#Invader Zim are my roots

[abrthephantomq]

'Encoder' Zim AU Idea Thingy

ie, Cas is Trying to World Build this Invader Zim AU he wants Alicia and Steven to Write and the whole process has got him like this:

Putting the idea behind a cut but also tagging @paynomindtotheinsanity because this was heavily inspired by a conversation we had a few days about competent!Zim but also because her characterization of Zim is *chef's kiss* in Your Eyes Are Red.

So the real concept is that instead of “Invading” planets, Irkens are sent to various alien planets throughout the universe in order to study them. And then they “assimilate” them into the Irken Empire’s vast galactic Empire. 

The Irken Race are being guided by the “Control Brains” still – the Control Brains can do all the things that they can totally do in like – The Trial episode. But also note that Red (Savin) and Purple (Jazz) (like 00 version J&S where they are very, very sexually compatible but not necessarily compatible-compatible, especially as leaders, not that it matters because –) are basically puppet dictators – they know their role is just to be the public face for the Control Brains. 

The thing is – the Control Brains aren’t actually Irken. They’re humans who achieved immortality. I want to say two of them but honestly? I think they’re supposed to be the 8 richest human beings from this earth. They had so much wealth and power that they basically other humans into something unrecognizable…

Well, they turned them into Irkens.

Irkens are basically the like, Worker Bees of the giant Hive Mind the Control Brains worked really hard to create, and have been creating, for the past millennia. Irkens are used to MAINTAIN the hive. They go to planets and figure out what sorts of things its societies are doing “wrong” and how fractured each world is etc and learn the history / record the issues down and then pass the information to The Tallests. The Tallests then report this information to the Control Brains, who then decide the fate of those planets. 

(Read: The Control Brains then tell the Tallests that yes, these planets should be assimilated and that they need sooooo much help and guidance to learn how to have the besttttt livessssss ever and like…. the Encoders are supposed to facilitate that whole process, as well. Irkens live for many many years, they effectively don’t age because they’re genetically perfect, thanks to the cloning process, and the Paks make sure that everyone stays in LINE)

So rly – Paks keep Irkens Alive, they keep them In Line, and they essentially act as fucking thought police. 

Now – here’s where it’s gonna get a bit loopy. 

Irkens are Humans, right? The first race that the Control Brains assimilated into the Hive Mind? The same Hive Mind that essentially continues to feed the Control Brains desire to control EVERYTHING across the galaxy and continue to pile more and more money etc??? 

What happens if an Irken Encoder is sent, purposely, to Earth? 

Humans shouldn’t still exist, right? 

Yeah, tell that to planet Earth, circa year 2001. Humans are still there. Still “thriving.” 

Professor Membrane is studying Human Genetic Manipulation. He’s made two clones of himself – a boy, and a girl. They’re both him, they’re his kids, they’re fucked up. As all families are. 

Professor Membrane is also splicing Human Genetic Material with Other Species’ Genetic Material. 

Except he can’t test this shit on HUMAN subjects, because that shit’s unethical. 

Well… 

Except he can, though. 

He proved that he could clone himself, after all. Who’s to say he can’t just…. try to clone humans and manipulate their DNA that way? No one. He’s given free fucking rein because Dib and Gaz were the only “successful” human clones he’d produced, according to his research and the grants etc he was given to conduct this research, etc. 

Dib and Gaz may get to live long, happy lives (as they are human beings born with Privillege – Professor Membrane’s rich as fucking hell, obvs) – but they have an untold number of “siblings” they know nothing about. 

I can’t remember if it was Enter the Florpus that had Membrane working on a perpetual motion / energy machine? I think it was Enter the Florpus. 

Anyway, EtF more or less proves that the Earth IZ takes place on is part of a series of different AUs. Remember, there are other dimensions, too – A Room With A Moose, for example. So this isn’t all that weird of a thing. 

Thing is, these AUs exist together and overlap one another and Zim is sent to Encode Earth. Zim is a competent Irken Encoder; he has yet to fail at properly folding various planets in. He’s good at it. It essentially requires him to just conduct experiments on different races all day long and see how they work etc. 

