"Oh people in this fandom just defend the toxicity of it because its queer!" I don't know about anybody else but the reason why i get such a visceral reaction to people going "oh, it glorifies SA! oh, this character did this and that so obviously they're toxic!!" about ALNST is because? yes?? obviously this is a toxic relationship in a fucked up situation??? its supposed to explore the nitty and the gritty of human nature? None of the characters in Alien Stage are good people because they're not meant to be good people in healthy relationships. They're people that are constantly pulled apart from each other, that are constantly facing the stress of being treated like objects, who have no idea what the fuck they're doing and they hurt each other because of course they do.
Zombie Stage may not be in the same setting (though the Kpop industry obviously dehumanized and sexualized Mizi like an object and pulled her apart from Sua in similar ways to the og alnst universe) and Sua's actions aren't justifiable but thats the point. Obsession has always been a part of Sua's character, her whole universe revolves around Mizi. Hell, obsession has always been the main component of Mizisua, or have you people forgotten "My God, My Universe" already?? Obsession is such a huge theme in all of the alnst relationships, from Hyuluka to Ivantill to just Mizi and her suitors in anakt garden. The actions of the character: they're not justifiable things that someone can just do, of course not. But thats the whole point of Alien Stage and people just treat it like its a flaw of the show and not the core of it?? its like with greek mythology: the gods embody the flaws and the very nature of humans, thats why they're such horrible, greedy, disgusting, lustful beings. Its the whole point of it!
Its not meant to be a digestible, non-problematic, happy and healthy fucking show. Its a deep and complicated exploration of many facets of human nature, and the reason why i get so mad when people just dismiss it/some of its characters due to the explorations of the disgusting horrible things they do as "oh Ivan is nothing more than an obsessed SA'er" and "Sua kisses Mizi while she can do nothing about it" is because yes those are things they do but there is so much more going on, and i need you to not reduce them to this one singular action and look, rather, at the wider themes those actions explore/accuse/emulate.
And I'm not defending the non-con, because it's non-con, and if they were real people and not fictional characters, I wouldn't be sitting here going "Okay, but what does the SA tell us about their environment, what does it tell us about the nature of their characters and the way they interpret love and obsession as one in the same?" like a literature teacher, because rapists deserve nothing less than torture. But they are fictional characters, and none of their actions are real, so we can ask ourselves those questions. Because they're not just doing that with no reason (which btw, I hate that in shows/movies/media, when there's just an SA scene to make us feel bad and then its not?? explored?? at all? and just dismissed as if it was nothing/doesn't show us anything about any character and is just a 'thing that happened to character once' for shock value) there is character exploration to be done here, theres philosophical thinking to happen, it tells us something (about their environment, about them, about humanity and its downsides and good sides). And people are just DISMISSING all of it! And it pisses me off so much, because they're not treating the show like the show that it is.
Its just so crazy to me that people actively criticize the showā¦ For executing the whole point of the show extremely well?? People's allergies to complex and highly flawed character is always mind boggling to me because they associate understanding with forgiving when NO these are undeniably terrible actions. But is it interesting to see how and why someone might be driven to that point? YES! Its not glorifying it, its dissecting it in a fandom made lab.
