god dammit milo

icon by @nokkipo | header by @archi-pelago [main blog @getvalentined]

[ageofscorpinions]

This blog exists exclusively to quarantine my Roman empire; find me elsewhere for proof that I don't spend all day every day blogging about a single terrible YA novel.

main blog: @getvalentined

writing blog: @valentinedwords

[getvalentined]

Man, I have got to stop going on long-winded rants about worldbuilding every time I think too hard about Age of Scorpius. I just remain so utterly baffled by the entire thing that I can't let go, like if I chew on it a little longer I'll figure out how the hell ten years of worldbuilding never led to extremely simple questions like "Why don't Rowan and his family live in Rayka?" and "Why do all these superpowered immortals leave this entire thing up to a bunch of teenagers?" and "How can the ruling class be the most oppressed in the setting?"

About leaving the whole thing up to a bunch of teenagers—I feel like this in particular had some really solid potential to establish the alleged dystopia of the setting, and it really bothers me that it's never properly addressed. See, the best way to make this make sense would be that the immortals in question have been literally grooming these kids into these roles from birth, placing them in positions where they would be radicalized in just the right way, manipulating them into a distinct mindset and ideology, because it's the only way to assure everything goes to plan. It still doesn't explain why the adults can't be the ones to do it (except maybe that the kids in question are less likely to be detected and caught before the culmination of this plan), but it would make a much more interesting conflict, because the "good guys" are ideological child groomers and the "bad guys" are hyper-fascists. Once the Code is eliminated, then what? Do the ends justify the means in this context? How do you deal with knowing you spent your entire life being tortured and manipulated so someone who was supposed to care about you could have the perfect tool to carry out a global coup d'etat?

But Milo never asked that question, and as a result we're just left with the implications of all this, which is honestly way worse! The concepts of grooming and eugenics and more are staring readers in the face for the entire story, but never addressed, leaving us to assume they're commonplace and acceptable. Milo never asked a single question of his story that would force him to lean outside Rieka's very narrow view of the world, and as a result the worldbuilding exists solely to make her both the most perfect wonderful girl ever and also the most tragically mistreated person ever born in the history of Gardian.

[jeza-red]

This story is doubly frustrating because fixing these plot holes is so damn easy.

"Why are the immortals leaving it all to the kids instead of fixing shit themselves?"

Because, say, people who were given immortality by the magical sword are prohibited from conflict. The Curse of the Colexus (or whatever way you spell it) is not immortality, but the horrific way in which it can be taken away for fighting other immortals. The sword is, basically, their get-along shirt, forcing them to become chess-masters that sacrifice people around them in their attempts to make the world better. It's been done, but nothing says it can't be done again!

[ageofscorpinions]

(OP here, this is my AoS blog, made after the post you reblogged!)

That's a really solid concept to fill that plot hole! Like if Milo really didn't want to risk characters losing their immortality, he could have said that the way the War of Rebalancing actually ended was with the ghost(s) in the narrative (Mathias and/or Mari Merek) casting a curse that made it impossible for any immortal to raise a hand against another, physically or magically, directly or indirectly. A stopgap to force them into some form of ceasefire, because they can't fight one another. They're literally incapable of the very necessary final confrontation, and they've spent the last 300 years figuring out how to rules-lawyer their way around that limitation to truly end the conflict once and for all rather than just delaying it until someone (probably Blaine) learned how to break the curse.

That would also cover why all the immortals waited so long to have children, and then allowed them to be raised in the worst fucking positions. They didn't know how far they could push it until fairly recently, and once they figured out a workaround they realized they needed people of their bloodline(s) in order to enter Conviction Woods, to enter Rayka, to reclaim the sword, and so on. It could also explain why Atlas never sent anyone after Blaine to rescue Narah after he kidnapped her despite the fact that she's legally a member of Atlas' Union, Aries are apparently the core military force of Gardian, and Atlas knew she was there the whole damn time being groomed by his family's immortal nemesis into an obedient murder machine.

It's pretty contrived, yeah, but it works within the expectations of YA. I also think the issues that would be created by that kind of explanation are much smaller and less plot-relevant than those presented by the complete lack of explanation we get in the actual book!

