crawling out of my cave after not posting for nearly two years for this but oh my god i cannot stop thinking about maxwell gotch he has bewitched me
specifically in this moment however i am thinking about the excerpt of monty’s book we got in the adventuring party and the absolute angst potential that lies therein
because like. the entire reason that the adventure STARTS (and on the zephyr too!!!) in the first place is because maxwell cared about his grandfather’s legacy and wanted to find the professor and he’s the one who helped olethra find the radio transmission from ramansu and it’s just. maxwell is one of the big inciting forces behind the ENTIRE story and instead, in that first chapter, it’s van who (iirc) discovers the radio transmission and it’s van who goes to gather the crew together and it’s like wow yeah that just practically erases a big part of max’s story and makes him appear significantly less important than he actually is/was
also like this might just be me autistically projecting onto maxwell but like. consistently being made fun of and/or scolded for having “tone issues” and then being turned into a completely silent character… ouch. while probably unintentional, that decision does almost carry the undercurrent of “you would be better, more liked, more palatable if you just didn’t talk” which is just ow. also like, yes while max does often put his shoe in his mouth and a lot of the tone criticisms are justified, there are also times when maxwell speaking was sooo important!! some of the ones that immediately come to mind are when he and monty are speaking in zumhara to convince everyone to destroy the engine before the queen does, and max did a significant amount of heavy lifting in that forum. max is the one who convinces the group to put torse’s golden heart in when he’s disanimated, which is what allowed everything important that torse goes on to do to happen in the first place. all of that gone and reattributed because now he’s just “the max,” brutal, strong, and silent, stripped of everything except his functionality as a heavy hitter.
(also there’s something in there about maxwell being too rowdy/whimsical for his family, but not rowdy/whimsical enough for the crew of the zephyr but idk exactly where)
also i am fully aware of both the in-universe and irl reasons why maxwell is portrayed this way, and also yes i am fully aware a lot of it was a joke and that i am reading wayyy too far into it but i just relate to maxwell soooo hard that i lowkey can’t help wanting to over analyze everything about him anyways rant over byeeeee
