I need to get fucking medicated why did I write 10 pages of this?
I honestly didnāt think that I was going to hear anything about Milo Winterās for a hot minute until the 2nd edition released or didnāt release. But I am kinda happy that it did because I need something to bitch about thatās not super serious. Also this is not a safe place for transphobes, I shit on Milo Winter because heās Milo Winter not because heās trans. This is also not a safe place for any bigotry, Iām an ethical hater and if you donāt come with that same energy then leave.
So Milo Winter released an essay called High Disturbance. You can read it on his website. The title is enticing especially if you take into account his naturalist history. And in this essay he also comes out as a trans man. I have very few compliments for his āessayā. The language gets flowery to the point it feels out of place for an essay but then also sounds normal in other places. This is an informal essay so it's supposed to be like a conversation between author and reader; however, it's supposed to still teach you something. By the time youāre done reading the essay you should've learned something. Milo Winter accidentally proved that he still doesnāt know how to write. Youāll see later on that he claims to have been writing this since August. He shouldnāt have admitted that for two reasons, one of which Iāll get to later.Ā
Milo doesnāt do any real reflection. Lets do a quick recap of what my first and last post about this white man was. He managed to get a shit ton of preorders on a debut book purely on vibes, aligned himself with professionals in the field to legitimize himself, was going around acting like he was a successful author, and then people gave him lukewarm criticisms on his objectively horrendous book and he flipped. He had a whole woe is me era, it was like watching a former gifted kid fail for the first time in their life. Remember his book didnāt make sense on a line level, fuck everything else the grammer was wrong. If he turned it in to his 5th grade English teacher he would've failed. But also ignoring the grammar thereās also his whiteness showing throughout the entire book that I talked about because he had a very white liberal view on what segregation was like. Not a lot of people actually talked about his shitty portrayal of segregation and how heās obviously never read about it but I did. His white liberal viewpoint on things didn't go away either.Ā
To cover my ass Iām not saying that he is racist or that heās not. Iām saying that heās clearly never deconstructed things like racism and his whiteness or how the world works.
This essay is as confused as the writing in his failed book.Ā
He started off the essay by talking about his background in being a naturalist for 3 years and having a degree in ecological restoration. Good for him, I didnāt even know that was something you could get a degree in. This is an essay not an egregiously long tumblr post so I expected him to explain what either of those things are. He doesnāt, he never does. Anyways Merriam Webster has two definitions the first one doesn't sound like thats what heās talking about so this is the second one: A student of natural history
Especially a field biologist
People with the ecological restoration degree usually study things like geology, ecology, plant science, soil science, and restoration principles. You can get away with a bachelor's degree but a master's will get you further (allegedly). He doesn't say which one he has. Maybe he has in one of his TikToks;however, this is supposed to be an essay. Not a random social media post. Anyways, time for his āwoe is meā bit.
āAfter I published a shitty book and became the most hated author of the yearā¦ā Silver Elite came out this year, calm down. At least people acknowledge that a person wrote Age of Scorpius.
ā...At that time, walking myself into a wildfire wouldāve been no more than a spark in my burning lifeāI was already standing at deathās edge after barely surviving the week prior.ā This is about the aftermath of the book, not something else. He doesnāt say shit about how unhealthy it was for him to be this attached to his book and how maybe it was a mistake to release a book that personal to him into the public. Or even say that he went to or is in therapy.Ā
He then goes into how heād tour people around in Colorado and people asking about the charred trunks from the 2020 Cameron Peak fire. From that he goes into how climate change is a factor into fires but it's more than that and older than that. He says its a,ā Misunderstandingā italicized. Which is weird because colonizers did things like burn cities to the ground, killed and raped anyone human shaped, made reservation schools so they could be tortured on a institutional level, purposefully killed the bisions to starve out the local indigenous people etc. etc. What we have isnāt a misunderstanding because the indigenous are oh so wise and the westerners just didnāt know any better. You donāt do things like hunt bison almost to extinction just to starve people (which is a genocide tactitc), you dont commit genocide, and then get to say āoh we just didnāt understand the environment.ā They quite literally did, it's why they did what they did.
He then gets to talking about how westerners tend to do a hand off approach and how in many indigenous cultures they didnāt do that shit they actually took care of the land. He also calls indigenous people in America,āThe First People of the American Westā¦ā Which is weird. Like up in Canada theyāre called First Nation, down in Mexico theyāre called indĆgena, over in Australia theyāre called aboriginals. Different places call the natives different things if theyāre talking about them as a whole and in America it's either Native American or indigenous people when talking about them as a whole.
