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DEAR READER
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@hyprotic
HEADCANONS.
max + not knowing her father. max + child placement. max + mimicking neil. max + tv. max + groceries. max + swimming. max + neil. max + post-high school. max + running away. max + susan / max + being a secondary person (+reblog). max + handwriting.
YOUR MUSE'S HANDWRITING. go here and find a font which resembles your muse's handwriting the closest. tagged by @chiefhop & @endureit. tagging @hargrovetm, @harringtontm, @pwrballad (literally anyone!), @greenscrunchy, @lachia, and you.
(i used this guide), max's handwriting patterns a rightward slant, narrow loops, heavy pressure, small size, angular forms, and controlled baseline. collectively, it suggests that she's someone who is emotionally intense, introspective, self-controlled, and able to manage outward expression of feelings through effortful regulation. writing provides a structured way for her to express emotion that she may not show in other contexts, especially verbally.
her handwriting slants rightward, which isn't always consistent but it's still noticeable. it shows that max experiences attachment and feelings strongly, and allows them to surface when she's writing, even if she restrains them in person. her letters also have narrow loops in both upper and lower-case letters which implies that while max feels emotions intensely, she manages and restricts their expression.
her heavy pencil pressure indicates intensity, persistence, and max's emotional weight. it shows that writing is an effortful process for max, likely reflecting underlying stress, tension, or strong emotions that are being channeled into the act of writing. despite this, this is still her most accurate expression of her feelings over verbally expressing herself.
max's handwriting is generally small to moderate in size, which suggests self-containment and a preference for privacy. it reflects her tendency to keep her thoughts and feelings internalized rather than broadcasting them outwardly. her angular letterforms/irregular baseline also indicates her own mental resilience and defensiveness.
ok more on this later but i think max's relationship with her mom is very complicated re: love and purpose. i think there's a very deeply-rooted dread of being alone with susan again because from an early age: max has always emotionally taken care of her. before neil, susan definitely leaned on max a little too hard as a single mother and it created this weird bond that was under the impression of like.. being very close. that hanging out with mom nearly 24/7 doesn't exactly equate being close with your mom, or her taking you out to restaurants and bars late at night doesn't make her a cool mom.
max has always been a caretaker to her mother, and while i don't think susan ever wanted this to be their dynamic, i think she's just an incredibly hurt woman that ended up bringing max into her misery. perfect victims don't exist, so i don't necessarily Blame susan, but i do think later in life, this really tears her up after billy dies and neil leaves which causes her to go down an even more miserable path in life re: drinking, etc. post-billy's death, it's just her and max again and susan knows she's slipping back into old habits of kneeling on max's back. if she has the Addiction Gene, she's probably just addicted to being taken care of by max and cannot break free of it, even if she can see what it's doing to max. and i genuinely don't think you can understand this kind of dynamic unless you yourself have/has a parent with an addiction issue.
and really it's just like, knowing your entire life will be on pause until said parent is no longer in your life. max is very much stuck not knowing how to create boundaries. so living with her mom in the trailer is horrible for max, even if she probably genuinely tried to look at things differently because they weren't paired up again under the Same Circumstances. not really. neil just took everything in the divorce and fucked off, and i don't believe susan really missed Him all that much after, but the security/illusion of completion he brought her. so susan isn't necessarily strung out on looking for a partner and being lonely, but rather, miserable with the way her life turned out. and with everything going on with max at that point (s4ish+), i think it just adds to how robotic she operates.
ok it's later and i'm vulnerable. this isn't just some kind of thing max can Get Over at the end of the day, after years have passed, after people have passed or moved on. max will tell herself her own life can and will begin after billy dies (saying she wished something would happen to him when trying to lure vecna etc. etc. i have thoughts on this but that's Another Post); and then he dies and she still does not have or fight for her own life because there is still susan. her mother is a drunk, but she loves her. and max will keep the mentality that until everyone in her life is taken care of, by her or by fate, THEN she can move on and have a life of her own. and it's a very dim existence to live because you know, deep down, that when that day finally comes, when there's no one left, you don't actually want to start your life. you want it to be over with.
