zim at 20: today on twitch

“Tues­day, March 30th, join mem­bers of the cast and crew from In­vad­er ZIM … as we dis­cuss 20 years of the en­dur­ing an­i­mat­ed se­ries. Follow/subscribe to our Twitch to be no­ti­fied: twitch.tv/wasabianime”
—Wasabi Ani­me
 

I can’t be­lieve it’s ac­tu­al­ly been TWO WHOLE DECADES since one of my ab­solute, most fa­vorite shows OF ALL TIME aired for the first time on Nick­elodeon.

Back then I was just a wee lit­tle child, 10 years old and ready to take on the world be­cause I had no idea how TRU­LY HOR­RI­BLE the world re­al­ly was just yet!

I still had that child­like sense of in­no­cence and won­der. My mind was still full of so many ideas and hopes and dreams!

You know, the feel­ing that any­thing is pos­si­ble and you can do what­ev­er you want to, if you only BE­LIEVE that you can?! THEN YOU CAN!

Back then, I had an over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion not yet con­fined to the laws and physics of this world.
Not yet cor­rupt­ed by our ever in­creas­ing­ly failed and col­laps­ing so­ci­ety.
(WE LIVE IN A SO­CI­ETY! Oh crap! WRONG FAN­DOM!)

Yeah, those were some good times  .… .

ANY­HOW –
Enough with all the SAD­NESS AND OTH­ER MOPEY FEEL­INGS AND STUFF.

Let’s go back to some­thing that is TRU­LY AMAZ­ING and has been a part of my life — and so many oth­er HOR­RI­BLE EARTH CHILDREN’S LIVES – for so long!

I’m sure any­body who knows me (or has read some of my posts) knows ex­act­ly what I’m talk­ing about!!
—not to men­tion the fact that I lit­er­al­ly just men­tioned it in the head­line AND at the be­gin­ning of this ar­ti­cle but any­ways YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALK­ING ABOUT, RIGHT?!!

I’m talk­ing about –
           The one …
                     THE ONLY …
                               I N V A D E R   Z I M   !!!

The most amaz­ing, in­sane­ly chaot­ic, HOR­RI­BLY AWE­SOME CAR­TOON I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY EN­TIRE LIFE!!

Okay okay, I MIGHT be just a teen­sy bit bi­ased, but I mean COME ON.
THIS SHOW WAS PRET­TY FUCK­ING IN­CRED­I­BLE.

It was a show that was full of dark, un­pre­dictable hu­mor and chaot­ic – some­times even hideous­ly mag­nif­i­cent – char­ac­ters with such a va­ri­ety of unique de­signs that were un­like any­thing I’d ever seen be­fore!

I hon­est­ly don’t know if I was al­ready such a weird kind of kid with a dark dark sense of hu­mor, and that’s why I liked the show so much …
Or if the show lit­er­al­ly warped my FEE­BLE HU­MAN MIND and made me one of THOSE kids.
You know the ones I’m talk­ing about.
The weirdos.
The creeps.
Losers.
The ones that nev­er seemed to fit in be­cause they were just so DIF­FER­ENT from every­body else.

The ones that made peo­ple un­com­fort­able be­cause they weren’t con­sid­ered to be “nor­mal.”
Hah.
That’s fun­ny
Sounds kind of fa­mil­iar, right?

Ac­tu­al­ly, now that I think of it, I was al­ways a weird kid. I mean, not weird in a bad way (at least I hope not, heh heh).

No, just one of those kids that did things that were out of the or­di­nary and you kind of just had to shrug your shoul­ders and be like “Oh, well! That’s KAiT­LYN­jane, for ya!”

So yeah, maybe I’ve al­ways been strange.

What­ev­er the case, I’m ab­solute­ly cer­tain that In­vad­er Zim helped feed that kind of in­san­i­ty and weird­ness.

AND I WILL BE FOR­EV­ER GRATE­FUL FOR THAT.

I mean se­ri­ous­ly, it in­tro­duced me to so many weird, grotesque and un­com­fort­able things through­out its short lifes­pan.

It was just so chaot­ic and fast-paced, and every char­ac­ter was scream­ing and yelling at each oth­er, ei­ther try­ing to save the world or de­stroy it.

