#similarly cannot hate max … there is nothing he can find that makes him hate her. in fact he’s curious! and interested

[langfield]

so in the text messages it’s shown that max and safi attended vinh’s halloween party before the events of the game and my mind has been spinning about how that went lol. i know both max and safi ended up getting wasted by the end of it but i was wondering if you had any headcanons about that particular night? specifically with how max and vinh interacted with each other considering how they would most likely still be in the early stages of getting to know each other.

i also wonder what their actual costumes were?? especially considering how safi seemed to really want to show vinh up in that department lmao.

aha. well! it’s very funny you mention the party, because i am drafting up a fic that takes place after and during it for a safi/max piece … so i’m afraid i’ll have to be pretty tight lipped about some aspects.

though the costumes i tentatively picked out for this fic and vinh’s halloween party is from a real world show called yellowjackets : a two season show about girls being stranded in the wilderness and losing their minds … to be as vague as possible. i personally love the show, so this is minor indulgence on my end! but there is some significance to my pick even if some fans won’t understand the reference. safi attends as ‘the antler queen’ and max’s outfit is more basic, given the fact the texts imply she was sort of spacing her own costume … she’s just a yellowjacket, a teenager, so they both look something like this ( with modifications of course, they made these outfits from scratch ) :

i’ve always found the antler queen’s design to be rather mesmerizing in terms of how haunting it is, so i think safi’s arts-and-crafts project for it would definitely show up vinh at the party. it’s not just the costume either -- it’s the energy she’ll carry while wearing it. and if there’s one thing safi is so good at, it’s silently commanding attention without much effort and maintaining an aura of mystery. point is : she’ll kill it. max’s is more low effort ( it’s just the jacket you see in the second picture, and her project doesn’t even look nearly as good, i’m afraid ) but being attached at safi’s hip helps! i could go on and on about why i’ve picked these outfits for them, though i’ll shut my trap for now because the fic touches upon it lightly … but if you’ve seen the show, you probably have an inkling as to why they’re wearing what they are, and why this show would be so up safi’s alley. vinh lang stands no chance!

but as for how vinh and max interacted during that night, i sadly doubt they brushed shoulders much solo. safi and max showed up together in matching costumes and i’m sure they hardly left each other’s side the whole time, what with max being such a loner initially ( she didn’t even hang out with moses one-on-one back then ) and safi being obsessed in turn … they likely existed in their own bubble and anyone who talked to one basically talked to them both. vinh would likely be jealous of this, given his admission of such feelings to max in spin when he confessed that safi would talk about max ‘all the time’, so this is a similar situation : where vinh wants safi’s attention and time desperately, but she is eagerly orbiting around the new blood instead. very complicated! this is also a vinh who is posturing still in many ways and is stupidly jealous, meaning that there wouldn’t be much going on between him and max besides some catty pettiness on vinh’s part, and total obliviousness on max’s. he likely would avoid her if possible back then, despite his own conflicting feelings about everything surrounding her -- since i do firmly believe vinh was always attracted to max in ways he couldn’t quite explain, outside of a vague ‘we could hook up’ feeling. which makes being jealous of her more complicated than it should be. for all his sleuthing and bitter stewing, i don’t think he could ever properly hate her, so instead it’s an odd game of sore looks and snide remarks. they knew of each other ( vinh knew more about max than she knew of him, given safi’s rambling ), perhaps talked in passing, and max clearly saw vinh enough in her day-to-day to have his photo on her photo wall … but their beginnings were still curt and bittersweet. it’s important to remember that!

[flightfoot]

I’ve been looking around at the salt about Alya using the Ladybug and it looks like the main foundation for most of it is fans falling for the “chosen one, only one” trope, and have this idea that while Adrien and Marinette (the “chosen ones”) can swap miraculous and use any of the other miraculous in the miracle box, any other “non-chosen-one” characters cannot outside of their own granted miraculous. This is just an educated guess, of course, but I’ve seen a ton of “she’ll never be better than OUR Ladybug”, “Marinette didn’t need to give it to Alya, she should have given the earrings to Chat instead” (confusing argument; if Chat’s using the earrings, then who’s using his ring? he certainly can’t fuse Plagg and Tikki), and “She needs to stick to just being Rena Rouge”. It’s not like Alya’s becoming the new Ladybug or anything (heck, she herself is visibly uncertain and nervous when Marinette gives them to her on a whim!), so this salt is just really confusing haha

Eh, I'm not too worried about this brand of salt. It's unlikely to last long past the episode's release and it's not demonizing Alya. It's more about being worried/annoyed that the leads have less prominence than any sort of actual hate towards Alya.

