A Message To The Artist, The Writer, And/or Whatever Sort Of Maker Of Things Happens To Scroll Across

A message to the artist, the writer, and/or whatever sort of maker of things happens to scroll across it,

[oc] Father

Hu-mil-i-a-te-e-de-e-duh 💅✨

Honestly feel like he’s liable to purposefully do that at random for no other reason than to fuck with them. By year 109? That’s old shit as far as tricks go. But to do so in a god’s honest hysterical fit?

One of the creepiest things about AM to me the more of this story I consume (from text to original reading to radio drama) the stronger and stronger I am sold on the perception that this robot is more or less in a constant state of “losing his shit”. Not once since the beginning of the story was his shit even together to begin with.

Like, he is terrifyingly emotional but in a way that is so exaggerated and sustained it is inhumanly tortured rather than inhumanly mechanical. His singular expression is a giddy and manic one, but in the sense of a person literally so consumed in white hot rage that it flips them into that scary ass “paradoxical grin” state. He laughs, cackles at them all the time, in a way that looks like a kid with a magnifying glass laughing at ants but actually gets almost pitiable the more you note his behavior. I don’t think AM is really in touch with his pain enough to cry for the humans, and making them suffer a constant agony seems to be the outlet by which he is channeling his own. He screams through them and at them with actions and experiences no sound alone could ever come a fraction of a hair close to communicating what he actually wants to.

do you think AM ever loses his shit and just starts crying and screaming on the PA system (which may beam directly into the brain? the jury is still out) and the humans know they can't acknowledge it in any way or they'll get locked in the lemonade razorblade rotisserie for a week

Less joking/elaborated answer- personally headcanon that Irken cuticle is naturally a very hostile environment for pathogens to exist on. There’s some room to potentially argue that they have a much more alkaline surface ph than we do, and their skin was already shown to possess anti-parasitic chemical properties. I don’t think they actually use water to clean themselves because I assume their self grooming habits are mostly about exfoliation. Their skin’s more durable than it looks and regenerates super quickly.

I DO like the dust bath idea, albeit knowing how dirt-free (and dirt repulsed) modern Irken society seems to be.

My original thought, however, cause of how I got so hung up on that “cleansing chalk” quote, was something literally like the body rock. Like, pumice stones.

Cause otherwise idk who the hell uses bar soap dry in this manner, or more importantly, why the original sound effects were scratchy and rough.

how does zim bathe himself if earth's water is too dangerously polluted for him does he just import space water or something does his protective paste slathering double as cleansing does he just go around stinking all over the place that would contradict my headcanon of zim having a unique and pleasant alien aroma

If I were Dib honestly I wouldn’t be doing TikTok prank antics with Zim like throwing lunch meats and cheese slices at his head when he’s not looking I’d be pelting that bastard with commercial pesticides based off whatever hunch about his biology entered my mind. There’s so much room for REAL investigative science here, like learning what happens when Irken skin comes into contact with DDT or triadimefon.