BACKGROUND

(In the comments of this app is a short summary of Julian's backstory, as it ties into Milo's. I think I've written Milo in a way that works even if Julian isn't chosen - there's a whole paragraph on that in the trivia section lmao - but I think a summary of Julian helps give context to Milo.

MAYBE THEY'D BE HAPPY FOR A WHILE

He was born in the town of Naomhan. It was a town, off to the west side of the kingdom. Far west, right where only mountains separate the kingdom from what lies beyond. The mountains there were rich with gems and so the people had found their purpose in mining. Had their names held more value, they could have found wealth, too. But as it was, the stones they hauled from the earth were ferried away, some few to their local church, but more to the bigger cities further inland. No one really knew what happened once the stones left in the carrieges, because they never did return, as the people of Naomhan were too poor to afford the magic, that these gems were imbued with by the church. The people who owned the mines had names so long, they barely fit on letters and the people that worked in them wiped soot from their eyes and continued on.

With any industry comes a variety of other fields of work, because miners need to be fed. And so not everyone in Naomhan worked beneath the mountains. Milo Dubhghall's parents were farmers. As you travel into town, turn north on Church Street and continue on past the holy building and past the small houses until you reach an expanse of fields and a barn or two. There you will find the residence of the Dubhghalls. They were common folk, but they were bright eyed and jovial. They didn't see any riches taken from the town ever returned to them, but that was all right, because they made due with what they had. They never wanted to go inland and see the big cities, because they were afraid, that anger and envy would darken their souls. So they stayed and they planted green and they helped sow life into a town of people, whose day was spent trying to get by.

One summer, they had a daughter. Her name was Caliope, possibly in reference to a more noble life she could have had, had she been born to anyone else. A noble life, that she might yet find, if that was, what she aspired to. But Caliope soon shortened her name to Calia and maybe it was from that moment on, that it became clear, that she had no intentions of leaving her life behind. Neither did her brother Milo, who was born four years later. He was as starry eyed as his parents and as curious as a cat, wandering around the family farm and the forest beyond. He could see animals in the clouds and faces in the mountains. And when his mother told him, that people drew pictures in the stars, he found his own and told their stories.

All of these figures, that he found reflected around him, began as a way to pass the time - back when nothing more was expected of him. But as his days grew longer and they began sending him to school, stories turned into a way to escape, to reflect, to understand and to find solace in the things the rich and powerful could  never take from him. Because while his family seemed content to run their own lives out in a place, where roaylty held little influence and the church held all the more, Milo never believed the old fairytales. You know the ones.

Once upon a time, there was a lovely young woman, who was slighted by an unjust world and the selfish people in it. But she smiled and turned the other cheek and she dreamed. And one day those dreams came true and she was elevated into the ranks of the highest society.

When Milo looked around him, although he couldn't put the words to it at that age, he felt it in his bones - that no one here really left this town. There was people, who had driven the delivery carriages, people, who had cooked at banquets. They'd gotten tastes and they had returned with barely fuller pockets, bragging rights and empty eyes. They had never really left this town and yet were forever unable to completly come back to it.

Milo didn't want to leave. He didn't want to be elevated, he didn't care to dream those dreams. Milo was a builder of ideas, of taking others' dreams and trying to make them as real as he could. He wrote his own fairytales. Though he knew he couldn't really provoke the changes he wanted to, he did what he could, to make people's dreams feel real for the time being. He was good at that.

His family and the neighbor's family had at some point decided, that he should play with the neighbor's daugher, keep an eye on her. She was only really a year younger, so Milo wasn't sure what authority he really held, but at that age, a year feels like an eternity. Celandine, or Dinah, as her name was also soon shortened. Dinah had wild eyes and a permanent grin and the low glow of mischief lay in the air around her. And when she stepped into that hollowed out tree in the forest near the farm and her eyes lit up, he didn't quite understand where this was going, but he was willing to follow. If Milo told stories, Dinah made stories and he would have followed her anywhere for it. And so, as she dragged stones and moss and flowers into that hollow tree and mentioned fairies, he pressed the flowers between books, so that they wouldn't dry out and make her sad too soon. And he took those fairies out of the offhand comment she had made and wove life around them. Gave them names, he gave them types of magic, not unlike the types the people possessed. He gave them goals and obstacles and he watched Dinah smile and run her fingers through the moss. Puffing up the pillows, she said, for the prince.
That's not your job, Milo said. The prince can puff up his own pillows.
She smiled. And I could press my own flowers and yet here we both are.

