A Messy, Sedulous Necropsy Of Zib Membrane

A Messy, Sedulous Necropsy of Zib Membrane

That’s what we call him right? Not Invader Zib? Hell if I know, we’ll let the tags decide.

Whatever he is christened by his author, enemies, or fans, this titular villain of the Zimvoid is such a mind blaster to me. I wish we had more time with him within the comics. I wish he had been a concept explored in the show. I wish he had a movie. I am having fun with a little hyperbole here, but I truly do find him just as interesting and potentially pivotal of an antagonist as Tak was, if not even more.

Both, of course, were so badly underutilized for sake of the series status quo. To that, Zib was a much bigger threat than Tak, and especially to that of the comics’ own. He potentially changes everything, and somehow absolutely nothing by the end. The TV show always had a more overt tone of cruelty and the macabre floating about its themes. These print issues? I don’t dislike them. It’s still recognizably invader Zim, and the more the merrier, content-wise, but longtime fans can feel that there was this change of essence in the transition. More obviously, in the art, but more subtly, there was an audible softening of that bluntly darker, cynical tone the show was made iconic for. To put it very generally, they lean a little more into the whackiness of this world, there’s a lot more dark comedy to be found in what I’ve seen so far rather than in your face darkness, and in the absence of the ost and voice acting the show accustomed us to, the comics leave a lot more room to be read as you wile. To me, they’re goofier and more episodic in spirit.

This all is not a critique or rating on the comics.. It’s purely, I feel, why Zib stuck out to me all the more jarringly in his context. His reveal was a genuine twist that brought forth stakes higher than arguably any other threat in the entire franchise. He represents a plausible while horrifying prophecy of our main characters if only they made worse decisions. The most interesting of all, for every piece of amazing information he fed to us, he bred dozens more questions about everything than he answered, from Irken machinations, to his ambivalent backstory, to the secrets hidden by the sum of his parts.

Though he was left evidently alive at the end of his story, I don’t see any chance for him making a return, so he is memorialized as another defeated one-off the writers have brisked past and left behind for good. Therefore, I’m here today to take what we got and present it on the metaphorical autopsy table. I want to really pull apart why this character alone pulled me back into the TV series, really just flay open the bits I can’t get out of my own head and dig harder until we find something or we run out of threads to tug at. Starting with the one already hanging out of my mouth, but

• B.E.F

“Bad End Friend” is a term I learned the meaning of within the last 12 hours or so of writing this, and I’m exuberant over that discovery. It’s a niche trope i didn’t know ive been a giant fan of since I was a child. Summed up, fictional characters from beloved media, typically, animated child protagonists… given the worst case scenario treatment. Their “bad ending”, whether that means a corruption arc, demonic possession, a lovecraftIan tragedy… usually something that’s anywhere along the lines of a fate worse than death to a full villainous turnover. As a treat. The concept is strongly associated with fanworks and AUs of popular media, but just as often this is something that becomes explored in the source material as well. A couple great examples I know would probably be Ice Prince Finn from Adventure Time or what happens in Undertale when you decide you want to run the most depraved playthrough possible. From a more mature story, “Evil” Morty is another validly arguable sample.

Besides a bit of a fondness I got going for certain dark or spooky themes in general, what I REALLY love about canonical BEFs the most is their utility as characterization tools. They’re the “having your cake and eating it too” option! The perfect way for an author to explore certain things about any character without actually committing to well… a bad ending.

Almost always, they are necessarily hypothetical or reversible. If they’re not reversible, they go often hand-in-hand with a little universe tampering to make happen. Sometimes, this means the story goes the way of time travel and branching off butterfly effects. Sometimes it means confirming multiverse theory, which can be the same thing depending on your semantical position.

And Zib crossed off the BEF qualifications by far and away. His implications are extremely dark given any pause think about them, and he’s a living, disturbing tragedy in aftermath. If you want to view a rigamarole about that aspect of his characterization as he appeared in the comics, someone else long beat me to that and I’m enthusiastically recommending a peek at their own work. I’m thrilled to do so and build a little upon that with those extended what-if-wonders.

• Lessons From a Lost Episode

Elephant in the room I haven’t seen someone ask yet, uh..

