#Maximum Ride rewrite

[fly-with-the-flock]

So anyway, in my rewrite, I’m thinking I’m gonna change it so that they can hide their wings completely by kinda like… pulling them into their backs, like a shapeshifting kinda thing? Idk. I know it doesn’t really make total sense, but neither does them being able to hide huge fucken 14 ft wings under a damn hoodie lmao

[junpeijackflash]

Happy Pride Month, lovers and haters of Maximum Ride!

I promised I'd talk a bit more about my rewrite by revealing which members of the flock are LGBTQ+, and now that I've finally finished fixed Chapter 7, now's as good a time as any.

This will be spoilers for stuff I've planned further into the future (as in: most of this is only really relevant from book 2 onwards). This also isn't all the LGBTQ+ characters I have. There's a couple of OCs (and a handful of stolen James Patterson characters). Might talk about them later, might not. Who knows.

Characters are below the cut!

Alright, we're all clear on spoilers? (though I guess it doesn't matter in the case of a rewrite with no confirmed release date lol)

Then, in a semi-particular order, let's start with...

Nudge!

Using a new picrew for all of these. Link can be found here: https://picrew.me/ja/image_maker/626197

Nudge is pansexual, which tbh is the headcanon I've had for her for years now, so this doesn't feel like much of a change. I should note here that she - along with the other members of the flock, minus one exception - don't technically use the terms I'm using here to describe their sexuality, for one reason or another.

For Nudge, it's because she doesn't discover any words for describing her experience other than "gay" for a while, and she doesn't really like calling herself "gay" since she doesn't feel like the term fits her.

She doesn't have any romantic relationships, but she does have a crush, and gets incredibly shy and embarrassed about it.

Iggy!

Iggy is, by definition, gay. However, Iggy doesn't particularly like the term "gay". He usually either uses "queer" or just goes unlabeled.

Iggy is also the only character that I have a planned romantic relationship, and it's with a stolen James Patterson character! Place your bets everyone! It's not gonna be who you think it is!

Both Iggy and Nudge are already out by the time book 1 starts. These next two come out after a bit of self-discovery during book 2.

Max!

Maximum Ride is aromantic, realizing this after 14 years of living when she's finally confronted with other people her age and realizes that dating and romance are in fact real things people want to do and not something made up for television.

I haven't decided whether or not she's asexual as well. Feel free to headcanon that, or whatever you want. I'm leaving it up to interpretation.

Of course, Max isn't going to be having any romance, considering she is the last person in the flock who'd want that.

And finally, the last member of the flock, and the only trans member......

...oh come on, like you don't know who I'm talking about.

Fang!

So yeah, I've fallen victim to the nonbinary/trans Fang agenda, and I'm here to make all of you join as well.

To keep things simple, and not spoil all of my Fang Development Plans, here's a basic summary of Fang's pronouns book-by-book.

Book 1: he/him

Book 2: he/they

Book 3: they/he, but in the "Only people very close to me get to call me 'he', everyone else has to use 'they' or I'll kill them" sort of way

Should also note: the flock as a whole is not even aware of the concept of being trans or the fact that people can be something other than male or female until book 2. Finding out helps Fang start questioning their gender.

That about wraps it up. Sorry if this is underwhelming, I never know what I do or don't want to say regarding spoilers. The only two flock members who aren't included on this list are Gazzy and Angel, but that's really just because they're very tiny children and I was thinking less about who they might have a crush on and more about the brand new childhood trauma they'll be getting and living with for a very long time.

[fortheflock]

Can someone doing a Maxim Ride rewrite make it that when they do their New York makeover challenge ( which if you're not including that, that seems like a sin because it is one of my favorite scenes in the first book cuz , it's just so fucking goofy)

Have Max dye her hair from brown to blonde.

This is mostly because of the hair controversy with the inconsistency of whether James Patterson wrote her with brown hair or blonde hair (or red???). I remember in the fandoms it was always such a talked about thing. In the book she had brown hair or brown with blonde streaks but on the cover she always had very blonde hair. The manga came out and she had blonde hair.

