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The Speculative Analysis About Irkens No One Asked For: Part II

Hiya! Back at it again with not shutting up about the lil green dudes. In case you found this first, here’s the Part One of this spiel, touching on some of the environmental theories about Irk and its cyberpunk-leaning cultural direction. While this post is dedicated to a more biological look of what’s going on with the Irkens, there was some leading context and other tidbits back in that one you may also enjoy, too.

So, carrying through what we previously set up, I want to… admit off the bat that, I found it a little difficult at first, you know?-To pick an angle I wanted to sink my teeth into. With how old the show’s become and how creative & enthusiastic a fanbase it attracted, it’s getting hard to really note (or theorize) something about Irken anatomy that hasn’t been said before somewhere. And don’t get me wrong, that’s awesome and I love almost every word of it I’ve read. A lot of it from various sources is almost certainly going to bleed together into the first half of this. So, keep it in mind, yet I will try to chew a little deeper into the questions we can’t actually answer with just a rewatch of the show, all good? Because there’s a few more base things we know from the canon I’m going to include to start listing: - Irkens lack any visible form of nose or ears, but are equipped with a pair of sensory antennae. Presumably, these organs fulfill the same roles, as they do in real-world insects. - Irken organs are obviously very alien, not well explained, artificially enhanced, and hard to compare to that of a human’s- outside of their general body shape, the presence of a primary brain separate from the PAK, and the fact that they do possess something of an internal skeleton. - A petite race on average (relative to humans), Irkens universally follow an unquestioned social hierarchy based on individual height. - Irkens are endowed with a remarkable ability to regenerate and heal superficial injuries, even up to repairing the damage of being nearly skinned alive (chest-down) or severely burning their corneas within a matter of hours. - Their preferred diet is one that is rich in (if not primarily made of) refined carbohydrates, and while they seem to tolerate fatty sources, such as processed dairy, their anatomy is poorly suited for dealing with high-protein foods like beans and meat. - In fact, all forms of contact with exposed animal meat itself will cause it to dissolve and meld into their own flesh, via an incredibly painful process. - On contact with water from Earth, their skin will receive harsh chemical burns (This has been explained by Vasquez to be a consequence of impurities and man-made pollutants, which Irkens seem sensitive to). - While I’m already on a roll about their skin, it also contains/produces a substance capable of killing lice.

Now, I think we’ve all heard a lot about sqeedily spooches, but does anyone else want to keep marinating a second longer on the topic of s k i n ? Because I have some damn thoughts to release about Zim’s outer casing.

Let’s Get Chemical

First hot take, and the hill I am willing to be slain on: That ain’t actually skin! At least, it is nothing chemically alike to Earth-native vertebrate skin. I’ve given all of the above and the general running theme about Irkens resembling arthropods a lot of thought, and I’ve come to about the only conclusion I could that makes their dermis equivalent… make sense.

See, one of the biggest traits that sets apart invertebrates from other animals in real life is the “innie or outie” skeleton question, but you gotta understand that the “skeletons” that bugs and crabs have would still be considered something completely different from our endoskeletons even if they were on the inside. The hard tissues that make up OUR skeletal systems are mostly made up of a *collagen (remember that word!) frame that is reinforced by calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals. The hard parts of an ant’s skeleton, on the other foot, are mainly composited of chitin.

Chitin, now, is a very neat substance. It’s a polysaccharide, meaning that it’s made up of a bunch of sugar molecules chained together. This makes it distinct from proteins, which are made of amino acid chains instead of carbs. Chitin is also one of the single most important structural polymers in the universe to a ton of existing life. It makes up the literal backbone of arthropods and the cell walls of all fungi. We’ve even found it in fish scales and some amphibians. So, must also be important to humans, right? NAH. Not a chance. Higher animals actually long ditched the ability to synthesize the stuff, and are not any the worse for it, since there’s more than one way to stick a bunch of creature pieces together. For two examples, keratin and *collagen are proteins we naturally synthesize that functionally do the same thing. Keratin is the hard substance that makes up hair & fingernails, and collagen is practically the wonderglue of flesh: It’s a fundamental binder that holds together your bones, your skin, your precious muscle meats, the ligaments, the tendies, the nerves…

pretty much the whole person blueprint if you get the picture.

And thus concludes your (VERY overly simplified) highshcool bio class recap, but what the hell did that have to do with the cartoon spacemen again? I’m gonna round back to them through a funny secret about exoskeletons, actually: They have a softer part, too! Chitin’s hella diverse in its forms and utility. What’s in an exoskeleton is actually a version of it modified with other materials (like what’s done to collagen in bone) to make it so rigid and shell-like. A purer chitin, on the other hand, is more leathery and flexible, less like the shell of a beetle and more like the squishy wall around a caterpillar or maggot. Even the hard bodied insects still have an endocuticle layer like this hiding just under the “shell”, still considered part of the whole exoskeleton, but suddenly looking and acting more like we’d call a skin.

Eh, see where I’m going with this? My conviction is this- Irkens may have used to be even more arthropodal in an earlier stage of their evolution, including BOTH an internal skeleton, and some form of protective exoskeleton in their body plan. And hey, maybe the two were extensions of the same system once, too. You recognize something like that in modern tortoises when you remember that their “shells” are actually just the bone structure of their own ribcage. Then, let’s say that Irkens later saw the loss of their heavier exocuticle, leaving behind the endoskeleton and the flexible inner (now just an outer) cuticle of what used to be an entire body shell. This could have been a gradual change, via natural selection, or it could have been another artificial mutation brought on by technology- wherein the elder brains decided the feature was less efficient and simply phased it out of the cloning process- the same as the loss of their species’ sexual organs.

