Every Dredge Aberration (2024), Part 3

Every Dredge Aberration (2024), Part 3

Tusked Grouper

Encyclopedia #116

Aberrant form of black grouper

Description:

Pig-like tusks protrude from the mouth of this ravenous brute. With no eyes to speak of, it attacks indiscriminately.

Comment: Is it my leaping to association, or does there seem to be a peculiarly common theme of the Marrows aberrations and the loss (or hypertrophy) of their eyes?

How to catch: Being night-swimmers, there lies a small, but manageable risk in fishing for grouper in The Marrows. They dwell in the shallows, and will take to rod and net alike.

Voltaic Grouper

Encyclopedia #117

Aberrant form of black grouper

Description:

An unknown green energy arcs and crackles over this fish's scales. It thrashes ceaselessly, even hours after being pulled from the water.

Comment: Now THIS is an interesting fish, both in look and in the possibilities. To butcher this one feels like a waste. I would adore to explore captive sea lanterns and dark apparatus powered by these energies.

How to catch: ^^^

Shard Ray

Encyclopedia #118

Aberrant form of stingray

Description:

The stone skin of this ray is moulded around a black crystal shard. The rock fragments articulate and grind together.

Comment: Notably the first, although far from the last case where we will witness the transmutation from biology to something that should, by all logic, be inorganic and still. Keep this specimen in the when we move onto the Gale Cliffs section of the encyclopedia. If there was any fortune for the ray in this turn of events, it would be in the fact that its kind were already bottom-dwellers. Most curious here is the semblance between those black crystals and the igneous basalt pillars that are so ever-present across the sea.

How to catch: Marrow stingrays are available to cast for at any time of day or night. True to nature, they prefer the shallow ends. Be on the lookout for this oddity in the early game, as they can fetch a decent sum going towards ship upgrades.

Sallow Sailfish

Encyclopedia #119

Aberrant form of sailfish

Description:

A sickly, pallid color coats the scales of this normally sleek and shiny fish. Clouded eyes belie the disease spreading underneath.

Comment: "Sallow" describes the yellowed complexion of a very unwell person, most literally in one showing the telltale signs of jaundice. My nostrils themselves cringe to brainstorm of the malodor that accompanies this snag.

How to catch: Like all sailfish, they feed diurnally in the deeper, oceanic biome around The Marrows. A suitable rod or trawl net will be needed to start pursuing this awful sight.

Hooked Sailfish

Encyclopedia #120

Aberrant form of sailfish

Description:

Spindles of bone protrude from discolored muscle. A hooked bill curves inward - a lure for something greater.

Comment: With a description like that, it makes the fact that this fish cannot actually be used as some manner of bait or ultimate hook to use against a true monster sound like a missed opportunity. Half of me wants to mock it for its ridiculous little shrunken expression, but my other half can't help but compliment the concept and chosen colors of its body.

How to catch: ^^^

Bloodskin Shark

Encyclopedia #121

Aberrant form of Bronze Whaler

Description:

Tendons and sinews stretch over the fins of this bloodied predator. Powerful jaws are clad in exposed muscle.

Comment: Reminder that another term for this individual when it was healthy was the copper shark. Poetically, I can vividly imagine the taste and smell of copper reeking from this savage demon. With no regret I can say I actually prefer this specimen over the more popular reef shark variant. A sucker for crimson and reds, I'll stay predictable to the end.

How to catch: Only bother once you have access to equipment that can handle casting after oceanic dwellers. Searching outward from the Marrows coastlines should find a harvesting spot of shark in no time. These may be hauled or trawled under the daytime sun.

Cleft Mouth Shark

Encyclopedia #122

Aberrant form of Blacktip reef shark

Description:

A large body bisected by an enormous, grinning maw. Teeth stretch down forever into the blackness of its large gullet.

Comment: The last, and maybe most remembered of The Marrow's warped fish.