Movie and Marvel comic also fucked it up but I don't want to talk about it right now. But another cool concept to add to that would be having Max be very paranoid about her being chased and have her dye her hair a lot.

End game would be that she gets sick of it and shaves it out for Hawk

[kisses4butterflies]

Boosting my silly Maximum Ride rewrite now that ao3 is back 🤭

[mkzmerryfriend]

HEY!

I can't find my old posts, I think I hid one but I don't know where those go so!!! Hey!!! I'm still writing the Maximum Ride rewrite!!!

I have a lot of material, as you might assume from the amount of time this has taken me, and feel semi-confident that I can start posting it on AO3 soon. I will make a new post here when I do finally publish it, but I wanted to let people know that I didn't just say I would do it and then dip. I have been Writing. Things are Happening. I hope this will go over Well with you all.

A short character intro for you all to get excited about for now: the Flock lives peacefully in a large home owned by Dr. Martinez in the Rockies. Max, nineteen, acts as the tentative leader when her mom isn't around. Fang, seventeen, is the house's resident shadow, and his neon gamer lights can be seen best in the dead of night, glowing from under his bedroom door. Iggy, also seventeen and one of the only two members who doesn't have wings, would be the mom of the group if he let them call him that. Naomi, fourteen, is a budding photographer with a bright future, known the house over for her beautiful aerial shots taken without the use of a drone. Angel, six and also wingless, is the house's resident little one, still innocent and hopeful about the world, living in a world where Barbie's fight the Terminator and win by challenging him to a spelling bee. Or something. Who knows what her Barbie sessions are actually about.

[holymolyineedtherapy]

What if I fall back into maximum ride and rewrite the entire series to make it good

Is that normal

Is that neurotypical

I know don't answer that question I'm thinking here

[homenecromancer]

This post is not what I wanted it to be when I set out to write it. It just sort of peters out where I got bored, although I tried to tie things up a little at the end.

But did you know that you can connect 9/11, Mothman, and Maximum Ride?

I wrote most of this post in 2021 and will probably not ever get around to really finishing it, because dumpster-diving the conspiracy theory Internet is depressing. Also, while I sometimes enjoy reading about Mothman or other cryptids, I am not here to write an investigation of how cryptid lore spreads and mutates on the internet. Which is where things were increasingly going, the longer I worked on this post.

A previous edition of this post linked to archived versions of the conspiracy websites I mention below. In this edited version, I've almost entirely moved to using screenshots, in order to avoid having my blog be a couple clicks away from upsetting, bigoted content. So this post is a little long.

This is a post about Maximum Ride. But it's also about the weird world of conspiracy theory websites in the 2000s.

Let's start with a brief note about James Patterson. Before he retired in 1996 and began to devote himself full-time to writing, he worked in advertising. He's used those skills in interesting ways over the years: in 1993, his first big book, Along Came a Spider, was promoted on television, when that was essentially unheard of for a book. I encourage you to read this article for a closer look into Patterson's general approach to writing.

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment was Patterson's first young adult book, released in April 2005. What's important for you to know, if you don't already, is that it's about a group of children with wings. It was also heavily advertised.

Part of the marketing for the book was undertaken by a firm called the Concept Farm. They created a lot of stuff, but today we're interested in one specific thing: this website.

The site is kind of a riff on a type of site that existed then and exists now: “this weird cryptid is definitely real and I totally saw it”. In this case, the cryptid is the main characters. Believe me, we’ll circle back to this topic, so if you’re not familiar with this kind of website, don’t worry.

There’s not a whole lot to the site, so I’ll direct you right to the page I want to discuss. 

Get a good look at this photo.

Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing it again.

Now look at the right side of the site. You see those links? Just take a minute and appreciate that list. A couple of them are just someone’s Angelfire (free web hosting) site. We’ll be seeing Above Top Secret later on, but the other sites aren’t of special interest to us today.

wingkidsarereal is the earliest appearance of this image I was able to find. I didn’t look all that hard, but still -- it’s visible in a July 9th, 2005 archive of the site. This is before any other usage I was able to find, but I don't think that says anything more than "it's hard to find websites from 20 years ago". I suspect, but cannot prove, that this image was probably circulated via email forwards prior to appearing on the archived pages I was able to turn up -- and email forwards, naturally, don't show up on the Internet Archive.