He went to school four years after his sister and a year before Dinah. And he wondered, if this was all education was meant to be. Stuffed in an over-filled room and copying notes. And so Milo soon turned into not the fastest worker - not by a long shot - but a careful one. He took the time to read, what he was copying, to get immersed in local myths and legends.

There were the stories of how the mines had come to be: Well before this age of men began, more powerful weilders of the elements had carved their legacy into the mountains. They had left there twinkling rocks, that people could use to see even a glimpse of the power, that those archmages had held. 
There were the legends of when the giants had roamed. The had come from farther west, beyond the mountains. They had fled from something dark, that no one could describe and now no one could remember. The giants had made it halfway over the mountains, but in doing so had crossed the border. They ceased to exist in the form they once had and slowly, ever so slowly, they grew thinner and spindlier and their arms and hair branched off until they had transformed into trees. And so these trees were scattered down the mountainside and so on the other side of the mountains, where far travellers said storms raged, you couldn't find many of them anymore, because most had made it across. And so those giants, ancient relics of a time when a darkness long past, stood scattered and between them lay the paths, that the carriages carried the stones of the old wizards. And in one of those trees, Dinah and Milo had found their fairies.

Dinah loved the legends, Milo told. Of course she did. Some of his lunch breaks were spent inside with her, telling her the tales he had copied and showing her on the pages, where her favorite sentences ended. If they weren't done by the end of the break, she would spin the stories further on their way home. If he tried to correct her, she would talk over him, until he contributed his own ideas and they told different stories.
In their tales, the ancient wizards were still around and they were the leaders of the church of light. They had traded their elemental magic into the stones and in doing so, had ascended and learned light magic. Of course, in their versions, the fairies were real. The giants from the other side of the mountains had carried them across, in an effort to save not themselves, but the fairies. When the giants turned into trees, the fairies had dispersed and hidden from the people, for their protectors had just turned immoble. But they built their houses on the branches and they flew with the birds when no one was looking.

As Milo grew older, he spent more and more time in their local Holy Church, for that was where the archives were. Where the legends were kept - and other books he never had acess to, for he was not a priest or a wielder of light magic. Or any magic, for that matter, as had been determined a few years earlier. There were enough stories that he had acess to, that he slowly began to have a greater understanding of the world and the social systems he was a part of. Even though he had no magic, among commoners that was far less of an obstacle, than it would have been, had he been noble. As ist was, he became renowned in the town of Naomhan for his knowlege and his willingness to help anyone who was in need. Or at least the people, that he thought weren't able to help themselves.

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

Because a year ago, when a nobleman from the capital and an accompanying girl rode into town, he didn't care to help or even meet them. He didn't care what some tourist might think of a town, that they would leave behind them in a day or so. Not when no one born there could ever really leave. He didn't care what they wanted to do or hear. But most everyone else did. Nobles didn't visit the outskirts often and if so, they never really took the time to speak to commoners. This man had a charming smile, nothing but compliments and he had money. And when he asked for a researcher, for someone well-read on the subject of magic, the people pointed him towards Milo.

One Milo had met the nobleman, he cared for him even less. Because as soon as Milo gave his name and said he was the researcher, something had flashed in the nobleman's eyes. It was grim determination. Not always a bad sign, but always a sign of a man up to something. And Milo wasn't sure that was what he  needed. Even though he distrusted him in the beginning, he fell for the man's promises anyway. The man introduced himself as Marigold, said he had connections to the crown and produced a letter to prove it. He told Milo, that in exchange for a small piece of information, he would write him a letter, recommending him to Aisling Academy. While Milo was about to protest and say that he had neither money, magic, nor intention to study at the kingdom's most prestegious academy, that his family needed him here, his town needed him - and even though Milo refused to tell him, that even if no one here needed him, the lower class wasn't something he had ever seen anyone truly escape from - Marigold was about to make him a better offer. The letter wasn't for the Academy, not directly, but for its library. One of the best, if not the best, collection of stories and legends and knowlege. It was tempting. So Milo decided he would take the deal and because Marigold had proven that he had been sent here by the crown, he did clearly have the power to sway opinion in the capital. No empty promises, he thought. If he did the research and got the recommendation, that gave him the option to leave for a while and then to return. He could always decide not to take it.

