Sizz-Lorr and Foodcourtia headcanons (and a bunch of other stuff) because this man has an implied past with that scar and unique armour and I am HERE for the implications:
Sizz-Lorr is one of the oldest irkens we’ve seen in the show. Irkens live for up to 800 years. Sizz-Lorr is in his mid 600s. He’s old, but not very old by irken standards, as they start showing signs of old age around the age of 750 or so.
Just for comparison, Zim, Skoodge, Tak and Tenn are all 15, Red and Purple are 16, and Tallest Miyuki was in her 400s at the time of her death.
Sizz-Lorr also very obviously has a military background of some sort. He instructs the soldiers that deliver Zim to him with the authority of a military commander and has that unique armour and gigantic scar across his face, which must have been quite the injury in order for it to still be visible nowadays since irkens heal very quickly.
Sizz-Lorr was a very high ranking soldier that served the Tallest before Miyuki, and was allowed to retire and become the Frylord of Foodcourtia because of his long and excellent service. The scar is from an injury he got when he was on the front line.
As for what he did as a soldier, I would like to present his armour that he wears to collect Zim.
Sizz-Lorr’s armour has the invader insignia on it, but it obviously isn’t invader armour. Invaders just don’t get that kind of tech. It wouldn’t help their mission and would probably cause more harm than good because of how obvious it is, when invading is a stealth focused job.
It’s armour given to a class equal in rank to invaders, who do something other than invade.
It’s Special Forces armour. A class equal in rank to invaders, but focused towards fighting on the front lines instead of stealthily invading planets beforehand. More specifically, it’s Frontline Division Special Forces armour, which is pretty much the default division of special forces.
[click on the image for better quality]
Members of Special Forces are given special powered armour that’s designed for combat in all environments, boasting heavy armour covering every square inch of the wearer’s body, retractable weapons all across the suit, most notably in the shoulder pads, which contain one plasma canon rivalling the power of a small ship each, even more weapons built into the gauntlets of the armour, a mask allowing the wearer to breathe in space and most notably of all, a jetpack.
Now the presence of a jetpack and space equipment shouldn’t be that important considering that irkens have both of those things built into their PAKs, with a spacesuit function and a built in jetpack.
But the thing about the built in jetpack is, it doesn’t work when on the surface of a planet. It’s not powerful enough to lift an irken off the ground because it’s an EVA pack. It’s meant to be used only in very low to zero gravity environments, which is why Zim only uses it in Planet Jackers when he’s in space, where there’s no gravity.
The Special Forces jetpack on the other hand is more than powerful enough to be used in situations where gravity is too strong for the PAK thrusters.
But there’s one more thing that’s extremely important about the Special Forces jetpack, along with the armour itself:
It’s all a part of the irken’s PAK.
When irkens officially complete Special Forces training and receive their armour, their PAKs are modified to contain the jetpack part of the armour. The rest of the armour is connected to the outside of the PAK as well, folding up to become a metal shell that surrounds the PAK whenever it’s not in use or needs to be removed for whatever reason. We don’t see this metal shell form on Sizz-Lorr because he always has his armour (mostly) deployed.
The jetpack also has a set of mechanical wings that are used for gliding when in an atmosphere, visually resembling something like dragonfly wings. These wings are actually modified PAK legs. The PAK legs extend from the PAK and the wings extend from the PAK legs.
These modified PAK legs can still be used as regular PAK legs, they just have the bonus ability of becoming wings capable of gliding. They have all the same tools that regular PAK legs have, but stronger. They even have a more powerful version of the mining laser that all irken PAKs have.
The mining laser is a square shaped laser fired using all four PAK legs simultaneously. We’ve seen Zim use it several times throughout the series and Tak use it once. It’s the most powerful weapon in the entire PAK.
^ This is the unmodified irken mining laser in action, so you can probably imagine just how powerful the upgraded version given to Special Forces soldiers is.
The irken’s spinal implants (a large set of metal plates that takes up most of the irken’s back and helps the PAK connect without damaging the irken’s insides) are also modified to accommodate the extra weight of the armour whenever it’s in its undeployed shell-covering-the-PAK form
The wearer can also choose how much of their body the armour covers at any given time. We already see Sizz-Lorr retract his jetpack when he doesn’t need it, but he also actively chooses to leave his arms uncovered by his armour, as the heavy duty designed-for-combat gauntlets that the armour has would get in the way of his job as a Frylord. Instead, Sizz-Lorr makes his armour stop just after the shoulders and wears proper cooking gloves. He also retracts the mask when he’s doing his job, as the space-proof mask also gets in the way of his job as a Frylord.
There are also multiple divisions of Special Forces, all designed for different things. There’s the Frontline Division, which is the largest division and is what Sizz-Lorr used to be a part of, but there’s also the Incendiary Corps, the Cryonics Division, the Royal Forces (the Tallest’s personal set of Special Forces soldiers), and many more.
The different divisions have slightly different armours, as they’re all meant to do different things. The Frontline Division is the default division however, and has completely unmodified armour as a result of that. The other armours are all essentially just modified Frontline Division armour.
