A lot of different ways to interpret that one, but I chose the tried and true full swap. Lots of ways to take it. I think it's funny when he's the awkward, uncertain one that adds to her competence on stage
Presenting: Maxlie week 2026! Taking place from May 29th to June 4th!
We will be reblogging art that follows the prompts, so be sure to tag us in your submissions, and tag your submissions with #Maxlie week 2026! This year, we are accepting NSFW submissions, just be sure to mark them as mature! Your submissions can be art, fics, or anything else that comes to mind that you want to create!
This year's prompts are:
Additionally, there is a bonus day dedicated to queer headcanons, genderbends, yaoi and yuri! Whichever flavor of Maxlie you prefer!
We're excited to see what you all will come up with!
wanted to also add that if you want to talk more about the event or share works in progress, get some ideas, post your en ess eff double yew somewhere without getting your head bit off by tumblr or otherwise talk about maxlie we have a discord! plus there's also a channel in it specifically dedicated to this event.
the maxlie server :D | 15 members
excited to see what everybody's gonna do and big shoutout to the GOAT @vixendoe for hosting and coming up w the prompts!
pausing my work to yap about pairing names and top/bottom conventions lol nothing serious i just need to take a break from constantly working on stuff nonstop
wish it was more common for m/f pairing names to have top/bottom ship name conventions, or more conversation about topping and bottoming as contentious and controversial as that often is. i understand why the idea gets people feeling super cagey (especially when concerning irl individuals, but knowing online discourse, inevitably will also be the case with shipping lol) but i do think that having the conversation in and of itself does prompt people to question why receiving (and submitting since they both get lumped together even though they're not the same) is always seen as a given for a female character (or even a more feminine character that isn't a woman. idk lots of assumptions are given about people's sex lives just based on the way they carry themselves in general) and vice versa. idk just a silly thought. maybe just me wanting to queer everything i touch and see a smidge of myself when i write fics and draw fanart regardless of gender or orientation of the characters i'm interested in.
this post brought to you by someone who wishes there was a distinction between charlie/maxwell and maxwell/charlie (actually, come to think of it, idk if the fandom is even big enough for the larger ships to have t/b distinctions if people are already starving to see content of two characters together LOL but i digress)
however counterpoint: any combination of names other than maxlie are terrible LMAO ik people love calling charlie a dommy mommy or w/e because shes the shadow queen but i know DAMN well nobody is gonna be out here saying "hell yeah i fuckin love charwell. charmax." those are over the counter anti inflammatory medications be so fr
also another counterpoint: iirc ao3 doesn't go by these conventions? usually it's in the added tags as opposed to the tag for the ship right? so idk what i'm yapping about. i guess even if ao3 doesn't go by these conventions, it'd be nice to see more "top x/bottom y" tags for m/f couples for the reasons above. maybe i'm just giving "that friend that's too woke" lol i just think it could be a good opportunity to prompt more content that is shades of gray as opposed to the black and white choice of either the default man-woman bumping uglies or this weird idea that women topping automatically means it has to be edgy femdom? (not that i have any problem with that. love me some edgy femdom, i should write some myself, i just wish it wasn't what almost feels like the only flavor of woman topping, if that makes sense. i feel like this is also a consequence of the whole mixing up topping with domming and bottoming with subbing)
also side note to that counterpoint: i know people on the internet are gonna argue about anything and everything but i've genuinely never understood it when people have like, ship war level beef with what is functionally the same exact characters except the t/b order. like full on "i ship a/b do not interact with me at all if you ship b/a" and it's the exact same characters. honestly it looks to me as a consequence of specific traits and characterization attached to characters personalities so deeply and heavily that imagining the roles reversed creates an entirely different character image than the actual character that exists in canon. which i have seen on an individual level more than ship level (cough claudefireemblem cough cough threehopesclaude cough) but i'm thankful to be in a small enough fandom that it doesn't seem this would ever be the case here with any of the ships (i hope?)
aaaah i can't wait until i'm done with everything i've gotta finish so i can do more maxlie lol. fun fact this entire thing came to mind after i was thinking about how i wanted to do maxwell/wolfgang stuff but i didn't know their ship name lol. so that's something else to look forward to. also there's a forcemasc maxlie thing i have still in ideation stage. forcemasxlie.... lol i have ideas and lil drafts for everything that isn't the final chapter of casting call calling card (bro i dont even remember if thats the name) because im so nervous about it ending on a bad note and letting people down
some more thoughts about the enchanted doll play: discerning charlie's voice from that of metheus
the biggest takeaway from the enchanted doll playbill is a demonstration of charlie's allegiance to metheus/Them as well as the first time we see a clear view of what things have been like for her since she arrived in the constant. prior to this all we got was charlie from maxwell and winona's limited perspectives and even then we did not get much related to how charlie herself has coped with the events that lead up to being trapped in the constant.
