u/GeekInGaming

One of my favourite episodes of Alien Stage, but it feels so miserable. It feels me with this sense of hopelessness…

The idea of Ivan thinking that Till hated him even while he was dying for him is so sad. I’d say Ivan is the most tragic character in Alien Stage, at least of the dead characters. I found the kiss in particular really sad. To me [I know this is a hot take], it’s by far the saddest moment in Alien Stage. Ivan being so desperate to feel loved and not knowing what healthy love looks like, and thinking that the person he’s spent most of his life loving doesn’t care about him… It’s not even just Till, even though most of my sadness comes from him and Till; I an truly believed he was completely unlovable, even with Mizi considering him a best friend [I hope we see more of their friendship in the high school AU].

A lot of the time when I watch it [I’ve watched Cure an embarrassing amount of times], I think about how Ivan must look like a monster to the aliens, and to some people on a first watch of Alien Stage. When you don’t understand him as well, all the information you have is that he’s sexually assaulting Till despite Till trying to get away, and it looks like he is trying to choke and kill him too. This just makes it feel even sadder to me. I’ve seen someone romanticise the kiss, rewatching it like any wholesome first kiss, and be happy as if Till was consenting and it wasn’t SA, and I saw this other person call Ivan a monster and a sexual assaulter as if he didn’t have more nuance than that. Both kind of pissed me off…

After I first watched Alien Stage, and I did some rewatches, a lot of the time all I could think about was how depressing Ivan’s story is. I actually lost sleep over it, even though Ivan wasn’t even my favourite character at the time [at the time, it was Mizi, and I was unsure about second or third, and now Ivan and Mizi are tied for me]. The only other times I lost sleep over a piece of media was after I played Omori and after I watched Squid Game S3E3 [Hide and Seek] and the start of the next episode. Anyway, unrequited love already feels like a pretty sad topic for me, but Alien Stage took it to what felt like an extreme in terms of sadness.

When I got more into the fandom, I developed the belief that Till did love Ivan back romantically, based on a few things, just in a way difficult to comprehend until after he had died, due to all the characters’ messed up beliefs thanks to the fucked up nature of Alien Stage. This belief is debatable [I did a poll and 450/741 or 60.7% believe he does, so it's rather divisive], but it did make me feel slightly less sad? Only slightly though. My belief of Till only having romantic feelings realised after Ivan died is also sadder for Till.

I remember seeing people say that Vivimeng confirmed that Till loved Ivan romantically, or that they confirmed that they would be happy in every other universe. These both made me happy until I checked them because I don’t like misinformation and found out they neither of those are true, sadly… Also, I was praying for months that the high school AU would involve Till and Ivan being happy together, but with the new comic I have a feeling that we aren’t going to be so lucky…

If anyone has any thoughts they would like to share, please do. Having someone to talk to about this would be cool. And sorry if I didn't phrase all of this well. I checked over everything but I imagine I phrased at least something badly [l'm really tired right now].

This is technically incorrect since I got the demo like a month ago, where Till got a crush on Ivan within literally like two or three minutes of being made, which got me really excited [the only romantic love I have aside from them is Sua crushing on Mizi]. I had exams, that finished two days ago, so I wanted to wait until they ended to start playing.

Anyway, I started playing the actual game like 32 hours ago. Like 90% of my time was spent with Till crushing on Ivan, but eventually he asked him out. Within like an hour of them dating, Till proposed?? It took me forever to get my Miis to marry in the original, so I was very surprised, but I’m really happy.

I was hoping they would be happy together in the high school AU, but it appears unlikely, so at least I have this. Oh, and ignore Till’s cut in the second and third photos [also, the fourth one is Till daydreaming about Ivan].

And this doesn’t even include YouTube…

This song convinced me to get Omori, and I knew it would be #1 for me, but I didn't expect it to beat everything by THAT much [the second song is for comparison]… it has more listens than the top 5 aside from it COMBINED [1496].

For reference, most of the Omori songs I'm really into have 150-300 listens [aside from Tee-Hee time, which has 294 but would probably have like 500 if it included YouTube since it's better extended in my opinion].

I didn’t actually like IvanTill the first time I watched Alien Stage, but it’s grown on me a TON since then. I did a poll for how many people believe Till likes Ivan, and it was 450-291 [out of 741], or 60.7% [this is not part of my argument, I just found it interesting]. I should probably say that this is just my opinion, and it is understandable if you believe otherwise.

Anyway, these are all the reasons I believe Till likes Ivan.

1. In KARMA, with the heart symbolism, you can see Till’s heart on Ivan’s neck.

2. Like how Till drew Mizi but didn’t show her, Till also drew Ivan, but didn’t show him, as shown in Scars [the comic], because he was too embarrassed.

3. In the wiki, it states, “By the end of the comic…Till has seemingly come to terms with both his and Ivan’s feelings for one another.”

4. In the ALNST art book, while Till is shown to love Mizi 100%, he still loves Ivan 70%, which is the same amount that Luka loves Hyuna. This also would’ve changed after the events of Alien Stage, with him understanding his feelings for Ivan more and stopping his childlike crush on Mizi.

I have more reasons, but they’re not as solid as the others:

1. In Scars, it looks like [you could argue otherwise, but I thought it looked like] Till was considering kissing Ivan [he ends up hugging him], shown in the photo I attached.

2. Till stops resisting the kiss in Round 6 as much after a bit, shown in the second photo [what Ivan did is still SA and not okay :/]

3. Luka chose to mimick Ivan instead of Mizi in Round 7. This point is weak, but if Luka knows [I don’t know if he did] that he loved Mizi, he might’ve been inclined to imitate her otherwise, and he would’ve probably been better at it due to singing with her.

4. Scars [the song] implies that Till can’t stop thinking about him no matter what he does. The song also says, “the colder Rue begins to bloom,” and the rue symbolises regret.

There are probably some more reasons I have but I can’t think of any more right now.

[Alter is the song that plays at the last part of the fight with Omori, which is my third favourite song in the game.]

I probably should have realised this from the term alter ego…