toastymarshie - Tumblr blog

toastymarshie · 18 days ago

Text

Analysis of Mizisua, Mizi-Luka parallels, and Mizi's relationship with Alien stage in light of the new comic

Initially, it was a general consensus held by both the audience and most of the alien stage cast that Mizi as a character was oblivious and naïve to the deaths alien stage would cause, or at least naïve to the idea that Sua and her wouldn't draw and that Sua would die as a consequence of competing.

However, in a heart-breaking but incredibly interesting twist from a character building perspective, this comic reveals to us that Mizi, in fact, was aware that only one person could win Alien stage all along and was conscious of the fact if she wanted to survive, everyone she cared about would need to die. Perhaps as a coping mechanism, she resorted to embodying this naïve and pure perspective on their futures whilst in ANAKT garden in order to not have to process the great emotional toll that comes from the knowledge of you and your friends imminent deaths.

Although, some may argue Mizi may have presented herself as this fully blissfully ignorant, pure and innocent version of herself in order to gain the support and adoration of other ANAKT members in hopes that they would give up their lives for her to keep intact her 'purity' and 'innocence', inadvertently applying to those dearest to her such as Sua and Till who given the chance, would give up everything for her, thereby ensuring her survival. This cemented her in her own eyes as somewhat manipulative and 'cunning' due to her weaponised obliviousness, whether the intention was to harm or not.

Perhaps this 'waste' is Mizi being self critical of her inaction- overcoming her repression of reality and embodiment of oblivious purity façade- in round one. Here, Miziay feel guilty for not revealing to Sua she knew about the death stakes all along in hopes to prevent her death, with the foresight of how much Sua's death would emotionally scar her. The verb 'waste' implies Mizi whether consciously or unconsciously abandoned her agency in round one, refusing to accept the true reality of alien stage as a means of survival, therefore deluding herself with the focus on 'winning together' at the forefront of her mind to ignore the real death stakes that, while aware of, she heavily repressed. This subsequently led to Sua's death which Mizi now villainises herself for.

In this way, Sua serves as an embodiment of Mizi's survivors guilt and internalised blame for the death of her friends. Mizi is under the constant, unrelenting gaze of Sua's lightless eyes, symbolising her own critical self judgement towards her oblivious façade as in utilising this to survive, she feels as though she sentenced her friends and love to an undeserved fate. Her own goddess, universe criticising her failure to take action and save not only Sua but Till, Hyuna and Ivan too cements this internalised blame and is a visual embodiment of the extent and weight of her guilt. Her façade methods of survival came at the cost of the deaths of everyone she cares about; in the pursuit of her own life and her conscious sheltered attitude, she 'abandoned' everyone else.

Now, i've seen some people be quite upset and confused with Mizi's actions here, either completely villainising her or absolving her of all guilt, even going as far as to claim that vivinos 'ruined' her character, or that her actions towards Sua were completely 'out of character'. Personally, I don't agree with any of these viewpoints. In terms of morality, of course Mizi was wrong for harming Sua but we have to understand that we are from the perspective of an audience who has been adequality socialised with what classifies as 'socially appropriate behaviour'. Contextually, we know students in ANAKT garden are unaware of the true definition of love, and even the idea of kissing is a foreign concept to them, so 'abuse' as we would define from a modern lense or seeing this as a disproportionate response to the hurt caused from Sua's words is not fully applicable to the situation here.

Furthermore, the point that Mizi's love for Sua was a façade for survival or that this reaction of slapping Sua 'came out of no where' is also none-factual and unevidenced.

Upon the introduction to Mizi's thoughts in round one, this dialogue immediately characterises her as someone with complete devotion towards her goddess, her universe, her 'love' -Sua. It is her internal speech which therefore typically will reflect her true feelings an intentions- she has no one to put on a façade for her her feelings for Sua come from a pure place. Despite her oblivious act causing a lack of decisive action in round one, Mizi did not manipulate Sua's death or even INTEND or WANT her to die and the implications from her inner voice she desired this outcome comes from a place of self blame and intense guilt, not genuine truth- Mizi is being an unreliable narrator, villainising herself as a way to cope with this continuous death of those she cares about.

However, it should be noted that there are elements of instability or 'toxicity' as some would call it in this relationship, in spite of the purest intentions from both parties.

From my perspective, Mizisua formed an unhealthy co-dependency and anxious attachment towards each other, in a world without full education on healthy relationships there love borderlines on obsessive worship and a devotion, which to some may be interpreted as romantic, to such an extreme level it is detrimental to both, with Sua's death and the beginning of Mizi's psychological break. that is the 'doomed' aspect of there relationship. If they were able to grow up and thrive in a modern day environment without alien stage perhaps their love could have blossomed into a beauty that could be 'healthy' and stable, but unfortunately they are products of their restrictive environments and none of them are at fault truly for these actions or the 'toxicity' in their relationship: the true fault lies on the oppressors, the aliens.

Circling back to the previous argument that Mizi's slap towards Sua was unprovoked and 'out of character', I present to you this:

As argued in psychology's Social Learning Theory, we learn behaviours through observation and imitation of those around us, especially key influences like peers. Mizi sees and experiences how others resort to violence when they are hurt by the words of others, as this boy slaps Mizi for her rejection of him and critiques her for her obliviousness to the attention she attracts from guys. Not only does this create a deep insecurity in mizi of her perceived perfection and 'easy life' by others at ANAKT garden but she may internalise violence as an appropriate response and social norm to instinctive hurtful feelings.

