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.
When there hasn't been a single AOS related post in two days so now I'm thinking ab another universe where Milo Winter and Tyler Catastrophe meet each other
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!!
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.
Yes, Narah is technically both their biological aunt and adoptive mother! I've noticed this isn't all that uncommon in real life gay couples, issue is, we don't know if this world has the technology for IVF or do Chase and Rieka have to actually sleep together? I think it's so interesting that no matter how much Milo tries to distance himself from Chase x Rieka aka the original chip in the story he seems incapable of doing so. Even in a world of lesbian Rieka, her and Chase still end up being so close that he becomes her sperm donor.
Thats a good question. Gardian isn't supposed to have any technology (even tho its got indoor plumbing. guess flushing toilets doesn't count as tech!) and I'm pretty sure IVF requires that and requires modern medical knowledge. Hard to say how much medical knowledge survived the apocalypse. My guess tho is Milo didn't even consider that IVF is a thing and Rieka and Chase created babies the old fashioned way.
Which yeah its p wild that Milo just couldn't let ChasexRieka go so we got a lesbian Rieka who hates men touching her also being fine with having sex for procreation reasons. Narah can't do it cause Chase is her brother and god forbid we adopt or have magic pregnancy rituals so despite everything Chase and Rieka lowkey end up as a thing regardless.
It is quite interesting. I think it just ties into the fact that Milo struggles to let anything go from the previous version of this book, especially in regard to his self insert. Even tho his understanding of himself has changed (realizing he is gay) he is still resistant to changing his characters. Chase still has echos of being the original love interest due to this inability to let anything go. If AOS ever does make a return, and Milo hasn't learned anything, then it wouldn't surprise me if self insert Rieka is still cis female despite his recent understanding of his gender (realizing he is trans) because of this inability to let anything regarding AOS/The Zodiac Turner go.
As someone who also has adhd and is autistic, I know that change isn't something folks like us like very much. But rip to him I have no problem changing my fictional characters and story. Because the change is something I like more or fits the story more. If I liked the previous thing too but it doesn't fit anywhere I'll just put it on the shelf for another time. I guess he isn't willing to do that. Or he too stubborn to do so. Now this makes me want a copy of The Zodiac Turner cause I'm interested to see what other story artifacts are hanging around.
I think the biggest issue is, as you said , that Rieka is a complete self insert of Milo's. Before Milo had come out as queer/trans, Rieka had started off as a straight girl (as I assume Milo identified at the time), then Milo identified as bi for a while and I'm guessing that was what Rieka was too, and around 202-somthing when he started identifying as a lesbian after a particularly traumatic relationship with a man, Rieka, too, became a lesbian character. Issue is, now he's realized he's a trans man, and since she's a character he's grown nearly symbiotic to, I cannot imagine a future in which Rieka remains a girl to be completely honest. I truly believe if AOS comes back, Rieka will be a trans man (not sure where Milo is bi/straight/gay idk if he says that in his poetry book or something since I have yet to read it but I bet whatever sexuality he identifies with then is gonna be what Rieka remains)
You got a good point there. Alternatively! Chase and Rieka get swapped and now Chase is a trans man and the mc. He was one of the two pov characters with her at first hence he lingers with the ghost of being the previous love interest because of Milo's deep attachment to him. Granted the plot would have to be changed a lot but any sort of hypothetical AOS rewrite would need drastic changes anyways.
Actually!!! This gives me a great opportunity to mention that Milo's most recent idea for the second book (just before publishing I think) was for it to be a Chase POV! Not only that but a Chase POV with some of the exact same scenes as age of Scorpius. Here's my proof:
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!!
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.
Yes, Narah is technically both their biological aunt and adoptive mother! I've noticed this isn't all that uncommon in real life gay couples, issue is, we don't know if this world has the technology for IVF or do Chase and Rieka have to actually sleep together? I think it's so interesting that no matter how much Milo tries to distance himself from Chase x Rieka aka the original chip in the story he seems incapable of doing so. Even in a world of lesbian Rieka, her and Chase still end up being so close that he becomes her sperm donor.
