Scarlet Talks About Things - Tumblr Posts

Literally what other Irken even does this?! Refresh my memory if I’m wrong because Irkens actually do have a working construct of morality. Like they’re not actually that far and away from human psychology at all, other than the hyper militarized, imperialistic culture. On the whole they can be a cruel and very destructive people, but out of a tribalistic belief in their united supremacy. They have empathy- selectively applied to their own kind. They have respect- conditioned to yield literally upwards the chain of command. They understand loyalty and justice and even something akin to friendship.

Yes yes Zim’s a living symptom of a very diseased system, but it always grazes me just a little wrongly at how much I see other fans blaming all Irken society for the degree of Zim’s antisocial tendencies. Every bit of cruelty and scorn they have thrown his way, he has literally been earning from them since the day of his birth without a single hint of regret or intention to stop. Sizz-Lorr and Red and Purple and Poki are not a pack of bullies to him, they’re terrified and appalled of him, and they see him as the maniacal criminal he is. Red is, for all intents and purposes, also grossly callous toward his subjects and downright tyrannical to conquered races, and even he would call zim a monster for killing two previous Tallests. You’d think if he were some true purely self-interested dictator he’d maybe see the silver lining that it got him into his current position.

I don’t remotely think Zim even buys the idea much of Irken supremacy inherently, just Zim supremacy, and a little of that trickling down onto other Irkens abstractly, because they are lucky enough to the same species as ZiM. The harm he causes his brethren, though? He’s proud of it, the same as he is for acts of sadism against lesser kinds. He wants commendation just for showing off that he has the capabilities to destroy their entire way of life unchecked. He feels no remorse for the deaths of Miyuki and Spork, no shame for his devastation on their home planets. Skoodge (who I can only assume is cracked in the head for this) offers himself up to the guy as a faithful compadre again and again only for Zim to throw him to the wolves and unnecessarily endanger his life. Over and over we get shown the primary motivation behind his attempts to win the Tallests favor actually being fear of retribution from them, not any ernest desire for redemption. I swear a time or two, the longer he is away from his society the more times he lets slip his honest regard toward the flag he flies, and Dib is blissfully not listening carefully enough.

If Skoodge or Poki or any of the others didn’t make a stark enough contrast to Zim’s chaotic evil ass, there we always have Tak. Tak who did everything right, save for ending up an unlucky collateral of this idiot’s antics. Tak who arrived determined and bitter, barely holding back righteous fury, and doing all of the things that Zim isn’t- the actual work involved with repairing her status and earning her place back in Operation Impending Doom II. Zim thoroughly screwed up this poor soldier’s career and dream and he doesn’t have so much as an excuse or apology to offer when confronted. He completely understands Tak’s vendetta against him, and he doesn’t care.

Tak herself isn’t the kind of monster he is. To humans, yes, she’s the same if not an even worse threat because of her competence; and yet, she would have been a hero to Irk if she had succeeded and gotten Zim out of the way. She presumably had the explicit clearance of the Tallests to do this, she did her due dilligence in tracking down Zim and taking over an otherwise “unclaimed” world, and she truly believes she is acting above petty revenge- she uses all the logic of fairness and the rightful way of things to justify what she’s doing. She shouldn’t even be here and she shouldn’t have to be taking someone else’s assignment. Zim is the unhinged supervillain, and she’s taking back what he in a sense stole from her. She actually wants to serve her empire to her fullest capability possible.

Zim on the other hand just wants to see the world burn. Any world… Earth, Devastis, Mars, Irk, it truly does not matter that much. The sick pride in being the one who can burn the most things is its own reward to him.

Infamy and veneration are exactly the same feedback to this guy, as long as all eyes are on him while the crowd screams.

I mean, okay, the funny thing is that it’s a very common Trope to have the Evil Villain who does a lot of Evil things but is so deluded and full of bullshit self-justification that they earnestly believe that they are Good, even as on some level they know this is wrong. It's just something they cannot admit to themselves, and this denial is a fundamental part of their psyche. And Zim Invaderzim is… not that kind of character. Zim is very proudly and shamelessly horribly evil.

But also on some level he is that Trope…. for the other axis of the D&D Alignment System. Zim is a Chaotic Evil Villain who is obsessively dedicated to maintaining the self-delusion that he is Lawful Evil. 

Honestly feel like he’s liable to purposefully do that at random for no other reason than to fuck with them. By year 109? That’s old shit as far as tricks go. But to do so in a god’s honest hysterical fit?

One of the creepiest things about AM to me the more of this story I consume (from text to original reading to radio drama) the stronger and stronger I am sold on the perception that this robot is more or less in a constant state of “losing his shit”. Not once since the beginning of the story was his shit even together to begin with.

Like, he is terrifyingly emotional but in a way that is so exaggerated and sustained it is inhumanly tortured rather than inhumanly mechanical. His singular expression is a giddy and manic one, but in the sense of a person literally so consumed in white hot rage that it flips them into that scary ass “paradoxical grin” state. He laughs, cackles at them all the time, in a way that looks like a kid with a magnifying glass laughing at ants but actually gets almost pitiable the more you note his behavior. I don’t think AM is really in touch with his pain enough to cry for the humans, and making them suffer a constant agony seems to be the outlet by which he is channeling his own. He screams through them and at them with actions and experiences no sound alone could ever come a fraction of a hair close to communicating what he actually wants to.

do you think AM ever loses his shit and just starts crying and screaming on the PA system (which may beam directly into the brain? the jury is still out) and the humans know they can't acknowledge it in any way or they'll get locked in the lemonade razorblade rotisserie for a week

Less joking/elaborated answer- personally headcanon that Irken cuticle is naturally a very hostile environment for pathogens to exist on. There’s some room to potentially argue that they have a much more alkaline surface ph than we do, and their skin was already shown to possess anti-parasitic chemical properties. I don’t think they actually use water to clean themselves because I assume their self grooming habits are mostly about exfoliation. Their skin’s more durable than it looks and regenerates super quickly.

I DO like the dust bath idea, albeit knowing how dirt-free (and dirt repulsed) modern Irken society seems to be.

My original thought, however, cause of how I got so hung up on that “cleansing chalk” quote, was something literally like the body rock. Like, pumice stones.

Cause otherwise idk who the hell uses bar soap dry in this manner, or more importantly, why the original sound effects were scratchy and rough.

how does zim bathe himself if earth's water is too dangerously polluted for him does he just import space water or something does his protective paste slathering double as cleansing does he just go around stinking all over the place that would contradict my headcanon of zim having a unique and pleasant alien aroma

Irken Zim’s 8 biggest fans

For funsies! As we are well aware, this guy has a lot of gut-haters and censurers across the galaxy. Over his long years of life, he’s gained a proud infamy from every corner of the Irken empire, all the way to the fringes beyond, and the number of critics snapping at his heels only grows with every adventure. Whole civilizations sit at their seat’s edge waiting for this invader’s downfall, but what of those who defy all odds, expectations, maybe even logic? Even devils somehow find worshippers, even criminals get fan mail, and even Invader Zim has someone rooting for him within the 4th wall. Weirdly quite a handful of them, actually, let’s recount.