But, you’re thinking, why on Irk would the loss of an entire badass armor layer be beneficial to their fitness? Few reasons- For one, they are cumbersome and limiting. The downgrade on freedom of movement and flexibility they would be for a bipedal humanoid is self-explanatory enough. When it came to structural integrity, the inner skeleton would have already done a well job with little modification. For all the protection they provide, they don’t leave much room for expansion, and need to be shed in order for the animal to grow any further or to recover from certain injuries. The process of molting itself would be an excruciating process for any intelligent species to have to endure; one that also temporarily leaves the critter in a very vulnerable and stressed state for every molt. To advance from more primitive origins into a dominant race, manual dexterity and mobility would have to take a front seat over a small amount of modest defenses, and mind you, Irk long ago woulda managed to compensate for that loss in the form of advanced weaponry (obviously).

I’m also of the mind that the shift away from an exoskeleton could have even been the key to allowing the Irkens to even grow to the size they are now. Recall back to Part One for a second, where I shared the likely case for Irk having a massive bulk behind its gravity field. Gravity is a hard thing on any skeletal structure, representing a constant strain to be fought against when moving, growing, and bearing weight .There’s a lot of factors behind why we don’t have horse sized spiders or elephant sized lobsters IRL, and weight is actually one of them. Notice how terrestrial isopods only get about to the size of a bean, but the aquatic ones can top out at over a foot long? And that’s only having Earth’s level of gravity to struggle against, let alone however harsh the conditions would be on a larger planet. So, there’s my framework for explaining what I think the aliens’ cuticle is not; however, what does that mean for what it is, besides “feels and looks like a grub’s”?

Well, look again at some of the extraordinary things it can do.

Cooties Immunity

“Germs” was a memorable episode that posed a very legitimate question to the viewer. Why IS IT that foreign pathogens aren’t a bigger concern for the invaders? They’re literally sent off to other worlds to blend in: Socializing with the native inhabitants, eating their foods, and living in an alien habitat. In the case of an undiscovered rock like Earth, our infectious diseases would have no reference available to the Armada whatsoever. Sure, species incompatibility would provide some protection, but the risk of something carrying over and adapting is always still there. Zoonoptic jumps happen all the time with bacteria and viruses, and Zim’s body temperature IS in the normal human range. And what about fungal pathogens, or parasites-

Oh, wait, the lice episode gave it away right there.

I love this sequence so much, because it’s coincidentally like, an exact “art imitates life” parallel to something a real species of primate does. Black lemurs live in the same area of Madagascar as these vibrant, red millipedes.

The millipedes are special because when threatened, they secrete a poisonous substance from their skin. The lemurs are special because they like to grab the bugs and nibble them for no other reason than to make them release those toxins. Those chemicals are then rubbed into their fur, because somehow the lemurs figured out it makes a really handy mosquito repellant. The lemurs also like to get completely zonked out on the chemicals too but eyy- Point was it stands to reason that Irkens may also secrete small amounts of their own potent toxin from the cuticle, perhaps for more hygienic than defensive purposes. This secretion would be responsible for protecting them from parasites and topical infections. Could it also make people blazed out of their minds? …Maybe? I think I’d like to promote the “Just Say No” policy on the matter of licking aliens, though. Ffs at least ask them out to dinner first.

When it comes to other kinds of sick, looks like it might be the trusty old PAK to the rescue here again. I imagine that, being an intergalactic, partially mechanical civilization, the Irken race has come down this road enough to put in a workaround. A standard PAK contains the entirety of the population’s collective knowledge/history- which would include a catalog of all known infectious agents they have encountered across the universe. Some kind of nanobot-bolstered immune system that could detect and respond appropriately to new threats isn’t out of the question, nor should a feature that can automatically administer the appropriate medicine directly into the wearer’s bloodstream. For all this awesomeness, nonetheless, there remains a downside or two that they haven’t quite conquered..

The Meaty, Sweety, Mending of DOOM

Anyone ever actually think about how as far as resilience is concerned, Zim is practically an X-man compared to any Earthling? He has regenerative capabilities that surpass anything else on earth, save idk, bamboo shoots, if even. Injuries that would leave a human permanently disabled only seem to incapacitate an Irken for a few hours to a day at most. They’re all the more tough to put out of commission when considering that a PAK doubles as a form of backup life support, ready to “soft reboot” the host with a quick jolt if it detects a sudden drop in vital signs. It is tempting to credit the same device as the source of this healing boost as well, teasing the nanobot suggestion again; however, I see a chance instead to bring this back a step.

Although not as quick-acting as Zim, or Skoodge’s healing, there are some remarkable examples of regeneration in real arthropods, from repairing tissues/organs to replacing entire lost limbs. What the aliens are packing doesn’t seem all that different, only refined (through years of bioengineering) to work at a truly frightening efficiency. It shows through in their diet as well. Almost always, if we see a member of this species eating on screen, and believe me there was no shortage of examples, what are we watching them shovel their face with?

Space doughnuts, space popcorn, space Fun-Dip, sodas, and curly fries. Sure, there’s plenty of calories here, no doubt with the amount of carbs and grease that could even turn the stomach of a college freshman, but is this… nutrition?

Yes. Just not for us.

Like their civilization, we have also turned the mass production of sweet-packed, fat loaded foods into one of our favored art forms, and there are scattered pockets of our planet that can enjoy these items in cheap abundance. The catch 22? Obesity and heart disease. Meanwhile, Irkens are so metabolically blessed that they can follow the same lifestyle and actually be thriving by it. We know that the majority of human food is utterly toxic to Zim, but then there were waffles, a literal stack of dessert and butter that pretends to be a breakfast…. Our guy was experiencing the “finally some good fucking food” meme from the first bite off that plate, but this can’t seriously be healthy,or if it is, then how?

Well, if I did sell you on the idea that much of their tissues and skeleton swaps out a chitin base where we would be using protein, there you go. Sugars for the building blocks to synthesize the connective/structural tissues for maintaining the body, and the bulk of the energy required to keep it running. And I won’t make the leap and suggest that’s all they have.

After all, the Irken equivalent of sandwiches do actually seem to contain “lettuce” and something that people will say looks like meat slices while not convincing me. I can get behind the thought of the natural or maybe original Irken diet to be a mix of plant matter and supplemental fungi, but everything I’ve put together implies that they are completely unfit for processing the goodies in animal flesh.

