I was fully prepared to not care either way. People who make and fall for posts like this have clearly never been near a kitchen. Food doesn’t come looking ready to plate and eat. Sometimes food just looks like slop at certain stages🤷🏾♂️
When talking about the idea that Zim might have some affection towards GIR - a lot of people bring up the fact that, like, GIR is even still functioning in the first place. After all, why would the Famously Sadistic and Callous Invader Zim keep around an evil minion who messes up as often as GIR does? Rather than scrap him for parts or just throw him in the trash? ….Unless he had some sort of emotional attachment to that minion in the first place?
But that’s… I’m actually not sure that argument 100% works. Because there’s one important variable that argument discards. GIR isn’t just a regular ol’ robotic minion - he is a special top-secret model SIR Unit personally gifted to Zim by the Almighty Tallests.
Zim cannot fully discard GIR as a worthless garbage robot that’s nothing but a hindrance to his mission the same way that he can’t discard Earth as a worthless garbage planet with no value to the Irken Empire - because that would be confronting and admitting that he is not actually a great and respected Invader in the eyes of his Tallests.
But I still think there are some other evidence to the idea that Zim likes GIR. Because, I mean, Zim is incredibly lenient towards him.
Zim… feels bad for yelling at GIR and making him cry.
Zim. Feels. Bad. For. Yelling.
This alone is incredible evidence for Zim’s affection towards GIR.
And that is absolutely not something Zim will do for just any minion. Just look at how he treats his Computer, and not to mention all those poor saps from Hobo 13.
The fact that in his deluded world, GIR is supposed to be a top-of-the-line personal gift from the Tallests certainly plays a part. But I also think that while these delusions might explain why he doesn’t throw GIR in the trash… Zim is very good at twisting reality and logic and his own ideology for the sake of justifying his own selfish desires.
If he actually wanted to hurt GIR, he could’ve very easily rationalized it as ‘you are supposed to be the bestest most prided minion in my army of doom and a personal gift from the Almighty Tallest themselves therefore I will hold you to a higher standard and punish you accordingly’. But instead he is incredibly lenient with GIR and his constant screw-ups and obnoxious whims.
So my read of why Zim is actually fond of GIR in his own weird way is very much tied to, like, a Big Thing about how I read Zim’s character in general. Which is, Zim’s delusion, like Ogres, has layers. Like, there are some aspects of reality that just genuinely never penetrated his thick Irken skull - and there are some things he does realize on some level even as he tries as hard as he can to convince himself otherwise.
So I think on some level, as much as he outwardly denies it, Zim is aware of how much he messed up things for the Irken Empire in ‘Impending Doom 1’ and how the Almighty Tallests really view him. This is basically how his thought process is described in the Pilot -
And it’s also supported with how Vasquez describes Zim’s similarities to Dib in some of the ‘Florpus’ interviews.
Dib is obviously painfully aware of the ways his father does not respect him - but for Zim to similarly want to prove his own amazingness to the Tallest, he has to be aware on some level that the Tallest don’t acknowledge that he’s amazing. And I think it also matches with his interactions with the various Tallests in the ‘The Trial’ Flashbacks. Because he wasn’t originally that feverishly devoted, eager to prove himself and deluded about being beloved by the Tallests as he is right now.
That’s a trait he has developed either in response to his spectacular failure in ‘Operation Impending Doom 1’ or just to Red and Purple - who already knew him beforehand and decided they can’t stand him - rising to power. He is aware on some level of how the Tallests perceive him, and while he cannot consciously acknowledge it, his behavior is him overcompensating for it.
And I think… Zim projects this aspect of himself on GIR. He sees himself in GIR. Not the self he wants to see, the hypercompetent and beloved Invader. But the self he keeps denying - a devoted and loyal minion who despite messing up sometimes (or rather, all the goddamn time), is always eager to please and driven to prove himself.