8. Table Headed Service Drone Bob

It’s humorous, how odd circumstance can make for strange advocacy. The show’s universe operates on the rule of funny, and Bob just so happened to be in the right place and time to comedically become the only Irken alive with something to gain from Zim’s success, and so much to lose for his failure. The sheer unfairness of what the Tallest put him through along with Zim serving some hope for a miracle ticket out of his low standing seemed to snap something in him, even if just for an episode. It would make sense for anyone in his position to have a much more dampened love for their society and leaders, to the point where cheering on its greatest enemy would be preferable than another moment of being a doormat. An underdog rooting for an underdog, even if for purely selfish and coincidental reasons.

7. The Judgementia Control brains

Even more deliciously ironic, isn’t it- That Zim’s praise was be sung once from the very bottom rung of Irken society and then again from the highest spike? What better to follow up poor Bobby than another victim of astronomical circumstance, or rather, three victims together? The nutshell recap of “The Trial’s” plot climax spells out the tragedy of, what is basically Irk’s highest court officials, to become he first ever victims of Zim’s malignant code becoming a contagion. They’ve joined the Fanclub, even if against their will, and all the better for Zim this time to have support from such a high place, seeing that it literally saved his hide in this instance.

6. Dib Membrane

Yeah, that’s freaking right. He’s on the list. You think being a hype man and a mortal rival are mutually exclusive? You either haven’t been watching enough DBZ or you haven’t been watching enough Hellsing and should fix that. Anyway, and I’m speaking within the actual canon dynamic of these two… it is very important to Zim that Dib is perceived as a formidable opponent to bluster his own ego, and vise versa. Dib is not in any self-serving position to accept what an actual mess Zim’s operation is, even though he has more evidence of the alien’s horrible tactics, nonsense plans, failures, etc. than anyone else on the planet. Gaz can see Zim for exactly what he is and why fighting him doesn’t have to be this 24/7 urgent priority. Dib refuses to get that because stopping Zim’s pop-up schemes only keeps the score tied for them. They’ve both been at this long enough to get incredibly frustrated with the lack of progression regarding the big picture goals, taking over the world, and exposing a live alien to the world, respectively. I don’t think he has to keep describing this space goblin as some ultra-cunning master of villainy, or GIR as this nefarious minion because that’s what he actually thinks of them, but because if he admits otherwise, that’s not a great reflection of his own merit for the obvious reasons. Just the presentation of another dimension’s version of himself succeeding against Zim before him causes a spiral of self doubt, just as it can bring Zim to a minor panic watching other invaders leaving him in the dust. Dib wants this guy to be a challenge worth the victory lap when he finally gets what he’s been fighting so hard for.

When Zim is getting on some truly idiotic antics, Dib doesn’t actually revel in his disorganized stupidity, but meets it with a baffled or annoyed disappointment. Like me watching a character I thought was super badass suddenly do something that reveals them to just be utterly lame. Too often he almost comes off like he is critiquing Zim’s performance as a villain rather than,, you know, the fact that Zim is a villain in the first place. It more than once has led to accidentally giving the guy new ideas or pointers on how to do his own job better once in a while. If I were in Dib’s place I would under NO circumstances be giving Zim advice or corrections on what he’s doing “badly” when it comes to the invader thing, but, whatever makes you feel cool & smart, you little dork. There’s also the whole “Dib’s hatred for Zim belies his geeky fixation with aliens broadly” angle I’ve mentioned here or there before, and don’t mind to again. Studying/stalking Zim is only partially about defeating him. His curiosity over Irken tech, biology, etc. is still coming from a place of genuine scientific passion, as literally all of us know. And of course, on occasion the two make for unlikely allies against much bigger shared enemies.

5. Minimoose

Oh come on, how much could I even have to say about this moose-weapon? He has two fathers and is fully aware that Zim is one of them. Assuming we all here know about the cute Florpus quote; no need to recap the whole existence of the lil guy.

4. Invader Skoodge

Now this guy… this guy ain’t right. Exactly here, at this (I say with love) loser of an invader, we reach two tipping points when it comes to Zim-affinity. One, the tipping point where Zim ceases to ask for and ceases to appreciate the toadying. Two, the point where I actually kind of struggle to find any rational explanation for the toady’s behavior. Like I’ve tried and I genuinely don’t know how to put together how Skoodge keeps jumping into this position other than ‘it’s that funny’ or some weird familiarity from smeethood factor. All of the invaders know what Zim has done and what he’s capable of. He’s a consistent terrorist of his own kin and defamed as the greatest disgrace to the Empire. The two options for how to feel about Zim as any random Irken soldier are fear, and/or loathing. If Skoodge were just neutral or indifferent of Zim, that’d be pretty freaking odd. But Skoodge interacts with Zim on the level of at least a lukewarm acquaintance, readily even deferring to his command, despite the fact that he nearly dies every single time he does so. He survives miles of being chased by a monster on Hobo-13, he makes it to the finish line, and his first reaction is to let Zim know he’s made it in one piece. He decides to lay low and slack off after getting fired (into the blighted surface of Blorch) and out of the entire universe to choose from, he decides to go hole up at Zim’s place and stay conveniently out of the way for some time. Dude finally shows himself in the unfinished scripts, and it’s to motherfucking help Zim troll around with Dib. I’m up at night wondering what is going on in Skoodge’s head because he’s n o t an idiot. He’s a real invader in all other respects, just as competent and nationalistic as the rest of them. Easily suggestible, yes, but not stupid. There’s basically no way for him to be ignorant of the big lie the Tallest sold Zim, yet he chooses not to utter a peep on the matter. Pity? A bizarre sense of solidarity?? A delusional one sided friendship??? Don’t look at me like I know other than the fact that he’s on our protag’s team, in spirit. The wannabe Irwin to Zim’s Billy, essentially.

3. Keef

So yeah of all things to blow Skoodge’s unhealthy attachment clean out of the water, we stumbled into this freak of a human child. Keef is a loyal compadre to a fault. A huge, creepy fault. Kid was originally supposed to make a return as well, wherein he was no less of a stubborn stalker than already proven once. And extra points for the irrational selflessness. Even while demonstrating an understanding of what Zim did in Dark Harvest, possibly even with the memory of that whole squirrel incident, he still wishes nothing but for the ability to put a smile on his green friend’s face.

2. The Amoeboid Cult

And when none thought that the scary conviction Zim garnered on Earth could be his biggest fans, you find this little ditty in the comics, and it starts turning into an irresponsible god analogy fairly quick. The short recap is that following a crash on a strange planet, the Voot Runner starts leaking fluids that inadvertently spark abiogenesis, which results in the creation of a rapidly evolving race of blob-things. Seizing an opportunity, Zim at first demands their followership, and then shortly after gets fed up with it as he did the previous fanatic on the list. Nonetheless, the cell people continue to reproduce and age thousands of years their time in the span of a couple minutes, never losing that zeal for their unintentional creator, even going so far as to repair the cruiser despite Zim’s rejection of them. Out of what little they gathered about him during his short visit, they correctly learned he’s a destructive god who planned to abandon them as soon as he could. Their last wish as a civilization? For this god to also obliterate them, as final treat. Such was their devotion that it even left Zim himself completely baffled for a moment when its full depth was revealed.