In that little tidbit he talks about land preservations in the same section about colonization. He doesnāt point out how land preservations both historically and presently hurt indigenous people. You canāt touch land preservations, it's the aforementioned hand off approach. So the nearby tribes canāt legally tend to their own fucking land even though the land was only as good as it was because they tended to the landāalso its fucking theirs. He does talk about how you need to have controlled fires so that massive fires don't happen and how the local indigenous people knew/know this. Probably because he wants to make a shitty metaphor with purple prose. And Iām being so fucking forreal.Ā
He started off this essay legitimizing himself with his 3 years of being a naturalist and his degree in ecological restoration. He chose to talk about colonizationāit was not needed for his essayābut he only really talks about the part that will help his shitty metaphor. It's why the title of the essay is called High Disturbance.Ā
And honestly Iām only pointing all that out because heās a self-proclaimed child prodigy and tried to liken himself to a master in writing because he wrote for an arbitrary amount of hours. And he doesnāt denounce that shit in this essay so here I am. Being facetious but also not really. He really did not need to half-ass and pussyfoot around something like colonization.Ā Ā
Anyways he touches briefly on one of the aftermaths of colonization. And it's a nice starting point for people that donāt know anything as he also has resources to back up what heās saying. And honestly I do think heād be a better writer if he like wrote about the ecosystem and climate change. Like before Age of Scorpious took off he was making tiktoks he could have very easily talked about the thing he has a degree in. Maybe he did and no one talks about it, I dunno. I'm facetious and stringent, not blind so he can get his flowers when it's due. Anyways talking about how colonizers fucked up the ecosystem and put in place laws that would further fuck it up is pretty fucking heavy. Colonization is a pretty heavy subject, like it literally changed the ecosystem in the Atlantic ocean because they drowned so many black people like they were cargo. So what comes after this?
He looked at a tree and basically came to the conclusion that heās either going to die or get better. And then he booked a ticket to Finland and moved in two weeks. Thats fucking crazy. I get that heās a naturalist and this is probably the first time people told him his shit sucked ass but oh my god. But talking about the ecosystem and how colonizers fucked it up and then being like,āWell my mental health was in the gutter so I moved to Finlandā is a choice. One that a PR manager would've said no to and honestly to this entire essay too.
ā...my signs pointed to death, the sparks started by my own killed the last of my life.ā Own what? Own hands? Own hubris? Just like his book this essay is seemingly unedited, heās been writing it since August mind you.Ā
āI am a surviorā¦ā Of what? Heās not referencing the doxxing, that was legitimately evil. Donāt dox people, unless theyāre like ICE or the KKK. Ya know something really bad, all he did was write a shitty book. And it's the reaction to the shitty book that heās referencing that heās saying heās a survivor of. Implying that heās a fucking victim, I guess of his own hubris but he doesnāt say that. We should've figured out he was a man all along cause only a white man would have the audacity to say that heās a survivor of people hating his book that he now admits to it being a shitty book. If you didnāt know the situation youād think that people were running a hate campaign on this guy and it almost killed him, that he was undergoing some real persecution over here.Ā
He goes on about death and rebirth and now heās stronger than before blah blah blah. Very melancholic of him.
He then throws out, āWe are not taking enough action for the climate; it must be done now.ā And it's hyperlinked with the BGSā Impacts of Climate Change. And then juxtaposes it with, as he calls it, āThe Controversyā. In the first paragraph of his essay he explains that heās a naturalist and has a degree in ecological restoration. Great for him but what the fuck does climate change have to do with him being a capitalist? This entire situation exists because he was so worried about being a CEO and running a company that he forgot to do his actual job: writing a decent book. It didnāt need to be the greatest thing ever, there just need to not be grammatical errors on page one. He couldnāt even successfully write the worst book of the year because Silver Elite came out, and that book had proper line editing.