and i think max will never out grow this entirely. she can live an entirely different life (move away, find a partner, find happiness, have a nice job, etc.) but this way of thinking is like a sleeper disease. it will never go away, even when its dormant. and so she puts so much of herself into her friends, or in avenues that don't necessarily promise or make her commit to things or people for the future because max knows she doesn't/wont want to be there. and it's an entirely personal thing. no one can convince her out of this mindset, but the right people can definitely make it a lot less bleak for a lot longer than if max stays isolated and shut off from everyone.
ok more on this later but i think max's relationship with her mom is very complicated re: love and purpose. i think there's a very deeply-rooted dread of being alone with susan again because from an early age: max has always emotionally taken care of her. before neil, susan definitely leaned on max a little too hard as a single mother and it created this weird bond that was under the impression of like.. being very close. that hanging out with mom nearly 24/7 doesn't exactly equate being close with your mom, or her taking you out to restaurants and bars late at night doesn't make her a cool mom.
max has always been a caretaker to her mother, and while i don't think susan ever wanted this to be their dynamic, i think she's just an incredibly hurt woman that ended up bringing max into her misery. perfect victims don't exist, so i don't necessarily Blame susan, but i do think later in life, this really tears her up after billy dies and neil leaves which causes her to go down an even more miserable path in life re: drinking, etc. post-billy's death, it's just her and max again and susan knows she's slipping back into old habits of kneeling on max's back. if she has the Addiction Gene, she's probably just addicted to being taken care of by max and cannot break free of it, even if she can see what it's doing to max. and i genuinely don't think you can understand this kind of dynamic unless you yourself have/has a parent with an addiction issue.
and really it's just like, knowing your entire life will be on pause until said parent is no longer in your life. max is very much stuck not knowing how to create boundaries. so living with her mom in the trailer is horrible for max, even if she probably genuinely tried to look at things differently because they weren't paired up again under the Same Circumstances. not really. neil just took everything in the divorce and fucked off, and i don't believe susan really missed Him all that much after, but the security/illusion of completion he brought her. so susan isn't necessarily strung out on looking for a partner and being lonely, but rather, miserable with the way her life turned out. and with everything going on with max at that point (s4ish+), i think it just adds to how robotic she operates.
i love you max mayfield that won't change her backpack from middle school to high school until the straps disintegrate. i love you money conscious (traumatized) max mayfield that will never buy something new unless it's absolutely necessary.
we do not claim runaway max here, but i do think there was a time where max did run away in california. and it wasn't some huge elaborate plan nor did she get far. she's like 10. but i think what's important is that in her little kid brain, she was that desperate to escape home because she hasn't learned to cope/ignore (disassociate) the abuse that went on, and it wasn't even "As Bad" in california as it is hawkins. but i think max running away in california is really ??? upsetting :(( because that is like.. as a parent, your big fat glowing red flag that something is happening in the house that your child does not want to be around. and i think susan really just swept it under the rug because she had no idea how to even handle that.
max was a relatively good/obedient kid when it was just the two of them, but that's because there neil-variable hadn't been a thing. even if max didn't get far, the fact she, a literal baby, wanted to leave like.. that should've been enough for susan to realize there is something very wrong going on in their blended house, and that her being willfully ignorant to billy's abuse was helping no one. and if she, for whatever reason.. didn't care as much because neil's abusive behaviour was aimed on his own son.. it's fucked but she should've started caring about both kids the moment max fucked off and wandered down their street with her schoolbag packed.
and this fucks up max's ability to trust really anyone in a guardianship role in her life. and i flip flop all the time on whether max's early adulthood is truly tormented by this, or if she can navigate it. and it really just depends on who is in her life at that point. i think it's unfortunately natural that max will become very isolated if her friends, or lucas especially, start treating her like they're supposed to take care of her in a parental/supervising way, rather than be her friend. and it's hard on them because when your friend is really struggling, it can be hard to not feel like you have to !!! parent them !!! especially if you grew up in a household where your parent comforted you, so you think the same will help someone who was pretty much abandoned by their parents.