Only once he accepted, did Marigold give him the letter of recommendation and tell him what exactly he needed. How to keep dark magic undetected. Because the Holy Church had come far, but there were probably still some dark magic users in hiding somewhere, Marigold said. While Milo didn't think too highly of royalty and nobility, he did admire their hunt against dark magic. So Milo didn't exactly see the harm in the request. He spent that day more or less locked away in the church's archives and uncovered information. It wasn't very helpful information, because hiding dark magic was near impossible unless you had so little of it to not be a threat to anyone. But still, Milo figured, reasearch with a negative answer was still upholding his part of the deal. He had found what he could, even though it probably wasn't what the guy wanted to hear.

It was the late hours of the evening or the early hours of the morning, when he set out to find Marigold. Now the man had told him, to meet him in a bar if he finished the research that day, or to meet him the next morning at the carriage, if he hadn't. When he got to the bar, he was informed, that Marigold had left almost an hour ago, towards the woods. Milo did think that was strange - any  man he knew, would have rested before travelling, unless he planned to sleep in the carriage. He wondered about that and so decided to at least go to the outskirts of the forest, to see if the guy was okay.

There, he found footprints. Two sets of slightly smaller footprints, leading out of the forest - Dinah and the girl, the nobleman was travelling with. One set of those, presumably Dinah's, continued on to the Fawcett-Garrick's house. The other was met halfway by a set of larger, heavier footprints, by what looked like better and newer shoes. And together they turned back into the forest. And Milo's general weariness of nobility turned to outright distrust. Because here was a nobleman, travelling with a young girl, who was dressed as noble, but held herself less so. Travelling to the borders of the kingdom, asking about the detection of dark magic and vanishing into a forest at night.

Milo knew the woods, knew them well. There was no path he and Dinah had left untread. There was no fallen tree or bramble bush or snapped-off branch, that Milo wouldn't recognize as one of the plotpoints to his fairy stories. And so he stepped into the forest, to find Marigold and the girl. He followed the footprints, the broken twigs. He followed the small bits of fabric, that had probably snagged on thorns as they walked. Later, he followed pricks of blood on those same thorns, hoping that this was some sort of mechanism the girl had used to mark her way, rather than part of some ritual.

He found Marigold in a clearing, sitting on a treebranch, the bound girl before him and a dagger in his hands and Milo wondered if he would even have time to come up with a plan. The girl looked half dead already, pale and bloodied in the moonlight. Before he could really think of the smart thing to do, Marigold plunged the dagger into her chest one last time, as Milo stepped into the claring and yelled out. Distraction was the first thing, that had come to his mind. As Marigold turned to look at him, for a split second, the nobleman's eyes flashed completely black. Then they cleared again and he looked at Milo, afraid. Milo took two steps forward and lost track of what he had planned to do, as the thought struck him out of nowhere. You should take that dagger and drive it through the guy's jaw up his skull.  And if his plan had been to catch the falling girl, to disarm Marigold, to do anything helpful at all - all he could do in that  moment was stand there in shock at his own thoughts. Because they were gone the second they had arrived. And he was left feeling hollow. In that moment, that he stood there, confused, Marigold ran. He had a limp, Milo noticed, and he could have probably caught him. But he felt no desire to chase him. Once Milo had recovered enough to reassure himself, that he would never harm anyone, he stepped to the girl.

THE CHURCHBELLS ALL WERE BROKEN

He knew he had no powers of healing, so he lifted her into his arms and lefted the forest the way he came. Hurried to the church, knocked on the door, a dying girl in his arms. As the priest opened the door and looked at him, Milo expected shock, he expected concern from someone, who had been close to him all these years that Milo's family had shown up to service and that he himself had spent in the archives of the church. Instead, he was greeted with glee, as his arm was grabbed and they were both pulled inside. He was ushered to lay the girl down on one of the benches and sit down next to her. But to his horror, the priest ignored her and turned toweards him. Still in shock, before he really knew what was happening, he had been tied to the bench. The priest began interrogating him as to what had happened and while Milo kept trying to explain, that he hadn't stabbed the girl, that it had been the nobleman - the priest told him that he believed him, but didn't care. That wasn't what mattered. What mattered, was Milo's state. And as the priest skipped off to retrieve some holy text he refused to elaborate on, Milo sat there. Bound to a bench in the local church he had known so well, as a girl whose name he had never learned, bled to death beside him.  So he manouvered his hands together. After a struggle, managed to untie himself. Lifted the corpse back off the bench and fled into the night.

