#shrug.

There are roughly three different things that the segyein guardians represent in Alien Stage, according to my interpretation. These are:

Parents (often abusive)

Pet owners

Colonial masters (w/ the connotation of slave owners in particular)

All the segyein guardians that we see in the series act as these three things in some capacity or another, though depending on the guardian and the human they own, one aspect may come through more clearly than the others. For example, I tend to interpret Nigeh and Urak as presenting more strongly as abusive parents to Sua and Till respectively, while Shine and Unsha are more clear analogs to pet owners to Mizi and Ivan.

On the topic of that third point in particular, all the segyein have a very strong colonial vibe to them what with how the aliens have subjugated humans in this universe. Humans are pets, property, with varying degrees of (still ultimately very limited) personal agency depending on who owns them. A justification for this subjugation is never explicitly stated in universe from what I can tell, but it's not difficult to infer the colonial analog, that, "We segyein, as the stronger, more intelligent, more advanced race, are simply naturally superior and thus it is just our place to make you dance and sing for our entertainment," or something along those lines. It is unclear how much time has passed since humans were originally taken over, or even what the state of Earth proper is like at this point in the story (an intentional vagueness, perhaps, since the uncertainty is what makes the human rebel's goals so iffy and dangerous) but relations are clearly Not Good, or at least not for the subjugated humans. The specifics of different alien races/cultures/species/origins (???) is also not discussed in much depth, though we can assume some differences through the variety of appearances, if nothing else.

In the latter half of this post I will be breaking down how each segyein guardian seems to present, how they represent each of the three traits, and how this influences their relationship with their human/how their human reacts to them.

[ TW for discussion of abusive parents/family dynamics below ]

1. Nigeh (Sua's guardian)

Nigeh actually has quite a clear role to me even if she appears very rarely, since we can see the influence of her in a lot of Sua's actions. From the few comic appearances we get of Nigeh, and her very short cameo in the MIZISUA video, she very much seems to strongly present as an abusive parent-- specifically, one with incredibly high expectations that she pushes onto her children.

Sua is held to extremely high standards, valued primarily for her physical beauty and singing abilities, to the point that it seems she is regularly taken away from Anakt Gardens for additional training. From the Sua sister comic we can also possibly infer that some of Nigeh's older human pets are parentified or expected to take care of the younger humans, and from the Sua long hair comic we can also maybe infer that Nigeh's kids are made to compete for attention and praise (intentionally or otherwise). The fact that Nigeh has so many children in and of itself is evidence of the fact that she is looking for a star, perhaps buying loads of pets with the hopes that one of her investments will end up being the idol she's looking for.

In practice, this means that she is quite psychologically abusive to all of her human pets, and one of the most overtly terrible segyein guardians that we see. Sua often appears fearful of Nigeh, and is clearly not personally indulged in the same way that kids like Mizi or Ivan are. Note below how her little space cube is left totally empty, leaving her alone in her frilly bonnet/dress thing, especially compared to Mizi who is given a number of toys for the trip.

2. Urak (Till's guardian)

Similar to Nigeh, Urak also presents quite clearly as an abusive parent to Till, both psychologically and, notably, physically, to the point where a significant chunk of Till's idol branding in-show is as this feral animal that must constantly be held down, collared, and even sometimes leashed or otherwise physically restrained. A clear example of this is in R6 where we can see Urak attempting to force Till to sing My Clematis, hounding him about Mizi's disappearance when he refuses to comply, and then physically restraining and collaring/gagging him when he attempts to fight back.

In the guardians interview we get post-R6, Urak also makes his intentions very clear, claiming that, "[Till's] talent is what kept him alive," and that, "[w]inning is all that matters." Similar to Nigeh, Till is an investment to Urak, and not the first human he has sent to die in Alien Stage. His personal desires only matter insofar as they can be used against him or when they become a problem for his owner, and he can and will be physically abused into compliance, his "strong personality" stifled as much as possible while still allowing his investment to pay itself back.

It's not difficult to see the influence this has on Till. Opposite to Ivan, he is the character that we see collared the most out of the entire cast, getting tied up or held down significantly more than any other human pet. Due to the idol branding thing I mentioned above, it is sometimes difficult to tell in-show just how many of his violent reactions are intentionally provoked and which just naturally occur, but regardless I think it's pretty fucking clear why he hates the aliens.

sidenote1: I'm unsure of how much the medical horror slideshow we see at the start of R6 can be attributed to Urak specifically. From the medical-horror themed pop up store we got a while back, it seems that AG just generally engages in shit like that with all of the kids sent there, but the flashes of Till we get right before R6 begins seem quite different from the usual AG testing. Pls alert me if there is more context for this anywhere, I'm wildly curious about it.

