Episode 45: Rat Romance

Time to start a new fanfic! We’re reading Love Knows No Race, an Invader Zim fanfiction written in 2002 by fanfiction.net author Carlotta Valjean. This one’s considerably more obscure than previous stories we’ve covered, but both of us have a Lot to say about it — we’re only covering the first two chapters this week and we still talked about it for well over an hour. We also have unfinished business with KingAurthr2, so it’s time to conclude The Quest for the Holey Grail. Content warnings: Love Knows No Race is a ZaDR (Zim x Dib) story, and we do have to be clear that canonically Zim is an adult while Dib is a child. While that doesn’t actually matter to this story (like a lot of ZaDR stories, Love Knows No Race treats Zim and Dib as though they’re peers), it’s not really something we can avoid mentioning. The way this author handles Zim and Dib’s relationship is going to require additional content warnings later, but… we’ll get there.