#iz headcanons

[annonymouslyannoying]

Baby Zim content! (He's 20)

[ms-scarletwings]

Frightsome realization brought to me by the beginning of the Planetjackers episode.

Zim’s telescope, all the way from Earth, mind you, couldn’t just search for and fix onto other known planets in the Empire’s range, couldn’t just find the base of the local irken spy, but was in fact able to lock onto the current, exact position of other invaders themselves.

Every single one of them is wired into a database to the point of being able to immediately check one’s encoded job and identity from a quick scan. Of course they’d have the technology and the foresight to have PAKs constantly log and update intergalactic GPS data to their fleet databanks. That’s how Sizz Lorr dropped in on Zim at the Skool. That’s how the guards black-bagged him in order to bring him to Judgementia for his trial. Hell, it probably might even be part of how Tak found him.

Every irken invader, if not every Irken soldier, can be tracked and observed at any time by the empire. Some form of cracking this network may even be the method through which Zim obsessively checks in on the Tallests and where The Massive’s been lately.

But more worryingly, for Irkens at least, this would mean that permanently deserting and evading the empire is effectively impossible so long as there exists some Irken authority willing to put in the effort to chase you down. There is no corner of the universe where their criminals could find a lasting peace of mind. It also adds some more potential context behind their ubiquitous loyalty to their leadership, or why to Zim’s perception, there is no third option after success or being as good as a dead man.

[invaderlazagna]

invadrr Zim style study I did

Click for better quaaaality

This one was fun, and actually productive. I did it instead of scrolling on Tumblr or watching YouTube, and I actually did it along with all my HW for once

[inbarfink]

My Favorite Random Inconsequential Invader Zim Headcanon has always been that Irk is considerably farther away from it's sun and thus colder than Earth. Mostly because:

Zim didn’t know that staring directly into the sun will hurt him

and his immediate assumption is that the humans ‘booby-trapped their Sun’ - meaning he thinks this property is unique to the Earth’s Sun. 

And the one time he complains about Earth’s weather, it is the intense heat that bothers him

Now, the implication in ‘Door to Door’ seems to be that it was an unusually hot day

(Jeez, Dib, if you’re sweating so much, have you considered taking off that giant black trenchcoat?? At least Zim’s a brainwashed conformist alien soldier. You’re just doing it for the Aesthetic). 

But Zim still seemed a lot more negatively affected than the humans considering, like, the hallucinations.

Meanwhile, Zim has also been to the goddam North Pole and has never once made a comment about the weather there.

Plus, since Zim was originally utterly unfamiliar with the concept of rain - I figured it might make sense if his home planet was so far away from the sun that all liquids are naturally frozen solid and there’s no ‘water cycle’ even with other non-water liquids. (Although maybe it’s just that all liquids native to Irk have a really low freezing point. That’s mother alternative explanation)

[madelee]

Hhhnggg I needed to get some ideas out…

Just some safety measurements that Dib installed and optimized throughout the years.

Anti-PAK Dib Device (APAK-DD)

V1 used to be a simple Signal Jammer: Capable of emitting a signal that disrupts the PAK’s normal operations. This jamming signal might temporarily disable the PAK or cause it to malfunction, giving Dib an advantage.

Dib used Gaz’ old GS 1 for that… she didn’t like that.

V2 Data Reader/Writer: Allows Dib to breach/hack into the PAK and read data from Zim’s PAK, download it for analysis, or even upload new code (APAK-Program) to change its behavior/corrupt it. ‘inserting’ a small USB-like device into the PAK.

V3 optimized: Dib still has full functionality over the PAK when the APAK-Program is active. Updated with integrated voice recognition allowing Dib to control the device hands-free by issuing verbal commands, making it more practical during a confrontation.

Dib did promise Zim at some point to refrain from activating the program, due to their ‘becoming friends thing’ and Zim hating how the program feels. However, Dib reserves the right to activate it in emergency situations or to annoy Zim.

[talonbite4596]

I have some more !!!

I like the idea of irken blood being a pink/orange color and also bioluminescent, no reason other than its funky to draw I like it

I'll add some headcanons or something under the cut so !! Yay i guess !!

