sorry if this seems rude, but isn’t zim confirmed to be an adult? i’m just trying to confirm the ages of zim and dib, and zims age isnt really confirmed in the show
jhonen vasquez has said Zim is older than any human currently alive but Zim is intended to be seen as a kid.
The show Bible calls him a kid
In the ETF scene where Zim is human he's a human kid
Zim is intended to be seen as a kid and a lot of people who worked on invader Zim make stuff to encourage ZaDr which they wouldn't do if it was an adult and child
Zim is intended to be seen as an equal to Dib the same age, size, power, ways of thinking, etc.
If you see Zim as a kid that's accurate, if you see Zim as an adult that's also accurate.
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There’s just something about the fact that Zim reads as So Autistic. Like, both in the sense that it’s easy to map his experiences as an alien secretly living on earth to Autistic experiences:
A lack of understanding of social cues and conventions
The Anxieties of feeling like you have to fit in some arbitrary social standards or Something Bad will happen
Unusual sensory sensitivities
Pickiness about food
General alienation
Even the whole ‘fully grown alien disguised as a human child but he’s so immature he basically acts like a child’ shtick can really resonate with a sort of Growing Up Autistic Feeling of… being both far too mature and childish for your age at the same time.
And also in the sense that even in the context of comparing him to other Irkens...
He has problems with volume control
And possibly audio processing
And definitely with emotional regulation
And is extremely impulsive
And uses very unusual wordings and turn-of-phrases
And experiences sensory overloads.
And these aren't even Alien Things. That's just Zim being Zim. So he can be read as a metaphor for being Autistic and also as just having the Irken Equivalent of Autism
AND ALSO
His human arch-enemy Dib also has SO MUCH AUTISM VIBES
Like being single-mindedly obsessed with a special interest from a young age
(The part where his interests alienate him from his peers at school and he only finds companionship with an assortment of fellow weirdos of various ages he met online is something I find especially relatable for my own experiences)
Also having problems with reading social cues
And a tendency to rant and info-dump
AND ALSO ALSO
There’s also Gaz
Who is ALSO single-mindedly obsessed with a singular subject
And it’s something that always gives her something to do with her hands
And avoid eye-contact
Which she generally prefers to avoid
And also seems to dislike any sort of physical touch
And either expresses her emotions in a way that is terribly understated or overstated
And it could also apply to their dad too, who’s been obsessed with science stuff from a young age
And also doesn’t seem to do so well with social interactions
Outside of just, like, me looking back at my Autistic-but-unaware-of-it middle-school ass imprinting on this show and being like “oh yeah, That Makes Sense” - it’s also kinda darkly hilarious how this show is basically about two autistic boys who just fucking hate each other to death (plus one of the boys' extremely autistic and extremely dysfunctional family). I mean, in the real world Autistic Solidarity is so incredibly important, obviously. But Invader Zim, a show that was everything to me as a lil autistic teenager is all about that sweet sweet Autistic Hostility.
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I mean, the thing is that fiction about aliens is almost always going to be about some sort of Other on some level. Whatever it’s about demonizing or fear-mongering about some sort of Outsider Group or trying to get the audience to sympathize with the Other via the metaphor of a lovable alien.
And Invader Zim is kind of an interesting spot there because, like, it’s not just ‘Bad Outsider Out to Destroy Our Beloved In-Group’ or ‘Poor Sympathetic Outsider Being Put-Down by the In-Group’. First thing first because Zim is kinda both. He is both the Outsider secretly hiding inside the in-group plotting their destruction - but the narrative and framing also sympathizes with him and supports his view of the in-group (that humans are stupid and gross).
So he can’t really be A Scary Demonized Outsider when he gets so much narrative sympathy and support, but also… he is a murderous little world-conquering bastard and most of his suffering is generally just him gets exactly what he deserves so he can’t be your classic sort of Sympathetic Outsider either.
And the other thing is that the in-group is not even really involved in Zim’s conflict. Zim’s biggest challenge in conquering the earth is Dib, another Outsider. Often, despite being a human and thus part of the literal in-group, Dib is an even bigger Outsider to humanity than Zim is.
Zim and Dib are both Outsiders, and Zim isn’t just an Outsider as an Alien on Earth - among his own people he is in the same situation as Dib is, an Outsider in his own in-group. (Not that he can ever admit to himself that is the case). So these two Weirdos are fighting to protect/further the goals of two in-groups that will never actually accept them.
And so often their main weapon against each other and the primary danger and the source of their suffering for themselves is the same thing; the in-group conformity and enforcement of social norms.
Dib’s main evidence that Zim is an Alien is, most of the time, just the fact that he looks and acts weird. But also he himself is constantly bullied for looking and acting weird.
And Zim’s most constant source of anxiety while undercover on Earth is the fact that he’s going to get caught being Too Weird and then not just fail his mission, but get brutally dissected and experimented on. But his best defense against being exposed is… basically just to point out just how much Dib also Diverges From the Norm.
It’s the story of two Weirdos trying to get the other punished for being weird in some way, while the Normies just kinda look on and laugh at them both. And the actual thing they want, recognition and acceptance from their in-group is the one thing they are doomed to never actually get.
And honestly, I think that's actually what makes a lot of real-life Outsiders cling to IZ, especially while we’re teens. I think, in a way, the fact that it’s kind of a messy Outsider narrative makes it more relatable to the messy middle-school/high-school experience than something more neatly crafted to be uplifting to the Weird Kids.
I mean, I certainly see the obvious value in fiction that’s actually trying to create a positive narrative for queer teens or autistic kids or maybe just scene kids or any combination of the following. This sort of media is very good, and can be just as important to some folks.
But... also the truth is that when you’re an edgy teen wrecked with self-loathing for Weirdness you don’t even fully understand “There’s nothing wrong with me and all the people making me feel like they are Bad!” can be a hard message to really believe in. Sometimes it’s easier to start from “Maybe I am all the terrible things people say that I am but.. still deserve love and sympathy, I can still be the hero of the story”.
And because, sadly, the problem of Weirdos attacking each other for being Weirdos using the same rhetoric that’s used to hurt them, just for the sake of approval and recognition from in-groups that are never going to treat either of them as nothing but a joke - is not a phenomenon exclusive to the Silly Alien Invader Nicktoon.
And Dib and Zim’s rivalry is a great basic framework to explore it both in analysis of the canon and in fanworks.
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