Thats a good question. Gardian isn't supposed to have any technology (even tho its got indoor plumbing. guess flushing toilets doesn't count as tech!) and I'm pretty sure IVF requires that and requires modern medical knowledge. Hard to say how much medical knowledge survived the apocalypse. My guess tho is Milo didn't even consider that IVF is a thing and Rieka and Chase created babies the old fashioned way.
Which yeah its p wild that Milo just couldn't let ChasexRieka go so we got a lesbian Rieka who hates men touching her also being fine with having sex for procreation reasons. Narah can't do it cause Chase is her brother and god forbid we adopt or have magic pregnancy rituals so despite everything Chase and Rieka lowkey end up as a thing regardless.
It is quite interesting. I think it just ties into the fact that Milo struggles to let anything go from the previous version of this book, especially in regard to his self insert. Even tho his understanding of himself has changed (realizing he is gay) he is still resistant to changing his characters. Chase still has echos of being the original love interest due to this inability to let anything go. If AOS ever does make a return, and Milo hasn't learned anything, then it wouldn't surprise me if self insert Rieka is still cis female despite his recent understanding of his gender (realizing he is trans) because of this inability to let anything regarding AOS/The Zodiac Turner go.
As someone who also has adhd and is autistic, I know that change isn't something folks like us like very much. But rip to him I have no problem changing my fictional characters and story. Because the change is something I like more or fits the story more. If I liked the previous thing too but it doesn't fit anywhere I'll just put it on the shelf for another time. I guess he isn't willing to do that. Or he too stubborn to do so. Now this makes me want a copy of The Zodiac Turner cause I'm interested to see what other story artifacts are hanging around.
I think the biggest issue is, as you said , that Rieka is a complete self insert of Milo's. Before Milo had come out as queer/trans, Rieka had started off as a straight girl (as I assume Milo identified at the time), then Milo identified as bi for a while and I'm guessing that was what Rieka was too, and around 202-somthing when he started identifying as a lesbian after a particularly traumatic relationship with a man, Rieka, too, became a lesbian character. Issue is, now he's realized he's a trans man, and since she's a character he's grown nearly symbiotic to, I cannot imagine a future in which Rieka remains a girl to be completely honest. I truly believe if AOS comes back, Rieka will be a trans man (not sure where Milo is bi/straight/gay idk if he says that in his poetry book or something since I have yet to read it but I bet whatever sexuality he identifies with then is gonna be what Rieka remains)
This little excerpt from one of Milo's old tiktoks is proof that Haruki and Silas are the same character.
Interesting changes! Blaine's mother, was originally supposed to be Blaine's father. I wonder why the male dictator was changed to a female one. No offense but it makes it seem like even more of the "Moms are the worst!" bullshit Milo loves so much.
Haruki and Sora are both asian names, specifically japanese, so why aren't Chase and Narah japanese, too? It bears mentioning that Narah is also a Japanese name if you remove the letter H and some of it's meanings include "peace" and "comfort". (The original is also a real name in Arabic, Hebrew and Sanskrit though so take my suggestion that Narah is Japanese inspired lightly. Her original character name was Bella, which is nowhere near Japanese inspired.) I know it's probably just because Milo is a weeb so although they had Japanese names they were never intentionally supposed to be japanese or any sort of asian whatsoever. Just still feels strange.
Immortality can be passed on? What? Then it's not immortality...? It's just decelerated aging or age negation. Even then this doesn't explain the canonical age regression that Atlas and Rhea constantly do.
Zayla (proto-Ivara, Rieka and Avia's mother) seems to have been part of the core group, too! So what the hell happened??
Lol did he not know what sign Blaine turned himself into? Also, again, changing your sign doesn't mean your arch powers go away most of the time (whenever it's convenient). We genuinely need an explanation on how long arch powers had been around because HOW does no one know all zodiac turners have heterochromia or that someone can be a zodiac turner even if they're not Scorpio? How did the war make the Mereks look worse? Why did anyone believe Blaine? Scorpio had been having brawls with other signs for years at this point.
