#maximum ride rewrite

[fly-with-the-flock]

Finally working on that rewrite again

[foxqlove-draws]

First 3 down! For my maximum ride rewrite. If you’ve noticed that “hey those are weird bird wings” you’d be correct because their wings are in fact NOT bird wings in my rewrite! They’re bird-like wings of aliens that have ascended to the 4th dimension! They’re based off of butterflies, moths, and medieval angel art

[junpeijackflash]

Welp, I Guess I’ll Talk About My Maximum Ride Rewrite Now

I promised I’d post about my rewrite soon, totally not expecting to do it for at least a few weeks. Then I opened up my doc after like a month and wrote two chapters in two days.

So, now equipped with a stronger drive to write (at least for now) I’ll share some details on my rewrite project. I’ll be putting this under a cut because holy fuck I did not expect to write this much:

The full title for the series is going to be Fly On, Maximum Ride. The individual book rewrites are going to be from song lyrics (or song titles? haven’t decided). Incidentally, the “Fly On” part of the title also comes from song lyrics.

Why, you may ask, am I doing the cliché AO3 “song lyrics as the title” thing? Because music ended up having a larger impact on this series than intended. What started out as me listing each flock members’ favorite bands and songs somehow wove so deeply into them that I cannot remove it.

(I’m aware kisses4butterflies on AO3 also has a music thing going in their rewrite. I came up with my version independently, and I do think it’s cool we had similar ideas)

Now to what people actually care about: the story and characters 👀

First off: Jeb never died/faked his death. He is still living with the flock as we speak, leaving the house every so often to get groceries or supplies for the flock. Sometimes he’s gone for a few days, sometimes weeks, sometimes a bit longer. But he’s still a part of the flock’s life. He trains them, teaches them, makes sure they’re healthy, rewards them when they do good, etc.

Ari sadly does not exist. I could’ve tried to come up with something for him, but I removed him from the plot so early on there’s no way to squeeze him back in. Maybe he could’ve been living with the flock as a normal human kid, but I feel like that would’ve just made him Gazzy Without Wings so :/

The house is…different. I don’t want to say much on that now, but just know the flock isn’t waking up with the sun or going on daily flights around the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. They go outside to train and occasionally play, but only when Jeb lets them.

Max, Fang, and Nudge are probably the only real physical fighters of the bunch. Iggy’s extremely good at assembling traps and weapons he can use, but he doesn’t have the same training as his siblings. Gazzy is training to be a good fighter, and training with Iggy on building things (he’s much more eager about the bombs than Iggy is), but he’s still a kid and he’s still learning. Angel is a six year old, and she’s also slightly lagging behind on her motor skills, so safe to say she is not good in a fight.

The flock still looks somewhat human-like, but not enough that they pass 100%. Their wings are massive, for one, and they can’t just fold them up into their backs. They need bulky jackets and pants to squish their wings inside if they want to hide them. They also have feathers along the backs of their arms and legs. Their pectoral muscles are larger and they have broader shoulders, all to help support the wings. They have smaller and rounder bird eyes with raptor vision, and they’ve got hollow bones and air sacs just like birds do.

In terms of what birds the flock’s wings are based on: Max = golden eagle, Fang = peregrine falcon, Iggy = osprey, Nudge = american kestrel, Gazzy = red tailed hawk, Angel = ferruginous hawk. Their eyes also match the birds they’re based on.

Everyone in the flock has pretty noticeable scars. Max has a large one on her cheek. Fang has several long ones across his chest. Iggy’s eyes are basically a scar on their own. Nudge has scars on her hands that flare up in pain. Both Max and Gazzy have scars around their neck in the same places. Angel doesn’t have scars yet, but she’s going to get some soon.

The kids fully believe they’re freaks of nature who cannot live outside of their home or else they’ll be hunted down or taken back to The School.

The flock all consider themselves siblings. This does in fact mean no Max-Fang romance. Honestly I wouldn’t know what to do with it even if they weren’t siblings. I have 1 (one) planned romance in book 2, and it doesn’t involve either of them.

There’s not de facto leader, since Jeb is still there. Max, Fang, and Iggy all take up different roles when he’s gone to help around the house.

Max and Fang do have a really close bond, though. They were cage neighbors at The School for as long as they can remember, and they developed a very close friendship, always looking out for one another, always ready to do anything to save each other. Even now, four years after leaving The School, they’re constantly there for each other, helping deal with trauma the only ways they know how.

Of course, when Max and Fang aren’t physically or mentally able to help, Iggy’s there to be the emotional support for his siblings. He’s one of the oldest kids, so he’s treated as such, James. Admittedly, there is A Lot to Iggy that won’t get unpacked until after book 1. But he’s still very blind. Still very skilled. Still very gay.

