I have some thoughts on the way Till uses the term family in Alien Stage. We already see familiar terms like “father” be used for their guardians and “sister” get used for Sua’s sisters, but neither of these terms are distinguished as family. Sua and her older sister seemed to have genuine love for each other, but we know that many of her other sisters engaged in competitive behavior over favor of their guardian. Familial terms like “father” and “sister” seem to operate solely in terms of the relationships the Segyein organize, that are entirely without choice for the humans a part of them and often of limited care. The relationships between humans within the biological and reproductive sphere are stripped entirely of any positive social possibilities. Io is not a mother, she is a producer, and term that is stripped entirely of any social and non-commercial associations. The boy that strikes Mizi does not just deny the possibility of queerness and specifically lesbianism, but he also strips the relationships between men and women to solely a reproductive function. “A male and female are bound to fall in love, and end up mating” structures the value of human relationships solely on the possibility of producing more human beings. The social aspect, love, is merely a stepping stone to the end, the production of more humans. Their lives are entirely commercialized—any relationship that exists outside of a commercialized framework, in which more humans are created, is rendered entirely invisible. Fathers can only exist as entities with total control over their children. Love only exists as a stepping stone to the production of further humans to exist as product. That they have friends is only because it is understand that humans, as social creatures, require social interaction. The humans in alien stage have no conceptualization of relationships outside of at their most commercial, and with little to no control in these situations. There is also no possibility of long lasting social relationships—Till is removed from Io, Sua’s older sister is gone, Mizi’s mother is killed, Hyunwoo is killed, and Ivan does not appear to have had a large amount of social relationships at all prior to Anakt Garden. To me, when Till in Remember Everything, talks about family in the context of Ivan and Mizi, it’s discussing a relationship that is social, non-commercialized, by choice, and based on mutual concern and care. When discussing both Ivan and Mizi, the idea of sharing pain is emphasized in both cases. It is also, by its vagueness, unlike father and sister, a term that does not situate itself within a particular hierarchy.