3. Heperu (Luka's guardian)

Rounding off the trio of the most overtly terrible guardians we get Heperu. Similar to Nigeh, Heperu has wildly high standards for Luka's perfection that have not been lowered in the slightest after his previous win of ALNST S49. While we don't see the abuse Luka faces quite as much as we do Till, from some of the interviews/other side content in the series it is very clear that he faces a honestly kind of comical amount of training (see: counting his heartbeats every time he's on stage to perfectly relaxed), with his entire life being hyperfixated around ALNST. In the same guardian interview referenced above, Heperu notes that, "Luka has been taught to overcome fear from a young age," being personally created by Heperu (according to Heperu) for perfection-- depending on how you read the whole Luka clone thing, this could be incredibly literal.

From the way he speaks in this interview, it is clear that Heperu sees Luka as little more than an extension of himself. It's for this reason that I'm also inclined to fit Heperu more strongly into the category of abusive parent, though there is a very deep-rooted dehumanization of Luka within that. Following this, it's a bit difficult to tell exactly how Luka personally feels about his guardian, though not because we can't see the influence of the abuse on him-- rather, Luka seems to live in a constant state of heavy dissociation in order to live up to Heperu's standards, either mechanically following orders/saying what he's supposed to or just straight up pretending to be somebody else, whether that be Sua, Ivan, or even his own younger self, from a time when he still had people nearby that he loved.

sidenote2: I've seen a number of people question why the general fandom seems so against Luka for playing so dirty against the other contestants, yet is completely fine with Till totally screwing over Acorn in R2. While I can't speak for anyone's personal opinions about these characters, I would like to argue that both Till and Luka are motivated by basically the same thing in either of these cases, using the expectations set upon them to finangle the situation into getting what they want.

For Till, this means using the expectation that he will act more feral/violently to his advantage, taking over the show the second he's granted the chance to get on stage so that he can sing the song that he actually wants to: an ode to Mizi, the girl he likes. For Luka, this also means using his only chance for freedom to exert as much power as he possibly can, goading the other contestants into wildly uncomfortable situations both so that he can win and since it is quite literally the only time he is ever granted a modicum of power.

In either case, both Till and Luka are using the circumstances they're in and the expectations set upon them to get as much personal power as they can, essentially working with the system to their advantage-- not only a good strategy, but emotionally quite understandable when you look at the situations they're trapped in. And, speaking of someone who knows how to navigate the rules...

4. Unsha (Ivan's guardian)

Moving away from the trio of Obviously Bad parent-analogs, we get into the segyein guardians that manage to still be terrible but without straight up physically/psychologically attacking their humans (intentionally, anyway). In comparison to the last three, I tend to read Unsha as treating Ivan a lot less like a son and more like a pet, though there is a similar element in how he treats Ivan like an investment.

The origins of Ivan's adoption make this pet angle the most clear, with Ivan seemingly being a human stray that Unsha just picked up off the street as a Valentine's present for his wife. The "promising" look in his eyes that he mentions during the guardian interview goes with this, demonstrating how Unsha sees Ivan as a convenient investment for someone seeking, "to venture into the pet human entertainment business," like Unsha was. His speech in this interview is really interesting, actually, as while he is still pretty detached from Ivan, he seems distinctly more aware of the fact that Ivan has personal internal feelings in a way that none of the guardians covered so far have shown to be. It's clear that he's far from deeply invested in any of those feelings, but he does see Ivan's forfeit as both curious and disappointing, and regards Ivan as a worthy investment even if he doesn't intend to stick with the human entertainment industry.

Perhaps even more interesting than Unsha's feelings about Ivan however is the influence of Unsha that we can see demonstrated in Ivan himself. Ivan is kind of a strange character in this series in terms of the type of access and personal agency that he holds as a human, as well as the extent of knowledge that he seems to have access to. While some of this can perhaps be connected to the fact that he was born in the slums unlike any of his close friends, all of whom (Mizi, Sua, and Till) were born in a kind of human modification center (presumably to providers?), it seems natural to assume that perhaps some of this comes from his connection to Unsha as well.

As I hinted at in sidenote2 above, I'm inclined to believe that either Unsha was particularly open about giving out information to Ivan while raising him or that Ivan was particularly good at going along with Unsha's expectations just enough to start getting access to things he otherwise wouldn't have. (i've also seen people joke that maybe Unsha is significantly wealthier than the other segyein guardians, which is why Ivan is the only one out of the main four to have shoes in AG and, like. honestly. that genuinely could be a part of it too lolol.) Regardless of how he gets it, it's clear that Ivan knows shit that nobody else does-- how to get out of AG to see the meteor shower, how to unlock Till's various collars and gags, perhaps even something about the human rebels depending on how deep that Isaac connection goes?? Unsha may really be onto something with his comment about how, "[w]e'll never know what he was thinking," is my point here.