Which… is also not a fully accurate view of himself, but like I said, it’s Layers of self-delusion. But that’s subconsciously how he perceives his own relationship with the Tallests and how he perceives GIR’s relationship to himself.
So Zim being so tolerant of GIR’s constant screw ups, never really seriously punishing him, always putting him in important positions in his schemes, always acquiesce to his stupid and annoying whims… that’s because he sees himself in GIR, and that’s how he would like the Tallests to treat him, that’s how he pretends the Tallests already treat him, and so that’s the treatment he gives GIR. He believes he deserves these infinite second chances and high-ranking roles in all of the Empire’s universe-conquering plans despite his constant failures and that’s what he keeps doing with GIR despite being just as frustrated with him as the Tallests are with Zim.
And the thing is, because of Zim’s Extreme Projection to the Max - he kinda got the entirely wrong idea about GIR. Zim is not exactly that eager-to-please loyal drone of the empire - but GIR is not that at all, not even remotely. While GIR might have some affection towards Zim, he doesn’t care at all about the mission - much less being ‘allowed’ to do Important Things Vital for the fate of the Zim’s latest scheme. He would much rather goof off and watch TV then be given any sort of responsibility.
Again, the cupcake scene is very illustrative. Zim thinks GIR is upset because he feels very bad about screwing up their mission and thus is immediately forgiving - but GIR was only sad because he ran out of Cupcake to eat.
With how distractible and chaotic and generally detached from reality GIR is, it’s… kinda hard to determine when he’s trying to obey Zim’s orders but failing and when he just never really gave much of a shit about them in the first place.
But he’s usually not even a little bit bothered or upset about the idea that his inaction has put his ‘master’ in mortal danger.
I guess the funny thing is, like, there are times where Zim needs an extra pair of arms or eyes on board - times where he needs the skills of… maybe not GIR but at least a hypothetical fully-functional SIR Unit. But there are many other occasions where GIR is nothing but a burden and annoyance to himand the thing is that they both would’ve been happier if GIR was just allowed to stay home to watch TV and eat babies but Zim keeps putting him in important positions because Zim likes GIR but he’s unable to understand what GIR is actually like beyond an image of all the projected insecurities he can’t admit about himself.
And of course, as we all know, if GIR was actually driven to fulfill their mission - that turns out very bad for Zim very very quickly.
In general, I feel like Zim’s panic and paranoia are very important aspects of his character that sadly often get overlooked and underutilized in the fandom. I feel like some folks just kinda go ‘oh, well, Zim thinks he is the greatest and most fearsome Invader in the universe so obviously he is certain that he can beat every obstacle’ when… I mean, sometimes he is like this - but some of Zim’s most iconic moments are powered by his fear and anxieties about failure.
So many of Zim’s schemes are motivated by an assumption that Humans are a lot smarter and more observant than they actually are.
Or even just scarier and more dangerous.
He probably would have conquered the planet in a day if he just directly pulled all of the technology he had at his disposal and marched his way publicly to President Land. But he is just so obsessed with the idea that the Enemy is basically constantly one second away from uncovering him that he just wastes his time on pointless ‘infiltration’ and ludicrously overcomplicated ideas of how to ‘subtly’ take over or weaken the Earth’s defenses via fast-food or the Skool Student Council or Dookie.
I mean, that is basically Duty!GIR’s big complaint about Zim in ‘GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff’. His progress has been stupid, because he’s been far too Stupidly Subtle about information gathering and world conquest and information gathering for the purpose of world conquest. When literally just heading to the public library and sucking out people’s brains is actually incredibly effective and has no real consequences.
‘Walk for Your Lives’ is another excellent example of how Zim’s extreme ego and extreme anxiety go together. Zim is driven entirely by a totally made-up arbitrary ticking clock revolving around the idea that the Tallests WILL call again soon and so he MUST get rid of the Time Explosion NOW.
