Happy (Day After) 15th Anniversary, Making Fiends!! (^^)

Happy (Day After) 15th Anniversary, Making Fiends!! ٩(^‿^)۶

Making Fiends X Creature Feature's "Mommy's Little Monsters", a Fan-Animated Flipnote MV/Tribute

I’ve mentally been running with option 2 for years. “Irken Empire” could mean a lot of things bereft of context. We never call our civilizations stuff like the Human Empire. Look out, here comes the homosapien army! He can know the word Irken before Zim arrives but wouldn’t know for sure if that’s like, a nationality, an ethnic identity, or even some multi-species alliance of dominant factions.

That said, option 3 is really, really funny to picture. Six months of this poor boy anxiously lying awake at night just wondering what do the curly fries mean. Are they a code for something else? are they like Earth curly fries, and why? And how? Was it a taunt? Do they want our fries? Do they want to make us into curly fries?

A fun little question for the IZ Fandom!

So if Dib was listening in on the Great Assigning transmission back in ‘the Nightmare Begins’

How comes he doesn’t seem to retain any of the information he might’ve learned from it?

Such as the existence of the Height-Based Caste System, which surprised him in ‘Tak: the Hideous New Girl’

The name of the Irken Empire itself, which he explicitly didn’t know in ‘The Wettening’

And one of the recordings shown in ‘A Room With a Moose’

(We never explicitly see him learn about Irk but he does mention it by name later on. I assume he learned the name from ‘Bloaty’s Pizza Hog’.

)

And, you know, the fact that Zim’s ‘Mission’ is bogus, which he never actually learns about. (Unless he was paying very close attention to the Implications in ‘Enter the Florpus’ - and honestly, he kinda had a Lot on his mind so I won’t be surprised if he missed that)

So, pick your favorite answer!

Aliens in the IZ Universe don’t actually speak English. Dib picked up a transmission of incomprehensible alien chatter and only assumed it means ‘they’re coming!’

Dib only picked up the last few lines of the transmission (“the universe will be ours for the taking!” and onwards) so while he might’ve been aware of the Irken Empire as a force with aspirations of conquest (“It’s only a matter of time until all the races in the universe serve the Irken Empire!”) he didn’t know for sure at first if he can link it to the alien who came to earth six months later.

Dib only picked up the very last line of the Great Assinging Transmission (“I’ll have them serve me curly fries”) and drew a lot of Accidentally Correct Conclusions from it.

Dib didn’t hear anything. The transition between the Great Assigning and Dib’s introduction doesn’t necessarily mean he was listening in on that. He was probably just listening to random Space Noises and assumed it is a broadcast from some conquest-hungry alien. This probably a regular occurrence for him and it’s just that today it was happening coincidently around the time an actual boardcast from conquest-hungry aliens was happening somewhere too far away for his equipment to reach.

The transmission was not perfect and Dib ended up missing a few key words like ‘Irken’ and ‘Tallest’ and then also he just happened to take a very long bathroom break just as Zim showed up.

Dib just… forgot some of the details of the broadcast. There’s like a six-months-gap between him hearing it and Zim actually arriving on Earth and he just forgot some of the broadcast. Six months is a long time, cut him some slack okay????

This might sound like it’s packing a little heat to some people in this fandom but

For me it’s hugely the common fannon that Shapey or Block are autistic... because they are severely stunted developmentally and scream and meltdown over everything. There’s actually a very visible, direct cause for the way they are, and it’s literally cartoonishly disgusting abuse/neglect of them. That’s what the writers were going for. That’s what not enough shows have ever had the guts to display the full serious gravity of.

Boiling all of their behavioral problems down to a very common neurodivergence in the absence of that context just kinda… gripes me in a slight way? Like from some people it almost comes across like all they know about ASD presentations in children are the most extreme, derogatory, or clichéd stereotypes (while having no or at least much less knowledge/consideration towards what severe social deprivation does to kids in the real world).

ok i have another controversial idea

what fanon headcanon irritates you the most

like you see it and roll your eyes in annoyance

I am sorry to bother you but I have to say, I feel Dib got treated too harshly most of the time. It's the point of the story yes but at times it just feels flat out sadistic for no reason.

It's why the Gargantis Array comic storyline sucks to me, it was just two issues of buildup to make Dib a gross fat joke and humiliate him across space. Jhonen just really seems to love torturing Dib more than anyone and it's rarely even deserved.

Oh, this is the opposite of a bother, friendo!

