Need more tillvan angst where Till totally takes Ivan for granted until it’s too late and he only realises what he had when it’s gone / broken. Please. Please. Requited wholesome tillvan truthers you are valid but where are the other evil freaks who like suffering 🥺
Till being so annoyed by Ivan’s overbearing clinginess and weird habits, wishing with all his chest that Ivan gets a new hobby / fixation and leaves him alone… Until Ivan disappears or gets sick / injured and Till realises the silence is a lot louder than he thought it’d be. Till having mixed feelings about the boy who buried himself into his psyche like a pest that can’t be excised anymore. Till haunted and wanting Ivan back, but it still isn’t love—at least not love in that soft, comforting, romantic way. Not love like how he feels for Mizi, endlessly wanting to bask in her glow and watch her succeed.
I feel like Till loving Ivan is like, the ease found in familiarity—living in the same house for so long you remember just how many steps it takes to get up from the landing. Even in the dark, you’re not uncertain; you won’t lurch at the top step and feel your heart drop, because you know what to expect. Until the layout changes, and everything is wrong and unfamiliar in ways you never could have anticipated. You keep forgetting you’re not in the same house anymore; you don’t know where anything is.
I like to think Till isn’t capable of loving Ivan the same way he loves Mizi, the same way Ivan wants to love and be loved by him. The only time his heart will ever skip a beat is from fear or embarrassment. There’s no head-over-heels, skin-tingling tenderness. No sparks. But while he’s content to get burned in Mizi’s brilliance, Ivan is like—room temperature. Something that feels like nothing, until you experience too hot or too cold and find yourself wanting that stability back.
I like thinking about Till’s feelings that way, tepid and nebulous but not insubstantial. I feel like they pair well with Ivan’s, who’s undefined in his own way—he knows what he wants, yes, but he seems like he denies himself those soft pleasures and opts for something cold and realistic instead. Till doesn’t care that he’s always there, always interested, always yearning for simple companionship. Till does care when Ivan pisses him off or hits him or insults him, so, well. If Ivan wants to be noticed, there’s a clear trajectory he can take, isn’t there?
I’ve always thought of him as someone content to be an “object,” content to be a fine-tuned product for the aliens’ enjoyment. Even compared to Luka, who’s similarly marketable, we see Luka having his own out-there quirks and acting impulsively, cruelly and letting his personality shine. Ivan is always just giving canned answers he thinks other people would like to hear, this empty black void that barely counts as a person.
(Perhaps that’s why he likes Till, who’s overflowing with vibrancy. Black holes swallow all matter, including light itself, etc.)
If he’s not a “person,” he doesn’t have to wear his desires on his sleeve. He can just react to Till in any way that might preserve their tenuous connection. If he’s not a person—just a pet, an object—it doesn’t matter if he’s denied; he’s content to take what he can get and be grateful for it. I figure they must have drifted after graduating from Anakt, since Ivan said in an interview that he and Till aren’t close. I figure it’s cuz their schedules don’t line up without living under a shared roof, and that’s… Just how it is. Ivan can tolerate that and play the role of a good pet. It’s not like they have any reason to meet anyway; only to indulge Ivan’s “shallow emotions.”
But as dark and impassive Ivan seems to be, we do get to glimpse what he’d like to do with Till if he could, sometimes—holding his hand, wanting him to cheer him up / cheer him on, nuzzling their heads together, etc… All things that feel so innocent and starkly contrast his provocative behaviour when Till is paying attention to him (further implying he only acts like that cuz Till won’t GAF otherwise). I often think about how he envies Sua because he thought they were both twisted, unwanted objects, only to realise Sua could be her soft and gentle self when next to Mizi. Sua could love and be loved back. She could be free. Ivan couldn’t.
So circling back, I think if Till and Ivan lived in a kinder world where they only had a death scare rather than death sentence, Till could resolve not to take his friend for granted anymore and, yes, admit they are friends. Being permitted even that much could be intense to Ivan, who was content to be a scribble in the background of Till’s life… I love thinking about them not having what Mizi and Sua have—because they’re different people—but being able to make “whatever” they have work regardless.
Maybe it’s not a blockbuster romance that hits every cliche and follows all the best tropes, but it’s theirs. Their kind of weird, kind of dysfunctional stumbling-around-in-the-dark bond, cuz maybe it isn’t “love,” like you see in the movies, but both of them know now, for certain, they don’t want to let each other go (Till needed a lot of character development to get there LMAO).