He’s so good at it, he starts to notice weird shit about the Human Race, and about the planet in general. Features of it look familiar; bits of history sound familiar, etc. 

btw, he and Dib more or less have the SAME weird rival situationship happening – because Dib recognizes Zim as not a human being (“Does…. nobody see the alien sitting in class?”), and since Zim is competent at blending in and shit (and honestly? Yeah, he kinda IS in the show – at least with middle schoolers? he was REAL GOOD at getting the other kids to be on his side and not Dib’s). 

So Dib grew up the same fucking pariah in his class, with Zim like – falling into the “preps” – Drumline Captain for the marching band, etc. Like, Zim is popular. The girls want to date him. The boys want to be him, etc. Prom King material, right there.

They graduate. 

They go their separate ways. Dib becomes a paranormal investigator with the CIA (Swollen Eyeballs - Agent Mothman) and… 

Well, he’s given a mission to assassinate a certain scientist / researcher. Someone who’s putting too many puzzle pieces together and therefore threatens to completely collapse the human race and, quite honestly, the planet – especially if he ever gets his research published. Because this scientist / researcher has been working independently for at least a decade, and every single time he releases findings, Things Happen. 

The researcher / scientist / historian (lol) is Zim. 

Chaos ensues. 

[scourgeblooms]

invader zim jumpscare!!!!!

couple of sketches of elite-era Red and Purple based off of @patchworkpoltergeist 's god-tier fanfic “Harder, Better, Faster, Taller.” literally think about this fic at least twice a week. ty so much for sharing your writing it's made me insane for years and I finally had to do art about it.

[chellodello]

I heard we were all posting our best Zimpais and Dib-chans?

[quimser]

there's a lot of dib hair variation not even including his scythe thing, but these seem to be the main categories. curious about the distribution

(btw if you want to add more detailed descriptions/images, esp if it's your own art, i'd love to see that too)

[amyisherenowitsokay]

ZAGR SOTW

Choke - I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

Now shut your mouth If I could burn this town I wouldn't hesitate To smile while you suffocate and die And that would be just fine And what a lovely time, that it would surely be

I don't know I just think if you can do a can-can to a song about burning down a town, that really screams "ZAGR" to me.

[hevendor]

XD

[jibberjibbsart]

Out of curiosity. Can you tell us how many shows are you planning to add to the power hour? This is getting crazy! (in the best way possible)

So the fandoms we see now (Supernatural, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, The Owl House) are the only ones I had planned! I apologize to the crowd that was rooting for Amphibia to show up. HOWEVER once I finish this comic I plan on doing smaller "slice of life" comics and I do plan on some characters making cameos. In my original script for the comic, Invader Zim and Dib were going to be in Luz and Amity's place but I haven't watched enough of that show to include them. I didn't think I was capturing their personalities very well. I would love for characters like Star and Marco to show up and someone said having the Doctor appear would be hilarious (I only watched a couple of seasons of Doctor Who but it was very near and dear to my heart).

[spaceboibrainrot]

Me when I was in the hollow Knight fandom: my head cannons for anatomy and how characters act is rooted in real bug activity, lots of research was done and lore was kept in mind.

Me in the invader Zim fandom: Irkens are hermaphrodites + their bodily fluids and meats taste like sugar + random head cannons cuz it's cool and really hot! Fuck you jhonen I'm not getting my Irkens neutered!

[gatioxd]

even more WB dribblez

aren't you so happy to see my doodlez! I HAD TO GO BACK TO MY ROOTS GUYZ! Invader Zim! Eddsworld! You also get one singular doodle of Vince and Rody! amazing right even a little awkward zombie aww so cute... cutie.. and obv my daily sonic doodles OR ELSE I WILL DIE. There's also an old oc of mine, that none of you know..., but if my old friends were to ever see this, they would collapse. I was listening to Godsmack and Pantera while drawing this, obviously

[starrysharks]

could you show a little bit of your art progression over the years? your style is absolutely magnificent btwbtw!!