Don't tag my art as ship stuff or be blocked, thanks 💖

Headcanon time!! These have little to no reason to exist other than "its fun why not" and "I said so"

- I already mentioned the irken blood thing but it's one of my favorite little things

- irkens have tapetum lucidum and it can show thru in their disguises (mostly zims) so it can be a good way to clock them if needed

- irken antenna function a lot like dog ears, which is more so Canon than a headcanon, but still. Like, example, they're pinned back when angry, down when sad, up when curious etc etc. It's a fun little idea

I'd like to delve into some more stuff but a lot of it is au stuff and I don't wanna blabber about that yet !! But I will add tiny little ones maybe

- irken paks, as well as keeping them alive, also "programs" each irken to be the best invader they can be. It all depends on what they'd NEED to be successful. For some, it's power and strength, and for others it's wit and smarts. So the pak, basically shifts their identity to fit the task they need to accomplish.

- paks also prevent irkens from being themselves, their personality is locked behind a barrier basically. They ARE their own people deep down, they are just physically unable to show it due to the pak preventing it

- however an irken CAN be themselves, but only for a while. They'd need to take the pak off and permanently make sure it cannot go back on, which would free them. It would also kill them!! So they can live a long life being nothing but a slave, or live as themselves for mere minutes.

That's all I'll get into for now but if u want more lmk ✨️ I like blabbering about random stuffs

Another reminder to NOT tag my stuff as ship ✨️🥰

[kalmiaclown]

Hmmmmnngg..... .. irkens eyes bulge out when they're happy like how rats do send post

[iswiminnachos]

dib membrane hcs !!

Ooohh

🛸  ☆

has a lemon demon playlist on spotify

he found his artstyle and its a crunchy one, he draws aliens and stuff

doodles himself exposing zim to the world

autism and anxiety

fiddles with hands and/or the ends of his sleeves when nervous

has a good singing voice!

he sounds like a younger version of neil cicierega when he sings

when he hears touch tone telephone he like flaps his arms a little bit bc he loves it(just like me fr)

touch tone telephone and two trucks are his fav lemon demon songs(i think jhonen said that two trucks would be his favorite but i wanted to sneak the silly phone song in there too,,)

has a youtube channel and only 4 subscribers

wtf is a hug?/maybe j(i dont think anyone has hugged him. i mean theres that one scene in etf where his dad ruffled his hair a lil bit but he didnt hug him!! i dont remember)

sometimes repeats words or phrases from tv shows

(bro i might do autism hcs for this dude man i love him sm)

also hc requests are open!! just like no iz x reader(unless its platonic) and no irken x child EL OH EL unless thats platonic too

my inbox is actually open for anything so dont be afraid to send in an ask or a request!! okay bye pt 2 soon

[lunathejaguar]

the next time you'll see him, what? marry him🤨

anyways, hear me out they had a rivalry when they where elite soldiers bc they wanted to be rule irk by themselves and miyuki never told them that they'd be co-rulers (bc i guess she felt problematic that day)....

edit: guess who realised they forgot the "i" in "the next time i see him i will-" sentence (me)

[daffodilesblog]

Releasing my headcanons about the main characters from Invader Zim in my au that I'm planning to write about :3 I liked the result of the drawings, remembering that these drawings here are just from the beginning of the Fanfic, they will grow up and stuff. Hope u guys like it 👉🏽👈🏽

And no, We won't have Gaz × Tak romance in this Fanfic, sorry guys, Tak and Tenn romance grows on me

(open the image for a better quality)

[s1lly-gh02tz]

Headcanon: Dib puts salt on all of the windows in his house. Every room except his room because he hopes that if there were to be a ghost coming into his home, he’d catch it

[annonymouslyannoying]

My personal take on Irken heights and designs! More insight into my process under the cut.

I exagerrated the heights of most Irkens to further pronounce Zim's lackingness- As well as make it make more sense in universe for the Almighty Tallest to single out Zim and Skoodge specifically for being short.

Larb in particular regularly recieves favoritism due to his height, so I made him taller to make it more fitting.

I also gave Spleen hideous veins because I hate you all personally. (There is definitely something wrong with him)

As for Tak I kept her height relatively the same in comparison to Zim which would make her pretty short by typical Irken standards.

I also removed her cross hatched mouth because it just confuses me and I don't really like it.

Tenn is popular amongst the fandom for some reason so I included her since I needed more female Irkens.