By show rules, isn’t Zib supposed to be a clear case of the writers committing the sin of retcon? By show I’m including the unaired scripts, including “10 Minutes to Doom”. In that one we had what looked like the potential setup for a Zib case, and it was deconstructed across the whole episode.

In short recap, Dib learned the hard and reckless way about the true nature of what Irken PAKs actually are. This is not an inventory bag, it is not “gear”. It’s the actual Irken entity- at least, the primary component.

Detaching it from the organic shell essentially caused a temporary split into two instances of Zim, desperately trying to connect back together under threat of obliteration.

Like let me be very clear about this,

The PAK is an autonomous instance of Zim’s consciousness, and it’s the main one. We’ve seen it act to save his life when his body has been out cold or flatlined, and he doesn’t appear the least bit disoriented or confused once “he” wakes and jumps back into the action. There’s no known separate computer assistant AI or security autopilot in there. That code, that program, IS Zim. As Long as the PAK is active, he is capable of staying fully conscious and able to react to what’s happening around him, and that’s what we’ve been seeing, his own actions.

Zim proved me right when Virooz tried to replace him and detached the PAK. Take note of his phrasing after the chair event™.

“I” activated the protocol. Immediately after Virooz ran off with my shell.

“I” Voluntarily chose to do so.

I don’t remember it playing out like that in “10 Minutes to Doom”.

Attaching to a new host wasn’t the first reflex. Dib was not the least bit aware that that he has literally holding the actual Zim captive in sense, and the latter was fighting like a cornered animal to escape him. Failing that, alongside the distance between him and his original body growing fast, he made a last desperate gambit, and he willingly connected himself into Dib’s body.

I can see why he thought this was better than nothing, no matter how repulsive the notion might have been. If he couldn’t fend Dib off physically, he could incapacitate him in some fashion by trying to overtake his will. Maybe give the shell a better chance to catch up, maybe in the longshot hope of being able to pilot dib in order to become whole with the correct host again. And you can say he succeeded, at least in dominating bodily control away from Dib, but at the cost of his already tenuously held sanity. This could be because of the interference of Dib’s own mind still resisting to fully submit, or malfunctions because of the biological incompatibility; however, the thing that Dib mentally becomes is only the basic idea of what “Zim” is. Instead of remembering it needs to reunite with its shell ASAP, the PAK mistakes Dib’s body for its own and goes through the manic motions of following the Invader mission. And it does this, weirdly enough, with almost no regard for blowing its cover.

When things are set right again, Zim’s later words near the episode ending revealed that he knew that was an unsustainable state.

Such a risk was not just accounted for, he was actually banking on it if that clock had hit zero. If Zim had truly lost, if he was really doomed to meet his end on this nasty rock in the middle of Nowhere, Space, then by every damned circuit in his being, he was going to take down this insolent fool boy and as many other humans possible with him. A dying act of vengeful rage.

• The Exceptional… Exception

Now, wouldn’t all of this be the definitive reason for Zib’s existence to be an aberrant impossibility? Yes, but actually no. Fun thing about multiverses is if something doesn’t work in one setting, you can just tweak a few dials and suddenly you have a world where the impossible becomes possible. But that’s a pretty cheap answer, isn’t it? So, what exactly was that crucial difference?

What happened in Zib’s timeline that went down so, so divergently from the events of 10 Minutes to Doom?

Because the only one who was in any position to explain it for us was Zib himself, and he’s proven to be one of the most unreliable of narrators. It’s as @dana-chan-the-control-brain already spared no effort to demonstrate, when he does tell us something about his past, his story is pocked with contradicting half-truths or outright lies. Ergo it helps to break down each recount of events to pick out the real facts.

Version 1: This is an alternate version of dib who defeated his complementing Zim (logically sensible) and went on to achieve all of the success and respect he sought after in his timeline (absolute bullshit). He kind of gestures and only implies about what has happened to his body while explaining that he came to his current understanding of Irken technology by studying it through Zim’s lab (a partial truth). He lets slip in passing that he has in fact fused with the PAK in order to learn how to alter and reprogram its coding, lessons he has applied to Number 2 in order to have a brainwashed pawn (also apparently true).

