the whole alnst cast tends to conflate love and violence as a consequence of trauma, and therefore can be very easily interpreted as CSA victims. this is especially so considering they are groomed to take part in the idol industry, where people are commodified and exploited by the nature of their work.
through this lens, sualuka have the most obvious allusions to CSA. they share a similar amount of bodily autonomy, and cannot untangle pain from pleasure. they are conditioned into being tame for those with more power, and end up replicating this in their own relationships by finding others with less power than them in order to reclaim their own autonomy.
due to this, they also both think control (domination/submission) inherent to intimacy. for example, luka communicates his affection by saying he owns hyuna, and sua, while intimate in a bathtub with mizi, puts her hands around her neck in equivalence. (you could also say this about mizi, but when she's most desperate, she's unable to carry through her cruelty. sua still does.)
tl: inusukuhito
notably, they're both associated with bugs, and also specifically cocoons that trap them: luka stuck in his eternal chrysalis, and sua caught as spider's prey. it symbolises the nuances of their trauma-distorted worldview perfectly. the cocoon, while trapping them still - both physically in place, and as a young child - nonetheless feels like an embrace.
in contrast to the emphasis on ivan witnessing the expanse of the night sky under life or death situations, mizi cultivates a simplistic and fake version of it in the safety of four closed walls with sua. these scenarios are used to both set up a world and destroy it.
ivan is notably the only child to see the night sky in its entirety, because of his background. but how it's related to his experiences makes it clear that he associates with that which is external to him - freedom.
mizisua often watch a portion of the night sky together from within anakt garden. even when mizi looks at the sky, she sees it warped due to her astigmatism. as their reality grows more harsh towards them, they find comfort back with the light projector from mizi's early childhood, a simulated night sky for when it's not night time. their envisioned freedom grows distorted as they can't bear to face their true fates, but they need this sweet dream for comfort.
the contrast between these two shows that while ivan constantly faces reality, and understands what freedom entails, mizisua don't. mizisua do witness and understand reality, they only see a narrow, blurred version, and choose to shelter themselves instead. till, on the other hand, continually turns away from reality, unable to face truth in fear of damaging his fragile psyche.
under the stars, both pairs have a "run back" scene. till runs back to the garden, in fear of the unknown; mizi runs back to sua, unable to ignore her suffering anymore. the aftermath is that ivan's hope and will to freedom disappears (yesterday's daydream), and the illusion of mizi's innocence disappears (the night collapses).
their idol creates the idealised world - the star lights up the night sky. ivan's stars fall and die, since there is no averting their predetermined fates. mizi's stars have always been fake, since their shared dream has been too.
they face the reality of "stars" - the death of an illusory dream constructed under their light. ivan's stars spin him a lie of freedom, mizi one of innocence.
ok this post was mostly about ivanmizi since they parallel the clearest, but hyuna & co do also experience the night sky like mizisua do. notably, hyunwoo is the one dreaming of freedom, and when he is killed by luka, the garden closes in on hyuna. the stars are gone - for hyuna, her idealism disappears with hyunwoo; for luka, his star has always been hyuna.
also unrelated note, these three images represent the three of them: hyunwoo's freedom and hope, hyuna's grounded happiness in community, and luka's confined understanding of love. future/present/past
MirroR overtly references snow white with the line "mirror mirror". this positions mizi as the evil queen. it's used alongside other girly-juxtaposed-with-evil imagery in the song to convey mirror mizi's hyperfeminine persona (eg: "candy lips with a poison kiss", "devil in ribbons"). however, this is standout since references a fairytale.
the idea of fairytale ties together other themes in mizi's character - fantasy, storytelling and childishness.
as fairytales are told at a young age, they provide the building blocks with how children perceive the world around them. then, logically, if a child continues to only understand the simplistic world of a fairytale, they are barred from maturity.
mizi uses fairytale as the framework to communicate the simplistic, one dimensional visage of villainy she views her femininity as - all her evils are condensed and personified into the image of the evil queen, clad in black. her victim is sua, the pure snow white. all this is born of childishness, including the idea of good and evil. it's easier to understand the world in black and white, so she does. by splitting off part of herself as the hyperfeminine & seductive bad girl, she can imagine herself as the normal & pure good girl (madonna-whore / bride-witch).
mizi does not mature because the world does not want her to: she is trapped under the ownership of her guardian; she is trapped in anakt garden, its abuse and the eyes of others; she is trapped under the control of sua. all these factors wish for her to stay as a child; girly, adorable, and therefore someone worth keeping alive. mizi has to cling to her childishness like a lifeline to make sure of her conditional survival, but she additionally uses it as a coping mechanism.
a simple world is a comforting one, a reason for mizi to dwell in a world that denies her interiority. "i'm free inside your desire" - sua imagines her as free, mizi acts it out as asked, and sua can indulge in vicarious escapism. "in white temptation, i disappear" - mizi too escapes into a simple, seemingly perfect world because it denies the parts of her that she doesn't want to acknowledge. her black evils can wash away under the blinding white light, as long as it keeps shining.
in her state of powerlessness, mizi pretends she is truly helpless and therefore not culpable of anything, innocent as a child. she does this in part by splitting off the part of her that revels in the control, leaving her with her guilt. but her "good" act, similarly to her "evil" act, is all product of fairytale - it's immature. rather than innocence, immaturity is the true mark of childishness, something that mizi has yet to stop clinging to.
till's graduation message to ivan is the only one that doesn't contain a goodbye, betraying the fact that he subconsciously cannot reckon with being separated from ivan. his message references an event from their childhood, insignificant but indicative of their relationship, representing all the things that stay uncommunicated between them. the fact that he remembers a specific mundane event between them is also reflective of till's core theme of memory. ivan has always meant a lot to him, and for that same reason he cannot consciously recognise it; but it still unconsciously bleeds through in how till treats him. what on the surface appears as shallow regard is actually an admission of reliance, twisted to be that way due to till's fear of abandonment.
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