I actually have a lot of reading to still do on the topic of the comics. I’m woefully only really up to good knowledge about issues 46-49 and a lot of bits of pieces otherwise. If what you’re saying rings true, that is sad to hear, but pretty interesting still. I’ve always in the back of my head been a little afraid that Dib’s karma could be flanderized to the point of making him a butt monkey. Especially when we all know that’s supposed to be Skoodge’s job! (waka waka)

As for the show, honestly? I think they managed the balance just fine. It’s not so much that the show was specifically cruel to him, but that sadism broadly was one of its central themes and there were no efforts made to exclude Dib from that. And why should they have? He’s not an innocent woobie, and in fact is actually in the seat of a very ambitious antagonist against the real main character’s goals. Arbitrary events of misfortune and pain were the bread and butter of the series back then, and almost no one was spared. Jhonen (who cameoed himself in the show just to choke on a fish and die for a joke) also from what I hear injected a lot of his own qualities into Dib, so I imagine it probably IS very entertaining to him to give the boy the works.

From what I have seen of the comics, that looks like a much finer line to tow. And this more of an off the cuff ramble, but you know what I think??? I think they made Dib a touch way too sympathetic actually. There’s so much more focus on just him and Zim’s side antics, and the more time you take Dib off world and away from the rest of the Earth side characters, the fewer reminders they give you about how many of his problems are majorly self inflicted and how much of a disturbance he can be to society. And, for better or worse, a less dark overall tone in the comics means that the moments of overtly black comedy are going to stand out a little more against the modernized background by contrast.

And there’s another elephant in the room that kind of gets to me, personally. As well as I can put it well, the art style change kind of really affects the lens he can be viewed through. Maybe more than most people want to admit. And I’m not dissing the rounded down, brightened up change, it’s not a better or worse direction from the show… but it is a different one with different strengths and weaknesses.

Like, look at Dib’s early season model sheets for a base of reference.

Now compare him alongside the comic and Florpus interpretation of Dib Membrane. OBVS I am simplifying a ton here, there’s a ton of room for more range than these examples.

I’m not here to say he’s a better or worse Dib visually, he’s still Dib to me! But is notable how comic Dib actually breaks a ton of the “rules” of what kind of character they wanted Dib to be. To put it one way, they sanded down some of his edges and he’s not as apparently “skrungly” as he used to be.

What I like about the change is that it actually gives the better impression of him actually being the lil dorkass kid he’s always been. He’s got a slight aesthetic shift that shows off his unique interests and it definitely sets him apart from Zim, who actually retained most of his own show design. He’s still got some funny lookin’ qualities and he’s so much more endearing

One of the downsides of all that, however, is probably that he’s so damn endearing and as a default.

I dunno if you ever watched Little Shop of Horrors, amazing musical btw, but, it’s supposed to have this whole tragic ending where the main character’s, Seymour’s, long chain of mistakes catch up with him and he meets his demise. In the movie, they casted Rick Moranis for the character, and he played such a puppy-eyed, adorkable Seymour that it made audiences suddenly too bummed out to even appreciate the dark ending. They hated it so much that the crew actually just changed the ending completely so that Seymour gets a consequence-free happy ending with everything he ever wanted. Even though he’s literally a serial murderer of sorts. You were always supposed to feel for him, but not to the point where watching him fail just makes you feel horrible.

I think Dib works kinda like that on a meta level.

If there’s any ruling on what goes over that invisible line when it comes to handling his character, I think Florpus Gaz nailed it right on the head. Dib is never supposed to just utterly break under the weight of his world. Can he sometimes crack? Yeah totally, especially in the “brink of madness” sense. Or if it’s funny. The golden rule is not to give him more than he can handle, and Dib CAN handle a lot of bullshit. He may be a frustrated lil squirt but he’s been at this for a very long time, and it’s hype af watching how he’s not slowing down even in the face of that. Dib and Zim’s biggest POSITIVE shared trait is the strength of their spirits against a world that is ultimately callous and cruel at every turn to them.

Every second you write Dib where he’s wallowing in despair or feeling sorry for himself is a second you come closer to that line and it’s what you need to dish out in wary moderation.

So I guess the TL:DR of what i think I’m getting at here is… it’s all about perspective.

But I really should read more of the comics.

Skoodge refuses to wear pants, and theres nothing you can do about it

I wish I could tell you to blame someone for encouraging me to make this, but I cant. Only I am to blame.

You know….narratively speaking, these are all the same character

But idk if y’all ready for that conversation