Endearing Through The Alien Lens: A Clue About The Primitive Irken?

Endearing through the Alien Lens: A Clue About the Primitive Irken?

I love literary xenobiology. I love it a whole lot, in fact. There’s a paradoxical line I dance across, between criticizing intelligent fictional aliens for their likeness to our species, and criticizing them for their unlikeness. It’s a pretentious and laughable dance between “Come on, the sky’s the limit, there’s no real reason for a bucket of different extraterrestrial races to just all be more flavors of quirky humanoids! Boring, show me something actually alien!!” and the yearn for the use of alien races as a funhouse mirror of mankind’s own evolution. I think the way Irkens nonchalantly dwell somewhere on that subjective tightrope is a good part of why I can’t seem to stop thinking about them.

They are inspired and yet creatively original. They are truly alien, and yet, they can still play foil to the bottomlessly decadent humanity that Vasquez’s Earth has set the stage for.

Before, in the very first brain dump I let loose about them, I noted a few of their parallels to the worst in Homo sapiens and the insects they resemble. This time, something is chewing on me that i haven’t seen another put into perspective. A something that seems contradictory to our collective view of the heartless, sexless, atomized conquerors that all of the cosmos will fear:

They… have parental instincts.

I didn’t necessarily say drives or wants; however, they undeniably havewhat seems to be an actual, instinctual “cuteness response”. Like us, like social pack animals which invest a great deal of resources and time into their young. Given that the closest thing that 100% of smeets born on the home world get to call a parental figure is a literal cold, unfeeling, automated machine, this seems kind of weird, doesn’t it? They’re not even born like mammals or nested like birds, they’re mass produced, like hived wasps or ants, miles beneath their actual society and out of the business of the adults. So, what the heck with them being written to be humanized with this baseless, arbitrary trait?

But, ah ah ah, nitpicker Scarlet, it’s not baseless. It’s only ✨vestigial✨

Y’all could probably make a good guess to what the cuteness response is and why it exists in Homo sapiens, but to sum up- it’s the phenomenon of when we see something we find “cute” and it makes us react to it in a protective, nurturing fashion- or also want to bite/squeeze things, weirdly, if it’s just too damn cute. Well, what do humans find cute? Things that resemble human infants, basically. It’s a biological reflex that makes us want to defend and provide care for our kind’s absurdly dependent and slow-developing young, rather than abandon them in the shrubbery like they’re just screamy, food-leeching paperweights.

“Pff, really? Well I must be special cause I don’t even LIKE babies. I think babies are icky gross, not cute! So, genetic instinct my ass!”

I hear you, sure, but what about… harp seals? Or koalas, or pandas and puppies and fawns and kittens? Or funny little cartoon blorbos? At bare minimum you’d have to be an alien yourself to feel nothing looking at photos of young hedgehogs

See, the fact that a lot of us may often find baby animals a great amount more endearing than even humans’ is not even in conflict with this understanding of cuteness.

The concept of the “baby schema” was formally proposed in 1943 by Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian ethologist. Fun fact is he was also the same researcher who originally observed and described imprinting behaviors, as seen in newly hatched waterfowl. Point is that his “Kindchenschema” idea grouped together a handful of infantile traits that make fireworks go off in the parts of your brain that wants to keep things alive and baby-talk to them. Included on the list were features like proportionally large heads, big eyes, round faces, short noses, etc. despite the name, the baby schema’s effect is something applied not to just actual babies, but children generally, and even in our reactions to non-human animals.

It’s the hypothesis behind both why we’ve jacked up the skulls of so many small dog breeds in the name of aesthetics and why we generally find the portraits on the left side of this image more appealing to look at than the ones on the right.

The consistency of these features across many species may also give some hint that they experience a similar phenonemon, especially given that these are traits shared among bird or mammalian offspring which require significant attention and protection to survive. And, it may also explain why this image likewise gives me a huge dose of that sweet, sweet response.

Awww, look at that lil’ mans! Look at his teeny noodle arms!! I just wanna pinch him like a marshmallow!

YOU are not immune to cuteness psychology, and neither are the proud Irken warriors. I’m going to cite Zim’s proclivity to what I can only describe as paternal bonding as a demonstration of this response, but before you go reminding me about his pak defects, it’s far from the only evidence that this is a natural Irken trait.

Check out little Timmy (importantly, the surrounding response to him), a hilariously out of place youngster who appeared briefly in the trial transcript for the sole purpose of a dark gag and to get us some lore revealed.

Take further note of the complimentary nature of smeets themselves.