āOn July 28, my peaceful morning TikTok FYP scroll was abruptly interrupted as I scrolled upon a video from another independent author; he was talking about how heād just finished the worst indie book heād read in a long time. As any reasonably paranoid author would, I kept watching his video. Though the other author said he wasnāt saying names, he proceeded to talk about preorder numbers that I had accomplished. I felt my heart drop with each sentence he spoke. He lectured on the importance of hiring editors and quality control in independent publishing.ā
āHe also talked about how debut trad authors don't publish their first book they've ever written meanwhile debut indie authors have a bad habit of doing exactly that. And how your first book ever is probably not a good book...I wonder why he left that part out.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā āHorror rushed over me. Heād presented false informationāthat my book wasnāt editedāas a concrete fact.ā
He released this essay like last week. So heās had since July until last week to think about the whole situation and he still says that a random reviewer was the cause of the whole fiasco. Age of Scorpius didn't have ARCs, that was a paying customer talking about a book he read. And he didnāt lie about anything, not about how bad the book was or the lack of editing. Also the guy gave him anonymity, Milo exposed himself. This entire thing happened the way it did because Milo doesnāt know when to shut the fuck up. And the really fucked up part about this specifically is that that TikToker ( TL Lewis) received hate from Miloās fans because Milo didnāt just ignore his video. Mind you it's been proven time and time again that there were negative reviews before this specific guy. But Milo doesnāt apologize for this at all or anything.
ā...āāand in the haze of implementing my copy editorās suggestions, I failed to notice that the edits themselves were insubstantial.ā This was on the same fucking page mind you. In one paragraph he lies and says that it was edited and 2 paragraphs later heās saying that he,āfailed to notice the edits themselves were insubstantial.ā So which is it? And why even bring up the random reviewer?TikTok has like what a 10 minute limit? Back then TL Lewis had only 200 followers. What was really damning book reviews were the YouTubers that broke that shit down chapter by chapter. And it's still not their fault, Milo just released a shitty book.
People could see from the first paragraph that the book clearly wasnāt edited. Like this white man really sat here and painted a picture with climate change and colonization for this. His own inadequacy. Youād think he was likening himself to colonizers since he ruined everything for nothing. And he will later go on to very briefly talk about the facism in America. Which that shit is hilarious to me, a Black American that casually studies black history. More on that later.
ā...tried to give some artists a secure jobā¦ā Word on the street says he sought out struggling artists and paid them like 75 USD for commercial projects. He openly talked about how heād have meetings at the beginning of the week every week to talk about revisions of his book with 6-8 people āacross the artsā. So not all of them were editors which makes sense because most of his team weren't editors they were artists. One of them was an animator. But then on top of that every night for like 3 hours heād have a meeting with Sauli specifically, an artist, about the damn book. Not only was none of that necessary Milo will later go on to talk about how he never put money in his savings account and his company stopped making money so are we supposed to believe that these artists got paid for work that they quite frankly should have never been doing in the first place? He openly talked about how he had his artists read the book, he never talks about paying them to read the book. He hired a shit ton more artists after people dissected his book more than he ever did in 10 years instead of scaling back and actually doing his job. To which he would later drop most of those artists cause yeah why the hell do you have like 18 people working on this book when most of them are artists and at the end of the day editing wonāt change the fact that at its core the book is bad. But we are only halfway through.
He goes on to talk about his mental health decline manifesting into his physical healthās decline. He then goes on to say,ā I tried to reassure myself by reading my own bookā¦ surely, it couldnāt be that bad.ā Did he just admit to not reading his own book before he got editors let alone before he sold it? For real money? He didn't say,āWith a new perspective on my book,ā or,ā Learning from the criticisms of my book.ā He said,āI tried to reassure myself by reading my own bookā¦ surely, it couldnāt be that bad.ā Milo needs to learn the art of shutting the fuck up, he is his own worse enemy. No one was asking Milo Winter for an essay.
Ā āIt was. It was that bad. I was overwhelmed with disgust and disappointment at my own writing. I couldnāt believe myself, the errors Iād made, the mistakes Iād passed right by. It wasnāt even close to what I knew I was capable of. Why did I release a debut so weak, compared to other writing I am so much prouder of? What in the world happened? What was I thinking? Was I thinking?ā I keep emphasising that his book failed on a line level because he keeps acting like it was a copy edit issue and as you saw threw the copy editors under the bus and now he wants to act like he totally wasnāt aware that he was straight up using words incorrectly.Ā
Copy editors are supposed to edit so that shit is consistent and accurate. You canāt do that if your lines are bad. Line editors do shit like fix grammar and make sure that the sentence makes sense in general. You cannot do a copy edit without a line edit; however, an editor can only do so much. They suggest edits but it's the job of the author to actually do something with it.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā āNo. No, I couldnāt have thought clearly when I was living in so much shock and overstimulation during the editing phases. My writing was confusing, my voice was fragmented, my characters werenāt shining through. I was furious at myself, swallowed by my own humiliation and enragement, sickened by my own audacity.āĀ
Writing a book takes roughly a year if youāre not churning them out like fast fashion. But Miloās whole schtick is that heās been writing this book for like a decade, for a decade he didnāt figure out that thatās not what good writing looks like. Mind you he hasnāt renounced his wild claims of being a child prodigy or a master in writing. It took a section of the internet dog walking his writing in order to realize he released a book so horrid that people believed that they were scammed. Because they kinda were (again previous post). But he hasnāt renounced shit, shown any humility, nothing.Ā
Thereās a level of writing that people expect from a book that costs more than 10 bucks and that book didnāt meet that simple expectation. Also he now admits that the writing was confusing and the voice was fragmented but doesn't apologize for claiming it wasnāt when he made a response the first time around. Remember when he went so far as to say that the MCs voice was that of an autistic personās inner dialogue, instead of saying he fucked up or saying nothing?