Nudge, being one of the younger three, got to have a slightly happier childhood, free to play with dolls and be a kid. She still struggles with nightmares and flashbacks, but not to the degree that her older siblings do. Now that she’s getting older, she has to train more, something she hates. Just like in canon, she really just wants to be a normal girl. She’s scared of people, but also fascinated by them and wishing she could live like they do.

Gazzy barely remembers anything from The School. It definitely had an impact on him, but the few memories he has are implicit childhood ones that are more sensory than anything. He’s the most innocent of the kids, but he’s also very aware of his siblings’ struggles and tries to help when he can. He’s willing to fight, despite his total lack of experience.

Angel, unfortunately, absorbed plenty of bad memories as a baby, when she couldn’t control her powers very well and overheard everyone’s nightmares. She’s aware of what happened at The School, but she tries not to bring it up because it makes her siblings sad. She still has nightmares about it, still remembers things she shouldn’t. However, memories don’t quite compare to experiencing the real thing... 

Gazzy and Angel are indeed biologically related instead of just found family. I’ve put a bit of emphasis on that being different. Not in a way that invalidates found family, don’t worry. It’s just that I personally believe if you already have a found family dynamic and are now including blood siblings, there should be some significance to it, because otherwise why do they need to be related if everyone is already family? Basically: Gazzy and Angel are very very close. They love each other, they play together, they barely ever argue or fight. They’re babies, and I will protect them (I say as I put them through several back-to-back traumatic events)

Speaking of biological families…uh, most of the flock doesn’t have any. Max isn’t Jeb and Dr. Martinez’ kid, the flock doesn’t go on a hunt for their parents that goes nowhere. In this world, a good chunk of the test subjects made through donor eggs and sperm that’s been genetically altered in advance and raised in artificial wombs. Yeah, sure, they’ve got donor parents out there somewhere, but it’s not top priority for most of the flock. They’ve got guardians looking out for them, and when they don’t they’re just fighting on their own.

Despite not being related to Dr. Martinez, Max is still Latina. I didn’t change any of the races - Fang is Asian, Nudge is black, Iggy and Gazzy and Angel are white - except for adding some clarification on Fang, since Asian is a very broad term (he’s got DNA from Southeast Asia and East Asia, more specifically The Philippines and South Korea). Again, stuff that will be more relevant after book 1.

Some kids are donated by real people, though, usually altered in very, very early stages of development and monitored heavily until they’re born. Families sign a waiver promising a nice paycheck to cover all medical expenses, and a disclaimer of possible permanent damage to the body or death. There is one member of the flock who was donated to The School this way. I’m not telling who yet.

Ohhh boy the Erasers. I have so much to say about Erasers, but I’ll have to keep it short. 

When I started this rewrite, I had the question: “Why do we never see newly made Erasers? They can’t just start out as full-grown adults.” So, in this rewrite, we have child Erasers, which the flock refers to as “dogs”. They age quickly, so they do look like full grown adults when they’re three or four, however it doesn’t last long, since rapid aging doesn’t exactly stop. They live for roughly seven years max, but most of them outlive their fighting use before that. 

Full-grown Erasers are stronger, tougher, and are experts at following orders since it’s all they know. Dogs, on the other hand, are wild and violent. They’ll tear into anything they get their hands on and they’re harder to control, since they’re still learning. Itex utilizes them both.

Also of note on Erasers: they’re officially just Lupine hybrids, and the Eraser nickname was made up by the various children at The School, because they only ever came to the cage room to take away the unfortunate kids who didn’t live long enough, or the kids who were too sick to keep on living, effectively “erasing” them.

The School is a nickname that Gazzy came up with after they left. He still didn’t really understand the bad place they came from and how it was affecting his siblings, but kids on TV always talked about school like it was the worst thing in the world, so he figured that must be where they came from. He used it a lot, and it stuck with the rest of the flock too. 

Did I mention there’s more mutant kids? Because there’s more mutant kids. A LOT of mutant kids. 296 of them at The School alone, with over half of those being Erasers/dogs. They have to make a lot, since you never know which ones will succeed, which ones will be used for non mutation-related testing, and which ones will fail.

Where do they get the money for so many research babies? The flock doesn’t know any of this, but Itex is massive. Governments are willing to pay outrageous prices to fill their military with Erasers, and the research Itex provides from studying their mutants have cured diseases and provided better medical treatment for ordinary people around the world. The human experimentation is an open secret (though granted most people don’t know the entire process). Most of them can’t do much, however. Itex is very, very old, and it’s far too powerful for your average Joe to stop on their own.

