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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 6 months ago

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Do you know who Yuu is canonically close to? Like who actually considers themselves to be friends or at least close with Yuu and willingly interacts with them. I'm sorry if this sounds rude because I know people have their own yuusonas and headcannons but I'm just curious.

In order to respond to this question, I will primarily be referring to the main story. Voice lines are not going to be considered because a lot of them are primarily aimed at the player and serve as fanservice, which does not accurately reflect the character's relationship with them in the main story canon. Events and vignettes do indicate character relationships, but are not technically "canon" to the main story. However, I will bring up examples from these, as while these may not fit in a coherent main story timeline, the lore presented in them is still very sound. Yuu appears to be canonically close with the first years, although their closest allies among this group are Ace, Deuce, and Grim. The first years are seen partying at the end of Terror is Trending as a group, clean up the ghost wedding decorations together, stake out Mickey Mouse + hang out at Lilia's farewell party in book 7 together, band together to help Ortho determine a club to join in his College Gear vignette, and help Ortho research the concept of "evolution" for Fairy Gala: If. Yuu is obviously very close with Ace and Deuce, seeing as they share the same homeroom, eat lunch together, and have gone through many dangerous situations with one another (several OB battles being the main one). They think of each other when one of them isn't included, either! For example, in White Rabbit Fest, Deuce invited Ace to join them (but Ace couldn't due to basketball practice). So Deuce decides to buy him a souvenir instead! Ace extends an invitation to Deuce to join him for Playful Land. And do I even need to bring up the end of book 4 where those two bozos take a long and convoluted trip from the Queendom of Roses to Sage's Island DURING WINTER BREAK to check up on Yuu after receiving a SOS text from them??? Or their tearful reunion at the end of book 6??

Grim is also a very important friendship for Yuu. They are, of course, the first person Yuu meets upon their arrival in Twisted Wonderland, as well as one of their roommates. He's almost always with them, for better or for worse. Yuu is shown to be hurt when Grim attacks them at the end of book 5 and worries for his wellbeing. In fact, the very first time Yuu blatantly acts against Crowley's orders (to stay put) is to rescue Grim in book 6 after he was captured by Ferrymen.

I'd also like to add that the Ramshackle Ghosts are also pretty close with Yuu! They not only live together, but also cover for Yuu when they're unable to fulfill the chores Crowley asked them to do over winter break, play magift/spelldrive with Yuu, worry when Yuu goes away for extended periods of time, and make a Halloween costume for Yuu.

Some honorable/"up for debate" mentions go out to:

Crowley - Some fan works like to portray Crowley (or other staff) as a father figure to Yuu. However, Crowley does the bare minimum in canon to act like a parent and is often offloading work onto Yuu. He doesn't really show affection or go out of his way to spend time with them unless he wants something from Yuu.

"The nice guys" (Rook, Kalim, Silver, etc.) - They're nice to everyone, but not particularly close with Yuu specifically; it should be noted that Kalim, Lilia, and Silver all have called Yuu their "friend" in dialogue. Trey and Riddle - I think it could be said that Yuu is closer to Heartslabyul than the other dorms (partly because two of their closest friends are from this dorm), but I don't know if they're actually "friends"? Yes, Yuu does walk around with Riddle and Trey in book 5 to check out the culture fair. Yes, Trey did send sweets over with Adeuce at the start of their training camp. But I never actually see Riddle and Trey going out of their way to casually hang out with Yuu or anything like that. They seem very... "business professional" with Yuu to me?? But I can see why others may see Yuu being close with the whole dorm. Malleus - I might catch some heat for saying this, but I don't believe Malleus and Yuu are as close as people think they are or want them to be. Do they talk consistently throughout the main story? Sure, but the exchanges are kind of short and usually don't amount to them sharing a lot. Does Malleus help Yuu out? Absolutely, especially in books 3 and 5. It doesn't mean they're necessarily close; every character gets moments where they pitch in. The nickname thing serves as a necessary filler because Malleus refuses to give his real name; it arguably is not a sign of intimacy (especially given that Grim came up with the name, not Yuu). I can see a point being made in Malleus sending a holiday card for Yuu in book 4 and Yuu returning the gesture with a VDC/SDC pass in book 5 (though this could also be viewed as transactional or tit for tat). Think about the main story timeline to put this all into perspective. It's been roughly 6 months since the start of the school year and Malleus and Yuu have only really had brief direct interactions like MAYBE 4 or 5 times total. Yuu doesn’t go over to speak with Malleus upon their return from S.T.Y.X. HQ in book 6; they’re focused solely on their reunion with Adeuce and Grim. They don't have other means of communication (like each others' phone numbers, which Adeuce do have, as seen in book 4) and they don't ever hang out outside of these mandated interactions. Yuu doesn't learn their name properly until book 5, which is in FEBRUARY. And, unlike Yuu's friendships with Adeuce and Grim, Malleus's friendship relies a lot on self-projection. Whereas it's clear that the friendship between Yuu and the idiot trio is mutual, it feels very one-sided with Malleus. Like, Malleus seems more invested in it than Yuu is. He's the one thinking of them on holiday break; Yuu doesn’t think of him on holiday break. They think of Malleus only in like early book 7 when Ortho asks if they know any fae, and it’s for a personal reason too (helping them find a way home).

Yuu's closeness with Malleus is left vaguely defined so the player can insert whatever their own feelings about him are into the scenario. They speak with him in a casual tone, yet they never go out of their way to actually invite him to functions or ask questions to learn more about him. Yuu doesn’t even seem to be that torn up about going back home and never seeing Malleus again. This is not the case with Adeuce and Grim; Yuu has dialogue options which imply they would miss their company. Yuu feels so… detached from Malleus; he at best feels like an amicable (?) acquaintance, but not a friend.

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iwritenarrativesandstuff · 25 days ago

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"The True Face" - Mizi's Love for Another Woman

**This analysis is mainly themed around a pretty frank discussion of heteronormativity and misogyny. Please be mindful of that before reading this!**

Oh boy. What a doozy of a comic. What a radical shift to the way I had been reading this story up until now.

It didn't really change the way I saw Mizi as a character, to be honest. What it changed was my perception of the environment these characters grew up in, lending new context to Mizi's actions and motivations.

To summarize: Mizi being queer is a much bigger deal than I'd thought.

[Long post is long, as usual. Full analysis under the cut.]

The hints were there from the beginning that Mizi wasn't entirely oblivious to the cruel nature of their world.

I'm not going to say that she knew the true deadly end awaiting the losers on Alien Stage, because I really don't think that was the case at all. She didn't know Sua was going to be killed. At the same time, I think it was something of a case of "well, what did I think was going to happen?" after the fact. Mizi simply didn't consider it as a possibility, because she didn't want to see it.

I'll come back to this.

While watching Alien Stage, I always did have a certain thought in my head that intrigued me. Love is one of the central themes of the show, namely, the way the cast try their best to love in the only ways they know how. However, due to the structure of their world, the control they're placed under and how the only way they are allowed to shine is on stage as part of a packaged performance, their only metric for what "love" looks like is idolatry.

It didn't seem like it really mattered that much of our cast was queer. I just shrugged and assumed the aliens didn't really care what their pets got up to, so long as they performed well on stage.

This comic turned that on its head.

The scene with the unnamed Anakt Garden boy establishes something very important.

It does matter, actually, that the love is queer.

Over time, the creators have done a careful job of slowly showing us bit by bit of all the different things they are taught at Anakt - we see the music lessons first (checks out; they're being trained to sing, after all), and their mandatory play for "mental health". They have phys ed type competitions. While there is a disturbing element of all of them being essentially brought up as lambs to the slaughter, compared to the stage and to the horrors some of them faced from their guardians, the garden appears a relative paradise.

But the garden is not free of the aliens' control, far from it. Everything is fashioned to train the pet humans and serve some sort of purpose to satisfy the aliens.

We see experimentation and augmentation. We see a form of religion that emphasizes the great pride one should have in fulfilling the aliens' intended purposes for them. We see cloning.

There is another purpose to training "pets" and selecting ones that have particular desirable traits. After all, if you like a particular breed of dog for their hunting abilities, or a particular beautiful coat pattern, you can breed more like it. Io, Till's mother and a "provider", seems pretty clearly kept for that purpose.

I'm not saying that Anakt was for breeding. It's pretty clearly for the stage itself. But that doesn't change the mindset the aliens have taken to the relative "purposes" of biological females and males, and the way that trickles down into the mentality of the kids we see there.

We've seen a recent comic of the Anakt kids at school together, learning things about biology. I had originally assumed that it was focused on vocal training and anatomy pertaining to singing. Now, I suspect, from this unnamed guy saying "You know what they say", that there's a heavy focus on reproduction as well.

So, now love is corrupted two-fold. "Love" is only acceptable in terms of idolatry, or as a biological imperative to mate.

The Anakt kids are familiar with the concept of crushes. A lot of them were revealed to have crushes and have liked each other, as seen in the notes they left each other after graduation. Some of the names are difficult to discern, gender-wise. But I suspect most of these are male-female.

Till's crush on Mizi is "obvious". But Ivan's crush on Till is never noticed, and people continue to confess to Mizi and Sua despite the two always being together and Mizi directly stating that Sua is her favourite person. The boy in the most recent comic does not think anything of Mizi and Sua hanging out and instead fixates on her and Till. I don't even know if Till fully understands. Mizi tells him her favourite person is Sua, but does it occur to Till that her favouritism is born out of a romantic love for her? Does Till even recognize the possibility that Ivan's "weird" behaviour could be because he has feelings for him? I'm honestly unsure. It's very possible he doesn't know.

Another thing that intrigued me from the start: Mizi and Sua are canonically in love. But, just watching the show without knowledge that the creator, Vivinos, is queer, or without some of the comics' background information, a lot of people watching for the first time mistake them for best friends and nothing more. Even in official in-universe interviews, we see this:

They are best friends, of course! That's not in doubt and that's important too. But it's really interesting that even though the aliens were moved by their connection made obvious in the My Clematis performance, it is not called love.

By contrast, while in-universe the obliviousness is much the same, real-life audiences have no issue picking up on Ivan's feelings for Till. Part of this is gender bias (women are expected to be more affectionate with each other), but part of this is presentation. For awhile, I felt a little uncertain about the canon MiziSua relationship being so... understated compared to IvanTill, who get a full yearning song and an onstage kiss to make it completely unambiguous. It's even strange, because Mizi does nothing but talk about how much she loves Sua. But now, I think that's the point.

The thing is, Mizi has been loud about her love for Sua. It's just that no one understands.

What this comic establishes is that Mizi has near constant feelings of being misunderstood and objectified. She is a pretty woman, who is friendly, with a genuine desire to see people happy. Unfortunately, due to the aliens' emphasis on what a woman's role should be with regards to men, with regards to what is expected of her, her desire for friendship is treated as "leading people on", the way many women are accused of being "temptresses" when in reality it is others who read into her platonic expressions of behaviour. No one bothers to actually get to know her as a person, because hardly anyone cares about her beyond a pretty face. Without other female role models to help her understand that this is not her fault, Mizi internalizes this sudden anger at her as somehow her doing, even though she really doesn't get what she did "wrong".

Unlike Ivan, who at least fashioned his own personality to fit in, Mizi was forced to fill in the cracks on a smiley, cheerful, pretty mask that everyone else had decided on for her - because they could get mad at her if she doesn't.

Even though Mizi is naive in many regards, she actually notices something here that none of the rest of them seem to. Sua and Ivan "steal" these precious moments, resigned to never being able to have or keep them. Till is content to find inspiration from afar. These three have been fighting to physically survive in their awful circumstances, so that they really don't question the existing power structures much at all.

But Mizi, misunderstood and hurt by social factors more than by physical ones at this point, has just enough awareness and just enough innocence to question. She's so close to performing as a woman in the way others expect her to. And yet, there's something about her that is just "wrong" enough in the way that gets people (men) mad at her. And she doesn't get it.

She doesn't return his feelings but she does want to be friends. Why is that not enough?

She's already said she loves Sua. Why is that not enough?

She runs away here, still with a smile on her face to try and appease and placate this boy who got violent with her for a reason she cannot understand, even as she cries, clearly scared. This is a fawn response. And it's this that gets warped into Mizi somehow believing that she has made everyone love her or somehow manipulated them. Yes, it is intended for self-preservation. But not from the aliens.

Mizi runs to Sua, seeking comfort and reassurance. Surely, Sua will understand. And personally, I think Sua probably does to some degree. But in this situation, she had just spent a long time with her alien mother preparing for the stage. What's more, she doesn't trust or like many of the other people at Anakt. Mizi says that the boy wasn't a bad person, while Sua says there was "something off about him".

They had also just come off the tail end of an argument. Mizi is content to just make herself be happy now that Sua is here. But Sua cannot "just be happy", and from her perspective, Mizi's apparent ability to just shrug things off and be carefree is hurtful after the experience she has likely just had. Both girls wanted comfort from each other here and did not find it, but Sua makes the really insensitive move of accidentally echoing the boy's words back at Mizi. I don't think Sua meant this to be mean, really. Her collar is green - if anything, I think Sua is sincere about being glad Mizi doesn't get dragged around the way she does. But all the same, a level of resentment does show through, and it doesn't change the fact that this is the last thing Mizi needed to hear in that moment.

It's not really Sua Mizi wanted to hurt. She's definitely angry with her. But that's the thing: Mizi feels safe enough to get mad at and hit Sua. She did not feel safe enough to do that with the boy.

It makes sense now that Mizi was comfortable enough with Ivan to fall asleep on top of him. He was likely the one boy there she wasn't scared of, with full knowledge that he would never be interested in her that way.

And that's what I think Mizi was truly aware of that she pretended to be ignorant of. Not the full horrors of Alien Stage itself, but the emotions and mindsets of the people around her. She's much more understanding of the way people think and feel than she let on, which allowed her to tailor her reactions so that people hopefully wouldn't get so mad at her. If she's just a ditz, then they can't get too mad, right? People would feel bad for getting mad at someone so oblivious, right? She could keep finding comfort and safety and protection in Sua, right? Right?

She's innocent to many things, but when it comes to human beings, Mizi is almost hyper-aware of the way her perceived womanhood puts her in danger, not just from the aliens but from her peers, and the way her love for Sua is not accepted and would not be understood. And by not understanding that, by not seeing the love that was one of the few things she chose to pursue and cultivate for herself, does anyone really know her at all?

The religion they pray to tells them to be honoured to be selected for Alien Stage, and to carry out the purpose they were created for.

Mizi, armed with knowledge of humanity's god before the aliens, but with a naive and innocent hope in her heart due to being shielded from the horror of physical death, defies this assigned deity and chooses a new god in Sua. Her love for Sua is what she sees as the truest part of her - no matter what anyone tells her about what her's and Sua's "purpose" is, that cannot possibly be wrong. Something that brings them happiness and security like this cannot be wrong. She devotes herself to it because it is the one thing that she refuses to appease others over. She thinks this entitlement to her heart and body is "gross". She states it bluntly, many times. Her favorite person is Sua. Her best friend in the world is Sua. Her god, her universe, is Sua, and she chose her.

This changes the My Clematis performance.

We know that Mizi, unlike the rest, was not forced to participate in Alien Stage; instead, it was a choice she made because she wanted to perform with Sua. What initially seemed like a naive desire to share a special moment with her soulmate becomes something much more motivated by Mizi's own desires to have people see her love for Sua in a way that cannot be denied. She wants people to see them together.

Mizi is oblivious to the Stage's true nature, but she is not oblivious to the emotions of her friends. She knows something is wrong with the way Sua is acting about it. She knows the stage carries tension they can all feel. On some level, she knows the two of them are destined to be torn apart.

