#it is exclusively in the form of 'coolest girl you know tries and fails to be the arch-nemesis of an immovable wall of apathy'

[sapphorror]

So there's this Moment in the beginning of the Zimvoid arc where he's going on about how he's the only Irken to show up on Earth and when GIR is like 'but tak!!' he has zero recollection of who she is, which like. on balance I do enjoy, because much of the zatr/zatp appeal in my eyes is the coolest girl you know trying and failing to be the ultimate archnemesis of the most embarrassing candidate imaginable, and lacking object permanence wrt one of his most formidable enemies is a very Zimcore thing in general, but at the same time, in Tak's particular case I'm not so sure the characterization is accurate, based purely on the way he treats her in her one flagship episode.

For one thing, he refers to her by name—which wouldn't be all that notable, except in the grand scheme of things, Zim doesn't really address all that many people by name, enemy or otherwise. Granted, some of this is probably just that she's Irken, who all seem to get tiniest sliver more notice from Zim (if not exactly respect), but there's also a Tone to it—a certain je ne sais quoi in the way he tells her 'It's over, Tak!' that reminds me of the way he addresses Dib and the other rare enemies he views as adversaries rather than mere obstacles

Even more unusually, he actually acknowledges her skill and calls her good ('Not as a good as me—but still good!')*. This isn't ENTIRELY unprecedented, given that Zim does have a pattern of inflating the abilities of the people he's bested by in order to maintain his ego, but even still, it's not all that often he straight out comes and says that someone is a worthy adversary—even with Dib, this aspect of their dynamic is more of an implicit, obvious truth than something he'd ever articulate.

All of which is my long way of saying that Zim seems to have a surprising degree of respect for Tak, at least insofar as he can be said to have respect for anyone, which is... interesting. And definitely something I'll be thinking more about

* tangential addendum to this but I'm also reminded of the "you're a worse pilot than I am (wait...)" quip and the fact that makes out at least two occasions where he's directly compared her to himself. Hm!