Two Types of Christmas People

18 Panels!    42 layers!   Four days!  

Why did I think this was a good idea? But here we go: another Invader Zim installation, this one being a Christmas Special for you lovely people! 
It would seem I'm back on the IZ hype train. All it really takes is remembering a moment from the show and suddenly my everlasting unconditional love for this show comes flooding back. This show...I've decided nothing can surpass it. Cartoons/animation/art is my one and only greatest passion and this show has literally everything I enjoy seeing and invented more criteria to what I deem as a killer sweet show. I've been thinking about it a little deeper and this show, for what little time it's even been part of my life, is probably a huge push for why I chose to take on art as my college major (and thus my chosen career path), it's inspired me in multiple ways (improved my mood greatly, introduced me to great people and great places, helped me define what I like in animation and why, inspired me to create something as great as this some day, and increased my respect for animation and the animation business even more than it already was.) It's even changed my personality. That's not because of the show itself, but where it's lead me and who I've met have had a monumental influence on who I am today. There have been some lows, but the highs greatly overpower those low moments and I just feel like an overall cheerier person with MUCH greater control over my emotions and choosing when being serious, and when choosing to let go, are most appropriate. I've always taken things so freaking seriously and it's been by far the hardest for me to choose my own happiness instead of what I think is the 'right thing to do' based off of what little I think I deserve as a human being or what will make everyone else content enough to deal with me. 

The lows have been....heavy and pushy all semester, but that's a big reason why I drew this. Happy Dib makes me happy (Happy Dib makes everyone happy ), but I was more or less drawing how I've been feeling like a dark cloud is always over my head all semester, and now that the semester is over, it's like a huge weight's been lifted and I've been feeling positively fabulous so far. Originally I've been wanting to make a sort of rant about those feelings over the semester, but I think this is a better way to talk about it. Losing someone I really cared about just before the semester (which I knew attending school in person would be really difficult for me as it is, since I haven't done this in over five years due to social anxiety) made the semester feel more like a trial to me. It was like three months of grieving, and then trying to understand where that left me. I had shaped everything that I defined as ME around that relationship, and right now I'm just having trouble understanding who I even am after-the-fact. It's like I have to rediscover who I used to be before I met them, which was well over a year ago... The absolute hardest thing about it, and probably one of the hardest things I've tried to do, is forgive myself for everything I did all year, and then everything else I've done to this point. My self-esteem just about flew out the window and I keep framing myself as someone who can't form relationships without hurting others, and even as someone who can't do much anything else and thus I keep habitually becoming the cage that prevents me from being the person I WANT to be and doing the things I've always wanted to do. Getting past this semester has been an influx of emotion and it feels great to just be forced into a position where all I can do is look forward. Frankly, I'm surprised I even got through it as decently as I did.

But another thing I want to blab about is that year was anything but a mistake. I may have made a lot of mistakes WITHIN it, but the entire experience was simply that- a learning experience and it's shaped me both negatively in that I lost a lot of my self-confidence but also in good ways, in that I learned to stop being so serious and to enjoy life in the moment. Things that we did together, sitting around taping mustaches to our art mannequins and talking for hours about honking clowns, is something that I would never imagine myself doing before. I have had very few lasting friendships as deep as that one, and I only really had one other relationship to compare it too. They were WORLDS different and compared to my previous one, this recent one reminded me that I don't need to be constantly anxious about everything in order to bond with others. That relationship was primarily goofy and yet it was deep and meaningful. I always thought relationships could only be forged that deeply if we had the same PROBLEMS, not necessarily the same interests. That was the biggest thing I learned from it, but also that meaningful relationships are still possible for me. I've only had one other, and I've spent a lot of time knowing that relationships that deep were out there but never quite being convinced of it. I really thought that level of meaning was beyond my scope at that point, and that I wouldn't find it ever again. I know this relationship I lost was unique beyond anything else- I will never find it again and I will never find someone exactly like that again- but it made me understand that what I love and find endearing has multiple forms (both those relationships were polar opposites and yet were equally as meaningful and passionate), and that it exists. It made me more confident in looking out there and framed people differently for me... I understand socializing a bit more this way. 

There's something ELSE this experience taught me but I don't even want to go into that one. But you know....sorry for using DA as a diary But I just like sharing what I learn about life. Life is such an interesting experience for me.. There's parts I like and some parts I don't. But I like learning new things through experience. One of my biggest regrets is letting my social anxiety role my life and shutting myself in all the time.... getting to experience things like this, stupid things like a simple friendship, means the world to me and helps me refine myself as a better person, and helps refine my idea of what the world IS. For what it's worth, this has been a taste of my experience over the past year(s). 

Now to talk about THE ACTUAL COMIC I came up with this more or less as I went along but while making it I was thinking about how there are pretty much two types of Christmas people (or more like two types of Holiday people.) People either hate the holidays or they love it (or so it seems.) I usually go back and forth. For these past few years which I've stated to be a colossal learning experience and shift in personality/character, I've usually been varying degrees of Dib/Gir. Occasionally I've been Gaz/Zim, but that usually translates more as disinterest and missing those sweet childhood days where the first thing you wake up to on Christmas is opening a ton of presents (instead of driving 40 minutes to various relatives and feeling pretty exhausted by the end of the day, but with a few gifts which you appreciate on a sentimental level.)

One last thing- that one panel 12 switched from Jesus to St. Nick at least five times throughout this process... I don't know how that could possibly be offensive but I was worried, so if anyone is somehow put off by that, I will change it The joke is about those Facebook posts where people start posting pictures that look like Jesus Christ everywhere and saying it's a miracle and in my opinion, those are uh....well not as they claim to be Being the enthusiast as I am, you see a lot of this in UFO pics, and being the enthusiast that Dib is, I have to wonder this would translate in the IZ world. So many floating spoons hanging by threads