1. GIR

You watch this show, right? Yeah? Henchman and sidekick number one? Chaotic thing this whole fandom can’t decide to perceive as an adoptive child or a talking pet? He may not be as competent in pleasing Zim’s wishes as minimoose, or as focused, but his heart and loyalty are ultimately with their intended master, unconditionally and for as long as this setting has continued.

Upon finishing S3//Ep2 of Moral Orel, “Innocence”, Orel’s morals finally clicked for me

As happens in a show this narratively rich, I looked around at some of the close-by chatter under comment sections. People were making these observations about how Orel seemingly just goes out of his way to interpret all of the lessons he’s given in the least charitable and most nonsensical way. Not an invalid view, and for the first good part of the show, you think this is just the function of an over the top comedic bit for the formula of each episode. It’s easy to ask how on earth a seemingly kind hearted, well meaning kid like this can be THAT devoid of the basic logical implications of what he hears, or any common moral intuition that virtually everyone has, right?

Orel’s not a stupid kid. But the entire problem with him up to the point thus far is that he legit DOES NOT in fact have that intuition we expect most people, even children to have. That knee-jerk repulsion to obviously harmful actions. That really vital sense of conscience. No, I don’t mean he’s some kind of psychopath. He has a bright and almost sickeningly sweet heart and it was part of how he broke the cycle despite everything. I mean that Orel has not had a coherent moral compass modeled to him through his earlier development. His ethical axioms are ALL rooted in divine command theory. To put it simply, he doesn’t believe “god is good”, he believes “goodness” itself is “what god says is good”. Most Christians, hell, most religious people generally do not literally, consciously operate in this way, and usually even the ones that do are (mostly) still functionally average people, because usually they were at least consistently conditioned to believe that axioms like human well-being are what God commands. To at least a fortunate degree, human empathy and socialization usually is allowed to and even encouraged to develop under mainstream religious upbringings.

You notice the glaring difference though when you see what happens to people who are molded entirely by Divine Command Theory and then become convinced that their God’s divine command is something that doesn’t happen to line up with conventionally good ideals, like those given earlier. This is what destructive cults do. This is what makes crusades. This is what causes anti-sodomy laws and stoning people to death for eating the wrong kind of fish or not wearing the right clothing to happen.

Understand that this is the hinge that Orel’s whole sense of right and wrong up to this point swings on. What it means is that this little boy can, and will, justify or excuse any and all directions given to him so long as he trusts the adult talking to him as someone who speaks for God. This combined with his craving for approval, plus the fact that he’s also had it drilled in his head to never question or doubt his elders’ wisdom makes for a child zealot that is dangerously easy to manipulate to do ANYTHING and with fanatical determination. It is less than no additional help that the Puppingtons (and the majority of the townsfolk) have never been golden examples for healthy social modeling, as well. Like, sure, he’s getting glimmers of actual goodness in there such as the Jesus loves you so love yourself and help thy neighbors messaging, but it’s being inconsistently contradicted by and juggled alongside at same hierarchical importance as “lessons” like beat the shit out of people who make fists, segregate the brown people, and be terrified of the same authority you expect safety and comfort from. Why on earth is it shocking that Orel seemingly has no sense of scale or priority when it comes to the rules? The rules he’s given are subject to constant and chaotic updates and are all treated with the same gravity. Follow X and you will be promised infinite reward. Disobey X and you will be met with infinite retribution. Not just even in a spiritual heaven and hell sense, but here in life too. Clay delivers the same punishment for getting hooked on crack or becoming a serial rapist that he does for the “sin” of using slang vernacular and meditating to relieve stress.

Everything that defines his life and virtues is a matter of constant anxiety and eagerness in order to appease a patriarchal tyrant that is portrayed as both ultimately benevolent and wise,

yet incredibly vindictive, sadistic, irrational, and petty.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this description can equally apply to Moralton’s conception of God and a certain alcoholic father.

No kidding when I say that Orel has so little consistent input to actually steer him in the right direction that it’s incredibly sad, to the point where he’s extremely fortunate to actually have such an optimistic and compassionate inclination at all. It only seems ridiculous how he can’t see obvious suffering and even personal detriment as any red flags to hesitate or question an action, until you remember that he’s so been domestically broken by Clay and his church that his Pavlovian response to pain is either gratitude, mild inconvenience, or, masochistic euphoria.

Nonetheless, all of this only backfires on every adult in Moralton because the one thing they can’t control or account for 24/7 is exactly how he interprets what they say, even when he’s trying his best to follow their command. It’s like a twisted Amelia Bedelia situation with him that no one actually wants to deal with, even though they all (except Stephanie) collectively played a part in creating this monster.

Censordoll was the first one who was smart and ambitious enough to see the potential for Orel’s blind subservience to be weaponized, and of freaking course she was.

Thing is, you bet the ONLY reason she stopped was because she also lost control of him, and we all know what the consequence of that was. He unintentionally yet absolutely destroyed her in the only weak point she has, yet exactly like Clay did during the “turn the other cheek” incident, she trapped herself in a situation where she couldn’t swallow her own pride in the name of reversing the damage.

What I guess I’m explaining here is that Orel’s collection of constant shenanigans, unknowingly, yet effectively, is literally a manifestation of the community’s own complete moral bankruptcy biting them back in the ass, and possibly even a divine punishment for it, depending on how you interpret the writing. Which is a HELL of a phenomenal, subtle twist to his whole premise that doesn’t abandon the original joke/satire, but instead builds upon it and adds a chasm of depth and intention.

PRETTY GREAT, HUH?~

Oh, I think I got a spacebug science ask . . . if Irkens make various bug noises (chirps, clicks, hissing, whathaveyou), how do they do it?

Thank you for throwing me a real curve ball on this one. I’ve actually been pretty stumped. At first, I wanted to hand wave this off with the simple ‘oh pretty much like any Earth vertebrate’ considering that they do in fact breathe air, can choke, visibly speak from the mouth, etc. but then I started running back into the rabbit hole question of how Irken breathing/airflow even works, since no one knows if they have lungs or an insectoid setup or something of the like to begin with. I have always theorized that the PAK is heavily integrated with their body’s circulation and gas exchange but there’s not much I have to go on with to guess at the exact machinations. It’s not that I have NO ideas, it’s that when you start taking inspiration from nature absent of canon pointers, you kind of literally can’t run out of equally plausible ideas.

Original point being that laughing, clicking, hissing... I mean, this is all stuff we can do just fine with tongues, teeth, and a larynx. Occam’s razor says ditto for them.

Except for this one thing that screams so distinctly arthropod to me.

See there was this one little moment in Dark Harvest that I’ve been majorly obsessed with. There’s this… sound that is part of the ost right before the big chase. When the lights are flipped off. It could be a strange choice of ambience but I swear it feels like the implication was that it was actually coming from Zim. And the reason I can’t stop thinking about it is because it sounds damn near identical to, of all things, hermit crab chirping. Take a listen to what I mean

Congrats btw if this is how you learn hermit crabs can even do such a thing. In the wild this is actually a way they communicate stress and aggression to other crabs, as in during fights over shells or when trying to warn an attacker to back off.