Version 2, when cornered and red handed: This is an alternate version of Dib who managed to specifically stop Zim's mission (Again, makes sense) but somehow could not convince the world of his findings or his warnings about the Irken Armada (*VERY eyebrow raising). Frustrated with the people’s lack of cooperation, he decides he has no choice but to physically merge with Zim’s PAK post-mortem (concerning and evidently mostly accurate), dominate the Earth himself, and enslave humans to help him in his efforts (highly troubling and probably true). The construction of his EMP super-weapon is successful, but ultimately led to the creation of the Zimvoid when the device was field tested (self evident, absolutely horrifying).

You know what I noticed was missing from both of these accounts? Exactly how his Zim was defeated. Which honestly could have been some beyond useful wisdom to pass along to the main Dib??? More than anything else? I’m not going to fault our boy for not pressing that matter better under the awing circumstance; however, there’s an implication I’ve been reading between lines. 

When Zib mentions “defeating” his own Zim, he’s talking about something different than ours.

When our Dib has always talked about “defeating” Zim, he’s meant incapacitation and capture. Throughout the show he explicitly wants to present Zim before an audience alive and whole. Yeah, he fantasizes about other people torturing or disassembling him for study, but HIS role was supposed to be reaping the fame for an undeniable, ground-breaking discovery. Conspiracies and cryptids are all this kid breathes and lives by! And as long as pop culture has always been fascinated with the paranormal, and he has to know this full well, people keep bringing forward hoax after hoax after scam. I mean there’s a freaking current one or few still going IRL about this exact topic. Dib would want no room left for being dismissed as another one of those con artists. 

Nonetheless, I actually doubt this is the reason Zib couldn’t get through to the scientific community. A genuine alien lifeform, even a dead one, could still be confirmed by any basic medical examination. The world thinks Dib is too crazy to listen to, but his father is still Professor Membrane. In "10 Minutes to Doom" OUR Dib got as close as having Membrane literally analyzing a PAK, or at worst, preparing to. “Ultimate Dib” gets his hands on the same thing and pulls a move I’d expect from an HP Lovecraft Protagonist instead.

We’re assuming way too much to what these two Dibs have in common, because this ^^^ is really what made the Zimvoid an outlier in the multiverse. That world didn’t only have a very different, more threatening Zim from the main timeline, it had the Dib who proved even more formidable, cunning, and ruthless, even before the fusion. 

He didn’t obtain that PAK ala the “10 minutes to Doom” accident, it’s a personal trophy. This is extra strange remembering that capturing an Irken is realistically more easy than killing one. They’re seriously more tenacious than kudzu and will even fight back in PAK form alone. I’m convinced that whatever sort of final showdown made the Ultimate Dib the victor, there are two optional endings on the table.

Option 1: There was not a body even left intact enough to bring in to research. Maybe Dib’s fault, maybe an accident, maybe even Zim’s own luck running out and his incompetent antics finally swallowed him (and possibly GIR). This theory assumes that the PAK was the only sort of remains to come into Dib’s recovery/possession.

Option 2: Curiosity Killed the cat,

but satisfaction brought it back.

Or, the one I personally headcanon. Dib… all Dibs, I assume, don’t just hate the Irken species. They are mesmerized by them, and all that they represent from his perspective. Firstly, the epic villain he gets to roleplay nemesis to in order to feel his own worth and importance. Secondly, an unknown wonder from beyond the boundaries of the cosmos. He’s not really a ghost buster or a Men In Black agent at heart, but a scientist, like his father. Underneath his contempt for Zim’s plans to destroy the world is a genuine and appropriately childish awe for alien presence, especially for Zim’s technology. His silent, dopey smile when Tak’s ship ended up in his backyard said more than words ever will.. 

Earlier in the show, a great deal of Dib’s time and effort was spent on trying to infiltrate the lower levels of Zim’s base. Sneaking into the house was hard enough, but the computer security can’t be bypassed like the gnomes. Not even by Zim himself unless he really is all himself. Perhaps you’re starting to sniff where I’m going with this one when I refer back to “Bolognius Maximus”. I’ve another reference that’s a little more on the nose, and a lot more… dark.

