Invader Zim/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** The gravitational pull is from the ''act'' of snacking on such a huge scale, not from the presence of the snacks themselves. So once everyone's full and there's no active snacking going on, the pull weakens and people can leave.

*** ...[[Mind Screw|You make my brain hurt so much that that actually makes sense]]! ...Possibly. ...[[Voodoo Shark|No, it doesn't]].

** They just don't leave. They arrive for the Foodening and remain until the Foodening ends. That's why it was such an urgent thing for Zim to get off the planet before the Foodening; because once it starts, he can't leave for twenty years.

* In the same episode, why is Sizz-Lorr a frycook at all? For Irkens, size=status, right? And Sizz-Lorr is huge, nearly as tall as the Tallest. And being a fast food worker is considered such a low-status job that Zim was demoted to it for nearly destroying his own civilization. So shouldn't Sizz-Lorr be in the military or something?

*** Irken and English are the exact same spoken language, but the Irkens made a different alphabet.

*** Maybe one of the many, many feature of their [[PA Ks]] are that it instantly translates their speech for anyone that happens to hear them, allowing them to communicate with other races.

** Because, though this show is really not for kids, subtitles for an imaginary language would just push it over the edge.

*** But subtitles in an imaginary language isn't?

* Just what DOES the G stand for?

** I don't know. [proceeds to pound on his own head mindlessly]

** The DVDs have Irken subtitles. If you're that curious, you can switch 'em on and see if they contain English letters.

** 'Glitch', 'Girl', 'Giraffe', 'Gaffe', 'Gomez'...

**** "Garbage Idiot Robot"

*** [[Shaped Like Itself|It stands for "GIR"]].

** OK, so perhaps we don't know what the G stands for, but what about the I and the R? Is it still ''information retrieval'' or something different since it's a G and not an S?

*** Possibly, though GIR is no good at information retrieval. I'm partial to it being Idiot Robot, myself.

*** Miss. Bitters is probably in the same bin as Gaz, she knows, but she doesn't care because Zim is [[Too Dumb to Live]]. Membrane on the other hand may just be [[Selective Obliviousness|oblivious to anything paranormal]] because the world likes screwing [[Butt Monkey|Dib]] over.

 

** Apparently, executive Mary Harrington was a fan of ''Squee''. So that answers that.

*** And she still somehow decided Vasquez's work would be perfect for a children's television network. Mmmnyep, sure [[What an Idiot!|nailed that one]].

** The show was canceled due to ratings. It was very expensive to make and they weren't getting what they thought they should for their investment, so they pulled the plug. There were some squabbles over material deemed inappropriate, but that's not what did ''Zim'' in. I know people like to harp on the [[Periphery Demographic]] and the merchandise sales, but guys, Occam's Razor. Which is more likely to cause queasiness in your average TV exec: A potential loss of money? Or the fragile little psyche of children they relentlessly push toward teeth-rotting candy and overpriced action figures?

* In the Halloween episode Zim and Dib gets trapped in a nightmare world inside Dib's head where everyone has a nightmare version of them, beside GIR and Zim, why?

** The Nightmare World was supposed to be an Darker version of Earth. GIR and Zim are not from Earth, which is why neither them nor their base is seen in the nightmare realm.

** It's not that we miss it. [[Selective Obliviousness|It's that we don't care.]]

** This troper doesn't have anything against [[Slash Fic|slash]], but she is pretty amazed by the huge amount of [[Portmanteau Couple Name|ZADR]] fanfics. Then again, this cartoon is one of the darkest shows the world's ever encountered, so it kinda makes sense that the girls who are watching it have twisted minds.

*** That's more like friendship than romance and a story about Zim's and Dib's developing friendship would be much better and would make much more sense than any romantic, crappy fic written by some idiotic [[Yaoi Fangirl]].

*** But it's ''hot''. (By virtue of being about characters they like driven to horniness for one another because... well, because they say so and it turns them on and that's what it's all about.) If you can come up with a counter-argument to that, please let me know.

**** Zim is only 16 in Irk years, according to Jhonen himself, though he's 159 in Earth years. Still weird, but not ''quite'' as weird.

***** "According to Jhonen himself"? Really? Where? I've heard this rumor again and again but as far as I can tell it's 100% [[Fanon]]. It's never shown up in an interview I've seen, nor his blog/twitter, nor the DVD commentary. ''Link or it didn't happen.''

*** No one ever said it would be a healthy, functional relationship.

** It's this simple: [[Fanon]] does not have to care about what is [[Canon]]. So if some-[[Sarcasm Mode|and I'm hiding my true views of the subject]]- stupid, horny, little, 14-year-old girl with delusions of being an erotic writer and some mental deficiency that leads her to believe a 10-year-old boy blowing an alien is ''hot'', then they have every right to write said, ahem, literature.

