Give the headcanon essay on Irken Love!! Gib!!!đđ
When I think of Irkens and love, I think of the Guante line: Your job is to protect your family. And your family is everyone.
Irkens are, at the base, a eusocial species. This isnât a Control Brain thing, this is something that was at the root of their society and their species before Brains, before PAKS, before technology and space travel. If anything, the implementation of those things made Irkens less of a hive mind, not more.
(The Empire, as of now, separates Irkens into individualized spaces, while still asking them to be part of a collective. It... causes problems.)
Irkens donât have parents, siblings, spouses, cousins, or friends. Irkens have the âUsâ.
What someoneâs âUsâ is depends on the Irken and the Irkenâs encoding, but overall, it tends to be the group youâre part of. A Navigator or a Pilotâs Us is a fleet or an armada. A Smeetery Supervisorâs Us is their smeets and the other Supervisors.
Invader is such a revered encoding partially because itâs so demanding. Not only do you need to have expertise in several military fields, itâs a job you do alone and that isolation is taxing. (Itâs also why the risk of going native is so high--without an Us thatâs fulfilled by other Irkens, that Invader naturally goes looking for it elsewhere, which is what happens to Purple in âFinal Examâ.) But even if theyâre apart from other Irkens, they still have the Us of the Invasion as a whole. They still have an Us, itâs just one you only see like twice a year.
For a Tallest, because theyâre the only ones with their encoding, their Us is the entire Irken Empire. Not that thereâs much choice, they donât have anyone else. Usually. Red and Purple are one of the uncommon (but not at all unheard of) cases of an Us being formed with just two Irkens. Since they get all the attachment and social bonds they need from each other, it hinders their ability to attach to the rest of the Empire like theyâre supposed to.
Even then, while their tiny Us of two is top priority, theyâre still Irkens and the rest of the Empire is still their Us. The same can be said for all other Irkens: groups within groups are just an Us within an Us.
Itâs not so much that the individual doesnât matter so much as that the individual is simply part of a whole that matters more. Your blood cells matter--if you bleed to death, youâll find out real quick how much they matter. But a papercutâs different than a stab wound. Losing ten drops of blood is an inconvenience; losing ten pints is a death sentence. Likewise, the loss of one Irken is a statistic, but the loss of a thousand Irkens is a tragedy.
Irkens love their Us the same way you love your wife, not just your wifeâs small intestine. Youâre glad it exists, youâre glad the intestine keeps your wife alive and healthy, but thatâs about it. A Commander loves their fleet, not Elite Skoodge. A Frylord loves their work staff, not Food Drone Gashloog. A Tallest loves The Irken Empire, not Invader Larb.
(This is the trouble with defectives. A defective, at the root, is an Irken that cannot or will not be part of the Us. And if youâre not Us... well. That can only mean youâre Them.)
Does this mean Irkens donât have individual bonds or friendships? Absolutely not.
Itâs uncommon for those bonds to be strong, and itâs unusual for those bonds to last beyond a few years.
Why? The same reason any species makes a lot of babies in the first place: most of those creatures arenât going to live.
Before the Irkens went to war, they were busy being eaten all the time. If the mortality rate for your clutch, your fleet, or your squadron is going to be at least 50%. When everything wants to eat you, whoever you decided to bond to probably isnât going to make it through the next five years.
But even if your war buddy gets devoured, who do you still have? The squadron. Who will you always have? The Empire. Investing your love in an individual is foolish, dangerous, and asking for heartbreak, which is why most Irkens donât do it.
Itâs a lousy investment. Itâs a dumb investment.
The Tallest are pretty dumb. Zimâs kinda dumb sometimes, too. A lot of Irkens are, really.
