🧵 let’s talk about ivan, till & anger (a rambling thread about how it plays into their general lives) #ALNST

if u want to hear more about this.

(end of thread 🧵) . guy who got side tracked at least five times probably. i’ve been thinking about this for a while.

which is why i say they’re two sides of the same coin, so similar in the fears and insecurities that drive them to act the way they do but ultimately in such different ways that they’re unable to understand each other’s provocation/anger beyond a surface level.

& they berate themselves when unable to meet these, frankly impossible, expectations. then, they look for the easiest thing to blame; for ivan, it’s himself, and for till, it’s the segyien as a whole though directed at whoever is there to take the punch (often, willingly, ivan).

both ivan and till’s coping mechanisms stem from the fact that they are two very fragile people; they’re scared & feel helpless to understand e/o. they place high expectations on themselves, ivan of not needing requited affection, till of shouldering urak’s abuse w/o faltering,.

till’s anger is yet another layer of his avoidance, so it’s no surprise that the person often on the receiving end of it is ivan who he feels the most complicated and confused about. for ivan, it’s a response he feels justified in receiving, rather than any kind of affection.

till’s anger started as smth very personal, first used to cope w/ ivan’s rejection which set the tone for their relationship going forward (ivan sees an emotion he can easily draw out; till finds a response that doesn’t make him feel weak)

& this is interesting to me bc till’s rebellion (before escaping) doesn’t come off as him genuinely retaliating (this is the more entertaining persona given to him by the segyien in TOP 3 and what he tells himself) but rather just his response to being hurt.

(for context, righteous anger is anger primarily motivated by injustice & moral superiority. it’s also used in religious (god-given) contexts which lines up w/ till, who convinces himself it’s his purpose to free humanity to maintain what little purity it still has).

this in mind, till doesnt have a natural disposition for anger or violence (seen by how optimistic he is w/ io), but having it suddenly be the only thing he knows, it becomes his first response, later growing into righteous anger against all segyien (& irritation towards humans).

that abuse (“violence to instill obedience”) is the best method for raising humans, which he creates and raises en masse due to being the head of a “human editing company” (where humans are sold in ALNST).

this is MAJOR to till’s view of the world and his core desires. io imprints on till a need for a happier time, that innocent, secure love, which only grows more harrowing when owned by someone like urak who believes, in contrast to unsha’s view on neglect,.

ivan & till were both raised in ANAKT & very closely, but the differentiating factor for why they express their emotions so differently starts w/ their origins. while ivan first grew up in the slums, till grew up w/ io, secure & loved. despite their separation,

it’s the emotion we see him express most often (alongside bashfulness and maybe confusion). usually in response to ivan, in fact. we’ll circle back to that later.

interestingly enough, till is on the very other end of this spectrum (though for many of the same reasons) bc anger as a result of unmet expectations & as protection against vulnerability is EXACTLY what till repeatedly displays.

tldr; in conclusion, ivan does not allow himself to reach a stage of anger because it would have to be secondary to processing his frustration, jealously & hurt, which he doesn’t even bother labelling nor thinks he’s justified in feeling, let alone expressing to others.

both of these things are directly opposed by ivan’s tendency to take full responsibility for his pain. rather than anger, he develops a binary understanding of his situation: there has to be something to blame & he chooses something that is within his control, himself.

2) anger can be used as protection against displaying more vulnerable emotions (see again frustration, jealousy & fear of rejection) but ivan doesn’t resort to that bc it’s not desirable. and his priority is always presenting himself desirably.

1) anger often is a result of unmet expectation vs. reality (i.e this is how things are supposed to be vs. how they’re turning out). for ivan, that would hypothetically look like “i deserve to be loved vs. i do not feel loved,” but doesn’t happen (bc he “lacks inherit value”).

ivan experiences frustration (not even for himself but bc he is helpless to stop till’s pain) & jealousy (bc, unlike sua, his true self is not lovable in his mind), which are arguably the closest thing to anger we see from him, but why not anger itself?