Let’s take a quick tour of the conspiracy theory internet, and see where else this image shows up.

s8int.com is a real time capsule -- it’s a young-earth creationist conspiracy theory site. Here we find our image in November 2005. This is the uncropped version which preserves Steven Moran’s watermark at the bottom left corner. For the most part, when you see the image getting passed around, it’s been cropped to remove this watermark.

The overall look of this site is extremely archetypal of 2000s conspiracy theory internet. By today’s standards the formatting is relatively plain -- all the flavor is in the text. Not visible in this screenshot: a generally simple design with a big banner image at the top, and a row of icons for other pages along the left side of the screen. This is the general look that the designers of wingkidsarereal are imitating with their site.

s8int believe this photo shows a pterodactyl near the World Trade Center. At this point in time, the later consensus (which we will get to later) had not yet gelled.

This is also the first place we see a bit of text that pops up a few times later -- the alleged description by the photographer, Moran. I haven’t been able to track this text any further back in time than this page, but it makes sense to me that it would’ve been passed around as a chain email before its appearance here. It’s also possible that the person who wrote this text sent it in to s8int themselves, and that it became a chain email later on.

Worth noting: s8int also have the highest-resolution version of this image I’ve seen, which you can view here.

Next, in February 2006, the wonderfully trustworthy-sounding mothman.us is on the case… they think it’s Mothman. This website has a slightly more sophisticated, modern look than s8int.

In October 2006, a small-scale Blogspot blog made a post that also uses the Moran image. The formatting is actually too bad to screencap, so here's the text of the whole entry:

Spooky Story Four: The Mothman Returneth Last year, I did a spooky post on The Mothman. It's probably one of my best scary stories, and I get a lot of hits from people Googling The Mothman everyday. You can find my original post HERE. The question now is...have there been other Mothman sites lately? For those too lazy to read my first post, and for those who need a refresher, The Mothman is a winged creature, standing about 7 feet tall, and has bright red eyes. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of reports of encounters and sightings with this flying thing near Point Pleasant, West Virginia from 1966 - 1967. The reports made national news, as Mothman sightings kept coming in, along with sightings of UFOs all over the place. It is here in Point Pleasant where the infamous Men in Black first made their public appearance as well. Townspeople also reported that they were having psychic visions and dreams. Basically, it was a weird time for Mount Pleasant that eventually ended in disaster. The Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, killing 46 people. And immediately after, sightings of The Mothman abruptly came to a hault. Since 1967, there have been worldwide reports of this Mothman appearing prior to major disasters: * People reported seeing the Mothman just days before the Mexico City earthquake in 1985. * There have been many interviews in Chernobyl from those that said they saw a winged man-creature, right before the nuclear reactor disaster in 1986. * Minutes after the Twin Towers' destruction on September 11th, 2001, observers reported seeing "winged, flying men" flying near both towers. The picture (at left and right) shows that the flying creature is much too big to be any kind of bird. * Newspapers in Tbilissi, Georgia wrote about how some guy said he got information from a "winged phantom" concerning the Church of St. David being in danger. Soon thereafter, there was a major earthquake striking Tbilissi on April 25, 2002. The church suffered massive damage. * Months after the Tbilissi quake, Chinese citizens reported seeing The Mothman. Shortly after reporters published their stories, a Chinese MD-82 in the northeastern part of China. There were further reports from people saying they knew the plane was going to crash because of information given to them by "a man that looked like a moth." * There are reports all over the world, even in Afghanistan and Iraq. So what is The Mothman and why does it seem to follow major disasters? Is it trying to warn us of impending doom? Or is there something sinister involved? Or perhaps, it's simply the human imagination trying to cope with tragedy. Although the tragedy of Mount Pleasant was 40 years ago, it seems the myth of The Mothman is still one that captures our attention and our imagination. Whatever you believe, catch Sci Fi investigates this Wednesday night, as the crew goes to Mount Pleasant, WV to investigate The Mothman (Sci Fi Channel). I was in Charleston, WV this summer and no one would take me on the hour drive to Mount Pleasant. As one local resident told me, "For us, it's all very realToo real." For those that live in the area, The Mothman represents a very scary and uncertain time in their town's history.

