*2010 intensifies*

Introduction

Archives
    Ari
    RAH
    Evi
    PEZ
    Lard Nar (canon)
    Avidai
    *Kit
    *IRO
    *Dot
    *Sai
    *Mar
    *REN
    *Ivy
    *Rif
    *May
    *AIR
    Axel


Reboot
    Ari
    Evi

Introduction

The year is 2010; I am in fifth grade. I have just moved to a new state. The school year has just begun, and I am surrounded by the faces of other children I have no hope of relating to. In my old school, I was able to forge connections based on a shared interest in certain shows or books, but here, I have no idea what the kids are into. I am quiet for the first two to three weeks until I see someone drawing a cool, funny dog with a square head and his tongue sticking out.

"What is that?" I ask.

"It's GIR from Invader Zim," they tell me. I am floored. I have never heard of Invader Zim, but I know that I love this square-headed dog named GIR, and I want to see more of him.

Naturally, the very first thing I do when I get home that evening is look up Invader Zim. A cartoon on Nickelodeon. Why does it look so familiar to me? As it turns out, I definitely have run into this show before, but I never paid it much mind. I had seen it in passing so few times that I hardly remembered anything about it, but that green kid with the toupee definitely sparks some recognition in my mind. Well, whatever; I'm just here for GIR.

---

Over the next two years, this friend and I would painstakingly craft the most in-depth and long-running OC universe that I had ever taken part in. Told through Skype roleplays, drawings on Sketchfu, drabbles on Fanfiction.net, and hundreds upon thousands of pages of notebook paper, we let our imaginations run wild as we told stories about different Invaders and their lives on Earth. We are no longer in contact, but these memories are very dear to me.

I wish I could tell you that this page would harbor the fruits of all our labor, but the really bitter and harsh truth is that most of it is gone forever. As a 13 year old child who was finished with Invader Zim and was beginning to move onto other fandoms, I wanted nothing more than to forget the 'embarrassing' art and our 'Mary-Sue' characters. When Sketchfu was shut down, I didn't make any effort to save any one of my thousands of drawings. I deleted my IZ fanfics so I would have a clean slate for my Homestuck stories. And I can't even imagine how many notebooks have been thrown away because 'there wasn't anything good in there.' I have genuinely cried thinking about how much of my childhood is gone because I was embarrassed by it, so this is my attempt to make up for it, by archiving everything that I have left. I also want to reboot my OCs and breathe new life into them. They gave me lots of joy and helped me work through things that, as a child, I wasn't ready to face head-on. They're very near and dear to me.

(DATE: June 2nd, 2011. DESC: Ari and her SIR unit, RAH, in their Irken forms.)

Background

Ari was maybe the first ever serious OC I had in my life. I drew her daily, and thought about her at every given opportunity. I thought about her favorite music, how she would react to different things happening, who she would be friends with and who she would hate, the kinds of clothes she would wear. Every little thing in my life I would try to relate to her somehow.

Her Irken design is pretty straight forward. Her antennae have one thick loop, and she has brown eyes (which was decided on a spur of the moment while listening to Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison). Her uniform is long-sleeved instead of short-sleeved, and the lines on her dress are wavy instead of straight. It looks like I used to draw her with some sort of spikes on her boots but that isn't too important. The top circle on her PAK is black, and the others are magenta. This might have been meant to show that she's 'defective', or it might have just been a design choice.

As for RAH, I really don't remember him being yellow, and my comment on this image mentioned that his eyes were supposed to be 'icy blue', so I think this color palette is outdated. Also, I have no idea why he has no antenna here. The stripes on his eyes seem about right, though. We wanted every SIR unit to have a different shaped compartment on their chest. I think the triangle was correct for RAH.

Ari's human design switched around a lot; I have yet to figure out which version came first. I will need to consult the notebooks in my filing cabinet and compare dates.

(DATE: June 4th, 2011. DESC: Ari and RAH in their disguises.)