Also another pic:
This one seems like one of the way earlier drafts but still wanted to post it. I'm guessing Marue was Blaine's prototype name, which, again, Japanese name. The Callexus was called the Sword of Eternity. This, however, is the single biggest evidence to the theory that the original draft had Akira as the child of Sora and Haruki. In this version, Akira knows none of her two parents. Pretty in line with Chase's original role not being as important as it eventually became and him having two siblings he was fairly close to at all times rather than a long lost sister. I think if we combine the two pictures here we can get a clear idea of the original version of AOS having Silas, Sora, Rowan and Ivara be close friends. Silas and Sora had a baby they couldn't keep due to Blaine always being at their tail, so they gave her to the other two to raise as their own in the hidden yet safe Conviction Woods. This explains a lot like how Avia and Rieka are so close in age (Still strange all these immortals took so long to have children lol). Yeah basically I think Chase and Narah being Sora and Silas' children is a post 2020 development, as is completly removing their other brother and creating Kaia instead.
I think the chronological order was:
1)Akira (Rieka) is Haruki (Silas) and Sora's daughter. Rowan and Zayla (Ivara) adopt her and raise her alongside Avia as twins (they're described as twins in what I think is the earliest versions of the story so I'm guessing that was Zayla and Rowan's cover story). Chase, Bella(Narah) and their brother exist and aren't related to anyone. Marue(Blaine) is the villain. Chase x Akira is endgame as is Chase's brother x Avia.
2)Kaia joins the cast but everything is still the same otherwise. Seeds for Kaia x Chase start.
3) Milo makes Bella(Narah) more villainous and removes the third brother.
4) Story starts taking shape as we know it nowadays. Akira is now Zayla and Rowan's daughter, biological for one and adoptive for the other. Narah and Chase become Sora and Silas' kids instead.
As thanks for reading this far, here's art of Hugo, Chase and Narah's brother, who Milo abandoned. In the armssss of an angellll
This is somewhat of a continuation of my last post on character relationships and old Milo posts. I want to discuss this one, which is fairly shorter than the last post:
Reading through the very small bits of information we get we can gather this particular sheet is set during the second book Milo had planned. It seems rioting starts in Scorpio as we can see on the far right side, and the Council is preparing to gather, presumably to discuss the Scorpio code. The last bit on the far right says they're preparing to bring Akira (proto-Rieka) to reverse the code. Pretty solid idea of a general plot however there's two things that interested me more. First:
It's hard to decipher what exactly is being said, hell, I myself thought this was Atlas himself married Narah HOWEVER I now have a theory on which Aries actually married Narah to put her in the Aries Lineage. I think it was Avia's supposed love interest. The reason I posted the wheel first, is because it shows that Avia's love interest only had two friendship lines- one with Rieka, which makes sense since everyone and their moms are her friends, and one with Narah, which is strange, cuz Narah doesn't have many friends, either. Who else could've possibly been the person she'd marry to put her in the Aries Lineage? Atlas is her uncle, and Avia is very implausible, so I do believe the person she fake marries is this unknown character we either have yet to meet or who was completely scrapped. Onto the second but of info:
This part mentions a character called Weylyn (meaning son of the wolf), who was a Scorpio murdered by, I'm guessing, the Stellarium for rejecting the Scorpio Code. In the wheel of relationships, we see that there's one non Generation Four character whose name we don't know, that being the sibling line connected to Rowan. Rowan is constantly mentioned alongside mentions of wolves and has that whole paragraph talking to Rieka about wolves in particular, so while this really flimsy evidence, I do believe Weylyn was supposed to be Rowan's brother.
(I have another post coming in a few mins, apologies for that in advance)
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!!
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.
Yes, Narah is technically both their biological aunt and adoptive mother! I've noticed this isn't all that uncommon in real life gay couples, issue is, we don't know if this world has the technology for IVF or do Chase and Rieka have to actually sleep together? I think it's so interesting that no matter how much Milo tries to distance himself from Chase x Rieka aka the original chip in the story he seems incapable of doing so. Even in a world of lesbian Rieka, her and Chase still end up being so close that he becomes her sperm donor.
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!!
Sorry for hogging the tag today, just have lots of things to say. As I was thinking about the Mereks today I kind of realized something. Over three generations of Merek men, Silas is the only one not to love a Cancer spirit walker and ultimately the one to suffer the most for his love. Matthias married Mari, and most of their issues were not related to their relationship; Silas married Sora (who, if I'm not mistaken, started off as a Aries woman...) and he paid for it dearly, not even being allowed to see his children together or be around said wife and his brother, ultimately having this transgression cost him his entire family as a punishment.