Were an expired Irken husk before you, you too might take your victory and cash in then. Still, who knows what sudden impulse may run through the head of a less humble version of yourself, one some could call greedier, obsessive to a fault, a screw or two loose, yet, a hell of a smart cookie. Smart enough to see it for what it actually was, the keys to a whole world of discovery that went so many layers deeper than they could ever imagine. It’s possible the Ultimate Dib already learned beforehand the same hard lessons about the PAKs that our own did, and took that understanding toward not repeating the same mistake this time. What happened to Zim? I think he was murdered in cold blood, body, and entity. “10 Minutes to Doom” showed us a fight between 2 brains clinging to one body, struggling until one overpowered another, but that’s not what this is. Through whatever means of science were available to him, this Dib has probably tried to “disarm” the technology by either erasing Zim’s consciousness out of it altogether, or by forcing the autonomous code into a kind of dormancy. His intentions were to render it back to its basic hardware without losing its precious knowledge and usefulness, something like the brain-filled tank that was wired into Skrang’s head. Zim’s PAK doesn’t cling onto his body like a parasitic teratoma this time; it’s merged in a literal sense with his nervous and circulatory system. As well, he has fooled the device’s ability to detect and reject a foreign host shell, the exact same way he deceived the the base’s security AI. If an Irken biology is what these measures authorize to command them and their secrets, then he had the tools on hand to give them just that- in an atrocity I like to call

the darker harvest.

Within this theory, there is not as much room to wonder exactly what became of Zim’s organic remains. 

But where Dib fucked up was, for the second time, in his ignorance to the true nature of what he was even playing with. That was a mistake that even the mighty Elder Brains of Judgementia lost themselves to; How much more vulnerable was the weak, human mind? Though Zim can be devoured, he can never be digested. In that fact was born this aberration against nature, sanity, and humanity alike.

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects… don't have politics. They're very… brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first… insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but… I'm afraid, uh… I'm saying… I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake." - Seth Brundle, The Fly, 1986

By fusing what is half-mad and what is utterly mad, neither being was cured, only assimilated into the birth of a new madness. The madness of the creature that snickers behind the curtain in the Zimvoid. I rightfully fear that lonesome thing, but not I think as much as I pity him.

• Dejavu, or Re:Plagarism

One more thing about the Zimvoid arc I find curious is the way it makes you question more and more just how much of the aberration is actually still Dib, and how much of it is Zim's infection haunting him. He does nothing with all of his intellect, his resources, and his time in the void doing anything but surrounding himself in everything he claims he despises. He decries alien tyranny in one breath while lording over a homemade, cruel dictatorship in another. He calls for eradication of the very race who's technology and physiology he has thoroughly appropriated. He laments feeling unable to protect the Earth from the Armada alone, yet sneers literally through Irken teeth to insult humans as inferior and of no value to him any longer. Our Dib spent the whole damn show longing for the support of other people, but Zib pushes away potential allies in his arrogance. His broken timeline never became a Dibvoid instead because while only half of his mind can't stand Irkens, both of the souls inside him remember that they loathe and look down upon a Dib, deep inside.

The corruption goes as far as even subverting his own creativity. None of Zib's plans are wholly original. His anti-Irken weapon was already a concept blueprinted inside of that PAK before the merge. Our Dib has several times shown a propensity for some DIY ingenuity, sometimes dipping a toe into the supernatural. Zib entirely calls upon, scavenges and regurgitates Irken designs with a few modifications or upgrades. The Dib Virus, I think is his most uninspired creation yet, for it's original form was always something inside of Zim, even if the latter himself was not aware of the fact. Like all else, it is a weapon he has plundered, customized, and turned around on everyone else for his own selfish ends. This brief point I will end on one  more reflection. The one kind of help Zim ever allowed at his side were the likes of GIR and his own creations. Unable to connect and cooperate with his peers and own kind, his ego preferred to be around those defective machines he related to- drones to be owned by him and always loyally at his beck and call. A slave to admire him unconditionally is the only companionship he's ever been willing to admit to desiring.

And what was Number 2's purpose again? What role exactly were the arena combatants auditioning for, when you think about it?

“You can't do this! People will know something's up. I mean, look at this place. It's enormous!”

“The great thing about your people, Dib, is that most of them don't notice. All they see is another faceless corporate venture, not a plan for world conquest.”

“Wait… is there really a difference?”

what the hell is his problem!!