Also there’s no “save the world” plotline. There’s some saving the world in there eventually (not now, but eventually), but it’s not a predestined thing that Jeb tells Max. Max wasn’t created to save the world. She and her siblings were created for something else...

...Anyways, that’s about all I have time for right now. I might post more details later, but feel free to hit me with a DM or an ask if you have any thoughts. Currently the rewrite is sitting at 23 chapters, which means I’m juuust over halfway done with the first draft lol. I don’t know when it’ll be out. I work on and off and I’m not super consistent. But hopefully I’ll have something done within the next twenty years. :P

[definitely-not-a-wasp]

I'm okay with a bunch of disorganized rambling honestly 😂. But if I had to narrow it down then I guess I want to know about main and side characters and how they compare to the original?

I know that tumblr is the Prime Site for disorganized rambling, but I have perfectionism issues. But that is a great question, nonnie, and I will be happy to ramble is a slightly less disorganized fashion.

When reading Maximum Ride as a somewhat-formed adult who discovered they enjoy English classes about 3.5 years ago, I noticed that JP, when writing, doesn't understand consistency. At all. Which means, in many ways, I have a free sandbox to work with.

Spoilers for my rewrite WIP, because I strongly believe that if a story would no longer be good if one had spoilers, then it wasn’t a good story in the first place.

I'm trying to keep the backstories the same, plus or minus the scientific method and a few characters (RIP my OCs. I want to bring you back so bad but it wouldn't fit with the thematic narrative). I've mostly kept their (starting) abilities the same, too. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce some WorldBuilding. (If I'm good at nothing else, I'm good at world building)

First off. Logically.

How are they getting Cable?

How are they getting internet?

How are they getting money to eat and stuff?

JP's answer: handwave it off. Sometimes you need to ignore logistics for the sake of plot. This is an answer I'd accept from an author that I like, such as Julie Kagawa, that makes amazing worlds, characters, and narratives that I will happily handwave a few things that wouldn't work in the real world. James Patterson, on the other hand, did not make any of that; he made a cool concept, some good rough-draft characters, and nothing else, and therefore this is an unforgivable sin.

Wasp's answer: They are not getting any of that.

Introducing Cottagecore.

The house is off the grid. Solar Panels and a wind turbine create electricity. They have their own well. They grow their own food, raise livestock for eggs, milk, and wool, and trap fish for meat. They get money through dumpster diving and pawning. They still have to steal half of the necessities they can’t make themselves. They do have a TV, but it can access about three channels on a clear day. Internet is only a thing when they go to the public library.

Giving the flock a background that’s heavy in farming and livestock rearing shores up the plot holes mentioned above, but in my opinion, ties the flock more tightly to the environment, thus giving them something tangible to lose when they have to leave the E-shaped house. Because they’re not just leaving a house and a safety net— they’re leaving their entire way of life with no promise of getting it back. It also gives them a tangible connection to the earth in case I want to actually pursue the global warming themes.

Main Characters

Maximum “Max” Ride (Birthname: nonexistent)

First off, I'm letting her be Latina, James Patterson.

In the original, Max was very much the headstrong, independent, action girl. Leaning into Strong Female Character (TM), but overall she had a strong, solid foundation and enough character consistency through the first three books for me to not have to just make an entire new character. However, I felt that she was, in some ways, a bit too Action-Girl and Strong and Capable. Yes, Max is incredible and competent, but she’s also fourteen. She’s a child.

In the rewrite, Max’s character is still headstrong, independent, capable, and sometimes not the best at listening to others. All of that’s the same. But she’s that way not because of girlboss energy, but because there’s no one else to do it. She doesn’t want to lead, necessarily. She wants to get some rest and let someone else handle the problems life keeps throwing at her. But she knows if she did that, the responsibility of leader would fall to Fang and Iggy, and she can’t ask that of them. She doesn’t want to place that burden on anyone else (Look, there’s a reason I chose Ayano’s Theory of Happiness as one of her signifier songs, okay?). Her narrative is very much centered around burden, and also around loss. She lost her cultural heritage when she was taken away from her birth family, she lost her childhood to being a leader, she lost a good deal of her friends to the school (RIP my OCs), she lost Jeb, and then she lost her stability. And she’s going to lose a lot more before the end of the story. So a lot of her character arc deals with learning that there are some things she can’t fix, some things that can’t be recovered. She can’t get the E-shaped house back. She can’t get her Little Baby Angel back, even after they rescue her. She can’t get her friends back from the school. And instead of working so hard to recover those or find something to replace them, she has to learn to live with that sense of loss and move on with her life without feeling guilty for leaving things behind. And she has to learn that asking for help and sharing her burden is selfish or weak.

