this is an important reminder for not just the alnst community, but for anyone with an online presence.
just because you are online does not mean you exist in a vacuum. there are still people on the other side of your screens, and how you behave online can have an effect on them.
always remember to engage online and in your real life with kindness! people will always need kindness, including yourself. no one ever needs negativity.
wishing Yufka’s family a safe and healthy recovery ❤️🩹 her art is beautiful and please still continue to support it. rest in peace, Yufka 💖🕊️
uh uh a pearl by mitski or welcome to the black parade. it would be funny to bleed out to “one day i’ll leave you a phantom to lead you in the summer to join the black parade” wouldnt it
When the True Face first came out I had an inkling of what Mizi's character arc was about, but in the end Karma proved me wrong.
A while later, Patreon posted the initial draft for Karma and that's when I realized I wasn't entirely wrong, that I wasn't delusional about the motifs and themes I thought I saw.
It existed. They just had good reason to abandon it.
_
The first thing to know is that Mizi played a different role in Karma's first draft.
Instead of bringing the rocket down in a bloom of mass destruction, she was actually the one who picked up where Hyuna left off, making sure the rocket was successfully launched.
Mizi stands at the front, leading the rebels, singing a song of hope for humanity. Behind her, the rebels fall one by one while protecting her. But Mizi doesn't back down. She stays in the center of the stage, strong until the end.
— The Story Behind Karma, Patreon
In this version, it seems that after Mizi reflect on everything that happened in Anakt Garden and what she experienced in the wider world beyond it, she'd grown to share Hyuna's hope for humanity and harnessed the great strength and courage needed to fight for that future.
"The feeling of standing with both feet on the ground, the heaviness you feel when you take a deep breath—
And... even those times when you hate yourself,
you realize those feelings are yours too. It’s scary, but also filled with hope."
— Mizi's old narration, The Story Behind Karma
This Mizi is unfamiliar to us because the final version of Karma shows her coming to an entirely different conclusion. But before the narrative made a hard pivot in R7, we can still find the signs planted early on that were supposed to lead up to the initial draft of Karma!Mizi.
Specifically, I'm talking about the existence of short-haired Mizi.
Mizi's pixie cut was actually conceptualized from the very early planning stages of ALNST! In fact, we quite looked forward to the moment when Mizi's hair would become short.
— Hyuna episode behind 2, Patreon
The True Face and My Fragile God shows us how Mizi found survival in being a people pleaser. It's a way of living that had put her in the passive position of prioritizing what others wanted from her.
This choice makes sense because it's made under the foundational belief that the segyein holds absolute power in this world — that they, as pet-humans, have no rights, no control, no will. It's built on the assumption that only through the segyein's grace and goodwill could she live.
This belief is both the truth she'd been indoctrined into at Anakt Garden, and the reality she learned through the life she's lived.
So the moment Hyuna defies the death sentence laid down by these absolute beings, and brings her into the world of the rebellion, Mizi's understanding of reality is turned completely upside down.
It was her first time experiencing an environment without Segyein [...] her encounter with Hyuna and the Human Resistance Force completely shakes up her entire entity. After all, the Human Resistance Force was a society built purely by humans and not Segyein.
— Hyuna episode behind 2, Patreon
The rebellion shows her a community, a small world unto itself, built entirely by human hands in defiance of the segyein. Its very existence is proof the segyein are not the all-powerful, all-mighty beings she was taught to believe they were. But more importantly, she's shown that humans are neither helpless nor powerless creatures — that their will is capable of making a difference in their own life.
This drastic change in perspective gave her the freedom and opportunity to drop the smile she'd always worn — and the way of life it represented: pleasing others as a means for survival in segyein society.
(^ Mizi not giving a damn about pleasing anyone anymore)
In its absence, she picked up something else — the conviction to take her life into her own hands.
Pixie-cut-Mizi is determined to no longer get swayed by the situations she finds herself in, but rather, choose and act upon her own decisions.
— Hyuna episode behind 2, Patreon
The moment Mizi's hair is cut is a turning point in both her and Hyuna's respective arcs. It's the sign of her turning from a passive player into an active one, a declaration of her refusal to let others dictate her reality anymore, the way she had in her life up to this point.
