I Already Know That Height Is Most Of The Reason No One Likes Skoodge Back Home, But Kept Wondering Why

I already know that height is most of the reason no one likes Skoodge back home, but kept wondering why Irkens think he’s also incredibly ugly on top of the short thing. Like, Jhonen knows how to draw/design hideous characters. Skoodge isn’t disfigured, or blemished, he’s… cute. A goofy silly little blorbo. He looks like a squishmellow??? He’s adorable to us, he’s a beloved fan fave. But he’s so darned ugly to them. Didn’t add up until it hit me.

He’s built like the Irken equivalent of a damn pug.

That’s wonderful to hear because I took more pics of that fella at the time

We literally didn’t know what robber flies were until encountering it so imagine a whole room of professional skeeter deleters in an enthralled circle around this bug. Obligatory PS to followers in case they find one of these: they can apparently bite. Really painfully. I didn’t know at the time and was either lucky or very unthreatening to the critter that it let me handle it like this. They’re extremely cool predators and kind of like bug vampires, catching prey mid-air and literally hanging from a perch to drink them like a spider.

Also huge thanks to @jack-of-all-inverts for letting me know that stag was in fact Lucanus capreolus

Other job-related honorable mentions:

Two lined spittlebug

European hornet

grasshopper sitting on a coworker

Barn spider

Annnnnnnd this thing

Thought @onenicebugperday would appreciate this but so I had been working as a pest control technician for mosquitoes over last summer. Obvs that much time outdoors lets you come across a lot of critters, and I decided since i haven’t had that job anymore since November it’d be fun to put together a little highlight reel of the other bugs I came across on the clock.

First off we got an impressive katydid

A quite photogenic snail

My favorite local wasp species, a cicada killer

A much more common and large red wasp

Local hanging thief. Absolutely badass looking robber fly who somehow got into the office building

Another robber fly encounter, this one was busy having a snack on a red wasp it has caught

BMSB that I would usually not like to see, but this one was literally in the middle of molting into the adult form and I loved how it looked like a forbidden peppermint

What I am going to guess is a very handsome stag

And of course, my actual target. Mosquitoes are certainly no uncommon sight but I managed to catch this one freshly emerged out of the pupa and that’s kinda neat

(Asian tiger to be specific, not native here but they sure be flourishing)

before 2023 end anyone wanna tell me if they're the thing

fuck you *homestuckifies your sly cooper*

i had no reason to make this im so sorry

Every Dredge Aberration (2023), Part 15

*Welcome to the Pale Reach~!

Fractalline Icefish

Encyclopedia #163

Aberrant form of icefish

Description:

Crystals of ice pierce through its body, distorting scales, teeth and fins.

Comment: The fog certainly hasn’t lost its touch for craftsmanship out in these frigid waters. Here we can already find in this wretch a namesake made poetically literal.

How to catch: Found in abundance throughout those glaciers and cold. You’ll only need a rod or trawl net capable of functioning in the new icey biome. For now, focus on the rod, you’ll already have moved onto other aberrations by the time you obtain the superior of the new DLC nets.

Thawed Icefish

Encyclopedia #164

Aberrant form of icefish

Description:

Globs of flesh drip from this fish, its departure from the icy waters causing an instant, irreversible reaction.

Comment: It seems the most unfortunate, compared alongside the former and upcoming variants. It’s fathomable that this is but naught one of the Deep’s rejections, unable to be fortified in fractals, and now all the weaker to ascent. Flesh brought ruin and change, failing to meet expectation.

How to catch: ^^^

Astral Icefish

Encyclopedia #165

Aberrant form of icefish

Description:

Constellations of light dance through its body, stitching fin to flesh and spine to bone.

Comment: The most interesting of the icefish aberrants, and finally a true taste of the Pale Reach’s unique flavor of corruption. Somewhere in these waters echoes the song of the stars just as loud as the song of the depths. Your search, your hunger to listen and know is only just beginning anew.

How to catch: ^^^

Bubbling Char

Encyclopedia #166

Aberrant form of char

Description:

Seared flesh forms the mantle of an incandescent core. Water boils into the air around it.

Comment: A charred char, if you will… or less playfully, a startling departure from the Reach’s expected theme, looking more at home in the volcanic crevice of Devil’s spine than under the ice sheets. Certainly this only makes the observation of the creature the more discordant from nature and reason alike. The only thing predictable about the Deep’s grand design is its indifference for the laws it did not decide.

How to catch: Pretty so the same advice as had for the icefish, minus the possibility of using a net, so, even more reason to rely on the old rod method.

Hinged Wolffish

Encyclopedia #167

Aberrant form of wolffish

Description:

Teeth interlock through flesh to create a brutish trap. Countless yet will meet their doom in the deep.

Comment: What else, but another agent of the cycle?- The cycle of life, death, undeath, and unlife. The corruption must thrive and spread, and all that seeks to do either must feed.

How to catch: Turn those jaws into a device of the fish’s own entrapment. Suit yourself up with that ice worthy rod and go out for a little night fishing in the Pale Reach.

Craterous Seer

Encyclopedia #168

Aberrant form of stargazer

Description:

A bright eye spins inside an impacted socket. An answer from above.

Comment: Give a round of an applause for this one especially. Out of all the new discoveries found in the pale reach, this breed of specimen is the one that makes me the most uncomfortable to look at. Someone please tell the fog and/or “above” that no matter how hard I search over these waves, I’ve still yet to find who the hell was asking.

How to catch: Save this for one of the last to mark off your encyclopedia. They can only be found with an ice-ready trawl net, and I highly recommend skipping the brittle one that is offered at the bleak pontoon. Patience and a little searching for your purpose among the ice will find you a much greater tool.

Pilot dib honestly gives me “season one Dib” vibes if anything. Dib took a quite a number of episodes to calming tf down since he met Zim. He’s the same overly dramatic, childishly cruel, potentially teetering on an edge of darkness little dork, but that last part becomes a little bit more contained by a rising apathy and maturity I think as things progressed. I feel like “The Wettening” follows the same skeleton of the Pilot Episode (dib discovers an Irken weakness, over enthusiastically exploits it, than stages a showdown meant to reveal it to everyone else, etc.), just with an altered ending.

P.Dibby stays up all night to make a food launching weapon, series dib spends an entire weekend to do the same for an auto-filling water balloon slingshot. Pilot dib says out of pocket shit like “only then will his evil intestines be revealed” and the iconic 🅱️eans line, series Dib doodles graphic vivisections in class and rambles about wearing his enemy’s clothes. Same twerp, different day.

I think it really does chalk up to the art style vibes AND the fact that Pilot Dib’s limited screen time didn’t give us much view of him outside the context of staring Zim down like a cat chattering at birds outside the living room window.

nobody understands a single THING about pilot dib vs series dib all they know is fandom osmosis and artstyle bias