Other changes I made that don’t necessarily fit into her narrative arc, but you asked for rambling so rambling you shall get:

Max hallucinates, because mental illness is also a prominent theme in the rewrite. She doesn’t have a psychotic disorder, but her C-PTSD causes visual/audio hallucinations, especially when she’s stressed or sleep deprived. 

Max ends up having a Gender Discovery throughout the story and goes by He/She pronouns eventually. I don’t know when, but it will happen.

As far as genetic modifications/special quirks go, she can fly faster than the rest of the flock, but not 300 miles per hour. She averages about sixty mph with diving speeds of 240. She cannot breathe underwater or shut down her organs on command. She also has the Super Special Power to predict the weather, but that’s not because of genetics, it’s because she has chronic pain in her right arm that gets worse when weather fronts change.

Her favored weapon is her trusty rebar that she picked up from a condemned building. I think she’s going to name it eventually but I don’t know what yet.

Fang (Birth name: Gabriel Xue)

In canon, Fang is characterized in early books by being the “dark, strong, silent type”. He’s probably the most reserved member of the flock, to the point of falling into the Brooding Mystery Man trope in parts of the book. They care a lot, but they’re not the best at conveying that, especially with the younger members of the flock, and at times their high empathy leads them to making mistakes. Despite the high empathy, he’s often compared to a robot due to his lack of expression and external emotions.

Well, first change is that they’re not a man, so jot that down—

If Max’s narrative is centered around burden and loss, I would probably say that Fang’s is centered around humanity and moving on. None of the flock was treated as human while in the school, but Fang was more often than not treated like a wild animal due to “behavioral issues”, and therefore had and continues to have a difficult time considering themselves real and alive, let alone human. This manifests through a several different ways— where in canon Fang definitely had a ‘fight’ reaction, in the re-write they have a ‘freeze’ or ‘shut down’ instinct. They’re selectively mute for multiple reasons (including derealization, jaw pain, the fact that they didn’t learn how to speak until they were 10, and genuinely forgetting it’s something they’re capable of), a period of Cotard’s syndrome, and a tendancy towards self-loathing and self-sacrifice. In short, Fang is still halfway stuck in the mindset that most of the flock grew out of when they escaped in the school, and doesn’t know how to move past it.

Much of their character arc revolves around not necessarily seeing themselves as human, but learning to treat themselves as human even when they don’t feel like one (or even feel real), and knowing that just because they don’t feel human all the time doesn’t mean anyone else can treat them the same. They never start easily expressing their emotions, and they’re always going to be selectively mute, but they learn to accept that those aspects of themself aren’t character flaws or signs that they’re sub-human. 

Other additions to Fang’s character include:

They don’t get their hair cut in New York. It stays long through the entire series. They have the longest hair in the flock by the end of the series, and they can wear it in so many styles.

Fang uses they/it pronouns because themes of reclaiming the weapons used against it and, more importantly, Gender.

They’re actually really good at spelling compared to the rest of the flock, because they and Iggy communicate with Print-On-Palm when they’re nonverbal, and they’re nonverbal for some pretty long stretches of time. 

They and Max have... zero romantic tension. At all. There is none. The number of times Max calls them her sibling/little sibling in the first arc alone is staggering, and that will not change.

Igneous “Iggy” (Birthname: Jamsetta “Jamie” Griffiths)

I’ve talked about Iggy before. Canon doesn’t give us much to go off of, but from what’s shown, he’s smart, sarcastic, has sharper edges than Fang and Max, and also has a sizable ruthless streak. So that’s what I have to go off of.

The big difference between Iggy and Fang&Max is that Iggy has a much better memory of the School. Most of the flock have areas (months or years) that they don’t remember, or people that they’ve blocked from their mind, but Iggy... doesn’t. So he’s the one that remembers all of the other AVIAN test subjects that were old enough to have names and identities but died due to complications. Max might have the burden of leadership, but he has the burden of memory. And that has lead to both a massive fucking guilt complex, because why did he survive when they didn’t, and, as mentioned above, a ruthless streak that he doesn’t shy away from.

Which is to say, by the end of the story, Iggy has the highest kill count.

I love, love writing Iggy next to Max and Fang. I love writing Iggy next to Gazzy and Nudge. Because, I say this with all of the love of the world, but Iggy is not a good person. He is loyalty and love incarnate, and the world can burn down if he and his siblings are safe. Max and Fang will always try to save as many people as they can. They will wonder what’s wrong with them the first time they kill and don’t have a mental breakdown about it. They are good in a way that Iggy is not. He’s okay with killing Erasers. He’s okay with killing humans. He’s okay with killing people who might not necessarily deserve it, if they show themselves as a threat or are simply in the blast radius. He knows perfectly well that most of those Erasers he’s murdering are four and five and he is okay with that, because a lot of the AVIANs were that age when they died. (Yeah, in the rewrite it’s not Fang who has an issue with Ari; it’s Iggy who wants the 7-year-old wolf-boy dead.) 