max scrapes by high school until graduation. she cleans up her act by senior year, stretching her grades far enough to get her the diploma. she gets an internship halfway during senior year for a local construction company, having favoured shop over any of her other classes, and her coordinator at the company promised her a job out of school if she promises to graduate. max is a blue-collar girl, doing her job better than some of the men there, who of course undermine her. but there are a few who are genuinely very kind to her.
i think if max and lucas don't make it out of high school together, they'll remain friends until max starts seeing some guy from work. someone a few years older, not.. a dick.. but does just above the bare minimum and is probably on the path of being worse. this strains her and lucas' friendship until max and this guy eventually separate. susan doesn’t really like him either, and to avoid any conversation about him or her life: max just starts staying at his place instead of the trailer.
whether her and lucas get back together (could see it going either way), i think it's important to her character that max gets into a relationship of all her own. someone unrelated to anything hawkins, upside down, etc. the guy's probably a local, knew about the weird shit that happened in their town but nothing more than that. and i always imagined max will think it'll be very easy to navigate her love life in a way that she think won't be anything like her mother, and essentially just be.. "better" at not picking up a guy like neil, or her biological dad who just up and fucked off. only to realize she's lowkey with a deadbeat and nothing about their relationship really makes her happy, and just.. distracts her from the part of her life she has no idea how to nurture because it's still very much an open wound!
i think neil really buttered up to max in order to get good with susan. like lets be so fr. he likes maxine because he can use her to straighten billy up. he likes the idea of having a perfect, nuclear family because he couldn't obtain one on his first go. and i think neil "favours" max because it's for susan, which means it's for him. i don't think he like.. hates max or anything, but she's a piece in this weird game he's playing within the house. he's the man of the house, he has a submissive wife, he has a son he can beat around, and he has max to use to make it easier for him to do both. and i don't think max ever realizes her position in neil's life, only that it's not a very honest one. he can give her money for things, help her with homework, drive her places, buy her things, be cordial and polite: because that's his wife's kid, and because by doing so, he can pin billy and max against each other and step to max's side as a way to i-told-you-so billy, or kiss up to susan so she stays in her place unlike his first wife. like it's all very self-serving for him, and max is too afraid of being a burden to ever start acting out against him.
and because my max never knew her dad, or knew what it's like to have A dad, she isn't exactly rejecting of neil because.. it's ?? that fatherly-attention right? this is what everyone is supposed to get? and her mom isn't miserable ("all the time") anymore? but she's not blind and can see there's a mega fucking difference in how she is treated as someone not even related to neil, compared to his own son. but she just doesn't have the language or experience to understand it for what it is. and neil is fucking scary to her! sometimes i forget just how much of a baby max is when we're introduced to her in s2. like she is tiiiiiny. she is a babyyyyyyy. she can bark back and forth with billy because i truly do not believe billy ever terrified max to the point that neil has. and neil hasn't even done anything to her. just by pure proxy of witnessing him interact with billy. it's almost like a, well billy never outright hit me when we fight, so i know he won't. but she's seen neil hit billy, surely.
and it's the same with susan because she literally saw neil strike billy. like with her own two fucking peepers, saw her husband fully shove and hit his own son, in the name of (finding) her daughter. and she hears the way he talks to him. she can't be that ignorant to think neil and billy's relationship is all aces. but i think there's just a boundary susan has re: max that billy just doesn't make the cut for, and that's why neil knows to baby max because it keeps susan complacent. i don't think susan doesn't Not care about billy, because she was clearly disturbed by neil's behaviour when he was beating on him, but like.. she's a sheltered woman and just saw a boy get hit so yeah, that's disturbing. but it also just goes back to the tone neil has set in that house. everyone has seen what he's capable of doing, and billy is the only one he can wholly abuse like that because he (believes he) has nothing to lose beating on his son, like he would if he hit susan or max, and that it only Gains him something. such as this weird illusion and fraud image of a perfect blended family, with a perfect son in his image, so long as he keeps behaving like how neil wants him to, with a step daughter that loves him and a wife that submits to him.
