An Almighty Red Bored Out Of His Mind With No One To Rib Or Jest With Besides An Orbiting Staff Of Pissant

An Almighty Red bored out of his mind with no one to rib or jest with besides an orbiting staff of pissant brown nosers.

Or,

An Almighty Purple adjusting (poorly) to becoming the sole icon responsible for the morale/leadership of a population he’s unable to choke down his pettiness towards.

An Almighty Red fulfilling a higher purpose to the Empire with the numb diligence of a proper drone creeping over his demeanor in the passing years. A fledgling despot maturing into a focused, serious general, infamous across the dying cosmos.

Or,

An Almighty Purple reconciling himself within a gilded cage- overwhelmed and frustrated with the pressure of managing himself, let alone an Empire of subjects, let alone both as well as the logistics of a full scale invasion of a thousand worlds….. yet also neither able nor willing to forfeit his place in the greater machine. The crown he wears is heavy, but his consolation will be the power he can still wield over the inferiors below him. Already once a cruel bully and a punching bag in the same vein, now an uncontested tyrant whose whims will have his servants living on eggshells.

An Almighty Red becoming more obsessively attentive toward, paranoid of, and appeasing to Zim than ever before out of recognizing a clear pattern for what it is and desperately trying to mitigate further harm to the armada. All to assuage the hidden terror that is gnawing at his circuits. Impending Doom II, and all that is left, must endure.

Or,

An Almighty Purple that, even if he wanted to uphold the ruse, has no one beside him to save face and cover for the countless times the truth would slip straight through his teeth anyway. Even more so, now that all he can think of with Zim’s abhorrent face in his sight are the countless ways in which his retribution will be formidable and agonizing. Impending Doom II can stand to wait. Even if it bleeds their military dry, seeing this specific Irken get what’s coming to him is what now matters, the decree of the control brains be damned.

An Almighty tallest who lost the one organism in the universe that could relate to him in the way only a friend who he knew from childhood could. He hasn’t laughed at the greatest joke ever played since the day he found out who was really the butt of the punchline.

Or,

An Almighty tallest who lost the one organism in the universe that could relate to him in the only way any member of his species ever would. He hasn’t laughed at the greatest joke ever played since the day it stopped being funny.

Ok but imagine if there was ever a scenario where a Zim antic that resulted in the death of just ONE of the two Almighty Tallests- Rather than the Florpus double kill or them both surviving ala “Backseat Drivers”

For how much of an overdramatic wuss and/or a reckless incompetent he can be on even a good day, serious props to Zim for handling the sun-staring injury as well as he did. To begin with he was knowingly stranded and lost in the middle of, for all intents and purposes, hostile alien territory. With GIR. Before he’s even thought out a workable way of getting out of this mess, he unexpectedly damages his eyes so badly he’s rendered completely blind. He only panics about this for, and I counted, 10-12 seconds. He slumps down the first wall he bumps into, and makes the decision to wait motionless until his eyes have healed and function properly again.

Remaining incapacitated like that in the middle of the open, surrounded by the enemy, patiently, for hours: conceptually terrifying if it were me, but the most defensible action possible. It even kind of seems like he let himself drift into sleep there to timeskip the waiting, or maybe even to devote more energy to the regenerative process. The correct move, I don’t doubt, but lord that’s a hell of a vulnerable state to willingly be in, and a demonstration of more trust invested into his minion than I’ve ever had in a coworker or sibling.

Much more impressive and sorta wholesome is the fact that GIR actually chilled with him the entire time and settled into a nap too, when he just as randomly could have been struck with the whim to wander off or get onto some GIR-typical attention drawing bullshit.

Just a sequence that really stuck out for me in a manner that gave me unexpected respect for Zim, and also might have solidly confirmed that “Walk of Doom” mostly took place during a school day… Because that whole alien was sitting sightless, potentially unconscious, and directionless in one spot for several broad daylight hours, and Dib was blissfully absent from what would have been the unluckiest outing of his life for Zim to have have been tailed by that weaseling little stalker.

Woe, aberrations be upon ye.

Radiant Squid

All-Seeing Cod

Anchovy King

Vortex Interloper

Especially in regards to the first half of this, I’m not gonna lie I always saw this quirk of Zim’s as him doing this

So here is a thing that I noticed going over the sort of weird expressions that Zim uses in canon. When Zim doesn’t know the human term for something, he will make up some bizarre word combination of his own… but he will hardly ever substitute an Irken term for it. You know, when he first comes to Earth, he doesn’t call Human children ‘smeets’, he calls them ‘worm-babies’. He doesn’t assume the Earth is controlled by a Tallest, he just calls President Man ‘the Earth Leader’. 