And this is, of course, juxtaposed with Iggy being really, really good with Nudge and Gazzy (especially in the beginning). Because, again, he actually remembers being a child. He remembers a lot of kids that died and is therefore fiercely protective of the kids that didn’t, as well as fiercely protective of the innocence that he never got. So he’s the one that cooks their favorite foods when they’re having a bad day, always makes time when they want to talk about something, and convinces Max to let them go to that toy store in New York because, yeah, he Max and Fang aren’t kids. They never were. But Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel can be. (And if he has to be a murderer to preserve that, then he’s perfectly okay with that.)

He and Angel don’t get along very well, though. The telepath doesn’t like hanging out with the person with the most clear memories of the school.

Other additions:

Iggy is trans and says trans rights

He also has paranoid episodes, because C-PTSD. Sometimes they’re very helpful. Sometimes they are not.

I actually decided that he’s one of the flock that doesn’t meet their parents. I know in canon he did, but I always found that very clunky because it didn’t add to his character. He was one of the characters who, until it was convenient for the plot, seemed to care the least about his family. I’d much rather give that to a character whose arc would benefit from it.

Iggy! Gets! Older Sibling Rights! Seriously, he’s two months younger than Fang, he is just as capable.

Iggy does not know braille because Jeb decided it wasn’t necessary for him to know. Iggy is also the best speller in the flock, because Print-on-Palm was the only way to talk to Fang for a solid year. Yes he mocks everyone over this.

Iggy is the only member of the flock that enjoys swimming and can take into the air from water. Everyone else in the flock is incredibly jealous.

Nudge (Birthname: Monique Robinson)

If Iggy is defined by his memories, Nudge is his polar opposite. She was seven when she left the School, but she has next to no memories of it. She is missing a lot of time in the first year she escaped. And that causes... a lot of things. It makes her feel disconnected from her older siblings, it gives her the ability to function in society in a way the other’s can’t, it lets her feel less grief over the ones that didn’t make it and she doesn’t remember, it makes her feel guilty that she doesn’t remember what she’s old enough to know. 

Basically, in order for me to keep the character of Nudge as I saw her (more extroverted, not afraid of the world, fascinated with humans like her siblings aren’t, desiring to fit in instead of isolate), I had to put a little bit of distance between her and the flock. Of course, she loves them— that will in no way change— but she’s old enough that she should remember the school (and her dead friends) unlike Gazzy and Angel, but she can’t, and she very much fears forgetting the flock if anything happens to them. So she’s trying desperately to keep the flock close and wants desperately to experience the world at the same time, and doesn’t know what to do when she can’t have both. That’s her biggest character conflict throughout the series, along with that in-between area where she’s not quite where her older siblings are but understands so much more than Gazzy and Angel, and where she stands in that.

So yeah. Nudge’s journey is that in looking for belonging in the world, in her family, and in herself.

This is why she’s one of the ones that gets to find her parent, James Patterson. 

Other additions include:

She never straightens her hair. Never. Her resources at the E-shaped house aren’t perfect, but she still has learned how to take care of her hair and has a few styles she cycles through.

She becomes the default person Max sics on people when the flock is trying to befriend them. Also their de-facto diplomat around strangers.

As in canon, she does take some time away from the flock to expirience ‘normal life’. This does not last long due to the stress of being separated from her siblings/not being able to help them and [REDACTED]

Nudge is... not the only person in her head. I’m not focusing on it much because she doesn’t actually know and neither does the flock (I don’t know if they ever figure it out during the series, either), but she has dissociative identity disorder. She’s not aware of her alter(s?). Her alter isn’t super aware of her, either. 

The alter that I’ve developed is named Oxy and is not super aware of the outside world. In her eyes, she’s still seven and they’re still at the School. She would not recognize the body as her own if she looked in a mirror.

Nudge actually leaves the flock for a while to pursue her dream of living a normal life. She deserves it. She learns how to make muffins and the basics of software development. These things are unrelated.

Gasman (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)

Honestly, writing Gazzy is kind of hard for me. Partially because I’m not great at writing kids, and partially because I feel like he’s a pretty surface-level character in-series that... isn’t super compelling in canon. But even if that’s the case, I try to treat all of my characters with respect, so here we go. In my rewrite, he escaped when he was four, which was half a lifetime ago for him, so his memories are ill-defined. Therefore, he managed to circumvent a lot of the trauma that the rest of the kids have, and not in the way Nudge did, which is by creating an elaborate blockage in her memories. 

