Warm Take, But

Warm take, but

I would bet my entire left lung that if IZ was not canceled before the rest of the incomplete episodes/scripts were allowed some airtime, the begrudging bromance potential between Zim and Skoodge could have ended up one of if not the most popular ship among viewers. I’m still forever miffed that we were cheated out of so much more on-screen Skoodge antics generally, though.

Ffs we would have seen what he looked like as a smeet in the Trial. We would have seen what the tallest looked like as smeets too, because Zim deadass grew up with all of them. But that dynamic he had with Skoodge during the Hobo 13 incident has literally had childhood precedent which, lmfao.

Also, for anyone who hasn’t read up on the series plans, Skoodge was going to be revealed to be living in Zim’s basement ever since Hobo-13. Not just in a roach in the walls way. Like, he was eventually gonna become a whole sidekick along GIR and mini-moose, actually helping in some of the plans against Dib. Canon exile buddies. You cannot fathom how angry I am that Dib never got to meet Skoodge on screen, yet was so close to him.

Vendetta has so many great pets! I taught some of them to swim. They are soooo good at Holding their breath!

She drowned my fiends!

We made a collage!

She destroyed my magazines!!

We played a board game!

She sank my battlesheep!!

i used to work at a used bookstore and there was an insect anatomy book for sale that was over $8000 im not even kidding. and i just found it at my school library. its mine for the month.

Since there’s a bunch of you in the notes genuinely confused on his logic here: Basically he saw himself in Hazel.

He saw the trauma that losing the cat put him through as character building that taught him a valuable lesson about Denizens, and that this action was ripping off a bandaid like telling a kid the truth about Santa or that their hamster didn’t actually go to a farm upstate.

He really, really thought he was doing a favor for her by breaking her attachment for Tuba in this fashion sooner instead of later, and honestly, and you can hear it in the way he explains himself, “I know you might not understand now, but trust me…”

He expected a negative reaction from Hazel, but the kind that she would grow out of once she joined the Apex and was indoctrinated into the same cult as the rest of them.

Grace on the other hand, he was hoping for approval from. The both of them were supposed to be on the same page in his mind. See, he’s her secondary when it comes to running the club for a good reason, besides his almost puppyish little crush-

Simon. is. horrible. at emphasizing with and understanding how other people think. Which actually makes him a terrible manipulator and simultaneously demonstrates why it’s a strong suit for Grace. He’s too blunt and impulsive. He doesn’t naturally take to this beating around the bush and Machiavellian way of getting what he wants. He BELIEVES in everything the Apex is and stands for whole heartedly. To Grace, a lot of it was something she constructed on the fly for power. To Simon, it’s unquestionable dogma and the only lens to view world through that makes sense.

Point was that Grace has years of experience in being the one who actually recruits new members in and sells them on the Apex narrative. She’s the leader and speaker for the group and she is followed because the kids look up to her for guidance and protection. Simon led them by blustering around his number, demanding respect for his authority, and relying on the fact that they were guilible children who remembered him as Grace’s close friend. And even they were aware of how obviously he was unraveled and becoming incoherent shortly after his takeover. He’s not good with kids. He’s not good with people. He had one person within the group he attached completely onto because she was.

But what reason did he have to think that Grace was starting to feel second thoughts regarding the denizens? All of the previous destruction of these train NPCs was at her order and instigation. Killing them was, according to the dogma up to this point, just a matter of racking up more points on a leaderboard. The Grace he knew since he was a young child WOULD praise him for finding a clever way to take down such an intimidating denizen.

But this Grace was doing everything she could to actively hide the empathy she was starting to feel for Tuba, and Simon trusted her word completely. When he does fuck up and make her upset, he really does believe that his problem was that he didn’t understand well enough how/when Grace wanted to deal with Tuba, or that he acted too quickly without her permission… not.. that he wheeled Hazel’s mom and Grace’s new friend. That was nowhere even in the realm of possibility for him.

Like that really is how warped and naive of a person he is. For nearly his whole life he was never given a context/framework to view this whole situation through that makes him a bad guy for it. And boy does he have a lot of mental capital invested in the framework he does accept not being broken for him.

And to me, that makes his personal fanaticism so terrifying. It’s a kind of evil that is near-impossibly difficult to reason a person back out of, and it’s a disturbingly realistic one.

it's been three years since Infinity Train Book 3 aired. here's something i made like two years ago and never posted

Yes, another Zim themed pic (think that's  the 3rd). But it’s my free time and I get to choose what I want to draw! Also made a gif of this because I recently learned how to animate in photoshop (be nice it’s my first animation :’3)