He buried her in a different clearing. One where the moon shone brighter, that he and Dinah had once proclaimed to be the graveyard of the fairies. He slept uneasily for an hour in the hollowed out tree that was their first fairy house. Before dawn, he realized that he was the first person to ever truly leave Naomhan. The only thing left for him to do, was to go.

NO ANGEL BORN IN HELL

Marigold's carriage was still in the square and Milo took it without second thought. He turned it on the road to the east, towards the capital. He needed to know if the crown knew its representatives were looking for dark magic and if so, why. Was this one ruthless step out of line or part of some deeper conspiracy? He did have a letter that could give him entrance to one of the most prestigeous academys, that was heavily linked to royalty.

But first, there was a pitstop he had to make. In a town close enough to be a day away and far enough, that no one recognized him, he stepped into a church. He sat down in service and no one  payed him any attention. So when service was over, he stepped into the library and tried to figure out what exactly had happened to him. Ironically, it was only closer to the capital, that he finally came to understand. The information wasn't in some heavy book or tome. No, he found it in a pamphlet outside a suburban church. It heralded how the bringers of light had stood up to the darkness. He realized he had stumbled upon and interrupted a ritual to gain dark magic. Not to become stronger, but to get it in the first place. And whatever darkness he had seen, flash in Marigold's eyes for a second, had passed through the man. And settled instead in him, the bystander, who had chosen to get involved. But not a lot of darkness had taken hold, after all now that some time had passed, he was able to pass undetected. While he was horrified at what had become of him, it was also relieving to realize, that he didn't have enough darkness magic within him to force him to act on any of the spontaneous violent thought, that he had. It was good to confirm, that those thoughts weren't his own and didn't represent him.

When he arrived at Aisling, he was actually accepted in and began to work as the assistant to the librarian. He helped sort books, helped students find what they were looking for and wrote letters reminding them of overdue books. He got lost in the castle a lot, but eventually began to find his way around more and more. The students generally liked him, although they were confused, that he had a job even though he was the same age as the younger students.

He dropped contact for the first five months after he left. He was changing so rapidly and was paranoid his loved ones would notice even in writing - or worse, that a darker throught would cause him to write something horrible. But Dinah sent him weekly letters and his parents wrote occasionally and eventually he understood, that they really wanted him in their lives - and who was he to force himself to be alone. So he wrote back, he wrote Dinah a story and his family a proper letter. And a month later he visited. Things had changed. His sister was cold towards him and his parents were glad to see him, but worried and Dinah was trying her very best to pretend like nothing had changed. It pained him to be there, because it felt like everyone was holding their breath for an explenation and for once, he couldn't find the words to make it alright.

When his first year at the Academy ended, the old librarian retired and he was appointed her replacement, much to his surprise. When the time rolled around to decide which new students to accept at the Academy, the higher ups actually asked Milo to help out with choosing their commoner quota. So he did what anyone would have done, and recommended Dinah/the protagonist. When she finally got the invitation, he wrote to her, convincing her to at least try the exam.

So while new students roll into the school, one familiar face among them, Milo is figuring out how to run a library on his own and keeping his eyes open for any mention of darkness magic.
 

FIRE IS THE DEVIL'S ONLY FRIEND
(AKA IF JULIAN IS CHOSEN AS THE SECOND PRINCE)

During Julian's route, the protagonist remembers, that a nobleman and a girl, that sound like Marigold and Zara, passed through Naomhan. That Marigold contacted Milo and while the protagonist played with Zara, Milo was researching something in exchange for a letter of recommendation to the library. That Milo took that letter to Aisling the next day, and broke off contact for five months.
After learning Julian's secrets, the player tells Julian, that Milo got into Aisling because of a letter from Marigold. He will freak out and will for the rest of the game try to get the protagonist to distance herself from Milo, but the player gets the choice multiple times to follow his advice or trust Milo. The same day, Milo asks the player if they're doing okay. The player has the option to say they're fine, or...

"Do you remember Marigold? The nobleman with the girl a year ago?"

Milo's concerned face drops into an even deeper frown and it's hard to say in the library's light, but he might have gone pale.

