CW: discussion of racism and racial stereotypes about African Americans
After my discussion with @sweetmagnoliasunrise the other day, I’ve compiled more evidence about the racism in AOS concerning the portrayal of Kaia. This is one of the most problematic aspects of the book that I have not seen others mention in their reviews.
Disclaimer: I’m not black, but I have studied enough American literature and African American history to recognize common racial stereotypes for black people in American pop media.
Kaia fits the “mammy” stereotype to a tee. Here is a link for a quick explanation of the trope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammy_stereotype . I will reiterate the point that this trope is not harmless! It was historically used to make slavery seem less bad in pro-slavery narratives. Black women do not owe white people emotional support and are not “naturally suited” towards domestic roles because they are normal humans like anyone else and not a monolith.
Mammy stereotype - Wikipedia
After losing her brother, whom Rieka helped one time, Kaia treats Rieka like an adopted daughter and act like a nanny for the party at large. Here’s the list of things Kaia do for them:
1. Reserve a room for them in Lyra: “Kaia hasn’t joke about paying them off” Chapter 12
2. Kaia steers the boat in chapter 15
3. She has spare shirts for Avia and Rieka when their shirts gets wet. Why couldn’t Avia use fire to dry their shirts instead? “She offered a shirt to Avia, who denied it; hers was already drying from her abnormally warm body. When Kaia offered one to me, I instantly took it; I despised the feeling of the wet shirt clinging to my skin.” Chapter 18
4. Kaia cheers up Chase after he heals Avia ““It wasn’t until Chase hesitantly pulled his hand away from her that her eyes snapped open, and she shoved him away. She moved next to my side instead. Chase frowned, his eyes glinting with hurt. Kaia stood up and sat back down next to him, cheerfully greeting him so he would perk back up. ” Chapter 19
5. Kaia acts as a nurse for Chase: “Kaia sat back down next to me with the notepad in hand, observing Chase’s intricate process. He held my arm, pressing two fingers to my wrist.“ Chapter 24
6. Kaia repairs Rieka’s clothes: “Kaia had taken my clothing to a material shapeshifter somewhere in the village for repair while I showered and rested, assumably to a material shapeshifter somewhere in the village.” Chapter 30
7. This bizarre scene where a black woman has to step aside to prevent 2 men from colliding: “Atlas jumped when Chase almost ran directly into him as they both turned a corner at the same time. Kaia stepped to the side to quickly avoid any collision, almost stepping into the creek next to the pathway.” Chapter 33
8. Kaia doesn’t even get a bed and volunteers to sleep in a different couch to make sure Narah doesn’t escape: “Where’s she sleeping?” Avia asked. “Kaia is already on the couch in our room.” “I’ll sleep out here, on this couch,” Kaia volunteered. “That way, she can’t try to run away in the middle of the night if she’s in the room with you two. I’m a light sleeper. I’d hear her get up. She’ll feel safer around Rieka anyway, right?”
9. When Chase confront Rieka for hiding the fact that Narah is his sister is one of the few times Chase holds Rieka accountable. Kaia immediately goes for Rieka’s defense: “She didn’t hide that from you on her own will,” Kaia said to Chase, and I snapped my gaze over to her with my mouth open to protest being called out. “I’m trying to help your case here, Rieka. There is no part of you that wanted to deliberately hide that from him. You weren’t afraid of him, you were afraid for him.” Kaia really is just the fail safe for when Chase doesn’t defend Rieka. Chapter 34
Many of these cases you could have Avia do the same thing, but Milo chooses to hand them all to Kaia.
The worst thing about this is that Milo knows it’s wrong! He reposted a TikTok about how to write POC characters as a white person. The TikTok specifically tells writers NOT to essentialize “the black experience” and put it into fiction.
Many readers have asked why the other signs don’t stop the Scorpio Stellarium and I think I know why after I reread the penultimate chapter of AOS.
The Stellarium leader can veto their lower house and a 12 out of 16 supermajority is needed to overturn it. Scorpio has a weighted vote of 3, Aries being the Arctura has 2, and Libra has 2 just because. Ignoring why the other signs would agree to this as it’s giving them unequal power to meddle within intersign governance (the 3 signs teaming up with the lower house to overturn the other sign’s leaders), this creates a problem particularly in the case of Scorpio. Both Capricorn and Sagittarius are non voters meaning the total vote is actually only 14. The Scorpio leader can just veto the lower house without worry because the rest of the signs combined only has 11 votes, not enough for a supermajority. This applies to other signs as well, if the Scorpio leader votes no there is no overturning the leader. Scorpio has been in this situation for over a century and there’s still democracy somehow. Also Atlas confirmed that Libra, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Pieces is against Scorpio putting them at a 6 to 1 advantage. Despite this, they do not declare war even though Scorpio supposedly execute their family members on a regular basis. Even if you assume that the 3 neutral signs (Aquarius, Virgo, Leo) help Scorpio despite the story pointing out that every other sign hates Scorpio, that’s still 6 to 4. Even electioneering in this world suck lol. Despite loving the Hamilton musical, Milo basically recreated the Congress of the Confederation (the failed first federal government replaced by the U.S. Constitution).