[thebendtimes]

Still getting this up and going, but I figured I'd post a link now: https://discord.gg/MeDXf4vZ

^^ I've created a Discord server where anyone affected by the situation can come together to talk about next moves, including potential legal action. Whether you or someone you know are owed a refund by Milo Winter, or if you're sympathetic to their situations, here's a place we can discuss it.

[ageofscorpinions]

I saw @/phatburd mention this in a comment, so I went to find it and put it here. This is the only review for the World of Gardian on Trustpilot.

I guess someone found another platform on which to air their grievances now that the patreon's comments are locked. I'm tempted to leave my own review describing Elrose all but accusing me of lying about buying the book after Some Mysterious Figure (Milo) put it back up on B&N following the cancellation of the "second edition," because that was a pretty fucked up way to respond to someone who asked a question about dishonesty related to the avenue by which that person gave your company money.

[alice-of-hearts92]

Milo voice: Oh yeah I love all my characters. Rieka, Chase....*looks at smudged writing on hand* Narwhal, Kangaroo, Avian.

[ageofscorpinions]

I think I just figured out the purpose of the whole "Atlas shapeshifts himself into a child periodically in order to grow up and retain/regain political control without revealing his identity as an immortal" thing.

I'm gonna reiterate that this sounds extremely fucking bad when applied to the only (meta-confirmed) trans character in the book, but I think it was probably intended to set the stage for Milo to include him (and possibly Rhea, but with how Milo treats female characters I'm not holding my breath on that one) as a more major character later. Since this was intended to be a YA series, all the major characters have to be like 18-20, so this reveal was probably setting up for "teenager" Atlas to feature as a main party member in a later book.

It's an extremely bad look, but I guess that makes some sense. It's still, like, really stupid, but I guess I can see the logic.

[roselinbooks]

I have waited a while to release a video on the whole Age of Scorpius/Milo Winter thing, and with the saga seemingly at an end (for now) I figured this was the best timing I could hope for. Enjoy!

[ageofscorpinions]

I left a comment on this video already, but I'll comment here too, since I can't post links in YT comments: Age of Scorpius is, in fact, extremely misogynistic and racist.

The Misogyny In the Age of Scorpius Part 1 & Part 2 (by our very own @/afanficof-theageofscorpius)

The Stars Say You're Racist, Milo (this one is from me)

It's not overtly transphobic, but I feel the need to point out that the only confirmed trans character in the entire book has canonically been lying about his real identity to the entire world and age-faking for 300 years, physically aging himself down to childhood periodically so he can grow up again via magic in order to regain/retain his political position.

This character is one of the two most powerful people on the planet, is in charge of the strongest martial force in his Union, and allowed his niece (who shares his sign and is therefore legally under his political rule) to not only be kidnapped and raised by his family's mortal enemy right under his nose, but also to be groomed into an assassin by the other most powerful political figure in the entire world, whom he hates but still works with in order to keep the peace. In the timeframe of the book itself, this character personally arranges for a bunch of mostly-teenagers to be placed into life-threatening situations—in which one of them, the only one to share his sign, actually dies and has to be resurrected—for the express purpose of not getting his own hands dirty cleaning up the lingering remains of his older brother's mess. One of these characters is the son of the brother in question, and in turn the brother of the girl who was kidnapped and groomed into being a nice little murder machine. This character does not, at any time, let his nephew know about this.

Atlas is one of the only interesting characters in the book, mind you, and I actually like him a lot, but he's a complete piece of shit who straight up just belongs in a different genre. Having the only character confirmed as trans have this kind of history is one hell of a choice.

[ageofscorpinions]

I am uncomfortable dragging Asia Winter into the spotlight of all this bullshit in an open post (although I do discuss her in comments quite regularly because I think it's obvious she's a rather large part of the story) but I really gotta say any remaining modicum of respect I had for Milo just as a human being died the moment I looked into Asia's original writing.

I'm locking reblogs on this post and not putting it in the main AoS tag because I don't want it doing the rounds, it's about some pretty heavy personal stuff related to someone I don't know, but it's also proof of Milo Winter being one of the ugliest people on the entire fucking planet and I really need to talk about it.