sure ! i've done a similar post, but that was focused on shape language and didn't go over all of my art progression. i'll link it at the end of this post!

anyway, i started digital art around 7 years ago, but all of the art from that period is essentially lost. at that time, it was just deviantart bases and various furry/warrior cats fanart made in MS paint. while i'm not a fan of vivziepop anymore, she was a big inspiration at that time, as well as a handful of popular animation meme artists at the time. around 2019, i started making art in krita using a mouse. and later that year, i started making art in ibispaint (mostly skullgirls fanart). unfortunately, practically everything from before 2020 is lost because it was on reddit accounts that i had deleted out of cringe. don't delete your old art ever!!! i do have this piece though, made in 2020 on krita with a mouse. my main inspirations were invader zim and other cartoons.

my artstyle took a lot of dips and turns around this time. i got back into anime, and it influenced my style in a way that i think made it really ugly and bad looking. i also refused to ever flip my canvas. i think this era actually held me back. here's an example.

anyway, by 2021, i had gotten into more anime that influenced my style in a different way. i forget the exact ones, but i did watch a lot of stuff from trigger (like BNA and LWA) at the time, and also got into enstars which influenced my compositions a lot. it's also around the time that nova in her current "space astronaut bunny" concept was born. i started experimenting with backgrounds, color palletes, and colored lines, which was crucial. i look back at this era pretty fondly. though i still refused to flip my canvas :D

by 2022, my artstyle looked like this -

(this is actually from dec 2021 but like. it's still what my artstyle looked like)

i had played world's end club and rewatched panty and stocking, and it changed my brain chemistry. i decided that my artstyle would be "60% anime, 40% western cartoon", and despite some shortlived phases where i'd go for a slightly different style, i still kept it up. looking at least year's art summary, though, you can see that i broke away from that style for something more anime. and also, i hardly ever experimented with colors anymore because i was focused on character design. i'm gonna be real i think everything after july looks like absolute bootycheeks. i hate this weird single tiny dot reflection style i had going on it looks like dogwater.

after 2022, my art was in a miserable transitional period where i had zero clue what direction i wanted to go in. but despite all that, this piece in particular is crucial. because i used halftones in the background. it's foreshadowing!!!

i continued like this for a while, until the time where i decided to play around with shapes with those vocaloid big 8 drawings. people really liked the shapes that i used in that one, and i found them fun to draw. so i started exaggerating more, and after i rewatched panty and stocking for the 307492020506th time, as well as invader zim for the 2nd time, my cartoony roots came back.

and then, when my art was already steadily improving, across the spiderverse dropped, and i watched it. funnily enough afterwards i had a big art block because i was just thinking, "you need to draw if you want to work on something as big as that! improve!!!!" which kind of held me back. but after all that, i decided to take a note out of ATSV (and comic books in general)'s book and start using halftones in my work. as well as that, i started focusing on lineart way more, and tried to play around with lineweight. which brings us to present day, where my latest art pieces look like this :

i still think that my artstyle needs a lot of work. even these pieces have issues when it comes to symmetry, values, and the like. but nowadays, though my art takes far longer now (as i've abandoned special pens and just do lineart with the hard dip pen in a kind of tedious way), i'm having more fun with it than i have in years. i think halftones fit my artstyle really well, and they're a unique way to "fill up" areas. now that i pay attention to lineart, i think it makes my art feel 'fuller', at least with more depth. did i mention my inspirations for this current 'phase' of my art? :0 i've been playing a lot of muse dash lately, and my pinterest boards are always full of stuff from TWEWY and megaman. there's far more than that, but in short, i want a sharp and striking style with bright colors. i know that you said a little bit of my progression and i basically dropped a whole essay 😭 ,,, but i really like talking about art in general even if i'm not very good at it. i hope this was interesting at the very least! here's the other post also:

[thegoldfisharmy]

Taking an Invader Zim break to get back to my roots, Ninjago OCs!

[freydpaladin]

Back with more fanart for Invader Zim!!