So I think I discovered why Ivara, Rieka’s and Avia’s mother is so hated by the narrative that she literally gets no name and her sexual assault was quickly mentioned by Rieka and moved away from. People easily figured out that Rieka was a self insert for Milo, but this is the “positive” manifestation of his paracosm as a power fantasy. Ivara is also based on a real person, Milo’s own mother. Yes AOS is part spitefic. Here is a tweet from one of Milo’s inactive account on Twitter about his mother. Yikes
As many of you know, I made this post yesterday informing people on how to make an FTC report against World of Gardian LLC for taking money from thousands of people with no product to show for it and refusing refunds for four months.
Earlier I was having a conversation with someone on the Discord, and we discovered this:
We're pretty certain the official page has a list of banned words and phrases. Upon further investigation, specifically the word "report" is banned, and any links are banned. "Tumblr" and it's varients (Tumb1r, Hellsite, etc.) are banned. "Facebook" is also banned. "FTC" still shows up, however.
Judging from the fact that there are extremely few (<5) new comments since May, this has potentially been in effect for several weeks. I'm willing to bet it was the 3rd, same day comments were disabled on Patreon.
Very frustrating, part of the reason I made the initial post was because I saw so many people in those comments angry about a lack of resolution and I wanted to reach them. I could DM people, I suppose, or word my replies differently, but it'll be an even slower process, since I don't want to be marked for spam. Plus putting links in peoples DMs unprompted doesn't look good generally.
Besides that, there's potentially even more people who think they have a comment up on the post, but are actually communicating into the void. I only caught it because Eastwoodlander was suspicious. I would have had no idea otherwise. And like I said in the screenshots, these are the two biggest places for former fans to congregate and discuss the issue, and now their speech is severaly limited beyond just politely asking for a refund
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.
Aaaaand comments are locked. We did it gang! They locked the most recent post. Aside from “Worldbuilding post delay🤒” and individual artists introductions posts in July last year, EVERY SINGLE publicly accessible post has had the comments disabled. So much for transparency!
Edit: Here is Elrose’s explanation for however much that’s worth. She deleted the March 31st edit.
Gonna do a public service and total how much money Milo made from his preorders. I got this from the total sold on the top left of TikTok listings. Note that the total does not include items refunded so we are sure that all the items sold has the money go directly to Milo. I’m going to use Milo’s $22 out of $24 dollars comment for the June hardcover preorders on all the items as TikTok’s cut which is about 8.33%. I could not total all the listings to the total 7773 sold, but I got to 7663.
There are:
June Preorder hardcover 5,209 copies $24 Total $111,598
Final Sale hardcover 35 copies $28 Total $898.33
Misprints hardcover 258 copies $24 Total $5676
Spring 2026 hardcover preorders 69 copies $25 Total $1581.25
Spring 2026 Paperback preorders 2040 copies $22 Total $41,140
Signed Conviction Woods poster 52 copies $25 Total 1191.66
110 Mystery products ??? (I could not find public reviews, and thus the original listings for these products)
Total income minus TikTok’s cut: $159,409.25 (certainly higher due to the mystery products)
The total he owes for the Spring 2026 preorders is $46,605 (including TikTok’s cut).
Also for completion’s sake the 225 1st edition copies he sold in 2026 isn’t included in his 2025 Taxes, but since he sold them directly on his website he likely takes the full $28. Since it’s out of stock, I assume he sold all of them, netting $6,300.
Now that Elrose has reaffirmed her sycophancy towards Milo, I’m a lot less sympathetic for her. She is reiterating the same point about not knowing when Milo is going to do refunds. I knew about her doing tracking numbers for Milo, likely for free, but decided against posting it because it seems petty. Now, with how tenaciously she defends him, I felt it’s important to share that as it is a pattern. Milo is actually very lazy, his TikToks are filmed on the same day and reuse the same visuals. This laziness bleeds into the business too. I don’t have proof, but it’s possible and likely that since it was created, every Patreon post and comment was made by Elrose. Milo could dictate or copypaste pre prepared paragraphs to sent to Elrose to post. Elrose’s attempt to control the narrative on Patreon is not working. She’s just making her involvement in Milo’s scam deeper and more obvious. If the authorities charge Milo with wire fraud, I think most people wouldn’t blink if they also charge Elrose as an accomplice in the deception. I hope Elrose is happy with her Frau Farbissina LARP.