Milo's former co-writer, the unmistakable basis for Avia, the abrasive and opinionated Aries known as Asia Winter, has a single piece of writing left on her Wattpad account called Letters To You. This piece is a series of short but extremely personal letters to people in her life who she loves or loved, who damaged her in ways that—at the time of writing—she considered beyond repair. They are the angsty writings of a teenager, but that doesn't make them any less valid or personal, so I won't be posting screenshots or linking to the piece.

One of the people to receive a letter is Asia's biological mother. She apparently had Asia quite young, and surrendered her for adoption at less than a week old. This woman went on to have another daughter whom she kept and brought up without ever telling her about Asia's existence. Based on the contents of the letter, it looks like she either never told her family that she was pregnant, or told them that Asia was stillborn. The letter is very clear that the family doesn't know Asia is alive.

Asia has/had a lot of baggage about this (honestly who fucking wouldn't, jiminy christmas), but there is a specific point of focus on her younger half-sister:

"[…] why did you keep her and not me? What did I do wrong?"

In Milo's shitty book, the character based off this former friend is literally treated as inferior to her younger half-sister by everyone around her. She is abused and silenced and vilified for the crime of not worshiping the ground on which her younger half-sister walks. Her biological mother is distant at best, her biological father uses her as a means to keep her half-sister safe and nothing else, and no one else even allows her to speak half the time because nothing she says matters in comparison to her younger half-sister.

If Asia was willing to post about this baggage publicly on Wattpad, there is absolutely no way Milo didn't know. They were close enough to have joint writing accounts, Asia set up and managed his socials for The Zodiac Turner. Milo must have known about this.

Which means his decision to do this to Avia was intentional.

Avia's mistreatment in the book is literally Milo grabbing a piece of a former friend's deepest trauma, something that impacted her entire life, and declaring that she deserved it. It's him confirming that there is nowhere she can exist, not even the fantasy world they seem to have created together, where her younger half-sister isn't worth more than her.

Milo Winter isn't "just" an egotistical liar, he isn't "just" repulsively racist, he's a specific type of absolutely fucking vile which I struggle to even describe, and I think people need to be aware of that.

"Justice for Avia" wouldn't even come close to making up for this. I don't know if anything can.

[ageofscorpinions]

My terrible penmanship returns as I continue my annotation of Age of Scorpius. We're up to the second chapter, and I am shocked at how early the narrative starts sniping at Avia for no damn reason. She's genuinely just an older sister—I see so much of myself in her, it's really rough knowing what Milo intended for her, and how much worse it gets as the book goes on.

One thing that strikes me particularly hard going back over this chapter with a fine-toothed comb is how Avia is shown being genuinely interested in Rieka's endeavors, and she's still belittled and vilified for not being interested the right way. When Rieka said "I found it," Avia immediately knew she was talking about the arch. When Rieka pointed out where it was and explained what made it special, Avia engaged directly, saying she'd never been out that far and thus wouldn't have seen it, and then admitting that they all look so alike to her that she wouldn't have noticed the difference anyway, indicating that Rieka is the only person who could have found the damn thing. This is a show of support. She teases her about it a bit after and puts it aside in favor of Ceremony preparation, but she was engaging with her sister sincerely here!

Milo literally wrote Avia being supportive in a way that jives with her characterization as a somewhat abrasive older sister, but Rieka intimates that Avia doesn't care and isn't interested as soon as the exchange is over because wasn't as excited as Rieka believes Rowan would have been. Avia was interested, but she's more focused on the impending Ceremony—which she had to delay by a year, putting her entire life on hold, in order to be there to assure that Rieka was able to integrate into adult society safely. The exact same Ceremony which Rowan literally left the house to attend without waiting for Rieka to get home. Of course, it's fine that Rowan prioritized The Ceremony over Rieka. He favors Rieka in literally everything and always has, so his absence is fine, his priorities are fine, whatever he does is fine because the next time he sees Rieka he'll tell her how perfect and wonderful she is and that's all that matters.

Avia is the one that has to keep track of time, she's the one that stayed behind and waited to even start getting ready until Rieka was home safe rather than either of their parents—even though Rowan is barely ever around anyway, so him leaving first is just intentionally limiting the amount of time they can interact like a family, seemingly for the express purpose of forcing Avia to be the most responsible adult in this entire fucking household.