In one episode they’d be fly­ing in space­ships or on plan­ets through out­er space – in an­oth­er they’d be sit­ting at a ta­ble, eat­ing waf­fles. YES, THAT’S LIT­ER­AL­LY WHAT THE EN­TIRE EPISODE WAS ABOUT AND IT STILL END­ED UP BE­ING AMAZ­ING.

Not to men­tion the episodes where they fought off a le­gion of alien ba­bies, a mall full of zom­bies, or a mal­func­tion­ing San­ta suit! Oooh! And who could for­get the or­gan har­vest­ing episode!

Ooooh yeah. Those were the best.

The episodes that made you un­com­fort­able. Made you think “what the FUCK is go­ing on here, man?!”

You just nev­er knew what to ex­pect, and I think that was one of the best parts about the show.

Be­cause not only did it keep you en­gaged and en­ter­tained, it kind of de­sen­si­tized you to some of your fears and oth­er things that made you un­com­fort­able.

I also think it’s pret­ty safe to say that it helped a TON of peo­ple – those who didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly fit in with the “nor­mal” crowd – re­al­ize that it was AC­TU­AL­LY OKAY TO BE DIF­FER­ENT.
To be “NOT NOR­MAL.”

That it was OK if your class­mates thought you were crazy be­cause you fol­lowed your pas­sions and you didn’t let peo­ple stop you from be­liev­ing in the pos­si­bil­i­ty of aliens, or ghosts, or even BIG FEETS.

That it was OK to creep your class­mates out be­cause you were just BE­ING YOU and if they didn’t un­der­stand or ac­cept you, then that’s okay, boo­boo! You do you and I’ll be me.

THAT’S WHAT I CALL IN­DI­VID­U­AL­I­TY, BABY!

(Not gonna lie, it was even kind of odd­ly sat­is­fy­ing to see them shut­ter in dis­gust and fear when I would play the show in my 7th and 8th grade art class. Thank you, Mr. Ratliff! Still one of my fa­vorite teach­ers OF ALL TIME!)

BUT ANY­WAY –
I di­gress.
Where was I?

Oh yeah.

It’s crazy to look back and see just how much that show has in­flu­enced my cre­ativ­i­ty, my sense of hu­mor, and my abil­i­ty to just … not take things too se­ri­ous­ly, I guess? I mean it’s made a huge, dare I say GAR­GAN­TU­AN im­pact on my life, in more ways than one.

Not only did it in­spire me to cre­ate my own art­work, de­sign my own char­ac­ters and write my own sto­ries, but it in­tro­duced me to SO MANY of the friends that I still have to­day.

And in quite an un­usu­al way, you might say …
Heh heh.
Okay, enough with the rhymes!

This ain’t no children’s bed­time sto­ry, yo! THIS IS REAL LIFE!!!

But yeah. I met the ma­jor­i­ty of my In­vad­er Zim friends on­line. Through an epic Face­book page that I came across af­ter bing­ing the show for the first time in ten years.

I’d met a cou­ple “in real life” friends at con­ven­tions be­fore, but I’d nev­er been in­tro­duced to SO MANY Zim fans all at once! All gath­ered to­geth­er on a Face­book page that was ini­tial­ly start­ed by a 14 year old girl with a de­sire that we ALL shared –

TO BRING IN­VAD­ER ZIM BACK, AND GET NEW CON­TENT!

Af­ter be­ing gone for al­most a decade, the cre­ator of the show stat­ed in a blog post that he’d ac­tu­al­ly love to work on more Zim stuff, if the cir­cum­stances were right.

Sud­den­ly, a sin­gle state­ment from the su­pe­ri­or be­ing known as Jho­nen Vasquez set the en­tire fan­dom on fire.

And thus … OP­ER­A­TION HEAD PI­GEONS WAS BORN!

But we’ll have to save that sto­ry for next time! ~

 

—kait­lyn­jane

Flom­mist KAiT­LYN­jane has been draw­ing and writ­ing sto­ries ever since she knew how to scrib­ble on a piece of pa­per, or her sister’s fore­head when she was just two weeks old. Copy­right © 2021 KAiT­LYN­jane.

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