This time, it's Zim himself. Now, I know what you're thinking - what happened to him? He's tall?! When? Why? Most importantly, HOW?! Fortunately, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this - being that this was not what I was planning.

Not at all.

It just sort of... happened.

So now I'm going with the explanation that this is Zim from an alternate universe! A universe where he's the leader of the Irkens! A universe where he is the Tallest. However, Zim is not afraid to get his hands dirty and even though he's the leader of his kind, he still takes the time to invade planets personally. Probably because it takes him back to his roots, back when he was just an Invader.

But yeah. That's my reasoning.

[ponett]

here's another slarpg Q&A roundup from my retrospring! this contains light spoilers for the game

in the past you've gone over how tall each of the main party are, so lemme ask you this instead: How tall are Beverly and Faith?

faith is 6'6". she is very tall. beverly's sprite is probably larger, but that's more a matter of NPC sprites generally being big rather than an indication of her actual height. i'd say she's only supposed to be around 6', give or take

What cartoons does pepper like

bartholomew only lets her watch ones that will be a bad influence on her like invader zim

We know Claire drinks, what about the rest of the Novas?

jodie and allison will drink some at social gatherings. melody tends not to, though, so if they're out together allison will usually limit herself so melody doesn't feel out of place

How do you feel about fanworks of slarpg? Specifically, which mediums would you be okay with fanworks existing in, and how do you feel about people using assets from the game?

fanworks of basically all kinds are encouraged! there's already a (very small) fangame about melody's cat in the works and i think that rules. considering my own roots as a fanartist and fangame creator i think it would be lame of me to discourage that

that being said, a few simple stipulations:

1) i ask people hold off on any sort of mass-produced merch like t-shirts or pins. custom items, commissioning someone to draw the cast, a small run of prints sold at a con table, etc. are fine by me, but i may end up making merch myself and bee and i need to make a living off of this game. when we're an operation this small, putting up a bunch of slarpg designs on redbubble could be a problem for me

2) please do not use visual assets from slarpg (including edits of my sprites) in a commercial product. using them in a mod or a freeware fangame is fine, though

3) if you do make a fangame or mod or whatever, please make sure it's clearly stated that it's unofficial, and also please don't just publicly distribute the entire game for free (modded or otherwise)

Between the 3 types of paladin Melody can become what one is the one that you pick for her?

i do a different one every playthrough >:)

From a story perspective, not a mechanical one: was polyamory ever a consideration for the party members in SLARPG? Can you see any polyamorous relationships working well between main-cast members, even if only for a little while?

i would be lying if i said this was a thing i had never considered, at least a little. it was never a serious plan for the game, but as the story and the character dynamics beyond the main couples evolved there were definitely scenes where i looked at what i'd written and went "oh people are gonna ship this, huh." i definitely see it in my own writing, believe me

the main thing is just that i don't entirely know how i would go about writing poly relationships in a satisfying way. for one i've never been part of a poly relationship, so i can't write from my own experiences there. but also i feel my strongest writing tends to focus on pairs of characters (hence all the one-on-one scenes in slarpg), so it becomes trickier when, for example, a character has two partners. i'd worry about making one more important than the other in terms of narrative focus just because of how i write. i could easily see a version of events where certain characters start dating certain other characters on top of their canon partners, though. i just don't know if it's something that i'd ever really explore myself

but i guess that's what fanfic is for

what's your favorite joke in SLARPG that got left on the cutting room floor?

i really wanted to find a way to make "irony poisoning" a status ailment but could never figure out a good way to do so

how long has claire been on hrt?

i actually couldn't say if claire is on hormones. if she is it hasn't been for as long as melody (who's been on hrt for several years by the start of the game)

I noticed your game seems very deliberate on exactly how it approaches the topic of sex and suggestive content. Obviously it wanted to avoid being "horny furry bait game." But, it also avoided being aggressively chaste as well. It struck a careful balance, where it gives the impression that it's something characters do and think about, but isn't the focus of the story so it stays incidental. Was there ever much consideration on the exact tone in this regard? Or did you just do what felt like a good fit?

this was absolutely something i thought about a LOT. perhaps more than people realize!

