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mystxmomo · 10 months

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Oh shit. Another curiouscat I had to move to tumblr because I broke character limit again.

So I am combining these two together in the same ask because, in truth, I don't think you can talk about Luca and Alva being mischaracterized separate from each other. So much of their mischaracterization comes from a respective opposing interpretation of the other character. I'm actually going to start with Luca, because I do think this is his story for better or for worse.

Guys. Luca is an adult.

More then that, Luca is an abuse victim and an adult runaway. Like that's not a headcanon, that's plain text canon. His dad neglected his family. He got a college application and rejected it within his deductions. 1900 wasn't so long ago that people were going to college at 16. By the time we meet him in the canon of the story, He's an abuse victim still dealing with that, a newly disabled former able bodied man, and coming out of Victorian prison.

A lot of people view Luca as being very childish for how he handled the fight with Alva. And to some degree it was, Luca doesn't seem like he has very good emotional regulation in the way a lot of young adults in that age range just generally are not. Even in the modern day, the amount of early 20 something's having breakdowns on their Twitter page about the injustices of the world is immeasurable.

But he wasn't /in the wrong/. From Luca's perspective, for all the information that he has. Alva Lorenz IS a thief. Not only is he a thief, but he's a thief in such a way that it, TO LUCA'S KNOWLEDGE, profited off his fathers work at the expense of his families well being. His mom died, man. And learning that Alva had those plans recontextualizes it to be just as much Alvas fault as it is his father's.

He has every right to feel betrayed! He has ever right to indignation! Alvas entire platform, to the information Luca has available to him, is based on plagiarization and theft of his families ideas. While there's shown to be a confrontation, we know this argument went on for a significant amount of time because Lucas deductions SHOW people talking about it. Luca accused him of being a thief before the confrontation that killed Alva and disabled Luca, and at any point inbetween that process Alva Lorenz could have sat him down and explained to him that he worked with his father, and that he had as much right to their ideas as his family.

But he didn't. Because Alva Lorenz is kind of a coward! He thought it would go away on its own!

This is where we get into the Alva Lorenz side of things.

Alva, from everything we have been given, is an incredibly immature man hiding that immaturity under the guise of stem professionalism, and then religious authority. With all of the above in mind, even if their relationship WAS strictly a platonic mentor-student relationship, let alone a sudo-familial one, it would not be a healthy one. Their relationship is not a healthy one.

They are both adults. Alva Lorenz is the adult with more life experience. He is the one that should have sat Luca down and explained himself. But he did not. Alva is not mature. He is not a good man. He would NOT be a good father figure. People, when they ship him with Herman, really try to make the fact they have wives work with lavender marriage. You are being too kind to his character. He would have cheated on his wife to be with Herman. And I understand wanting a more positive approach to these relationships, I understand not wanting the female characters to suffer. But that is not the canon we are presented. And we know this, because of how he treated Ann.

If he was a father figure, he would be willing to enable Herman's neglect. He was willing to enable the cat cults abuse of power to get what he needed, and he would be willing to enable Herman's neglect for that same reason. We don't know what he got from the cat cult yet, but we know he was willing to work with them. We know from Ann's perspective that he ruined her life. We know from Alvas perspective that he doesn't even think about the fact that he ruined her life, because she is NONEXISTENT in his narrative. It is ALL about Luca, and his relationship to the Balsa's.

And that's good writing. I know people are disappointed that she doesn't pop up more with him, but that tells you exactly the kind of authority figure he is. She was no one to him, and he treats her like she's no one.

The thing about Luca Balsa is that he loves passionately. Everything he does is from a place of sincere belief in the *rightness* of it. He feels as strongly as he does about perpetual motion because he believes it can help people, and if HE discovers it, HE is helping people. He sincerely does care about the people in his life, even if he is a moron about it. I think Alva Lorenz is a selfish man. I think he loved Herman, and Loves Luca, and because he cares about them that's what his focus is. He does not care that he hurt Ann through the cat cult. As far as we can tell, he does not care that Ann exists. Alva Lorenz exists in a perpetual state of "fuck you I got mine."

The most infuriating part about all of this is that Luca already has a surrogate father figure within The narrative of IDV. He HAS someone that does want to be a healthy mentor figure to him. It's BURKE. burke has been projecting onto him since we have gotten his second year letter. This relationship with Burke is literally what people who don't like Alvaluca characterize the Alva & Luca relationship to be. But at the end of the day, their goal isn't exploring a complications student-teacher relationship. It's engaging with a set of characters in a way they personally see as being morally correct.

And don't get me wrong. I do have a few issues with the Alvaluca community's interpretation of the two that I've never been quite quiet about, and that gets a lot of AlvaLuca people really defensive sometimes. The Alvaluca relationship IS an unhealthy one. You cannot get around that. No matter how much they love and care about eachother, they are so deeply and horribly bad for eachother. But that's the meat of it. They're soulmates in the worst possible way. Theyre always going to effect eachother, intrinsically and miserably.

Above all else, I want to explore Alvaluca as this really uncomfortable relationship. I want the eternity manor au to be brimming with melodrama over the Alvaluca relationship. I want Tracy to try and talk to him directly about her concern only for him to dismiss her. I want Naib to try and bring it up while they're smoking only for Luca to LIE HIS ASS OFF about not thinking anything is wrong with their dynamic. I want Edgar to hate Alvas guts because he's fucking Luca, because he sees the situation and he projects his situation with Sarai and sees red.

Because the unfortunate reality of being an adult that exists in the working world is that your friends will get into these deeply uncomfortable, deeply unhealthy relationships. There will probably be a time where someone you personally care about date someone two decades older than them. One of your college classmates will get caught hooking up with the professor. One of your retail coworkers will get caught fucking in the break room. Some of these relationships will crash and burn, some of them will move on to marriage despite the power imbalance. These are very real things that happen all the time and to say that we are forbidden from exploring that in Media is absolutely goddamn ridiculous.

#It's not to completely tangent #but this is what I mean when I say we don't actually have any toxic yuri in idv.#EmmaEmily is the closest thing we have to that #and people start getting squeamish when their relationship is still being portrayed as relatively positive and caring #just from a former power imbalance. That is aside from the point! Just something I wanted to bring up because you have me ranting and raving #we dont have any femslash pairings that have quite the same level of THIS complexity in its toxicity #unless 15 year olds are calling you out for shipping it its not a true toxic ship

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