anyways all this to say, max has never been kindly sought after as a daughter by a male/father-figure in her life and the only closest thing she has uses her to abuse his own son and ruin the only relationship with a sibling she could've had. and i believe at some point down the line, her biological father is going to try and contact max as an adult and want to be part of her life and it's going to fuck things up further! because that's another grown man needing max in order to feel better about his own life choices he made or are currently making.
hi new brainrot thought. but i actually don't?? think max is that great of a swimmer?? she can tread and swim from edge to edge in a pool, but there's such a big difference between being an ok pool-swimmer and being a strong ocean-swimmer. like wading around the shoreline definitely does not count as swimming in the ocean, and i think that's pretty much the extent of what max liked to do in california. i don't think she ever went in past her hips, and susan knew/enforced this. she wasn't gonna be that single mom who loses her only baby to the fucking current.. and like genuinely, when you think about it, max is a land creature. she absolutely loves the boardwalk. she loves anywhere she can skate! and while i don't think she hates the beach, i think she actually loves the beach aspect. pro sandcastle builder. pro hole digger. pro moat maker. pro shell finder!
things i think max fucks with: yard sales, and bowling. things i think max hates: grocery shopping.
thinking max reluctantly becomes a tv girl. like actually obsessed with daytime/primetime soaps and dramas solely because of her mother. i think growing up, pre-neil, the tv was on allllllllll the time in the mayfield house. susan would leave it on in the background, not wanting the house quiet when it was just her and max. naturally, the shows were for susan, but max would watch them by proxy, reluctantly. which max hated at first! because mom always had the tv! morning cartoons? no, days of our lives. taking a sick day? the young and the restless. guiding light. general hospital. after school? as the world turns. all my children. max would get away from it whenever she played outside, but one look into the window and she'd see her mother folding laundry in front of the tv. and this continues into the night. i don't think max and susan ever did the sit-down dinners at the table. i think they'd eat together on the couch and watch whatever was on the primetime. dallas, dynasty, knots landing, falcon crest, moonlighting, murder she wrote. just truly, no matter what, the house always had noise because of this. she's 100% the kid sighing loudly while watching from the stairs but never actually leaves.
when they move in with neil and billy, the tv gets a break. susan doesn't watch as much, nor need it in the background, because she now has neil. the wistfulness and escape the shows once brought her aren't needed anymore. as max gets older, i think she is a lot less secretive about liking some of these shows and would even sit with her mother to watch whenever they could get the tv from neil. and max most definitely plays down liking these shows, now that it's not just her and susan in the house. probably a lot of: "ugh this plot is so stupid.. shhhhh! i didn't catch what she said!" going on.
max and her mom probably watch the young and the restless together: even if it's not really max's favourite of them all. this is susan's like.. wind-down, immersive show. and max associates it with the rare days her mom is in a good mood, or at least not stressed, so she watches because her mom watches. and because the glam, messy adult lives feel like a window into a world where people's problems are dramatic but not deadly (which, escapism, is a really big theme for this meta + max).
and like, granted, max is waaaay to young to be watching some of the plotlines that happen in these shows. but i think all of us have watched shows with our guardians or older housemates and found it so ?? almost fun and exciting to be watching something you know is a bit beyond what's appropriate. like if this is modern, other than modern soaps, i think max would be wildly into like csi or law and order in the same way ksajhdkjsd
i'd love to think max has a deeply buried, shameful softness for melodrama. like melodrama, trauma, tragedy: but scripted. that in a lot of these dramas, x character will go through shit so outlandishly crazy, plot-wise, but still have a happy ending. and i think that comes as a really personal comfort, especially as max enters her tween/teens. on the sillier side, she has an encyclopedic knowledge of family dynasties she never cared about and opinions on characters she claims she "barely remembers." she has the ability to describe soap love triangles, and predict plot twists because she's "seen this arc a hundred times already". like she's actually the worst person to watch anything with. affectionately.
she definitely outgrows it, to an extent. but i think she religiously keeps up with moonlighting on her own. of all the shows, i think max shamelessly will beg for the tv when it's about time to watch. she'll want someone to record it if she's not going to be home so she can watch the vhs of it later. i find it hilarious thinking that max might go to mike's house and catch karen watching a soap she knows waaaaaay too much about for someone her age while getting a glass of water or something. like where's?? max?? why hasn't she come back down?? oh she's upstairs with mrs. wheeler watching the the father of the baby reveal himself!!!