"... Yeah. Yeah, I do. Go on." He pulls up two chairs and its in one of them.

"She was his best friend. Julian's. Her name was Zara."

Milo gulps and runs a hand over his face and through his hair. He's staring at the ground.

"He ever find out what happened to her?"

"Marigold killed her... Apparently  his parents wanted her gone, because hanging out with a commoner was damaging the family's reputation."

At the mention of  the king and queen, Milo looks up sharply. His face is grim and determined now, the music changes to something faster and more dangerous.

"You're saying... the king and queen were involved in murder?"

"I know it sounds crazy, but Julian heard them say she was dead and -"

"And that was their plan? Are you sure?"

The protagonist nods and Milo excuses himself. "I have... a few things I need to find out."

For the rest of the game he is seems distracted and any information you get him to look for takes longer. He is trying to figure out if the crown only knew about the murder, or the dark magic angle as well, but doesn't tell the player what he knows.

hot take: milo knows sth about marigold. it happened in their town and we know he met the guy and ed off to Aisling the next day. he hears all that about zara dying because she was s commoner and close to julian and not once. nOT ONCE does he tell the protagonist she needs to be careful. like - he's either a bad friend or he knwos something!
- a comment by @otometheories

➤ In Julian's bad end, Milo helps him load things onto the carriage and gives the prince a note. As Julian rides away and Milo comforts the protagonist, she can ask him what was on the note.

"I found the bastard. Call it an investment."

➤ In Julian's good end, Milo is seen telling the loyal bodyguard to keep an eye on the protagonist and the princes. He also bribes various messengers and peace-keeping guards that travel the far kingdom, to tell him about any and all strangeness they might encounter and to watch over the protagonist's family and the town of Naomhan. If asked about why he's so protective, he answers something like "you're dating a prince. I gotta make sure no one has a problem with that and tries to hurt you."

➤ In Julian's great end, a nurse will pop her head out of the healing room while Julian's prosthetic is being attatched and tell the protagonist to get someone to help. The choice is to get another healer, or to get Milo. If the player wakes up Milo, no matter if the protagonist has distanced herself from him or not, he will hurry after her. He enters the room, muttering "oh sh*t!" as he sees whatever he sees behind the door and forgets to close it all the way behind him. The player has the option to eavesdrop, in which case they will hear Milo give instructions on "how to move the arm", later revealed to be about the prosthetic.
If the player has told Milo about Julian's secrets, refused to distance herself from him and not made more than four research requests after telling him about Zara's story (aka leaving him enough time for his own research), they will overhear the following:

"I'm looking out for her, too, you know. I won't be too late. History isn't going to repeat itsself. I don't care if you trust me, we won't let it."

Julian never responds and after a while, Milo steps back outside, puts an arm around the protagonist and walks her back to the hall outside of her dorm.

➤ If the player doesn't tell Milo about Julian's secrets, Milo stays uninvolved. Walkthroughs warn the player of that choice: if you tell him, you get a few cute scenes of friend-talk and Milo looking out for you in the ending scenes. But it also slows the time libraby research takes and Milo is less likely to know helpful gossip. So the choice is basically "do you want to  nerf a game mechanic to get more character development, or rather keep the game mechanic as it is, but miss out on some clues for a deeper story?"
Most players that read walkthroughs decide not to tell him on their first playthough. There are compilations on youtube of Milo's scenes if you tell him, so some people watch those, or tell him on a second playthrough, when they know the game well enough to feel comfortable nerfing a mechanic.

hey @[dev-company]. why is there an option to make Milo useless and we don't get anything from it??? so much effort for three lines is a joke i swear
- a tweet from @aislingalumni

*cough* sequelbait *cough* we're still working on plot and it might come into play. you never know.
- a tweet from @programmingduck (one of the devs)
(see roseline's relationship and then the last scene request for this to make sense ^^)
 

A CLARIFICATION FROM VIOLA

Okay so because I tried to explain all of this from Milo's point of view, I'm afraid some info might have gone lost. Here is the Marigold situation again, but from the perspective of the person who made it up lmao

➤ The girl Marigold brought to Naomhan is Zara, from Julian's app. Marigold was told by the crown to take her to the countryside and kill her, to get Julian out of rumors.

Marigold was starting to learn darkness magic. If he did that on his own or if the crown told him to, is up to you. My idea was, that he got books on darkness magic from other kingdoms on his travels, but that is also up to you.