Which means Gazzy... really doesn’t know how to deal with all of this traumatic stuff happening. So much of his development turns out to be a coming-of-age narrative. Learning how to deal with the horrors of what his siblings grew up with. Learning the fears that they had the entire time. Losing his innocence when everyone around him never had it in the first place, and being so terribly alone because of it. Because, really, how can you explain such a deep loss to people who never had what he had? How can they help in a way that matters?

Also, relationship-wise, I’m slowly deteriorating the relationship between him and Iggy. Slowly. Or, changing it, at least. Gazzy hero-worships Iggy in-series, and for good reason, because Iggy is super cool, especially in the eyes of an eight-year-old, and especially when Iggy has taken care to cultivate parts of his behaviors to be child-friendly. Part of growing up is seeing the flaws in your heroes, and Gazzy has to learn how to deal with it. End of the series Gazzy is much less closer to Iggy than beginning of the series Gazzy, and neither of them are really okay with that, but they learn to live with it, because that’s really all they can do.

Notes:

I’m keeping the mimickry! It plays a bit of a bigger role because that’s how Gazzy learned to talk. I’m debating whether or not he has his own voice or if he just borrows the flock’s as he sees fit. He also uses it to scream really loudly and occaisonally burst the eardrums of Erasers.

At one point he cosplays as Jessica Jones. No you don’t get any more context than this.

He has a horrible sense of fashion.

I’m changing his name eventually because it sucks. He’s either going to change it to Gannet, Garrison, or Ivy Mike temporarily, and permanently to Zephyr. (I never said I was going to make his name GOOD, because he’s eight, but it’s changing. You’re welcome.)

Angel (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)

It’s just... a completely different character, at this point. I’ve changed so many things about her in an attempt to make her consistent and act like a six-year-old and work in the whole “telepath before she has a solid sense of identity”, so it’s a different character. Also, I’m tired of writing coherently or in paragraphs, so have some interesting facts.

She has epilepsy! Super severe epilepsy! I think she might also develop juvenile MS in the future because her brain has so many scars from being a fucking six-year-old telepath. There’s no way she could get out of that unscathed.

She has more memories of the school than Gazzy, but only because she keeps accidentally reading the minds of Max, Fang, and Iggy. On a related note, she interacts with Iggy as little as possible.

The mind reading means that she has a hard time developing as a normal child with a normal sense of identity or reality. She can’t tell how much people are individual people and how much they’re just extensions of her. Conversely, she can’t tell how much of herself is actually her instead of the thoughts/opinions/identities of someone else. It’s... kinda fucked? But also super not-her-fault. 

She’s albino because white wings. Also, because I thought it was cool. This also means that her vision sucks, though. Also she has the biggest straw sunhat and the most stylish sunglasses a six-year-old can have.

She’s responsible for Max shaving her hair off.

She has the highest swear count because I think it’s funny. She’s the only person allowed to say the fuck word in writing. Everyone else can only say ‘hell’ and the occasionally ‘damn’ but she can say whatever she wants for dramatic and comedic value.

She is NOT THE FUCKING VOICE, J*MES P*TTERSON.

Honorable Mentions

Jeb

I’m skipping Jeb because of how little I care about him. He’s a little bitch, next character.

Ari

STILL HASN’T BEEN REVEALED AS AN ERASER. I’ve been writing for 50,000 words and he’s over here saying ‘nope nope not yet, not dramatic enough’. He’s had speaking lines but has refused to make himself known to Max. I am so frustrated with this seven-year-old wolf-child that I’ve already considered how I would kill him, if I decide I want to kill yet another child in my writing.

So, my main thoughts for Ari is that he... really just drew the short end of the stick in every possible way. While Jeb didn’t sign him up for Eraser expirimentation, he didn’t do anything to stop it, and pretty much cut his losses when he realized this expiriment made a wreck of his ‘perfect, unflawed’ son, because Jeb doesn’t consider children of any species to actually be humans. So, Ari really hates his dad, which makes things complicated, because he also really loves his dad and really wants his approval. 

Which means that he also really hates Max, because she’s the child that always got Jeb’s time and attention, even when Ari was human. I think, on some level, he knows that trying to tear Max down to a less-favored level isn’t actually going to help his situation— infighting for the love of an abusive parent won’t make them any less abusive— but he’s also seven, and his development is already severely stunted due to becoming an Eraser, and he doesn’t see ‘leaving ITEX’ as an option like the Flock does. ITEX is his everything. It’s all he’s ever known, and they tell him he’s doing the right thing, and he wants them to love him. He wants his father to love him. He knows that if he ever questions ITEX, his father will never love him. So it must be his older sister that’s ruining his life and being a horrible child, and once Ari drags her back down to his level, Jeb will realize who the best child is and love him properly again.