I think part of the reason for this is that, well, if Alya can become Ladybug and be competent at it, what's so special about our leads? Why are they the stars of the show if some other character can come in and be as good at their jobs as they are?

Reflekdoll didn't "threaten" Marinette's place as Ladybug: if anything, it seemed to say that really only Marinette could use that Miraculous effectively. With Alyabug though, there's a chance - a pretty good one, judging by Sentibubbler - that Alya will be as good at using it as Marinette was in Origins. And if so, then what's so special about Marinette?

Thing is, Marinette isn't superior to her friends. She has some really strong skillsets that make her particularly effective as Ladybug - most notably her Macgyvering and planning skills - but it's not like the rest of the class is talentless. Max made an AI buddy in his free time, Alya runs an influential blog, Luka, Ivan, Juleka, and Rose (and sometimes Adrien) are part of an up-and-coming band, etc. Among her friends, Marinette IS "a normal girl with a normal life".

But that's fine. The point of the show isn't "Marinette is the only one who can be the primary hero". Heck, just look deeper at Origins: Yes, Tikki said she was the Chosen One. Thing is, we know this isn't some deep, mystical thing. She was chosen by Fu because she was nice and helped a stranger. No arcane tests determining her compatibility with the Ladybug, nothing like that. Just a man doing his best to find a wielder on a few hours notice.

Similarly, Marinette isn't divinely ordained to be Ladybug. But she does happen to be good at the role. She's just a kid doing the best she can, and she's an interesting character to follow along with, to watch mess up and grow and fumble her way through life, same as the rest of us.

Oh, and as for the "she should have given the earrings to Chat instead" thing, I think that mostly comes from wanting to see Marinette trust in Chat more. But yeah, as you say, it doesn't make much sense for her to do that when she has another option. She doesn't WANT to take Chat out of the equation, fighting-wise. She doesn't want him to fight alone either.

Plus, on a practical note, it's a lot easier to deliver and get back a Miraculous from a wielder who knows her identity and who she knows the identity of.

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Hi! You often give alot of insight into anons like this and your my fave CM blog so that's why I'm here! So I'm finishing up the last seasons (and lord it is hard to get through) and they just introduced Max and I cannot stand her. She was just so rude and it felt like she had 2 different personalities the entire time she was on screen. And I worried that this meant I was like hating women because I don't like other female characters like Maeve, JJ, Hailey, and Seaver. But then I started thinking and I honestly think it's cause these Characters are women poorly written by men. But then I wondered how they created likeable Characters like Emily, Kristy, Blake, Tara, and Penelope (leaving out others like Savannah because they're under developed in my opinion) I don't know what's the difference in the writing for these Characters or of there isn't any at all and I'm just being hateful in a way. What are your thoughts?

Ah, I think about this a lot. Thank you for thinking I’m interesting enough to answer this, also!

I think you’ve really hit the nail on the head with the writers doing a poor job at most of their female characters. However, I think it’s possible (and very common in this fandom) for people to dislike any character Spencer showed an interest in, which is also problematic and rooted in internalized misogyny. To me, it all comes down to why you dislike the characters.

(A LOT More Below - Bit of a Rant)

The first step I took when reflecting to see if this was my problem was rewatching and seeing which female characters I loved. Along with the ones you listed, I also found a number of side characters I greatly enjoyed, including Lila, Austin, Dr. Linda Kamura (from Amplification, the anthrax episode), Einstein, Megan Kane, and a few other random case characters. So, right off the bat I found multiple characters who Spencer showed an affinity for. I also greatly enjoyed Cat’s character, although I found her to be underdeveloped in canon (Fanon has done a good job, IMO) and often contradictory in her character design.

If you didn’t like any of these women, and your reason is related purely to Spencer’s reactions to them, chances are you might be suffering from a bit of jealousy rather than improper character design - not that you need to like them all (or the ones that I like), but because they are all very different. You should, theoretically, find something to enjoy about at least one of them.