Therefore, when Sua, the person Mizi loves most, confirms her worst fears by not seeing her struggles and confirming her image as the perfect, naïve and unharmed guilt, mizi acts on this feeling of hurt by slapping sua, imitating the behaviour she had just observed from her peer. Therefore, it is completely understandable why Mizi responds this way to the unknowingly harmful words of Sua, and it is clearly still in character for her and mizi immediately tears up, apologises and gains a face of mortification in realising she had caused injury to sua, showcasing her true sweet and loving nature behind the repressed anger.

Finally, there is symbolic and ideological parallels between Mizi and Luka as people, in their relationships and in their current circumstances. Both utilise a façade for survival in alien stage for personal survival: Luka does this through putting on the face of a performer and modelling after other people to manipulate opponents emotions to win whereas mizi puts on a mask of naïve innocence and obliviousness to bate people into being willing to sacrifice themselves for her, whether she intends to or not. There are also significant parallels in their romantic relationship, both forming an overall obsessive devotion to their partners and overdependency on them for a large proportion of their livelihood and as both their partners sacrifice themselves for Mizi and Luka, they are both then forced to live without their support person and their true object of devotion and become the two only surviving members of the core cast (at this point in time). Finally, this link between the two is showcased even in the physical character designs as there is a parallel between the bluish/purplish tint of Luka's fingers and the purplish/blueish tint at the ends of Mizi's hair and this blue/purple is perhaps metaphorical of them using others for survival so when mizi loses her hair it is symbolic of her character arc as she is now taking action and abandoning her oblivious façade to the true nature of alien stage, joining the rebellion and facing the threats head on as she loses her hair in a trip to try and save her friends, Ivan and till no longer prioritising whether unconsciously or not her own survival over those she cares about, showing the true impact Sua's death had on her mindset. In contrast, Luka gains his blueish/purplish tints of his fingers at his ultimate sacrifice of others for his personal interests and survival when he, presumably, has a part to play in Hyunwoo's death.

Ultimately, I believe one detrimental downfall of fandom seems to be the harsh and unforgiving treatment of women. If female characters do not maintain the perfect, innocent and pure persona and actions and make one mistake or have a single ounce of complexity, everyone seems to forget or ignore their redeeming qualities and automatically jumps to master manipulator or villain. In contrast, male character like Luka immediately gain more support and sympathy from fandoms, foreign for their less moral actions due to attractiveness or blatant misogyny. It is truly sad to see that not only is Mizi forced to keep up the perfect façade in the world of alien stage, but is also forced to keep to those unrealistic standards by the audience too, and with a single ounce of complexity everyone is jumping to ignoring her morality and love for her friends and Sua. We need to do better.

sorry for my ramble haha this is my first post here, hope it brought any of you guys any of the joy it brought me to produce this.

-SweetCherryBie

#LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK #alien stage #mizisua #alnst sua #alnst mizi #alien stage mizi #alien stage sua #alnst luka #luka-mizi paralells

47 notes · View notes

toastymarshie · 18 days ago

Text

NEW ALNST COMIC

My thoughts on the new alnst comic, and also me trying not to crash out and kill everyone saying Mizi was acting and is evil :/

First off I found it very obivous that what shes experieincing survivors guilt, and guilt for being "born lucky." in the end the mizi we see walking away is who everyone thought she was, the perfect girl was born lucky with a pretty face and a good owner, someone who was cunning, just like everyone told her, Someone who Won.

But that's not her. She didn't win. She lost everything and everyone. She's not some cruel actress who threw all her friends away to win, then she wouldn't have escaped in the first place. She feels guilty because once again, she's the "lucky" one.

Also, there's clearly a theme of people only seeing her for her looks, and she hates it. And I think that's a storyline anyone who was born female could relate to, especially that scene of that boy creepily confessing to her and saying boys and girls are supposed to fall in love and mate and stuff (ew) and then getting mad and even violent at her rejection. Saying how she's so lucky. And then when Sua, the one person she felt genuinely happy with, said she was lucky, it added salt to the wound, which is why Mizi lashed out, which we can see she quickly regretted and even started crying.

Part of this is also because she hates being put on a pedestal, which, when the person she loved, Sua, did as well, it hurt. We can also see that she feels such strong disdain and disgust when Till calls her pretty and puts her on that pedestal. This doesn't mean she doesn't care or like Till as a friend; we see in the latest episode that she clearly does and is visibly distraught at his death.

Mizi is clearly not some violent sociopath whos constantly lying and trying to get all her friends killed. Shes a girl who hides everything behind a smile, all the pain shes experiencing, and how she feels at fault for it. A story which I, and many other females could relate to.

She's someone who lost everyone, and she feels guilty for surviving and because of it is villainizing herself. She feels at fault and thus blames herself. In the photo where she's sitting on top of their bodies, she's not smiling because she's happy. She's breaking down, like how she smiled while crying and running away from the creepy boy while she rejected his creepy confession.

Sorry for the long ramble, I love mizi so much and got tired quickly of people mischaracterizing her.

#alien stage #alnst mizi #mizisua #alien stage mizi #vivinos #alnst till #alsnt ivan #alnst sua #alnst luka #alnst hyuna #THIS #I’m so tired

22 notes · View notes