Chase almost loved an Aries woman and was literally yanked and forced away from her by his sister to be then pushed against a spirit walker. A literal representation of his family taking him away from his choice to push him into upholding tradition. Going against what's considered "destiny" and keeping your bloodline powerful (both partners having arch powers) is actively punished and looked down at with disgust. Avia is considered lesser for not being powerful like the rest of them. Narah despises the sight of Chase HEALING her, let alone a possible relationship.
Hey let's open up a can of worms over here instead of on my main blog! I did not mean for this to get so long, but I wanted to put everything in one place for easy reference instead of having my analysis splintered through comments all across the Age of Scorpius tag.
In order, left to right, top to bottom:
Scorpio: Rieka, Ivara, Blaine. Pale skinned, black hair, visibly Asian-coded facial features.
Aries: Avia, Atlas, Avia+Avia, Atlas. Slightly tan, curly hair in light to middling warm colors, (possibly) Nordic facial features.
Cancer: Rowan, Kaia, Mari Merek, Kaia, Mari Merek. Curly hair ranging from dark brown to black, skintones ranging from middle-brown to black, blue eyes, ambiguously nonwhite or unambiguously black features.
Libra: Chase+Chase, Mathias Merek, also Mathias Merek, ALSO Mathias Merek (presumably). Pale skin, brown* hair, amber eyes (the unnamed Ceremony Master is a Libra also described with amber eyes), very western European (white) features. *Chase is described multiple times in the book as being identical in appearance to Mathias Merek, a fact which is integral to the plot and cannot be discounted based on artwork, so the third picture in this lineup is presumably from an earlier version, possibly where he was related to Rieka instead of Chase. Please do not argue this point. The book says he looks identical to Chase, so we are going to assume he looks identical to Chase.
Milo gives minimal descriptions of characters in the book; he expected the artwork to fill in his gaps, we know that based on his intentions for "clarifying scenes" in AoS-2E being based around adding more artwork rather than clarifying anything in the narrative itself. I was careful to only use illustrations drawn by Sauli, because he was explicitly the lead artist on the team and based on the art shared on his blog he seems to have been responsible for the final character sheets that everyone else would have referred to when creating their own work. While his rendition of Avia changes with regard to her hair texture, her character sheet is pretty clear, and he's fairly consistent throughout with everyone else.
Based on the artwork, an ambiguously brown man with black hair and a very Asian-coded woman* with black hair had a blonde child described on her character sheet as "slightly tan." *Ivara looks so much like the aunt I lost to brain cancer that it's genuinely unnerving.
An immortal white man and his ambiguously brown wife had at least one white child (also slightly tan) and two unambiguously white grandchildren, one of whom is explicitly stated in the book to be physically identical to said immortal white man.
If this doesn't look to you like Milo decided to make Gardian's ethnicities contingent upon star sign rather than culture or genetics, I really don't know what to tell you. I don't think it was intentional, per se, I think it was a result of seeking diversity and inclusion in the cast without thinking about the greater implications.
I've mentioned this elsewhere, but even if we pretend Milo didn't silo character ethnicity by star sign, the book is still horrifically racist.
(This is getting really long so I'm gonna put it under a cut!)
Kaia's family situation is the most blatant example of the deep-seeded racism explicitly illustrated in the text, regardless of which way you take it:
If star sign DOES NOT impact ethnicity: The only person the reader knows was actually executed for breaking the Code is a gay black teenager whose mother, presumably a black woman, lacked the power to protect him in spite of being the political leader of 1/12 of the entire human population for over a century. Said mother is also unmarried, sleeps around all the time, has multiple babydaddies she doesn't talk to, and passed her daughter off to two of her other estranged children to keep the birth from impacting her career.
If star sign DOES impact ethnicity: Kaia's white (Libra) mother pawned off her black (Cancer) daughter on two of her ambiguously brown (Sagittarius) kids, who she also didn't raise, and allowed her gay Asian (Scorpio) son to be murdered by the government. She herself has been in a position of legislative power in this same government for over a century, but has done nothing to protect any of her children, all of whom are people of color* and none of which she raised. *Robin's faceclaim proves that, if star sign is ethnicity, Sagittarians are people of color. Thanks to @/saint-chevy and @/queen-of-hearts92 for this one!