* [[This Troper]] has found out from Jhonen's site that Dib is not actually Membrane's son. He is, in fact, Membrane's younger clone. The question is: Where does Gaz come from? Is she adopted? Membrane's creation? A clone of Membrane's wife, who died and couldn't have kids?

** Or a demon... In ''Gaz, Taster of Pork'' she levitates off the ground, surrounded by a purple light and her eyes are red. Plus, she's scary like hell for a little girl. It wouldn't surprise me if she was a paranormal being.

** This idea is [[Pure Awesomeness|pretty interesting]]. Though it is mentioned in one episode that Dib's and Gaz's mother is kept in a jar by Membrane. It might be just a dark, humorous joke of the show or Membrane ''really'' does keep his wife's ashes in a jar, because she has died and he's still attached to her. And due to the fact that he's still attached to her, he has cloned her and named her ''Gaz'', just like he has created a clone of himself and named it Dib. There are many possibilities. [[Too Good to Last|Too bad the show wasn't continued]]

* The robot parents. We know why GIR is the way he is; his head is literally full of garbage. But as far as most of Zim's other equipment goes, it's clear that the only defective element is Zim himself -- except for the robot parents. They make an appearance in the very first episode, having been included with the house apparently, and they suck from the get-go. What gives?

** It probably has something to do with Zim's knowledge, or lack thereof, of everything Earth-related. Same reason he has a toilet in his kitchen.

*** They don't malfunction too badly, considering. They talk, move around, even riverdance and fly with jetpacks. And when they do give off sparks/explosions, maybe Zim just never intended for them to leave the house until Parent-Teacher night, and decided they were good enough.

*** "Considering" what, exactly? Yes, they have some obviously sophisticated functions. That don't work properly, in a fashion that is never suggested to have been the result of Zim's idiocy or misuse. None of Zim's other equipment malfunctions to the degree they do, saving GIR whose crappiness is specifically accounted for. It's not really a big deal, but it seems like a weird oversight.

* About Tak's plan: if she already ''had'' enough snacks to fill a hollowed-out planet, why didn't she just use them to curry favor with the Tallest? The planet-hollowing part seems redundant.

** Most likely to ruin Zim's life like he did hers.

** Tak said herself: it wasn't about revenge, it was about being an Invader. She should have passed her test, not Zim. It's about taking what was rightfully hers. Even though she knows Zim's assignment is a joke, she still wants it because, in her mind, she'd be taking back what Zim stole from her.

* Why do they continue airing this show if it was only canceled due to appealing outside the intended demographic and it being frightening to children, rather than ratings? (Which it was dominating in.)

*** There might actually be a very simple explanation for why the Tallest do what they do. It's all [[For the Evulz]]...which of course is seems to imply that the entire Irken race is always going to be represented as the [[Villain by Default]].

*** Maybe. I know that confusing the morality issue by using a [[Villain Protagonist]] and a [[Hero Antagonist]] was one of the things Jhonen enjoyed doing, so maybe he'd have also enjoyed mixing it up a little more with the Irkens down the line. [[Wild Mass Guessing|I personally suspect]] the Irkens aren't necessarily evil for the hell of it but because their wiring's crossed -- we know they're utterly dependent on their technology, and looking at how Zim came to be Zim in "the Trial", it seems he didn't become a megalomaniac obsessed with destruction until AFTER all that information was "downloaded" into him, that could be a clue. (It would be an nice little irony, then, that Zim is not so much a defective as a living emblem of the larger defective nature of his entire race.) It would also leave open the door for possible redemption. OR... I could be reaching. But hey.

** It could be that the Irken, or better, the Brains that rule them, have built this massive militaristic society and only got to the technological point they are now because of that militaristic past. In order to have this militaristic empire working, the Brains needed to shape the irken species into the warmongers they are, and if now that they have all this power and technology, they try to turn back from the militaristic life style, their empire would crumble, probably hundreds of different paramilitary factions would emerge and try to take over each other, not to mention all the enemies they've made by now. So now the irken society has to keep making war in order not to destroy themselves or be destroyed by angry former slaves or scared neighbors. They have gone out of their way for so long to become ideal warriors that now they can't be anything else. Besides, war itself seems to be something the leaders use to keep citizens distracted and entertained.

*** Panem et circenses.

*** For all we know the reproductive organ is part of the squeedlyspootch when the Irkins were redesigned to have all organs super-condensed into one.

 

** That is because nick-toons has been re-airing it due to its Massive fan base. They even made a new game for it too so this makes people wondering "what is zim" and will he come back. There was also a poll on whether we want more Zim: 98% yes 2% no

** I ''saw'' that, but that doesn't really explain where people are getting dates from. (I keep hearing November.) And they've very recently taken if ''off'' their schedule.

 

* Why, oh, why do the fans blindly hate [[SpongeBob SquarePants]]? Honestly, it's not Stephen Hilenburg's fault [[Invader Zim]] was canceled.

