So After Dark Harvest,

So after Dark Harvest,

Did Zim just willingly give Dib his missing lung back after the nurse was finished with them or what???

Was mooing Dib Just too annoying to have as a nemesis even if he was weaker and more mockable than not-mooing dib?

Or. Alternatively. Did Dib just have that problem fixed via the privilege of having Membrane as a father? And in that case…. Did Zim keep the original organ?

I need to know if there’s a trophy lung in the base (or more disturbingly, still in Zim) somewhere.

The worker 🐝

Hol up, at bare minimum I DO recall they actually did do an entire educational unit out of a Wilderness Survival Manual. Still a downgrade from a relevant textbook, but it’s something. Specifically, they were doing quiz prep on how to skin a moose in the bologna episode.

Why do I remember this? Because it puts me in stitches how authentically curious Zim became in learning about moose, in another case of just showing his quirky personal fascination for them.

You know what’s almost weird? Zim already had at least heard of the species before, since this ep came out after “Room With a Moose”, but here he’s asking if they can wield high powered projectiles like it’s the first mention.

It’s also intuitively absurd that he would go browsing a huge collection of wormhole purgatories to send his enemies to, and he was deadset on the moosey option. Though, I see a pretty smooth through line. Some point, he learned correctly somewhere that moose were an extremely dangerous species of native megafauna, that they also are one of a minority of wild animals on earth that can tend to be unafraid of/even willing to attack humans (making some humans afraid of them to point of carrying weapons for self defense), and that they live in one of the most inhospitable biomes on this entire dirt ball.

I don’t believe his knowledge went any deeper than the surface though, I think he is honestly just really impressed by power and originally thought moose were a lot more badass than they turned out to be. So, he finds out in Skool that actually, even if moose are pretty strong and hardy, they’re disappointingly stupid beasts that aren’t actually another potentially epic tool for reigning terror and fire down against humanity… bummer.

And when he got his easy opportunity to fix this by just designing a better moose, well,

F

( 8

ᖶ

Thinking about how the main premise of Zim is "he's so stupid he thinks going to public skool is a good use of his time". But despite how much of the series took place at skool or dealt with things related to skool not once did we ever see any of the characters doing homework or taking a test. Literally the only assignment the class was ever given was caring for a fake baby for a week. Bitters wasn't kidding when she said they weren't doing dick to prepare them kids for the real world.

This Single Oversight Will Bring Irken-Kind to Its Knees

I have a little riddle for you.

What does an ant nest, a computer, and the ancient city of Troy have in common?

While you ponder the significance of this question and consider your answer, there’s a few things I want to analyze about the worldbuilding of Invader Zim.

We may have heard it said before, least I have (and agree), that the fate of the IZ universe appears to be a rather bleak picture.

Through our lens of focus, being upon Earth and an oh-so specific nutball waging his battle upon humanity, we often don’t do as much thinking about the larger cosmic war taking place meanwhile. Not between the Meekrob and Tenn, not between the Tallest and every dumb luck threat they are thrown against, but between the Irken Armada and all life in the entire universe, sentient or not.

Their intentions will not be made any more clear, between outright eradication or eventual enslavement of every lifeform they set their sights on. While they have alliances and neutral treaties, those agreements seem few and far between, as well as born from temporary conveniences. The cards have already been dealt, and all available evidence has indicated that every planet they are aware of is doomed from the moment The Massive was operational.

Though littered with inefficiencies and incompetency that could suggest an empire in internal decline, the development of the control brains and other centralized command crutches of the species suggests the Irkens can still keep a well oiled machine running, no matter how many mishaps happen along the way. At least, that machine and their plundered resources will definitely outlast the survival of their enemies, for sure.

To speak of their enemies, there has not been a single competitive race within the show that demonstrates any credible threat to Operation Impending Doom II- only those that can resist the conquest a little bit longer than others, or those who survive by appeasing Irk (or evading its detection). The fall of Vort, which stood as the homeworld of the only aliens with the technological ability to match the armada’s firepower is…. Really bad news. That’s to say the least of comparatively primitive, TINY planets like Earth or Blorch, standing zero chance in the way of what’s eventually coming. This is a war that has continued despite the death of two.. FOUR Almighty Tallests if you follow the movie’s events… and Irkens wholly are still thriving for it across the Galaxy.