Suddenly finding themselves alive, fresh Irken babies too, like the hatched gosling, begin to immediately seek an emotional attachment with the first animate thing they see. While mobile and fast learners, smeets are far from being able to truly fend for themselves. They’re tiny and naive and they need lots of mental enrichment/teaching. They also play and form something akin to friendships, much like human children. In the bygone era before Irkens were so reliant on Paks and all of the advanced technology of the modern empire, smeets would have been exceedingly vulnerable. All signs point to a phase in Irk’s natural history where they were once nurtured after by adults of their own kind, and commonly bonded with their caretakers. This could mean compact family units, or maybe even a communal raising situation, akin to penguin crèches (Personally I like to headcanon that the tallests/queens were traditionally the only breeding members of the population but that’s neither here or now). Either sense, the evolutionary remnants of a parental creature are still around.

Taking all that to note, instead of perceiving Zim as the bizarre outlier to the Irken condition when it comes to having this soft spot, I instead see him as an opportunity to see natural behaviors in action without the suppression of his militarized society and its distractions. Even someone as warped and selfish as he can be is still very, very full of love to give that he doesn’t even understand enough language to describe. He pretty clearly shows he has no cultural understanding or reference of cuteness, and still, he’s not so different in this “weakness” than the very humans he manipulated into fawning over Ultra Peepi. It just took an example his own sensibilities could relate to instead of an unfamiliar, repulsive alien rodent.

And when he’s given the rare circumstance to show that potential, well-

*(With the rough shape/size down, no nose, and huge, bug-like eyes, Li’l Meat man may actually be a great approximation of the key “smeet schema” features. More importantly, it was made to specifically resemble Zim himself)

- I feel that’s downright adorable.

happy painted bat day

13 essential films for the Burtonphiles and Selick-ites out there.

Yee. Unconventional list as this isn't just short content here, but I love me some Selickesque-Burton whatever stuff and I wanted to feature it exclusively somewhere.

Family = Kids can watch it.

Adult = Kids can’t watch it but teenagers can. Contains swearing and adult situations

Horror = Classic horror/thriller with some good scares and creepy imagery.

Goth = Less horror and more on the macabre or suspense side of things.

Surreal = Weird stuff that crosses into the other genres.

Comedy = Funny stuff w. maybe some cuteness too.

Drama = Horror and monsters used to make you sad or tell a gripping story.

GORE = Take this as your Trigger Warning. Films with this label are gorey and not for the faint of heart in that department.

MATURE = Not for kids; contains disturbing subject matter such as abuse or sexual encounters.

Moon Girl | Family

A solo film Henry Selick made with Laika before he began production on Coraline. The CG is give or take but it's an adorable story if nothing else.

Face Like a Frog | Family/Surreal

Sesame Street animator Sally Cruikshank's iconically surreal short film featuring a musical interlude by the one and only Danny Elfman.

Frankenweenie | Family/Horror

Tim Burton's 30-min live action feature which got him kicked from Disney.

Hansel and Gretel | Family/Horror

One of Tim's contributions to Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre, this one being an adaptation of Hansel and Gretel that of course Burton used to make some creepy imagery.

Vincent | Family/Goth

Tim Burton's first breakout film at Disney, featuring the voice and made in loving tribute to the late, great Vincent Price.

The Stalk of the Celery Monster | Horror/Comedy

What remains of this film is what you got. It was to be one of Tim Burton's short 'interlude' shorts he made while at Disney.

Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp | Family

Also made for Shelley Duvall's show, though this Burton-directed outing is a bit more in line with a fairytale adaptation. A bit.

The Sandman | Family/Horror

Paul Berry, the lead animator behind Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach shows us why he was picked for such projects with this early horror short of his.

Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions | Surreal

The 'pilot' episode for an MTV series that Henry Selick never ended up pursuing. Yet, it features all of his staples of multiple techniques at once.

The Devil Went Down to Georgia | Goth/Comedy

Paul Berry directed another fantastic gothic short, this one being the music video to Primus' take on "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".

Family Dog | Comedy/Adult

One of many late 90s attempts to reach Simpsons-level acclaim - this tv show had a handful of writers involved but the designs of the characters were Tim Burton's.

Party at Ground Zero | Surreal

Selick's first time directing a music video for the band Wishbone, for their black-comedy romp "Party at Ground Zero".

Demiurge Emesis | Goth/Surreal

Voltaire brings us a grim little stop-motion diddy about the will of the artist to aspire against it's peers, narrated by good ole Danny Elfman.

Happy Hauntings

Obsessed with tiktoks of high school girls doing Steve Harvey cosplay. My favorite genre of video tbh

Yo who went and made the app widget so freaking m o i s t ?

this is how the movie went right