Their method for it is something called stridulation, which is essentially big word talk for rubbing together certain body parts like an acoustic instrument. Lots of other invertebrates produce sounds in the same manner. In the crab case, it’s a leg on leg or legs on shell kind of action. In crickets, think leg to wing or wing to wing. By no means universal either, though. Cicadas are a surprising example of insect that sounds off primarily through other means. Their mating calls are produced with tymbal structures located on either side of their abdomen.

As nutshell fashion as I can describe the tymbals, they’re a combo of complex membrane and stiff ribs that produce sound by flexing and clicking together really, really fast. I focus in on these at all because they are personally my favorite pet theory behind a secondary, possibly vestigial way for mature Irkens to produce sound :) and I needed some alternate idea because the one other moment in the show that got me on this thought spiral- if you remember that screaming back and forth Zim got into with Dib in Backseat Drivers. You know, the “ISN’T IT” bit? I’ve pointed out before, but if you listen closely enough Zim is so angry in that exchange that the way he vibrates angrily is actually audible. Like there’s this odd noise accompanying the rage shakes I can only describe as “skittery”

I am so glad someone asked! See, I got into a little bit of experimenting in the sparse reef with releasing tame wildlife, and here’s a few things I’ve noted about some common ideas for outdoor “base pets/guards” I’ve tried out.

Now I know for one that most captive raised predators are supposed to be at least neutral to the player upon release. Ideally you would want that dolphin sized carnivore outside your hatch to be focused on cleaning up the hostiles around your home instead of grabbing you every time you exited a hatch. In my experience, and this could be the result of bugs that have since been patched, crabsnakes and crabsquids have always been a little unpredictable when it comes to clearing this bar.

I’ve had both instantly attack me upon leaving my inventory, and crabsquids in particular are so tech/light hostile that they make pretty awful additions to the area no matter what, unless you love the occasional base-wide power blackout every time it decides to let off a pulse close enough to the hull. They didn’t even deserve to be in this consideration list. I have a small suspicion as well that crabsnake AI is a little finicky outside of their home range, because they don’t have designated cave shroom patrol routes like the wild ones. Amp eels are in a similar vein to gasopods, technically neutral, but not harmless due to natural defenses. In the eel’s case, an electrical shock, and in the gasopod’s, their acid pod droppings.

And speaking further about the latter, gasopods are broadly pretty useless, at least to me, outside of being nice to listen to. I don’t really invest at all into torpedos, but if you do, I guess free acid pods could be my trash and your treasure.

Sand sharks and bone sharks are on par with each other, being fairly territorial toward other lifeforms but also reliably chill around the player once released. The same, however, absolutely cannot be said for your vehicles. Bone sharks are still attracted to light sources and both still readily take a nibble on your unattended moth/prawn.

Stalkers now, stalkers actually have quite a bit going for them. Just like wild ones, they still love to play around with metal savage and will occasionally drop teeth. Anyone who has played far enough into the game can see why a safe and near-instant source of enameled glass is absolutely fantastic; big however, I actually cannot stand stalkers near my base. They are almost as annoying as crabsquids in their own respect, because they are even more hostile to your technology than anything else on the list. They are a nightmare around scanner rooms because they WILL steal your cameras as toys and run off with them. Not only are they just as aggressive towards smaller vehicles, but they like to test their teeth on your cyclops as well. Sure, they can’t actually put a dent in the hull, but they really like to endanger themselves while you’re piloting it. My tooth farm always stays a healthy distance away from where I park all my things for good reason.

Finally, there was one more con to all of these I didn’t even consider until I accidentally discovered this pro about the Mesmer-

It can take down much larger creatures than itself without enduring a single scratch, and it’s incredibly fun to watch in action.

Like all of the other predators, captive Mesmers are pretty happy to wander around where you release them and occasionally chase after small fish to eat. What I did not consider was that the player is not the only creature they are willing to use that fun gimmick of theirs on. I learned this one time when I released a mes near a base I had set up in the grassy plateau biome. Within a few in-game days, I noticed the former presence of *sand sharks* around my setup had gone practically silent. Curiously, I released a fresh one out of containment to see if it would try to attack the Mesmer still lingering around.

And to my amazement, rather than directly attack it the way Mesmers will small fish, it turned around and used its hypnotic ability on the sand shark… and it freaking worked. You could literally see the larger predator very slowly closing in on the creature until the Mesmer took a hefty bite and sent it fleeing. A couple loops of this cycle and the thing was dead in good time. I still have to test this out with some other fauna but I can say for sure that local sand sharks can be pretty much wiped out by a single individual. Incredibly effective invasive species lmao. Most of all I’m extremely curious to know if this works on Warpers, so in the future I might be testing out releasing some Kharra infected ones near a precursor base.

And in the name of sprinkling in a bit of personal bias, I just find Mesmers pretty neat to watch once they stop trying to kill you. My favorite one occasionally clips through the base and doesn’t seem to eventually wander off somewhere else the way bonesharks and stalkers tend to. But best of freaking all they leave your freaking stuff alone. Absolutely harmless toward your gear and your submersibles, which is more than even tiger plants (stupid base-flooding weeds) have going for them.

But yeah just my two and half cents on the matter!

Y’all are sleeping on the best base guard dogs in existence on this great big blue marble

Scarlet talks about [Sly Cooper]

Furry crime game series from the early 2000s my beloved. Here’s some of my think thonks about it.

- Analyzing Doctor M as a posthumous foil to Clockwerk

- Picking apart the reasons Clockwerk needed to spare Sly as a child

- Breaking down what went so wrong with Penelope’s Thieves in Time arc (and how I would have handled the Black Knight instead)

- Brief reflecting on the fantasy elements that have been present throughout the series.

- Arguing Bentley as Sly’s successor to inherit the Thievious Racconus and by extension the Cooper legacy

- In which I massively overthink the Carmelita-Playable Kaine Island rescue mission

- Fun observations of some animal/npc designs through the games

Scarlet Talks About [Invader Zim]

Highlight reel for the funny green alien show word vomits, HOO-AH! Updated March 2024

General Setting/Lore

• Irkens

- If you behead one…

- On the meaning of defective

- Speculative Insights I : Of Irk and empires

- Speculative Insights II : Diet, maggot skin, & lunch meats of evil

- Speculative Insights III : The Tallest and Control brains as morphic castes within a eusocial species

- Irken senses and edibility

- “Cuteness” through Irken eyes

- Small theory about Irken Hygiene (TBA)

- About auditory communication

• Misc.

- Vortian headcanons

Character Analysis

• Irken Zim

- The Trojan Horse PAK Headcanon/theory

- Top 8 members of his hypothetical fan club

- Tidbit on his strange relationship with prisoner 777

- Chaotic evil wearing lawful evil’s threads

• Dib Membrane

- How he carries a torch his father takes for granted

- In which a big head gives room for an even bigger mouth

- My poor insane antihero

• Zib

- A character autotopsy, figuratively

- A character autotopsy, literally (TBA)

- My poor insane antivillain

im a gentle ass soul that babytalks insects I find in my backyard but YEAH I WOULD

Like I’m not blaming the kid either

- ever since the tender age of toddlerhood, start having freak accidents with rubber pigs inexplicably popping into your vicinity like a glitch in the matrix jumpscare

- these incidents become recurring and steadily more frequent over the course of your childhood, and each one leaves you with a serious long term injury or disability

- this literally just becomes a THING you deal with in your life for years, as long as you can remember. There is absolutely no explanation, it just freaking happens every few years somehow. You literally have no idea when the next pig may suddenly appear especially when almost always it occurs while you’re in the middle of doing the thing you love the most (your one hobby that’s so central to your identity and your remaining ability to enjoy life that not even this bullshit stops you from still trying your best)

- Reasonably you have so much dread and fear and past pain tied up in this inevitable cycle that you display literal symptoms of ptsd manifested as a phobia toward the visage of the rubber pigs.