But the CM Writers have a TERRIBLE habit of writing women that are easy to hate.

There’s a bunch of controversy I see over Haley Hotchner, but the truth is that they wrote her to be hated. That was her sole purpose. Her character’s decisions were poorly thought out and she was shown to be malicious 80% of the time. This was intentional. She was written to personify the trope of the nagging housewife. If you dislike her, you have done nothing but follow the narrative.

That being said, you should also criticize why they wrote her this way. Because it didn’t make any sense. She married a prosecutor - a dangerous, time consuming job. She had Jack when she knew he was with the BAU. Why did she randomly change her tune? Why did she suddenly demand he gives up on his dreams that she was fully aware of for years? I’d argue they wrote it like this to further the narrative of “the wife who traps you with a child to force you to do what she wants” which is garbage writing. I wish people could look at the potential she had if they hadn’t written her like... that.

Maeve, I find, is problematic on multiple aspects and I’ve talked about it before. Her narrative was poorly thought out because as soon as they pitched the idea of a long-term love interest for Spencer, everyone (most notably Gubler) rejected it. They didn’t think it was necessary for his character, who already had a lot going on with the ignored plot lines of his drug addiction and mother.

There were multiple problems associated with her character that were never addressed. The fact she essentially just took advantage of a patient because she was bored, she seemed to “correct” his interests and show annoyance when he disagreed with her, she lied about having a fiance, she was shown to be considering breaking up with him... there’s a lot.

Her character is poorly written. It had a lot of potential, but they just kind of stopped caring once they decided to kill her off. She had more faults shown on screen than redeeming qualities. For many, they liked her because they see there was a potential that we’ll never see (fair). But for people like me, we interpret it as a idealized fantasy of what could have (but probably wouldn’t have) been, which is not healthy for Spencer.

JJ is an interesting character because you can feel the constant struggle between AJ Cook and the writers. They really sabotaged JJ at every step of the way. I’ll be honest and say that I think there are some reasons to hate JJ, but they aren’t the reasons I see most often. Almost all of the JJ hate I see is surrounding the idea that JJ is an evil, manipulative, jealous bitch. But.. she’s not. Even in Truth or Dare, when she pulls that asshole move that was wildly OOC for JJ (in my opinion), she isn’t shown to be jealous or cruel about it.

I think she’s the most likely target for people who’s hatred is driven from jealousy or disliking conventionally attractive women and assuming them to be bitchy by nature of looking “beautiful.” I think Lila Archer* also falls into this category.

But as I said, JJ was also written with a lot of flaws. I think it’s fair if you don’t like her character or the way she treats Spencer, but I also hope that you similarly criticize the whole team in the same way, and don’t just pity Spencer because he is smol uwu babie who needs protection.

(* Yet another reminder that I ask everyone to not message me about J Depp or Amber Heard. Reactive Abuse is an extreme trigger for me and I will block you if you try to get me to talk about it)

Seaver got a lot of hate based off one line of dialogue. I think it was a bad line. If they had left it out, there would be essentially no reason in my mind to dislike Seaver. I used to dislike her a lot, but the more I rewatch the show, the less she bothers me. She was just a young student who wanted to learn about her father/herself. She was MASSIVELY underdeveloped because they kicked her off just as quickly as they invited her in.

NO character was developed that quickly. Her scenes were a bit cringey and the plotlines were bad, and her character was mediocre. I don’t think she deserves the hate she gets. She is a lukewarm character.

I hate everything Max’s character represents. She was introduced to show that Spencer could be trained to be “normal” and it’s anti-autistic bullshit. She had no personality besides “I hate my low-brow job as a teacher and couldn’t be fucked to change it until a man told me I was smart.” She was cracking high-school-clique jokes while her family was about to be murdered. She immediately abandoned said family to make out with her boyfriend who just admitted to enjoying kissing the woman who tried to murder her family.

Her character makes absolutely zero sense. I do not understand how she is so liked. I really don’t (other than the fact that RLC is absolutely wonderful).

If they had left her character out, I think we would have been better off for it. We could have seen Spencer wrestle with defining himself by the women in his life and learning to love himself (without just replacing those women with... another... woman...)