Overwhelmingly, I believe that the only time they possibly even seek out more sources of amino acids is going to be when they are smeets. That’s how it works in many wasp species. I.e. The growing larvae are the only ones that actually get to reap from the hard work of a colony hunting down enough protein to feed them with, yet the adults live out the rest of their lives more than content to gorge themselves on nectars and fruits exclusively!

And you even could put that aside, but you’ll have to grapple with the ungodly thing that happens every single time you see Zim touching a piece of meat. Would be awfully convenient to blame it on his personal brand of weirdness, or earth contaminants, but we remember this was a weakness that Tak approached fully aware of and expecting.

We know that polluted water can burn them. We know that beans and other foods can give them grotesque allergic reactions. Well what in the horrifying name of Resident Evil is this, though? Buddy pals, I think we got some unintended consequences of that bio-hacking on hand. Collagen and chitin aren’t just functionally similar to each other, they are practically analogous building blocks.

For a WILD science fact, consider that there’s a ton of ongoing research into the application of chitin and chitin-derivatives into having a role in tissue engineering, as a hypothetical scaffold in lab cultured meat, and as an effective wound dressing ingredient.

What we’re seeing with incidents like Dib throwing that Bologna at Zim could be an extreme form of the vise versa, because I know a certain protein that processed meat happens to be pretty high in :)))

Imagine the coupling of this with the bioengineered genome of Zim’s kind being so… reactive to a foreign intrusion, yet also flexible to modification. Maybe it is the acids, or some contaminant/seasoning on the meat that first damages the cuticle. That healing ability kicks in, but doesn’t stop where chitin does, readily binding to and with the collagens in these strange tissues that are sorta like an Irken’s but also just enough not like an Irken’s that it also kicks the immune system into overdrive. Think of all the pain and inflammation of a poison ivy rash but if the damn plant itself could also fuse itself with whatever you brushed against it. I think Zim actually had an understandable reason to be homicidally pissed off for that Bologna assault. Also how the Bologna virus was accelerated in Zim’s body. Once it had incorporated itself into his own DNA, it was game set and match with the speed and help those cells had to replicate themselves.

And uh, yeah, I think this post has gotten about as long as it reasonably should be here. I did have a couple more points I really wanted to get out of my brain about the Almighty Tallest, and I think that would be a good launching point actually for a possible (and hopefully final jfc) part three to this. Till then I got some off-topic scoliids to taxidermy 👀

This Single Oversight Will Bring Irken-Kind to Its Knees

I have a little riddle for you.

What does an ant nest, a computer, and the ancient city of Troy have in common?

While you ponder the significance of this question and consider your answer, there’s a few things I want to analyze about the worldbuilding of Invader Zim.

We may have heard it said before, least I have (and agree), that the fate of the IZ universe appears to be a rather bleak picture.

Through our lens of focus, being upon Earth and an oh-so specific nutball waging his battle upon humanity, we often don’t do as much thinking about the larger cosmic war taking place meanwhile. Not between the Meekrob and Tenn, not between the Tallest and every dumb luck threat they are thrown against, but between the Irken Armada and all life in the entire universe, sentient or not.

Their intentions will not be made any more clear, between outright eradication or eventual enslavement of every lifeform they set their sights on. While they have alliances and neutral treaties, those agreements seem few and far between, as well as born from temporary conveniences. The cards have already been dealt, and all available evidence has indicated that every planet they are aware of is doomed from the moment The Massive was operational.

Though littered with inefficiencies and incompetency that could suggest an empire in internal decline, the development of the control brains and other centralized command crutches of the species suggests the Irkens can still keep a well oiled machine running, no matter how many mishaps happen along the way. At least, that machine and their plundered resources will definitely outlast the survival of their enemies, for sure.

To speak of their enemies, there has not been a single competitive race within the show that demonstrates any credible threat to Operation Impending Doom II- only those that can resist the conquest a little bit longer than others, or those who survive by appeasing Irk (or evading its detection). The fall of Vort, which stood as the homeworld of the only aliens with the technological ability to match the armada’s firepower is…. Really bad news. That’s to say the least of comparatively primitive, TINY planets like Earth or Blorch, standing zero chance in the way of what’s eventually coming. This is a war that has continued despite the death of two.. FOUR Almighty Tallests if you follow the movie’s events… and Irkens wholly are still thriving for it across the Galaxy.

So, given all of these facts, and the perception that the Irkens (like any invasive species or colonial force) don’t seem to be a society that will make responsible and/or sustainable use of their ill-gotten territory… it seems like this is how life across the universe ends in Invader Zim one day: Not with a bang, not with the whimper of heat death, but through screams muffled under the bloody boots of a dominant predator- a predator that is, itself, doomed to cannibalize its own once it hits the carrying capacity of all existence.

Bleak, concrete, and horrific as that may sound, there’s still a “however” here to consider!

Yep, that’s me about to point one of my big fat fingers to the sky and protest- Irk just might be,

Not so Undefeatable, after all!

And not only have I figured out exactly what sort of countermeasure you need to destroy these invaders, I have reason to suspect it’s a plan already long ago set into motion.

Let’s break it down,

An Irksome Achilles’ Heel

True, individually, the bug bastards are irritatingly tough to kill through conventional means. True, collectively, they are nigh impossible to outmatch. And more than most anything else, they owe this tenacity to two things: numbers, and R&D. Possessing some of most state of the art pinnacles in transportation, communications, and military equipment, the Armada found a knack for being able to steamroll most lesser planets before it.

The genius of the individual PAK unit grants each and any one Irken a theoretical path to partial immortality itself, by route of consciousness archiving. I strongly believe that kind of cybernetic progress was also one of the stepping stones that led to the creation of the Control Brains. Nonetheless, this very same strength of the Irkens’ has also proven to be the source of their greatest vulnerability.