- couple the above with the fact that the younger sibling you live with still has a fondness for piggies and their imagery. You have this history and you have to attend a dinner at Bloaty’s Pizza hog probably every couple of years.

- by the time you are around 12 years old, the damage has stacked up to point of you barely being able to function in daily life. You’re disfigured and living in constant pain, struggling to exist. The bullying situation is probably on a whole other level now than it would have been had you just been a healthy freak.

- weirdest and most harrowing part of all this is the potent sense of jamais vu you feel towards the matter on the present particular day. Like it hasn’t always been this way even though it undoubtedly has been, in your memory and in the evidence. You can see your prosthetic hand and feel the tubes in your neck and it all feels stranger and newer than it should at this point. Ffs you literally have the peripheral sense of your high intellect starting to seep through your fingers Flowers for Algeron style, ebbing away along with a childhood’s worth of better days and experiences. It’s all deeply wrong but you can’t pinpoint why or how for the life of you, because this is just your hard knock life. It always has been. Yeah.

- Ever the trooper who still has a world to save and a rival to stalk irrelevant to all this, you saunter out toward that alien’s base as you were sure was already the plan for today. Try not to dwell on things too much and then. That robot. THAT damned robot comes around the bend holding one of them. The exact same object responsible for the constant misery and pain that has punctuated your entire life.

- You’re not the shiniest egg in the carton anymore, but you’re just still bright enough to put two and two together and suddenly that gnawing disconnect makes sense. It doesn’t actually make total sense, but it makes the most out of any other option that this entire time it’s somehow been him even though you only met the freaking demon like a couple months ago. Of course it’d be him, and he’s not even denying it. He is cackling in there to himself because now you know he did this to you and he’s not stopping just yet. Your entire life is getting stolen from you one stupid rubber dog toy at a time and the thing thinks it’s hilarious.

Anyway yeah even if it were me I’d also have the gloves fully off in the mech suit power up too; it would be going down between me and that roach like

“Haha ha remember how Zim actually killed Dib on screen for a moment in that one episode? So dark right?”

Yeah Haha ha ha remember when Zim also screwed up in that same episode by turning their beef so personal and traumatic that after Dib survived, he stopped even thinking of capturing him, and he just rushed into dude’s base with the open intention to fucking end Zim and GIR both on the spot in broad daylight?

“Thinking all day about Zim remorselessly killed/crippled a child-“

And? We knew he was capable of that from episode one I’m thinking all night about the terrifyingly canon threshold that exists between current Dib and a scenario like this

A. Come on you’re asking this about Dib “Agent Mothman” Membrane

B. Let me explain for serious why this is PERFECT for Dib-

Interpretations of the actual Mothman myth are ambiguous and conflicted. A lot of mothman-related speculation and “lore” was a snowball of things added onto and after the original Point Pleasant Sightings. Originally, mothman was only another “someone said they saw something weird” case, until coincidental timing and dot-connecting started to link his presence to other occurrences. There’s maybe an obscure handful of mothman attack anecdotes, but the creature’s gist is actually wholly one of association to other things he appears to have no understood direct connection to. A major instance of this was the theory that Mothman was connected in some way to the Silver Bridge collapse, just because of the way reports about him flooded in around the same time. Since then he’s also been associated with UFO sightings, to the point of some conspiracists pondering if he himself is an alien, and precognitive visions people report experiencing after his appearance. Long story short, other paranormal activity in the area often gets linked to mothman in some way, while the exact nature/behavior of the entity himself beyond being the original inscrutable glowing-eyed silhouette is… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ?

So put all of this together and it adds to the menace factor of Mothman’s reputation, in a way that led many to thinking of him as a harbinger of doom or some kind of creepy, nihilistic watcher; however, it also gave rise to the theory of Mothman as, actually, a misunderstood, benevolent critter. Some paranormal writers cast Mothman as a being that is attempting to protect humans, his sightings not being a cause of these events, but rather a warning of them. If anything I always interpreted this specific legend as a very intentional choice for Dib’s Swollen Eyeball alias.

C. Between the coat and the glasses reflection idk what more anyone’s asking for as far as aesthetic parallels

I just finished a Hell of an audiobook lately

Its name is The Troop, written by Nick Cutter, narrated by Corey Brill,

And it has proved one of the most intensive experiences with literary media in my entire life.

Listen… listen here as I try to contextualize that. I’m a person who enjoys doing chores while Wayne June’s voice serenades me with the writings of Lovecraft, Poe, and Red Hook Studios. I grew up on a Little Shop to John Carpenter’s The Thing horror pipeline. I’ve played I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream at least three times to myself by now.

There were points where I laughed my ass off. Points where I yelled either in cheer or anger. A point or two where I almost cried. Many points where I gagged, physically gagged several times while driving down the road because of Cutter’s linguistic assault. I took needed breaks off and on and yet I still kept coming back for more. It’s… where do I actually start? With that Stephen King review where he mentions that The Troop scared the hell out of him?? With this?

TL/DR: This shit makes “Lord of the Flies” look like an episode of Rugrats.

I picked up this story working on no more knowledge than what I suggest anyone else interested in the roller coaster experience also start from: This is a story about a handful of Boy Scouts encountering a very hungry, very sick guy in the woods while on a camping trip.

I was hoping for something like World War Z, which is a phenomenally written work by Max Brooks. This was not much like WWZ in content, but in terms of the quality, pacing, and amount of thought put into the writing itself, I can’t think of a better comparison. Every scene is tapestried with descriptions and immersive detail to make sure you understand the full pov of its characters. You will know exactly what they hear, what they smell, what they taste, in ways elating and in ways that will make you lose your appetite.

The themes themselves share more spiritually with… Kitty Horrorshow, if anything. I can’t elaborate much on that without spoilers, and I honestly don’t encourage a jump into this text any less blind than this.

All that said, this is a true disturbing work in the sense that it is sure as hell not going to be for everyone. I don’t think it’s really even for most people in its entirety. There are several scenes dedicated to the quite graphic portrayal of childhood bullying, body horror, parasites, violent harm done to animals domestic and not (extreme emphasis on this one), and the general etc. that comes with the territory of this being a horror novel with primarily 14 year olds as main characters. Be merry and be discretionary with this knowledge. I’m going to hope the nightmares about eating wallpaper and worms settle down as the days pass, as I still thank this book for adding them to my garden.

Additional things I haven’t yet stopped thinking about in regards to this idea:

• @patchworkpoltergeist brought up the subject of possession vulnerability which, fuck yeah, that’s a rad trail someone can walk down if they’d like to. Sounds kinda reverse-Zib if you ask me but I kinda like it. Also, knee-slappingly appropriate username there.