Let’s wrap up in February 2007 with an Above Top Secret thread.

Above Top Secret is a general conspiracy theory discussion forum, so getting a clear consensus on something is rare. This thread is no exception, and it’s not good reading. But forum member Raist did eventually go the extra mile to win an argument they were having, and emailed the photographer, Steven Moran.

…It was the wrong guy. This Moran did give his opinion of the photo – he thinks it’s a bird. Also, I must note: this screencap is from a 2015 archived version of the site -- in 2007, Above Top Secret had a black background with greenish text, and was much more like the other conspiracy sites I've shown in this post.

This is where I chose to stop poking around with all this stuff. Not because men in black suits showed up at my door, but because I just sort of lost interest. I had seen what I was interested in seeing: a widely-circulated photograph made the successful jump from "this photo of a recent event is crazy -- is it an angel? A demon? A pigeon?" to "this photo is part of conspiracy theory 'canon' and is definitely Mothman".

Along the way, it crossed through the small portion of the internet that I was reading in the mid-2000s. I'll pause to speculate on how I think it got there: someone working on wingkidsarereal needed some images to use for the site, and happened to see the Moran image somewhere. I don't think it's any deeper than that.

The Mothman angle was what dragged me into scrolling through these old conspiracy websites, because it seemed so odd to me. Worth mentioning: it is my opinion that The Mothman Prophecies, which came out in 2002, helped give Mothman a boost out of the world of weird nerds who like talking about cryptids and toward the mainstream, or at least toward people who had not yet heard about this specific weird phenomenon. (Here's a brief little 2001 IGN article I found, explaining what Mothman even is. Which you don't need to do if everyone already knows.)

Canonically, Mothman appeared during a specific period in the late 1960s in a very specific area of West Virginia, then was never seen again. But he just keeps showing up, "canonical" or not -- people really, really want to see Mothman, in the same way they want to see Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Seeing Mothman is cool, and gives you a link to a pre-existing bank of cryptid sightings. You're not just a person who saw something weird. You're a person who saw a known thing that's linked to a global pattern of sightings.

And so, now Mothman is no longer limited to Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966 - 1967. Mothman is in Mexico City in 1985. Mothman is in Ukraine in 1986. Mothman is in New York City in 2001.

Mothman... is in our hearts.

[definitely-not-a-wasp]

Gearing up for Book 3, have Annabelle Rosalind (Anne) Walker, our favorite Gaslight Gatekeep Girlfailure.

[maxtothemax]

gay birds jumpscare

[tricobicofriend]

I found it!! Thank you definitely-not-a-wasp for telling me who the post was from!

does anyone have that maximum ride post where someone talked about initially reading the books they thought the flock had bird feet/talons bc of the scenes where they were high up in trees or did i like imagine that

[mirrorofliterature]

the temptation to rewrite the australian total drama world tour episode is strong

add alenoah for flavour (keep the aleheather rivalry and alecourtney friendship, they're cool)

MAKE IT FUCKING GEOGRAPHICALLY ACCURATE -

From the wiki: 'Chris states that Hanging Rock is in the Blue Mountains of Australia, but Hanging Rock is located in the Australian state of Victoria, while the Blue Mountains are in New South Wales, near Sydney.'

And Hanging Rock doesn't look like that, neither does the Blue Mountains!

So I would do this by:

Making London a reward challenge w/ Team Chris winning (as they truly deserve) so Noah is safe. Team Chris gains Duncan as there 'reward'. The Gwuncan kiss doesn't happen because I don't like it.

Team Chris wins in Greece as Noah volunteers and crushes the boar challenge (canonically good with animals). Team Amazon votes off Sierra because she made them lose - Courtney is annoyed at her for beating her up, Cody always votes for her, and Heather also votes for her.

In X-Files, Team Chris still lose and Tyler gets medically evacuated (RIP) (he's alive but ouch).

