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Invader Zim/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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** You have severely overestimated the intelligence of anyone who exists in the Invader Zim universe. Only Gaz, Dib, and maybe Tak are immune to the idiocy.
* Yeah I know it's for [[Rule of Funny|comedy]] but it still annoys me that Zim's [[Paper
** This is a Jhonen Vasquez cartoon. Everyone everywhere is an idiot except for usually one or two exceptions.
** But then again, neither Ms. Bitters nor the Professor are particularly known for caring much about anything.
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** This troper is just surprised that the show managed to stay on Nick long enough to make 27 episodes. Undoubtedly Invader Zim rocks, but it was too dark for kids. I mean, they had a kid being shown having his eyes ripped out of his head and replaced with red robotic eyes. It's amazing how much [[Getting Crap Past the Censors|crap they were able to get past the censors]] in the short time at Nick.
** 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?
*** To be perfectly honest, I'm actually kind of glad they canceled Invader Zim as soon as they did. In that sense, it allowed every single episode to be completely devoid of any horrible Flanderization from the network and the creators, leaving the series as a precious masterpiece. I mean, just look at [[Rugrats|some]] [[Spongebob SquarePants|of]] [[The Fairly Odd Parents|the]] [[Drake and Josh|other]] [[I Carly|shows]] that stayed on and then tell me Invader Zim wasn't given a mercy killing.
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* This is more an It Just Bugs Me about the fandom than the show, but... How do all the shippers seem to miss the fact that Irken have no concept of romantic love, are literally ''grown in vats'', and have bodies that are little more than vessels for their PAK? In fact, the seeming oversaturation of the fandom with such shippers practically makes me ashamed to admit I love this show. STOP IT PLEASE. I SHOULDN'T BE ASHAMED FOR LIKING SOMETHING GOOD. :( Err... Got a bit carried away there.
** That's because the [[Viewers
*** He does not "hate his fandom." That he's been exasperated on occasion I don't doubt, that he's felt people [[Completely Missing the Point|missed the point entirely]] is something I ''know,'' and yes he's made fun of the whole phenomena but seriously, this "Jhonen hates his fans" thing is fueled in large part through either A) people interpreting [[Accentuate the Negative|bemusement as scorn]] and B) outright hearsay, this is one of the reasons he and Steve Ressel so infamously did not get along, he was continually badmouthing Jhonen to the fans. I know it might seem counter-intuitive to the kinds of [[Crapsack World|settings]] he uses, but he's a pretty unpretentious guy, not the sort of person who'd take himself ''seriously'' enough to genuinely resent the people who support him. If you'll notice, most of the things that can be read as a [[Take That]] to the fans is equally easy to read as him making fun of ''himself'' and his insanely [[What Do You Mean
** 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.
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** 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.
*** [[Sarcasm Mode|And it's simply impossible]] that anyone, anywhere, is capable of writing ZADR in a way that makes it interesting, emotional, appealing, or even believeable. No such thing. Every last one is a stupid, horny 14 year old girl, ever since Above Troper deemed it so. Simple, people.
**** [[
* [[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?
** She might be a clone, but whose clone, that's another story. The most probable theory is that she is Membrane's experiment. If you noticed, she really has a lot of strength for a ten years old girl, it's almost supernatural. Then again, this is [[Invader Zim]] we are talking about, so anything is possible.
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** [[Completely Missing the Point|SIX months, not two.]]
** No offense, but people who want Zim to seem either more sympathetic or less evil than he really is are never short of reasons -- ironically, one of the favorites is to presume he is in fact a child in "Irken years" and so shouldn't be held accountable as an adult. Usually, it's the less sympathetic crowd disputing that. I don't have too much sympathy for Zim being "forced" to attend an elementary when that was his own idea and I've never heard it as much as implied that he can't simply stop whenever he wants. Of course, to do that would be to admit to a mistake... At any rate the fact that that he did choose that on his own was probably MEANT to be significant in terms of hinting at his level of FUNCTIONAL maturity, his chronological level notwithstanding. But many people look at that and do not realize there is meant to be a discrepancy in between the two.
*** Okay, I just thought that some of the things in the show seemed [[Dude, Not Funny]] when looked at from the point of view of Zim being an adult in a world of giants instead of an adolescent or young adult, and (as you said) the people trying to make him seem sympathetic rarely go the other way from "Zim's just [physically and often emotionally similar to] a child". Zim was in school (Skool) because he needed a disguise that would allow him to gather the humans' knowledge, but he could hypothetically have sent in tiny camera drones (since I'm pretty sure he has those, or at least tiny cameras and tiny drones if the shrinking device wouldn't work for that purpose), so you have a point there.
**** Actually my point wasn't "he doesn't have to physically attend skool because he could send robot spy cameras," but "he doesn't have to attend an elementary school because that is a completely useless place from which to build a primarily military-oriented intelligence-gathering mission," which was highlighted in that first episode when he tries to ask his ridiculously obvious question and is met with a raised eyebrow and a silent return to the discussion of the e'er approaching doom. He should be trying, say, the Pentagon. Or at least the library. I might not have said anything if you hadn't asked whether anyone else had noticed the discrepancy -- I mean, yeah. I've definitely seen people very pointedly reference Zim's age relative to the kids he surrounds himself with, so if you haven't I suspect you're just looking in the wrong places, which might come down to a contrast between the camps of "Zim-as-Woobie" versus "Zim-as-Villain".