But don't worry guys he has thicker skin and has gone through rebirth.Ā
āThe fire has been extinguished, there is no more underbrush to fuel it, yet many of you who are reading this will try to take these same words and use them against me.ā Yeah, because this essay sucks and says nothing substantial. Also he lays it on thick with this whole high disturbance fire metaphor. Like he thinks the audience might not understand the metaphor, this feels like when a DM is railroading a game. Also heās had since July to do something like take a creative writing class, this metaphor tells me that he didnāt do that because the metaphor doesnāt work.Ā
āYou and I, weāre more similar than you realize.ā That's a cliche line a middle grade villain says to the hero before losingā¦In this essay he tells you that you moved to Finland in 2 weeks because that's the deadline he gave himself. What he doesn't tell you is that he had a lease on that apartment and left furniture in there that easily amounted to 1,000 dollars and would let whoever would take over his lease get the furniture for free if they immediately took over the lease. Also the rent was like 2,000 a month. You and I are not the same as him, do you have cash laying around to relocate to Finland? Would you have the audacity to do any of the shit he did? Cause I donāt. Also remember this for later.
āThere is a fundamental value we all share, as writers and artistsāwe are people who want to fight for creative representation in an era where it is so easy for each of us to catch fire with a spark.āĀ
He underpaid and overworked artists and blamed his editors for the shitty book he created. In one of his Q&Aās one of his editors shit talked Rebecca Yarros and her book Fourth Wing, did the same shit to Lauren Roberts and her book Powerless just to make his book sound less shitty. Even went as far to say that Rebbecca Yarros hasnāt spent time reading books in the same genre and then giving props to Winter for reading in the same genre. Mind you Fourth Wing is romantasy and Age of Scorpius is a YA fantasy.Ā
Ā Then on top of that Fourth Wing and Powerless not only has a plot (not good ones but it's there) but the sentences grammatically make sense. I donāt like the books, theyāre shitty books but you canāt do all of this and then say we all share the same values. Because as far as Iām aware there has been no apology for dragging Yarros and Roberts into this mess. And thereās no fucking way he had Q&Aās going on and didnāt read the post first before hitting post. Or maybe he did, that's not our problem tho.
He got a new editor and the new editor was basically the unofficial co-author, and the one that did the shit talking, and I bet you they weren't paid like one. And all of that about a book that wouldnāt get a passing grade in elementary school from the first page alone.
āThis is not just my forest on fire. It is all of ours; as creative workers, we are acquainted with the burns of both rejection and exploitation.ā And in his case being the capitalist that started the metaphorical fire. Just because he doesnāt use generative AI doesn't mean he doesn't exploit creative workers.Ā
ā...uplift each fellow life form in your communitiesā¦ā He left the continent in 2 weeks. Also just say people, is he trying to hit a word count? āIād like to think that my high-disturbance fire scarsā¦ā High-disturbance fires happen because of a lot of different reasons and climate change makes it inevitable. Milo Winter went through what he went through because he released a shitty book and people dragged the shitty book and in response to that he had a woe is me thing and people responded to that. The purple prose is bad and his metaphor is dead on arrival because heās not a fucking victim. At least not the book part, the doxxing was pretty bad but that's not what heās talking about. And honestly heās so flippant about the doxxing that it makes me wonder why. Like was the book that important that people finding his address wasnāt as concerning as this bullshit?
Weāre at the āmore on that laterā portion.