5. Shine (Mizi's guardian)

Ahh, and at last. Shine. Guardian of all time. Wanting to talk about Shine was not an insignificant part of my motivation for writing this post, so I'm glad we can finally get here. Even more so than Unsha, Shine is very clearly a pet owner to Mizi, and the implications of this on Mizi are fascinating to me.

In particular, to state the obvious upfront: Shine is one of the most overtly loving segyein guardians that we see in series, genuinely loving and caring for Mizi after they find her crying by the body of her dead provider, yet their relationship with Mizi fundamentally does not work. A significant chunk of the problem here is the inability for either party to properly communicate, with both Shine and Mizi literally not understanding the other's language. Another significant chunk is Shine's inability to see Mizi as a full, complex being, writing off her pain as something cute or funny, and keeping her in Shine's weird water dimension without much other deeper thought to Mizi's greater desires or feelings or ability to just. Live. As a person.

Mizi can never be an equal to Shine, she's a fun thing for her to play around with and take care of, a "unique and beautiful being," (to quote the wiki) but little more than a cute oddity. Again, the pet comparison is very prominent here, but to bring back my original idea I think it's also interesting to view this relationship in terms of colonialism as well. Shine may have an interest in Mizi's human culture, so to speak, and she may somewhat respect it and genuinely love and care about Mizi as an individual, but her affections are also deeply paternalistic, and perhaps very surface-level or generalizing too. From what we have seen Shine shows no qualms about letting Mizi throw herself headfirst into a death match, even giving her video access to said death match in the first place. In this universe, humans are simply secondary beings to the segyein, and Shine demonstrates no significant challenge to that set status quo.

6. Phan (Hyuna & Hyun Woo's guardian)

A (somewhat) quick entry for this one since Phan is a bit hard to talk about, seeing as we know basically jack shit nothing about him due to never seeing him. I'm mostly referencing the wiki for this section since I can't read/don't have access to the full art book, so if you, dear reader, have additional information about this one, do let me know.

The biggest defining trait I can suss out for Phan is the fact that he is distant, which fits considering how not-at-all relevant he is to anything in Hyuna or Hyun Woo's arcs. We know that he's a kind of aristocrat, from an incredibly "superior race," a legend in the academic/scientific world, and also that Heperu apparently has a crush on him?? Lol. Otherwise, he seems to not even remember Hyuna or any of his human pets, and Hyuna herself seems to barely recognize his existence in return.

It is this supreme disconnect between guardian and human pet that pushes me to want to view Phan as demonstrating the most clearly this colonial vibe present in all of the segyein guardians. Phan clearly does not give two shits about anything human pet related, only introducing themself to AG as a part of a sponsorship. Their focus is on other matters in the likely wildly complex system of Other Worlds that Alien Stage hints at but never quite shows, yet it is this exact lack of care that reveals a notable truth about this world: that human pets, and humanity as a whole, are only one small part of it, an industry to get involved in if you're passionate or desperate or wealthy enough, but little more.

It's an undeniable fact that humans are simply secondary beings in this world, or at least according to the alien societies that govern and control the parts we can see. Thus Phan doesn't give a shit about whatever human pets he might've stumbled across getting because their existence simply doesn't affect him in any meaningful way, their lives a distant problem for somebody else to deal with. Sure, Hyuna might be wildly prodigiously talented, the only meaningful competition to the dude probably literally genetically engineered to be an ALNST idol (though she was tested for "genetic superiority," wasn't she? what the hell was that foster home??), but it's only natural that Phan, as such a superior aristocrat, would receive the best of the best human pet-wise too.

In this sense, I suppose the framing of Alien Stage (the series, not the in-universe show) is made that much more important. We see the world from the perspective of the humans, centering their feelings and experiences, and thus sympathize with their suffering that much more strongly. Which, y'know, makes sense, considering I assume that we the viewers are also likely human (hellooo, segyein ALNST fans out there!!), but I still think it's a notable choice. There's a perhaps weirder version of this story that centers more around the experiences and emotional arcs of the segyein themselves, whether that be these particular humans' guardians or the general populace as a whole. Instead, we see the perspective of those still being subjugated, still suffering from the lack of agency or personhood that comes with being seen as an inherently secondary being.

pocket polly sized boyfriend™ not for sale.