Although I took more inspiration from her first appearance than her more prominent role in Megadoomer because she looked too similar to Zim.

And of course there's Zim himself. I made sure he was the shortest- Even moreso than Skoodge because that's hilarious.

Pint isn't a real Invader moreso just an extra Irken I added to showcase traits that other potential candidates weren't able to- Such as the brownish eyes and chubbier build on a female Irken.

I refrained from drawing Sizz-Lorr's hat because I wanted to show off his antennae.

I also changed the logo on his metal sleeve things to have two eyes instead of one- Since the one eye symbol is supposed to be for Invaders only.

As for the Tallest without the suit, I took inspiration from this concept art from The Trial- Which depicts the young Tallest as Irken Elite.

I do think it looks pretty cursed with that awful huge head on that tiny stick body. I made Red TALL, tall enough to be the tallest living Irken (tied with purple) but the height is greatly exagerrated by the suit.

Since I buffed the Irken race so hard size wise JUST to screw over Zim, naturally Dib (who is even smaller) got screwed over even harder

[ms-scarletwings]

So there was a note under my post about Zim hovering a finger over the self destruct switch on his first day on Earth that just cracked open something in my mind.

Cause…Oh. Oh hecc you, @murhuedur. You actually touched on like, my favorite thing about this character, period. I really like this take, I do. It’s a good one. I ponder, still,

In my own opinion, it’s actually genuine confidence and arrogance, but Zim’s delusions of grandeur are as a thin rubber band. They can stretch out to wild lengths and remain malleable enough to bend around truth as he wills,

But there’s a hard limit out there eventually, and should reality require him to stretch his cognitive dissonance just too far, it’s a violent snap-back to full clarity. I don’t think he’s faking it or always lying to everyone else about what hot shit he is, because I think he fully believes those lies about as fast as he can speak them, even if he will later realize he was wrong after a cosmic punch to the face.

Like, Zim’s smart, but smart people aren’t inherently rational ones. Within Zim, the tallest, hell, maybe even Skoodge, there’s sometimes this very short-sighted flippancy about what is objectively true/false that peeks out every now and again in their psychology. I mean, humans sometimes do this too when it’s convenient to their interests, just, obviously not to goofy cartoon character levels if they want to function in society.

Zim has whatever this flaw is and cranked up to 11, maybe as a side effect of his PAK defects. Sometimes it gets him into DEEP shit, but it’s also his biggest mental shield. Zim has like no fortitude against spiraling into a full on depression or a justifiable panic attack over the smallest concession of being an absolute failure to his race. That weaponized denial that makes him so dangerous to himself and others also keeps him together and motivated forward. But it’s not largely a conscious lie he’s telling himself. It’s genuine faith he’s trying to manifest into matter through sheer force of his will.

His dogmatic mantra, “I am Zim” and what it means to him is a statement he holds on such conviction it overpowered and hijacked the ego of 3 control brains at once.

If I were inserting him into DnD he’d have the wisdom stat of a stale poptart and a 20+ thrown into charisma. He’s faking it without even understanding he’s faking it.

But were he completely detached from reality, he’d be WAY more likely than even now to accidentally get himself killed. While a narcissistic level of self esteem is what lets him ignore and selectively unhear inconvenient truths, the adrenaline of immediate life or death danger is what grounds him back in the real world. You notice over time that as self-sabotaging as he normally is, he seems to act his most rational and competent when he’s suddenly put against the grindstone and self preservation HAS to jump into the driver’s seat. He basically survives his day to day on a tightrope between a falsely glorious narrative of himself, and his perceptive anxiety both tugging him to land on either side of the fence when something big happens.

In “The Trial”, he wastes very little time on his expected bullshit or his confidence in being able to just win over the approval of his judges.. by virtue of being his awesome self. He spent most of that ordeal on the verge of a heart attack, squirmed to find an escape, and actually tried to DENY causing the death of two Almighty Tallests (reminder that he usually owns up to his atrocities with downright offensive pride). He understood the full gravity of an existence evaluation and how cooked his goose was. As soon as the situation resolves and he’s no longer in that danger, it’s right back to full trust of his status as an invader, and in Red and Purple as his biggest fans. When his disguise starts to slip in front of Skool kids he knows are dumb as a bag of rocks, he can silver tongue his way around that without skipping a beat. Losing his disguise in front of a bunch of alien-obsessed adults? Uh oh, pants-shitting terror, this is potentially game-over levels of bad, immediately gtfo of here. Stand there, chest beat, and scold the obviously rogue duty-mode Gir all day until the second it actually tries to kill you and you suddenly have to realize you’re not the one holding the cards anymore to save your own life.