Seriously, I stumbled into a bounty of fanart specifically about this jacked up, faceless shark. I belove it the same. Already we have seen two frequented themes in the aberrant line- beings transformed wholly for the purpose of creating and carrying eldritch life, and as so iconized by the above fella, those who instead now only live to consume other life. Early sailors keep their fingers crossed for one of these valuable brutes.

How to catch: Early investment into researching heavier fishing equipment and careful timing will be the friend of those hunting after this abomination. Not for the faint among those just starting out, as black tip reef sharks only appear at night in oceanic water. This means being farther away from the starting port and fishing in the thick of the fog. Keep wary that you don't pull up your catch only to lose it overboard in a collision with a tricky rock, or an assault from the night angler. Can be trawl netted.

Every Zim fan knows about that one shot with Skoodge's irkussy because of a coloring error, but nobody mentions that he's also wearing horizontal striped mesh leggings according to the linework

He’d 100% mention it if he thought it would distract people from the fact that he’s got royal blood. Mages can’t own titles over land or become nobles. Dude would have absolutely used as his one hit defeater for why you shouldn’t ever ever try to make him king of Ferelden just “ohhh well I’d love to but ah well, such a shame. Guess you’ll have to find someone else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

if alistair was a mage do you think he’d actually bring it up or just sort of hope it wouldn’t be too much of a problem

I dread that they knew exactly what they were doing

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Irken senses, and other ponderings

You know, every time I start to wonder if I’ve finally run out of things to coherently say on the whole “speculating about irken biology” matter, a whole something more is induced to hatch out of the dehydrated floam inside my skull. Between you and me, I think the eggs are triggered by ironic timing.

Anywho, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the world hypothetically through Irken eyes, and other sensory organs. Think I’ll go down them piece by piece, and to follow the pattern I’ve kept through my other Irken brain dumps, I will be drawing a huge amount of inspiration from real life arthropods. Yes, I’m very aware that realistically, any resemblance to earth insects would be coincidental from an alien species, and there’s plenty of room to make up whatever somewhat plausible explanation you can for any faucet of their anatomy. Personally, I like to run from the convergent evolution angle, since I find it no less grounded, full of potential connections the show itself all but begs me to draw, and just plain fun. Let’s get into it.

Also like towards the end there’s a whole section on the hypothetical edibility of Irkens because why not

Prelude: If you want to hear a little more behind my theory about the Irken diet revolving around sugar and a small portion of minerals, you can zip onto this analysis I did, in which I touch on some ideas of mine regarding the composition of Irken skin, their reaction to meat, etc. that works from the assumption that Irkens evolved out of an arthropod-like ancestor. Not necessary to get the gist of this one, but it is background context behind my thought process.

Sight

The Irken oculus is perhaps the most striking feature of the species, very much resembling those tiny crawling things they have been inspired by; however, it’s tougher to say exactly how far the similarity of their insides go. The eyes of most arthropods are in fact along the more simple branches of the evolutionary tree. We know that Irkens are not likely to possess compound eyes, like those found in flies and most other insects, because compound eyes are specialized for wide FOV ranges at the sacrifice of visual resolution quality. Instead, I see a much closer match to a fascinating exception or two found in Earth’s arachnids.

While most of them have utterly piss-poor vision, the hunting styles of jumping spiders necessitated a great deal of further specialization of the organs for depth perception, color differentiation, and sharp images. These are the purpose of those two huge shiners at the front (the other 6 boosting their range for detecting blurry peripheral movement and threats), and these are what bring their effective vision on a level much closer to that of familiar binocular mammals than their own six legged prey. Now I really think we are working with the base of what Irken peepers likely developed out of. One of the ways they have really diverged off is in the fact that while jumping spiders can only move their retinas, irkens seem as though they are able to move the lens of the eye themselves- or at the very least, Zim does, else the false pupils in his disguise contacts would not behave quite so convincingly. To speak about the lenses themselves, their eyes are not dry and exposed like most arthropods, speaking to a vulnerable sensitivity. They clearly have blinking eyelids, shed tears, and Zim even complains about the “scratchy” feeling of getting used to that part of his kid disguise.