Ari, on an even deeper level, does care for Max quite a bit, because she’s his older sister and he wants that to mean something in a way that ‘Jeb being his father’ obviously doesn’t. He wants what she made for herself, and he hates the Flock because she loves them and obviously doesn’t love him. 

Ari, if anything, is the product of neglect, and both loves and hates everyone who shows a chance of caring about him. And he’s seven, so he can’t notice these patterns, let alone break them.

So. Notes!

He doesn’t look like an adult. I thought that was gross and unnecessary. He’s seven, but he looks closer to thirteen or fourteen. Still young enough that he looks like every Eraser’s little brother, and the Erasers high-key treat him like it.

On a related note, he’s the only Eraser who can talk. The others don’t have the mental capacity or vocal structure to replicate human speech, but they can understand language (at about the level of a two or three year old) and are very good at nonverbal communication. This is why Ari managed to climb the ranks despite only having three years of “service” and also looking like a tween.

He doesn’t have an expiration date because that is SUCH a stupid plot point.

I’m giving him a chainsaw! I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but he deserves to have a chainsaw and GODDAMN I will give it to him.

Emergency and Gene

The OCs that I love and also killed pre-series. They don’t have any scenes, because they’re dead, but their deaths greatly effected Max, Fang, and Iggy, and they are very commonly referenced. Their voices are probably Max’s most common hallucination, to the point where she sometimes pretends they’re ghosts that she can talk to. They’re not ghosts. They’re dead.

Dr. Valencia Martinez

I’m actually keeping her pretty close to canon— loving, supportive, the type of person to take in a gsw victim with minimal questions. The difference is that rather than kindness fueling her actions, it’s incredible guilt. She has three goals surrounding Max: Give her as much support in any way she can, teach her as much about chicane culture as possible, and never let Max know that she’s her birth parent.

(She’s probably going to fail at AT LEAST two of those, but it’s the thought that counts.)

Notes:

She has a pet fox named Robin Hood that she rescued from an exotic animal salesman that got arrested.

I think I’m going to kill her. I don’t know yet, but it’s on the table.

Anne Walker

Y’know, the fake FBI Agent. Who’s not actually a fake in my story because I hated that plot point. She’s genuinely an FBI agent who put the Flock into pseudo-witness-protection in order to build a case against the Institute of Higher Living, accidentally got attached to her prime witnesses, raised them for a few months, realized a [SPOILER] and promptly had to let them get the hell out dodge.

I really like the Anne Walker that lives in my head. She is a VITAL part of the Flock’s development, their mental/emotional recovery, and adding to their safety net to fall back on. She serves them as their first adult role model, and is the first adult to show them what parent/child are supposed to look like from a healthy perspective. Though she has several fuck ups, she becomes someone that the Flock genuinely trusts and loves, which makes it all the more difficult for them to leave when [REDACTED].

Notes:

She and Max do butt heads initially, because Max is paranoid and also afraid of becoming uneeded. This ends up being incredibly important because Max needs to learn how to live and find meaning in life without being the designated Leader/Parent/Big Sister

Anne, at one point, sits the entire flock down to teach them about consent, which was something no one ever talked about with them before. She goes in talking specifically about consent in a romantic/sexual sense (because they’re fourteen and that’s something they need to know), but quickly turns into a full-fledged no, people are NOT allowed to do that to you, what the FUCK.

She’s responsible for giving the flock a laptop. It’s because Angel is online schooled (bc telepathy makes actually learning difficult) and was therefore provided with a computer.

Anne is also allowed to swear, but only when it’s funny.

Michael “Grey” Rivers

Aka Grey from the Sewers Aka GR3Y H47 Aka Mike from the Bronx Aka Gifted Child Syndrome Incarnate Aka Would-be-in-MIT-if-his-parents-weren’t-horrible. He’s my son, your honour.

Basically, his backstory boils down to him being a genius, getting into MIT at 14, his (horrible) parents wanting a perfect child who could “make it out” of the Bronx and represent his family/neighborhood/borough to the world. When he inevitably failed their expectations due to stress, a schizophrenic-spectrum disorder that completely alienated him from the rest of his support network, and refusing to take his psych meds because the side effects were horrible and they made it harder to think (and therefore pass his classes), they kicked him out. He fully intends to go back to MIT when he turns 18 and has control of his finances/scholarships/medication/therapy.

So that’s how the flock meets him. 