In Round 5, Luka covers the movie theater screen in front of Mizi, but in All-In, Mizi is standing in front of Luka's screen. This symbolizes Mizi overcoming her trauma and taking a step forward.
[...] Seeing Mizi's growth, Hyuna faces her suppressed emotions for the first time and moves forward together.
— All-In commentary, Artbook
Her ability to deny and overcome the traumatic hold Luka had over her in turn gave Hyuna the push, the proof she needed to see to take a step forward in her journey too.
What we get here is a glimpse of where Mizi's character arc was supposed to go in the original version of Karma — an ending where Mizi has the strength to hold up others, to fight and sacrifice for hope, for all humans, and for the future.
But she never reaches that vision.
In All-in, Mizi follows Hyuna to break free from the painful cycle of her past and move forward into the future.
The cutting of her long hair into a shorter style symbolizes this change.
But in the end she couldn't forget the children who died in Anakt Garden so her hair grows back again.
— The Story Behind Karma, Patreon
Short-haired Mizi symbolizes agency and moving forward.
Long-haired Mizi symbolizes attachment and the inability to let go.
R7 gave us the critical moment where Mizi had to make a choice between Till and the rebellion's plan.
She chose her family without hesitation.
She failed anyway.
In Mizi's inability to handle the grief of losing everyone one by one, her original character arc is cut short here, mid-transformation, as visualized by the confrontation between the short-haired Mizi and the long-haired R1 Mizi.
After all, the core difference between Mizi in the first draft and Mizi in the final version of Karma is her ability to move on.
In the original ending, Mizi had actually started taking the first step of moving on from Sua.
"[...] Even those times when you hate yourself,
you realize those feelings are yours too. It’s scary, but also filled with hope."
I don’t believe in God anymore.
I’m going to move forward—past you."
— Mizi, The Story Behind Karma
(Notably the scrapped thumbnail related to this is one of short-haired Mizi in a field with child Sua.)
In My Clematis, Mizi once called Sua a god, but now she no longer believes in that god — which was just an obsession and an illusion from her past. Instead, she dreams of the future together with the people right in front of her.
— The Story Behind Karma, Patreon
God is what you turn to when everything seems out of your hands. When you feel at your most hopeless and powerless, and the only thing you can do is pray for a higher being to intervene. In her pain, Mizi had made Sua her god.
But through her journey and growth, she had taken back the power and will the segyein long-denied her. She could now move forward with her own hands and feet without the help of a higher being. She was in a place where she didn't need to, didn't want to rely on a "god" anymore.
What we have here is a Mizi who had mourned for the loss of Sua long and hard, but in the right environment, began to heal from her loss and embarked on the journey of moving on.
Is that what the audience wants? No. Loving what Mizi and Sua had together means it'd be painful and disatisfying to think about Mizi moving on. But as a person, as a human, is that what would be healthiest for Mizi? Yes.
And honestly? I think that's what Sua would have hoped for.
Because as shown by her graduation message to Mizi and Bon Bon Jellyfish Planet, Sua has always above all else wanted Mizi to be free.
"Leaving Anakt Garden means we'll spend less time together, but I hope you can always see the summer sea and live a free life."
— Sua -> Mizi, graduation message
Even if it means free from her.
But despite her earnest wishes, Sua does become the ghost that chains Mizi down forever after.
In the end Mizi's love, and therefore her past, was something she could never truly cut away.
Hyuna was always a strong, noble person who had plenty of time and opportunities to mature and experience love after escaping.
But Mizi, a normal human being, went through so much abuse and despair in such a short time, it didn't make sense that she would suddenly become strong overnight.
So we decided to accept Mizi's feelings exactly as they were in this situation.
— The Story Behind Karma, Patreon
I personally don't think Hyuna or Mizi were wrong because I think the right answer is always going to be different for every individual.
This just happens to be the only answer Mizi could accept.
Mizi, stuck not in the future but in memories of the past, becomes attached again to the Anakt children from before.
It hurts a lot, but inside that pain, she also feels comfort and love.
— The Story Behind Karma, Patreon
(Oh also Till effectively inherited Mizi's old arc but that's a different post cause this one's long enough already.)
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