the north remembers (i will get my ss of this later i promise) neil telling billy "WHAT DID WE TALK ABOUT?" hitting him, repeating it, and having billy respond saying "RESPECT AND RESPONSIBILITY." then neil prompting him again, about this idea of a son he wants billy to be re: ditching his evening to go find max by saying "ISN'T THAT RIGHT BILLY? ISN'T THAT RIGHT?!" to which billy quietly says "YES SIR." only prompting neil to go "I'M SORRY, I COULDN'T HEAR YOU." which makes billy repeat "YES SIR." again.
the north also remembers max does the same exact thing!!!!! as neil!!!!! doubling down on billy after fighting steve and sedating him. standing over him, she barks out "FROM HERE ON OUT, YOU LEAVE ME AND MY FRIENDS ALONE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" billy says "SCREW YOU." max slams steve's bat (do you see what i'm getting at?), like neil hitting billy. she repeats, "SAY YOU UNDERSTAND! SAY IT! SAY IT!" and billy groggily says "I UNDERSTAND." and like neil, max makes him repeat! himself! she says "WHAT?" and billy repeats, "I UNDERSTAND."
ok so being the only child turned youngest in a tumultuous family. i think the biggest takeaway from this is the aspect of loneliness and the inability to determine worth from want. i don't wanna say it's similar to being a glass child, but it's in the ballpark.
max is only 7-8 when susan and neil merge families (i think lols), and she already has such an independent sense of self (neil introduces her to billy as maxine, she clarifies it's just max even at that age). and there's no need for max to have been as independent as she was, as an only child, in terms of like.. individualism. for my max anyways, she was the only child to a single mother. like she neeeeeeeeeded to have some individualism, some barrier or boundary differentiating her from the only other person in her house. if she's seen how hard her mother has it as ??? a woman ?? a mother ?? i think max would/did very much rubber band the opposite way re: not wanting to be as feminine as her mother (because susan is still miserable at the end of the day), and that in turn is not Solely why max is the way she is, but it's a great factor. max stays pretty true to herself as she gets older, but she likes going to dances! she likes having a girl friend like el! she likes going to the mall, and shopping, and gossiping: which are stereotypes, but it's what max associates with femininity and thus, her mother, and thus, what she tried to avoid, thinking it would only make her miserable too!
max isn't competing with other siblings to have her own style/personality/sense of self. there is her and just her. and then her mom. maybe there's friends she has that affect this, but friends are only variables at school and when they hang out. not a constant variable like a sibling would be. and i think max is so (too?) headstrong to have her personality entirely based or reliant on someone else. influenced? yes absolutely. she's a kid and absorbing the world and people around her. and the people directly around her, for the most part, are susan, neil, and billy. so.
i think there's a very stark loneliness in max being the only child, aside from the actual alone-ness. it triggers this need to be her own person. to be max and not maxine. to like skateboarding, and not (*hc dance) that susan put her in. if you have a very strong sense of self, you don't need other people ? and max probably takes this and internalizes it and uses it to cope and uses it to defend herself when she's being a bit of a brat. like honestly, having to believe that she doesn't need friends because she just doesn't! know how to have friends! and you know this is a prevalent Thing in my portrayal with her!!
but suddenly becoming the youngest child, that's a whole other demon. because i hate the narrative that the youngest are spoiled/advantaged. sometimes the youngest are "spoiled" because the parents have given up by then! and unlike max, who doesn't really act out, per say. but susan or neil don't hold her to the "standard" (not really standard, but, expectation that billy parents her when they don't want to) billy is held to, not really understanding.. control vs. supervision vs. attention vs. love. max actually does get away with A Lot. but i don't think it has anything to do with favourtism. the nicer neil is to max, the better he is seen by susan. and clearly he never gave a fuck about that with billy, abusing him right in front of susan. i think neil (mostly) and susan definitely think max is a lot "easier" to parent than billy, sure, but susan also babies max which max reads as a sign of being seen as irresponsible or incapable.