Then I would keep the challenge (but remove the emu riding part because you do not fuck with emus like that or ride them - we lost a war to them), but make it so that each team is split into two, tossed somewhere in Melbourne and has to find their way via public transport to Hanging Rock.

The teams:

Gwen and Courtney

Heather and Cody

Alejandro and Noah (for maximum drama), and

Owen and Duncan

Shenanigans ensue.

[fly-with-the-flock]

So I’m working on my re-write, and I’ve kinda been tossing around this idea of some of the older flock member having taught themselves to play an instrument and/or sing so they can busk and have a way to get a little bit of money, coz the books never really explained how they got food or money and that always kinda bugged me.

Like, they try not to do it often so they don’t attract attention, and they maybe wear disguises, like wigs and big sunglasses? Idk, I haven’t fully figured it out yet, it’s just something I’m think about.

[junpeijackflash]

Small update on my Maximum Ride rewrite? Maybe?? Perhaps??

I really didn’t want to, but for the sake of pacing I’m bringing in the increased healing. Otherwise there’s going to be a timeskip during the Martinez chapters I cannot justify.

I’ll probably tweak it, see how much I can make it work so injuries still have stakes and all that.

Also, general chapter update, I’m current fixing Chapter 11 rn. Don’t remember what I was on when I gave my last update. It’s been a bit rocky irl and I haven’t been working super consistently, sorry.

[fortheflock]

A list of things to correctly make a maximum ride series into a visual media ( movie) 2024 edition

- make it a series ( a three season series)

Some of the chapters are such " fade to black moments and the plot of the first book is very split up for most of it, a movie would be harder to get to know the characters and the plot.

Also with a series they can grow the backstories of the flock and rewrite / expand on the books ideas in a way a movie couldn't .

- take it seriously but it's also okay if it's camp.

A huge problem I had with the original movie was lack of care that felt like went into it.

I would absolutely love a max ride show like the 100 or really any out there supernatural show ( like supernatural) . They have wings for fucksake it's going to be a little silly. Lean into that Sci-fi shit . The more similar to X-Men /stranger things the BETTER.

- Call it something other then "Maximum ride". No offense to my beloved main character but it's a bad name that kinda sound like a porno and make my embarrassed to say the name out loud.

"The angel experiment" on the other hand is something that could hold a wider interest.

Their are a couple series that change their titles for their series ,( shadow hunter and his dark materials) it's been done before and it's not hard .

- change the fucking stupid ending.

If Game of thrones can do it (poorly but it at least finished) sure as shit this little series could..

Or alternatively just do the first three books as God intended there to be .

- on-top of that getting rid of /adding characters that suit the overall story. No Total you don't get to come along. But the Director should come in earlier and just be the final big bad.

- the Voice!!! Make that a consistent character. Make it Jeb or angel or Maya for fuck sake. The voice is such a present cool concept that just gets steam rolled every book.

I still feel like this after over ten years story deserves more and that it could be really fun to see brought to life . I'll be adding more ideas as I think of them.

I went to bed thinking about it and haven't stopped all day .

Someone hire me to make this

[14carrotghoul]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you to @cha-melodius @happiness-of-the-pursuit @myheartalivewrites and @firenati0n for tagging me! ❤️❤️❤️❤️ It's always fun to see these writer posts go around!!

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

27! One short of my lucky number 👀

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

114,876 (was soooo excited to pass 100k at the beginning of this year!)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

RWRB :)

4. Top five fics by kudos:

D��jame Ver Cómo Es Que Floreces 

Solo Déjame Estar Junto a Ti 

Isn't She Lovely 

Whataburger, Whatanight  (very surprised by this one???)

Tiempo de Vals

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes!! I NEED all my inboxes/notifications to be zero and try to respond within a week. And I love giving my thanks and screaming back my love!!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Thank You, Shaan :'(

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oof I write soooo many happy endings so idk!! The Las Flores series has made a LOT of people cry so I'll go with that!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Have been very lucky so far and I have not, however I have had more demanding comments lately :P like don't yell at me!!! Ask nicely!!!!