Paks, Paks… Oh Paks. The entire race’s civilization revolves around such technology the way we do around our own brains, our own hearts, and our communicative network. For all intents and purposes, and as I’ve gone on about ad nauseum in my other spills about the show, a PAK is all and at once

• Synonymous with the holder of their soul, consciousness, being, whatever you want to call their personhood.

• Able to have their data repurposed by future generations, in the result of an Irken’s permanent death.

• A universal necessity shared by the entire population.

• Susceptible to alterations, sometimes by intelligent enough individuals (as demonstrated by the Zimvoid comic arc), but usually by a Control Brain, directly.

In addition to that last quality, there’s another way the code in a PAK can be changed, for better or worse- Via evolution. Though I am talking about digitized neurology, the actual data in a PAK is a lot more comparable to biological DNA or a “self-learning” AI than it is a rigid computer program. By this, I mean that its code is subject to certain changes over time, perhaps both directed and completely random, particularly during the recycling of its information back into the Smeeteries.

And this is actually good design on the control brains’ part, the same way not reproducing Irkens as genetically identical clones was. Genetic and digital diversity are desirable goals to keep in mind if you want a healthy and versatile stock of workers, engineers, soldiers, and everything in between. We’re talking about highly sentient, highly intelligent, and emotional organisms here. A static drone mindset is going to offer them inadequate ability to adapt to their lengthy life experiences or be unique persons. How else would social mobility have purpose in their world? How else could the cream of the crop rise so far above their peers? That positive was deemed worthy of an obvious risk, however: computational errors.

When the Bugs Get Bugs

 IZ does not clearly lay out what it means for an Irken to be defective, but it gives us a general idea. Defectiveness is not something diagnosed from a code scan for this missing value or that incorrect variable. It’s not judged by one specific character trait or quality that’s abnormal for an Irken to display. “Defective” is a judgement stamp, wielded by the Control Brains when they gauge the total sum value of a life’s contribution to the species. And it’s not one given to Irkens which are merely incompetent, no. Anyone proven to be unfit for their standing is given generous opportunity for redemption or simply reassigned a more suitable occupation. If it were based on likability, we’d have seen Skoodge sent to Judgementia years ago.

Rather, it’s given to those who are viewed as so twisted that they are proven to be an existential danger to their brethren. Irkens that are so destructive to the essence of the collective that their memory must be purged from the record and their identity erased.

I adore the enthusiasm behind fans who want to view this as an analogy for disability or neurodivergence against a conformist society, but the metaphor I’m seeing is one of extreme antisocial behavior. A defective Irken screams less “adhd/autism” to me than they do serial murderers (of their own) or outright traitors. Pardon the use of a gross phrase, but it’d seem we were talking about an Irken equivalent of what the outdated gens would have dubbed the “criminally insane”. No one on screen has ever shown Skoodge or Tak the sort of concern that would get them sent to the Spike of Judgement, but when Zim was in that hot seat? NO one was doubting what his verdict would be.

^ courtesy of “The Trial’s” transcript

I think about the 40 shmillion mistakes a lot.

It’s such a vague quantity. But it sure sounds like a hell of a big one. And what mistakes… what did the lil squirt even have to compare them to? There’s no standard one person an Irken can be. Every presentation of the flaws in that code to the control brains hasn’t ended up a flaw to him.

I only started writing this because I really couldn’t stop thinking about the 40 shmillion. There’s no chronological room for bad self-modding to add up to that so quickly.  DNA replication, nature’s own sloppy and random process of creating new life, can be excused around 120,000 hiccups when duplicating with a 6 billion pair-long protein. But this kind of shuffling is under a futuristic AI’s precise eye. Yes, defects happen, but as bad as him? From birth??? How could you possibly get that many detrimental deviations from the mechanical fucking god-queen(s) of their entire homeworld?

And then it hit me.

You don’t. Not from Irk.

The hot take I’ve been charging for this entire time is thus.

Zim is not defective by any random accident. In fact, I smell the tampering of foreign sabotage.

Not only is this guy the thing his kind fears more than any else, they have every right to be shaking in their stance.

That puzzle i posed at the beginning of this journey, have you seen what I’ve seen yet?

Because the answer I was looking for as to what similarity connects an anthill, a PC, and a city from Greek legend was a most effective tactic for taking them down.

Do you know the best way to deal with a bad ant infestation? Cuz you can lay down all the raid and crushing action you want, but you won’t really be getting anywhere unless you target the pests directly at their queen. To that end, liquid ant baits are marvelous inventions- a sweet substance hiding a small amount of slow acting poison. Poison to be peacefully delivered by the stomach of an ant to the rest of her colony, poisoning her kin, who sicken more members, on and on until the queen is destroyed and the entire nest perishes. An insidious toxin to do all the work while its user never lifts a finger, pretty ingenious.

And when it comes to computers, we also have ways to attack entire networks at source, from quietly and far away. “Trojan” was a category of malware responsible for 64.31% of all cyber attacks on Windows systems in 2022, and they still make up a majority of active malware hits today. The concept is deviously simple. The malicious code is hidden within an innocent looking program, maybe even within a legitimate software that does what it’s supposed to. Once the stowaway is invited into the system, it can get down to it some sneaky, nasty, destructive work on your device. As for what those acts could look like, well, malware exists to do all kinds of things. Mostly something involving trying to get money/information from you or hijacking your computer for whatever its creator wants to use it for. And some of them will just up and wreck your shit, disable your antivirus software to open you up to more infections, disable important operations, wipe your data. Use your imagination.

And as for Troy.. well, where do you think Trojan programs got their name? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, Irkens have their Armada, bionic drones, and homeworld- in other words, the thriving swarm of army ants, the billions to trillions of computers they so rely on, and their nigh untouchable fortress, always at war.

And some damn crafty bastard(s) in the stars said

“Here is their sugar-bait,”

“Here is their cyber attack,”

“Here is their wooden horse.”

And one particular race is going to be getting the last laugh before long.

Nerds That Are GOATed With the Sauce

That’s right, I thought about this all the way through to finding our prime suspect. And let me tell you, NO ONE in the Galaxy reeked of fish like the Vortians did. Get over here and lemme show you my whiteboard with all the red circles and polaroids on it.