There is no angle from which this is not unequivocally, even repulsively racist.
But wait, there's more!
Based on the original faceclaims, the Age of Scorpius cast was originally intended to feature a total of three people of color:
Robin, the only named Sagittarius and thus our only "on-screen" representation of a group that has been essentially banned from living on land due to being too destructive to live with normal people [chapter 4], and who have no representation in the government [chapter 38] as a result.
Kaia, who is introduced with a revenge plot but summarily reduced within the narrative to a mother figure to Rieka (who is only a couple years younger than her) and a compulsory love interest to the explicitly white male lead, Chase.
Blaine, the literal child grooming rapist.
I will note that Blaine's ethnicity was changed in the course of the book's creation, with his original faceclaim apparently being transferred to Rowan* instead, and Blaine being made into an East Asian man, presumably Japanese. So now the child grooming rapist is Japanese instead, and he's evil because his white girlfriend dumped him. That's way better, thanks Milo. *I still think Rowan mostly looks like an expy of Tonraq with a much better beard, which may not be Milo's doing, since I know ATLA is a major source of artistic inspiration for Sauli.
We meet a single named Capricorn in the course of the book, Dion, who lives in Rayka. He is described thusly: "[…] colorfully beaded braided black hair and sepia-colored skin." [chapter 23] This reads to me like he's intended to be analogous with Native American/First Nations, albeit bordering on caricature, and even if this isn't the case he's very clearly described as a person of color.
Reminder that Capricorn is apparently so feared by the general public that it could have torpedoed Rhea's century-long career if anyone found out she had kids with one [chapter 19], and Kaia is surprised that a Capricorn is allowed to serve as a border guard in Rayka [chapter 30]. This group "doesn’t interact with the Council," [chapter 38] seemingly because they're just too busy keeping the rest of Gardian safe by keeping dragons up north [chapter 30] to participate in the government. Capricorn is also the only sign indicated to have animal shapeshifters, per Milo—this seems to exclusively be draconic shapeshifting, and this is the same sign that hunts dragons, kind of implying that the dragons out there may all be Capricorns that went bonkers and got stuck as dragons. This seems to be a direct reference to the Navajo myth of skinwalkers, which I don't personally think Milo has any right to contemplate, never mind incorporate into his book.
Even if ethnicity isn't intended to be tied to star sign, Dion is the only Capricorn we know by name, and he is a person of color, just like Robin in Sagittarius. Both Dion and Robin come from cultures which are so dangerous they are inherently feared by the rest of the world, which either don't or aren't allowed to participate in society, and which have no governmental representation.
If ethnicity is based on star sign, we have Scorpio parents being emotionally distant and stoic, Scorpio children forced into specialized schools where they are expected to excel beyond their peers in other signs due to dedication to logic and formality. As an Asian person, I have to point this out: does anyone else think this sounds like a dozen East Asian caricatures rolled together? It sure does to me.
The implications this has for Zodiac Turning are also pretty heinous—Blaine can only be a governmental leader as long as he's white-passing I guess—but those aren't explored in the book at all, possibly because Milo didn't realize he was doing this in the first place.
I genuinely think this is as much an indication of his worldview as the claim that Avia not being a sycophant made her an abuser. Milo didn't notice how fucked up this all is because he sees diversity and inclusion as a series of tickyboxes to be checked off over the course of a project, filling in skintones like a literary paint-by-numbers. He put no thought into the greater racial implications of the world he built because he's a middle-class white person from a military family in the United States.
He never sought genuine feedback on any other aspects of his book, his world, his characters—why would he do anything differently where race was involved?
I think I just figured out one of the most misogynistic things about AOS. Hear me out here. Excluding Narah since she's AOS Jesus and has every arch power, there's only two Libran Healers we meet in the story— Chase and his grand father, Matthias. Libran healing is a power that you can unlock at random without needing assistance per se. These two are considered very important, both being chosen ones and in the front line of history, and by their sides... There is two women, both Spirit Walkers...
Spirit Walking can only be unlocked when it's user comes into contact with a Libran Healer.
Two women whose superpowers can only be unlocked... Through their male love interests, and whose superpowers are then only used to aid their male love interests in achieving greatness. Mari, who is virtually useless other than birthing children for her Chosen One husband, and Kaia, who is virtually useless, other than being gawked at by Chase. These women cannot use their powers, if not for the men that stand by them, but said men can use their powers with ease and without the women even as much as breathing on their direction.