much like we don't know what amount of charlie remains in her own body and where the line is drawn between herself and metheus, there is a similar blurred line between the character of the doll/shattered doll/queen and that of the narrator. at closer glance, it reveals a far more nuanced perspective on her feelings about her circumstances and that of the person responsible for bringing her there.
ugh. this play has haunted me ever since it came out and every time i reread it i find something new to dwell on.
fair warning that i am biased because i really do have a particular affinity for max and charlie that that does undeniably taint my reading of things, lol. but even with that not taken into account, i feel like what i'm going to mention is still pretty sound hehe
first thing's first: the narrator is not the doll except for when it is and the doll is not the narrator except for when she is. and they aren't. does that make sense? of course not. what i'm trying to say is that while a connection is there between the perspectives of narrator and doll, it is important to occasionally think of them as separate entities and think about how these things interplay. think about the motivations that the narrator has and where they sort of deviate from the doll's in regards to the level of allegiance to the mirror.
consider when the narrator appears and when it does not. the narrator tells us that the king is capable of wonderful things- the king does not (initially) say so. the narrator establishes a case for why the audience should care about the king before the characters meet. this does not happen when the narrator recounts the doll finding the mirror. the narrator does not tell us that the mirror is wonderful- the mirror does. and the doll takes it at face value. only after this point does the narrator appear to be in agreement (or at the very least, not in disagreement.)
the narrator narrates from third person limited. it does not narrate from third person omniscient. the limited perspective is always of the doll. the narrator explains the situation the doll is in far more neutrally than the doll herself does because the doll's purpose is to react to the things she encounters and to the scenes the narrator sets up for her. except for one of those scenes. the narrator is present in all acts and scenes except for act 2 scene 2. this is the scene where the mirror revives the doll. and only after this scene does the narrator speak of the king character in more personally negative ways; treacherous, cowering, frail.
had this play been entirely from metheus's perspective, it would have no reason to depict him in any remotely sympathetic way to anyone. if charlie's just a pawn anyways, why would it be important to mention their relationship being a genuine and mutually beneficial one from the very beginning? that's something you would only get from charlie's perspective. not just that, but a perspective from the part of her that seems to understand that despite how deeply maxwell has fucked things up for everyone, the reasons for keeping this secret were not entirely shortsighted.
it would have been very easy for maxwell to be depicted as selfish and uncaring from the start; diverging perspectives from the naive doll who is happy to meet a king and the narrator who knows how the story ends. but this is not the case. she describes him flatteringly ("he twirled his finger in the air / and the trees and flowers bloomed at his command / crowds gathered to watch him pass") when we know damn well that his whole vibe in reality was tall dark and mysterious shadowmancy. you would have no idea that this guy was a shadowmancer or even remotely into the dark arts from how positive and unthreatening she depicts his feats when she knew from the start that he manipulates shadows (albeit she thinks it's an illusion.) he quite literally changed her entire world in so many ways and she makes a point of saying that he's been doing so since the moment they crossed paths. she acknowledges that they had many adventures and that they were wonderful. at no point is there any indication that he would ever be untrustworthy not only from the doll's perspective but from the narrator's as well. his character flaw initially appears to be that he has a difficult time saying no to her and has to create excuses. the only two characters in this play that are not stock and go through character development are the doll/queen and king. the fool and blacksmith occupy very different roles.
if charlie the human woman is meant to be just a pawn, simply a body to occupy, why would it be important to mention their relationship being a genuinely mutually beneficial and positive one from the very beginning? it would still be a play that successfully recounts the queen's memories (whether real ones or fabricated/heavily influenced ones) and makes the point she wants to make without giving maxwell all that much credit. that's something you would only get from charlie's perspective, one that still exists within her actively. memories that have not been fully erased or something that the body intuitively recalls.
why depict maxwell in a dynamic way? why make him more sympathetic if not to show that she understands that, on some level, he knows he has made a grave mistake and that he very likely would not have done what he did had he known the consequences. that comes from a level of personal knowledge and some remaining slivers of trust. she does, on some level, know after getting thrown into the constant that this is why maxwell was so hesitant to teach her magic. i think that she acknowledges somewhere inside of her that this was an attempt at protection. despite the king being an antagonist in this play, she doesn't write him making his choices as ones to explicitly punish her but instead out of self interest. the only characters that she writes the king lashing out at are the fool and the mirror. he calls her a monster not knowing that he's talking to her, and immediately changes up when the doll makes herself known.
