Tawerut,
Thank you for the response and the critique. Looking back, I realize that my habits of being brief with my words / assuming other people are sharing my headspace/writing late at night in this instance has produced an impression/conclusion that is not what I believe AND indeed my previous conceptions about greek myth limited my frame of view. I am going to respond, not to excuse what I said, but to offer a context as to what I was thinking at the time, which I realize is a bit too little, too late at this point.
"any attempt to ligature race, ethnicity, and skin color to limited physical attributes of animals/anthropomorphic animals/androids/physical projections of A.I./an animated fucking toaster is inherently damaging and toxic and dangerous to members of the community, e.g. trying to treat fur color as a analogue to skin color. This is racial essentialism This hurts all of us and limits us, but worst of all it singles out and excludes people of color in the furry community by attempting to remove agency from how they represent and explore themselves. "
>I assure you that this was not my intention to exclude people of color in the furry community or try to remove their agency. I do not wish to invalidate your interpretation.
The latter half of Point Two was the main reason why I wrote what I did. The white Bull form that Zeus took, The white Bull / perhaps Poseidon's form, and Asterion fall into the mythological pattern you mentioned. Patterns are important, both in mythology but also in how Mino tells its story. I too made the mental connection with Argos and Io, and pondered if she would have some part to play in the story. It would be cool if that were the case.
I am aware that in genetics, traits can not be phenotypically be represented but can be genotypically represented. My point was that at this point it is an unsettled question how if he was a descendant of Io, how if Io had cow genes, how those would interact with those of his human parent(s). When I said "problem", I meant more of a narrative obstacle that would have to be explained. I am very fine with saying that coat phenotypes could have changed over time and could be influenced by those of his parents. My point is that it's one motif/narrative step removed from fitting as neatly into the established pattern, and I am very happy to expand that pattern.
I articulated this point poorly in my original post, I admit.
I have enjoyed reading Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Aeneid for my latin class in high school, but thank you for the recommendation. MY favorite Ovid translations has the muses vs a group of nymphs doing a rap battle in meter, and it's one of the best things ever.
3a- I agree and have enjoyed how the MinoTeam has adapted myths so far. If team mino wants to turn a pattern on its head (i.e. what I thought Disney was going to do with Rei before she was retconned to be a Palpatine), I welcome it.
3b-I'm not quite sure I understand the point in 3b. I.e. I understand and agree with what you're saying, but I'm unsure on how it relates to the topic at hand, apologies, I am dense boi.
3c- I agree. My motivation behind that is that at least for Luke, a connection was made between him and his greek griffin ancestry, and something I would like to see is if storm is related to Io, I would at least like to get an idea of how her bovine descendants ended up in South America and if these cow traits popped up before . In addition, we have a lot of greek myth represented right now, it seems Koda and maybe the kobalds are the only non-greek myth. I personally would like to see some other myth sources being drawn from. Again, it's fine if he is a descendant of io, but it'd be cool as well if he was from another realm of myth.
tl;dr. I apologize if my short response inadvertently enforced colorist / traditional ideas surrounding mythology. I will try to be more cognizant about talking about things of this subject in the future / better articulating my points.