Mike ends up in a very prominent support role for the flock both in technological persuits (helping them track their parents, helping them get information from ITEX, trying to disable Max’s chip and failing multiple times until it becomes a matter of personal honour—), in helping the older members of the flock figure out how to deal with hallucinations/delusions (because he’s actually been to therapy, unlike them), and in being one of the only people who talks to them and helps them without any ulterior motive. He’s not trying to build a case against ITEX/The Institute of Higher Learning, he’s not double crossing them, he’s not plagued with guilt. He just genuinely wants to help them, and they genuinely want to help him, and that’s their first introduction to a healthy, non-codependent relationship.

My many disorganized notes on Michael Rivers:

He’s from specifically Morris Heights, Bronx, NYC.

He would say that his last name is actually Rivera, but his grandparents changed it to Rivers so it would sound more English, and his family has been in America for so long that he doesn’t know much about any Latino heritage he may or may not have. He identifies as African American, not Afro-Latino. He’s just bitter that his family felt the need to change their surname to have better opportunities in New York.

Nudge aggressively befriends him pretty much the moment she meets him, bullies him into teaching her how to code, and he very quickly adopts her as his pseudo-little-sister.

His delusions in the book seemed to involve government conspiracies, but as that’s the one delusion that is proved correct in the book, I’ve decided it would be best if his delusions and reality intersected a bit less if I don’t want to write him having a manic/paranoid episode in the second scene he has screen time. So his delusions are more based on “none of this is real”, “someone is recording everything I do and setting me up to fail” and “my ill-wishes on people can and will come true if I dwell on them too long.”. Government conspiracies are one of things he is skeptical about because he thinks most conspiracies are either “CIA admitted to this twenty years ago” or “antisemitism”.

He’s taking online free college classes that don’t actually give him any college credit, but they have good information and help him feel like he’s working towards something. He plans to double major in computer sciences and electrical engineering, minor in marine biology. He’s wanted to join NOAA since he was twelve and he is nothing if not stubborn.

There you go. These are my characters, now. I have custody.

[emorish-avian]

so far in my efforts to rewrite maximum ride, i have come up with the following chapter titles, which i will list here (in no particular order):

Theres Nothing Worse Than Doing Laundry

There’s One Thing Worse Than Doing Laundry

Who’s At The Door? Surprise! It’s Trauma!

Things Get Even Worse, And It’s Not Our Fault This Time

Gazzy Gets Creative, And Everyone Is Afraid

And Remember Kids, Please Break Into Houses Responsibly!

We Interrupt Your Rescue To Bring You Another Shorter, Easier Rescue

Note To Self: Don’t Assume Rescues Will Ever Be Short Or Easy

[blinkywritesstuffsometimes]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

HEYYYYY GUYS GUESS WHAT??? PROJECT ICARUS CHAPTER 3 IS OUT! GO GIVE IT A READ!

[blinkydoesstuffsometimes]

So I've mentioned the MR rewrite I'm working on a couple times, but I've never made a big official post about it. Now that I'm more than halfway through book 1, I figured I'd talk about it for a bit.

It's more in the vein of Gay Birds, since I'm using OCs instead if the flock.

It's technically almost a year old at this point. Like, it wasn't called a rewrite back then, but that's when I developed the OCs and the AU idea. (i didn't actually start writing until two months ago)

I'm going to cover the first three books, but there will be many, many differences.

Honestly, it's less rewrite and more of an original story borrowing from JP's premise at this point :p

Currently doesn't have a title. I mean, it's got a placeholder title, but I don't think "AAAAAAA BIRDS AAAAAAA" does the story justice.

I'm not posting any chapters until book 1 is done (which will be hopefully soon?) and I've got a decent grip on book 2.

I'm not including any romance between characters in the book. None. Zip. I don't trust myself to write a romamce sub-plot well enough.

And that's all I have for right now I think? If anyone has any questions or feedback or whatever drop an ask/rb/reply/carrier pigeon/whatever and I'll see if I can answer. Just figured I'd make my rewrite-bandwaggon-joining official.

[maxtothemax]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

After, like, two years of me promising this, it’s finally happening.

Introducing: GAY BIRDS | a Maximum Ride rewrite!!

For those of you who are just joining us, I believe the Maximum Ride series had a lot of untapped potential. But also, I’m not too great at working within the constraints of pre-existing characters, so I made my own and threw them into the plot of MR. You don’t have to have read MR to read this, but if you have read MR, then my hope is you’ll enjoy it equally as much.

This is going to be an ongoing work, so stay tuned, because there are more chapters coming. Also, here’s a link for a quick intro to the GB universe’s flock.

Enjoy the ride!