But he’s overconfident in the sense that he is certain that the solution he comes up with is Actually Good and won’t just make everything worse even as literally everyone around tells him it would.
Enter the Florpus’ plot kicks off with a very similar scenario. Zim just comes up with a Made-Up Deadline and a Made-Up Consequence for ‘forgetting Phase 2’ and just starts… stressing himself up with it.
On one level I think this is like… also a weird result of his Ego. You know, the logic being that if any potential challenge is not 100% effortless for him, Irk’s most amazing and powerful Invader, then it must be a horrible and fearsome threat. If Zim actually fully admitted that Earth is the stupidest, easiest-to-conquer planet in the universe - he would have to admit that failing to conquer this planet of all planets makes him a huge-ass loser. So instead, Zim salvages his own pride by constantly overestimating the humans.
But I also think in general Zim has a lot of anxiety and nervous energy. Maybe just from all the insecurities and failures he’s trying to deny and ignore all the time? And he’s just channeling them into the only channels he can consciously acknowledge - worrying about his enemies.
i know it’s just typical tv show technical nonsense babble but i cant stop thinking about that line from future dib. the implications are too funny. do irkens also have access to windows xp too?
the blog killing axolotl is one of my favorite things that has ever happened on this website because talking about it afterwards sounds like an inside joke or perhaps a prank. like always be on the lookout for the blog killing axolotl. he can kill your blog. it happened to me once trust me.
there’s this very specific image of an axolotl plushie with the phrase ‘i am at my limit’ that i’m not posting for obvious reasons (even though i’m inoculated because i tried to post it before) that if you try to post it tumblr will immediately delete your blog. like completely. your blog is just gone if you try to post the image. you can get it reinstated but you have to go to staff and be like ‘hi my blog was killed by a picture of an axolotl can you please give me it back.’ we found this out completely accidentally when brianna brucespringsteendotcom made the image and then posted it and then her blog was just gone, at which point we started to experiment. anyway, a while later we found that if someone submits the image and you don’t know what it is and you try to post it it will also nuke your blog. this obviously all sounds like an incredibly stupid internet hoax so when you try to warn people about the blog killing axolotl you just sound like you’re trolling but i promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that we are not.
people in the tags are like ‘i don’t know if this is true but it sounds wild’ i feel like the old man you meet in the first five minutes of a horror movie that tells the teenagers on spring break not to visit the creepy old house at the end of the road
FAQs:
1. Is this the image of the axolotl plushie with the fire behind it?
NO! that is a different, more well known axolotl image that does not delete your blog.
3. hey, i remember this! it was over a year ago. does this still delete your blog?
someone in my askbox has informed me, under certain circumstances, yes. and that image is live, so be careful with it.
4. have you figured out what causes it?
same person in my askbox said this
which was my first theory before i went down the source code rabbit hole, although there must be a certain threshold for editing it since in the past people have posted censored versions where it still deletes your blog.
5. can i use it as my icon/can i send it to someone in dms/can i upload it if it’s not in a post/can i post an edited version of the picture?
back when this first happened if you did any of the above it deleted your blog, unless it was pretty heavily edited (someone in my discord put him behind bars - you know like he was caged - and i think when we uploaded that it didn’t delete the person’s blog? i could be wrong though). see the above ask for the most recent information. someone in the notes earlier (don’t remember who, sorry) also said that you can upload the original via mobile and it kills your blog, but if you try to post it on desktop it blocks it from being uploaded, so that’s also another route you could go if you want to experiment.
6. why have i never heard about this before?
spnblr is more complex and layered than you can possibly imagine it’s not my fault you can’t see it for the majesty it is.
7.this still sounds fake.
hey man, weird thing to lie about. but the picture and all the information you need to test it out is right here. post it to your blog. go on. prove me wrong. 🙂
8. didn’t people try to remotely delete neil gaiman’s blog by submitting that image to him?
we did do that yeah.
okay, i made another account to try this out. hopefully i dont die guys
