflict of interest for her. Meanwhile her rival from the opposing party is married to an oil tycoon who's been accused of illegally dumping thousands of gallons of toxic waste into the ocean but still thinks she can be unbiased about a bill that would make it legal for him to do so and also funnel taxpayer money directly into his bank account. Needless to say, this rivalry heavily mirrors Zim and Dib's.

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I know canonically the reason why Membrane would rather believe he’s hallucinating than accept that aliens are real is because it’s funny, it maintains the status quo, and it’s probably meant to characterize him as extremely arrogant despite his intellect and incapable of admitting he could be wrong about something.

But what if the actual reason was that his wife was a lot like Dib, obsessed with the paranormal and proving the existence of aliens? Membrane was willing to indulge her at first and helped her build a space ship to go check out a signal she believed to be of alien origin, but something went wrong and she never came back. Membrane wanted nothing to do with the paranormal afterward and buried himself in “real” science for the benefit of mankind to assuage his guilt. He discourages Dib’s interest in the paranormal because he doesn’t want him to get hurt but doesn’t outright forbid it because he’s smart enough to know it’ll only encourage Dib to rebel and keep secrets.

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I forget if I actually made this post or if this was just an idea I had that I forgot to write down some time ago but like...

Zim and Dib worked together on the cure for bolognafication, so Zim's probably had access to Dib's DNA for examination, and he created Clembrane as a clone of Membrane, meaning he's probably gotten his hands on some of Membrane's DNA as well.

So if they were to do Eric Trueheart's idea of Dib being a clone of Membrane, what if it was actually Zim who figured it out first and told him? Or what if Zim knew for ages and never said anything because he thought Dib already knew/didn't think it was a big deal because that's how all reproduction is handled on Irk?

Also, foreshadowing that the Membrane family has a connection to Irk.

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Even more additions to my Peg Membrane Concept:

Peg's full name is Dr. Margarita Membrane.

When Dib gets nosy about what happened to his mom, he asks Membrane if he's worried the truth will hurt him and tells Membrane that he's already survived having his lungs stolen, being turned into bologna, and trapped in his own nightmare world, so there's pretty much nothing Membrane could tell him that could hurt him worse than he's already been hurt. He asks if his mom left because she didn't want a family and Membrane is quick to tell him she wanted a family more than anything. He explains to Dib that he and Peg couldn't have children by conventional means and that's why they developed the process by which Dib and Gaz were created together. He also reveals that because of the way they were conceived Dib and Gaz were both born sterile and with pituitary issues that will require them to go on HRT soon so they can grow up alongside their peers.

Peg used the same technology to save the Irken race from extinction, but the Control Brains took over before she could solve the sterility and hormone issues and never fixed it themselves because it gave them more control over the Irken populace. This is why only a handful of Irkens selected by the Control Brains grow to be taller than the average pre-adolescent child.

Peg nurtured Dib's fascination with the paranormal as a child by providing him with picture books about aliens and cryptids and giving him cryptid plushies like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and his favorite; Mothman. She noticed that Gaz seemed to really like pigs as a baby so she got her lots of piggy toys, blankets, and stuffed animals. Before she went into space to check out the Irken signal, she taped a drawing Gaz made of a pig to the inside of her shuttle. At some point while she was raising the original Zim he found the drawing and asked her to explain it and became fascinated by pigs. This is how knowledge of pigs and pig imagery became prevalent on Irk despite pigs not existing on their planet and why current Zim says things like "pig-smellies" and "love-pig" all the time. This is also where the confusion between "Peg Membrane" and "Pig Mom Brain" originated and why Peg is often described in ancient texts or drawn with a pig's head by the Irken cultists who worship her. Irken cultists also sing and play music that Peg brought with her on her shuttle, with lyrics that have become garbled nonsense overtime, but which Dib is able to recognize and give the correct lyrics for.

Dib only starts looking into what happened to his mom because Zim was gone, having been lured to planet Judgementia to be put on trial. He figures out "Agent Roswell" was his mother and that Membrane knew and kept it from him all his life. So it becomes like a Little Mermaid situation where a combination of dissatisfaction with his life on earth, a longing to explore other worlds, and feeling betrayed by his father drives him to run away from home. Meanwhile, Zim is declared defective and upon escaping execution decides to go home to Irk to try to get the Master Control Brains to overrule the Control Brains of Judgementia and affirm for him that he was made perfectly, exactly according to their grand design.

When Dib and Zim both end up on Irk at the same time, Dib isn't able to breathe Irk's toxic atmosphere and only has a limited supply of oxygen to get him by. Zim finds him a PAK fresh off the assembly line with no personality or memories coded into it which allows Dib to breathe without overwriting his personality. It takes Dib a little while to get used to it and figure out how to make the spider legs and other appendages and accessories come out when he wants them to. Zim can't explain how to make the PAK do what he wants because for him it all happens automatically without him having to think about it, like breathing.

