you know all that "white savior" criticism about Daenerys is just preformative chirping when GRRM literally wrote the children of the Forst building Brandon Stark a weirwood throne 🍂...the natives to have been ethnically cleased by this boy's direct ancestors...GRRM really made a stark prince their last greenseer, their last men...AND NOT A PEEP ANYWHERE
Hot take: fuck the bloodymary angel trope in any and every context. It's mischaracterization at its finest. Simon very obviously isn't a religious nut, and the entire thing is a thinly veiled excuse to insert a white savior relationship. Yes Simon got saved, but he would never worship anyone especially not some random guy. Simon is distrusting inherently because of his trauma, in no universe would he immediately trust Grace and think he's an angel. It's just racism and it pisses me off so bad.
As the only visibly black/poc character in aos (correct me if I’m wrong though), Kaia falls a little too close to the “magical black lady” trope for my liking
I'm glad you mentioned that, because:
Trying to appear really inclusive is why Milo kept mentioning how diverse his team was because he knew he had no real diversity in his book. I'll go through a brief history. NOT BRIEF BECAUSE I AM A YAPPER.😩
He mentioned that a lot in the beginning of his campaign, but then he slowed down once most of his more "diverse" artists started to leave.
But yes, Kaia was the only visibly black character. While Reika is coded as Wasian, specifically half Japanese, even though she's not explicitly stated to be so. Avia is also Wasian, but half Indian, and that's if we assume Rowan is Indian. Again, nothing is explicitly stated but if you look at the artwork, you can tell.
Milo was a huge weeb around the time he first wrote (mashed together) Zodiac Turner. So, a lot of the characters had Japanese names, despite being clearly described as white. Chase and his (erased) siblings were the only ones with "off" sounding names.
Here is art from probably around 2021 or beforehand. Remember, Milo has been collecting art since 2017/2018. I noticed that in alot the early art pieces he shows, there is never any artists credited (here).
He probably didn't notice thiw artist credit was still in the stickers below. He has always been extremely careful not to show early art pieces or give away credits.
Here is link to that artist's Kofi to see their commissions prices, which are too cheap, imo (here)
Do not contact this person asking about Milo.
But like I said in my post about Avia (never being an abuser), Kaia's name wasn't in the earlier versions of Zodiac Turner/AOS. Many characters got cut and/or reworked as Milo tried to de-weeb his writing head towards a story more similar to She-ra. There were other shows that Milo borrowed ideas from for sure. However, I only specifically mention She-ra here because he was obsessed and rewatching it in 2023. That is right before he started promoting it heavily on TikTok and when he shows Narah and Reika/Akira together for the first time.
Someone mentioned RWBY to me, and I agree I believe Milo watched that. Because of the color coding, destruction of technology, human animal and and the way the named their relics.
TAOS: Sword of Immortality
RWBY: Crown of "blah", Necklace of "blah" (sorry, too lazy to read through their wiki again.)
In RWBY, the FMC has some issue with her father. I think that's where Milo got the idea for Reika. Because in some the earlier versions, Reika and Avia were full siblings and their parents did not raise them.
So, a lot of the characters and storylines just falls on Milo's whiteness. I spoke to @endlessdreamerxoxo about how some white people feel like they own East Asian culture. That's why a lot of SEA, brown, and Black people get attacked in Kpop/anime spaces.
Which is why Milo doesn't feel the need to explain why Reika or Avia would be Asian. Gardian is a world where he erased everything, everyone's culture and ethnicity, it's just gone. That is peak whiteness. Which causes nothing in the story to make any kind of sense. He could have easily just left different continents but still had everyone live under a uniform rule. But that would cause too many obstacles his in story. He's not interested anything that could take away from Reika's journey. She is the chosen one. She's like Tom Cruise, the last samurai.
And like previously mentioned, he just took his favorite parts from different shows and put them together. Those parts don't work together without the proper context. Which is why his story contradicts itself. He doesn't understand oppression. That's why he claims Scorpios are both the oppressed and oppressor.
Don't get me started on how he doesn't understand intersectionality. That's why he quite easily wrote a eugenics fantasy.
I really hate that so many of the movies suggested when you google, "movies to watch when you need hope" are white savior films. Sorry, but watching The Help or The Blind Side will do the opposite of improving my mood.
Viewed at a distance, Dances With Wolves might seem like an instance of the White Savior trope. But while Dunbar’s process of learning Lakota language and culture does parallel what happens in many white-savior stories, it’s an unavoidable fact that he does not save them. (To the contrary, they literally save him.)
In the middle of the film he does bring in rifles that allow the Lakota to fight off a Pawnee attack, but this is not the main story, and the Pawnee are never the true threat. This is one battle in a long, long inter-tribal conflict, and it makes a huge difference on one particular day, but soon enough the Pawnee will acquire rifles and the sides will again be more evenly matched. Dunbar only gives this group of Lakota advance access to a technology that we know, historically, radically altered the Plains cultures.
The true threat in the film is white encroachment—not merely the army and their forts, or white hunters and trappers, but more than anything white settlements. And before the final credits of the movie begin, in case we didn’t already know it from history, there’s a paragraph of text on the screen informing us that thirteen years later everything was over and the last of the Lakota surrendered. The film deliberately tells us that Dunbar/Dances With Wolves does not save them and that his efforts will not be enough.
I hope that everyone seeing this knows that Kate isn't doing damn thing but sitting on her white ass right beside her insecure, duplicitous, controlling husband being complict in throwing Meghan under the bus. So do not allow anyone tell you differently.
Also the white savior trope/complex needs to die!!!!! Phil Dampier tried this same shit by trying to give Kate credit for the Smart Works collection.