- The Means

In a way of tragic irony, Vort has contributed more than any else to the same Irken conquest that turned on them in the end. A natural talent for cutting edge engineering and technical development actually does not seem to be what Irk already came into the ring with. For how mighty and superior they view themselves, the greatest achievements of their military can actually be owed to Vortian outsourcing. When we would have gotten a look at Tallest Miyuki’s very own “finest minds” during her reign, notice something interesting about these guys below,

Zim there is the ONLY Irken to be found! Yes, transferred there because of the punchline explanation of ‘he breaks everything he touches so maybe he’ll have an affinity for weapons research’ but damn right he actually did! And still does; I don’t want it to go unsaid that Zim has shown MUCH more technological skill and innovation than near any other Irken we’ve seen.

Another fun thing to note about this is that Lard Nar was also part of this lineup, and in the transcript he was in the process of working on the blueprints for The Massive. (which leaves you with the cursed knowledge that Zim, Prisoner 777, and Lard were all familiar coworkers long before the events of the show) And that brings me back to what I’m saying about the real reason the Vort natives were enslaved and imprisoned instead of outright sweeped after conquering. The Armada needs their skills, because Vortian advancement is something their own scientists couldn’t come close to. Left to their own devices, Vort could have easily outmatched them at an earlier point in history. It’s a people that figured out infinite power sources and potentially wormhole technology, while PAKs were something a disfigured human tween with a lot of time on his hands was able to crack. If anyone could outpace and outsmart the defensive measures of the Control Brains, it’s going to be them. And what better, cleaner way to sabotage the enemy than from within. 

The very same strings of inserted code that cursed Zim with his delusions, paranoia, lust for destruction, and horrible tactics may also have blessed him with a determination and intellect higher than almost any creature alive. The saboteur gave Irk the most powerful racecar in history, and then fitted it with bicycle brakes. No matter how hard Zim tries to conform to what will give him admiration, no matter how competent he is at keeping himself alive, it’s as if he is instinctually compelled toward whatever actions will cause the MOST damage to his allies in the process. Dib may think he’s the bulwark against the invasion when, ironically, he’s fighting against the one being that’s predetermined to be the arrow that strikes Irken leadership right in their dumb, green heels. (There is also an instance in the comics where Dib figures out that Zim is the ace in the hole for total Irken eradication but that’s another fun story.)

Oh, oh HO HO, and that’s only what he’s capable of doing before the empire’s actual immune system against defects like him wakes up and notices!

Three planetary blackouts, two dead generals, and a whole swath of dead invaders was just the fucking warm up, babey! All that is merely the kind of loud disruption that you need in order to fulfil the real thing this Trojan horse exists for in the first place.

What a celebration of hubris the Spike of Judgement was. Yeah, let’s take our method of filtering the corrupted data from the hive mind, and completely centralize it on a single planet! As well, let’s have the very purging agents also be the same ones to perform the evaluations themselves, I’m sure that it would be unthinkable for any outsider to design a worm that could make it through the brains’ firewalls. Goddamn spectacular. Like inserting an infected USB into your laptop, the Tallest never realized what kind of beast they woke up by plugging that PAK into the Spike’s mainframes. Those brains were meant to handle an expected spectrum of deviation when it came to defective Irkens, never a sleeper virus of this complexity.

From here it probably won’t even matter if Zim survives much longer on Earth, his virus has already spread to the very thing relied upon to keep things like him out of the data pool in the first place. With the Judgementia brains corrupted and no higher authority to overrule them, the firewall is effectively broken, and you know what that means? Bigger cracks for future defectives to start trickling through, both spontaneous and artificial. The ideal scenario is one where a degenerating and glitched population accelerates the incompetency of the empire to the point where it just implodes on itself; nevertheless, even a disease that only slows down Operation Doom could be a game changer, by giving the rest of the little guys more time to band together a coalition strong enough to strike back when the time is right.

- The Motive

The history of these two races’ alliance is something I lament us not having more lore to pull from- how far back it goes, what the character of the Vort was like during that time, what the Irkens had offered in return- a few among dozens of questions it rears.  The implication behind how it ended lies in Zim’s creation that slayed Tallest Miyuki. Interestingly, the Empire never received the memo of what exactly went down, or, perhaps, stubbornly denied the account of the other scientists who were there that day. Neither Red/Purple nor the Judgmentia Brains had any idea that Zim’s actions led to the death of a Tallest. So, makes sense that the Vortians became the unintentional scapegoat (no pun intended) for the incident, and the rest is history.

Note: It’s also in the realm of possibility that Vort was actually the one to withdraw from the alliance instead, given that the same blob that devoured Miyuki (purely the fault of their Irken transfer) also went on to cause untold amounts of devastation. Red’s reaction to the real story stuck out to me as more telling, although.

But why am I even talking about this? Zim was decades old before war was declared on them, and either people’s regard to each other seemed strangely… respectful, if anything.

But, was Vort really a monolithic bunch? Irk was already an empire by this point, and diplomacy with those they needed something from did not mean they weren’t otherwise an aggressive force in the universe. For all we know, the alliance itself might have been coerced, or result of depraved leadership among the Vortians.  Any citizen with a conscience who could see the writing on the walls would be disgusted by giving so much aid and brown nosing to such a menace, no? I know who would have seen that writing before anyone else. Brainiacs who are smart enough to build something like The Massive and all its bells and whistles would know better than anyone just what it was all capable of in the wrong hands. The collateral damage against your own people might be a sacrifice worth making in the face of the alternative.

- The Oppurtunity

So.. that’s all well and good, yeah? A why, and a what, yet this is actually the tricky part of saving the galaxy,

Sneaking your StupidifyIrk.exe file onto the assholes’ homeworld without alerting either them or your own treacherous, weak, collaborator superiors to your actions. Infecting and releasing a random Irken alive would be far too dangerous, far too noticeable to the point where they could just be destroyed outright before given a chance to wreak real havoc.