Avia works a physically demanding job full-time at nineteen years old and is basically responsible for parenting her barely-younger sister when she's not at work, so she sleeps in when she can; this is a character flaw, it's something to criticize, it's something wrong with her. Meanwhile, Rieka can't even be fucked to read single a note her mother left detailing the plan for the day, and that's just Rieka! That's normal and fine! Avia is the problem here for making her feel bad about it!

Avia is apparently so intrinsically bad that their parents had to get fireproof furniture on the chance that she ever lost her temper, because just having her around is dangerous on account of her being an Aries. Rieka, meanwhile, lives in the fucking TETANUS KNIFE ROOM and that just shows how she's a badass genius who is better than everyone else.

Milo literally wrote this! He made the characters act this way! He made Avia a sincere, snarky, protective older sister who openly cares about Rieka despite the risks involved, and then had everyone around her act like this! I don't know what (presumably) Asia Winter did to Milo, but he needs some professional help to unpack it, because this is really fucked up.

[valentinedwords]

I think a key element of worldbuilding that a lot of people fail to take into account is the necessity of seeking other perspectives. You created the world, so you know all about it, right? Wrong! There are questions that are important to the suspension of disbelief that you will never have considered!

You need to seek other perspectives, you need to think outside the box, you need to accept questions and really think about them. You don't need to go too deep, generally, but some things you consider perfectly understandable even from a surface level will look like huge plot holes to others. No amount of worldbuilding will be enough for everyone, but worldbuilding strictly from your own perspective is a recipe for disaster if you ever intend to share your work with a wider audience.

If you have issues with rejection sensitivity, questions can feel like criticism, particularly when it's something you never thought of yourself. It can make you feel stupid—you invented this world, why didn't you ever figure that out? This is pretty common in neurodivergent folks, and it's something you just gotta work through via exposure.

If you're in early stages and aren't in a place to put your work out there for scrutiny from other people—whether that's because you struggle as described or just because you don't have anyone your trust to treat your work with respect—it actually isn't entirely necessary to take questions from other people. There are plenty of worldbuilding questionnaires and primers out there that you can go through, some of which are quite comprehensive. Keep in mind, though, that filling out a massive worldbuilding questionnaire wherein 90 percent of the questions aren't actually relevant to the story being told won't help you avoid unbridgeable gaps later in the creative process.

You need to answer questions that:

Matter to the setting;

Matter to the storyline;

Help to establish limits for you within the narrative.

Anything beyond that can be fun, but focusing on minute details that don't mean anything to the story will bog down your creative process and can cause you to stall out and hit walls. You are never going to be able to create a world as rich and comprehensive as the one in which we live. You cannot answer every question. All the most educated, experienced, intelligent people on the planet combined don't know everything about the real world, you can't expect for your single human brain to know everything about the fictional reality it created.

Just try not to make "interpersonal relationships—romantic, platonic, and familial—are forbidden among the ruling class" the single most important aspect of your societal setting and then crash out when readers ask how the hell the ruling class manages to reproduce.

[ageofscorpinions]

Bringing this over here from my original writing sideblog because it is technically AoS related and as I reread the book to annotate it I feel like it bears repeating.

[ageofscorpinions]

So, as I'm sure some folks have seen, I'm annotating my copy of Age of Scorpius, but as I work through chapter two I've gotten curious about what folks think is worth highlighting.

So far, I've settled on this list:

ORANGE: Formatting error/bad formatting

YELLOW: Continuity error/WTF is going on here

GREEN: Wrong/confusing word choice, repeating lines

BLUE: Someone is mean to Avia for no damn reason

PINK: Rieka goes to sleep/passes out/etc

I have two other colors I can use (PURPLE and RED) if anyone has any suggestions of what else I should mark.

[ageofscorpinions]

It's bad, Milo.

I know everyone and their cat has ripped into the first chapter of this book, but it is kinda wild coming back to the beginning after so long and seeing how disjointed and bloated it all is even this early in. Three of the first chapter's seven pages are spent hinting at how dangerous the woods are, and then the actual danger appears and resolves in like 200 words. It's asinine.

