#so the potential johnny romance wouldnt have been that good

[not-a-space-alien]

hey its me again wall of text sorry not sorry

k i saw your little treatise justifying zadr and yknow its a cartoon its not the worst thing ever of course nobody is gonna sue you for reblogging fanart or burn you at the stake or w/e and im glad you decided to open yourself up to a differing opinion but zim IS portrayed as an adult. there was even an unfinished episode where zim’s childhood and growing up training from start to finish would be shown so by the time of the pilot he is definitely a full grown developed adult by irken standards especially if hes a former member of an elite military force like the invaders. jhonen has said that the irony and sad comedy of zims character is that hes a grown ass man and a war veteran to boot who VOLUNTARILY goes to an elementary school every day and throws hands with an 11 year old boy who should be well below his notice because he’s that pathetic and desperate for validation that he’ll stoop to seeking it from a child. it also sets up a dynamic between them where dib is CHALLENGED by having to go up against an adult with way more experience than him while dib is just a child, so when he wins its more meaningful, which is a common trope in childrens fiction that an underdog young hero has to take down a powerful adult villain.

jhonen might joke a lot but he’s serious about this part of the characterization of zim and dib and he even went to great lengths to make dib look and act more like a kid in ETF (more emotional and naive, designed to look smaller/softer, going in depth with his relationship to his dad and sister and needing his dad to protect him at the end when he’s too overrun to fight alone) just to drive home the point of how young he is. it was a very deliberate move and jhonen knows what hes doing ESPECIALLY since he also left zim pretty much unchanged and also includes gags about zim’s relative maturity like animating him briefly grimacing because his joints are sore and the part where he pretty much gestures to his crotch and goes “theyre afraid to look at ALL-A THIS”. like you would not see jhonen do that sort of joke with an underage character ok. dont confuse his social awkwardness and self deprecating/trolling humor for not knowing the difference between right and wrong and not acknowledge when he means something sincerely because he doesn’t just clown on people and troll ALL THE TIME 24/7 hes a human, and times have changed with more awareness on issues such as the grooming of minors so he can go back on things he may have said in the past that he doesn’t agree with now or said by mistake. he has said enough times that zim is older than any human alive that its safe to take his word for it by now. judging by the one strip he did in JTHM about johnny murdering a pedophile who was about to prey on squee i think his stance on protecting kids is pretty clear. also i wouldnt put it past jhonen to have redesigned membrane to be more chaddy looking to divert the adult fandom’s attention away from dib and throw the fangirls a bone but thats a whole nother can of worms lol.

and the justification that zim is immature so hes essentially on dib’s level is a reversal of something lots of kids hear from either creepy or ignorant adults who tell them theyre “so mature for their age”. no matter how emotionally mature you are it wont ever compensate for the number of years youve been alive so that’s not very sound logic, and even in fic where theyre both adults it’s still pretty weird because it doesn’t erase their history where zim knew dib as a kid. that’s sort of like a grownup waiting with bated breath until a kid is “legal” so they can start dating. kinda like when jacob imprints on bella’s newborn daughter in twilight then having it handwaved away by saying he’ll wait till she’s grown up, which understandably drew a huge amount of criticism. it’s a loophole that might be mildly acceptable in some cases but the context leaves it colored with a residual ickiness that sets off some red flags for me and a lot of other people.

also you said zim is an alien and therefore the situation itself is unrealistic, but the reason invader zim’s writing resonates with people is because zim is written with very HUMAN emotions and motivations and part of the humor again is how irkens despite being aliens from another planet mirror some of humanity’s worst flaws such as being petty, gluttonous, willfully ignorant, arrogantly believing they are special and better than everyone else, easily manipulated by propaganda, all too eager to greedily colonize other societies etc making them not so different from us at all. so the premise out of context might not seem realistic but the idea of a sad burnout adult who doesn’t realize how humiliating it is to be consistently outsmarted by a kid less than half their age IS realistic and applicable to human interaction since we’ve likely all met someone like this before at one point in our lives for example a schoolteacher who has a personal vendetta against one or more of their students and has nothing better to do than antagonize them, or a really dumb parent that you fight with a lot.