But what about releasing a dead Irken? 🤔

PAKs are only screened for criminal flaws when errors begin to affect their body’s behaviors in destructive ways. A fully competent scientist, or soldier, or navigator performing a lifetime of loyal service to the empire and then meeting an unfortunate end? Their minds’ shadows can be accepted back into the data pool no questions asked. That’s only business as usual.

That almost makes new smeets something of a reincarnation of their ancestors. Personally, I see it kind of like replaying a video game and re-rolling your stats, even if you’re reusing your character’s name and general play style.

Either way, we come full circle to my theory about Zim’s actual origin. Maybe not “our” Zim, but the previous iteration of data that was shuffled to create his person. Whoever they were, I’m convinced that they were also an exceptional individual. They were probably pretty arrogant, but it was a more earned confidence, and they were a prodigy genius, the likes of which that was drawn to work alongside Vortian allies, as another researcher. Then, an untimely demise befell them. I couldn’t say they fell victim to some unfortunate accident, considering the cockroach durability of their body. No, I find it a lot easier to imagine they met their end in one of the more embarrassing ways for an Irken to die- A PAK stolen, disabled or forcefully detached by an assailant they might have allowed a little closer than they should have. To the homeworld, it’s a small matter. One more PAK recovered by the natives of the friendly planet, brought back home to be repurposed by the smeeteries, right?

Well, that’s what one smartass might have been hoping for.

And they really were a clever cookie, because that scheming seed is fruiting beautifully.

A Messy, Sedulous Necropsy of Zib Membrane

That’s what we call him right? Not Invader Zib? Hell if I know, we’ll let the tags decide.

Whatever he is christened by his author, enemies, or fans, this titular villain of the Zimvoid is such a mind blaster to me. I wish we had more time with him within the comics. I wish he had been a concept explored in the show. I wish he had a movie. I am having fun with a little hyperbole here, but I truly do find him just as interesting and potentially pivotal of an antagonist as Tak was, if not even more.

Both, of course, were so badly underutilized for sake of the series status quo. To that, Zib was a much bigger threat than Tak, and especially to that of the comics’ own. He potentially changes everything, and somehow absolutely nothing by the end. The TV show always had a more overt tone of cruelty and the macabre floating about its themes. These print issues? I don’t dislike them. It’s still recognizably invader Zim, and the more the merrier, content-wise, but longtime fans can feel that there was this change of essence in the transition. More obviously, in the art, but more subtly, there was an audible softening of that bluntly darker, cynical tone the show was made iconic for. To put it very generally, they lean a little more into the whackiness of this world, there’s a lot more dark comedy to be found in what I’ve seen so far rather than in your face darkness, and in the absence of the ost and voice acting the show accustomed us to, the comics leave a lot more room to be read as you wile. To me, they’re goofier and more episodic in spirit.

This all is not a critique or rating on the comics.. It’s purely, I feel, why Zib stuck out to me all the more jarringly in his context. His reveal was a genuine twist that brought forth stakes higher than arguably any other threat in the entire franchise. He represents a plausible while horrifying prophecy of our main characters if only they made worse decisions. The most interesting of all, for every piece of amazing information he fed to us, he bred dozens more questions about everything than he answered, from Irken machinations, to his ambivalent backstory, to the secrets hidden by the sum of his parts.

Though he was left evidently alive at the end of his story, I don’t see any chance for him making a return, so he is memorialized as another defeated one-off the writers have brisked past and left behind for good. Therefore, I’m here today to take what we got and present it on the metaphorical autopsy table. I want to really pull apart why this character alone pulled me back into the TV series, really just flay open the bits I can’t get out of my own head and dig harder until we find something or we run out of threads to tug at. Starting with the one already hanging out of my mouth, but

• B.E.F

“Bad End Friend” is a term I learned the meaning of within the last 12 hours or so of writing this, and I’m exuberant over that discovery. It’s a niche trope i didn’t know ive been a giant fan of since I was a child. Summed up, fictional characters from beloved media, typically, animated child protagonists… given the worst case scenario treatment. Their “bad ending”, whether that means a corruption arc, demonic possession, a lovecraftIan tragedy… usually something that’s anywhere along the lines of a fate worse than death to a full villainous turnover. As a treat. The concept is strongly associated with fanworks and AUs of popular media, but just as often this is something that becomes explored in the source material as well. A couple great examples I know would probably be Ice Prince Finn from Adventure Time or what happens in Undertale when you decide you want to run the most depraved playthrough possible. From a more mature story, “Evil” Morty is another validly arguable sample.

Besides a bit of a fondness I got going for certain dark or spooky themes in general, what I REALLY love about canonical BEFs the most is their utility as characterization tools. They’re the “having your cake and eating it too” option! The perfect way for an author to explore certain things about any character without actually committing to well… a bad ending.

Almost always, they are necessarily hypothetical or reversible. If they’re not reversible, they go often hand-in-hand with a little universe tampering to make happen. Sometimes, this means the story goes the way of time travel and branching off butterfly effects. Sometimes it means confirming multiverse theory, which can be the same thing depending on your semantical position.

And Zib crossed off the BEF qualifications by far and away. His implications are extremely dark given any pause think about them, and he’s a living, disturbing tragedy in aftermath. If you want to view a rigamarole about that aspect of his characterization as he appeared in the comics, someone else long beat me to that and I’m enthusiastically recommending a peek at their own work. I’m thrilled to do so and build a little upon that with those extended what-if-wonders.

• Lessons From a Lost Episode

Elephant in the room I haven’t seen someone ask yet, uh..

By show rules, isn’t Zib supposed to be a clear case of the writers committing the sin of retcon? By show I’m including the unaired scripts, including “10 Minutes to Doom”. In that one we had what looked like the potential setup for a Zib case, and it was deconstructed across the whole episode.

In short recap, Dib learned the hard and reckless way about the true nature of what Irken PAKs actually are. This is not an inventory bag, it is not “gear”. It’s the actual Irken entity- at least, the primary component.

