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random-iz-stuff · 2 years

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Headcanon:

Existence Evaluation Trials are a bit more biased than you might think.

Existence Evaluation Trials are used to find and kill defectives, but they also go out of their way to villainize the irken on trial and defectives as a whole.

Here’s Zim’s trial as a surprisingly good example:

First off, Existence Evaluation Trials only show the aftermath of events up to a certain point and don’t add in anyone else’s perspective.

For an example of this, in Zim’s trial, they show Horrible Painful Overload Day 1 and 2, and tell the audience that the events left Irk without power for five years and four years respectively, but coincidentally leave out the facts that:

HPOD1 resulted in irken engineers finding several large issues with the smeetery tubes (mostly the fact that there are no systems in place that can prevent or clear blockages and nothing preventing curious smeets from climbing back up the tubes). Issues that engineers declared “made a blackout like Horrible Painful Overload Day completely inevitable” that they would have never known about if not for Zim causing HPOD1.

HPOD2 exposed a massive flaw in the entire irken power grid (a central part of it is completely undefended in an obvious spot on Irk’s surface and there are no backup systems in case it goes down) that engineers were completely unaware of, with irken engineers declaring that HPOD2 was actually the best possible scenario because it made them aware of the flaw and got them to fix it before it could be discovered and used by Irk’s enemies.

Irk actually WASN’T completely without power, as the entire planet used emergency generators in the times when Irk was being affected by HPODs 1 and 2. Irk was still in a blackout and many nonessential things didn’t work, but Irk wasn’t completely dark with no electricity whatsoever like the Control Brains imply.

The Control Brains leave this stuff out because without it, Zim seems worse than he really is. It removes the positives and only shows the negatives, villainizing Zim and his defects.

Another common tactic that Control Brains use is manipulating the footage. They don’t add anything that isn’t there, but they do go out of their way to cut the feed before good things happen and even show things that aren’t relevant to the trial, often to villainize the defective on trial and sometimes to preserve sensitive or classified information.

We see this tactic used CONSTANTLY throughout Zim’s trial. Just going through all of it:

They don’t show any parts of Zim’s smeethood apart from HPODs 1 and 2, despite Zim’s smeethood having so much evidence of Zim being defective that they could spend DAYS going over it, including:

Zim showing emotions beyond what is normal.

Zim having access to parts of his PAK before the ages where smeets are normally given access to them.

MULTIPLE TIMES WHERE ZIM COMES CLOSE TO ADMITTING THAT HE’S DEFECTIVE.

And several hundred other times where Zim preforms obviously defective acts.

But they only ever show the Horrible Painful Overload Days. And there’s one good reason for that:

Tenn.

Zim and Tenn, being twin siblings, were very close throughout smeethood, but just like how they can’t show Zim doing anything good, the Control Brains can’t show Tenn doing anything bad, or even show them interacting with Zim at all.

This is because Tenn is the Empire’s most highly evaluated invader. They’re the Invader assigned to Meekrob. Operation Impending Doom 2’s Star Invader. One of the faces of OID2 right next to Invader Grapa after they were given credit for Skoodge’s mission. They’re an important figure.

They’re also a rather controversial subject among the higher ups after they went MIA on Meekrob, with the fact that they’ve gone missing and were captured by the Meekrob being covered up by the irken government. Can’t exactly have it be known that one of the faces of OID2 failed their mission. It would erode trust in the irken military, OID2 and the invader program as a whole. The public is unaware of Tenn’s capture and is being led to believe that everything is fine on Meekrob.

It’s a similar situation for why Tenn cannot be shown interacting with Zim. Tenn is an extremely important figure, while Zim is a defective. Showing the two of them being friendly with each other would make Zim look better for being friends with (and being related to) the Empire’s Star Invader while simultaneously making Tenn look worse for willingly associating with a defective.

In just about every part of Zim’s smeethood that could be used as proof of him being defective, Tenn is either there or is close enough that the Control Brains can’t show the clip without including them in some way as well. So they simply don’t show it. They keep Tenn separate from Zim to protect Tenn’s reputation and to prevent Zim from having anything that could make him seem better.

But there’s another trick they use during Zim’s smeethood. Skoodge.

Just like Tenn, Skoodge has been there throughout all of Zim’s smeethood, but he’s only seen with Zim in one clip: HPOD2.