So, given all of these facts, and the perception that the Irkens (like any invasive species or colonial force) don’t seem to be a society that will make responsible and/or sustainable use of their ill-gotten territory… it seems like this is how life across the universe ends in Invader Zim one day: Not with a bang, not with the whimper of heat death, but through screams muffled under the bloody boots of a dominant predator- a predator that is, itself, doomed to cannibalize its own once it hits the carrying capacity of all existence.

Bleak, concrete, and horrific as that may sound, there’s still a “however” here to consider!

Yep, that’s me about to point one of my big fat fingers to the sky and protest- Irk just might be,

Not so Undefeatable, after all!

And not only have I figured out exactly what sort of countermeasure you need to destroy these invaders, I have reason to suspect it’s a plan already long ago set into motion.

Let’s break it down,

An Irksome Achilles’ Heel

True, individually, the bug bastards are irritatingly tough to kill through conventional means. True, collectively, they are nigh impossible to outmatch. And more than most anything else, they owe this tenacity to two things: numbers, and R&D. Possessing some of most state of the art pinnacles in transportation, communications, and military equipment, the Armada found a knack for being able to steamroll most lesser planets before it.

The genius of the individual PAK unit grants each and any one Irken a theoretical path to partial immortality itself, by route of consciousness archiving. I strongly believe that kind of cybernetic progress was also one of the stepping stones that led to the creation of the Control Brains. Nonetheless, this very same strength of the Irkens’ has also proven to be the source of their greatest vulnerability.

Paks, Paks… Oh Paks. The entire race’s civilization revolves around such technology the way we do around our own brains, our own hearts, and our communicative network. For all intents and purposes, and as I’ve gone on about ad nauseum in my other spills about the show, a PAK is all and at once

• Synonymous with the holder of their soul, consciousness, being, whatever you want to call their personhood.

• Able to have their data repurposed by future generations, in the result of an Irken’s permanent death.

• A universal necessity shared by the entire population.

• Susceptible to alterations, sometimes by intelligent enough individuals (as demonstrated by the Zimvoid comic arc), but usually by a Control Brain, directly.

In addition to that last quality, there’s another way the code in a PAK can be changed, for better or worse- Via evolution. Though I am talking about digitized neurology, the actual data in a PAK is a lot more comparable to biological DNA or a “self-learning” AI than it is a rigid computer program. By this, I mean that its code is subject to certain changes over time, perhaps both directed and completely random, particularly during the recycling of its information back into the Smeeteries.

And this is actually good design on the control brains’ part, the same way not reproducing Irkens as genetically identical clones was. Genetic and digital diversity are desirable goals to keep in mind if you want a healthy and versatile stock of workers, engineers, soldiers, and everything in between. We’re talking about highly sentient, highly intelligent, and emotional organisms here. A static drone mindset is going to offer them inadequate ability to adapt to their lengthy life experiences or be unique persons. How else would social mobility have purpose in their world? How else could the cream of the crop rise so far above their peers? That positive was deemed worthy of an obvious risk, however: computational errors.

When the Bugs Get Bugs

 IZ does not clearly lay out what it means for an Irken to be defective, but it gives us a general idea. Defectiveness is not something diagnosed from a code scan for this missing value or that incorrect variable. It’s not judged by one specific character trait or quality that’s abnormal for an Irken to display. “Defective” is a judgement stamp, wielded by the Control Brains when they gauge the total sum value of a life’s contribution to the species. And it’s not one given to Irkens which are merely incompetent, no. Anyone proven to be unfit for their standing is given generous opportunity for redemption or simply reassigned a more suitable occupation. If it were based on likability, we’d have seen Skoodge sent to Judgementia years ago.

Rather, it’s given to those who are viewed as so twisted that they are proven to be an existential danger to their brethren. Irkens that are so destructive to the essence of the collective that their memory must be purged from the record and their identity erased.

I adore the enthusiasm behind fans who want to view this as an analogy for disability or neurodivergence against a conformist society, but the metaphor I’m seeing is one of extreme antisocial behavior. A defective Irken screams less “adhd/autism” to me than they do serial murderers (of their own) or outright traitors. Pardon the use of a gross phrase, but it’d seem we were talking about an Irken equivalent of what the outdated gens would have dubbed the “criminally insane”. No one on screen has ever shown Skoodge or Tak the sort of concern that would get them sent to the Spike of Judgement, but when Zim was in that hot seat? NO one was doubting what his verdict would be.

^ courtesy of “The Trial’s” transcript

I think about the 40 shmillion mistakes a lot.