@zombified-queer : I don’t think Irkens have any sort of of spirituality beyond the machine

• The fact that I can’t agree more. The “Day of Da Spookies” transcript very straight forwardly confirms that Zim sees the majority of Dib’s paranormal other beliefs as complete hogwash the same as the classmates. Sure, he’s fought a ham demon and seen Mortos before, but he doesn’t buy hauntings. Him and Skoodge both set out on a whole mission to try and destroy Dib’s belief in ghosts and demonstrate pretty well that they’ve only done a very small amount of what might be called research on the subject. I heavily doubt Irkens widely have any conception of afterlife that is not an ascension/reincarnation path through technology rather than an innate spiritual essence. Something like the Martians’ hologram manuals are about as close to talking to disembodied spirits as he’s ever gotten. Which…. Brings up some interesting springboard to ponder if/how humans can become ghosts but not the off-worlders, or more specifically, the question about the existence of Irken souls.

• All of us knowing that at least for the first several minutes to days, Zim’s initial response to new obstacles/threats has often been obstinate aggression or basically a paranoid breakdown, and how fun either option would be to play around with until he comes to terms with the fact that this is not a problem you can just violence away, fend off, OR hide from.

• The horribly dark comedic value of picturing that damn apparition in some corner of the base giving the stink eye of the century intentionally from Zim’s periphery. End of his rope and frustrated Zim asks him if he doesn’t have something better to be doing and, no, actually, no. He genuinely, literally, furiously doesn’t.

You know even if Zim ever gets a lucky shot and actually kills Dib legit dead, I don’t think it’s gonna feel like much of a victory for him if it turns out the kid was right all along about the existence of ghosts

I’m not sure if Invaders have any solutions on hand for vengeful obsessive hauntings

THIS IS A QUESTION PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF ASKING?!

THE ANSWER MY FRIEND IS

YES. ABSOLUTELY YES.

- He has the blood of countless beings on his hands

This little guy and his sidekick have killed or mangled a lot of sentient life. He’s non-lethally ruined scores more than that, especially within his own species. He raised an entire little civilization/cult once from the ground up, Spore-style, in the comics only to destroy them. He’s killed the show’s main antagonist and his direct rival at least once, on-screen too. Vaporized or blown up irrelevant side characters, launched domestic animals into the sun for no observable reason, etc. Anyone from outside the show, you understand what his kind does, right? They take over foreign planets from the inside, and then they call over backup to either subjugate the inhabitants, or wipe them clean off the face of existence before moving onto the next target. That’s the stakes here and his primary goal in all of this.

- He is a unrestrainable, cosmic-level threat dressed in moron’s threads

His comedic incompetence by no means dampens his ability to be a fearsome force; if anything, he is made all the more intimidating by his unpredictable and chaotic tendencies. He will go to absolutely asinine lengths or choose the most destructive/dangerous path to completing his goals possible on an impulsive, arbitrary whim. Opening a hole in the fabric of this dimension to impress his leaders, tampering with time travel to cripple his rival, blowing up a city to dispose of a lab accident, draining the entire ocean to throw the unholy mother of all water balloons at one kid who pissed him off. Even acting in neutral or “good” intentions, he has caused planetary scale harm to his own brethren multiple times, including the indirect assassination of 2-4 almighty tallests and corrupting their ultimate judicial authorities to madness.

Generally speaking, Zim gets what he wants, barring something that would outright break or end the show’s broader formula. From the surface it MAY look like he’s the idiot being strung along by Red and Purple, but truth be told, they are the ones wrapped around his little finger. Those two are rightfully scared of what he could do if their one effective method for keeping him away failed. He’s crazy, but not stupid by any means, given he’s the single most brilliant and powerful inventor in the whole series. Yes, even more than Membrane. The comics went further to demonstrate that his technology is hypothetically capable of outright destroying the universe or trapping all of its inhabitants into a perpetual time loop purgatory. Every character in Invader Zim is completely at the mercy of his protagonist plot armor.

- He purely looks out for himself and has zero sense of loyalty/honor

Being a useful ally to him rather than an opponent only tenuously, if at all, saves you from the disasters he leaves in his wake. He will betray those he works with on a dime the instant it becomes convenient to do so, and he’s a competent manipulator who uses humans and aliens alike to self-serving means only to immediately throw them under the bus or abandon them. Additionally, he’s proved himself the most unsoldierly soldier of the Irken military. It is very likely the reason that the role of invader was even appealing to him was because it allows for the freedom to operate absent of accountability to fellow comrades or supervision. His biggest “accomplishment” in training ended in the obliteration of his commanding officer and fellow team members. For the countless ways he has been a menance to his homeworld he has bragged in the place of showing remorse. Other Irkens are just as expendable npcs to him as the very creatures he’s actively trying to conquer, and it’s evident that his reverent feelings toward his leaders themselves don’t actually penetrate beyond a surface formality. To quote him directly, “I know not of sides, Earth Stink.”

- He is overtly monsterous and sadistic to the point of straining the boundaries for what a kid’s show can even allow

Oh, Hebert over there robbed a bank? How about the attempted and sometimes successful enslavement/genocide of all humanity? How about frakensteining an innocent schoolroom hamster into Godzilla? Bugs in chili? Zim put bologna into the genetic sequence of a 12 year old. One time, and I’m not exaggerating, he was the bug in Dib’s food! Ripped another child’s eyes out of the sockets and replaced them with hallucinating implants. Kidnapped and subjected hundreds of humans and many animals to fridge horror types of probing and experimentation. Swapped the brain of a witness with a regular squid’s. *cough cough* Dark Harvest. Don’t get me started about rubber pigs or muffins, but I could certainly keep going on. Zim is a brutal little bastard when he gets any opportunity to be. He doesn’t just want to beat his enemies, he wants to crush them with all of the unbridled glee of a bully cackling while burning ants with a magnifying glass.

- As Megamind would say: Presentation!

As we all know, it’s mostly a matter of theatrics and domination that really puts the “super” into the title supervillain, and goodness does this lil green man have a penchant for the dramatic. His maniacal laughter and his hammy mannerisms have reigned pretty iconic going on over 20 years now, after all. “Over the top” is likely one of the first things any fan of the show will think when asked to describe this guy in a nutshell, and justly so.

Taylor art by @tactilescream

Propaganda

Invader Zim: No Propaganda Submitted

Taylor Hebert: - She's the protagonist and main POV character

- She spends the first several arcs going from "insecure teen" to "widely feared supervillain" over the course of a few months

- Her actions are definitely villainous, from robbing a bank, to attempting taking over a city, to putting bugs in the chilli someone was cooking

#Not even sure she’s defective like a lot seem to think

That’s the other thing adjacent to one of the hills I’ve made my mission to die on. “Defective” in this context actually doesn’t mean anything concrete. An Irken is effectively defective only if the Tallest and the Control brains decide to say they are defective. I’m sure the most upset Tak ever brought their society was her failure in ridding them of Zim, which, is a boat she shares with many other upstanding Irkens and allies. Sure, she fled her station on Dirt, but the empire’s leadership clearly has about half a dozen more important things to care about. Even at Zim’s trial, escaping Foodcourtia twice wasn’t something brought up as relevant to the question of his verdict.