*** Oh, that... actually makes less sense, since Zim's intelligence (or lack thereof) tells him that Skool (and later, the library) is where those in want of information go (presumably, a top-secret military base would be one of the last places to go in order to get information). I was agreeing with you (or the above troper, if that was not you). But yes, I probably have just been looking in the wrong places (though more the places that people insist Zim is a kid {{[[[Insane Troll Logic]] because he's the height of a human kid}} than the people who realize that Zim is an adult, though a low-ranking one by Irken Invader standards).
*** It was me (Tyoria) both times. Sorry if it makes less sense now, it just seemed to me that it would be obvious to the average "Earthanoid" that an elementary school would be a poor place to begin that kind of research, and while Zim might be forgiven his ignorance due to being an alien (and being "told" that was a place to go for information), the bit in the first episode that I was talking about seems like it should have been a clue bat to the face that he wasn't going to progress very far at all along that route. So thus it didn't seem like "forced" was the word -- more like he's sticking to it out of habit. You could spin it as a [[Dude, Not Funny]], I just think most of the show's like that already (plus I'm not PERSONALLY too inclined to feel sorry for him, although he has his moments).
** To be fair, there are moments when sympathy is justified. In "Room With a Moose" Zim wanted revenge for all of the bullying and abuse he has when through so far attending <s> school</s> Skool, and a lot of the examples of said bullying are pretty harsh, especially if you've been bullied yourself. Examples include [[Groin Attack|Groin Attacks]], being punched, hit, and smacked with dodge-balls, using a tether ball as a means of torture, being offered tainted ice cream, getting water poured on him while tinkering with a device, causing burning and smoke, and being socially excluded in general.
*** That's not the same thing as saying "sympathy is justified". I never said I don't sympathize with him because he ''never suffers''. I'm saying I don't sympathize with him because the reasons for him being in that situation in the first place are '''not''' sympathetic. The original [[Draco in Leather Pants]] suffered a number of moments that almost certainly were traumatizing and could be viewed as [[Dude, Not Funny]] (bouncing ferret comes to mind), but when he was ''put'' into those situations as a direct result of his own jackassery, I didn't feel too much for him. The best you can do is conjure up a [[Freudian Excuse]] such as "well he was raised that way, so really it's his parents' fault". Kinda like what happens with Zim. Only when he started suffering for reasons that really weren't his fault did I come to feel sorry for him. I can see how Zim being bullied generates antipathy towards his tormentors, but think about the greater context here. He's being beaten up by people he plans to enslave or murder ''in the first place''. That situation looks sympathetic mostly because it's viewed through the lens of [[Protagonist
* In "Parent-Teacher Night", it's shown that baby Irkens are created through some kind of cloning process. Most likely, this was not always the case, and they once reproduced in a more "natural" way. However, in the aforementioned scene, and occasionally elsewhere, Zim does not appear to have genitalia. How exactly did Irken reproduction work?
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* Why do people keep saying Gaz ([[Disney Death|sort of]]) killed Iggins? The elevator cord snapped when he was having a fit, and she does flinch and grimace. It's not like she was ever shown to have ''invisible'' [[Buffy
** 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.
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* The fact that Dib never seems to learn. Most of his encounters with Zim and his subsequent pseudo-defeats are his own fault. For example, in Dark Harvest, he points out to Zim that he doesn't have human organs, which is what starts his organ hunt. Then, when he actually seems to goad Zim into searching for an organ he doesn't have yet by asking what he has so far. In Nano Zim, he actually tells Zim about his backup copies of the photos he took of Zim out of disguise, causing him to erase his memories of where he hid them. Why, why, why, why, why, dear God why hasn't he learned by not to give away his information to his enemy?
** To be fair he's not the only character prone to picking up that particular [[Idiot Ball]]. The biggest [[What an Idiot!]] moment for me was in "Backseat Drivers" when one of the Irken techs screams aloud that their shields and weapons have all gone offline -- '''while the Resisty is still on the main screen.''' "Hi hostile aliens, please feel free to destroy us in our helpless state!" *[[Face Palm]]* In "Room with a Moose" Zim does the [[Just Between You and Me]] speech that helps Dib work out a way to escape the wormhole, and so on.
*** Then, just for that extra little bit of delicious idiocy, the Resisty still focuses on stealing the Tallest's snacks rather than, you know, killing them.
** True, but you'd think Dib, being one of the few characters with more than two brain cells, should know better.
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* In ''Vindicated!'', what DID happen to the old counselor? We hear a voice (presumably the old counselor) saying "Help...me..." from inside the air duct, followed by a [[Jittercam]] shot (accompanied by heavy breathing) from inside the air duct. Did they fire him and stuff him in there, did something in there capture him, or what?
** Maybe Zim stuffed him in there after stealing his larynx in "Dark Harvest". Sure, that implies they took quite a while to replace him... but that seems business as usual for this school.
** He probably did something to [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|piss off the school.]] Stuffing him in an air vent is probably considered merciful to those people.
* Does anyone notice that Zootch (the kid with the blonde spike of hair and blue eyes?) is in Zim and Dib's class - but he's also seen in GAZ'S class? Also, there was an alien in Hobo 13 who looked remarkably like him...
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