It’s such a vague quantity. But it sure sounds like a hell of a big one. And what mistakes… what did the lil squirt even have to compare them to? There’s no standard one person an Irken can be. Every presentation of the flaws in that code to the control brains hasn’t ended up a flaw to him.

I only started writing this because I really couldn’t stop thinking about the 40 shmillion. There’s no chronological room for bad self-modding to add up to that so quickly.  DNA replication, nature’s own sloppy and random process of creating new life, can be excused around 120,000 hiccups when duplicating with a 6 billion pair-long protein. But this kind of shuffling is under a futuristic AI’s precise eye. Yes, defects happen, but as bad as him? From birth??? How could you possibly get that many detrimental deviations from the mechanical fucking god-queen(s) of their entire homeworld?

And then it hit me.

You don’t. Not from Irk.

The hot take I’ve been charging for this entire time is thus.

Zim is not defective by any random accident. In fact, I smell the tampering of foreign sabotage.

Not only is this guy the thing his kind fears more than any else, they have every right to be shaking in their stance.

That puzzle i posed at the beginning of this journey, have you seen what I’ve seen yet?

Because the answer I was looking for as to what similarity connects an anthill, a PC, and a city from Greek legend was a most effective tactic for taking them down.

Do you know the best way to deal with a bad ant infestation? Cuz you can lay down all the raid and crushing action you want, but you won’t really be getting anywhere unless you target the pests directly at their queen. To that end, liquid ant baits are marvelous inventions- a sweet substance hiding a small amount of slow acting poison. Poison to be peacefully delivered by the stomach of an ant to the rest of her colony, poisoning her kin, who sicken more members, on and on until the queen is destroyed and the entire nest perishes. An insidious toxin to do all the work while its user never lifts a finger, pretty ingenious.

And when it comes to computers, we also have ways to attack entire networks at source, from quietly and far away. “Trojan” was a category of malware responsible for 64.31% of all cyber attacks on Windows systems in 2022, and they still make up a majority of active malware hits today. The concept is deviously simple. The malicious code is hidden within an innocent looking program, maybe even within a legitimate software that does what it’s supposed to. Once the stowaway is invited into the system, it can get down to it some sneaky, nasty, destructive work on your device. As for what those acts could look like, well, malware exists to do all kinds of things. Mostly something involving trying to get money/information from you or hijacking your computer for whatever its creator wants to use it for. And some of them will just up and wreck your shit, disable your antivirus software to open you up to more infections, disable important operations, wipe your data. Use your imagination.

And as for Troy.. well, where do you think Trojan programs got their name? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, Irkens have their Armada, bionic drones, and homeworld- in other words, the thriving swarm of army ants, the billions to trillions of computers they so rely on, and their nigh untouchable fortress, always at war.

And some damn crafty bastard(s) in the stars said

“Here is their sugar-bait,”

“Here is their cyber attack,”

“Here is their wooden horse.”

And one particular race is going to be getting the last laugh before long.

Nerds That Are GOATed With the Sauce

That’s right, I thought about this all the way through to finding our prime suspect. And let me tell you, NO ONE in the Galaxy reeked of fish like the Vortians did. Get over here and lemme show you my whiteboard with all the red circles and polaroids on it.

- The Means

In a way of tragic irony, Vort has contributed more than any else to the same Irken conquest that turned on them in the end. A natural talent for cutting edge engineering and technical development actually does not seem to be what Irk already came into the ring with. For how mighty and superior they view themselves, the greatest achievements of their military can actually be owed to Vortian outsourcing. When we would have gotten a look at Tallest Miyuki’s very own “finest minds” during her reign, notice something interesting about these guys below,

Zim there is the ONLY Irken to be found! Yes, transferred there because of the punchline explanation of ‘he breaks everything he touches so maybe he’ll have an affinity for weapons research’ but damn right he actually did! And still does; I don’t want it to go unsaid that Zim has shown MUCH more technological skill and innovation than near any other Irken we’ve seen.