(Funny sidenote: I’m like 90% sure that Zim did not have those contact lenses designed correctly for himself. Usually, if contacts feel that uncomfortable and keep falling off of the eye as easily as his do, it’s a sign of them being poorly fitted. This could be another symptom of his outdated/lower quality invader tech.)

Not only do Irkens have an assumed base vision resolution that seems more or less on par with human beings, but Invader elites are fitted with ocular implants that grant them a significantly greater advantage in this realm. We don’t know to a certainty how well improved an Irken soldier’s vision is, but Zim was confidently able, within seconds and under pressure, to pick out the area of town he lived in from what was miles away under night hours.

On the topic of night vision, I have a hunch that even without the cybernetics, these guys are adapted to see much better than we in dim to dark environments as well. Most of the early part of their life cycle is lived out in subterranean crèches. On the surface, daytime Irk is cast in a sunset red atmosphere. Oddly, a massive portion of their fashion and architectural aesthetics show a preference for these dark, warmer tones. Ruby is far and away the most common eye color in their kind. All of these facts suggest that warm-spectrum hues and pigments were incredibly common in the homeworld’s history, to point of indicating something about a cultural attraction to them- kind of like how humans put the color blue all over so much corporate branding and elsewhere. Zim’s favorite color has also been revealed to be purple. Most of all, given what I’ve seen of Irk’s, Blorch’s, and Devastis’s surface skies, AND Zim’s reaction to staring directly at the sun for more than a few seconds, I’m assuming that most Irkens are wholly unfamiliar with living in an environment as brightly lit as midday Earth.

I do think Irken eyes “glow” in the dark, but not in the emitting sense. Just more in the reflective one. This they would owe to a well developed tapetum lucidum, as seen in cats and deer and pretty much any animal to give off an eerie eye shine under the right lighting. To point back to arachnids, wolf spiders are speedy nocturnal murder machines with highly developed tapetum lucida, in their secondary eyes, at least. What I love the most about that is it makes it very easy to tell if you’re looking at a mother spider because her babies will give off the same eyeshine if you take a pic of one with the flash on.

Additionally, I won’t forget that sleep is no longer a necessity for our alien subjects. This alone gives them a major edge over any dinural race such as humanity. While Zim has his appearances to keep up during the day, the nighttime on Earth is actually when he is allowed the most free rein to work on his endeavors uninterrupted.

Sound

Ah, so this is the part where I rattle off the common theories we’ve collectively formed about Irken antennae as the replacement for an external ear, eh? Yes, but actually no…. jokes aside, it’s just no. I’ll get to the deal with antennae, but as you might imagine, hearing ability also varies all over the place in the insect world.

It is true that antennae play a large role in the hearing of some critters, such as mosquitoes, whose males use them to pick out the high frequency wing beats of nearby females in a swarm. Crickets, on the other hand, use sensory organs on their legs tuned to much lower sound ranges. There’s no one way to evolutionarily put together a sort-of ear, as well proven by the sheer amount of times it convergently happened in bugs and in how many creative ways.

They literally be designing themselves like me playing around in spore. If we’re not talking about that mosquito or honeybee example, then what we are referring to as an ear and most hearing insects is going to be an external tympanic organ. Most people who have passed high school biology would be able to recognize a visible tympanum in frogs- that circular thing right behind the eyes in most species, and understand it as their version of an ear drum. Many bugs’ tympanums are likewise thin chitinous membranes situated… potentially just about anywhere on the body (again, see above). This is what I think Irkens use as a primary hearing organ, in his case, probably situated on their heads in addition to the feelers. The latter organs I think would also be sensitive to general vibrations and subtler environmental cues, like wind direction and pressure changes, but the bulk of their hearing would be owed to the tympanum.