If these two women had never met their male love interests, they would've never realized their true potential, because their entire story lines depend on these men's existence ...
Milo Winter you have such a bright future as a alt-right grifter writer.
I said this in the comments already but I want it over here on this blog too.
There is, in fact, a single female Libran Healer mentioned in the book: Rhea Muko. Kaia's mother.
You know, the woman who had Kaia inside her body for, presumably, about nine months? Who gave birth to her and carried her, physically, to pass off to the Sagittarius twins? Yeah, Atlas reveals she's a Libran Healer in chapter 38, right before also letting everyone know she's immortal and has been age-faking with shapeshifting for over a century in order to retain her position in the government.
This means that Kaia "made contact" with a Libran Healer in the womb. Based on how this works, her powers should have been fully present at birth. And yet, for some incomprehensible reason, she had to wait 20 years until she finally had the chance to hold hands with a big strong white man before she could do anything.
I think I just figured out one of the most misogynistic things about AOS. Hear me out here. Excluding Narah since she's AOS Jesus and has every arch power, there's only two Libran Healers we meet in the story— Chase and his grand father, Matthias. Libran healing is a power that you can unlock at random without needing assistance per se. These two are considered very important, both being chosen ones and in the front line of history, and by their sides... There is two women, both Spirit Walkers...
Spirit Walking can only be unlocked when it's user comes into contact with a Libran Healer.
Two women whose superpowers can only be unlocked... Through their male love interests, and whose superpowers are then only used to aid their male love interests in achieving greatness. Mari, who is virtually useless other than birthing children for her Chosen One husband, and Kaia, who is virtually useless, other than being gawked at by Chase. These women cannot use their powers, if not for the men that stand by them, but said men can use their powers with ease and without the women even as much as breathing on their direction.
If these two women had never met their male love interests, they would've never realized their true potential, because their entire story lines depend on these men's existence ...
Milo Winter you have such a bright future as a alt-right grifter writer.
I think it was @queen-of-hearts92 who posted a link to the TikTok with this picture so thank you so much for finally finding the original face claims for the AOS characters!!!
Just wanted to post it so everyone knows what they were. Zayla I'm pretty sure was Ivara's original name. Some of the face claims and designs have obviously changed but I find it interesting that this is confirmation the only nonwhite characters were Blaine, Kaia and an irrelevant guy lmfao. I'm guessing the two spoilers are Narah and Reika. With Ivara being white and this version of Blaine being Maori, I do really wonder what Reika's face claim was, lol.
Looked for updates on Age of Scorpius and found that Milo has decided to respond to people's criticism of the mistreatment of Avia by essentially making her a member of Gardian's Hitler Youth—y'know, so she deserves to be treated like shit all the time.
Is this because Avia is almost universally loved by readers, whereas Rieka and Narah are...not? Making a beloved character less likable won't lead readers to suddenly see other characters as superior to the one they loved, particularly when those other characters were already and continue to be extremely unlikable. It just means your whole cast sucks now.
Sorry Nashi I know this is an old post but I've been thinking about TAOS and the rewrite Milo was trying to do recently and it's kinda funny that by making Avia more antagonistic once again he makes her twenty times more interesting than everyone else in the story. Let's go through what we got from the rewrite:
Reika has the same personality. Still a perfect little girl coddled by everyone, even the woods itself. Not even one negative trait shown.
Chase is also perfect and now a meek little abuse victim with no bad traits whatsoever just like Reika, now even more of a victim through his relationship with Avia.
Kaia, again, is practically the same but she gets a few more lines and joins earlier.
Meanwhile Avia was a parentified young girl, left to raise her sister who she's only one year older than. She lost her mother's attention and love when the baby came along because of how depressed and distant Ivara became, and she lost her father's attention because he much prefers the step child over his fire bender daughter— and so she builds up resentment towards Reika and all Scorpios, thinking their very existence and happiness a personal slight. She's abrasive and violent, but we know deep down she's just that kid that never got to be a child. It would make her evil but also way more interesting than anyone else we're forced to follow, and I think that's once again just funny backfiring.