Another fun thing to note about this is that Lard Nar was also part of this lineup, and in the transcript he was in the process of working on the blueprints for The Massive. (which leaves you with the cursed knowledge that Zim, Prisoner 777, and Lard were all familiar coworkers long before the events of the show) And that brings me back to what I’m saying about the real reason the Vort natives were enslaved and imprisoned instead of outright sweeped after conquering. The Armada needs their skills, because Vortian advancement is something their own scientists couldn’t come close to. Left to their own devices, Vort could have easily outmatched them at an earlier point in history. It’s a people that figured out infinite power sources and potentially wormhole technology, while PAKs were something a disfigured human tween with a lot of time on his hands was able to crack. If anyone could outpace and outsmart the defensive measures of the Control Brains, it’s going to be them. And what better, cleaner way to sabotage the enemy than from within. 

The very same strings of inserted code that cursed Zim with his delusions, paranoia, lust for destruction, and horrible tactics may also have blessed him with a determination and intellect higher than almost any creature alive. The saboteur gave Irk the most powerful racecar in history, and then fitted it with bicycle brakes. No matter how hard Zim tries to conform to what will give him admiration, no matter how competent he is at keeping himself alive, it’s as if he is instinctually compelled toward whatever actions will cause the MOST damage to his allies in the process. Dib may think he’s the bulwark against the invasion when, ironically, he’s fighting against the one being that’s predetermined to be the arrow that strikes Irken leadership right in their dumb, green heels. (There is also an instance in the comics where Dib figures out that Zim is the ace in the hole for total Irken eradication but that’s another fun story.)

Oh, oh HO HO, and that’s only what he’s capable of doing before the empire’s actual immune system against defects like him wakes up and notices!

Three planetary blackouts, two dead generals, and a whole swath of dead invaders was just the fucking warm up, babey! All that is merely the kind of loud disruption that you need in order to fulfil the real thing this Trojan horse exists for in the first place.

What a celebration of hubris the Spike of Judgement was. Yeah, let’s take our method of filtering the corrupted data from the hive mind, and completely centralize it on a single planet! As well, let’s have the very purging agents also be the same ones to perform the evaluations themselves, I’m sure that it would be unthinkable for any outsider to design a worm that could make it through the brains’ firewalls. Goddamn spectacular. Like inserting an infected USB into your laptop, the Tallest never realized what kind of beast they woke up by plugging that PAK into the Spike’s mainframes. Those brains were meant to handle an expected spectrum of deviation when it came to defective Irkens, never a sleeper virus of this complexity.

From here it probably won’t even matter if Zim survives much longer on Earth, his virus has already spread to the very thing relied upon to keep things like him out of the data pool in the first place. With the Judgementia brains corrupted and no higher authority to overrule them, the firewall is effectively broken, and you know what that means? Bigger cracks for future defectives to start trickling through, both spontaneous and artificial. The ideal scenario is one where a degenerating and glitched population accelerates the incompetency of the empire to the point where it just implodes on itself; nevertheless, even a disease that only slows down Operation Doom could be a game changer, by giving the rest of the little guys more time to band together a coalition strong enough to strike back when the time is right.

- The Motive

The history of these two races’ alliance is something I lament us not having more lore to pull from- how far back it goes, what the character of the Vort was like during that time, what the Irkens had offered in return- a few among dozens of questions it rears.  The implication behind how it ended lies in Zim’s creation that slayed Tallest Miyuki. Interestingly, the Empire never received the memo of what exactly went down, or, perhaps, stubbornly denied the account of the other scientists who were there that day. Neither Red/Purple nor the Judgmentia Brains had any idea that Zim’s actions led to the death of a Tallest. So, makes sense that the Vortians became the unintentional scapegoat (no pun intended) for the incident, and the rest is history.

Note: It’s also in the realm of possibility that Vort was actually the one to withdraw from the alliance instead, given that the same blob that devoured Miyuki (purely the fault of their Irken transfer) also went on to cause untold amounts of devastation. Red’s reaction to the real story stuck out to me as more telling, although.

But why am I even talking about this? Zim was decades old before war was declared on them, and either people’s regard to each other seemed strangely… respectful, if anything.

But, was Vort really a monolithic bunch? Irk was already an empire by this point, and diplomacy with those they needed something from did not mean they weren’t otherwise an aggressive force in the universe. For all we know, the alliance itself might have been coerced, or result of depraved leadership among the Vortians.  Any citizen with a conscience who could see the writing on the walls would be disgusted by giving so much aid and brown nosing to such a menace, no? I know who would have seen that writing before anyone else. Brainiacs who are smart enough to build something like The Massive and all its bells and whistles would know better than anyone just what it was all capable of in the wrong hands. The collateral damage against your own people might be a sacrifice worth making in the face of the alternative.