Detaching it from the organic shell essentially caused a temporary split into two instances of Zim, desperately trying to connect back together under threat of obliteration.

Like let me be very clear about this,

The PAK is an autonomous instance of Zim’s consciousness, and it’s the main one. We’ve seen it act to save his life when his body has been out cold or flatlined, and he doesn’t appear the least bit disoriented or confused once “he” wakes and jumps back into the action. There’s no known separate computer assistant AI or security autopilot in there. That code, that program, IS Zim. As Long as the PAK is active, he is capable of staying fully conscious and able to react to what’s happening around him, and that’s what we’ve been seeing, his own actions.

Zim proved me right when Virooz tried to replace him and detached the PAK. Take note of his phrasing after the chair event™.

“I” activated the protocol. Immediately after Virooz ran off with my shell.

“I” Voluntarily chose to do so.

I don’t remember it playing out like that in “10 Minutes to Doom”.

Attaching to a new host wasn’t the first reflex. Dib was not the least bit aware that that he has literally holding the actual Zim captive in sense, and the latter was fighting like a cornered animal to escape him. Failing that, alongside the distance between him and his original body growing fast, he made a last desperate gambit, and he willingly connected himself into Dib’s body.

I can see why he thought this was better than nothing, no matter how repulsive the notion might have been. If he couldn’t fend Dib off physically, he could incapacitate him in some fashion by trying to overtake his will. Maybe give the shell a better chance to catch up, maybe in the longshot hope of being able to pilot dib in order to become whole with the correct host again. And you can say he succeeded, at least in dominating bodily control away from Dib, but at the cost of his already tenuously held sanity. This could be because of the interference of Dib’s own mind still resisting to fully submit, or malfunctions because of the biological incompatibility; however, the thing that Dib mentally becomes is only the basic idea of what “Zim” is. Instead of remembering it needs to reunite with its shell ASAP, the PAK mistakes Dib’s body for its own and goes through the manic motions of following the Invader mission. And it does this, weirdly enough, with almost no regard for blowing its cover.

When things are set right again, Zim’s later words near the episode ending revealed that he knew that was an unsustainable state.

Such a risk was not just accounted for, he was actually banking on it if that clock had hit zero. If Zim had truly lost, if he was really doomed to meet his end on this nasty rock in the middle of Nowhere, Space, then by every damned circuit in his being, he was going to take down this insolent fool boy and as many other humans possible with him. A dying act of vengeful rage.

• The Exceptional… Exception

Now, wouldn’t all of this be the definitive reason for Zib’s existence to be an aberrant impossibility? Yes, but actually no. Fun thing about multiverses is if something doesn’t work in one setting, you can just tweak a few dials and suddenly you have a world where the impossible becomes possible. But that’s a pretty cheap answer, isn’t it? So, what exactly was that crucial difference?

What happened in Zib’s timeline that went down so, so divergently from the events of 10 Minutes to Doom?

Because the only one who was in any position to explain it for us was Zib himself, and he’s proven to be one of the most unreliable of narrators. It’s as @dana-chan-the-control-brain already spared no effort to demonstrate, when he does tell us something about his past, his story is pocked with contradicting half-truths or outright lies. Ergo it helps to break down each recount of events to pick out the real facts.

Version 1: This is an alternate version of dib who defeated his complementing Zim (logically sensible) and went on to achieve all of the success and respect he sought after in his timeline (absolute bullshit). He kind of gestures and only implies about what has happened to his body while explaining that he came to his current understanding of Irken technology by studying it through Zim’s lab (a partial truth). He lets slip in passing that he has in fact fused with the PAK in order to learn how to alter and reprogram its coding, lessons he has applied to Number 2 in order to have a brainwashed pawn (also apparently true).

Version 2, when cornered and red handed: This is an alternate version of Dib who managed to specifically stop Zim's mission (Again, makes sense) but somehow could not convince the world of his findings or his warnings about the Irken Armada (*VERY eyebrow raising). Frustrated with the people’s lack of cooperation, he decides he has no choice but to physically merge with Zim’s PAK post-mortem (concerning and evidently mostly accurate), dominate the Earth himself, and enslave humans to help him in his efforts (highly troubling and probably true). The construction of his EMP super-weapon is successful, but ultimately led to the creation of the Zimvoid when the device was field tested (self evident, absolutely horrifying).

You know what I noticed was missing from both of these accounts? Exactly how his Zim was defeated. Which honestly could have been some beyond useful wisdom to pass along to the main Dib??? More than anything else? I’m not going to fault our boy for not pressing that matter better under the awing circumstance; however, there’s an implication I’ve been reading between lines. 

When Zib mentions “defeating” his own Zim, he’s talking about something different than ours.

When our Dib has always talked about “defeating” Zim, he’s meant incapacitation and capture. Throughout the show he explicitly wants to present Zim before an audience alive and whole. Yeah, he fantasizes about other people torturing or disassembling him for study, but HIS role was supposed to be reaping the fame for an undeniable, ground-breaking discovery. Conspiracies and cryptids are all this kid breathes and lives by! And as long as pop culture has always been fascinated with the paranormal, and he has to know this full well, people keep bringing forward hoax after hoax after scam. I mean there’s a freaking current one or few still going IRL about this exact topic. Dib would want no room left for being dismissed as another one of those con artists. 

Nonetheless, I actually doubt this is the reason Zib couldn’t get through to the scientific community. A genuine alien lifeform, even a dead one, could still be confirmed by any basic medical examination. The world thinks Dib is too crazy to listen to, but his father is still Professor Membrane. In "10 Minutes to Doom" OUR Dib got as close as having Membrane literally analyzing a PAK, or at worst, preparing to. “Ultimate Dib” gets his hands on the same thing and pulls a move I’d expect from an HP Lovecraft Protagonist instead.

We’re assuming way too much to what these two Dibs have in common, because this ^^^ is really what made the Zimvoid an outlier in the multiverse. That world didn’t only have a very different, more threatening Zim from the main timeline, it had the Dib who proved even more formidable, cunning, and ruthless, even before the fusion. 

He didn’t obtain that PAK ala the “10 minutes to Doom” accident, it’s a personal trophy. This is extra strange remembering that capturing an Irken is realistically more easy than killing one. They’re seriously more tenacious than kudzu and will even fight back in PAK form alone. I’m convinced that whatever sort of final showdown made the Ultimate Dib the victor, there are two optional endings on the table.

Option 1: There was not a body even left intact enough to bring in to research. Maybe Dib’s fault, maybe an accident, maybe even Zim’s own luck running out and his incompetent antics finally swallowed him (and possibly GIR). This theory assumes that the PAK was the only sort of remains to come into Dib’s recovery/possession.

Option 2: Curiosity Killed the cat,

but satisfaction brought it back.

Or, the one I personally headcanon. Dib… all Dibs, I assume, don’t just hate the Irken species. They are mesmerized by them, and all that they represent from his perspective. Firstly, the epic villain he gets to roleplay nemesis to in order to feel his own worth and importance. Secondly, an unknown wonder from beyond the boundaries of the cosmos. He’s not really a ghost buster or a Men In Black agent at heart, but a scientist, like his father. Underneath his contempt for Zim’s plans to destroy the world is a genuine and appropriately childish awe for alien presence, especially for Zim’s technology. His silent, dopey smile when Tak’s ship ended up in his backyard said more than words ever will.. 

Earlier in the show, a great deal of Dib’s time and effort was spent on trying to infiltrate the lower levels of Zim’s base. Sneaking into the house was hard enough, but the computer security can’t be bypassed like the gnomes. Not even by Zim himself unless he really is all himself. Perhaps you’re starting to sniff where I’m going with this one when I refer back to “Bolognius Maximus”. I’ve another reference that’s a little more on the nose, and a lot more… dark.

Were an expired Irken husk before you, you too might take your victory and cash in then. Still, who knows what sudden impulse may run through the head of a less humble version of yourself, one some could call greedier, obsessive to a fault, a screw or two loose, yet, a hell of a smart cookie. Smart enough to see it for what it actually was, the keys to a whole world of discovery that went so many layers deeper than they could ever imagine. It’s possible the Ultimate Dib already learned beforehand the same hard lessons about the PAKs that our own did, and took that understanding toward not repeating the same mistake this time. What happened to Zim? I think he was murdered in cold blood, body, and entity. “10 Minutes to Doom” showed us a fight between 2 brains clinging to one body, struggling until one overpowered another, but that’s not what this is. Through whatever means of science were available to him, this Dib has probably tried to “disarm” the technology by either erasing Zim’s consciousness out of it altogether, or by forcing the autonomous code into a kind of dormancy. His intentions were to render it back to its basic hardware without losing its precious knowledge and usefulness, something like the brain-filled tank that was wired into Skrang’s head. Zim’s PAK doesn’t cling onto his body like a parasitic teratoma this time; it’s merged in a literal sense with his nervous and circulatory system. As well, he has fooled the device’s ability to detect and reject a foreign host shell, the exact same way he deceived the the base’s security AI. If an Irken biology is what these measures authorize to command them and their secrets, then he had the tools on hand to give them just that- in an atrocity I like to call

the darker harvest.

Within this theory, there is not as much room to wonder exactly what became of Zim’s organic remains. 

But where Dib fucked up was, for the second time, in his ignorance to the true nature of what he was even playing with. That was a mistake that even the mighty Elder Brains of Judgementia lost themselves to; How much more vulnerable was the weak, human mind? Though Zim can be devoured, he can never be digested. In that fact was born this aberration against nature, sanity, and humanity alike.

"Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects… don't have politics. They're very… brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first… insect politician. Y'see, I'd like to, but… I'm afraid, uh… I'm saying… I'm saying I - I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake." - Seth Brundle, The Fly, 1986

By fusing what is half-mad and what is utterly mad, neither being was cured, only assimilated into the birth of a new madness. The madness of the creature that snickers behind the curtain in the Zimvoid. I rightfully fear that lonesome thing, but not I think as much as I pity him.

• Dejavu, or Re:Plagarism

One more thing about the Zimvoid arc I find curious is the way it makes you question more and more just how much of the aberration is actually still Dib, and how much of it is Zim's infection haunting him. He does nothing with all of his intellect, his resources, and his time in the void doing anything but surrounding himself in everything he claims he despises. He decries alien tyranny in one breath while lording over a homemade, cruel dictatorship in another. He calls for eradication of the very race who's technology and physiology he has thoroughly appropriated. He laments feeling unable to protect the Earth from the Armada alone, yet sneers literally through Irken teeth to insult humans as inferior and of no value to him any longer. Our Dib spent the whole damn show longing for the support of other people, but Zib pushes away potential allies in his arrogance. His broken timeline never became a Dibvoid instead because while only half of his mind can't stand Irkens, both of the souls inside him remember that they loathe and look down upon a Dib, deep inside.

The corruption goes as far as even subverting his own creativity. None of Zib's plans are wholly original. His anti-Irken weapon was already a concept blueprinted inside of that PAK before the merge. Our Dib has several times shown a propensity for some DIY ingenuity, sometimes dipping a toe into the supernatural. Zib entirely calls upon, scavenges and regurgitates Irken designs with a few modifications or upgrades. The Dib Virus, I think is his most uninspired creation yet, for it's original form was always something inside of Zim, even if the latter himself was not aware of the fact. Like all else, it is a weapon he has plundered, customized, and turned around on everyone else for his own selfish ends. This brief point I will end on one  more reflection. The one kind of help Zim ever allowed at his side were the likes of GIR and his own creations. Unable to connect and cooperate with his peers and own kind, his ego preferred to be around those defective machines he related to- drones to be owned by him and always loyally at his beck and call. A slave to admire him unconditionally is the only companionship he's ever been willing to admit to desiring.

And what was Number 2's purpose again? What role exactly were the arena combatants auditioning for, when you think about it?