HPOD2 is shown because it doesn’t show Tenn in it, but DOES show Skoodge. A very short irken. HPOD2 shows Zim interacting with a short irken and treating him as an equal, or at least better than most irkens treat shorter irkens. Not only does this make Zim seem more unappealing because it shows him associating with a short irken, it literally plays into the stereotype of defective irkens being close to short irkens and vice versa, which demonizes both short and defective irkens simultaneously.

Hell, that part about trials playing into stereotypes can be applied to just about every part of Zim’s trail. Almost every clip shown plays into and reinforces various stereotypes about defective irkens.

Moving on from Zim’s smeethood to his work as a scientist. The Control Brains jump straight to the Blob Incident while neglecting to mention the dozens of other things Zim did as a scientist, including designing the Massive’s bridge cannon, important advancements he made in dark matter technology (the stuff that modern ships use to move around without visible thrust), and his impressive work in genetics.

Apart from Zim designing the Massive’s bridge cannon, which is classified information, the Control Brains have no reason to not show this stuff. The whole reason that Miyuki would visit Zim’s research station in the first place is because she was genuinely impressed by his work, so it seems like it would be useful to show just what that work WAS, but the Control Brains cannot show a defective doing good things, as that would defeat the purpose of trying to demonize them.

And after that, there’s Spork’s death. Which, if you think about it, shouldn’t be in Zim’s trial. It’s unknown if the Blob was actually seeking out its collar or if it was just hungry, since it had digested the perpetual energy machine it had originally eaten to the point where it no longer worked and the Graduation Ceremony had a massive amount of various energy sources for it to consume.

And even if it did come specifically to find it’s collar, Zim having that collar with him isn’t proof of him being defective. It isn’t proof of anything. It proves that Zim….had a collar with him once. Zim had no way of knowing that the Blob would come back for its collar, or even that it was smart enough to do so in the first place. It means nothing. And it means even less since there’s a good chance that the Blob showed up through random chance and would have killed Spork even if Zim wasn’t present at the Graduation.

Spork’s death also isn’t a crime that Zim committed, nor was it something that he could prevent. He DID originally make the Blob, but by that point in time it had been wandering through space for the better part of a year, with no one, including Zim, having any idea where it went. By that point it’s no longer Zim being the cause of a Tallest’s death, it’s the Blob doing that. The Blob had become separate from Zim by that point.

Spork’s death is there specifically to villainize Zim. It’s not proof of him being defective or committing a crime. It’s just there so people know that it was HIS Blob that killed Spork. And Zim actually seems to KNOW this, calling out the Control Brains for “using two Blob clips in a row”. They used two Blob clips in a row to drill the fact that it was Zim’s Blob into the brains of the viewers, making it seem like Zim’s defects killed two Tallest when in reality his defects killed one Tallest and the other died from what was most likely random chance that no one could have forseen.

And just to make Zim seem even worse, they show Spork being eaten, but cut the Footage and don’t show what happens immediately afterwards.

As for what happened after the footage was cut; Zim killed the Blob. As every other Elite evacuated, Zim snuck away from the group, fought his creation and did what the entire Armada could not by successfully killing the Infinite Energy Absorbing Blob. He preformed a Herculean task that not even the toughest irken soldier could preform and killed a creature considered by many to be invincible. Zim successfully stopped the Second Blob Incident from getting as bad as the First Blob Incident (entire scientific station destroyed with only a small handful of survivors, Zim being one of them) and saved the lives of countless irkens by doing so.

And the Control Brains cut it out.

They don’t want to show a defective irken doing good things. Zim killing the Blob would single handily throw a massive wrench into the constant depiction of defectives being irredeemable monsters that only care about themselves, destroy everything they touch and go against everything the empire stands for.

That clip would show a defective charging towards what most irkens would consider suicide specifically to protect others (and also to avenge two Tallest). Willingly laying down their life for the empire. It would also show a shorter-than-average, defective irken doing what Irk’s finest could not by killing the Blob. And the Control Brains simply cannot allow that to be shown.

TLDR: Existence Evaluation Trials are extremely manipulative and help perpetuate the belief that defectives are horrible, disgusting, irredeemable villains that hate the Empire and everything it stands for. They also manipulate things to make the defective on trial look worse while keeping other, better irkens looking good.

#invader zim #headcanons #zim #was thinking about Zim’s trial #mostly about Spork’s death and why it was included in the trial #and then I made this

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