Ari's human outfit was always consistent, and always terrible. Long sleeved purple and green striped shirt with a 'jagged heart' (that's what I called it; it was like a heart and a lightning bolt) on it, and orange, tiger-striped pants. It's very cute that her sleeves match RAH's disguise, which is a stuffed animal that's half wolf and half dragon. This just means he's a white wolf that has horns and a dragon tail. In this picture, she has shoulder-length red hair, which is just my hair. My guess is that this version came first, and I changed her hairstyle later. At some point, I literally just gave her Miku's hair; literally, super-long cyan ponytails. Whichever design came later will be her 'canon' one, so I really need to dig through my drawings and figure it out.

Story

Ari was an extremely talented Invader - well, she excelled during training, anyway. She had never been assigned to a planet because the Tallest were extremely annoyed by her erratic behavior. This caused them some issues. Because of her talents, she should have had a cushy position in the ranks, but they wanted nothing to do with her. They decided to kill two birds with one stone and send her to Earth along with a Genuinely talented Invader and assassin, Kit, who was my friend's OC. Ari and her SIR unit, RAH, set off with Kit and her SIR unit, IRO, towards Earth, where they were instructed to kill Zim so he would stop bothering the Tallest so much. I'm sure the Tallest were hoping that Kit would off Ari while they were down there, too.

While reading the rest of the information on this page, please remember that this story was written twelve years ago by two 10 year olds who had very limited knowledge of how the real world works, and also did not really take into account that the entirety of Invader Zim was supposed to be taking place in an elementary school classroom, lmao.

Upon landing on Earth, Ari and Kit swiftly took up a residence and enrolled in Skool to get closer to Zim. Unfortunately, things can rarely go as planned for unlucky Irken Invaders. Ari immediately fell head over heels for Zim (what did you see in him, girl??), and begged Kit not to kill him. Kit agreed, but for her own reasons; while she didn't have any feelings for Zim, he was obsessed with her, and she kept him around as an easy lay and a source of entertainment whenever she wanted a punching bag. There was a lot of slut-shaming when it came to Kit, and I'm just going to retroactively get rid of it here.

Ari and Kit had a very tenuous relationship, despite supposedly being friends. Looking back on it, this was obviously me trying to come to terms with the fact that the very friend I was creating these OCs with made me feel bad about myself quite often. The details aren't too important, but this tension and Kit's constant, passive meanness to Ari became a very important theme as time went on.

Ari was always made fun of, and even if she didn't let on, it took a toll on her over time. Her leaders were sick of her, her mission partner was always telling her that she was useless, and the boy she was convinced that she was in love with would reject her and run into the arms of another girl who would treat him terribly. Things just didn't make sense. She thought that being an Invader was what she wanted, but the idea of hurting people made her upset. She didn't know how to express these worries, because Irk's militaristic culture had no room for those who didn't follow their orders.

The longer that Ari and Kit stayed on Earth, the more that the Tallest grew tired of waiting, and the more that word spread to other Irkens that weren't so happy with how things were progressing on Irk. Nearly a dozen other characters would land on Earth and join the ensemble cast with their own little stories unfolding on the sidelines. Ari was able to make a few friends besides Kit that treated her better, and even her brother, Evi, eventually showed up. Things were starting to look up for her. But the most important turning point in her life by far was the accidental arrival of Lard Nar, the leader of the Resistance movement against the Irken empire.

Love and Loss

The Skool had already welcomed ten or so new students by this time, but that didn't stop the arrival of yet another new student, named Eric. This was Lard Nar's cover.

Now, here is where the details become a bit fuzzy. I have a hard time remembering how Ari and Lard Nar became aware of each other's identities, but become aware they did. They bonded over an immense, shared hatred of Zim; Ari had become tired of waiting for him to return her affections by this time, and her crush had turned into a jaded sense of annoyance. Lard Nar would regale her with stories of his home planet, Vort, and as he told her of his dreams for a peaceful universe without the threat of planets being conquered, she felt herself falling in love with someone who cared about the same things that she did.