- The Oppurtunity

So.. that’s all well and good, yeah? A why, and a what, yet this is actually the tricky part of saving the galaxy,

Sneaking your StupidifyIrk.exe file onto the assholes’ homeworld without alerting either them or your own treacherous, weak, collaborator superiors to your actions. Infecting and releasing a random Irken alive would be far too dangerous, far too noticeable to the point where they could just be destroyed outright before given a chance to wreak real havoc.

But what about releasing a dead Irken? 🤔

PAKs are only screened for criminal flaws when errors begin to affect their body’s behaviors in destructive ways. A fully competent scientist, or soldier, or navigator performing a lifetime of loyal service to the empire and then meeting an unfortunate end? Their minds’ shadows can be accepted back into the data pool no questions asked. That’s only business as usual.

That almost makes new smeets something of a reincarnation of their ancestors. Personally, I see it kind of like replaying a video game and re-rolling your stats, even if you’re reusing your character’s name and general play style.

Either way, we come full circle to my theory about Zim’s actual origin. Maybe not “our” Zim, but the previous iteration of data that was shuffled to create his person. Whoever they were, I’m convinced that they were also an exceptional individual. They were probably pretty arrogant, but it was a more earned confidence, and they were a prodigy genius, the likes of which that was drawn to work alongside Vortian allies, as another researcher. Then, an untimely demise befell them. I couldn’t say they fell victim to some unfortunate accident, considering the cockroach durability of their body. No, I find it a lot easier to imagine they met their end in one of the more embarrassing ways for an Irken to die- A PAK stolen, disabled or forcefully detached by an assailant they might have allowed a little closer than they should have. To the homeworld, it’s a small matter. One more PAK recovered by the natives of the friendly planet, brought back home to be repurposed by the smeeteries, right?

Well, that’s what one smartass might have been hoping for.

And they really were a clever cookie, because that scheming seed is fruiting beautifully.

My last two braincells staring at this discourse hot plate I’ve avoided touching for this long like

And ah….

Fuck it. Someone is going to ask me sooner or later or start over-assuming a world of stuff and I’d rather be on the record than not about the elephant in the room if we get to that point. It’s a question I care to try answering genuinely.

So, I wasn’t really an active participant in the larger “fandom” back when fanbase culture, especially on tumblr, was memorably a whole different ballgame. If anything, I just remember being in high school and seeing this ship actually held up as so omnipresent and near rabidly supported among same-aged fans that it makes the current popularity of it feel almost niche by comparison.

Note I said feel, because lord knows I don’t have any actual backing on this besides a personal anecdote. Someone mentioned a valid point about how people who invest a lot of energy into character shipping generally calmed the hell down relative to what it looked like in the early 2010s and I have to agree with that perspective. But I’m also rambling really off-topic now.

I don’t Ship ZaDR and in fact I actually could be counted in that crowd of strong dislikers of it. Like 7/10 times I’m a personal cringer and those 3/10 times is probs under special circumstances. I just know a lot of it squicks me out for the hopefully obvious reasons unless you tweak ages and get way into OOC range. Most of the kind of ZaDR content that would gross me tf out is, I remind myself all the time, usually from pretty young fans who just don’t understand the gap is there and how steep it is in canon. It’s not just a numbers technicality. Zim being roughly 16 in Irk years does not translate to his equivalence to a 16 Earth-year old human anymore than we can say a 6 year old… idk, kobold is developmentally level to a 6 old human child. (For non DnD fans, Kobolds are full egg-laying adults at that age even though they can live to be around 120).

Dib is a human tween, and Zim is not just at the maturity rate for his species, he’s got over an earth century of military training/service and a little fry cooking on his resume. He went through the same underground educational class with The current Tallests. Zim, Skoodge, Red, and Purple are all from the same-aged generation of Irken stock. It’s sometimes easy to forget that when Zim’s a uniquely petite, whimsical creature and the characters he spends the most time interacting with are literal middle schoolers. Imagine shipping Red with Dib instead and you might realize we really let the height, mannerisms, and voice shape a lot of perception here. Or hey, maybe that’s just my take.

I can’t make any definitive comment on the dozens of iterations of ZaDR that are changing canon factors around since A. I don’t go looking for and researching any of that out of a personal disinterest. B. Something something, idk. Eat, Drink, and be Merry, and C. It’s flatly easier and I have more to say about the show as it exists because that’s the material I have on hand to speak for. I’m not here for high school tier media literacy and moralizing shit-flinging over imaginary scenarios about imaginary people either, just continuing a Fan to Fans dialogue on the matter.