 

 

** Has she ever been shown NOT to?

** ...Even so, she wouldn't have winced at the sight if it was a deliberate act on her part.

** Also, Iggins is clearly alive at the end of it. He even screams his name.

 

* Alright, this is a long, somewhat odd one: the one thing about this show that I wish I could change would be to add some kind of potential escape from the relentless negativity. It's not that I don't like [[Black Humor]] and only want Happy Endings. Bad endings and good endings and bittersweet endings (and sometimes even [[No Ending|No Endings]]) have their place. I don't need morality tales either, I could understand the work being basically [[Spy vs. Spy]] -- either no good guys or bad guys, or only bad guys. But [[Invader Zim]] is ''not'' that, though I've seen people try to argue it is. Basically that would make it less depressing because that would be your cue as a member of the audience to [[Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy|not invest any actual empathy in the characters.]] If you do start investing empathy, the world is about as bleak and depressing as it's possible to get. There is nothing affectionate in the kind of humor that is being used to tear down a world that recognizably has shades of our own, accentuated past the point of absurdity but not far enough that you won't see those targets striking home. It's funny as hell, but it's generally not thoughtful or constructive, it hits only our negative emotions and tends to bring out nastier sides of people. Surely you've seen that some fandoms can be uglier than others. Well, Zim's is nowhere near the worst. But it whispers to people's cynical sides, the part of us that looks around us in contempt. Contempt for other people, our classmates and neighbors and contemporaries. Fandom tends to set itself up in factions who are the only real fans who "get it" and what Zim's about. But of course most of our fellow fans are morons, right? And Jhonen probably hates them too. But what if they aren't and what if he doesn't? I don't think this show was intended as a condemnation or a warning, it was meant to be entertaining in a very dark but funny way. It seemed to me that they were building to something, too. We started seeing guys who were ''fighting'' the Empire. There were one or two times someone on Earth actually ''listened'' to Dib, who got his own spaceship. There was the potential capacity for ''hope'', which you can only get in a story where you're supposed to care what happens to the characters.<br /><br />And then it got cancelled.<br /><br />Despite what some rumors will tell you, the show was cancelled for pragmatic (read: monetary) reasons rather than any but-think-of-the-''children'' hysteria, but I resent it on such a deep level for this. The show wasn't just hysterically funny, it was ''going'' somewhere, and while not to the land of sundrops and lollipops I think it was going to go to a place where hope at least ''existed''. It would have been hugely satisfying because of that -- addressing that which the show did not directly address but always alluded to. The fact that it was left unfinished leaves it in the quagmire of cynicism and contempt with no outlet but the belittling of others... oh yes, and very funny, too. I'm grateful for that much, but I feel the show lost more than continued hilarity from its cancellation. I think had the show concluded people could have wrung more meaning and fulfillment out of it than it was allowed to do in the time it had, and what it's lost is so... inexpressible.

** What's weird about this, at least for me, is that having listened to the unfinished episodes and found a handful of scripts, is that the really ''weren't'' going anywhere with it. Sure, there are some episodes that build on Irken society and Zim's backstory, but nothing that really moves the plot forward. There's no signs that the general trend of a growing force for good (or even any sort of solid arc) would've shown up except in a two-part finale that never made it past concept and some [[Word of God]]. I would've loved to see the sort of trend you're talking about, but the simple fact is that there's no hard evidence showing that's the direction the show was taking.

 

* So...Jhonen offered to design cover art for the initial ''Zim'' DVDs and recorded commentaries and interviews. He did an entire month's worth of Zim-focused articles on his blog when Nick made a big deal about bringing back reruns (at least, [[Cloudcuckoolander|as much as he can be expected to focus on one topic for a month.]]) He gave a shout-out to a ''Zim'' convention and declined to show up because he hates conventions. Nick has mumbly things about bringing ''Zim'' back, and Jhonen says he's game. And yet rumors persist that he hated the show and would never consider doing anything with it again. How the hell does this even happen?

** People get the impression he is more negative towards his fans and to his own work than he truly is. To be ''completely'' fair, he does take shots at some of his more obnoxious admirers from time to time. Couple that with the fact that he tends to feature [[Crapsack World|Crapsack Worlds]] and you might be inclined to think he's truly cynical and embittered, when he's really just a weird (I mean that fondly), sarcastic guy who enthusiastically poured a lot of his life into the show. It's really unfortunate.<br /><br />There may also be some confusion with him for director Steve Ressel, who was more active with the fandom at the time of the show actually being on the air, who went on record as saying that [http://www.buzzyworld.com/zim/archives/askstevearchives.html he would not come back to the show]. For that matter Steve said ''Jhonen'' probably wouldn't come back, but Steve evidently said... a number of things about Jhonen, and Rikki, that fans should probably take with a grain of salt.

**** I'm trying to explain it, not justify it. People who are ''looking'' for the truth should certainly be able to find it -- but you weren't asking about those people.

* A couple of episodes have GIR crying, like in "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy". HOW???

 

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[[Category:Headscratchers]]

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[[Category:Headscratchers (animation)]]