Hello, Dear Dear Dead Friend

holy shit rewatching invader zim’s halloween special like… dib really threw zim out to the beasts that wanted to tear him apart. zim even agreed to work with him, under an alliance, a treaty, and it’s obvious zim is Scared Out Of His Mind, vocalizing his fear of halloween and the beasts, and dib just tossed him out like a wet paper towel.

He also essentially did that in Bolognius Maximus, and screwed both of them over in the process.

I do find it really interesting that Dib does to Zim (tosses him aside) what Zim does to others (abandoning the prisoners in FBI Warning at the mall, the way he treats Skoodge in Hobo 13, etc), so in a way it’s not like Dib is doing anything Zim hasn’t done. But the fact that Zim is usually willing to attempt to work alongside Dib and will in instances try to form alliances with him (the Tak episode is another good example) is something that really sticks out to me. It gives me the impression that Zim actually could have the capacity to befriend Dib but Dib helps push their rivalry into staying one because of how he’s treated Zim in moments of his vulnerability (even EtF he tries take advantage of Zim’s depression when he could have opened up more to him and they could have possibly connected further). I feel like writing Dib this way is intentional though to consistently keep their back and forth rivalry. But knowing it’d be probably on Dib moreso than Zim for them to shift their dynamic interests me! It’s interesting to think about.

If we ignore Zim and pay attention to how Dib treats others, it becomes clear that Dib's behavior is clearly destructive, including for himself.