in the art school au art, luka and till are the only two characters without hearts as pupils. while both of them are very much in love like the rest of the cast (they are still heartstruck), they differ because their relationship with love itself is tenuous.
for luka it's obvious. in sacred light, he begs a dead woman to teach him the meaning of love. he has never been shown love, so he doesn't understand unburdened affection. in his floriography bio, he is represented by the purple rose, an uneasy love. he reads books to try understand the concept of it, and fails. alnst argues that love is a human concept: without any peers, luka is doomed to struggle alone, loveless.
till's insecure love is driven by his fear of abandonment. he loves his own constructed fantasy of mizi, and remains ignorant of his love for ivan - he must not be vulnerable. mi vida loca conveys this paradoxical struggle: he wishes desperately to love and be loved, but he remains too terrified of it despite declaring it as his driving conviction.
while alnst presents that love without hurt doesn't exist, lukatill stand out because they remain blind to the harm they cause.
it is no coincidence that the object of their outward affections are women - this is illustrated by ruler of my heart. in the song, the female muse is reduced to an object that simultaneously represents a man's strength and weakness - the strength required of possession, and the weakness of the heart. they do not afford women humanity or autonomy: they are accessories, and as muse, they are tools to power. they can present the aesthetics of pitifulness (hyuna's jaded cover; mizi suppressed into harmonies), but there is no pity extended to them. lukatill's versions are also the only ones that feature the catcall whistle at the beginning, ie, a signifier of misogynistic violence.
hand - love as possession. empty hand - unfulfilled love. therefore, heartless - loveless.
this is an example of the end result of when emotional immaturity is afforded to men. it is no disadvantage to them to be unlikable to their peers, and so they are not punished for not being empathetic, rather, it's even an expectation of masculinity that they aren't. this enables their disregard of others - luka's disgust for his clones, and other humans by extension; till's deliberate ignorance of everyone but himself. both of these act as self preserving measures, and for it, they make it to the final round of alien stage.
to succeed in a system you have to embody its values. they are the ideal competitors alien stage breeds: they possess an equal amount of talent for art and drive to survival. this exceptionality is cultivated at the cost of the lives and humanity of others. misogyny is only the first and most universal building block of the dehumanisation required when survival means dominance. the woman is love, emotion, weakness; the man must be strength, possessor, heartlessness.
season 50 ends with till's uncontrolled emotionality killing him, while luka ultimately triumphs by demonstrating the control he has over his. there is no need for love when everyone else is competition.
