The thing about ZaDr is that a large chunk of those who ship it do not ship a child Dib with Zim. Most of the people that do this are minors, think that Zim is a child, or both. The majority of ZaDr shippers use an adult Dib, usually in his twenties.
A lot of antis like to say “YOU SHOULDN’T BE THINKING ABOUT A CHILD CHARACTER IN THAT WAY!” but the thing is, no one is? People age. That’s... just a normal thing people do. That’s like saying “You can’t date that person because they were a child once, and that makes you a pedophile.” Many, many different forms of media will depict their normally child characters growing up, getting married, having children, and no one bats an eye about that. Because it’s not wrong. There is nothing different in imagining it yourself, instead.
Antis will reply to this argument with “Yeah, well Zim is so much older than Dib while he’s still a child!!” The thing about that, is when you’re dealing with characters of different fantasy races and species, especially those who age at different rates than humans do, you can’t use the same logic on these pairings. And no, I’m not talking about the “human that looks 8 but is actually 8000” thing that anime likes to do. I’m talking about an alien/fantasy beast that looks and acts like an adult.
Lets say, hypothetically, you’re watching a show/reading a book where an alien and a human meet, circumstances irrelevant. The human is 25 on Earth, an adult. The alien is 23 on their planet, but in Earth years, they’d be in the thousands. They’re both adults on their planets, and I doubt anyone would care at all, and there would be no discourse. However, this also means that while the human was a child, the alien was probably still an adult. Aging is different for the two parties. What if their ages were the same, the human being 25 Earth years, the alien being 23 of their own years, considered a mature adult, but the alien was only 9 Earth years? Would that still be considered wrong? Where do you draw the line in interspecies relationships in sci-fi/fantasy?
Take Steven Universe, as a popular example that most people can easily understand/relate to. In the show, there are two human + alien ships, one even going so far as to have a child together. The aliens are known to be thousands of years old, while the humans, though mature adults, are vastly younger. In reality, Rose would have still been an adult while Greg was a child, as with Pearl and Mystery Girl. Does that mean that these ships are pedophilic? What if we had seen Greg as a child in the show? What if Rose had met Greg as a child at some point in the show? Is that what makes it different? At what point in time the two meet?
The thing about that is, in regards to ZaDr, those who ship using adult versions of characters do not depict Zim having any feelings for the humans while they are children. 9 times out of 10, Zim shows no interest until they are the same age/around the same age as he would be on his own planet. (Using the same example as before, lets say Zim is 23 on IRK, hundreds/thousands of years on Earth, and he shows no interest in Dib until Dib is 25, considered an adult on his own planet, Earth). He’s not interested in a child. He shows no interest in a child. He’s showing interest in someone he once knew as a child, who has now grown up and is the same age/near the same age as he is. I see this as similar to two people knowing each other as children, and then going on to love one another once they’re grown. They weren’t attracted to one another while they were children, but once they had matured and learned, they start to see one another differently. Obviously that example isn’t spot-on, seeing as we’re dealing with a human and an alien who age at different rates, but there are similarities.
On top of all of this, antis like to cling to the tweet Jhonen made about Zim being an “old man”. Sure, you can take it how you wish, and say that this means he’s considered an old man in general, on both Earth and his own planet, but in reality, the tweet can be taken a variety of ways. Jhonen could easily be joking about how the year length difference between Earth and IRK makes Zim an “old man” because he’s hundreds of Earth years old. Knowing Jhonen, taking what he says, especially his tweets, as jokes is probably the best route to take. Of course, I can’t claim to know exacly what he meant, but neither can you. Not only that, but Jhonen is known for changing his mind, or straight up saying things in order to cause a stir in the IZ community. He thinks that it’s funny to watch as people quarrel among themselves trying to decipher exactly what his newest vague tweet meant for the lore of the show. Nothing in IZ lore has ever been 100% certain, and using a tweet to demonize and accuse innocent people on the internet is kind of an outlandish thing to do.
I’m not going to say that “fiction doesn’t effect reality”, because I believe that it does. I’m also not going to say that I like to see a child Dib being shipped with Zim, because of how vague things really are. However, I don’t believe that shipping fully consenting adult versions of characters is morally wrong, nor should shippers be attacked for doing so. As far as I’ve seen, antis are far more aggressive and cruel than the majority of ZaDr shippers, who usually just want to enjoy what they’ve made and share it with like-minded others.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling squicked about certain ships. If you dislike ZaDr yourself, but aren’t aggressive towards those who do/understand why others may like it/aren’t accusing shippers of being pedophiles/etc, this post isn’t about you. You have done nothing wrong and disliking something does not make you a bad person, just as liking something doesn’t. I feel that the entire “ZaDr Discourse” thing has gotten wildly out of hand, and a lot of antis are using their stance to act as if they hold the moral high ground. In reality, the situation would benefit greatly from an “agree to disagree”, at least. We’re all IZ fans, we’re all watching the same show. You’re not morally superior for having a “ZaDr Shippers DNI” banner on all of your posts.
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