goddamn.

Carmilla said the best thing to kill an angel with is to fight for what you love. To fight for something you believe in. And that's what the whole gang does.

Charlie fights for her dream

Vaggie fights for Charlie

Angel and Husk fight for their friends

Lucifer fights for his daughter

Sir Pentious DIED for love and friendship

Guess who doesn't win in their fight?

I mean, jeez, how many times has Dib technically saved the Earth - not by stopping Zim’s latest scheme - but by being the target of it? Making Zim waste resources that should’ve gone into weakening Earth’s defenses or targeting its leaders and instead channeling all of that technology and Zim’s general malice and mayhem at this sixth grader? Again, Zim developed temporary hypnotic powers and wasted them on getting Dib to identify a flaw in his security system that he found. So while Dib technically lost that one battle against Zim…

He also kinda indirectly saved the world from a Zim who would use Pustulio’s Power for literally any other more useful purpose.

But, of course, if Dib could ever come to that revelation - he would absolutely hate it. Dib wants to be the cool hero who saves the world from a dangerous alien invasion via his wits and brainpower

Not the useful distraction that keeps Zim too occupied with one-upping him to actually be a credible threat to Earth. That would be very bad to his ego.

‘Enter the Florpus’ is kind of a great demonstration of that whole thing, actually. Because Dib claims to be ‘all that stands between Zim, and the annihilation of our world’ and despite ‘Florpus’ being kind of a more traditional heroic narrative for Dib - that still couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Because despite Dib being undisputedly the main character of ‘Enter the Florpus’, pretty every major action taken to foil Zim’s plan in the movie was performed by another member of Team Membrane

Such as Gaz

And Tak’s Ship

And Professor Membrane

And even Clembrane

And the most useful thing Dib actually did himself in that whole movie? Chase Zim for a bit 

That whole chase scene had them basically equally-matched for the whole of it, Dib didn't really get any closer to getting his hands on Minimoose and then he pretty thoroughly lost (before his dad came over to save his butt)

But you know, that was still probably an invaluable part of Zim’s defeat. Because Dib chasing Zim around for a bit was a distraction preventing him from somehow making things worse before Professor Membrane and Gaz and the other Competent People could come over to actually stop him.