So, as best as I can manage to be both some pretend outside observer and also in a position to agree with ZaDR hate, these are the main points I believe driving the most disapproval of this ship (as perceived on face value)

• ZaDR is a ship between characters which are unquestionably considered to be an adult and child by the canon setting.

Zim, is around 16 in Irk Years, 126-150+ something or older in Earth years, and “we have no actual idea” in equivalent human years, but definitely past that of cultural and physical adult maturity. There’s no real if, ands, or buts about that reality of the show and I think this is the single thing most driving the modern push against the ship or at least the vitriolic intensity behind that push. The fact that it’s remembered as a children’s cartoon makes anything that remotely smells like a pedophilla-adjacent topic, even if/when that smell comes from kneejerk assumptions or rumors, does to shipping discourse what mishandled gasoline does to an open bonfire. Predictably and reliably. And that is something that’s been ticking up in many other fandoms right now, just so happening to also include this one.

• ZaDR taken literally is very arguably incomprehensible outside of an OOC or AU context.

And this is the kind of thing I would otherwise love to have some fervent and good faith in-depth conversations with other fans about and elaborate on if they want to contest that, but as far as I have seen, most ZaDR shippers don’t to any degree of aggressiveness that antis try to characterize of them (appealing again to limited experience). And that’s something respectable in its own right if I’m making a correct observation. Like as far as I know these characters it's borderline a stretch already to conclude that Irkens, which are uniformly asexual cyborgs, will readily bond and affectionate in a way comparable to human romantic love.

• Jhonen Vasquez openly doesn’t like ZaDR.

Not that it matters to my opinion or that there’s any prescriptive weight to his stance, but I’d wager it’s probably from some combination of the above two points. Though, those who hate the ship enough to devote entire websites or blogs to fill their time up maintaining a crusade with probably point to Vasquez’s input here more like a post-hoc justification rather than an original motivation. But it gets brought up enough that I found it worth keeping in mind in understanding the crowd.

• A possible contrarian sentiment against what can be viewed as a recent trend of every canon hero/villain rivalry becoming an etl within common fanon. Maybe also a contrarian sentiment against romantically shipping every fictional duo with a speck of chemistry by default when a friendship interpretation is no less valid.

This idea I’m kind of just speculating about instead of reporting on. Maybe also projecting…Was just kind of a gut hunch that I can understand, even if I’d still find it more than anything else on the table to be a trivial reason to be downright destructive or confrontational about broad fandom engagement. It’s also a point not remotely unique to IZ pairings. I’d feel the same way if I saw people shipping Doofensmirtz and Perry the Platypus, or, SpongeBob and squidward in a “Problematics discussion aside, this just feels like a random bandwagon because someone could” sense. I really wouldn’t be hasty to assume this is homophia based, as I have seen some people suggest, because it’s actually a complaint I see way more often from queer aromantics and asexuals (who I emphasize with, being on the grey spectrum) than straight people, but that could also be the selection bias of my circles talking. When I actually was poking a nose around the web and getting through puberty in early 2010s America, ZaDR shipping was something I associated more with the same straight girls who were borderline obnoxiously obsessed with mlm relationships (anyone else remember the hayday of the Yaoi fangirl trope?) than actual LGBT+ people trying to find representation.

But yeah I just really don’t enjoy ZaDR myself and I do sometimes get annoyed at how it’s basically the most popular and well known ship within IZ as a community. But it’s also kind of fascinating as like, a phenomenon? The entire radioactive shitstorm surrounding and watching it gain over a decade of internet history (god I feel old now) and most of all I just find it very intimidating to be both so everywhere yet at the same time so freaking gd in range of some loud hornet nests.

So in the anyway, idk, I hope that was an honest, somewhat solid contribution to the conversation here, at risk of alienating some of you if my tone came across wrong 👉👈

Btw if there’s any false impression I really hope I did not send out above all, it is any ambiguity or hypocrisy around the pro-ship stance in my intro. Just because I find iterations of ZaDR disgustang and not aligned with my view of the canon doesn’t mean any terminally online antiship/pp nonsense claims me as an ally or promoter of it, capeesh?

i know its probably not my place to ask, but im genuinely curious why so many people absolutely hate zadr? like i got the message that people didnt like zadr but i never got the reason why, yknow?