I actually disagree with the complaints about the opening line being unsalvageable, and I think KrimsonRogue's suggested fix of "Our historians are liars" is genuinely terrible because it sets a totally different, even inappropriate tone for the character—at this point Rieka is inquisitive and eager, not angry. The issue is the lines that follow, which do necessitate a full rewrite of that paragraph in order to retain the information expressed therein without sounding so clunky and unengaging.

Conviction's sprawling woodlands, divided from the surrounding territory by a shimmering border enchanted in the colors of warning, were cursed. I knew that, everyone knew that, and in a rare instance of solidarity with the aspirations of my Union, I wanted to break the curse as much as anyone else. The difference was that I wanted to heal the land not as some political coup, but because I knew the historical record regarding the nature of the woods was a lie, a fabrication created wholecloth centuries prior to conceal a war and an alliance which none of my colleagues at the archives would believe possible, supplanting reality with cautionary tales of a land rendered uninhabitable by the gods themselves in the days of time immemorial. It had to be a lie, both because the silent language of decay spoke truth through rusted swords and shields and armor from the previous age strewn across the forest floor, and also because I lived there.

Look at that, some simple worldbuilding, indications of character motivation, and a plot hook all in one place! I don't write like a YA author, but whatever. It's doable without completely killing the vibe Milo was going for.

Anyway, as I do this new read-through I'm gonna see if I can tell where the cutoff is between versions. I'm positive this book is multiple drafts stitched together without a thought for continuity, it's the simplest explanation for the continuity errors and painfully obvious oversights throughout the narrative. We'll see.

[thy-lovelylionheart]

I didn’t even know Robin existed as a character in AOS so I CMD+F’d his name in the book and I’m just cackling rn over the fact that canonically polo shirts and boxers exist in Gardian

Chase frantically banged on Robin’s door. “Robin! Let me in, now.” “Hold on, Chase, give me a second to put on my damn boxers.” Shuffling sounds came from inside of the room. “Chill out. I just took a shower.” “Right now, boxers can wait!” “I thought we had a conclusion about—” “This isn’t about that. Ego check yourself!”

reading the word “boxers” (also the phrase "ego check" like bro) in a fantasy “sword and sorcery” (according to Milo) story feels so anachronistic that I just can’t stop laughing

also I know Rieka and Avia have plumbing in Conviction Woods but reading about a character stepping out of the shower is so jarring. Yes the ancient Romans had communal showers thanks to their aqueducts and plumbing but I just have absolutely no sense of what technology actually exists in Gardian, especially because the intro says the stars commanded them not to build machines. When does technology become a “machine” in this world? What is the common sentiment toward technology in Gardian? Does a spinning wheel count as a “machine”? Where is the line between acceptable rudimentary machines and star-forbidden machines???

[ageofscorpinions]

My assumption is that "machine" actually means "computer" in this context. Anything with processing capacity. The whole "we blurred the lines between man and machine" nonsense at the beginning supports this, I think.

That said, I am curious about the level of automation in Gardian. Watches, whether for the pocket or the wrist, are notoriously difficult to construct and historically were quite expensive prior to the industrial revolution—but Avia, a no-name border guard who hasn't even gone through The Ceremony to become a full citizen of her Union yet, has a watch. She checks it at the beginning of chapter two before asking Rieka why she's so late getting home.

I feel like a lot of these things, watches and polos and boxers, along with phrases like "ego check" and "random dude" and "oh my god," may be holdovers from an earlier iteration. There was a point when this seems to have been placed in a more modern day setting, based on the fact that Avia had a gun (the book would have been much shorter if that was retained, I think), and these may be leftover from that. He just didn't catch it when stitching together the multiple unedited drafts that make up the final book.

[ageofscorpinions]

How many people out here talking about Age of Scorpius don't have a copy of and/or have not read Age of Scorpius? I'm not throwing shade here, I'm genuinely curious. For reasons.

EDIT: I've gotten a pretty good cross-section, I think, and I'm honestly impressed by how many people have made a genuine attempt to read the book! Good job, y'all.

[saint-chevy]

When the AOS drama first began, way back when, I had taken many, many screenshots of every TikTok of Milo's, and even slowed down various sped up videos to take screenshots of prior art not created by his team, writing excerpts from over the years and, most importantly to me, a wheel of relationships between different characters through the three generations of his book.