Just for comparison, the Incendiary Corps Armour has better heat resistance than the Frontline Armour, a wrist mounted flamethrower unique to the corps and ditches the shoulder mounted plasma canon for a shoulder mounted napalm launcher, also unique to the Incendiary Corps, just to name a few differences. Armour is also coloured differently depending on the division.
Speaking of the Incendiary Corps, Invader Tenn is a former member. As for why they didn’t get to keep their armour while Sizz-Lorr did, there’s a very simple explanation for that: The differences between their current jobs.
Sizz-Lorr is a Frylord. That’s a civilian job that definitely doesn’t need the Special Forces armour, but at the same time, it doesn’t hamper his ability to work. Plus his PAK and spinal implants have already been modified and it would be a massive hassle to undo that, and after all his hard work in the military, Sizz-Lorr definitely earned that armour.
In comparison, Tenn is an invader. That’s a military job, but it requires stealth and keeping a low profile. A suit of powered armour capable of going toe to toe with a small army with the irken armada insignia on both shoulders definitely doesn’t fit the description of stealthy and inconspicuous, especially when you’re alone on an enemy planet. The armour can protect you from a lot, but it can’t go up against an entire planet’s worth of soldiers, which is what you’ll be going up against if your identity is discovered. Tenn still has the modified spinal implants and PAK and she can still deploy the Special Forces jetpack, but it’s very much not recommended to do so without the stability and protection that the armour provides, as the armour protects the wearer from both the extreme force of the jetpack and the extremely hot exhaust. She also still has the modified PAK legs that can fold outwards to become wings and the improved mining laser that comes with them, but without being able to use the jetpack, the wings can only be used for gliding. If Tenn ever manages to conquer Meekrob, her armour will be given back to her.
Anyways, back to Sizz-Lorr. Not only was he a member of Special Forces, but he was a Special Forces COMMANDER. He commanded a squad of 9-10 irken soldiers in power armour for a living, and he was GOOD at it, having completed tens of dozens of successful missions and participated in hundreds of battles.
There’s also Sizz-Lorr’s shock spear, or shock spatula in his case.
This is an irken shock spear:
It’s a staple of irken culture. An electrified halberd that can either focus energy through the blades for better melee damage or fire energy from the tip for use as a ranged weapon.
It’s irken tradition to make your own shock spear once you leave the smeet academy, and you won’t find a single irken that doesn’t partake in this tradition. Even Zim has his own spear that he built by himself.
But shock spears don’t have a strict design that they must follow when being made. Many irkens go for the popular two-bladed design, which is why we see it the most, but you don’t have to follow those rules. Sizz-Lorr making his shock spear resemble a giant spatula is a perfect example of that.
Sizz-Lorr’s giant spatula actually predates his title of Frylord, as he used it back when he was in Special Forces. He built it to replace his previous shock spear that broke during a mission, and he’s used it ever since.
Also worth noting Sizz-Lorr’s armour in that picture with the spiked shoulder pads, front that resembles an apron and cape-like thing that actually is an apron. That’s Sizz-Lorr’s “Foodening gear”. He built it when he was stuck in the Foodening after Zim escaped for the first time. It’s designed to work as armour protecting him from the never ending stream of customers that show up during the Foodening. It also contains equipment designed to make cooking large amounts of food easier, including two built in automatic fryers in the shoulder pads, so he can cook as much food as possible in a short amount of time.
As for why he dons it to chase Zim, it’s less because it gives him an advantage (quite the opposite in fact, as his Foodening gear gets in the way of his jetpack and Special Forces armour), and more because if he goes after Zim, win or lose, he’s going to be facing the Foodening. The most he can do is take Zim down with him and have both of them go through the Foodening together.
Speaking of the Foodening, let’s talk about Sizz-Lorr’s current job.
Sizz-Lorr is the Frylord of Foodcourtia. That means that he owns the entire planet, but he doesn’t own all the restaurants on Foodcourtia. Sizz-Lorr has his very own restaurant in the form of Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster, which is his restaurant that he owns and runs, but every other store on Foodcourtia is owned by other people, of all sorts of races, not just irkens.
If someone wants to open a restaurant or another business (like a Snacky Cab) on Foodcourtia, they go to Sizz-Lorr, who gives them an area to put the store and gives them permission to advertise. In exchange, Sizz-Lorr gets a tiny chunk of the store’s profit. That tiny chunk of the profit is small enough to not really affect the individual store financially, but when combined with all the other restaurants and stores on the entire planet, which all also give Sizz-Lorr a tiny amount of their profits, it adds up to quite a lot of money in Sizz-Lorr’s pockets.
Meanwhile, despite already having a steady stream of income from his main job as a Frylord, Sizz-Lorr also owns and runs his own business, Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster, although it’s less of an income thing and more of a personal thing. Sizz-Lorr’s main job of leasing Foodcourtia gets him more money in a week then Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster does in a full year, but Sizz-Lorr doesn’t care. Shloogorgh's is a personal project of his and apart from dealing with the Foodening, he enjoys spending his retirement running the place.
Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster is also one of most popular restaurants on Foodcourtia, partially because it’s run by the living legend and owner of Foodcourtia that is Sizz-Lorr. So Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster is a bit like the unofficial capital of Foodcourtia. Sizz-Lorr also lives in his restaurant, with a house being located on the top floor.
Now there’s just one problem with Foodcourtia, and I’ve mentioned it before. The Foodening.
Before explaining how the Foodening works, there’s something very important that should be said about irkens; They don’t experience time like us. Their brains automatically translate local time into irk time, and they perceive time differently depending on that.
I’m bad at explaining this through words, so here’s a graph that should hopefully explain what I’m talking about.
If the irken is on a planet where one day is less than 28 hours, the irken’s brain will start perceiving time faster than normal so one day seems like 28 hours.
If the irken is on a planet where one day is more than 28 hours, the irken’s brain will start perceiving time slower than normal so one day seems like 28 hours.
The irken doesn’t age faster or need to eat and sleep more. They just perceive time differently, not directly experience time differently.
Their PAKs have systems that stop this from happening beyond a certain amount, as it can be disastrous if an irken goes to a planet where the rotation is extremely slow (one day being a month or more) or extremely fast (one day being a few minutes) and their brain starts making them perceive time according to the planet they’re on.
Drone class irkens and irkens undergoing punishment will often have these systems shut off or removed, either to make the punishment worse or to make their sentences seem longer or shorter than they actually are.
This is why Tak was apparently on Dirt for seventy years, despite the blackout that ruined her life somehow happening fifty years ago and only about three or four years actually passing between Zim causing the blackout and the present day. As a drone, Tak’s time perception adjuster was shut off while she was on Dirt and she experienced time according to Dirt’s rotation, so that three year span of time felt like seventy to her. And since she doesn’t know how to reenable her time perception adjuster (she’s not a PAK technician and doesn’t want to just remove her PAK and start trying things at random), her sense of time is still incredibly screwed up by the time she reaches Earth.
The same applies to Zim during his stay on Foodcourtia. He was there for three years, but experienced fourty. Luckily for him, Zim actually knows how to reenable his time perception adjuster, having had a brief time working as a PAK Technician before becoming a scientist, and reenabled it once he escaped.
Now that that’s out of the way, Foodcourtia. Time works weirdly there.
99% of the time, time flows normally on Foodcourtia. But on rare occasions, time starts behaving weirdly for a very short time. These events are called “time warps” by tourists.
No one actually knew about these time warps that happen on Foodcourtia until the very first Foodening happened, and no one knows exactly why it happens. No one can really study it as well, as the only real way to study all this would be clearing everything off the surface of Foodcourtia and setting up thousands of research stations, along with possibly cutting open the entire planet. Due to just how many businesses and stores exist on Foodcourtia, this just isn’t possible. Dismantling Foodcourtia wouldn’t so much as put a dent in the irken economy as it would put a massive crater in the entire galactic economy, as there are so many different businesses there that Foodcourtia is a big part of several different economies.
Now most of the time, these time warps don’t do much. A Foodcourtia day might get three or four seconds longer, maybe a minute longer if you’re lucky, but nothing nearly as bad as the Foodening. However, rarely, with no real pattern, these time warps become extremely powerful, going from “barely noticeable” to the “twenty Foodcourtian years happening over the course of several months” that the Foodening is known for. These supermassive time warps also cause a gigantic aurora to form across the entire planet’s sky for the duration of that twenty foodcourtian years, considered to be one of the galaxy’s greatest sights.
No one knows what causes these time warps, and they happen at random, but people can still track and predict when particularly large ones are going to happen. So people will learn that a massive time warp is going to happen on Foodcourtia and bring that beautiful, must-see aurora with it, and they flock to Foodcourtia to see it, even if it means being stuck on Foodcourtia for the duration because the time warp prevents you from leaving the planet. It helps that the twenty years in question is twenty Foodcourtia years, which isn’t too long when compared to something like an Earth year.
But the people that have actual problems with the Foodening are irkens because the time warp overloads the irken’s time perception adjuster and shuts it off, forcing them to fully experience those twenty Foodcourtia years like they’re irk years, as their organic brains force them to perceive time like that.
So basically, during the Foodening:
People outside Foodcourtia experience time normally, and the Foodening is over after several months.
People on Foodcourtia experience time differently due to the time warp, and the Foodening is over after three or four years for them (which is twenty years in Foodcourtia time).
Irkens experience the full twenty years of Foodcourtia time like it’s twenty Irk years.
So that’s how the Foodening works.
In conclusion, Sizz-Lorr is easily one of the most powerful and dangerous people that Zim has made an enemy of. He’s an Ex-Special Forces Commander with a set of iron man armour and has hundreds of years of combat experience, compared to Zim’s 15 years of life experience, about 1 or 2 years of so is actual military experience. He’s one of the only people that Zim clearly fears, and that’s for very good reason. He’s also rich, powerful and very influential due to his current title of Frylord and gargantuan height.
Also Foodcourtia has a lot of weird time warping stuff going on that no one really understands, and irkens perceive time differently depending on what planet they’re on.
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