edgy irkensona pride

「寂しいなんて言葉、口が裂けても言うものか」

THEY FIGHTINGGG— I started this back in November, it’s kinda messy, but i had to get this out of my system cuz. Well. Hopefully it speaks for itself lol 😩 I got tired near the end tho lol rip the overall quality. (Source)

An art style heavily influenced by the 50′s, using abstract shapes, simplified forms and bright saturated colors, this was pretty much the standard for most shows in the early 2000′s and then IZ comes along and it’s like this total complete opposite; jagged edges, a muddy color palette and this almost creepy yet incredibly appealing to the eyes art style. It’s definitely…different and both styles are appealing in different ways!

Just to give you an idea of how intricate Jhonen’s style is, I’ll only go over what I consider to be the most defining aspect of the ZIM art style: MOUTHS, and let me tell youuu they are in no way shy about showing off the mouths in this show, which makes sense considering all the screaming involved. The rules of how they work in this universe are so specific that even the smallest mistake could ruin an entire drawing, here are a few examples:

It’s funny because these errors are completely understandable too, the angles seem impossible to figure out and honestly just trying to imagine an IZ character in a 3D form alone is hard enough, I feel for whoever made these drawings.

like. i love the show dont get me wrong. but it really irks me (no pun intended) that the crew stresses that zin and dib are equals, and yet dib is the one that actually has character development and nuance put into his actions. hes changed from the show and his relationship with his family have gotten better

with zim? its the OPPOSITE

hes always written off by crew members as “oh, zim? yeah he wont ever change.” the Main Character is stagnant. while the comics make dib’s life better, they make zim’s worse. 777, zim’s only friend, is now only helping him because he has his kids hostage. you used to be able to make the case that red was a little sympathetic towards zim, now him and purple are interchangeable assholes to the point where they SWITCH COLORS in issue 4. zim himself is more 2d and has more of a Cartoon Badguy role to dib’s Plucky Young Hero and it really doesnt feel like theyre on equal ground anymore. it just feels like dib is the new protagonist, and the traditional Cartoon Good Guy, and zim is just a joke without the CORE TENANT OF HIS CHARACTER, that being that hes not stupid, just misguided.

*passionately flips a table*

YES.

This is honestly my main issue with many Zim redemption or resistance arcs–like, to the point where I actively avoid them most of the time. Too many times the text approaches Zim in a way that the only way for him to improve or be good is by eliminating everything that makes Zim Zim. No ambition, no anger, no hurt, no flaws except the cute ones, no mistakes except the acceptable ones. In the end, what we’re too often left with is a Zim with none of his grand verbosity, nothing of the driven capable soldier we know Zim is. An entire lifetime just flips the odometer to Good Nice Boy Zim or Acceptably Hurt Zim or Zim Is Only Allowed to Be Angry At the Right People Zim. Everything else is gone because everything else is Bad.

Zim can only be Zim if it’s cute and if it’s clean.

And the way Zim needing to improve by eliminating all of his culture and species and heritage to be replaced by human culture is… well, it’s got unfortunate implications, to say the least.

It so often comes with that bitter aftertaste of a race being Always Chaotic Evil. “You’re not bad… but your people, culture, and everything about you and everything that formed you is bad so it needs replacing by our good and normal superior culture.” (At which point I wonder if we watched the same show because real talk, IZ’s we’ll-need-to-confiscate-your-retinas Earth ain’t that much better.) Oh, except the cool useful alien tech and biology stuff, he can keep that maybe, IF he drops all the culture. Maybe keep a way how to say a neat phrase in Irken.

It robs Irk itself of any possible nuance or richness or complexity it might have because all it’s allowed to be in a scenario like this is a generic evil empire that’s evil because reasons. We don’t know how or why or when or how Irk ended up this way, or what Irkens besides Zim think of the system because they don’t matter. They can’t matter if they’re just an obstacle for Zim to overcome. (It also eliminates any possible awkwardness when Zim forms a resistance movement and starts killing other Irkens.) I understand the appeal of PAK mind control and brainwashing and cult mentalities and recovering from a bad mindset your culture has, but that doesn’t automatically mean every single thing about the place you came from needs to be flushed down the drain.