i mean for one, yes, the problem of people assuming the game was just furry porn based on the title was always an issue. (not that there's anything wrong with furry porn games, this just isn't one.) the game's origins as a successor to an old fangame also presented an issue, because i was worried that people who knew about the old project but hadn't actually played it might, like, assume that it was extremely horny if i pushed things in slarpg too far? which could, in turn, color peoples' perception of slarpg. they're very distinct projects to me, but i'll never escape the reductive perception of them being Literally The Same Game

at the same time, i started work on the game at age 21 and finished it almost age 29, and in that period my feelings about what i wanted to make and also the attitudes in the wider queer community shifted a lot. there's been pushback against the idea that queer media always needs to be "wholesome" and "pure," with conflicting attitudes about the "wholesome games" marketing label in the indie scene mixing with very valid fears about puritanism growing in the queer community online - stuff like the perpetual "kink at pride" fearmongering. and i didn't want to be seen as being part of some push to erase the sex from sexuality or whatever. even beyond that, i've always kind of rankled at the "cute aesthetic = wholesome" thing. i worried about the idea that the game was "wholesome" and all fluff leading to people getting upset at the more intense parts of the story. and also, just, you know. the characters are all in their 20s. i think it would be weird if they didn't know what sex or alcohol or swear words or whatever were. i think they'd become less relatable and real if it was too sanitized

but of course the flipside is that it's a 16-bit jrpg throwback game and i was absolutely overthinking how much people expected adult themes to be touched upon, queer subject matter or no. i think i struck a good balance in the end where it's lightly acknowledged without disrupting the expected tone of the genre. i'm glad it's speaking to people

(why yes i struggle with RSD how can you tell)

How seriously does Allison take caring for her sword(s)? As an unabashed ADHD sword lesbian myself I gotta say it's a not insignificant amount of (very fulfilling) work.

i think her natural inclination would be to be a little careless with them, but countless lectures from jodie have instilled a sense of responsibility in her when it comes to taking proper care of her weapons

I ask this with no weird intentions - characters like Melody and Jodie have no paw pads on their hands, but do they have them on their feet?

you know what? sure. why not

how did faith get such a big job at 24? did she know someone... is there nepotism in this world. I demand accountability.

faith was always an overachiever and was basically training throughout her teens and early 20s to become guardian. when she put herself out there as a candidate she was already generally popular with the community for her skill with magic and her work ethic, so it wasn't hard for her to win the election in a small town like greenridge

Were there any plans during development for Allison or the other two to meet or confront Harmony in the Astral Plane? Or was she always just meant to be exclusive to Melody's character arc?

the entirety of what was planned for harmony is there in the game

is the city shown in the intro supposed to be brightport?

not necessarily! the identity of the city in the intro is unspecified, although brightport definitely looks something like that

Jodie’s theme from when she was gonna be a dog (apparently?) has a very different feel to it. Was her puppysona a very different character than the danger kitten? Or was her intro in the story simply different?

i was still just figuring out jodie as a character at the time - both her design AND her personality - so bee didn't have the most complete information to work off of when trying to write the fourth character theme

i think initially she was going to perhaps be somewhat more brash, being the one Actually Qualified Adventurer on the team who's surprised that her friends made it so far without her, and she would've been exasperated with claire's shenanigans instead of enabling them. she was also intended to be more of a foil to melody, seeming to be (from melody's perspective) the person everyone compares her to. which might be why i thought to make her a canid? this juxtaposition between the two is still an element in the game, but it's more subtle and i rarely draw direct attention to it. and she was intended to be much more bullheaded, with her arc revolving around her running off and picking a fight that really didn't need to be picked off-screen to set up a side quest that was completely cut

obviously a lot of this doesn't sound very much like jodie at all! she was the character i struggled to nail down the most. if she was too brash and critical of claire's decisions then she'd have way too much overlap with allison, so instead she became claire's best friend who's supportive and trusting to a fault, and who's also the most earnest and straightforward member of the team

[cherrypopc0la]

Here's my persona! Sorry for the wait lol. Yes that's a Gir jacket from Invader Zim, gotta keep in touch with my roots.

