Ms-scarletwings - Of Carmine Carnations

THIS IS A QUESTION PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF ASKING?!

THE ANSWER MY FRIEND IS

YES. ABSOLUTELY YES.

- He has the blood of countless beings on his hands

This little guy and his sidekick have killed or mangled a lot of sentient life. He’s non-lethally ruined scores more than that, especially within his own species. He raised an entire little civilization/cult once from the ground up, Spore-style, in the comics only to destroy them. He’s killed the show’s main antagonist and his direct rival at least once, on-screen too. Vaporized or blown up irrelevant side characters, launched domestic animals into the sun for no observable reason, etc. Anyone from outside the show, you understand what his kind does, right? They take over foreign planets from the inside, and then they call over backup to either subjugate the inhabitants, or wipe them clean off the face of existence before moving onto the next target. That’s the stakes here and his primary goal in all of this.

- He is a unrestrainable, cosmic-level threat dressed in moron’s threads

His comedic incompetence by no means dampens his ability to be a fearsome force; if anything, he is made all the more intimidating by his unpredictable and chaotic tendencies. He will go to absolutely asinine lengths or choose the most destructive/dangerous path to completing his goals possible on an impulsive, arbitrary whim. Opening a hole in the fabric of this dimension to impress his leaders, tampering with time travel to cripple his rival, blowing up a city to dispose of a lab accident, draining the entire ocean to throw the unholy mother of all water balloons at one kid who pissed him off. Even acting in neutral or “good” intentions, he has caused planetary scale harm to his own brethren multiple times, including the indirect assassination of 2-4 almighty tallests and corrupting their ultimate judicial authorities to madness.

Generally speaking, Zim gets what he wants, barring something that would outright break or end the show’s broader formula. From the surface it MAY look like he’s the idiot being strung along by Red and Purple, but truth be told, they are the ones wrapped around his little finger. Those two are rightfully scared of what he could do if their one effective method for keeping him away failed. He’s crazy, but not stupid by any means, given he’s the single most brilliant and powerful inventor in the whole series. Yes, even more than Membrane. The comics went further to demonstrate that his technology is hypothetically capable of outright destroying the universe or trapping all of its inhabitants into a perpetual time loop purgatory. Every character in Invader Zim is completely at the mercy of his protagonist plot armor.

- He purely looks out for himself and has zero sense of loyalty/honor

Being a useful ally to him rather than an opponent only tenuously, if at all, saves you from the disasters he leaves in his wake. He will betray those he works with on a dime the instant it becomes convenient to do so, and he’s a competent manipulator who uses humans and aliens alike to self-serving means only to immediately throw them under the bus or abandon them. Additionally, he’s proved himself the most unsoldierly soldier of the Irken military. It is very likely the reason that the role of invader was even appealing to him was because it allows for the freedom to operate absent of accountability to fellow comrades or supervision. His biggest “accomplishment” in training ended in the obliteration of his commanding officer and fellow team members. For the countless ways he has been a menance to his homeworld he has bragged in the place of showing remorse. Other Irkens are just as expendable npcs to him as the very creatures he’s actively trying to conquer, and it’s evident that his reverent feelings toward his leaders themselves don’t actually penetrate beyond a surface formality. To quote him directly, “I know not of sides, Earth Stink.”

- He is overtly monsterous and sadistic to the point of straining the boundaries for what a kid’s show can even allow

Oh, Hebert over there robbed a bank? How about the attempted and sometimes successful enslavement/genocide of all humanity? How about frakensteining an innocent schoolroom hamster into Godzilla? Bugs in chili? Zim put bologna into the genetic sequence of a 12 year old. One time, and I’m not exaggerating, he was the bug in Dib’s food! Ripped another child’s eyes out of the sockets and replaced them with hallucinating implants. Kidnapped and subjected hundreds of humans and many animals to fridge horror types of probing and experimentation. Swapped the brain of a witness with a regular squid’s. *cough cough* Dark Harvest. Don’t get me started about rubber pigs or muffins, but I could certainly keep going on. Zim is a brutal little bastard when he gets any opportunity to be. He doesn’t just want to beat his enemies, he wants to crush them with all of the unbridled glee of a bully cackling while burning ants with a magnifying glass.

- As Megamind would say: Presentation!

As we all know, it’s mostly a matter of theatrics and domination that really puts the “super” into the title supervillain, and goodness does this lil green man have a penchant for the dramatic. His maniacal laughter and his hammy mannerisms have reigned pretty iconic going on over 20 years now, after all. “Over the top” is likely one of the first things any fan of the show will think when asked to describe this guy in a nutshell, and justly so.

Taylor art by @tactilescream

Propaganda

Invader Zim: No Propaganda Submitted

Taylor Hebert: - She's the protagonist and main POV character

- She spends the first several arcs going from "insecure teen" to "widely feared supervillain" over the course of a few months

- Her actions are definitely villainous, from robbing a bank, to attempting taking over a city, to putting bugs in the chilli someone was cooking

Me explaining to friends why gourmand is the best added campaign in Downpour

Also true yet I think even that is underselling it. Disorganized colonizer to Earth, natural terrorist to his own species. I woulda gone with “He’s a walking natural disaster”

Also, me when propaganda works

Taylor art by @tactilescream

Propaganda

Invader Zim: No Propaganda Submitted

Taylor Hebert: - She's the protagonist and main POV character

- She spends the first several arcs going from "insecure teen" to "widely feared supervillain" over the course of a few months

- Her actions are definitely villainous, from robbing a bank, to attempting taking over a city, to putting bugs in the chilli someone was cooking

Okay here’s the thing. I love and adore Doof as much as the next high class cartoon fan, but if you are voting for him, you genuinely do not know what a “villain protagonist” is. The main protags of phineas and Ferb are Phineas and Ferb, and even within the classic doof-centered B plot, Perry the Platypus is the one in the protagonist role.

Like all other campaign arguments are thrown aside. One of these guys is an actual villain protagonist, and the other one is a villain antagonist. It’s not your fault, Doof, you are amazing and iconic, but this is not your banner to fly and I will not deprive you of your proper taxonomy.

Propaganda

Heinz Doofenshmirtz: He has a tragic backstory. It’s so tragic that not even his parents showed up for his birth. He also has a found family of ocelots! And a nemesis with whom he has a mildly homoerotic rivalry. He predictably gets his plans utterly decimated each time, but he never gives up! Give the guy props for tenacity. He’s also legitimately good at building crazy machines, his downfall is his habit of building self-destruct buttons. He’s ridiculous. He tries so hard. He’s such a babygirl.

Invader Zim: An autistic icon who paved the way for so many shows people praise today - Steven Universe, She-Ra Princesses of Power, Hazbin/Helluva, Owl House and so many more. Also, a non binary icon, as this beautiful small bean rocks a pink dress and on multiple occasions is the draggest of queen's. Vote Zim for the road he died paving for all the recent LGBT faves to run on.

#Not even sure she’s defective like a lot seem to think

That’s the other thing adjacent to one of the hills I’ve made my mission to die on. “Defective” in this context actually doesn’t mean anything concrete. An Irken is effectively defective only if the Tallest and the Control brains decide to say they are defective. I’m sure the most upset Tak ever brought their society was her failure in ridding them of Zim, which, is a boat she shares with many other upstanding Irkens and allies. Sure, she fled her station on Dirt, but the empire’s leadership clearly has about half a dozen more important things to care about. Even at Zim’s trial, escaping Foodcourtia twice wasn’t something brought up as relevant to the question of his verdict.

Two things about Tak this fandom keeps forgetting:

1. She’s officially not an invader

2. As far as Irken morality goes she literally did nothing wrong