#what if max could have helped

[theoldkyokodied]

The Allegiance of the Ascended Vampire and the New God of Magic

[fumifooms]

Chilchuck analysis speedrun: As a hardworking half-foot who grew up poor and discriminated against and had his gullibility taken advantage of multiple times in his early adventuring days, Chilchuck thinks optimism is a dangerous flaw. He’s stressed and strict all the time because his job is noticing details like traps that could get everyone killed before anyone knows it, he takes the lives of everyone to be on his shoulders, and with the way he speaks about it that probably partly reflects how he felt about taking it upon himself to provide for his family too. His life’s always been pretty centered around work and has become even moreso now that his wife left and everyone is independent, and due to past events he’s very iffy with bonding with coworkers. He thinks feelings and job are a disaster mix. Like with his wife or with parties hiring him as sacrifice, being open or having good faith is vulnerability which can get you hurt, so he processes and shows all his stress as anger instead of worry. Doing strict dieting probably isn’t helping the irritability what with hunger, and on top of being a hunger suppressant alcohol might be the main stress reliever he has.

His grey hairs are so earned

[sysig]

Delusions (Patreon)

"Could I have your hand, sir?" Max didn't move, which Dexter was, sadly, getting used to.

"Sir?" Max jerked, then turned and stared at him, lost and blank. "Your hand, please."

Max's hand lifted shakily, and he laid it gently in Dexter's upturned palm. Dexter gave a quick and quiet "thank you," then turned it over in his own hand, observing him closely.

Too closely - his knuckles were rough and his fingernails were dull and cracked in places. His once-soft, not-a-day-in-his-life-subjected-to-hard-labour hands were now, already, toughened and split and scarred in places, especially the heel of his palm. He turned it over again, this time to stop looking so intensely. He had only wanted to give it a cursory glance to begin with.

"Do you know what I see, sir?" he asked as conversationally as he could manage, running his fingers along Max's abused flesh. He seemed to be at least half paying attention, his eye gazing down between them, and he'd occasionally twitch, encouragingly Dexter thought. He seemed to want to curl around him, then stopped and shook, his hand squeezing into a fist. Dexter coaxed him back out, encouraged him to hold himself lightly.

"What do you see?" He was almost startled by Max actually continuing their conversation, that happened so rarely now, shaking and quiet as it was. He took a deep breath, was he really going to do this?

"I see a hand, with five fingers." Max remained quiet, though his brow curled, and a guarded look came into his eye, though he still wasn't looking at Dexter. He felt a pang of guilt, but he had to try. "What do you see?"

Max's eye unfocused and began to water. He looked up, but not enough to reach Dexter's gaze in return, instead staring through his chest, and he felt just as hollow and empty as he must look to him.

"Do you take me for a fool, DAX?" Quiet and as close to angry as he'd heard since they'd been here.

No, not angry.

Betrayed.

He swallowed down the stinging lump at the back of his throat. He had to put on a brave face, had to keep his composure if he wanted Max to get better. That was the only thing he wanted, more than anything.

"Of course not, sir. Genuinely, what do you see?"

Max pulled his hand away and turned his body, his bandaged side facing Dexter. Shutting him out, pointedly. Dexter's empty hand curled into a fist, he was no better.

"Please, don't..." Max took a shallow, shuddering breath, and several beats before he spoke again, even quieter. "Don't ridicule me." Dexter could hear his breath catch, and he wanted nothing more than for this all to just stop.

"Sir, I didn't-"

"I've had enough of that." He shook his head stiffly, the action strange and wrong, like he had forgotten how. He stilled, his head turned even further away. "More than enough."

[simgerale]

me after attempting to get back into sims and realizing i had a lot more to do than play the game

[gooperts-gunk]

love wins btw

[toytulini]

if you draw enough monster ocs, when you go back to drawing a human character, it feels like "sameface syndrome" everytime, by virtue of their face being. human.

[thebigqueer]

unrelated to that rb but im thinking about it and i dont think piper liking jason was ever a forced heteronormativity thing i think she genuinely liked him

[bunisher]

i need all future comics writers of frank (and anyone on DDBA) to stop trying to write him as a guy who had a normal childhood and was always just kinda Like That. or that he was simply destined to become the punisher, but that’s kind of a separate topic.

people who go into the military at 18 rarely have normal childhoods, they are often raised in abusive environments that are normalized. the urge to go into the military typically does not come from people who aren’t used to some form of abuse, because why would you willingly want to go into that? unless you are susceptible to indoctrination toward having faith in a system from a young age and aren’t able to discern the red flags? the military system preys on poor young men in particular by scouting them and offering all these bells and whistles (free college, healthcare, community) and feelings of importance, but then just forgets about them afterward.

side note: it’s actually such a disservice to many veterans to forget about how the military is an abusive system. it literally strips you of everything with no help in reintegrating back into society (other than by members of the same community). i get TPS1 tried to do something with this but dropped the ball. it feels like many writers just use his marine background as some sort of fun fact that only comes into play with certain things, but it very much shapes who you are and changes your identity. it’s a very cult-like system.