the part that i think does an even better job of showing that softheartedness she still has towards him and/or their predicament isn't her retelling their first time meeting one another. it is instead the soliloquy that she writes for him. i think, again, it would have been really easy to depict the king's soliloquy as one similar to the cowardly and self interested perspective she writes him in at the end half of the story, the version of the king that cowers behind his throne or when the fool takes mercy on him. it could have just been about how he feels like he's done nothing wrong, or how he only cared about himself and will continue to do so. if this was from the mirror's perspective, it could very easily have been a soliloquy about how he doesn't regret anything other than the fact that he got caught. none of the soliloquies change before or after the reveal of the secret mirror. instead, it's how deeply affected he is by his own actions. he may have great self preservation instincts, but that also there was an intent at some point to extend that to her. the actual tragedy is not that he never cared but instead that simply caring wasn't enough. it was not enough to keep the mirror away. while he cared for her, maxwell also was hubristic enough to assume that the shadows (no matter how frightening and upsetting they could be) worked for him and not the other way around. even in solo don't starve, where i feel like his character is more openly self-centered than by the time cyclum/together happens, he is always keenly aware that she is watching and his quote for the codex is an apology to her.
and on a much sadder note, this play may or may not serve as confirmation that she died either moving between dimensions or immediately upon arrival. the doll specifically says that the mirror brought her back to life. the king didn't just knock her out with the magic blast, he killed her. in "encore" (i think?) there's a quick flash of charlie with fuelweaver in the background. those two things may not mean much because people die in the constant all the time. but the doll's death is chronologically placed between her finding the mirror (corresponding to charlie finding maxwell's study room) and her searching the castle (charlie during the events of ds adventure mode.) generally, dying in the constant is just a quick reprieve at the character select screen before being thrown right back in. you can die in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons. characters die in the same way animation-wise. the only death animations that are distinct (besides drowning in shipwrecked) are from maxwell being freed from the throne and wagstaff being taken by the celestial scion. with the former, i think that that just has to do with 1) maxwell being maybe the first individual to ever leave the throne and 2) maxwell's character model is different on the throne and it wouldn't make sense for him to go bobblehead mode and then die like the other survivors on the throne lol. the latter, though, is distinct and shares something with charlie's circumstances, that being that this is some sort of death or change that arguably takes place between the dimension of the constant and their real world. so the laws of the constant might not apply as evenly as before.
we do know that charlie very much exists- as in, the human woman with the memories from her human life. in the short with winona and wendy searching for abigail's flower, we see a flashback of charlie and winona and it's assumed to only be winona reminiscing but not guaranteed that it's winona only. charlie has moments and lines that may give her a distinct, sterner voice from her previous form (ie. her response to winona comparing her to a mandrake) but are shaped by memories and instincts of the body metheus now resides in. they speak separately from one another in the boneward bound short and have dialogue with each other. we still don't know what they talk about and to what degree that is charlie herself engaging with metheus as an independent actor.
we also know that in the play, the doll's revival is linked to and relies entirely on the work of the mirror. the queen mentions that she owes a debt to it. the king dies because he's so old and forgot to create a magical life alert to get help for when the fool knocks him off his throne lol. his life is not contingent on whether or not the mirror is around. the mirror gives the king the ability to do magic, but not his life. and with the 2026 roadmap art depicting an empty nightmare throne and maxwell holding the rose on his lapel as its petals fly into the wind, it begs the question of if charlie and metheus could be separated safely. it's not a webber situation where neither boy or spider died before they merged. i think in webber's case, there could potentially be a way to undo the merging though i imagine that by that point in the story webber may have already made complete peace with his predicament or would miss the spider's presence if it was gone.
queen charlie is a bit of a different case. it makes me wonder if being possessed by metheus and/or metheus's magic may or may not be the only way that charlie is able to be alive and retain aspects of her former life in the first place. could trying to separate charlie from metheus not lead to two separate beings but instead to metheus and a corpse? hard to say.
also quick plug: i actually drafted this version as a sample post in the new maxlie discord server! we can talk more about this in depth and get more stuff like this early over there. you can click here to join. :D
i have a little secret of my own too; and it's that there's finally a maxlie discord server set up! never done this before so there's a lot of playing by ear but here's hoping it becomes a nice place for everybody to hang! i want everyone who takes part in it to have input over how it is shaped and ends up :D
there are only 2 requirements: be an adult and have a discord account lol
click here to access the invite! excited to see familiar and new faces!
i feel very grateful to share fandom space with so many incredible artists and writers. i still haven't gotten to see everything that i missed for almost half a year of not being here lol. y'all make me want to improve myself every day to catch up. here's hoping i have time when i'm done with my regular non fandom stuff to do at least one all the way done maxlie piece, or at least something ds related :)
No “Don’t Starve Elsewhere” Maxwell and Charlie?
Actually if you look through one of the windows in the shot with the castle in the trailer, you'll totally see them! ;)
Looks like Maxwell has completely deserted the other survivors (to be with his wife), and he is thriving. As for Charlie? She caught Maxwell red-handed! (*badum tss*)
janainaart
areudirty
origamiaround
gummygunk
prguitarman
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
snowghoul
jacobvanloon
theartofmadeline