When Dib becomes aware of the Control Brains and their role in Irken society he points out that the entire Irken race are getting all their information outside of personal experience from a single source and none of them have ever questioned whether anything's been omitted or misrepresented to them. He gets very upset by Zim's blind trust in the Control Brains and tells him, "You know, I used to think you were different, but it turns out you're just as willfully ignorant as every other person I've ever met. No wonder no one else can see that you're an alien. You fit right in!" to which Zim does not take kindly.

Zim and Dib meet the cult of Pig Mom Brain, and Dib quickly realizes that they're not really operating like a cult. They don't have any leaders telling them what to think to serve their agenda. They do research, they come up with theories and debate them with each other, and they're willing to change their minds according to new evidence. They're scientists, just like him.

With the cult's help, Dib and Zim end up discovering Peg's lost lab. There they find video diaries that explain everything that happened and show the original Zim growing up in her care. Zim gets to see himself being nurtured and cared for and loved by Peg. He gets to see her being proud of him. He gets to see himself become tall thanks to her addressing his pituitary issues. Dib also gets to hear Peg lamenting that she may never see her biological children again since they won't even be born for another 10,000 years, and wishing that Zim could've met them before wistfully adding, "Maybe in another life."

Original Zim is somewhere in his late teens or early 20s when Peg's final diary is interrupted by the lab being attacked by robot assassins sent by the Control Brains to destroy her and take control of the planet so that they can force the Irkens to depend on them forever. Original Zim tries to protect Peg, but is fatally injured. Zim and Dib stop the playback so they don't have to watch Peg die as well.

Zim realizes his entire life he's been subconsciously influenced by buried memories and emotions from his past life. When he first came to life and said he loved the cold unfeeling robot arm? That was him projecting his feelings for Peg onto the closest thing he had to a mother. His destructive nature was born from his rage over the Control Brain's betrayal and his constant accidental sabotage of his own people came from knowing that what Irk had become wasn't what Peg wanted for them. His inability to conquer earth and affinity for Dib came from his instinctive recognition of their connection to Peg.

He'd always believed he was meant to be an invader, but the events of ETF and his subsequent trial have made him doubt himself. All Irkens are supposed to be made for a reason, but until finding out about Peg, Zim didn't know what he was made for.

Knowing the truth, he's convinced that he was never meant to be an invader, he was meant to be a disruptor. He wasn’t supposed to perpetuate the system, he was supposed to burn it to the ground. Peg made him to be the start of a new generation of Irkens who would save their planet, and being unable to do that in his past life he's returned to become Peg's vengeance and the destroyer of her corrupted dream.

Zim and Dib team up to take out the Control Brains who are simultaneously the only things keeping Irk from completely falling apart and also everything holding Irkens back from being able to fix their broken society.

The Control Brains actually have Peg still alive in suspended animation and try to use her as a bargaining chip, but Zim and Dib manage to rescue her and still defeat them. They bring Peg home to reunite her with the rest of the family, which Zim is welcomed into.

Zim asks Peg for confirmation that he served the purpose he was made for and what he should do now that his reason for being has been fulfilled. Peg tells him, "I didn't make you to be anything. I made you for the same reason I made all my children. Because I wanted you."

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Ya ever notice that pretty much all Irken food looks identical to human food and even has the same names while the only actually alien food we see is stuff served at Shloogorgh's to other non-Irken aliens?

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Thinking about my Peg Membrane concepts again.

I remember I mentioned in one of them that she would've brought some earth music with her to Irk. There would be a song remembered for thousands of years and sung by the Irken cultists, and the lyrics would be garbled, but still recognizable enough that Dib could identify it as a pop song that came out before he was born, but still remains popular on earth.

So what if something like the above scene happened? Like, Irkens have lost all their culture except for mindlessly consuming snacks and brainless AI generated entertainment and conquering worlds. They don't create their own art anymore, so they have no outlet to express themselves and the only art they consume is devoid of any meaning that can resonate with them and help them process their feelings or understand the feelings of others. But then Zim and Dib discover a song, a simple, yet catchy pop song about love from earth that's survived for thousands of years because a handful of Irken archeologists and cultural conservationists thought it was worth protecting. And then they blast it all across Irk to remind the people that there's more to life than food and conquest and that gets them all to turn against the Control Brains and fight for their planet's freedom.

I feel like the idea works especially well if Dib's the one singing the song, because his entire deal is that he just wants people to listen to him and for his words to have an effect that shakes them out of their apathy and complacent stupidity. So being able to blast his voice out to an entire planet and actually succeed in changing peoples' minds would be the best possible ending for him.

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Another small addition to my series of Peg Membrane posts.

Since the original Zim was Peg's first attempt at creating new Irken life from the DNA of sterile Irkens, he's essentially a prototype categorized as an experiment labeled "Male Irken 0" or "MI0". When deciding to give him a name, she saw that designation on a monitor reflected on a window as "0IM" and changed the "0" to a "Z" to get "Zim".