another thing, i know you and other fans probably have a lot of sentimental value and nostalgia attached to zadr because you probably shipped it back when you were a kid yourself and you cant be blamed for something you liked as a kid, but youre an adult now, and you have to listen to the portion of kids in the fandom who dont like zadr and say without question that the age gap makes them uncomfortable. those kids ARE the priority. we’re grown up now and we have to put our feelings aside for them because that’s part of being responsible and mature. i feel like zim himself is a pretty good example of how not to act at our age [shrug emoji]

and anyway a lot of the same elements of zadr can be explored with zadf just as well with just as much potential for cute moments and as a bonus is it’s not creepy

You do bring up some good points, and I’m not saying you’re wrong...  But honestly I’m still not convinced.  I mean, stuff that Jhonen said, the thing is even if it’s the author saying it it’s still outside of canon, that’s the reason why Neil Gaiman got flack for Good Omens because they didn’t write an actual kiss or hug or hand-hold between Aziraphale and Crowley yet Neil Gaiman went on Twitter saying they were queer representation.  I still don’t really put much stock into what he says because the unfinished episodes and Jhonen’s commentary don’t really change the dynamic that’s actually in the show.  And again...Jhonen said if there were going to be romance in the show it would be Zim/Gaz, so he’s either a huge hypocrite or doesn’t view Zim as being incompatible with Gaz.

I do think it’s much better when Dib is an adult and it just makes more sense, and I actually do prefer zadf to zadr and if i were going to ever write fanfiction or make fanart it would probably just be zadf, just because i know this does have some stuff to think about and I totally respect that you have a different view of it, but i honestly just don’t see it that way.  The analogy with Jacob imprinting on Bella’s child in Twilight isn’t really the same thing honestly.  The author in that situation tried to make it not......that....by saying that imprinting isn’t always a romantic relationship thing, and that Jacob would be more of an older brother, but honestly that doesn’t really negate the impact of grooming that kid would have with Jacob around.  The idea that Zim would somehow be grooming Dib seems really silly to me although you’re right, I think his characterization in Into the Florpus has evolved somewhat especially with regard to Dib wanting to get his father’s approval, but again Zim has parallels with that in trying to please the Tallest.  the world-building and characterizations are inconsistent and scattershot at best.  Like no, zim isn’t waiting for him to turn legal, that’s absurd, they’re nemeses coming at each other then learning to be friends.  You’re right that that doesn’t have to be zadr but I still tag it as zadr so people can block it if they want to.

Like, I’ve seen people ship Zim with Professor Membrane instead of Dib.  That seems very weird to me.  that professor membrane would have a relationship with someone who literally goes to his son’s elementary school and who doesn’t know anything at all about human behavior and emotions.

I feel like with this discussion people don’t really understand the problem with age gaps. With age gaps, it’s not a matter of mature/immature, it’s about development.  A ten year age gap sounds like a lot right?  a 25-year-old and a 15-year old would absolutely have a predatory “relationship.”  But a 35- and a 45-year old, that’s perfectly fine.  Having a difference in age doesn’t automatically make the relationship unhealthy.  so if Dib is 25 and Zim is [whatever the hell aliens years i still don’t really take Jhonen’s word for it bc he’s not consistent], that’s doesn’t mean it has to be bad.  The thing about telling minors they’re “so mature for their age” to try and convince them that a person interested in them isn’t a pedophile is that we know a human being who is 15 isn’t developmentally at the same level as a 25-year-old regardless of their behavior.  What is Zim?  All we have to go on is how he acts, and he acts like Dib is an equal match, it’s not “he’s immature for his age,” it’s very unclear.  Raw number of years isn’t the ultimate decider, for example in DnD lore elves reach maturity at, like, 100 years old so a 25-yo human trying to get with a 50-year-old elf would be predatory to the young elf even though the “younger” one is technically twice as old as the human.  Do you see what I’m saying?

I also don’t really buy the idea that Invader Zim’s writing resonates with people because Zim is ~~so human~~.  The guy steals a bunch of kid’s organs in one episode and flies into a tantrum over the slightest inconvenience.  You have to be reading really deeply into it and dig into some old internet archives of things Jhonen Vasquez has said to paint it as realistic.  You can do some interesting things with it wrt like, Zim being defective and starting to experience human emotions but that’s mostly fanon.

Well, you’ve given me some things to think about, thanks for explaining your side to me.  I’m still going to tag things as #zadr so people can block if it can’t plausibly be categorized as zadf.  I’m not actually making any fan content for Invader Zim so the point is kind of moot, but if I ever do I’ll definitely take this into consideration.

#invader zim #zadr #submission