[alabasterplasterart]

Welcome To The Rave Cave

Hello hello!

I am Alabaster / Ala (they/them), a queer writer and artist finally digging in and setting my roots somewhere. I am on Instagram and YouTube under the same username, but I don't post art on Insta anymore and my YouTube is, for the moment, quiet.

Below the cut I've got the details of this blog as well as where my art goes. Links to those side blogs are here with more details below. Thanks for reading! :DD

My Hermitcraft and Life Series Blog

My D&D and Fantasy Planets Blog

My Invader Zim Blog

What's The Deal?

This starting lobby is where I'll reblog things, mostly art from my fellow creatives. For non-specific art of my own, I'll also post that here. Anything relating to the above blogs though will be posted there for ease of organisation.

Who Am I

Like I said above I'm Ala, a queer and neurodivergent lover of all things artistic and creative. I love cartoons and animation, music, and gaming, especially. I'm a huge supporter of fan work and do a lot of fan art and writing that you can find either here under '#fandom char' or on the above side blogs!

How to Find Things

Here are the primary tags used on this Blog. Check the pinned message of the side blogs to find theirs.

alaart : For digital and traditional art I make

alawriting : For my story excerpts and such

alaspeaks : For text posts I make

artist support : For reblogs of fellow artists!

fandom char : Tagged on art or writing that I've done or reblogged for fandoms

Note From The Publisher

This is a positive space to enjoy the act of creation. Bigotry and malice have no place anywhere, but certainly not here. We're here to love and create and breathe life back into the world around us. If you're not here for that, you can move right along.

With that said, I hope my little corner here can be a safe creative space for you lot! Enjoy, be merry, and kiss your dad square on the lips.

[theizzifromosaka]

So the next piece of media I've decided to review is Monster Prom, but these games aren't really meant to be played for extended periods of time, they're more meant for occasional single playthroughs with friends.

In the meantime I thought it would be neat if I spoke about an individual character I might not get to talk about otherwise. I figure this would be a neat way to fill the gaps between reviews, and opens the possibility to talk about just about any character that fits the description of "monster" and "girl".

Invader Tak (Invader Zim)

Despite only appearing in two(ish) episodes Tak remains a fan favorite character. Personally, I love all these little Bloodthirsty Irken Scrimblos, and honestly wish Invader Skoodge and Sizz-Lorr got the same amount of love as her.

Tak definitely earns her popularity, as her two part special is one of the best episodes in the series. It starts off as a Valentine's special, with Zim predictably aghast. Suddenly an inconspicuous new girl joins the class and covers Zim in barbecue sauce, causing him much pain.

Of course this hideous new girl is revealed to be an Irken in disguise, with a grudge against Zim and intent on conquering the earth to regain her status as Invader. Zim and Dib must join forces to save the earth and re-ruin Tak's life.

Tak is such a good parallel to Zim. Their backstories are similar in many ways but while Zim was victim of his own hubris and stupidity, Tak was instead victim of Zim's hubris and stupidity.

Villain protagonists are pretty rare, especially among the media shown to kids. Sorta like the few instances when Klasky Csupo tried to make Angelica sympathetic, to get people to root for Zim you gotta pit him against somebody worse. Tak fills these shoes well, she's every bit as conniving as Zim, and somehow almost matches his eccentricness (with Richard Steven Horvitz voicing Zim that's all but impossible), with the crucial difference between them being Tak is competent, and as a result genuinely intimidating.

As for her design, she's built off the same deceptively adorable base all Irkens share, with her pointy "eyelashes" and curled antenna giving her a distinct, easily identifiable look. Her human disguise is similar, standing out from the background characters but still matching the show's angular style.

Invader Zim is my favorite Nickelodeon cartoon, and the only real competition it has is SpongeBob. It stands out so much from its peers, both visually and tonally. Though I can't recommend it to Monster Girl fans on account of it really doesn't have any, I can personally say this show means a lot to me.

Previous review:

Next review: