#both because shes literally the foundational concept of alien stage but bc mizi's arc is literally kickstarted by sua

[pandelacreme]

at first glance i thought the fixation on till’s neck was a sly joke about a/b/o, a genre heavily based in bl works, in the same cheeky way ivan’s name is a play on korean lgbt slang.

but the recurring motif of strangulation, how till's relationships (excluding his infatuation with mizi) are largely characterized with him being the object while the other is the subject; how him being on a leash, not just a collar, is quite literally one of his defining visual traits...

it reminds me of shakespeare's othello, where the titular character strangles his wife to death in a fit of jealousy over her alleged infidelity... the results of round 6 almost feel like a subversion of that play, where the leading artwork, esp the red one, seemed to suggest that ivan would strangle till in an act of possession, but it ended up as just the opposite.

but i wonder if there's more symbolism we can extrapolate if we hypothesize that some of the imagery are allegories to othello...