The other way this quirk of his really shows through is in his selective memory. Zim has this skill to repress down and push away unpleasant experiences that I think some of us can only dream we had. I love it because it’s equal parts a comedic and analytical goldmine.

Tak, who actually posed a legit threat to his entire mission and tried herself to chip through that massive wall of denial he’s shielded in- same Tak who’s powerful af ship was stolen and desecrated by Zim’s arch nemesis… she’s not just an afterthought in his mind after that mess. He’s literally pushed that one out of his thoughts altogether in the comics. Like she, and Skoodge, who he can’t fucking stand, might as well have never even existed, even while GIR’s trying to remind him. That time he played around with time travel and it was one of the biggest clusterfucks he quickly lost control of? The bologna incident he stooped so low as to ask dib to help him with? You must be thinking of someone else. Nope. Not a thing. Lalala, can’t even hear you. This is also what makes it no wonder he deeply struggles with actually learning from certain mistakes.

From an outsider’s eye this behavior of his is baffling. It makes him look actually insane or at least obnoxiously obstinate. And I think both assumptions are half right, because this is clearly not the result of mere stupidity. Those truths are simply wayyyy too discordant with his view of himself to devote surface memory to, or too uncomfortable, unless and until, of course, you confront him with them in a fashion where that rubber band has to snap, that bubble pops, and he instantly sobers out of that complacency.

Literally god forbid he ever stops being defective in this way or is given the ability to reckon with the reality of his situation and his history all at once. I’m not even just talking about his job or banishment. I’m talking about his entire life. This chaotic, flexible, incoherent mindstate is the only branch he’s holding onto from dropping into a much more horrifying chasm beneath himself, the depth of which we can only guess. I straight up have no idea what he would do or what could happen to him if he could, even for a moment, rationally comprehend his every action, memory, and empirical truth all at the same time. Seriously, leave that Pak’s Gordian Knot be, or I imagine there could be an HP Lovecraft type of breakdown in the making.

#By the way this is probably one of the most important differences between him and Dib, and what makes Zib so… way he is.

[lestat-wesker]

[inbarfink]

So here’s the thing, Zim is characterized as an utterly selfish and cruel person in general and especially when he’s in a position of leadership. ‘Hobo-13’ really just exists to demonstrate to us what a callous and uncaring leader he is. He routinely and remorselessly sacrifices his own subordinates for the pettiest of reasons. And it’s not even fueled by his Space-Racism cause he’s just as callous about the life of the Irken on his team.

But it’s specifically not how he acts with GIR

Or the Robo-Parents 

And especially not the Robot Army from ‘Enter the Florpus’

And you know, on some level this really is just a Rule of Funny situation. It is just funny that Zim is capable of being a caring and loyal leader - but only towards total deranged hedonists like GIR or basically 100% non-sapient robots.

But if you want to look at things a bit more seriously, it might just be a Thing where Zim’s cruelty as a leader is driven by his insecurity. Like, being around an organic being with free will there’s always the risk they’d threaten his authority and status. Even if we’re talking about a non-Irken in Empire’s territory, there is always that possibility that they might dare to see themselves as his equal (or even think themselves superior to him) and he overcompensate by being especially domineering and cruel. Reinforcing his position above them by showing them how little they mean to him.

Meanwhile GIR and his various robotic minions are programmed to obey (I mean GIR isn’t very well-programmed, but he’s supposed to be programmed to obey, at least) so there’s a lot less of this insecurity-fueled cruelty. With Robots there’s less of a need to reinforce how much they are beneath him and how little they mean to him. And thus…

Or alternatively, you can link it to this iconic moment.

Maybe this whole ‘Cold Unfeeling Robot Arm’ thing is really no joke. Maybe ever since he was born, Zim kinda ‘imprinted’ on robots. And thus he is much more likely to feel sympathy towards mechanical beings than organic beings - including his own kind?