Understandable and justified reaction from her here ngl

I’m totally playing Devil’s Advocate for Gaz here but every time you think she’s being an absolute demon to her brother and it’s uncalled for, recall the full extent of Dib’s most insufferable and jerkass behaviors, and imagine being under the same roof as that guy every day. Sharing a fridge and pantry with that. Sharing a common living space with that after you’ve already spent a school day with it. You’re like, 11 and just want to play video games and do normal childhood stuff, and you live with Dib Motherfucking Membrane.

Yeah yeah, he got what he deserved for the Pork Taster thing, but I’m pissed off on sis’s behalf just watching how often the dude straight up shows negative amounts of consideration when it comes to someone else’s food. What the hell.

Use me as a guinea pig for dark magical arts and curses? Well, nobody’s perfect bro. We all make mistakes.

Drink the last soda unnotified like that? Fucking yoink my pizza slice out of my own hand??? You are catching some freaking hands you audacious little twerp.

Woopsie, I Put Too Much Effort Into A Character Song Playlist (Zib)

YouTube

Garbage Boi Roach Man

Garbage Boi Roach Man

Just showing off some contextual brain worms. Feel free to toy with it as hyperfix fuel, art/fic ideas, a discussion starter, or just to know what’s been rattling around in my ears lately. Addition suggestions welcome. No particular order to arrangement.

Breakdown/Preview below:

Outer Science, English Ver. [Kuraiinu]

Song artist: Jin (covered by Kuraiinu, English lyrics by Kuraiinu)

Fact of fun: The story told in the original song is part of a whole rabbit hole of a work, the Kagerou Project. Outer Science is specifically about one very bad ending out of a huge branch of connected timelines and possible “routes”.

Sorter’s note: This badass track is a huge favorite of mine both with and without even considering this character list, but holy shit did I find it appropriate for this purpose- from the action, the vibes, and especially for it to center around another villain as utterly maniacal as the star of the list. In my little headspace I love to imagine it mostly addressed from Zib’s perspective toward our main timeline’s Dib.

Sample lyrics:

[Does it matter when you, will soon awaken anew

That I’m reveling in every suffering just like a demon?

“Ahh why! No! Why!” you howl and cry

“I never wanted this” you lie..!

Look into my own eyes, there lies your fate and demise

And I know there another fated eloquent master awaits]

[Ahh, not enough, I can’t evade the desire

To eat up their darkened hearts upon the pyre

Taking ahold of every one of their lives

I’m buried in their eyes

Ahh, it’s also in you, deep down inside

The power bigger than them all, Combining Eyes..?

Yes, within this sad tragedy

You are the “queen”]

[How pitiful to live and die

Time and again you all defy

Though it will end the same, you keep resetting the game

Remiss and pain all aflame

Crying, howling, ever writhing]

Broadcast Illusion

Song artist: GHOST & Pals

Fact of fun: This is effectively a remake of one of GHOST’s earlier works, “Colorbars” and was the last song released as part of their Communications project before the series cancellation.

Sorter’s note: With the instrumental stylizations and dark themes of this piece outright, I hope my associations with the favored freak become self evident.

Sample lyrics:

[We’ll wake up in a singular reality

The death of a nation

A toxic reaction

So scream and shout, make a whole lotta noise

Don’t be afraid, let the night run out

Well, after all, it’s a television show

A telecast promoting vertigo]

[A moment in time to reconcile

Came a little too late, and now it’s gone

A moment in history

Produced by the broken and thrown away

And I’m already here

For you to see, for you to see, to see you

I’ve always been here]

Goodbye Moonmen

Song artist: Ryan Elder (Cover by Shadyvox)

Fact of fun: It’s generally accepted that this song was composed in a way to parody/tribute the musical style of David Bowie

Sorter’s note: I felt this one fitted Zib to the point of comedy. The original context of the song was literally about a universe-wide genocide with xenophobic motivations. To me this might as well have been going through his head in canon had he gotten his way.

Sample Lyrics:

[The worlds can be one together

Cosmos without hatred

Stars like diamonds in your eyes

The ground can be space, space, space, space, space

With feet marchin' towards a peaceful sky

All the moonmen want things their way

But we make sure they see the sun

Goodbye, moonmen

You say goodbye, moonmen

Goodbye, moonmen

Goodbye, moonmen

Oh, goodbye]

Final Transmission (Remix)

Song artist: Remixed by The Living Tombstone

Fact of fun: The original version was by Temporal Walker & Voodoopony

Sorter’s note: Delicious Title. Pretty darn catchy on its own. Trippy AND sad when you think about it for too long.