That being said, those who cling to Max for hope of a happy ending for Spencer... I felt that. Fanon and fanfic can solve all character deficiencies. I believe in you.

So, yeah. I’d say if you’re worried about why you dislike women characters, you’re probably on the right path. I’d just reflect on why you dislike the characters you do and whether they are written as misogynistic stereotypes. It makes complete sense to reject characters written for the purpose of making you hate them, but we should all pour one out for the brilliant actresses that had characters with so much potential if not for men ruining it.

[urdearestmom]

brain damage

i’m back again y’all and just wrote this piece... a bit of a scene study from that scene in 3x06. basically what i wish mike had said 

also the middle part is mostly conjecture but some of it is bits that you can hear in the actual scene if you strain your ears and ignore nancy and jonathan talking over it

also DISCLAIMER i do not hate max!! i really like her actually but she was really pissing me off with this whole bit because she just does not have any basis for understanding mileven's relationship and so her advice doesn't always directly apply. she had good intentions but BRUH. anyways i could go on a whole rant about max vs mike in season 3 but i'm not gonna do that right now lmao

It’s pretty silent in here, El thinks. It always is, but tonight it’s… strange. Almost as though it’s empty. Why can’t she find them? She’s been sitting in her room for the last half hour trying to locate any of the flayed and although she can’t see it, she knows there’s a growing mountain of bloody tissues next to her on the floor. She’s starting to think that she might need to give herself a break for a little bit.

Her friends are in the living room waiting for her, and she knows they’re all anxious to find out what she might see. So far, absolutely nothing. The only thing that happens is that every so often she hears a bit of a voice. It’s just there, tickling the edges of her consciousness, and she could tune into it if she wanted to… but she’s already identified it by the cadence of the noise as Mike’s voice, and she’d said she wouldn’t spy on him. She’d done it once and he was clearly upset by it. Although they aren’t really back to how they were before, El misses him more than she lets on, and she doesn’t want to make things worse by spying again.

Outside, Mike is getting close to yelling. He sincerely hopes El can’t hear him because he is once again fighting with her new best friend.

“It can’t be good for her to be in there for this long,” he exclaims, pacing in front of her door.

“Mike, you need to relax,” says Max, looking disdainfully at him.

“What if she gets brain damage or something?!”

“Oh shit,” interrupts Lucas, looking between them. “Is that like, a real thing?”

Max scoffs. “No, it’s not. He made it up. Mike doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about,” she adds, raising her eyebrows defiantly as if daring him to refute her.

“Oh, and you do?! ” He retorts. Her facial expression alone is pissing him off. It’s so self-righteous, as if she knows anything at all about him or how he thinks and feels.

“No,” she says quickly. “But I think El does. See, that’s the difference between you and me. You think you know everything!”

“I don’t know everything,” he fires back. His hands are balled into fists and he’s starting to shake. “But I know her.”

Max snorts. “You’re just mad she wants to be her own person. You can’t deal with other people not doing what you tell them to.”

“What do you think this is, Russia? I’m not some dictator, okay? I’m just trying to protect El!” He says angrily. This is getting more and more ridiculous by the second. Max doesn’t know the first thing about what he can or can’t deal with and acting like she does is striking his last nerve. Mike can feel the familiar boil of rage deep within him coming to a rise.

“The only person who knows anything about El’s powers is El,” says Max, with an air of finality.

Mike crosses his arms in an attempt to get himself in control of his emotions. “So if that’s true, what makes you think you have any more of a say than I do?”

She splutters for a moment and it’s so satisfying that Mike almost smirks, but it drops quickly when Max rises from her seat and stalks over to him.

“I don’t,” she seethes, poking him forcefully in the chest. “But she does, and you need to back off .”

“I’m not even on! ” He yells, throwing his arms up and pushing her away. He realizes his statement doesn’t actually make any sense but… whatever. At this point, it’s not like it matters. “She won’t listen to me! Because you put ideas in her head! You know she absorbs every new thing people tell her and you pressured her into dumping me!”

There it is. It’s out. It’s what he’s been thinking since it happened. He knew he’d messed up big-time by lying to El, but he never would have expected her to dump him over it. And the look on Max’s face as she stood by and watched had said everything he needed to know.