Zara was Marigolds first attempt at a sacrifice for dark magic. Whether the crown just told him to kill her, or told him to sacrifice her for darkness, is up to you.

This being Marigold's first sacrifice, he didn't manage to get a lot of magic to appear. Because Milo interrupted the ritual, there was another variable and what little magic showed up, took a hold of him instead.

Marigold was wounded when the magic passed through him, which was why he was limping away.

The priest that Milo took Zara to, was somewhat corrupt. Because the darkness magic in Milo was still so new, some of it was seeping out of him? The priest sensed that and was more excited at the chance to perform an exorcism, than to heal Zara.

Marigold ed off out of the country, but wrote a letter to the royals, saying that Zara was dead. Whether Marigold has managed to get darkness magic since all of this happened, or if he's still just an evil no-magic person, is up to you.
It is also up to you where he is, what - if anything - he has planned, when/if he will return and if he's still in contact with the crown and if so for what reasons.

If Julian is chosen, there are options to get some information on Milo. If all the right ones are picked, he will reveal that he cares deeply about the Zara situation. In Julian's bad end, he finds Marigold's whereabouts and gives them to Julian. In his good end, he worries about Marigolds links to dark magic, that are still unexplained and unknown to the characters and even the player. In his great end, he will hint at having been too late to stop Zara's death. The fandom is still debating if "I won't be too late. History isn't going to repeat itsself." means, that he was too late in the past, or if those sentences are unconnected and he is only promising not to be too late in the future without making any reference to the past.
Under no circumstances will he reveal the connection to dark magic, in fear that he would have to mention that it took a hold of him.

I hope things have become clear now and make sense in the lore. If not, feel free to ask me any questions!
Also, it's basically up to you how deep this conspiracy goes and how much the royals are involved. Aka was this just a powerplay by an evil dude on his own, or is he conspiring with the royals or some other force outside of the kingdom?

➤ What Julian knows: Marigold was tasked to kill Zara. That happened somewhere in the countryside. Marigold fled from the kingdom.

➤ What Milo knows: Marigold killed a girl in a ritual to gain dark magic. The ritual failed, probably because Milo interrupted it. Whatever dark magic Marigold had conjured, passed through him and into Milo, but there wasn't a lot of it/it got lost on the way. It also got less over time - when the priest first saw him, he could still sense it. But after a day or so, it was undetectable.

PERSONALITY

"Have you heard the librarian is a commoner?"

"No way, he's too smart!"

"No, seriously. He's from the same town as that new girl."

"But I like him..."

"I know, right? Maybe he's an exception."

Milo is the calm in the storm. The type of person, who keeps his head in stressful situations and thinks things through. Generally he's a thoughtful person and a little introverted, finding himself happiest among a few close friends and a mountain of books. Those friends and his family, he would do almost anything for, they mean the world to him.

One of the few things he would never do for anyone, is to compromise his ideals. He has a strong moral compass and fights for fairness wherever he can, especially because he's grown up held down by a system, that was constructed against him and his kind.

Despite not being the biggest fan of the upper class, he really does love people as a whole and thinks everyone deserves a chance. (Which is exactly the problem he has with the class system, ironically.) Empathy is probably his greatest strength and although he's not always open to hearing everyone out, he does try to see things from more than the one side.

He's not all books and calm, though. No, he's spent far too much time with Dinah, not to be a little wild. He does have a good dose of mischief in his heart and an amused twinkle in his eye. Years of having to prove himself, have left him very quick-witted. His humor and stories do usually have a good and fair heart, but they are not boring.

Of course, his revolutionary streak makes him a thorn in the eyes of more traditionalist noble leaders. Which isn't great, considering he works at the school a lot of their children go to.

Although he isn't always that secure in who he is. Ever since his encounter with Marigold, a small bit of dark magic has taken hold of his mind. Not enough to be detected and not enough to actually force him to do anything. But enough to make  life a little more complicated: he suffers from occasional, sudden violent thoughts, that are gone as quickly as they arrived. He doesn't understand them, doesn't want them, doesn't know how to deal with them. Luckily, he feels no compulsion to actually act on them - which he thinks is probably the only thing keeping him from completely freaking out. 