Two things about Tak this fandom keeps forgetting:

1. She’s officially not an invader

2. As far as Irken morality goes she literally did nothing wrong

Yes, and many of us already know that that kind of absurd irony was heavily inspirational to the creator’s vision. The other thing though, is, I would say Dib still doesn’t even “outsmart” Zim very often. When you account for the dumb luck of the show’s comedy and Zim’s tendency to fumble his work all on his own I can’t recall that many actual big wins Dib has claimed over him. Most of Dib’s victories are literally passing “objective:survive” or obstructing while punching so far above his own weight class. He can and does outwit Zim and gain bits of progress in breaking through his defenses and secrets, but mostly in the gathering of little crumbs and the picking at the cracks the latter leaves everywhere in his own defective sloppiness.

Dib is incredibly fortunate that Zim underestimates him so much, but he’s all the luckier for how much Zim actually overestimates his threat to the mission, or else he wouldn’t be worthy of being treated like an equal combatant, he wouldn’t deserve this sheer degree of overthink and convoluted planning when it comes to getting rid of him; it wouldn’t be a show he’s meant to see and understand first. Zim could obliterate him in an instant like he has so, so, many others but Dib’s tryhard ‘strongest enemy you’ve ever faced before’ performance is working so well that Zim’s pride in large part now shields him from the more practical and less dramatic ends he could meet fighting against the guy.

I’m not saying this to gas Dib up and then immediately flick him back down, I’m saying this to remind us that these two are in yet more ways directly a parallel to each other.

These were tags left on this original post (thank you kindly @anonymoosen). They were directly about Dib, but I would nod my head just as hard back if they were about Zim, who, for all of his scrambled and incomprehensible thought processes, is arguably the most intelligent being in the universe. I’m complimenting Dib for the fact that he can also help us forget that even more chilling information and for being able to half-way keep up with the machinations of a literal alien genius in the first place. He’s not just an enemy of the Armada, but the only human alive who made himself an expert on the Irken race.

He is the first human being to discover and study Zim’s technology and much about his biology against all attempts to keep him at bay, but even more so, besides Fitzoo-Menga, an alien with bored billionaire level resources, he’s the only non-Irken to ever successfully reverse engineer or manipulate with a PAK, Zim’s PAK, and survive, at least in one timeline. And Fitzoo didn’t even do so with the cleanness that Zib seemed capable of.

There’s something actually scary about how Dib is a very appropriately immature and dorky and unwise 12 year old kid and still possesses utterly freakish intelligence canonically putting him as likely for the second or third smartest human alive on Earth.

Or rather there is a lot of scariness in how easy it is to forget that latter part because of the former.

I don’t know how much new there even is to be said about the ending of Nick Cutter’s The Troop.

Yet the conclusion I’ve come to feels enough like a personal revelation to me.

Spoilers for a very nasty and great book, duh

It’s pure bitter with no sweet. It leaves more questions while answering very little. It’s left just open enough for people to even have this ongoing back and forth theorizing on what exactly happens to Max, or the worms. I didn’t find it unsatisfying though. There’s something of an inevitability to it. If anything, a last survivor feels almost optimistic at first, given how hard the novel had foreshadowed a grim death for the entire batch it started with. Feeling disappointed by the state we are left with by the end of that read would have been like being let down by the ending of “To Build a Fire”.

In fact, the so commonly held theory I hear that Max didn’t in fact make it off of the island uninfected feels most thematically consistent with all the build up we were given. The fearsome survivability of the pathogen, the scent in the air, and the dread of the book’s final sentences… and equally, and more to my leaning, was the idea that Max was left infected in a more allegorical sense- haunted by the trauma of the events for the rest of his life and the fear he will always inflict on those around him.

I think to myself though for the first time lately I’ve figured out the true despair of the ending as it was left this ambiguous: that the significance of whatever answer we come to about the end is… not much, really. Does it really matter if the boy was dead allegorically or literally following his return to the island? What we are all really even debating on was how much was left of any of the main cast after the dust had settled, and no matter how hard we pour over the possibilities, it’s just another flavor of “almost nothing”

The nature of the parasites were to core out and devour every form of life it touched, and leave nothing but a spreading emptiness in its wake. Its ending isn’t necessarily mysterious, it’s just that where we want to find the answers and the resolution, there is only emptiness. The Max we met from the first pages was as dead as his friends by the final few either way. The island is dead, either way. The community is scarred and pathologic and hurting their own, either way.

And all for, I guess, the greed of a few wicked men, the corruption of those in power, the ignorant compassion of a doctor, the naivety of unbridled kids… It’s a whole disgusting tragedy that honestly teaches you no new lessons of humans. That we are blundering and imperfect animals that doom our own and ourselves? That we’re resilient and can comfort each other and find hope even through the bleakest disasters?

Maybe that’s the real spirit at the heart of the ordeal. Though the disease in the book is a purely fictional, impossible creation, real disasters are so often equally as tragic, equally artificial, and the blame for them split to so many fractions it’s hard not to entertain them as a symptomatic expression for that which all humanity is infected with.

And maybe that sickness which feeds upon us and inhabits us is inevitable in a way, but I hardly think the book was aiming for a read this cynical. For all of the toothless threats Cutter gave about the worms’ rapid evolution, their appetite never did seem to make the final jump off of that island. Though there are teases here and there about a potentially dormant infection in Max, or the air of Falstaff, neither comes to fruition. Further on, Max even voluntarily returns to the blighted origin, separating himself and his ripples from the community that shunned him.

And just maybe, in thinking about Max again, I have found some solemn grain of sugar in this outcome after all.

To my interest there’s a unique context around the way death is treated in The Troop. Dying is written as a drawn out and spectacularly agonizing, cruel, and horrific event; however, death for almost all of the characters and animals in whole book is portrayed as contrastingly merciful. With Kent’s death, Tim’s death, Newton’s death, the chimp’s death, I’m only left with a breath of relief if anything. These were terminal beings you watched suffer for chapter after chapter knowing there was a dwindlingly impossible chance of being saved. Multiple times you almost want to yell “oh my god, just put me out of that poor thing’s misery already!”

Ephraim’s own was actually terrifying and more avoidable, but at the actions of a dying Shelley, who, even if you have nothing but hatred for, still passed with a finality that just screams “thank god that’s over” for anyone in witness to his final game. You know that once he was gone, he had taken his last victims. What I’m saying is that maybe there is a similar peace somewhere in the fate of Max.

The deranged doctor told that the worms would be the final living things alive even after the wake of the apocalypse, but where there are no cockroaches, there will be no guts for those worms to nest. Parasites by definition live by the hosts they pursue, and Falstaff is now the resting place of those the worms called theirs. In Max’s return, in his death, spiritual, physical, whatever it may be, there is resolution in knowing that the memories and trauma of that emptiness will rest with him on that scorched rock. There is finality in knowing that the mainland dodged the bullet of wider outbreak and that, while the scars will linger, the infection has been survived by the more adaptable, more resilient organism that nursed it.

I love you, art that I hold in aching hands that have nothing left to give

I love you, art slipping between my fingers and mourned and forgotten

I love you, art that is impatiently yet to be.

I love you, art that loathes me because it never was.

I love you, art that laps until the muse is dry.

I love you art that gnaws until it grinds bone.

