WARNING: I have lost my mind and written an INVADER ZIM fanfic. Repeat: this is INVADER ZIM fanfiction. Flee now! FLEE!
*cough* Anyway, the fic. Not slash unless you wanna see it that way, probably not in character, and hopefully the last thing I'll ever write in this fandom.
Observations
by S_Star
Disclaimer: I don’t own the computer I’m typing on, let alone Invader Zim!
Summary: An extract from Dib’s Log, contemplating Life, the Universe, and Zim. An attempt to organise my thoughts which turned into something that kinda resembles a fanfic...
Rating: PG
AN: My first Zim fic. Probably my only Zim fic. Nothing much happens, it’s mostly introspective, but still, it really is insanely difficult to keep these guys in character, so I’d like to know what y’all think!
Anyway, although it has no pairing, if you squint the right way through slash-tinted glasses, you can see it ZADR, but even a hardcore slasher like myself found it difficult, so it’s pretty much safe. ^_^
DIB'S LOG, Monday 6th February
Dear Log,
What can I really say about Zim today that I haven't already said a million times before?
Well, since this is a new notebook, maybe I should start at the beginning.
He's an alien invader from another planet.
Yes, yes, I know that I sound insane when I say that - my father (when he can be bothered to talk to me) wants me to seek psychiatric help and then join him in his studies of his precious 'Real Science'; and Gaz...well, Gaz has been telling me I'm mad for years.
Then again, after investigating the paranormal for so long, I have become almost convinced that she is a demon from another dimension, sent to our world to cause pain and suffering. I'll admit that most of her wrath is taken out on Vampire Piggies, but I have my suspicions.
With Zim, on the other hand, suspicions have nothing to do with it: I know he's an alien, and I have ever since the first time he came to Skool, with his pathetic disguise and constant shouts of 'I am ZIM!'
I mean, I know that no one in Skool is normal, intelligent, or at all observant, but someone short - he hasn't grown an inch since he's arrived, does NO ONE find that at all unusual?! - and green without ears or a nose, who jumps on tables and screams 'I'm normal!' every ten minutes...surely even idiots who'd been taught by Ms Bitters all their lives would recognise that there was something wrong with him.
I recognised it, and it's made me who I am today.
Before Zim arrived, I had just given up trying to find evidence of my sister's demonic origin - postcards from Satan; pagan altars; everything in her bedroom - after she'd pinned me to the back door with a convenient pitchfork and left me hanging there during the biggest storm in the town's history.
I had moved on to trailing a man I'd seen on Mysterious Mysteries: he claimed to have Bigfoot living in his basement, but had refused to let the camera crew in. It was a rather disappointing episode. Anyway, I was sure that I was small enough to fit through the tiny window and obtain some revolutionary footage that would make me known as the best upcoming - if not THE best - paranormal investigator in the world!
...And now I'm even talking like Zim; egotistical space idiot that he is.
Of course, it turned out that it wasn't Bigfoot but the man's twin brother, who'd been locked away down there for so long he'd gone psycho and started believing he was a dog.
I didn't ask; I was too preoccupied by all the running away.
Anyway, I was at a loss. There'd been little to no paranormal activity lately, here or anywhere else, and Mysterious Mysteries had been driven to spending entire episodes outlining the reasons why viewers should send in their own tapes of otherworldly experiences.
My father, of course, tried to take that time to show me the apparent beauty of 'Real Science', but after I tried to decorate his lab with a map of Area 51, he decided to 'Let this little phase of yours play itself out.' He thought it would only be a few more weeks at most, what with the sudden lack of strangeness in the world, and had already presented me with my own lab coat embroidered with my name...spelt wrong. Fine, so Super Toast may be a revolutionary concept, but what kind of genius can't spell his own son's name? It's only three letters, for God's sake! I was beginning to wonder whether he'd been to the same Skool as me, and was tempted to ask whether Ms Bitters had always been that old and morbid.
But then, Zim came...and he was just what I'd been waiting for.
There still wasn't much paranormal activity, and I knew that if I could expose that little alien freak, maybe I, Dib - okay, really sounding too much like him...I wonder if there's a way I can remove his voice box...does he even have a voice box? I must remember to research that - anyway, maybe I, Dib, would finally prove to my pseudo-father and demon-sister am not quite as crazy as they - and, apparently, the rest of the world - seem to think!
All right, so a couple of years later and I still haven't done anything beyond wasting all my money on notebooks and pencils to record my observations, but I must admit that it is rather fascinating to just watch Zim. After all, they do say 'know thy enemy', and I can't begin to understand what goes on in that warped brain - again, does he have a brain? What organs DOES he have? - of his until I get some understanding of Zim himself.
Gaz's comments about 'staring at my boyfriend' don't phase me because, come on, it's laughable to think I'm smitten with the moron, but I do think that if I were to fall for someone - eventually; I'm only fourteen years old! - it would be highly unlikely for me to pick a normal human.
I mean, look at them! Sometimes I think Zim may be right about us being pathetic worm-babies (with the exception of myself, of course, and Gaz, but I say again that she probably isn't even human). I can't see any of the girls, or even the boys, I've met ever meaning anything to me.
Besides, I don't know whether I could take someone breathing down my neck constantly, telling me I should seek professional help and trying to convince me that everything has a so-called 'logical explanation'. None of them could even begin to understand what I see, what I've devoted my life to even at such a young age.
Also, I'm fairly sure it would bore me to be anything more than a pseudo-acquaintance to any of them: I don't like to be around people unless there's something strange about them, like the boy in second grade who's meant to be half-werewolf. I once managed to carry on what - by Skool standards, at least - was a coherent conversation with him for more than five minutes without being bored to tears.
Okay, so it may have been more an interrogation, but it was still the only time I have carried on a remotely interesting face to face discussion with anyone. In fact, sometimes I wished the paranormal were...well, normal, if just to stop the world boring me to death. Then everyone would believe in aliens and vampires and Bigfoot and werewolves and all the other - ahem - mysterious mysteries there are in our world.
Maybe then I'd be able to have some kind of credibility rather than spending my days being ridiculed for my futile attempts to make people recognise that Zim isn't human.
Then again, I suppose that without that endless quest - especially given the lack of paranormal encounters in the last God knows how long - my life wouldn't be very eventful at all. I mean, think about Chicken Foot! The nearest we get to mysterious in years, and it turns out to be a fast-food worker in a costume.
In fact, I would probably have thrown myself off the roof after hours of staring through my telescope into empty space if I hadn't had the assurance that there IS something out there and the knowledge that I would be the one to enlighten humanity.
So in that sense, Zim's essentially saved my life, which isn't something I'm about to admit; even though the number of times he's attempted to annihilate me must cancel it out.
There we have it, then: life, the universe, and Zim. I could write more, but I really am spending WAY too much on notebooks, and besides, Zim said something today about a new way to 'bring doom to all you human-slimebeasts!' - loudly, in the middle of the cafeteria; I swear these people are either blind or that alien's brainwashing actually worked...hehe, like hell - and I am, once again, called to save the planet and further my quest to prove the existence of aliens.
Fear me, all invaders, for I am DIB!
*end (thank God!)*
...Fear me, all sane writers, for I am S_STAR! *evil laugh which dissolves into coughing fit*
For both the fic and the slip into evil-pseudo-genius mode, I apologise and swear never to do it again.