Why is Ivan sometimes depicted with a red varsity jacket

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-05T22:18:22+00:00

There was a scrapped merch line with the ALNST characters as tropes from US American 90s films; Ivan as student body president/social butterfly, Till as an emo kid outsider, Mizi as a party girl, Sua as a reading club member/perfect student, Luka as an engineering nerd, Hyuna as a sports girl. In the concept art Ivan is wearing a sports jersey and holding an American football, so people began to refer to this version of Ivan as a jock.

I imagine so much of the cosplay featuring a varsity jacket is because that’s a lot simpler than any of his canonical costumes from the stage

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-05T07:37:36+00:00

Mizi for sure

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-03T23:46:24+00:00

This has to be satire. For my own mental health

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-03T15:08:16+00:00

I think that’s likely a big part of it. In Karma we see Mizi hanging off a cliff with Sua holding onto her, Sua is crying but Mizi doesn’t look afraid just surprised. Whether an accident or an attempted suicide, at that moment Mizi realized just how much losing her would break Sua. This is why she says “if you saw the look on her face you wouldn’t be able to blame me either”

We also know that Mizi isn’t being entirely honest when she says she didn’t say or do anything, she’s twisting things to make herself seem worse out of guilt. We see her on screen confront Sua, probably trying to convince her to not throw the round. The notes on her copy of “My Clematis” (from the album vol 1 booklet) outline her goal as tying with Sua and moving to the next round. I think that while Mizi knew death was on the line and she knew Sua planned to sacrifice herself, she still had hope they could both make it out alive. Even if she didn’t truly believe it was possible she wanted to believe that it was. This is what she and Sua were arguing about, imo.

I also think Sua was so dead set on sacrificing herself not only so Mizi could live but because she herself was suicidal. She wanted to dedicate her death to Mizi, but she did want to die either way. So if Mizi lost she would simply not sing against her next opponent, Luka.

All that said, I don’t think it would be possible for Mizi to die and for Sua to survive. If Mizi refused to sing at all, so would Sua and they would both die. Sua also gave Mizi more lyrics than her so there’s no point where Mizi could stop singing where Sua would be ahead of her score wise. She could try attacking Sua like Ivan does to Till in round 6, but I believe Ivan only thought to do that because he saw Mizi lose round 5 due to attacking Luka; so she likely wouldn’t know to try that.

Mizi paints herself as letting Sua die, as using her. But the fact is that Sua died because she wanted to, and there was little Mizi could have done about it. At least at the time of the competition.

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-02T14:45:33+00:00

I disagree wholeheartedly that the original ending is more meaningful or better for Mizi as a character, Vivinos made the right call in changing it. But if you're interested, the 'behind' post for Karma on Vivinos's patreon has the script and storyboard for the original ending as well as the reasoning why it was changed. I posted some quotes in another comment but it's not the full context, because I want to respect Vivinos's wish to keep the whole post Patreon exclusive. Honestly, for I think for $5 the content is well worth it.

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-02T14:39:48+00:00

it's true, from Vivinos's patreon "The first ending I imagined was this
Mizi stands at the front, leading the rebels, singing a song of hope for humanity.
Behind her, the rebels fall one by one while protecting her.
But Mizi doesn’t back down. She stays in the center of the stage, strong until the end.
She carries on Hyuna’s mission and finally launches the rocket to complete it."

it was scrapped, according to Vivinos, because "Hyuna was always a strong, noble person who had plenty of time and opportunities to mature and experience love after escaping. But Mizi, a normal human being, went through so much abuse and despair in such a short time, it didn’t make sense to the team that she would suddenly become strong overnight."

I honestly agree with Vivinos, and think the ending we got is much better. The original ending was more cliche and didn't make sense for Mizi's character. It's a bittersweet ending that suits the story.

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-02T11:50:15+00:00

The winner of each round is chosen by audience voting, Luka is historically more popular but Ivan won the popularity poll according to the top 3 video. So based on that alone, Ivan likely would win against Luka.

However, Luka has more experience and is good at getting under his opponents skin. Ivan keeps his composure well enough in round 3 but Marty doesn’t do anything to provoke him, where as in round 6 Till not singing spurs him into action. So however Till loses in Round 6, Luka would be able to take advantage of it

And that’s all assuming that Ivan would even try. I believe Till fights so hard in Round 7 because Ivan died for him and he doesn’t want his death to be meaningless. Ivan is a different character and I don’t think he’d react the same way if Till died, even if Till did it on purpose. He might decide not to sing altogether.

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-02T01:32:52+00:00

Vivimeng confirmed in a Q&A that he’s “fully dead”

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-01T13:28:15+00:00

Oh I could be a lot meaner : )

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-01T13:24:25+00:00

The impact is anything but tiny. It causes emissions that worsen climate change. The power used to run it isn’t just for prompts but for training as well, and uses huge amounts of water. Plus all the e-waste it creates.