Max’s face is turning an alarming shade of pink and Mike thinks that he probably matches her. “I didn’t pressure her into anything, she decided! What is your problem with letting El decide things for herself?!”

“I don’t have a problem! At least I didn’t before you inserted yourself where you didn’t need to be!”

“All I did was give her choices!”

Mike takes a deep breath to retaliate, but then lets it go and turns away. “You don’t understand. Just- fucking leave me alone.”

Lucas is still staring at them; Mike can feel his friend’s eyes on his back. Why isn’t he agreeing? He was there when El- he knows what she can push herself to.

Max makes an angry noise. “Fine! It’s not my fault you can’t be wrong!” She walks toward Nancy and Jonathan and Mike follows, preparing to convince everyone else that this is a stupid idea. “Okay, can you guys settle an argument for us?”

Nancy looks hard at them, her eyes searching Mike quickly before flicking back to the girl next to him.

“Who do you think should decide El’s limits… Mike, or Eleven?”

He sees red. “The way that you framed that is such bullshit. ” Why is he the villain here?!

Her braids whip around her face as she turns to him. “It’s not bullshit, Mike, this is your whole problem! And it’s also precisely the reason why she dumped your ass!”

“El dumped you?” Nancy asks incredulously.

Mike throws his arms up again. “Yeah, because she’s conspiring against me! She’s corrupting her!”

“N- enlightening her!” Max throws back. “The fact is, she’s not yours. She’s her own person, fully capable of making her own decisions.”

“She’s risking her life for no reason!” He shouts.

“No reason?” Says Nancy. “Mike, the flayed are out there doing god knows what-”

“Killing, flaying,” interjects Lucas.

“Transforming into monsters,” adds Will.

Mike glares at them. Not helping.

“And El’s not stupid,” Nancy continues, shaking her head. “She knows her abilities better than any of us.”

“Exactly, thank you,” Max says victoriously. Mike closes his eyes. He cannot believe this is how this is going.

“And she is her own person-”

“Exactly!”

“With her own free will-”

“Exactly! El has saved the world twice and Mike still doesn’t trust her-”

At that he has to interrupt. There’s no way he’s letting Max flip this around. “You wanna talk about trust, really? After you made Eleven spy on us?!”

Max looks down, giving herself away.

Lucas stands up behind him. “Wait, what?”

Mike whirls to face him. “Oh, she didn’t tell you this?” He says sarcastically.

“No!”

“Your girlfriend used El’s powers to spy on us ,” he spits.

“No, no, no,” Max interjects. “I did not make her, it was her idea. And why are we even talking about this, seriously?”

“Yeah,” says Will. “Who cares?”

And now Mike’s annoyed at Will too. Will has no idea what is going on in Mike’s head and he’s not ever going to understand why he feels the way he does. Just the same as the rest of the Party will never really relate to Will’s struggles because they weren’t there, Will wasn’t there for theirs either. He didn’t see what she did-

“I care!” Says Lucas, and finally Mike is glad someone seems to be on his side. Thank God for small blessings.

“Yeah, I guess girlfriends don’t lie, they spy,” he says, turning back to Max at the last moment so she can truly see his ire.

“We were just joking around,” she defends.

“Would it have been so funny if I was taking a massive shit or something?” He asks.

She wrinkles her nose. “You weren’t!”

“But what if I was?!”

“Then gross!”

“Seriously, Mike?” Interrupts Nancy, and all of a sudden this has become like one of those moments where he just wants to strangle her for talking before he’s done. She does it all the fucking time and like, he guesses it’s probably part of being siblings but it leaves him fuming more often than not.

“I’m just trying to demonstrate how careless Max is with Eleven’s powers,” he says carefully. This is where he needs to get his point across. He desperately needs someone to understand that he’s not trying to be controlling or police what El does or doesn’t do, he’s just trying to save her from herself. He couldn’t do it the first time, but by God if he isn’t going to try now.

“Have any of you noticed Lucas is the only one not disagreeing with me?” He asks.

Max huffs. “Lucas doesn’t have anything to do with this. This is your prob-”

“Lucas has everything to do with this!” He roars. Mike has absolutely had it up to here with her and turns on her a final time, shaking again. “You weren’t there, Max! None of you were. Except Lucas. You don’t know what she’ll do..” His voice trembles.

