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The characters that appeared in Cluster of Life.
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The Traveler
- Actual Pacifist: He actively avoids fighting or being in the frontlines, preferring to simply travel the world. Played With, as she ponders if the war was the cause of the girl's death. Even when the ghost girl is readily throwing a tirade of rants, he doesn't yell at her.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He is often referred to as "The Traveler".
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: His reason for separating from his family was because he felt that he was not good for them.
- Irony: He always wields a samurai and has a Samurai Ponytail, making him a warrior; yet he's a conflict-averse man who prefers to be away from the frontlines. Invoked in one dialogue with the Ghost Girl, when she asks him about being a warrior, only for him to respond with "I am not a warrior".
- The Nameless: Has no name, where he lampshades it in the very first page.The Traveler: I am a traveler. I am on a journey. My name... Never mind that.
- Only Sane Man: He's the only reasonable person in the cast who is often put up to his companion's ramblings.
- Perpetual Frowner: He rarely smiles, if not at all.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to the Ghost Girl's red. He's the calm and reasonable half of the duo, unlike the short-tempered and anger-prone Ghost Girl.
- Samurai Ponytail: His hair is tied in a ponytail and he's equipped with a sword. Despite him trying to be on the side of neutrality from the past war.
- You Can't Go Home Again: It is revealed that he ran away from his parents due to his inferiority complex and has no plans to go back to his home again, especially in the midst of a war. Averted at the end of the story when he decides to return back to his own home and to his parents again after the ghost girl fully disappeared.
The Ghost Girl
- Allegorical Character: She's the personification of sadness and bottled regrets in one emotional baggage, when her ghost form serves as a metaphor that she is not entirely put to rest and will curse any humans she comes across, as long as she's existing. Metaphorically speaking, her slow disappearance in the latter half of the webcomic, which takes place one month later, is basically a sign that she moved on from them before her soul finally rests for good to the afterlife.
- Broken Bird: She has a lot of emotional baggage, whether it be the war that killed her or simply her own parents who abandoned her. She borders to extreme cynicism and aggressiveness to the point that she rather wants to die than seeing her parents or being with humanity in general, often going through nihilistic rants aplenty. Justified as her parents abandoned her and humanity's war caused problems firsthand.
- Death of a Child: She died at a very young age at the start of the story and had never reached her own teenage years.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: She has bouts of extreme anger whenever her trauma about humans and her parents are mentioned.
- Hates Their Parent: The ghost girl hated her own parents due to abandoning her at an uncertain part of her past, whom she treats them with anathema.
- Irony: The ghost girl is a misanthrope who is shown to have a big hatred to humanity, but she travels with a human alongside her.
- Killed Off for Real: Involuntarily. At the start she's actually dead, but she emerges as a ghost filled with regrets of her past life. But after she moved on from them, her soul disappears for good and ascends to the afterlife.
- Last Request: Before disappearing for real, the ghost girl wishes her last to the traveler, once she got over of her regrets and her emotional baggage:The Ghost Girl: Hey, old man... Old man... I hope you die real soon. Because I want to see you again... As soon as possible...
- Misanthrope Supreme: Not only she has absolute hatred over her parents who abandoned her, but she also hates humanity with no reservations, contemplating how she would curse them as long as she exists. Even her going so far in pointing how Humans Are the Real Monsters, ranting why they always fight and start wars. Exemplified in pages 11 and 12 where she goes into a state of vitriolic rage about it, temporarily going through a Madness Mantra.The Ghost Girl: I hate them!! I hate warriors!! They make war!!The Ghost Girl: Why do they fight?!The Traveler: Calm down.The Ghost Girl: I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know!
- Our Ghosts Are Different: She is a unique example, as in the very first half of the story she is a tangible ghost, which were mostly fuelled by her past regrets. She is visible to the Traveler and her own estranged father. Ironically, despite the said tangibility, she still exhibits ghostlike natures, including her attempting to eat food which simply goes through her ghostly body. Though near the end of the story after she has no regrets left, she becomes transparent and invisible even to the Traveller.
- Parental Abandonment: Was abandoned by her parents prior to the events of the story for unknown reasons.
- Perpetual Frowner: At the beginning, it's her default expression due to the emotional baggage she had to go through, only defaulting to either a frown or a scowl, where not a smile is seen in her face. Subverted in page 23 where she is seen smiling for the first time after she let go of her past, promising that she hopes to see him again if he dies before disappearing.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to the Traveler's blue. She's extremely misanthropic and anger prone, who is prone to outbursts.
- Straw Nihilist: Big time. She actively rants over the course of the story about humanity and the damage they caused, which is at least true, given how the war caused a lot of agony to the ones who survived from it. Her rants often border to hammy nihilism, planning to curse humanity as long as her existence still happens.The Traveler: And what are those feeling of?The Ghost Girl: Hatred!The Traveler: Hatred?The Ghost Girl: (bluntly) Hatred. Hatred for this world... Hatred for my parents who deserted me... Hatred for this war...
- Then in Page 4 where she starts monologuing about the state of the world during the war.The Ghost Girl: Burnt fields everywhere you look. Only the wealthy stay alive. Those with no power or money... Would curse this world, just like you... Or rather, rejoice their liberation from this cursed world.
- In Page 12, she goes into her own monologue about the warriors and their actions, of whom which directly led to her death, ending with a full-blown hysteric.The Ghost Girl: Warriors... They fight to put an end to this war... Is that why they killed me? Those were not warriors. Then who am I supposed to curse now? You can curse those you hate. In that case... I HATE ALL THE HUMANS OF THIS WORLD!!
- Then in Page 4 where she starts monologuing about the state of the world during the war.
- Stopped Caring: She clearly lost her faith about humanity, who defaults herself into simply hating them for a good measure.
- Trauma Button: Mentioning anything about humans would put her into a misanthropic, nihilistic rant about them. And especially her parents, whom she hates them for real because of her trauma from being abandoned by them.
The Ghost Girl's Father
- Bit Character: He only speaks in two lines and that's it, but he is significant to the backstory of the ghost girl. And at the very least, he's the source of her anathema towards them.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The person that the traveler and the Ghost Girl firstly meets? Her own father whom he actually can see her, despite being a ghost.
- Outliving One's Offspring: His own daughter is dead.
- Parental Abandonment: Abandoned his own child for unknown reasons.