Sample Lyrics:

[He feels it in his stomach and in his bones

The weight is lifted now, he's never going home

Drifting in silence, now he's all alone

Difference is that now, there's no need to atone

Spaceman, that's what they said he was

Head up in the clouds, he never put up a fuss…]

[Eyelids getting heavy, sleep it off now kid

Everyone now knows exactly what you did

Go on, finish up the fuse that you lit

It doesn't matter now, cause we'll see you in a bit

Tapestry of nightlights above and below

Sanity coiled tight, the Earth he'll out grow

Amnesty a slight, too late to forego

Vanity benight, all to do now is let go]

Control

Song artist: Halsey (pitch edit presumably by Lunarex)

Sample Lyrics:

[I paced around for hours on empty

I jumped at the slightest of sounds

And I couldn't stand the person inside me

I turned all the mirrors around

I'm bigger than my body

I'm colder than this home

I'm meaner than my demons

I'm bigger than these bones

And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"

I can't help this awful energy

God damn right, you should be scared of me

Who is in control?

I'm well acquainted with villains that live in my head

They beg me to write them so they'll never die when I'm dead]

Bacterial Contamination [Bookiezz]

Song artist: Kanimiso-P (covered by Bookiezz)

Fact of fun: The original music video with Hatsune Miku is super famous for good reason, and it’s actually a terrifying piece of art. The song by itself carries a really sad story involving themes of alienation, the vicious cycle of bullying, and possibly suicide, depending on how you interpret its ambiguous ending. There’s also a lot of body horror in the fashion of arthropod imagery, and that’s neat. This pick happens to be my favorite version of it, something about the part with the laughter still gives me actual chills.

Sorter’s note: I’m keeping it a secret for now what segment of the song I’m referring to but I actually started working on storyboarding for a brief animation of Zib to an audio snippet earlier this month.

Sample lyrics (approx. translated):

[Bacterial Contamination

You're not worth believing in my mind

Recently my "common sense" has corroded

I can't even hold my purity

The contamination is spreading

You’ll want to become stronger

Even if I barely survive

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts]

[My contamination has healed

I’ve been starting to feel much better

All because I transmitted it to her

Aha Aha Aha AHAHAHA…

Bacterial Contamination

Everyone's infected wounds keep bleeding

Killing themselves from contamination

They can't even die with grace now

The contamination has spread

None of you are here; you're dead in my mind

I'm eventually alone

It hurts (x13)]

The Distortionist -

Song Artist: GHOST & Pals

Sorter’s note: Oh hey look, a ditty specifically about gaslighty, abusive assholes for the self loathing bug bastard that started his own cult.

Sample Lyrics:

[Surely you can see the problem

I don't wanna lose my own reflection

A deplorable perception of me

Was none other than an image of you

You're making a wreck of broken glass and leaving me a fuckin' mess!

Bending light in a way that shows exactly how the story goes]

[In all this madness, it's madness

Oh-ho, it's sickening, it's sickening

You know it's unfair, it's unfair

How you distorted my reflection

You know it's too late…

You're lost in a world of funhouse mirrors, twisted for eternity

Bending light in a way that shows refraction of hypocrisy

Whimsical, dear, your lies are clear, now, who the hell would've ever guessed?

Play my games and abide my ways, there's no way you can compensate]

CORROSION

Song Artist: R.I.P.

Sorter’s note: I’m just gonna let “I've lived in fear my whole life; I'll give you a taste, you can't change my mind” speak for itself. This is one of the more tragedy flavored ones.

Sample Lyrics:

[Don't you know? I'm truly evil, and

Everybody 'round me's dropping dead!

Overflowing, oddly gleeful, and

You're all blue and cold, yet painted red!

Undergone drastic changes

Oh, it's the only thing that's left for me

All along I've known it's wrong

But I can't fix what I am

It's all I know

Low and behold!

I'm truly evil, and

You're a person standing in my way!

Have I shown I can be lethal

I'll leave them all to rot and to decay

Hold on tight, it will be painful

Oh, it's more than your weak mind can conceive

You're all blind, I'll take what's mine

Oh, I wish I could restrain

It's all I can be]

Wake Up!

Song Artist: Oomph!