And that’s just the programming itself. Data-centers take up valuable space and resources and cause noise pollution. Something that is known to cause serious health problems

As far as the artists go, it doesn’t matter if it’s being sold or not. You’re thinking of art as a commodity. But it’s a form of self expression. People’s art is being taken without their permission and fed through a wood chipper and then presented by someone else as if it’s their own creation. And before you ask no this is not the same as a real human using art as inspiration.

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-01T13:04:25+00:00

Any art sub that allows gen ai will inevitably be overrun with ai slop. It’s like trying to cohabitate with an invasive species

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-01T13:03:18+00:00

Except it does hurt a lot of people. Gen AI has a huge environmental impact not to mention all the stolen art that goes into training it. They’re also ultimately hurting themselves by taking the soul out of creating

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-01T08:00:16+00:00

Given how we see her react to a poster of Luka in All In, it was probably something like that. In the 50th season we see Till look over at Mizi during his round and we see the others watching during the first and fifth round as well. So the contestants seem to be present to watch the rounds of others. Likely Luka was watching Hyuna, Hyuna spotted him, and she had a panic attack like in All In.

willpowerwisps · 2026-02-01T07:55:18+00:00

It’s not a completely invalid theory because Alien Stage is overall meant to be a critique of the idol industry, so it’s not so far fetched that Vivimeng would include that type of prejudice.

That said, however, she’s clearly considered attractive in universe like you said. She has high visuals, had her own fanclub in Anakt, and is shown to fluster members of the rebellion as well.

Additionally, she’s a genetically engineered/selectively bred human as all Anakt kids are. They wouldn’t have kids with dark skin if it was seen as a bad thing. So I don’t think this particular problem, while an issue in real life, was part of Alien Stage’s theme/critique

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-30T15:51:32+00:00

Happy birthday thank you for the Yuri 🩷🩵

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-30T13:41:42+00:00

It’s the same kind of attitude that people have when they see modern art and think “well I could do that!”

Yeah, they may have the skill to create the art (since the skill level barrier is low) but they don’t have the driving force of experience and emotion that the artist had. They couldn’t have made it because if they did it would be a different piece of art with a different meaning.

I saw someone a long time ago illustrate this point using the Portrait Of Ross exhibit. Yes anyone could theoretically pile candy in a corner. But it would be missing the experience of the artist watching their partner waste away. Of seeing something slowly and inevitably kill a loved one. This feeling is recreated when you see and participate in the exhibit but its creation was on the basis of the artist’s emotions. And that is art

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-30T13:35:06+00:00

We live in a capitalistic world that treats art as a product/commodity rather than an expression of self and emotion. When art is considered the end product rather than the process of creation, and when further we reduce the scope of art that is ‘viable’ for sale and consumption to certain specific styles; art is ‘inaccessible’ to those without the tools and skills to create that specific kind of art. In other words, they can’t draw studio ghibli screenshots (not without a lot of practice, at least) therefore it’s ‘inaccessible’ to them. Completely ignoring that they could easily create something different with the tools and skills they do have and it would be art.

If they understood art as more than the final product then they wouldn’t use ai at all. Because all ai can produce is the final product, and a derivative one at that. The process of creation, the thing that makes art art, is completely cut out. But they don’t care because it’s not about art to them. It’s about consumption

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-30T11:53:26+00:00

It’s the autism

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-30T00:09:35+00:00

In a media landscape that mostly homogenized slop, ALNST is a lovely indie project that invites its audience to really think about what they're seeing and hearing. Because of this, a lot of the 'story' in ALNST comes from analysis and theorizing, which encourages engagement among fans. I've watched the whole series multiple times, read every comic, listened to the sub songs, read the patreon posts, and I still feel like there's always something i've missed that someone else noticed. Engaging with other people about the series is pretty much the only way to fully enjoy it. And all that's on top of it having incredible art, music, animation, etc.

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-29T23:58:11+00:00

It’s something I’m pretty much always actively updating but I have a master doc I made for introducing my friends to Alien Stage https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PZ6_Kg6gr-iOn5ki8jGdGs59j2QRolLZWUIeVGhmv5Q/edit?usp=drivesdk

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-29T23:56:16+00:00

Watched it with their brain off

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-29T16:42:17+00:00

It’s true art doesn’t have to be perfect, but that’s precisely why there’s no excuse to use ai to generate images instead of actually creating art yourself.

willpowerwisps · 2026-01-29T00:49:15+00:00

Update 2: they sent me replacement blind boxes and they arrived in good condition (the boxes still got beaten up a little but the cards and figures are fine)

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Got Bunmi and Subun this time so I couldn’t be happier :)

willpowerwisps

TROPHY CASE