many people who want to serve are related to others who have prior. many people (especially men) who want to serve at that age have an underlying need that they think can be met. many people are brainwashed by military propaganda and believe it is the right thing to do. especially when it comes to religion, there’s this idea of men using their bodies to protect the innocent that goes back hundreds of years, and this idea of serving god, which we see young francis try to do in two ways. (side note: why do they keep removing his religious background? i liked the nod to it in the nmcu but it seems modern comics writers (looking at you jason aaron) just forget this?) besides, the functions of religion for people are very similar to the functions of the military as far as members go, namely community and a sense of greater purpose.

to me, as a reader/watcher, threads of probable abuse history are present in frank’s character, and i wish we had a writer brave enough to write about it. why else would he care so much about innocents and victims? why else would he become suicidal and guilt stricken when he hurts an innocent? it makes you think: was there no one who protected him or someone else he knew?

and this may not mean anything but idk i think he’s so much more tragic and juicy if you look at him like someone who is not the perfect victim (and maybe doesn’t even recognize their abuse) but someone who instead of healing and becoming soft, becomes angry and violent afterward. trauma, especially repeated trauma, does not effect people all the same way and i really wish they would just be bold enough to work with that. i get trying to piss off the alt right but completely changing the character to fit the same stereotype of a ‘psychopath’ (which is an outdated term) as they do in horror movies about killer children is just poor writing. again, talking about punisher 2022, but this was kinda in nmcu too. and sure yeah they’ve retired his character (but not the punisher….? ok) in the comics, but for when he inevitably does come back, yeah.

[opalsiren]

consider: aquamarine (2006) but zikki. that's it that's the post

[phoenix-clan]

i'm trying to finish 4 part 2 but i am feeling really dissatisfied with my art style lately... would anyone be angry if i slightly changed the art style i'm using for this?

[sysig]

Just a bit indulgent, no harm in it, surely (Patreon)

[pinkeoni]

do you think max was characterised for a bait-and-switch final girl. preferring max than maxine, being boyish, seeming to reject the boys at first, being the one to defeat billy over steve holding his nail bat (check the castration fear threat when she slams it down to the floor between billy’s legs) while all the boys are prone bystanders. but this then falls away as her story prioritises her romance with lucas and female solidarity, and why she isn't able to escape her victim role coming to head in s4 saving herself

I don't think I mentioned this in my Will post but Max is absolutely a Final Girl, from what you said anon with her boyishness as well as her function in the story. S4 is the most slasher-y season (they even bring up Freddy Krueger by name, just in case we missed the reference) and Max is the final victim and does manage to survive, even narrowly.

There are some aspects like you said that do set her apart from common ideas of final girls although final girl-ism isn't necessarily a strict set of guidelines and there are plenty of other characters that bend the rules but are still considered to be Final Girls— Sally from Texas Chainsaw was rescued by an outside source and Sidney Prescott had a romance and even lost her virginity in the movie (albeit to the killer himself, and Scream is a film that acknowledged and tried to both embrace and subvert slasher tropes)

I see the part of your ask that asks if these parts of Max that set her apart from other Final Girls is what causes her to not be able to save herself and honestly anon... I'm not sure. I know that the Duffs originally planned to kill her which is... a decision I'm glad they went back on. And really I don't think that this eliminates her Final Girl status as I see the Final Girl as being able to endure and survive and even if she needed outside help and just barely escaped alive, she's still kicking!

Honestly I don't know if Max's rescue by El at the end of the season is meant to be a bait-and-switch and more of a half-hearted attempt to try and string two plots together. Sure it makes sense for El to want to save Max, but El's plot wasn't really about Max, Max's plot wasn't really about El, so it doesn't feel like a culmination of anything. Max was able to help herself out a little by figuring out how to "hide in the light" but after that she was just mulling around until El showed up. If anything it serves El's hero plot more than it serves Max's plot. There's some connective tissue there, but it's loose.

I know that part of Max's plot was about allowing herself to open up and let other people help her, this is a little flimsy because El wasn't the one she was keeping out and they were really only separated by distance. Would Max have shut El out if El were still in Hawkins? Probably. But the way more satisfying moment already came from Dear Billy when the people she was trying to shut out in the first place, Lucas and Dustin, not only get through to her with the music but she also makes the decision to run to them. So now with Max being able to let others in to help her, she needs to decide if she wants to allow herself to keep living.

[ghostclout]

NPMD fancast, if it took place in the 80s and in England:

Terry Hall as Max Jagerman

End of fan cast.

[straycalamities]

i wanna draw but the thing is: i Think too much when i draw and so the horrors flood in

[exopelagic]

okay facing consequences of my actions

[arolesbianism]

I am still not over the level cap thing what do you mean level fucking 10