zombie stage is immediately and obviously more overt in its usage of and commentary on sexual imagery than alien stage, so it's interesting to consider the differences in how mizi is objectified/idealized in alien stage versus in zombie stage.
in alien stage, mizi is idealized by both sua and till as a child madonna, as a paragon of innocence and kindness. for sua, mizi is someone ignorant of and therefore untainted by the ugliness of the world (unlike sua herself), who must be shielded from the ugliness of the world in order to preserve this innocence, whose innocence can be lived vicariously through by sua (who lacks this innocence) herself. for till, mizi's appeal is both her innocence and kindness, and also that she is unreachable: he is free to idealize her from a distance and use her as his artistic muse because he doesn't actually have any chance with her and so can never mess up with her, he can never have his fantasies shattered by actually forming a relationship with her.
these virtues - kindness/innocence/ignorance/untouchability- run opposite to the dirtiness of adult sexuality. they form an image of both childish girlishness and pure saintliness, both of which that, by modern standards, are valued/fetishized specifically for their absence of adult sexuality. along the childhood axis: childhood is innocent, while adulthood is mature; childhood is ignorant, while adulthood is knowing; childhood is untouched, while adulthood is stained by reality. along the saintly axis: the saintess is pure, while the whore is dirty; the saintess is untouched, while the whore is tainted and corrupted. the transformation is also unidirectional: that which is innocent and childlike can become mature and tainted, but that which is mature and tainted can never become innocent and childlike again; that which is saintly and pure can become filthy and corrupted, but that which is filthy and corrupted can never become saintly and pure again.
key to this specific sort of bastardized madonna-whore complex, i think, is agency. children and saintesses are both beings that are acted upon by others. children exist as an extension of their parents' wills and lives, and serve as a platonic ideal of innocence for adults to project their own dreams and regrets onto; saintesses exist to represent the purity of an ideal to a worn-down audience in the same manner, and to accept the prayers and hopes of their worshippers. by this framework, a sexualized saintess or child, for certain audiences, can still remain a saintess or a child: so long as the sexualization is framed as an undeserving act of violence forced upon the target, which the target fully does not want, the target can still be called an innocent victim rather than someone truly tainted. rather, for these audiences, the truly tainted parties are those who willingly choose to become dirty adults - those who, from the audience's perspective, willingly choose to sexualize themselves.
this makes the blatant and unsubtle sexual objectification mizi suffers at the hands of the kpop industry in zombie stage round 1 interesting. i do think that sua's idealization of mizi in zombie stage had the same angle of innocence and purity to it as said idealization had in alien stage: sua is unhappy with mizi engaging in more "adult" activities like smoking a cigarette, and responds by physically taking the cigarette out of mizi's hands (as opposed to verbally disagreeing with mizi's behavior, which imo would have been more normal for two people of equal standing albeit harder to animate); sua also seems to resent mizi for sexualizing herself, which is my interpretation for why sua frames mizi's breasts with her fingers when she finds zombified mizi. if this is indeed the case, then sua's negative reaction to the direction of mizi's idol career can be read as not just a reaction to mizi pulling away from her or to mizi being hurt, but also the innocent/pure/madonna-like ideal of mizi that sua had constructed being tainted.
following this reading, i can see the argument between mizi and sua (that immediately preceded mizi getting bitten and turned) happening as a result of differing views on the aforementioned agency. to me, mizi reads as a character who knows she is incredibly powerless, and as a result desperately strives to maintain some sense of control over herself and her fate. this was why kid mizi kills the rat with a rock after getting hit (either by her mom, or by someone her mom was unable to protect her from): she felt weak, and so killed the rat in order to vent her feelings on something weaker and regain a sense of control and power. to then connect this to mizi's idol career: obviously, had mizi been given full creative freedom, she would not have sexually objectified herself like that, so it's probably more accurate to conclude that she was either pressured by her agency or felt like she had no choice but to present herself that way in order to stay competitive in the industry. however, because mizi wants to feel that she is in control and that she does have power over her own fate, she would probably tell herself that sexually objectifiying herself like that is something she's choosing to do of her own free will. doubly so because being an idol was originally her dream and joining the industry was a decision she made of her own volition - mizi wouldn't want to admit that she had been coerced, whether directly by her agency or by capitalistic pressures, because to do so would be to admit that she is powerless.
(i think this view of herself - as someone deliberately sexualizing herself, as someone weaponizing her sex appeal to wring more money and support out of a parasocial audience, as someone with the free will to make this decision herself - closely aligns with alien stage mizi's view of herself as a witch at the end of alien stage.)
sua, by contrast, would want to view mizi as a victim. because she previously viewed mizi as a child saintess as discussed above, and because of the damage mizi's sexualization by the industry has dealt to this image, sua can only maintain this image of mizi by believing that said sexualization was forced onto mizi, against mizi's directly stated will. anything else - such as mizi's own insistence that she is in control - would threaten the image past the point of repair.
hence, i can see the argument between them resulting from this disagreement about mizi's level of agency: sua says that mizi is being victimized and is being coerced, half because her idealized image of mizi means she has to see mizi this way, and half because this is simply an accurate assessment of the situation. but mizi rejects sua's sympathy and comfort because accepting it would entail confronting the reality of her own powerlessness. so mizi pushes sua away, insists she is in control and she is making her own free decisions, says something hurtful, is horrified by herself, and runs away. and then gets bit by a zombie 😔
based on this, it will also be interesting to see how till's views of mizi change or stay the same from alien stage to zombie stage. as discussed above, till's idealized image of mizi also falls along the lines of saintly and childlike; the ideals he sees within her are ones that are diametrically opposed to adult sexuality. so it will be interesting to see if till's idealization of mizi survives mizi's sexualization at the hands of the kpop industry. will he still idolize her even after seeing her objectification? will he idolize her because of her objectification? will he see her as a victim? as a perpetrator, a witch? is he in the comments of that one youtube controversy video on mizi we saw in round 1?