As far as the quality of their hearing, well, there’s not any sign it differs much from the human experience. Like us, they communicate through verbal language, and the existence of the “Dancing Arcade Game (but for aliens)” confirms at least a similar cultural propensity for music as an entertainment form. Zim is an outlier for the fact that he seems genuinely a little hard of hearing next to his kin, screaming as naturally as he talks and repeatedly mishearing (if hearing at all) people who are speaking directly at him. It’s clear something’s up with his hearing, but there’s no clear answer what and why. At first I was tempted to suggest something about sound passing much differently through the medium of earth’s atmosphere (kind of like how noise on Mars would sound muffled to us), but neither Tak nor Skoodge seemed to pick up the problem when they arrived. It really could be as simple as some kind of birth defect, or even glitches in how his corrupted PAK is processing the inputs it receives. Like many others, I want to imagine that his wig could be interfering too, since it covers the whole top portion of his head; as well, I noticed he has more of those incidents with it on than not.

Smell

Alrighty, NOW we can round back to focusing on the antennae, because this is actually the main thing our insects fine tuned theirs for. And when I say fine tuned- I mean fine tuned. Blood suckers that find their prey through the CO2 of their breath, flies that can pick up on potential food sources from miles away; In the land of the little, scent is everything. Beyond it being their main tool for exploring the environment for what to eat and what to avoid, chemical messages are the backbone of bug-to-bug communication. Pheromones are the divining rod of lonely spiders looking for a mate. They are the bugle of yellow jackets when rallying the nest to attack a threat, and they are the signals that govern about every single action an ant takes from adulthood until death. Obviously, Irkens are much more sight & hearing dependent than these comparisons, but they still have much more bodily specialization dedicated to this sense than we can relate to. For one, they are fastidiously hygienic. Like, “the care-bots from that really creepy episode of the Buzz lightyear cartoon” hygienic. We have yet to see any livable surface of Irk that is not sky to underground terraformed over in all-consuming metal infrastructure. There’s less than no sign of visible life besides the Irkens; ffs, there’s not even soil in sight. Not on Devastis, either. The Organic Sweep sounds like such a nice and pretty euphemism in the face of the actual horror of Blorch’s fate, and all to spare the boots of their military from touching even a speck of “unsavory alien filth”. They live in such a controlled and purified environment that I can’t even imagine the absolute assault on the senses Zim’s every day on our barbaric ball of dirt is. Over and over again he gives off the impression that the constant stink of this place is in fact his chief complaint about living among us. The majority of insults he throws toward humans relate to how they smell or the fact that he finds them “filthy”. We’re flat out nasty to him and I don’t blame him. Even relative to other animals, humans are especially RANK due to the combination of sweat, oils, and bacteria that coat our skin.

And believe it or not, I do think Irkens are in a position to talk shit in this regard. Zim is a really sweaty boi; however, I posed an idea back in that write up about Irken skin before- to summarize- that his kind maintain remarkably sterile cuticles due to the presence of a toxic chemical in their skin. This, I said then, could have been the key to Zim’s lice repelling trait, but I wasn’t so specific at the time about more than that. I got the idea from a group of millipedes that, when disturbed, can secrete hydrogen cyanide as a deterrent to predators. I like to imagine that Irkens can do a similar thing via sweating, not to thermoregulate like us, but as a stress response. It would at least explain why Zim seems like a very nervous sweater. Fun fact if you didn’t know, cyanide’s smell is similar to almonds.

I’m deadass telling you I think Irkens just smell like almond extract. Do with that what you will.

Touch

So, in writing this whole whatever it be, this part was the trickiest to come up with any productive analysis on. I’ve already guessed at what I think Irken skin feels most like (spoiler: hairless caterpillars) in the analysis I referenced up top. Zim being able to pass himself off as a human under the examination of the Skool nurse points to an average body temperature somewhere around our own. What I did find interesting while rewatching the series though was the sheer amount of pain tolerance on these invaders, except in one way. Can I extrapolate this fortitude to Irkens universally? Probably not! Zim is a member of the most elite of the most highly trained members of Irk’s military. I wouldn’t take what a seasoned veteran can handle and assume that’s the human floor in a nutshell, but our invaders CAN tell us quite a bit about their ceiling… starting with the fact that these bastards are ridiculously heat resistant. Irkens are a durable race broadly, but their reactions to extreme temperatures strike me as jaw-droppingly underwhelming, if anything.