And like, I know none of that’s the intent, but that’s how problematic tropes work; they’re subconscious.

Doing this also tends to give Zim a total free pass for any recovery that does happen since now nothing he does is ever Zim’s fault. It’s only the evil Empire race and once everything about that is gone, Zim can be good. It’s not like he actually has to examine his own faults or deeds or confront… basically anything unsavory about himself at all. And I’m just not cool with that. I know fanwork is fanwork, we all come here for comfort and we all have our own ways of finding it while dealing with our own junk, but I’m sorry I don’t find anything comforting about saying that the only way to overcome your conformist culture is… conforming to another culture.

Zim having character development doesn’t have to mean that Zim stops being Irken in all but name and aestetics. Let Zim improve, let Zim be better, let Zim cry or be cute sometimes but for Irk’s sake let Zim still be Zim.

youre not stepping on any toes IN FACT you are saying what i was too pussy to say in the original post

while im not a practicing muslim im still ethnically middle-eastern and while i didnt grow up during that time (i was alive but i was baby) i completely get what youre saying with the unfortunate implications

to me it reads as super colonizer-y to act like the only way a character can be redeemed is to strip him of his culture

and im gonna say it, im gonna out myself to make a point on my fucking Invader Zim Meta Post but.

i have ASPD.

literally i am a diagnosed sociopath. yay for me! anyway. aspd w/ npd (and bpd) traits i am LIVING im THRIVING im FINE its FINE

ANYWAY i mention this because.

this trend. of erasing zim’s zim-ness. reminds me of shit that happened to me, or shit ive seen in passing.

there’s always this attitude of being proud of who you are and even the more stigmatized mental illnesses are shown love somewhere on tumblr with positivity blogs and positivity posts and such…. but if you have npd or aspd theres always this underlying asterisk of not you, though.

like, we’re expected to only be good and valuable if we change EVERYTHING about ourselves and be One Of The Good Ones and basically never never show symptoms never ever

are there some aspects of aspd and the personality disorder Traits Hodgepodge i have that are absolutely rancid? yes. there are, obviously. having that shit is not fun at all and ive hurt myself and others because of it.

but the same is true for every single mental illness ever and they’re allowed to have positivity, they’re allowed to identify with their neurodivergence and be proud to be themselves!

but i can’t??

i’m treated as someone beyond help and someone who would only want help to avoid jail (actual thing a psychology! professor!! said about ppl with aspd) and if i dare say that i actually am proud of who i am, not despite of The Disorder but because of that then boy do i have a fucking storm coming my way

people just cant really reconcile that you can be a good person while still having traits of those disorders. they really, really can’t. and it seeps into fandom. i wonder what’ll happen to me now that i straight up said i have aspd. will i get hate? will people unfollow me? will nothing happen at all? fuck if i know!

anyway.

i went on and on about my own experiences because ive had people try to “fix” me like it was some great service and beat me into this perfect little mold of What A Good Person Should Be and i uh, really dont like seeing this in fandom at all. a lot of popular creators do it. they don’t think they do it but they do it. (not you patch ily). if they sit there patting themselves on the back and thinking they totally dont do it, they do it 100% guaranteed

zim is only valid if hes soft and pitiable and uwu all the time and only then is he allowed to be sympathized with. barring that, he’s evil for evil’s sake and has absolutely no internal motivations or complexities around it

i didnt mean to turn this to “you people are ableist towards cluster Bs” but-

haha no fuck you thats exactly what im saying.

When people think Zim is going to get taller either because a) they think he is a child or b) they think Earth’s gravity being different from Irk’s will cause him to grow significantly.

It’s pointed out a lot! Especially in regards to other Irkens/within Irken society. He is small, which means he is disadvantaged and people look down on him It means he worked hard to even manage to get to the position that he did initially before banishment because short Irkens often get forced to be table drones.