Fact of fun: The German version of this song goes really hard too.

Sorter’s note: This one was selected more to reflect the broader nature of the Zimvoid and the hierarchy itself.

Sample Lyrics:

[Got no time for waiting

Got no time to waste

Everywhere machines here

Set a deadly pace

Got no time for questions

You have work to do

Got no time to stand now

If you stop, you lose]

[Your life is seeping through your fingers like sand

And time, it flies like the wind

You run in circles and you're losing your mind

But all you want is to win

Just breathe in

Then breathe out

Wake up! Now you're stuck in this game

And even if you run, the score is the same

Wake up! Now you're stuck in this game

You're just stuck in this game]

Confrontation

Song Artist: Frank Wildhorn, Et al.

Fact of fun: yeah yeah it’s from that Jekyll and Hyde Musical. The one people been making animatics of forever and they had every right to be because it’s still good decades later.

Sorter’s note: A little red meat for some of you who like to toy with the two minds, one body idea/headcanon, or your cute little corruption arc narratives.

Sample Lyrics:

[This is not a dream, my friend

And it will never end!

This one is the nightmare that goes on!

Hyde is here to stay,

No matter what you may pretend,

And He'll flourish, long after you're gone!

Soon you will die, and my memory will hide you!

You cannot choose but to lose control.

You can't control me! I live deep inside you!

Each day you'll feel me devour your soul!]

Amygdala’s Ragdoll -

Song Artist: GHOST & Pals

Fact of fun: For some reason the chorus of this caught on as a little animation trend once. Think they dubbed it the Trypophobia Meme. If I do actually ever do something with it myself, I know I’m not calling it that.

Sample Lyrics:

[Today something changed

I figured it’s true

The frontal lobe placed me behind my own strings

‘Cus I defy the way the game works

I’ll say it again, I’m only getting worse]

[Say we take what had been torn apart

Say we mend any patchwork discord

Turning eyes to the trypo-puppeteer

Waiting for the world to burn

So, One two three, and we’ll tie the tourniquet

Larvae eating away at everything

Word goes ‘round, I’m the trypo-puppeteer

Laugh along, I’m spreading holes

Now I know this has always been my fault

and I can’t inhale anymore]

Honorable Mentions:

• C e n t i p e d e by GHOST & Pals, omitted for personal and practical reasons.

• Honey I’m Home, another GHOST hit, omitted because most of my Zib association with that goes along with my personal “darker harvest” theory/headcannon

It makes so much sense and I honestly have a lot of my extended headcanons riding on it for good reason.

The Vortians used to ally with the Armada once. Someone evidently got betrayed and now the proud people of Vort have literally been reduced to either fugitives from or battered slaves on their own planet. The Irken menace is an over-militarized force that cannot be fought against directly once it has taken hold.

Under these conditions, sabotage can be the most brave and rebellious action possible against your captors.

They wouldn’t keep alive a sentient race unless they NEEDED their services, and Vortians are the entire reason that Irk has such superior military prowess in the first place. There was also the one screwhead from the planetary conveyor belt system. The dude single handedly responsible for getting Zim that Megadoomer while ruining invader Tenn’s entire mission. Saboteurs behind the line like him are unironically more effective at doing damage to the empire than the Resisty has been so far.

I also got that one personal theory that Zim might be the pinnacle example and it was extremely fun to write up.

But yeah Vortian technology is approaching or capable or approaching that of a Kardashev scale type 3, maybe type 4 civilization. That’s freaking insane. It’s fun to call Irkens just stupid and incompetent for all the glaring flaws in their toolset, but their sin was laziness, not shitty engineering. They outsourced the bulk of that to their allies and captives, and Vortian scientists are not stupid beings. Collectively, they are likely the most intelligent known creatures in the universe.

Just look at the Massive, flagship of the galactic conquest fleet. Most badass Battle Cruiser to exist so far: superior weaponry, extremely impressive durability. Truly worthy of a commission by an Almighty Tallest. And yet it has two absurdly shameful flaws- An exposed storage section on the side that can easily be pierced through, and a vulnerability to remote hijacking. Prisoner 777 wasn’t the only designer of that ship. Another known researcher responsible for its early blueprints was Lard Nar.

i remember being 7 and losing my shit over this stupid ass scene………… zim truly was prime comedy

injured and pissed off