Separated by categories of "Generation Two" (the parents of the characters), "Generation Three" (the main characters) and "Generation Four" (very surprisingly, next gen children we will now most likely never see), the wheel had every single name blacked out. Up until tonight, I had been too lazy and even straight up forgotten about it, but as I lay down watching Taskmaster, I decided to finally decode the whole wheel. I present you, the names of each character in the relationship wheel:

(my apology for misspelling Silas.)

To decipher the relationships, I had to up the saturation by quite a bit, as the original picture was much fainter than this. If you don't understand what's going on, worry not as I will thoroughly explain best I could.

The way I found out who was who was purely from one character: Blaine. He's the only character whose every single relationship is hate other than the singular purple line pointing straight to Rieka. The huge black block of text in the middle proved to be an issue, yet nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. Let's start with the lines one by one!

Purple is the biological parantage line. From it we can gather some information we already know that helped decipher everything else. Blaine and Ivara are Rieka's parents; Ivara and Rowan are Avia's; Rhea and Kaia's father are her parents and her brother's parents (on a side note, I don't know if said brother was supposed to be Quinn as he's in the "Fourth Generation" Category. Also Milo forgot his Uncle lines with Kaia and Chase's future kid's but more on that later); Silas and Sora are Chase and Narah's parents. However, this does also give us major spoilers for the plans Milo had with the future generation of Gardian. Chase is signed as having four biological children, two with Kaia, and two with Rieka. He was obviously used as a sperm donor for Rieka and Narah's children, as shown in the picture below:

This is the Adoptive Parents lines. Rowan is obviously Rieka's adoptive father and Narah is signed as Chase and Rieka's biological children's adoptive mother. Pretty interesting but gets a little weird here:

The sibling lines... Seeing those four cousin siblings over there is so strange. Wish he'd put a half sibling color or something of the sort. Anyway, as we can see, Rieka and Avia are connected, as are Atlas and Silas and also Kaia and her brother. But a new character emerges! One who is Rowan's biological brother— a figure we never got to meet in AOS (no biggie. Not every character needs to be immediately in the first book). You might have noticed in the first picture I had put his name down as Weylyn and this is over another story related screenshot I have from Milo's TikTok where he talks of a character called Weylyn who was murdered years ago. His name translates to "son of the wolf" and Rowan is often mentioned alongside wolves in the story. His name isn't too important but this was just a theory on what it could be.

Then, there's the uncle and aunt lines. Atlas is obviously uncle to Narah and Chase. Weylyn is uncle to Avia and Rieka (through adoption but that seems to count). Chase has both father and Uncle lines towards his and Rieka's bio children, which is fine ig but seems so strange to look at. Kaia is also considered the children's aunt, but you might have noticed... Avia isn't. I have a theory to that. If we go by the canon of Quinn dying, that means that he doesn't have Uncle lines to his nephew/niece/wtv because he's dead and never got to meet them and I think the same thing is going on here. I think Milo's big plan was killing Avia and that's why she's not related to her nephew/niece/wtv, which is very messed up.

The lines after that are the romantic relationship ones. I know in the original picture it might look confusing but due to my saturation, the romantic lines look more red and the enemy lines look more red-orange. I think I missed a pink line between Sora and Blaine but I was too bothered to go back and add it so apologies for that. I think it's strange that Ivara and Blaine seem to have had a romantic relationship but maybe this is hinting to their relationship not being non consensual after all? That could very well be the case as Ivara never gets to talk about it at all in the book.

This one is the friendship lines. I don't care too much about these but I think it's depressing Avia doesn't have even one singular friendship line. Just cruel and mean as hell.

The hate lines. I thought it was so funny only one of the next gen kids hates Blaine. All of them point to him so nothing interesting to talk about really.

Lastly the most boring ones aka the Ally lines. Avia's love interest having them with one of the next gen kids makes me think he gets to survive while she dies, which, again, so fucking weird. His treatment of this character is diabolical. Idk what Asia Winter did to him to have him tripping ten years into the future but he needs immediate help. Anyway, this was the unlocked, fully deciphered relationship wheel Milo had posted on TikTok. I don't think I left any lines off other than the Sora/Blaine love line since the whole board was so cluttered by that time. Can't wait to hear everyone's thoughts and hope you guys find this interesting!!

