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Where were you twenty years ago?

Today is the twentieth anniversary of Maximum Ride: on April 11th, 2005, The Angel Experiment hit the shelves. The intervening decades have seen the publication of eight sequels and a two-book sequel series, as well as the release of a movie adaptation.

It’s been a long road from 2005 to 2025, but I’m happy to have spent it with Maximum Ride in my life.

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So it’s April 11th. The 20 year anniversary of Maximum Ride. That’s a pretty big deal. I wish I had more to do, to say. Max means so fucking much to me that I can’t even put it in to words. I would absolutely not be who I am today without her, these books genuinely shaped me as a person. I had originally planned to push back my year long art block and draw something for the anniversary, but I’ve had so much going on irl these last two months that I just haven’t had the time unfortunately.

But it’s now almost 9am Florida time. Which means that at any moment now Jimmy p could be active online and making posts, or god forbid, announcements about the series. I really hope he doesn’t announce any new books, but I do have to say, I think I will be a little disappointed if he just forgets it completely.

It’s still early in America, but it’s nearly 11pm here in Aus so I’m going to bed soon, and I just really really hope I don’t wake up to bad news in the morning.

But anyway, happy 20th anniversary to my favourite fandom ever. Yall are truly amazing and I love being a part of this community so damn much. I know I’ve said it before, but the current Maximum Ride fandom is seriously the best fandom I’ve ever been in. I hope to be here with all of you for another 20 years.

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IT'S UP

Four hours of me explaining all of maximum ride to you as I hold you captive and also mildly die of heat. Welcome.

This was my fav book series as a kid, so revisiting it was. Well. Huh.

Maximum Ride, huh.

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Maximum!

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Can’t believe I’ve never drawn my girl!

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I love when they’re in love🪶🖤❤️

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1. god the writing is heavy handed

2. my little sociopath *pinkie pie prances across screen*

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fang is so cute i am inconsolable “focused… >:|”

[ID: a manga panel of max looking to the side at fang with a curious expression and the caption “glance” while fang looks forward with an intent neutral expression captioned “focused…” /END ID]

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This is SO much better and makes Anne's betrayal a harder hit than in canon.

concept for an MR fanfic that's been rattling around in my head for a few years:

at the beginning of book 2, it actually is the FBI that finds the flock at the hospital, not just itex in a trench coat. the FBI is very interested in these bird kids, and they see a unique opportunity with fang's injury.

they fake fang's death and whisk him off to a secret lab to study him.

the rest of the flock—devastated by fang's "death," unsure how they want to proceed—goes to live with anne (who, again, actually works for the FBI in this version), with the promise that they will be studied "non-invasively" and given grief counseling (which they all think is bullshit, especially max, but this is their most stable option at the moment).

fang is studied intensively while recovering from his near-fatal injury. (i know he recovered in, like, two days in canon. i'm not doing that here.) someone from the FBI tells him that the flock thinks he's dead; no one is coming to save him. he's not sure if he believes them. most of the time, he's too exhausted to think about it.

max grows more and more restless with being tied down, so to speak, but the rest of the flock seems to appreciate the momentary stability, especially while they're still grieving. she tolerates it as best she can, thinking that it would be much easier to tolerate if fang were here.

slowly, though, max grows suspicious of anne—overhearing strange snippets of phone calls, not believing when anne just smiles and says everything is fine. max and iggy snoop around in anne's office, and that's when they stumble upon the truth: fang never died. he's been alive this whole time.

cue the badass rescue scene, with iggy and gazzy's bombs wreaking havoc on the government lab. fang is weak from the experiments when they find him, but they manage to break him out and make their escape.

once they're finally far away and safe (as safe as they ever are, anyway) there's a teary, heartfelt reunion. fang cries, too, because he wasn't sure whether the flock would ever find him.

the end :)

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Eating this up, op

Re-designed the Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment book cover for a class assignment!

I loved these books so much as a kid- the flock deserved better <3

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All of Iggy's power-boosts become much more acceptable if you decide that they're not actually power boosts, but instead Iggy "canonical genius who fucks with dangerous things he definitely shouldn't touch" Griffiths taking a page out of Jeb's book and doing horribly unethical science through the first three books.

He only started acting upset about being blind after leaving their home, because it was at that point that being blind became a liability in his life. This grows through books 1-3, until the entire flock is kidnapped and conveniently brought back to the School, where sure, Iggy's a prisoner, but suddenly he has access to supplies and research. And then, oh so conveniently, he starts being able to sense color and have limited sight on white backgrounds (see: in bright lighting).

I think Iggy was gathering information from the Institute for Higher Living (mostly what he could glean through "innocent questions") and from his own memories of the School, to try to give himself a boost. In fact, I think it started in SoF, and that's why Iggy had a breakdown over being blind— what he was trying wasn't working, because he didn't have a full laboratory full of resources or all of the puzzle pieces he needed. And he's not about to talk to anyone else about it, because not only would they probably freak the fuck out about him using himself as a test subject, but he also knows that... frankly, they probably wouldn't be able to help him. Nudge is great with tech, Fang is an investigator at their core, Max is an excellent tactician, but when it comes to biology, to chemistry, to anything that strays to the School, he's the person who handles those subjects.

What's that? They're breaking back into the School? Iggy is 10/10 on board.

What's that? They're getting kidnapped by the School and Angel betrayed them? Not great, but he's been during disadvantages into advantages for most of his life. He can do it one more time.

They're breaking into ITEX now? Even fucking better.

Sitting in the dining room of the Martinez house, after ITEX is distroyed, after several sleepless nights of injections and eyedrops and saying it's going to work this time, he can see pinpricks of light at the edge of his vision. By the time he boards the Wendy K, he can see light. Sometimes, when he focuses until his head aches, he can pick up movement against bright backgrounds. Not much, but enough that he can move out of the way of an oncoming attack. And that's all he needs.

Then he picks up a plastic cup and tastes something on the back of his tongue that he can only describe as blue, and tastes bad, and wonders what the fuck else he accidentally caused.

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1. The Angel Experiment

2. School’s Out Forever

3. Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

4. The Final Warning

5. Max

6. Fang

7. Angel

8. Nevermore

9. Maximum Ride Forever

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Shout out to anyone that ever made a character that’s a ‘Secret Government experiment’ that escapes the lab and is now wanted and misunderstood. That’s top tier character design, thank you.

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IT IS HERE

lip balm for scale… it’s just like, normal CD size

context: this is a bit of promotional marketing for the second Maximum Ride book, i talked a little more about it in this post

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OH MY GOD

LOOK WHAT SHOWED UP ON EBAY

ok i will be a little more normal and explain. this is the SOF promotional soundtrack, a mindbogglingly-rare piece of marketing for the second Maximum Ride book. prior to the release of said book, the CD was available in a number of ways: a weekly contest run through the forums, a promotional offer through Five Below, as a prize in radio contests, and as a gift with each of the first 100,000 copies of School’s Out – Forever.

but as far as i’ve been able to uncover, it was never available for purchase, and it is now completely unobtainable unless you go to the, like, one library in California that owns a copy.

or if someone lists one on eBay.

(yes, of course i bought it lmao)

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This very interesting FANG cover with an implied similar cover for MAX