Ā āThis piece, which started in August, was written in Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina, Finland, Sweden, and, at last, Norway.ā Poor people canāt do shit like that. Like unless he took out a lot of debt thereās no fucking way heās poor. Reloccating from Flordia to Georigia is expensive as fuck so bouncing around different states and then different countries and then relocating to Finland is definitely expensive. And it's fine if heās not poor, I donāt want poor people to exist because this capitalistic system is evil and I want people to not stress about a fake resource. It's just strange that in this same essay he goes on about how he didn't put any money in his savings, that his company stopped making money, and basically tries to play the starving artist trope he goes on to say that.
And then in that same portion goes on about America being fascist and the fascists shit Trump is doing. And says how he needs to bring awareness to this and talk about it because heās a public figureā¦from Finland I guess. Skin is thick but not thick enough to be in the streets with everyone else. Does he think that he can outrun fascism? That is something that I see a lot of white and white-passing people think. Cause like there is the belief that you can, especially if youāre white and/or a man. But thatās because they never actually educate themselves on these issues, probably because they never had to sincerely think about the system.
Ā But once you learn about how America is in bed with a bunch of different countries spreading their personal brand of fascism and how fascism is on the rise globally you understand that you canāt outrun fascism. This includes Finland. A country that historically fought with the Nazis. For shiggles too, they didnāt need to do that. They have the NCP and Finns Party, it's not as bad as Americaās MAGA. But they do want to get there.Ā
Throughout everything Milo Winterās has ever made there's always been these sprinklings of left leaning talking points; however, it's all very surface level. The book was supposed to have themes of environmentalism and be about anti-facism, where was it? He allegedly cares about diversity but the one character to be explicitly POC needed a white man to activate her powers, everyone else gets to just have them. Anti-facist but couldnāt write a world that wasnāt super white. Sounds like a terrible boss to have. Doesnāt apologize for shit. Uses serious things like colonization, climate change, and forest fires so he can set up a shitty metaphor for his inadequacy.Ā
Ā He had enough money to bounce around 5 states and 3 countries but not enough to find or make a community set on fighting back? This sounds like heās virtue signaling so that whatās left of his audience doesnāt jump ship before spring but heās also not taking into account he literally left the continent so heās like the last person that should be talking about community.You can take this section out and you wouldnāt be missing anything, if anything it would improve the essay.
Iām not saying that moving out of America because of the facism is a bad reason or that you shouldnāt. Iām not saying that you have to be a founder of a chapter that fights against American facism. Not everyone can be like Huey P. Newton, Elbert Howard, and Bobby Seale.
Iām saying that Milo Winterās is not in the position to talk about creating a community when he left the fucking continent. You canāt do that and expect people to just nod along and be like āyeah heās like me frfrā fuck that. No one thinks of Milo Winter and thinks,āYeah that's the guy that should talk about American fascism and in general serious subject matters.ā We just think he released a shitty book, no one asked for this.
Heās not in the position to talk about his failed company when he didnāt put in the work to make a decent book. Throwing in shitty analogies and buzzwords doesnāt fix the fact that he fucked up in proportion plenty of starving artists wouldāve loved to be able to fuck up. He had like 5,000 preorders on a book no one actually knew was about all he had to do was release a decent book. It didnāt even need to be a great book, it's TikTok. TikTok books are the new aged fast fashion books, all he had to do was have a decent plot and for the editing to make sense on a line level.Ā
Heās had since July, it's now November. Nothing has changed, except Finland. He didnāt apologize for dragging his staff along, he didn't apologize for letting his fans down, he didn't apologize for being a capitalist first and a writer never, all he did was blame others. In an essay that he claims heāll be vulnerable in. He left the continent but wants to preach to the choir about building community and volunteering to save your local ecosystem also something something American facism let me go to Finland that has a rising right-wing coalition issue. Which again isn't inherently a bad thing to talk about volunteering to save your local ecosystem or acknowledging that America is fucked up, just look at my most recent posts. Heās just the wrong messenger and no one asked for this. If heād just learn to shut the fuck up heād be in a much better situation.Ā Ā Ā
Thereās the illustratorās section but I don't think it matters much except it sounds like Sauli thinks Miloās brave and survived a āliving nightmareā and then generic stuff about impacting the world. It's mostly fine and my beef isn't about the illustrator. The art does look good in this essay as it's the thing Miloās not in charge of.Ā
Thatās the end of High Disturbance, a part 2 to his woe is me era. This essay throws around the ecosystem and has plenty of resources about these issues, this essay should've been about the ecosystem not a woe is me essay. We didnāt learn anything meaningful about what led him to his shitty book or why he acted the way he did or even if he took any steps to build himself back up. Unless you want me to believe that moving to Finland is building yourself back up. This essay tries to do too much so in the end it does nothing.