anyways im going on a tangent. but as the sudden youngest, max is now made to compromise. always. suddenly she needs to be babysat. suddenly she needs to keep small and keep quiet because susan brought two very uproarious men into their lives.
max always saw herself as the opposite of her mother, so for them to now live with billy and neil who are (for a lack of a better word) very "masculine", which is what max always assumed she was more like since she didn't see herself to be very "feminine", suddenly she doesn't know what to be anymore! all because the only sense of self/individualism max thought she was this entire time is ruined because neil and billy are not! what she wants to be! and she says this to lucas (im pretty sure its when they're on the bus fighting the demodogs for the first time), how she doesn't want to be anything like billy, who is just a product of neil! so she's compromised her sense of self as well!!!
yada yada yada, i don't subscribe to max ever knowing her biological father. or at the very least, her having any real recollection of him. i think susan raised her as well as she could, solo, prior to meeting neil, and any ounce of memory (legit or not, maybe triggered by a photograph max found laying around and she's forcing herself to try and remember sam/the room/the house they lived in prior to his and susan's split/etc) is just.. not reliable. and it's just ?? watching how max neverrrrr really yearns For a father-figure in canon, never looks for it in billy (she wants a brother, surely, but she doesn't look to him for a father): i think it just comes from the day-old idea of not knowing what you're missing and not missing what you don't know.
had max had a relationship with sam, even if it was shit, even if it was short-lived, she would ??? want to look for a betterment of it elsewhere. in neil, even. or have it be reaaaaallyyy obvious that she is So Totally Not looking for a dad (/s). but she doesn't. like she actually couldn't give a fuck about not having one (which is a whole other brainworm thought i have about her being the only child and suddenly the youngest child, and how she has to always compromise!).
and it could all be chopped down to the fact that she's a tween/teen living through actual hell, and oh yeah i don't have a real dad around anywhere. but idk ! i like to think it's the opposite of what i've seen fanon assume for her. like yes, max would love it if her mother actually found love, real love, and it was kind to her and in turn, gave max a good father. but there's a difference in pain between wanting what you know you could have (*deserve), and an empty pain of not knowing what you want, but just that you want Something, and not knowing how or what to ask for, because she doesn't know what it's like! to have a dad! when she never had one! and neil doesn't fucking count!
max moves through her days as if the air around her remembers more than she does. there's a near-constant pull in her chest. a sense of something unresolved humming beneath her skin. she's young, so young, and yet her life feels marked by long, invisible tides that keep rising no matter how fast she runs. she carries the remnants of a childhood that never had room to stay gentle. too many slammed doors, too many nights spent waiting for the storm inside her home to settle. she learned to shrink, then to survive, then to stand her ground. each lesson carved itself into her, quiet and permanent.
and still, beneath the grit and the vigilance, she's a teenager trying to understand herself. trying to hold onto pieces of joy where she finds them. on a skateboard, in a laugh that slips out before she can stop it, in the rare moments when she doesn't feel watched by her past. for a little while, the world softens for her. for a little while, she remembers she's allowed to want more than just safety. her friends become the place where the air turns warm. where she can exist without bracing for impact. their presence gives her shape. they remind her she's here, that she matters, that she is seen in ways she once thought impossible. she guards them fiercely, not out of duty, but because they're the first people who ever made her feel anchored.
max keeps going even when the ground shifts. even when the shadows stretch too far and the weight presses in. there's a fragile kind of strength in her. steady, instinctive, born from every moment she refused to give up. it flickers sometimes, but it never fully goes out. she is still just a girl trying to make sense of a world that asks too much of her. a girl carrying grief that comes in waves, hope that arrives without warning.
! what patron saint are you? the patron saint of heartbreak.
not of comfort. not of condolences. there is a heart and there is a fissure, a fracture, something that starts to splinter and break open. you're the patron saint of the way a heart is rent open. the way it tears itself apart. patron saint of the rift. patron saint of the gash. when they say to "open your heart" to somebody, you are the patron saint of bleeding out.