Some time passed; things remained largely the same. Ari was starting to get frustrated by this. She became increasingly more reactionary, trying to inspire Lard Nar to try to take down the Irken empire for real instead of just talking about it. This remained nothing more than passionate talk until Lard Nar proposed to Ari, sending her life careening into an entirely new direction she had never anticipated.

Not long after they were married, they decided to have a child. Drawing upon the collective scientific knowledge of everyone available to them, they were able to conceive in vitro by combining their DNA and growing the child in a tube, the same way that Irken smeets are born. Their son, Avidai, was born; he was named using Vortian naming conventions in honor of Ari's brother, Evi. The two knew that they couldn't raise Avidai in a world where his father's planet was in chains and the threat of invasion was ever-present. They knew it was time to act.

Ari, Lard Nar, Evi, and several others began hatching their plan in secret. Kit and Zim, still loyal to the Irken empire, turned their backs on them. The Resistance planned to infiltrate the Massive, the Tallest's ship, and plant a bomb, killing the tyrannical leaders and hopefully allowing time for a new form of government to take place during the chaos.

Their plan was set into action. Evi was able to get Ari and Lard Nar onto the Massive, with the bomb in hand. However, the guards came after them, and they were separated during the chaos. Lard Nar wanted them to escape and live to fight another day. Ari refused, knowing that they would never get another chance like this. She detonated the bomb even knowing that the right conditions weren't in place. The bomb went off, killing Tallest Purple, while Red and his personal guard escaped. Ari was caught in the blast and was seriously injured, to the point where they didn't think she would survive.

With the Massive severely damaged and the leadership in shambles, Lard Nar found Ari's body and brought her back to the Resistance base. She was blinded in one eye, and one antennae was burned off. Half of her body was covered in severe burns. But, over time, she was able to heal, and came close to being her old self again.

On the Irken front, Tallest Red was now unfettered by his other ruling half. Having always harbored some silent doubts about the way the planet was run, he began putting new changes into effect that would have lasting, healing consequences for Irk and many other planets. Ari and Lard Nar were free to raise their child in a safe, peaceful universe. And with that, Ari's story came to a close, surrounded by her family and people that loved her.

RAH is Ari's SIR unit. He is quite sarcastic, and is unwilling to spend much effort to do anything, even when Ari tells him to. He often antagonizes Ari, slyly calling her out on her own bad behavior while not bothering to fix his own, but he dpes genuinely care about her. When push comes to shove, he will defend her to the best of his abilities.

Design

In his normal form, RAH's character color is icy blue, and his shape is a triangle. He has vertical black stripes down his eyes, and spiky shoulder pads. When he's in his disguise, he pulls on a white wolf costume with dragon horns and a tail, with purple stripes over his eyes.

(DATE: June 7th, 2011. DESC: Evi and PEZ in their Irken forms.)

Evi is Ari's brother - not biologically, of course, since Irkens are born artificially in breeding tubes - but they have a very close bond. Calling each other brother and sister was a turn of phrase they picked up from learning about other species. Evi would be considered just a year or two older than Ari in human terms.

He is quite level-headed, and can be fairly blunt. His SIR unit, PEZ, is a stark contrast to his serious personality. She enjoys fun, trivial nonsense, and approaches things with a wide-eyed curiosity.

Evi arrived on Earth a while after Ari did. He set out of his own accord, wanting to check in on her and see how she was doing. Upon finding out that she was safe, and that she had abandoned her original mission, he decided to do the same and set up camp on Earth with her. He had never fully subscribed to the militaristic leadership of Irk in the first place, and had no qualms giving up his status on his home planet to enjoy a fairly simple life living with his sister.

Evi's SIR unit. Her character color is forest green. She has pronounced eyelashes, and three small 'freckles' under each eye. Her associated shape is a diamond, seen on the top of her antenna and the storage plate on her chest. She has small angel wings on her back.

PEZ spends a lot of time with RAH once she arrives on Earth with Evi. Despite RAH's snarky attitude, PEZ takes a liking to him, and often seeks him out to ask questions about Earth or other things she isn't familiar with.

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