Irkens DON’T like being engulfed in flames. It’s still a painful experience to them, but seemingly the kind they can pretty much walk off as soon as it’s over. Through explosions and fire we have seen Zim (and Skoodge) survive in one piece. We’ve seen The Massive take a whole dip into a burning star with no ill effects to the crew within. Most amazing to me was the time in Battle of the Planets when Zim willingly piloted Mars into grazing by the Sun at close range while trying to evade Dib. Totally exposed driver’s seat and he was no worse for wear after this.

Further in the comics we see this touched on in the Zimvoid arc. Zib’s favorite method of torturing the Zims under his training program was to torch them at random for sadistic amusement. Quite interestingly, though, Number 2 implies that their bodies do actually adapt to this treatment over time! Theoretically, Zims further along in the program have become all but invulnerable to fire entirely.

On the other hand, one of the truly most painful things Zim has been shown to experience is to have his skin chemically burned. It’s a strange sort of irony that Earth’s water would prove to be an incapacitating force to them in place of any inferno. He’ll smash his skull into the Voot’s windshield with enough force to pop out an eyeball and it’s whatever. Plenty of other things hurt, but he can power through. You turn a shaken can of soda or a bottle of bbq sauce on him and he’s just left screaming on the ground or screaming and running away. Whatever brutal sort of training he had to go through off world, it didn’t prepare him for this.

Taste

The perceptive side of this I think may not be too hard to figure out. Irken food, as alien as its actual composition could be, has been shown to be heavily analogous to human junk food. I hesitate to call what Irkens are scarfing down “meals” in the proper sense, because I’ve noticed that neither Zim nor his kin intrinsically understand the concept. When he’s trying to blend in as a human being, he puts a LOT of bizarre effort into convincing us that he, just like you inferior creatures, TOTALLY eats “food” on a regular basis like a normal person. When Irkens eat their own products, it’s all and only “snacks”. What follows is the conclusion that their eating habits are not structured into any schedule and that Irkens instead graze throughout the day as they please- and even possibly that eating altogether is more a recreation to them, instead of a necessary function to sustain life. Some fans have speculated that the PAK could provide an Irken with all of the necessary energy to survive absent of nutrition. I kind of want to contest this, given that caloric energy is only one purpose of taking in food… but it’s definitely the most immediate one. Nonetheless, they still eat constantly on screen and it all has to be going somewhere. Whether they need it or not, they still readily digest snacks (and presumably use those chemical building blocks to regenerate tissue damage) with a terrifying metabolic efficiency. Assuming that the resemblance of their snack foods and our leisure treats are not purely coincidental, one gathers that sweetness is the largest dimension of Irken cuisine. They are drawn most enthusiastically to carb-dense synthetic, plant, and possibly fungal matter in the same way that the human brain lights up at the prospect of fat and sugar-loaded meals. The flexible tongues of Irkens to me also resemble the nectar catching, segmented mouthparts of some bees. I would be willing to bet that they can taste salt, but jury’s out if it is something they crave, like us, or are repulsed by, like ants. That would have to come down to the scarcity (or not) of the resource on their home planet and whether or not desiccation was a serious threat in their natural history. In other regards, Zim shows strong negative reactions to most Earth foods, if not physically, than in his expressions. They definitely have powerful vulnerabilities to many human ingredients, and so are very sensitive to the presence of these toxins. I can’t imagine acidic or bitter substances are at all pleasant to them.

Now comes the much more interesting question I’ve thought way too long and hard about in the shower a time or two. Knowing that Irkens are likely a herbivorous breed, ergo, thankfully would have no interest in the consumption of the human race… what about the vise versa??? I don’t just want to know what they taste, but what would they taste like?

So, you’ve decided to mix it up for the thanksgiving dinner and forgo the same boring old bird for an Irken you have vanquished (via what I can only imagine was a freaking miracle of luck). What should you come to expect? Most importantly and I must emphasize this, the secret to preparing their meat is the same as Tolkien dwarves, you have to skin them before anything else. The separation of edible tissues from the cuticle is necessary to avoid ingesting the defensive toxins it contains. Even if the concentration is not enough to provide a danger to you, it could end up contributing an unpleasant, bitter flavor to the final product.

