#but hid everything that made him defective so he wouldn’t be deleted

[random-iz-stuff]

Headcanon regarding Zim:

Zim used to be sane.

Zim wasn’t always a super self-centred, egotistical idiot. Way back when he was a smeet in the irken academy and even when he worked as a scientist, he was a lot nicer and had much more common sense than he does now. He was still Zim and was still egotistical, defective, mean at times, impulsive, a pyromaniac and tended to speak in the third person quite a bit, but overall, he was a very different, much more likeable person. Capable of making and keeping friends, actually caring about those around him (although he did have to hide that at times because he didn’t want to be discovered as a defective) and was able to keep his more impulsive ideas and thoughts at bay by putting actual thought into them (most of the time).

Then Tallest Miyuki’s death happened.

Miyuki was basically a mother figure to Zim and watching her die from something that he made broke something in him. Him being one of the only survivors of the blob disaster and the only one that actually knew what caused it only made things worse.

His time in the military didn’t help either, as the stress of constant military training, both in controlled environments and field training combined with trying to hide the fact that he was both defective and the cause of Tallest Miyuki’s recent death continued to damage his mental health as more and more defects began appearing because of both the high stress environment overwhelming his already defective PAK and the defects that already exist damaging his PAK further and causing even more defects.

He started caring less and less about thinking through things and those around him, and as his organic brain started doing that, his PAK was regulating less and less things because of all the defects, making it harder to act like a proper irken.

Then Spork died.

If Miyuki’s death started Zim’s descent into madness, the revelation that he was responsible for the deaths of not one, but TWO Tallest launched him directly to rock bottom at Mach five. If Spork hadn’t died in front of him, Zim probably would have been sane enough to resist his urge to destroy and Operation Impending Doom 1 would have gone off without a hitch.

And Foodcourtia just put the final nail in the coffin. Being stuck on a grease covered planet, forced to work the worst parts of retail 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with basically no pay for what was supposed to be the rest of his life finally broke whatever was left of Zim’s mind.

All of Zim’s delusions about being the Tallest’s favourite invader and even still being an invader despite his banishment exist because of Foodcourtia. He was stuck there for years and relied on denial regarding his position and rank as a coping mechanism HARD, until he started truly believing the lies he was telling himself. For the majority of his time on Foodcourtia, denial was the only thing keeping him going.

Despite all of that, the old Zim isn’t completely gone. It’s rare, but occasionally you’ll see the more competent side of Zim that is much more aware of his situation. The Zim that actually thinks through what he’s doing before doing it. The Zim that acts like he’s dumber than he actually is to trick people and lure them into a false sense of security. The Zim that actually cares about some of the people in his life. The Zim that is fully aware that he’s not an invader or liked by the Tallest, or anyone else for that matter. These glimpses of the old Zim usually only last for a few minutes, but they still exist.