webgirl's comment

beware - long long yapping: i love him too much ( -w-)

Words cannot explain how much I love Ivan's character.
When I first started Alien Stage, I didn't really know what it was about nor remembered any of the characters - I had seen a few edits on Tiktok of characters like Luka or Till, but I didn't even know their names. This means that, for me, it was a completely unbiased watch.
It took me a whole day to process what I had just seen (it was January 2025, so I was able to watch up to Round 7/Final) + a good old Fandom Wikia read-through to finally settle on a favorite - and it was clearly him.

As weird as it could sound coming from me (ahem, a very avid IvanTill enjoyer), one of the things I've enjoyed the most of Ivan's character was his one-sided attachment. Gladly, Alien Stage isn't that type of media where everything ends with an "happily ever after", so pretty much all of the characters have their own vices and virtues, as well as the three main relationships being far from "healthy" and ideal. For such reasons, I found it very interesting to see how his feelings were potrayed and acknowledge that such a relationship was what you'd call a "wrong place, wrong time" situation.

As we can also deduct from the KARMA MV (I'm too lazy to get a screenshot but I'm referring to the "hearts" scenes, where we see the three main couples and these crystal hearts are a recurring theme), Ivan "forced" his love on Till: it started with his persistence during the Anakt Garden times and it culminated with that final, forceful kiss he imposed on Till during his last moments alive.
Such actions clearly had an impact on Till, as I mentioned above, with him experiencing several hallucinations of his late friend and feeling this mixture of anger, guilt and sadness, along with the physical trauma of losing his voice and the emotional one of losing his dear friends.
However, in multiple artbooks, official contents and such, we can see that their intimacy statuses are high, that they spent a lot of time together in the Garden and that, generally, Till did not dislike Ivan - he just found him annoying at times.

All of this was not my attempt to force a ship on whoever is reading this (long live the freedom of choice, guys!), it was meant to show Ivan's wrongdoings that clearly affected his own character and the ones around him: I firmly believe that Alien Stage's characterization is mainly shown through the main three relationships, so I find it a bit hard to mention Ivan's flaws without connecting them to Till, somehow (obviously, one can acknowledge his flaws and disklike the pairing). This is why - like any other character in this amazing series - he is not "perfect", but rather potrayed as a human being with human flaws, only aggravated by an environment that did not allow him to live like a normal person would.

Speaking on a lighter and less-analyzing note (my fault... I love yapping about this dude!!!), I like his design very much. He perfectly passes of as the composed, beautiful model-like man that his owner, Unsha, wants him to be, while in reality we know that he hides several deep emotions under that facade of his (and they occasionally slip out... Round 3's ending during the flashback, anyone?). I also enjoy drawing him because something about his hair satisfies me, lol.

I love his songs very much (Black Sorrow is definitely my #1 on an eventual personal Alien Stage songs ranking), both because of the nice music/nice vocals (we all love Park Byeong Hoon!!!) and the meaning behind each of them: through his lyrics we can get a perfect picture of his thoughts and feelings, and I think that's very cool!!

And, to go even more lightly on the topic, I LOVE every single variation of Modern AU Ivan. I'm generally a sucker for Modern AUs on, like... every single fandom I'm in. But I felt like adding this here just because.

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