I Just Hope You Know That Im Literally Asking Myself That Question Every Time Im Reminded Of The Topic,

I just hope you know that I’m literally asking myself that question every time I’m reminded of the topic, and with fear in my eyes. He’s in a psychological quagmire SO deep and yet completely of his own making.

Saiyan men are built different

Ngl I had a Vortian OC concept rattling around in my head since summer of last year that was basically this

Yeah, these threats come off as desperate raving on Zib's part, and largely they are, but also? Given the two guys he's a combination of, I actually don't doubt for a minute that Zib will eventually carve a way out, even if he has to tear a million different realities to ribbons to do it. All involved parties ought to be very, very concerned

Don’t forget how Membrane literally swore a portion of his life toward vengeance against a possibly mythological figure because he once got socks for Christmas as a child (instead of the twelve cases of Uranium-238 he DESERVED).

Like literally put aside resources and god only knows how much time to stockpile an arsenal of high-powered weapons with the express intent to murder Santa, beloved icon of the world, should he finally encounter him. Hilariously over the top and petty, yet it sounds like the former though, doesn’t it? It’s precise, it’s calculated, and it’s compartmentalized.

What makes the huge difference between that and the characters who can’t seem to turn it off or keep them from going worlds further beyond targeted proportional retribution? Time to bring back one of my favorite Zingers with an addendum.

Zim, Dib, Gaz, and Tak are actually all horribly vindictive spiteful people to more or less equal degrees, but the interesting thing is that Zim and Gaz both exact vengeance in very specific, premeditated ways, which are often wildly out of proportion but once they feel like they've evened the score they will pretty much immediately forget about whatever pissed them off in the first place—whereas Dib and Tak are both ostensibly above being ruled by petty grudges, but very obviously boiling over with a constant resentment that sends them pouncing like rabid dogs at even the slightest opportunity or excuse to make the object of their ire suffer (and if they're both working towards their own self-serving end game that just HAPPENS to involve every terrible thing imaginable befalling their enemies, well... that'll just be a happy by-product of their personal success).

I don't I have any point to make here, I just like it when these freaks are all an overwhelming danger to society (and each other)

My favorite fanon thing with this show is when people frame Zim’s exile and the way his society looks down on him as like a poor ugly duckling who’s amazing potential was overlooked (that would be Skoodge) or like a divergent mind among heartless conformists and it’s like

no they don’t hate him because he’s different™ they hate him because you can’t leave him alone for 2 minutes without him remorselessly decimating his own kind. They’re understandably terrified of him.

To his people he’s like a dozen Jeffrey Dahmers stuffed into one broken computer. Red is leading a flight of ships across the galaxy to subjugate and exterminate other species and the full extent of Zim’s actions horrify and disgust him. Zim has accurately been called a monster by aliens and his own. Yeah, a monster they created in part, but the rap sheet is what it is. Even if Irk were some utopia, I can’t imagine what kinder and more lenient action you could take regarding handling him besides imprisonment or exactly what Red did. He can’t be reasoned with, he’s a manic loose canon, and every time you stick him in the same playpen as other Irkens, well, sometimes you lose a bunch of your most valuable soldiers, sometimes you lose a couple of almighty Tallests. Bro doesn’t just not value “other” life like the rest of them, he doesn’t even value Irken life. And then he turns around and brags about it. Brags about nearly annihilating their civilization like you should be giving him awards for cutting your brake lines and shooting you in the back. I don’t care if it was ‘just a misfire,’ I pity him and I’d still be gunning for his trial if I was among them too, if it takes away the gun!

A scene from Invader Zim I seem to find way creepier than anyone else does

It’s just weirdly good horror to me as a years later rewatch somehow. Dripping with menace.

Long time fans know this is one of the most theatric and chatty characters in the show, alone or not. He also more often than not gets over -ahem, denies- setback and mission fumbles in record time. Not here. Just the silence that lets you truly hear that eerie ass ambience in the background. Just watching him reviewing back collected surveillance, on presumably what’s supposed to be human child behavioral data (this was still season 1 after all), but he’s neither mocking the subjects nor boasting about himself for once. He’s not even complaining or getting into one of his spiels. It’s just that cut back to the reel of a dozen pains he’s suffered at the Skool, cut back to that stone still expression, cut back to the tapes. You don’t know if they’re all from a singularly horrible day or a pile of weeks of humiliations stacking on a camel’s back. You get nothing of explanation except for that quiet seething in his expression- The scariest kind of angry. It’s Zim, ruminating on a god’s honest murderous rage, toward this species that seems to only justify his contempt of them with every single interaction. Almost as if you can watch this and imagine his hatred just getting hotter and hotter for all mankind under the surface, and then narrowing in like a magnifying glass straight onto the worst and most frequent offender of all. Those four consecutive Dib clips are what finally seem to make him feel like he’s seen enough and he’s fully decided on beginning to craft what we later find out was the Moosey wormhole plan. If it was only about Dib standing in the way of the mission, like he frames it, this episode intro wouldn’t serve any purpose. It was about so much more than Dib probably ever thinks about, the axe forgets and all that.

To me this clip is like the one moment where I swear to Tallest Zim was feeling on a kind of Nny wavelength in that isolated instant,

AND it’s one of many moments where I shake my head remembering how Dib’s average Tuesday is spent more recklessly than poking a sleeping dragon in the eye with a stick.