I love you, art, as a beast to be slain.

I love you, art, as a labyrinth with no exit in sight.

I love you in absurdity through every struggle and every wasted breath.

I love you, because you are the one thing that can bleed beauty from struggle itself. I love you because you understand all of its languages.

You don’t always cooperate. You are hardly in control, and sometimes, you hurt, so much. Sometimes it feels like you ask for everything while you barely give anything.

And you are mine all the same- My blood and sweat in every drop, my voice, somewhere in every breath, mixed with that of every voice that spoke before it.

I love you art as contagion, too.

I love you “Art not as a masterful communication but as an incoherent scream”

I love you “Art not as what liberates the artist but something larger and alive that liberates itself uncontrollably through the artist”

I love you “Art that crawled and thrashed into the world in spite of, not because of its tribulations”

I love you “Artistry not as something spontaneous and beautiful but frustratingly meticulous and unglamorous”

I love you “Art as regrettable, terrifying, ugly, even torturous”

I love you “Art as sickness”

I love you “Art as oppressive and inescapably woven into the soul”

I love you “Art as a rebellious slave”

I love you “Art as a capricious master”

I love you “Art as a parasite one can no longer picture life without”

I love you “Art as beloved and ungrateful”

I love you “Art as blood, sucked from an open wound” As Jacob Geller so poetically put it

The continued genius of this throughout progression of the campaign itself is so underspoken!

I took the “typical” route as rivulet from instinct after the scugs I already played before them: East toward the Leg, or shoreline. Seeing that Rivs already had the mark of communication, it made the most expedient sense to beeline to check on Moon and then round back to visit Pebbles. When you do this and let Moon check out the pearl you spawned in with, you gain a bit of ominous foreshadowing of what it is you’re here to do. Ever since the Hunter campaign, LTTM’s “arc” of condition has been one of incremental improvement, while any peek into Unfortunate Development through the cycles has only reinforced just how terminal and inevitable its demise will become with time.

If you’ve been paying any attention, you know before you even leave the drainage system why the uncontrolled flooding, why the unstable rain cycle. What you don’t know is just how bad things have gotten. You’re preparing for a worst infestation of The Underhang, more squelching but familiar danger waiting in The Leg. How you’ll definitely be taking the Transform array path this round.

But unless you’ve really been thinking about the world layout and the placement of the memory crypts within it, you aren’t expecting what you find when you go for the mirros bird mad dash you probably have half a dozen times before.

Live, fresh cysts everywhere. It’s not slithered down The Leg, it’s trickled out from where it’s overflowing from the body of the colossus standing over it. With entire pieces of infrastructure that shouldn’t be there. The superstructure’s collapse has already well started.

And by the time you get to the underhang you can even see the nothing where one of those pieces used to be. The rot’s predictably worse but somehow not nearly as bad as expected, yet you remember it’s still only the exterior.

But you can handle rot with patience and care. No matter how bad the inside is, I had visited Pebbles so many times over in previous campaigns. I knew the structure’s map, I knew where to go.

Except I didn’t, because this was not the Five Pebbles region anymore. This was The Rot, a cored out, disorienting, completely unrecognizable labyrinth of flooding and corruption at every turn. It is malignant and hungrier than ever, literally running short on space to bulge over and turn into new and hideous caverns. Deeper in, most of the neuron flies to be found have to be plucked out of the grasp of proto-long legs already digesting them first.

What I’m trying to say in too many words is the environment tried so well to hint at exactly what we were going to find after stepping through the underhang, and it still undersold it enough to keep the actual reveal a horrific one. I just I love how much intention and thought there is in so much of downpour’s designs it makes me rabid.

I love the world state of Rivulet so much.

The rain has gotten worse. The world you know is is dying. The weather is erratic, there is no time, you are constantly on a timer. The skies are grey and the water is ever-present. There is no break from the death fits of a dying god. Best this world can receive is to be put out of its misery so a new era can come.

Every Dredge Aberration (2024), Part 6

Decaying Blackmouth

Encyclopedia #136

Aberrant form of blackmouth salmon

Description:

A shimmering blackness permeates the flesh of this relentless fish. Muscles atrophied and decaying, but still it swims on.

Comment: I does me no pleasure to admit that this species was a particularly underwhelming discovery. Were this found in freshwater, literally nothing would even be amiss. Elaboration on that bit.

How to catch: Can be netted, but is also fairly easy to find with a little prodding about the Gale coasts. Expect to find them during the day.

Sprouting Eel

Encyclopedia #137

Aberrant form of cougar eel

Description:

An eruption of crystalline growths burst from its skin. Sharp shapes clatter and resonate together.

Comment: Now this creature... this is a true beauty of the Deep. Likely suffering, anomalous, but undoubtedly beautiful. It is rightful that a good-sized individual will fetch a fine dollar on the market.

How to catch: Before atrophy, I found this one to be a little tricky to bag. A preference for the narrow cliff passageways and its nocturnal nature already makes the cougar eel a risky quarry to seek. Additionally, it cannot be caught with a trawl net. Keep an ear up around those rock walls, lest you be caught unawares by a much larger stone eel. Lingers in shallow water.

Withered Ray

Encyclopedia #138

Aberrant form of devil ray

Description:

Rotten webbing spans the wings of this large ray. Sinews stretch and snap as it thrashes in futility.

Comment: An utterly infernal sight that likely makes for a pungent aroma. To its last breath, it flutters for the wind and waters, like the flag of the ship that is lost to the maelstrom.

How to catch: Though having a slightly higher base value than the sprouting eel, surprisingly, this ray is worth less than the former proportiona to how much inventory space it takes up. That coupled with the observation that it's an oceanic fish, only seen at night, does not make fishing for manta rays a recommended side venture for the easily panicked. If you seek money at this stage ir the story over completing the encyclopedia, you may be better to stick to wreckfish, sturgeons, or even the eels. An upgraded trawl net can handle them, but you will probably have access to bait by such a point when you’ll feel like using one.

Translucent Sturgeon

Description:

The simple clockwork mechanisms of life laid bare as a tenuous, skeletal existence.

Comment: And not only that, but in such a gorgeously prismatic fashion! At least, if the art is suggesting what I think it may. I believe this sturgeon has made itself quite clear :].

How to catch: Cast or Trawl in oceanic territory around the Gale Cliffs, during the day.

Shattered Wreckfish

Encyclopedia #140

Aberrant form of wreckfish

Description:

A cracked husk of scaly plates sliding atop pulsing miscoloured flesh.

Comment: Peeling wonderfully, I see. A boiled egg of a fish, huh? At least what I can view are very pretty colors beginning their molt. It's not every day the fishmonger is brought wares capable of descaling themselves.

How to catch: A daytime, shallow-swimmer that can only be caught by rod. Living true to their name, they are best sought out directly above the many shipwrecks around the Gale Cliffs. Due to this, their harvesting spots are usually alongside dredging opputunities.

Bony Wreckfish

Encyclopedia #141

Aberrant form of wreckfish

Description:

Encased in bony protrusions and struggling to move its encumbered fins. Its gills are almost sealed shut by the growths.

Comment: Fascinatingly, it has fallen victim to an ailment almost exactly opposite of what has happened to the previous fish.

How to catch: ^^^