#until they get so sick of each other that they'd sooner die than share a cause

[sapphorror]

Y'know... A lot of ZaDr fics have them either gradually drifting into a less contentious status quo or establishing a deeply bizarre multilayered dynamic that is nonetheless very consistent and beholden to its own rules—which works, to be clear, because slavish adherence to the rhythm of their endless 'game' is already their canon baseline.

WITH THAT BEING SAID. I think it would be very funny to depict a ZaDr dynamic in which they're like, on-again off-again nemeses. As they get older theyre gradually forced to acknowledge the true depth of their mutual attachment, but instead of actually improving themselves in any lasting way or compromising the conflicting elements into an ill-definable state of contentious codependence, they just start oscillating wildly between periods of obscenely clingy allyship and devotedly murderous enmity. There's never an in between. They'll dedicate all their energy to trying to horrifically torture each other to death, until one of them gets uncomfortably close to actually dying or an external crisis pushes them together or they just get bored—at which point, they become obnoxiously glued at the hip until one of them relapses into anxiety about their ambitions or an argument escalates past the the point of no return or they just get bored. And every time they both Really Mean It, They're Not Gonna Do This Anymore, before naturally going ahead and doing it again

#invader zim #zadp #zadr #iz posting #natterings #there is so much good drama potential here actually #initially I just thought the idea was funny and it IS but also #there is something to be said about leveraging the full force of ones loathing #against someone you've been sincerely intimate with #and at the same time still being too attached to that person to fully commit #so that it just becomes this endless unresolved resentment that's never meaningfully addressed #also how this effects literally everyone around them #because they literally cannot be trusted to stick to anything #anything they do they HAVE to do as a team #until they get so sick of each other that they'd sooner die than share a cause #and they'll sign themselves onto wholeass war efforts just to have a sufficiently dramatic battleground #(because obviously it's not any fun if the stakes arent absurdly high #'apocalyptic' being the bare minimum here) #only to defect without a second thought the moment they decide they miss each other #at the end of the day there's only one kind of dedication and loyalty they care about #and they're making it everyone elses problem #im always saying steady pitch-pale vacillation is the ideal zadr endgame #and what is this if not that taken to its absolute practical and emotional extreme