Once again thinking about Zim having issues intermittently with self esteem and self sacrifice. I’d love to see him have a similar desire to make Dib happy with him in the way he was with the tallest. Not necessarily in a worship sense but in the way that his one-sided desire for affection from his tallest is the only example of an acceptable positive relationship in Irken society.
I feel like he’d struggle to maintain balance between either doing everything he wants to do and bending completely to what Dib wants from him.
As the relationship progresses, I’d love to see Dib have to make a decision upon coming to terms with Zim’s issues that he has to be the responsible one and really check if his partner is okay with something before doing it.
Zim transferring his feelings from the Tallest to Dib and not knowing how to act can be a pretty interesting concept. We know that sometimes Zim is capable of actually following orders even when it's harmful to himself, like in the comic with the "Munchitronic DeathSkrang". But a lot of the time Zim just does whatever he wants with some mental gymnastics to convince himself that it'll make the Tallest happy too, even when it's in direct defiance of their wishes. Like hijacking their ship or teleporting the earth into their flight path so they can watch him be amazing.
So I could see Zim doing a bunch of stuff for Dib that he doesn't really want to and Dib needing to learn to intuit when Zim's uncomfortable but not willing to say so. But he's just as likely to do a bunch of stuff Dib never asked for and doesn't want and expect him to be grateful and then get really upset when Dib (in classic tactless Dib fashion) lets him know he does not appreciate it.
"What do you mean you don't like your new leg upgrades?!"
"Why would I ever want you to saw off my legs in the middle of the night and replace them with legs of pure gold?!"
"All our other classmates seemed thrilled by the idea!"
"That's because they're stupid!!!"