[alice-of-hearts92]

This is very impressive untangling work! Nice job! It's quite interesting.

Geez, rip Avia. So little fucks are given towards her that I'm baffled as to why she's here. Maybe it is just to fucking die? That would be depressing if that is the case. RIP to her unknown love interest too, sorry your gf has to die for dramas sake and the author doesn't give two fucks about her. :V

Not Chase being everyones baby daddy. Wait, doesn't that mean Rieka and Chase's kids are blood related to Narah? As in she is the kids' mother and aunt? That can happen irl via legal guardianship stuff but having that be the case in a fictional story is certainly a choice. Same with the second gen kids be entirely half siblings and cousins.

Side note, this world is magic. Why isn't there a magical way for gay couples to create a bio child? Granted, it doesn't have to be a bio child, Rieka and Narah could just adopt! But I guess Milo really really really wanted to preserve that bloodline so Chase is everyones baby daddy it is! This preserving the bloodline thread that keeps popping up concerns me greatly.

LOL at only ONE second gen kid hating Blaine. The hate lines are wild to me cause its like "wait no one else hates each other even a little bit? Just the Big Bad guy?" Could have put dislike lines in there at least gdi. Also does that mean since theres a next gen here Blaine is gonna be the antagonist for next gen too? Maybe not since only one of them hates him but I think we only know two human bad guys (Blaine and Verbena) so I guess options are limited. Weird.

Part of me is glad that we are most likely not getting a continuation cause whew what a mess. But there is a part of me thats like "hey Milo how ya gonna justify the Chase is everyones baby daddy situation?" and wtf the kids are gonna do. I guess the code isn't overturned yet? Or just a different plot I suppose.

Anyways these character connections are fairly flat it seems like. Idk why he blacked out so many of the names, I get the kids and such but all the names? That's just silly. Guess it was just a way to build up hype or something.

[ageofscorpinions]

Thinking about it, there actually must be a magical way to do this, because shapeshifters can change human bodies. Atlas and Rhea have been doing it for ages—I assume that's how Atlas transitioned, since he's been confirmed FtM via Word of God.

Maybe Milo just didn't want to consider the idea of shapeshifting being able to temporarily give one of his female characters a schlong so the lesbian couple could have their own biological children. I don't know how that's less weird than having the lesbian who is canonically repulsed by men even standing in close proximity to her have sex with her wife's brother, who is also her best friend and used to date her sister, but okay I guess. Whatever you say, Milo.

[ageofscorpinions]

One really weird thing in Age of Scorpius that I don't see people mention much is that all character names, with a single exception, end in one of three ways.

All female characters (save one) have names ending in an "ah" sound:

Rieka

Avia

Ivara

Narah

Verena

Kaia

Rhea

Sora

(Yes I know that the correct phoneme there is actually /ʌ/ rather than /ɑ/ and is characterized as "uh" rather than "ah" but we're not getting that technical with this.)

All the Merek men have names ending in an "s" sound:

Mathias

Silas

Atlas

Chase

(I actually don't dislike this, or even really take issue with it except in combination with the other name choices. Everyone in my stepdad's family who didn't marry in is named starting with "J" and that's fine. This is one family, it's fine.)

All other male characters have names ending in an "n" sound:

Rowan

Robin

Quinn

Dion

Blaine

I think the only exception to any of this is Mari Merek. I don't remember the name of Blaine's mother, if ever she got one (I saw "Odessa" floating around but it's not in the book any more than "Ivara" so idk about the canonicity), but if her name is also different I'd be curious to know what linguistic bullshit happened since then to cause every woman in the entire world to have names that end with the exact same phoneme.

I have two characters in my own novel who interact a lot whose names start with the same letter, and I've been super conflicted about whether I should change one for readability. I cannot fathom making everyone in your cast have names that sound this similar without realizing it's a problem.

[ageofscorpinions]

Just want to say your banner is the funniest fucking thing ever

I AGREE and I can't take credit for it at all! It's my sister's absolutely hilarious response to one of my earlier posts about the terrible formatting in Age of Scorpius. She is the single funniest person I have ever known.