Here’s the actual first draft for the version of AOS that was released in 2025. I found this from Milo’s Deviantart account. It was created in April 2020.
Here are all the changes that I could find: Rieka is called Akira; She is an explorer not a historian; She lives in a kingdom instead of a corrupt democracy; They are actually forbidden from stepping into another Union’s territory; We are given Akira’s name on the second page and meet Avia in the same chapter one. Avia shoots a gun; They live alone, Rowan isn’t in the picture; Avia is on a mission given by Atlas himself.
What’s striking is that this version is more readable than the version that spent 3 and a half years in revision. How does that even happen?
On May 4th 3 days ago, someone created a Better Business Bureau profile for the World of Gardian LLC. The website itself states that WoG LLC is out of business. I think Milo made the profile himself because the contact is “Milo Winter” his new pen name not his legal name. Also we would know for sure the company’s status by June 30th 2026. He has to file a report for the Colorado Secretary of State’s website by that date. If he doesn’t his business becomes delinquent and he has to pay a $50 late fee. Someone let the people on Patreon know! He’s never gonna give them a refund.
As promised, here are all the funny stuff I could find. Here’s Milo claiming to get free food and drinks from the cafe he frequents. Chapter 6 (the one where they find the super convenient letter) was just as hard for Milo to read himself. Fun fact, it’s the second longest chapter in the book only behind chapter 35 by a few dozen words. The next ones are about an ex leaving him because he gives them constant AOS lore dumps, him rejecting a traditional publisher, and just irony. It also seems that he consider 100 copies preordered in 5 days unprecedented for an Indie author. I ran out of pictures, but Milo also says he has three pages worth of foreshadowing for the first book and this is so funny in hindsight because that means he probably just highlighted a few sentences and write FORESHADOWING in capital letters.
Here’s more AOS world building I found while looking through all his videos’ captions. Someone was confused about how immortality worked. The notebook says it only grant 500 years more to live not actual immortality. Also the Scorpio code was supposed to be reversed by Book 2. The main group was supposed to split up by that book. I’ll post all the funny stuff I found tomorrow.
As a preamble, when I first looked into this controversy, I sympathized with Milo. I thought I was amazing when I was at the same age Milo was when he released AOS. However, the deeper I dug into the videos and captions, the more convinced I became that this facade was a lie. Milo is a performative male dirt bag who manipulated people (including close relations) into giving him free money. He’s also really dumb, but I’ll get to that later.
For anyone who doesn’t know, the platform Kofi gives money instantly the moment someone donate, the goal does not need to be reached for the money to hit beneficiary’s bank account unlike Kickstarter. I learned about it through @seoulmama, but I thought it was just for extra motivated Kickstarter backers who wanted to give Milo money after it failed. That is not the case. Milo directly beg his audience in the caption to one of his video, pretending to be a starving artist, AFTER 1000 preorders. You might be saying: “Okay so you prove Milo’s an e-beggar, why is your tone so hostile?” Well for one, 23% of $3000 goal is $690 dollars. He only got 12 supporters, one of which is called Mom and Dad. Yes, his actual parents gave him money directly. Before someone try to claim that Mom and Dad is a troll, why would a troll give their prospective victim money directly without demanding anything in returns? It’s likely Mom and Dad gave a large portion of the $690 unless the internet strangers were more generous than usual. IF he actually was starving that week, maybe consider not going to the local cafe so much that the baristas start worrying about your health?
On a related but distinct topic, Milo is so fucking stupid that in one of the many videos on his PUBLICLY viewable TikTok, he has a sheet of paper visible literally listing the name of the banks and last 4 digits of his bank accounts! Remember that his legal name was available as soon as he made the LLC and in old pictures in his 2021 TikTok. I’m not going to show it here obviously to protect his privacy, but it does confirm that he took student loans. I sure hope he used his preorder money to pay them off instead of mooching off his parents again.
As a chaser, here are two screenshots which imply in the captions that he wrote 250,000 words in under a week. Congrats to Milo for writing a book roughly the same length as The Name of The Wind! They should start National Novel Writing Week for the first week of January in your honor.
yousharknotpass
izzy806
prguitarman
amandla
tangentwithtanner
