My terrible penmanship returns as I continue my annotation of Age of Scorpius. We're up to the second chapter, and I am shocked at how early the narrative starts sniping at Avia for no damn reason. She's genuinely just an older sister—I see so much of myself in her, it's really rough knowing what Milo intended for her, and how much worse it gets as the book goes on.
One thing that strikes me particularly hard going back over this chapter with a fine-toothed comb is how Avia is shown being genuinely interested in Rieka's endeavors, and she's still belittled and vilified for not being interested the right way. When Rieka said "I found it," Avia immediately knew she was talking about the arch. When Rieka pointed out where it was and explained what made it special, Avia engaged directly, saying she'd never been out that far and thus wouldn't have seen it, and then admitting that they all look so alike to her that she wouldn't have noticed the difference anyway, indicating that Rieka is the only person who could have found the damn thing. This is a show of support. She teases her about it a bit after and puts it aside in favor of Ceremony preparation, but she was engaging with her sister sincerely here!
Milo literally wrote Avia being supportive in a way that jives with her characterization as a somewhat abrasive older sister, but Rieka intimates that Avia doesn't care and isn't interested as soon as the exchange is over because wasn't as excited as Rieka believes Rowan would have been. Avia was interested, but she's more focused on the impending Ceremony—which she had to delay by a year, putting her entire life on hold, in order to be there to assure that Rieka was able to integrate into adult society safely. The exact same Ceremony which Rowan literally left the house to attend without waiting for Rieka to get home. Of course, it's fine that Rowan prioritized The Ceremony over Rieka. He favors Rieka in literally everything and always has, so his absence is fine, his priorities are fine, whatever he does is fine because the next time he sees Rieka he'll tell her how perfect and wonderful she is and that's all that matters.
Avia is the one that has to keep track of time, she's the one that stayed behind and waited to even start getting ready until Rieka was home safe rather than either of their parents—even though Rowan is barely ever around anyway, so him leaving first is just intentionally limiting the amount of time they can interact like a family, seemingly for the express purpose of forcing Avia to be the most responsible adult in this entire fucking household.
Avia works a physically demanding job full-time at nineteen years old and is basically responsible for parenting her barely-younger sister when she's not at work, so she sleeps in when she can; this is a character flaw, it's something to criticize, it's something wrong with her. Meanwhile, Rieka can't even be fucked to read single a note her mother left detailing the plan for the day, and that's just Rieka! That's normal and fine! Avia is the problem here for making her feel bad about it!
Avia is apparently so intrinsically bad that their parents had to get fireproof furniture on the chance that she ever lost her temper, because just having her around is dangerous on account of her being an Aries. Rieka, meanwhile, lives in the fucking TETANUS KNIFE ROOM and that just shows how she's a badass genius who is better than everyone else.
Milo literally wrote this! He made the characters act this way! He made Avia a sincere, snarky, protective older sister who openly cares about Rieka despite the risks involved, and then had everyone around her act like this! I don't know what (presumably) Asia Winter did to Milo, but he needs some professional help to unpack it, because this is really fucked up.