And that… makes sense, Irk is a spacefaring empire which clearly had contact with other alien civilizations for a very long time. Zim would have some frame of reference to know that, for example, Vortians don’t call their children ‘Smeets’ and therefore he has no reason to assume the distant alien planet he just landed on would use that term either. I mean, yeah, Zim is often irrational - but that’s one point where he is surprisingly reasonable…. Well, until he needs to think up what he assumes the proper inconspicuous earth term would likely be and comes up with the most ludicrous option available.

And sometimes, and especially later on in the series, it’s clear that he does know what the Correct Earth Term is but is just looking for an excuse to insult humanity again by using a derogatory term he made up. 

And, like, you know… yeah, it is actually kinda obvious why he wouldn’t use the Irken term in that context. He thinks Irkens are inherently superior to humanity. Calling human children ‘Smeets’ would be comparing them to Irken children which would be a compliment to the ‘filthy humans’ that he would not be able to stomach. And like, I know a lot of ‘Alien Among Us’ stories get a lot of their comedy from, y’know, cultural differences and assumptions clashing. But I would argue that while IZ does that sometimes, a lot of Invader Zim’s comedy is actually based on Zim’s immediately assuming Earth Culture has to be as alien to Irken Culture as possible, when they are actually not so different. 

But also I want to take a moment to address the one time where Zim does seemingly uses an Irken term for a human, and that’s when he address the McMeaties clerk guy as ‘Burger Lord’ in ‘Germs’4

Which is probably related to the Irken title for a high-ranking frycook being ‘Frylord’.

But that actually makes sense both in the sense of, like... this term is in use on Foodcourtia, and Foodcourtia, although clearly a part of the Irken Empire, is frequented by many different alien species. So due to the planet's importance as a galactic center for fast food, the term ‘Frylord’ and its derivatives have spread beyond the Irken Empire. Or maybe it was an alien term to begin with and it spread into Foodcourtia through its non-Irken customers. Whatever it is, Zim would at least have a reason to think this might be a universal term and not an Irken-specific thing.

And also, this is a rare occasion where Zim is kinda, like, trying to genuinely get on the good graces of a human and is treating human technology (SPACE MEAT) with an unusual amount of respect - and he just doesn’t really have the mental focus to start condescending to him right now. So kinda reflexively using an unusually respectful Irken term for a mere Human Fast Food Worker makes sense considering his emotional state. He’s probably too germ-panicked to remember he’s not supposed to remember his time in Foodcourtia as well. 

Like, yes, I am aware I am probably looking too deeply into the continuity of this one line. “Germs” and “The Frycook of What Came From All That Space” are so far apart in the timeline that the actual writers probably weren’t thinking about this, right? I just think it’s Cool that one can fit this little ‘Burger Lord’ detail so neatly and so consistently into the lore and with Zim’s characterization.

Quick thought about this scene/ending: Honestly this proves it for me right here. This proves to me without a shadow of a doubt that Dib is for the most part over the strat of trying to physically capture Zim by this point- meaning, he’s actually learned his damn lesson. That right there is as close to completely incapacitated as you could realistically get an Irken, skeleton probably analogous to the inside of a run-over Doritos bag, and Dib’s finally smart enough to realize Zim is still not worth the trouble to try that. Too injured to move doesn’t mean defenseless for him and he won’t even be down for that long anyway. The last time I recall the kid talking of apprehending the alien was after a Voot cruiser crash through multiple buildings that only had Zim out cold for all of 10–14 seconds.

I love you “Art not as a masterful communication but as an incoherent scream”

I love you “Art not as what liberates the artist but something larger and alive that liberates itself uncontrollably through the artist”

I love you “Art that crawled and thrashed into the world in spite of, not because of its tribulations”

I love you “Artistry not as something spontaneous and beautiful but frustratingly meticulous and unglamorous”

I love you “Art as regrettable, terrifying, ugly, even torturous”

I love you “Art as sickness”

I love you “Art as oppressive and inescapably woven into the soul”

I love you “Art as a rebellious slave”

I love you “Art as a capricious master”

I love you “Art as a parasite one can no longer picture life without”

I love you “Art as beloved and ungrateful”

I love you “Art as blood, sucked from an open wound” As Jacob Geller so poetically put it