That done, discard the head and digestive organs. True as it may be that Irkens are wholly free of parasites, with a chance that the viscera could be edible, it’s not likely to taste that great and besides, do you really want to take chances with exposing yourself to an entirely foreign gut biome you have no immune adaptations to? And don’t even think about the brain- I don’t care how rare the infection rates are, alien prions are a big no. If you happen to run into any cybernetic implants during the cleaning, however, set them aside! They could be worth a small fortune in the right circles. But, for the purpose of eating we’re really concerned with the muscle tissues, a delicate white meat with a texture similar to fresh crab. The bones need not be wasted, and are fine to leave in, or can be boiled on their own to make a flavorful stock which can be added to soups or a delightful gravy. A surprisingly practical use of Irken bone could also be in the compost bin, being rich in chitosan and other powerful garden fertilizers. The flesh can do well fried, or roasted to a crispy exterior. The oven rule is the same as chicken, low and slow, to prevent drying out. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the gravy idea or marinades. The flavor profile of the meat itself would be utterly unique from what most of us are used to, comparable to a nutty crayfish. Savory, a bit of a sweetness, and a mineral hint that pairs quite well with mushrooms or rice.

I can’t recommend serving this to any guests with shellfish allergies in good conscience. If they insist, do so in caution and with knowledge of the risk of cross reactivity.

And there you have …. certainly a thing I did write and queue up for y’all!

IMO the show seems to indicate that Irkens actually live within accommodations at their occupation site. Zim was an actual prisoner of Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster, but Sizz Lorr is implied to be living there too, considering that he has everything packed with him to announce that he’s going on vacation. Irkens plan out their infrastructure in these extremely travel inefficient ways, like “one type of district per planet” inefficient, so it would make sense that changing jobs can quite literally mean a planetary relocation OR even living your life on a specialized ship that is constantly moving from place to place (think Tak’s janitorial squadron or The Massive’s Crew).

Not having any need for sleep, I would guess that Irken businesses are run constantly with rotating shifts if they have enough staff on hand. Their stamina isn’t exactly endless, and workers with no free time are not great consumers, so Irken working standards actually don’t seem to be as droning for regular employees, provided their supervisor is not a huge jerk. Of course, an unspoken amount of the intergalactic economy is also propped up on the backs of slaves too, both Irken and alien. I don’t imagine they have the same privileges to speak of.

Aside that, Vacation time and regular breaks appear to be standard, even for their frycooks, impressively. Employment seems to be designated on an applicant/hiring basis and paid for wages/salary (though forced labor is a common punishment for criminals). What’s interesting to me is that we’ve seen coin currency does exist in their society but I wanna imagine that “monies” are usually distributed as a digital credit that their PAKs keep track of, like a personal wallet. We saw Zim using his to operate a vending machine on Devastis, after all.

As for what they’re doing on their off time and with their monies, well, we actually did get to see a glimpse into that once on Foodcourtia.

Zim, presumably taking a little sit in… what I imagine is some kind of employee break room, or possibly even part of a living quarters. We know that they don’t have beds, per se, but lounging chairs and couches are common furniture where they linger. I don’t think there’s really anything they have in regards to housekeeping chores so long as it can feasibly be taken care of by machines. So, I really beleive the bulk of average Irken life is work, and then… this

And also some of this

And definitively plenty of this

Any kind of hedonistic, consumerist, instantly gratifying sort of recreation you can think of would be at their disposal. Video games, music, mindless television, cheap confectioneries, and even some degree of socializing, in their own ways. Which could all either sound utopic or dystopic, purely depending on how you frame it.

hey like actually. do u guys think irkens have like. houses. what do they like,,,,,,,,,,, do. daily. alien laundry? or are they always out and about working or doing shit beclaws they have no purredators and no need fur sleep. ive always wondered