But she doesn't want to see it, because much like Sua needed her bubble of innocence to survive, Mizi needed her hope that their love could be enough some day. That they won't be torn apart and forced to fulfill some coldly practical or biological prerogative. It's the first duet in Alien Stage history; a brilliant, almost rebellious demonstration that Mizi has just about deluded herself into thinking might actually work to spare them from their fate she sticks her head in the sand about and refuses to acknowledge.

They are going to wear their most beautiful dresses. They are going to sing the most beautiful song for them, a testament to their love and connection. Look, see, aren't we beautiful?

Mizi: "Still, I want to sing and perform with SUA for as long as possible, so I want to win with her, together! I heard that there’s never been a tie in all of ALIEN STAGE’s history… But if we get that tie, then I bet everyone will call us the most fantastic duo to exist in history, right?!"

After this comic, all I can read in this is: acknowledge us.

But then Sua is shot dead in front of her.

Her blood splashes that same cheek where the boy slapped her. Mizi's final hopes are shattered. Worse yet, because she still can't understand why this happened and why everyone keeps getting violent, because her desire to display their love openly got Sua killed, Mizi internalizes the idea that she is the one with something horribly wrong with her - blaming herself for being too frightened to face reality when the rest of her friends had, and feeling like her desperate attempts to people please and hold onto an ignorant hope forced people into dying to protect her. In actuality though, Mizi is not responsible for the way people try to force her to fit an image, and she did not manipulate people into liking her - she's just friendly, and many of the guys read into it, feeling entitled to her because they're boys and she's a girl, and in the face of that, Mizi's established love for another girl is inconsequential.

This adds another layer to Mizi's violent breakdown in round 5. The boy from this comic bears quite the resemblance to Luka. This comic recontextualizes Luka's interactions with Mizi and Hyuna in a really intriguing way.

Luka is a victim. I want to make that clear off the bat. He's heavily implied to be a clone with the least amount of understanding on love and human connection. Off the stage, he is micromanaged to the point of complete and utter obedience - the perfect idol. But on stage, the performance is his to control, and he does so by asserting dominance over his performing partner and emotionally destabilizing them.

Fascinatingly, while everyone else appears somewhat oblivious to the queer love of many of our main characters, Luka appears stunningly aware of it, and is able to weaponize it. Round 5 looks like a wedding. He grabs Mizi and forces her to participate in a distorted version of a partner dance. It was really the perfect way to break her.

In addition to mocking her over Sua's death, in addition to her anger that Sua lied to her and enabled her ignorance, Mizi looks up at Luka and sees what she always feared: a man replacing her beloved Sua and forcing her into a kind of relationship she doesn't want, because "that is the way things are meant to be".

She no longer has anything to lose, nor fear for her own life, so she finally lets all her anger out on him.

Again, Luka is obedient. He's internalized many things: win at all costs being one of them. Do what you were designed to do. It's not really a surprise that he probably internalized these biological notions of what is "natural" too. Whatever his audience wants to see.

This also lends context to this scene. Hyuna is in distress. We know and she knows that Luka's feelings are genuine, but for as long as he acts out the aliens' methods of control, his "love" will only be a prison for Hyuna. He forces himself on her here, likely because... "it's only natural". That entitlement tainting what were genuine feelings between them would be unbearable for Hyuna, who values her freedom more than anything (and this is before even getting into what happened to Hyunwoo).

For Hyuna to rescue Mizi immediately after she lashed out, and for Mizi to temporarily see a woman who embodies freedom in how and who she loves, who is unabashedly loud and courageous while no less damaged, is a huge deal coming on the tail end of Round 5. It's really such a shame the time they had together was so short.

I, for one, am really hoping that Mizi can find her strength in love again, much like Hyuna did, instead of continuing to punish herself through Sua's memory.

#storyrambles #i could definitely talk more about sua and hyuna through this lens but this is already long enough. and we're talking about mizi so.#anyways i really hope this was clear? it's a bit heavy to write and read... i hope i didn't overlook anything important #alien stage #alnst #alnst mizi #alnst meta #call me ace detective the way i am ace. and also a detective #mizisua

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