He's also not great at adapting to change. His opinions, once formed, can be difficult to change, particularely because he's read enough to be good at explaining his point of view. This can make him incredibly stubborn at times. Because of this, the fact, that he's losing his faith, is troubling to him and he doesn't quite know, how to deal with that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Scene requests:

➤ If Milo and Lissy Hallewell are both chosen, he will absolutely slip up and call her Calia, since she has the same first name as his sister.

➤ Milo is an older brother/mentor figure to everyone (except to his love interest if he gets one ofc).

➤ In a dark moment, when he's alone, he uses the enchanted stone to make a small flower. Maybe to cheer himself up - or maybe someone else?

➤ Milo being lowkey highkey protective of that necklace.

➤ Since new Roséline thinks she's friends with Milo, most other people interpret that as Roséline trying to hurt the protagonist by stealing her childhood friend.

➤ Milo finally opens up to Dinah about what happened a year ago INCLUDING his barely-there darkness magic.

➤ Do I have a scene request for the Roseline-based sequel game? Yes. Apparently I do.
(Since the banishment scene was a dream in one of your teasers I'm guessing it will still happen, but there will be some darker plot connected to it? In which case all of Milo's hidden interactions with Roseline would probably still happen. Since I'm guessing the banishment is going to happen, I figured I'd give you this scene suggestion anyway lmao)
Milo at some point visits Roseline while she is staying with his family (if she chooses to, I guess). And while he is there, if Roseline has begun to regret her actions towards the protagonist, Milo will give her a tour of the forest and the fairy houses. When they get to the fairy graveyard, he gets really serious, the music changes to something sombre and he uses his magic stone to plant a flower in a specific spot (on Zara's unmarked grave).
If you choose (some 0f) my characters and decide to make Marigold a plotpoint, If Roseline asks Milo what the flower is for, he might even tell her (though he probably would not mention his own dark magic but idk), if she has built up enough trust with him. If Marigold isn't involved in the plot/Roseline hasn't built up enough trust with Milo, he refuses to answer why he planted the flower there, or gives some explentation of a fairy graveyard deserving flowers and quickly moves on to other topics.
(Maybe Roseline even gets the option to pick other flowers and bring them to the grave??)


Comments:

➤ I might add collabs as we go along idk

➤ When you described the ritual for dark magic to me, I realised you had basically handed me an opportunity to write a magical metaphor for intrusive thoughts. So that's part of who Milo is - a normal, kind-hearted guy, who suffers from occasional violent thoughts that don't represent him, but he doesn't quite know how to deal with.

➤ OKAY I just realised I'm handing in the first two white characters and they're the underpriveliged ones. I actually can't quite tell if that's problematic, or exactly not problematic... In my defense, I was basing a lot of this off of Victorian Enland, and wanted to hand in some non-asain characters. (And didn't want to use Zendaya for Dinah, cause even though Zendaya is amazing, she's also a little overused imo). If it is problematic, feel free to change their fcs or something, sorry.

➤ Hey, here's more Milo songs, since I could only use one :) Shadows by Tragedy Machine for a darker take on his past, Glory by Radical Face (make sure to read the lyrics, they're not super easy to understand lmao), Indifference by Pearl Jam.

I decided to use American Pie by Don McLean, because it's the best song about living like you always have after your perspective's shifted and you've lost the innocent outlook on life you always used to have. (Please go listen to the non-live version too. It cuts off on soundcloud, or I would have used it instead, it's phenomenal.)

➤ I will never be sorry about his surname.
My brain breaks everytime I look at it. (In case you missed where I wrote how to pronounce it, it was Doo-gal. Just leave out  half the letters lmao)

➤ I made sure to emphasize that Milo was not programmed as a love route - now that things are being shaken up, it's up to you, what you do with that. They could also just be super shippable friends, if you prefer that.

➤ Also if you're wondering how tf his background ended up that long - I recoded myself telling it like a story while I was cleaning my room and then later typed what I said in the recording. Which is how we ended up with so many details and more vivid descriptions lmao

➤ I've written him very much with Dinah as the Protagonist in mind. If he gets chosen and she doesn't, maybe we could work out together what of his Dinah-specific story would fit the chosen Protagonist as well? Because things like being the Protagonist's childhood friend are super easily transferred to a different person, but things like their specific chemistry and the way he wears his enchanted stone might be a little more difficult.


Password:
Only the Dark by K.Flay
The Raven (Sunset's Promises) originally by Anna Prossern and Holly Conrad on DCA, also this cover by Anthony Buchanan