Sometimes My Genius Is Almost Frightening

Sometimes my genius is almost frightening

oh i’m “problematic”? name at least three problems i’ve caused

Gotta love how the “you took everything from me” “I don’t even know who you are” meme is Zim’s entire dynamic with like every fellow Irken that gets anywhere close to him and 92% of his enemies

I read one of your answers to a post where you mentioned that Skoodge is the ugly duckling who is being done dirty (I couldn't agree more). But what about Dib? Where does he stand? Is he one too?

Dib is literally just a post-March 15th Denzel Crocker that’s still a child.

He’s the larval form of this.

(Or, you could say this is his final Pokémon evolution)

And don’t tell me the warning signs aren’t already cracking through

That may paint a very tragic trajectory for Dib if he or his environment doesn’t fundamentally change in some way, but that was exactly what Denzel’s story was. This “creep” was the result of a genuine intellectual who fell deeper and deeper into a fixation towards a great secret that simply vexed his every attempt to possess and reveal. He’s a series antagonist whose days are spent like a frustrated cat twitching and chattering at birds beyond glass, made all the worse and more obsessive because of the actions (past and present) of the protagonist. The relationship between young Crocker and his mother is damn mirrored in lock step with that gaping, validation-shaped hole Dib is trying so hard to fill by proving something to Professor Membrane.

It’s an observation so ready to be talked about I’m far from the first person to even say so. I literally plucked these insights alone up just from the comment sections of the various videos I had to skim through for the Crocker screenshots.

Freaking seriously. Hats off to these accounts for saving me the time writing it myself.

can you calm the fuck down

Do you slander Dib out of spite, or because watching the little loser try to get his way and utterly failing is fascinating to document, or maybe because justice should be made to the idiocy and disfuncional braincells of his character? Or maybe all three of them? Perhaps a secret fourth thing, even?

I slander Dib because he slanders my peop- uh I mean, yes. You’re mostly right. He’s a great antiheroic antagonist, warts and all, and he deserves a fair slice of the justice pie in this post Florpus era now more than ever, me thinks. Don’t let the updated art style or the fandom blobofication fool any, especially the newer riders. This has always been a Vasquez setting and if there’s two beautiful things I’ve learned are true to Johnen’s work, it’s that his universe(s)

• are quite whacky

• refuse to leave room in the spotlight for Gary Sues and wee pwecious cinnamon rolls

And I respect the fuck out of both of these qualities. This isn’t “haha ESH” family guy kinda writing, it’s writing that doesn’t fear gritty textures or unsanded corners for its characters. It’s also I think a huge part of how they were able to stay so engaging and fascinating over so much content while having relatively minuscule serialized character development- Why Dib episodes work on their own even without Zim, why Zim episodes still work even when taking place completely off of Earth, and why we can’t ever stfu about either of them so many years later. They already came in with a full deck of dimensions, flaws, and personal conflicts that you can stretch out for an enormous amount of entertainment. If you make a character that I am just as happy to root for as I am giddy to laugh at their failures, I think you’ve done something neat.

I don’t think it comes out of spite, though. Judge it whatever you will, but I think I slander this boy for sake of tough love. Pretending it’s spite is just funnier (-᷅ w -᷄)

All the same, if you really want the tea on the not so secret fourth thing, Dib, for all his Dibness…. is frankly a notoriously relatable twerp. Out of the mainest main cast, I’ve at least found his deal the easiest to empathize with.

A final note, on the topic of my general regard toward Dib “Agent Mothman” Membrane: