ghost of a data hoarder

based on this ⬇️

You can clearly see I put less effort into each succeeding panel. But yeah, hi ZADR nation!

If the boys can't handle, is now the girls job to do it!

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Zim knows that if he does anything out the ordinary Dib goes all crazy. So he probably wouldn't date Keef. He would just hang out with him to make Dib jealous and suspisious, cause he craves all his attention :3

they cheer when people get hit with eye lasers

they draw mean pictures

and shoot each other out of cannons and enslave everyone possible INCLUDING THEIR OWN SPECIES

and zim makes sandwiches for the tallest

and gets upset when robots cry

apologizes for blowing up taxi cabs, tells giant mutant monsters he ‘doesn’t want to be the bad guy’ and picks flowers for girls

so now I’m wondering

…

is zim sensitive by irken standards

is this what’s considered soft for an irken

Not only is Zim considered sensitive by Irken standards, he is canonically defective. Probably the most defective Irken that ever existed. His PAK is faulty, which makes him impossible to be brainwashed or controlled by the Control Brains. But what else does a faulty Pak entail?

Well, I think Zim simply feels too much (for an Irken). His emotions aren’t controlled by his PAK.

He is capable of being kind and hyper-empathetic, yes, but he is also a narcissist who doesn’t esistate to use and abuse his teammates, even going as far as letting them die. Hell, he blew up half of Irk on purpose during Operation Impending Doom I!

His relationship with Dib is so interesting because they are nemesis bound to fight each other until one of them is finally defeated for good, and yet they are also canonically codependent, probably in the same way Zim depends on the Tallest. In fact, he fell into a deep depression both when he found out that the Tallest weren’t coming in Enter The Florpus and when Dib gave up paranormal and their rivalry in the unaired episode Mopiness of Doom.

Every emotion, good AND bad, is at 100% all the time.

Even his devotion to the Tallests is unusual for Irken standards. Other Irkens seem to obey the Tallests mostly out of fear of what would happen if they did otherwise, but Zim? The Tallests can do no wrong according to him. Even when they gave him GIR, a clearly defective SIR unit. Even when they showed him a map of the known universe, pointed at a clearly empty space and said “there’s a planet here, and you’re going to go on a really secret mission to conquer it”. Of course he believed them! The Tallests would never send Zim, the most amazing invader Irk has ever known, to die in an empty part of the universe, drifting away for all eternity!

But what I personally find most interesting is how much Zim is capable of loving, especially artificial creatures or even inanimate objects. We usually see that with how he treats GIR, but there are other examples both in the show, the movie, and the comics.

In Issue 45, Zim and Dib’s class is given the “baby assignment”. Zim ends up making GIR create a fake baby out of meat, and he pretty much imprints on it on the spot.

After the assigment ends he refuses to destroy poor Li'l Meat Man and flees to show it the world.

In Enter the Florpus not only does Zim seem to have named every single robot he created, but he is genuinely pained when Professor Membrane starts destroying them!

And let’s not forget about Lawrence, who was probably his favourite.

Last but not least, the episode Parent Teacher Night. In that episode Dib teases Zim saying that he bets that he doesn’t even know what parents are, to which Zim replies in a small voice that of course he does. We’re then shown a flashback of the moment Zim was “born”, or actually hatched out of a test tube by a robotic arm that immediately installs the PAK on his back and tells him to “report for duty”. Zim’s reaction?

In conclusion, Zim was pretty much full of feels since birth.

His first destruction was right after he was given Irken knowledge and he tried to explain to the robots how his PAK has “shmillions of mistakes”, only for them to ignore him by pushing him out of the chair and replace him with another smeet. Zim becomes frustrated by this and that was why he threw the smeet up the tube and destroyed the power outage.

Or when the Tallest put him in a circle as his only task during OID I. Or when one Irken commander made him want to use small bombs instead of huge bombs.

These events would cause him to feel like their are not giving him a chance to show what importance he can really bring and as a result, he tries proving it to them, but in a misguided way. Yes, defectiveness is pretty much what makes Zim, Zim. But I can guess that most of them time, his behavior mostly comes from his upbringings and how the empire sees him.

Zim was only brought to life to serve the empire. And he knows if that’s no longer his purpose, what else is he.

I think what makes Zim’s defectiveness unique is that he has a lot more freedom than any other irkens. He has more feelings and free-wills. If he was born non-defective, the empire would STILL look down on him because of his height. He would spend the rest of his life fully obeying their every rules despite the treatment and do very low errands like Bob (hopefully I said his name correctly).

Dib

Irken anatomy,

Zim and Tak, as examples.

In my interpretation, there must be no difference between female and male Irken bodies. They are made in factores, after all, and then serve in army equally. Their only purpose is war. Obedient, gender-neutral manequinns.

And yep, like in official comics, they have extra arms hidden inside their torso)

Иркены произошли от насекомых, напоминающих ос или пчел. Но после прихода Мозгов-Контролеров к власти многим пришлось пожертвовать ради оптимизации: У них когда-то были крылья - их место занял пак, а их функцию заменили летательные аппараты. У них когда-то была броня из хитина - но металлические латы прочнее! У них когда-то были жала... Их тоже пришлось лишиться.

Дети производятся на специальных фабриках, по ГОСТу, так что мужчины и женщины ничем не отличаются друг от друга, кроме формы усиков. У них полное равенство. В результате прогресса эта раса превратилась в андрогинных манекенов, на которых отлично сидит военная форма.

У всех иркенов есть дополнительные руки, сложенные в груди и заменяющие им ребра (еще один остаток насекомного прошлого). Но очень немногие знают о них и умеют их высвобождать, потому что образование в Империи крайне одностороннее. Акцент делается на военном деле и технологиях, а биологическое просвещение отсутствует в программе. Принято считать, что тело иркена очень простое и создано только для сражений.

In my interpretation Zim's physics are more cartoonish than humans'. He is harder to damage, if his eye or tooth is taken out, he just puts it back in place. It doesn't work like that for human characters. And he is much more flexible than a human!

Zim in a...better? ...disguise.

Headcanon #4:

“What have you become?”