9. Do you write smut?

Nope

10. Craziest crossover:

No crossovers! Although I did write Philip as BAFTA president like prince will irl and the secondhand embarrassment is Real

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No and I would love to translate Déjame ver into Spanish someday (or at least the first part) but I haven't found the motivation, especially with the amount of wips I have

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No and I feel like I'd be either too anxious or too scattered to be a good writing partner! I put a lot of pressure on myself if I feel like someone is watching me (tis the catholicism 😔)

14. All time favorite ship?

Firstprince ❤️💙

15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Oh nooooo I don't wanna jinx any! If anything I need some major rewriting for my dormant lost prince/Anastasia fic to make me happy. I wrote most of that one while essentially bedbound after a hospitalization and my mindset is very different now

16. What are your writing strengths?

I can get the happy, sappy tears flowing very easily! I also work hard on my dialogue and characterization and I'm pretty proud of both!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I tend to be very literal in my writing. Not a ton of poetic metaphor in it, which I would like to work on but it just doesn't come naturally to me! And I get pretty dialogue heavy.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

LOVE. Haven't indulged in it very much lately but I love it so much

19. First fandom you wrote in?

Twilight or Maximum ride. Idk I was 11 so it's fuzzy

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Déjame Ver Cómo Es Que Floreces and True Blue . Very different fics but there's not a word I would change in either!

Tagging @read-and-write- @inexplicablymine @tintagel-or-cockleshells @cricketnationrise @orchidscript @dumbpeachjuice @cultofsappho @kiwiana-writes @littlemisskittentoes @nocoastposts @xthelastknownsurvivorx @pirate-radiofriday @smc-27 @sprigsofviolets and anyone else that wants to share more about their writing!!

[sleepyiswhumping]

10, 11, 19, 20 for the ask game :)

10. Ooh, this one's hard. While I'm not satisfied with most of what I've written and plan on rewriting a lot of my work, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have favorites. My current favorite piece is untitled, and is the aftermath of Theo, our poor whumpee, being released back into the world by his whumper, Z, and the trauma he's suffering from after the 2 years of abuse, manipulation and pain Z forced him to undergo, and his recovery, with the help of his boyfriend, Lynn, who's been searching for him ceaselessly since he disappeared. I'm actually currently working on a rewrite for a part of this that I may share soon!

11. Agh. There's not really anything I'm comfortable sharing, but this'll have to do. It's not great, but one of the few scenes that's more than a sentence or two that I think is okay.

Z ran his hands across Theo’s hips, up his stomach, his fingers playing across the scars and fresh wounds on his chest, before coming to rest on Theo’s neck. Theo gasped as Z wrapped his fingers around his throat, struggling to get one final breath in as his hands closed tight, crushing his windpipe. Theo’s hands flew to his neck, scrabbling at Z’s, trying to pry them off, but found no purchase. As panic began to set in, Theo hammered and scratched at Z’s chest, but his efforts grew weaker as his vision faded, his mind going blank, running out of oxygen. The last thing Theo saw before he blacked out was Z’s hungry, intense smile, looming over him.

19. Funnily enough, I started writing whump last February, so I haven't been part of the community for very long at all. Despite how fresh I am, however, I've fallen in love with both the community and my writings, even though most of them are pretty bad lol.

20. I actually haven't written whump for any fandom yet. So far, I've written exclusively about OCs. While OCs are, in my eyes, tougher to start with, due to having to construct a character from scratch, I prefer the versatility and freedom you have with an OC compared to a pre-existing, developed character. I have much less obligations and pre-existing tropes and characteristics to follow with characters of my own creation, making the process easier for me. That being said, I have been considering writing about some specific characters in some fandoms. I'd probably write about R. Daneel Olivaw, from part of the Lije Bailey series by Isaac Asimov. From the first story I read about him, I was in love with a robot so complex as he was, to be essentially human, and I've recently been thinking about all of the whump you can do there. I've also been considering whumping Erasmus from the Dune prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, but I think that's just due to my obsession with his character as a whole. Lastly, there are so many characters in the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson that are ripe for whumping, and considering this was the series that spawned my love for wing whump before I ever knew what whump was, it'd be remiss if I didn't whump at least one character from the series.

Thanks for the ask, @stalecabbage! <3