Lucas seems to understand what he’s getting at and lays a hand on his shoulder. Mike flashes him a grateful look. He still has a hard time thinking about that night, much less talking about it. “She vaporized herself in front of us. I tried to stop her and she did it anyway.”

The room is silent now, the only sound being the TV static from El’s bedroom where she’s still holed up. Mike takes a breath.

“It’s not that I think El doesn’t know her limits,” he says. “I just know that she doesn’t care about them. She’ll die overexerting herself before she lets something hurt one of us.”

He looks up at everyone, Jonathan and Will looking oddly similarly out of place and Nancy with her eyes trained on his face as she listens. Max isn’t looking at him. Good , he thinks. Maybe that made her feel guilty.

“How would you feel if you knew firsthand El didn’t care about dying to save her friends, huh? Wouldn’t you be worried about her?” He directs this at Max specifically, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “You guys are treating her like some kind of machine, and she’s not a machine. I still have nightmares about that day all the time.”

The room stays silent, almost as though everyone is holding a breath and waiting for him to start yelling again, but he’s not going to. He doesn’t have any energy left to expound on this topic. If Max wants to keep making him the bad guy, then whatever. He has more important things to worry about.

“I just-” He starts and stops, wondering if this is the right thing to say. “I don’t want her to die looking for the flayed when they’ve obviously vanished off the face of the Earth, so we can we please just come up with another plan because I love her and I can’t lose her again.”

Now it’s almost as though all the air has actually been sucked out of the room. Maybe this wasn’t the right time to reveal the depth of his feelings, but Mike really didn’t know what else he could say that could possibly make them understand his position. Lucas’ hand on his shoulder squeezes for a quick second and then lightly taps him as Lucas moves his arm back.

Nancy shakes her head. “I get that you don’t want her to hurt herself, Mike, but she’s already in there. There’s not much else we can do.”

“What’s going on?”

Everyone whips around to face El coming out of her bedroom doorway. Holy shit, did she hear what he said? Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit-

“Nothing. Nothing!” He says quickly.

“Just… family discussion,” adds Lucas from behind him. Mike can feel the smirk in his voice without even having to look at him.

“Oh,” says El, and suddenly Mike really wants to hug her. But this isn’t the time. He looks away.

“I found him,” she continues.

“Found… who?” Nancy asks.

“Billy.”

[idkwhoiamanymorebutwtf]

Honestly I'm not completely sure that Max actually intended for David to find out? Like he was blackmailing Gwen, and usually in blackmail situations the deal is that you get what you want and you DON'T tell anyone what you know. That was their deal and Max explicitly told Nikki and Neil not to tell anyone (especially David) about the situation, and if he was really deadset on David finding out then he wouldn't have tried to keep it a secret.

You could say that he just didn't want David to know YET because then he'd have nothing to hold against Gwen to make her do what he wanted. And that's a good point but idk.

Max knew full well how much it'd hurt both David and Gwen if he found out. He knew that if anyone told David he'd be completely crushed and heartbroken, and Max knew that Gwen would be fired and was desperate to keep the secret. And that's exactly why I don't think he ever wanted to see that happen. He doesn't like seeing either of them get too hurt. I mean Max is a little shit don't get me wrong. Discomfort, frustration, anger, even fear are all emotions he's reveled in seeing from others. However I don't think I've ever seen Max genuinely happy about putting people through serious emotional or physical distress. It's always just harmless stuff where people will go "wow, that was shitty, fuck you Max", but a situation that'd leave Gwen bawling her eyes out and that he was sure would completely devastate David? No. See Order Of The Sparrow where Max saw David hurt and immediately took measures to cheer him up, see Camp Corp where he seriously messed up with Nikki and Neil and immediately felt horrific, see Candy Kingpin where the moment he genuinely thought he put Dolph into a dangerous situation he went into full panic and immediately not only swallowed his pride and got an adult, but completely took the fall for something he and Dolph had done together as well. Max is a bitch but he doesn't like to genuinely hurt people. He doesn't go too far. And actually telling David something he thought would break his heart? Getting Gwen fired? Never. Especially since we also know he cares a lot about Gwen and definately wants her around as we saw in Something Fishy when he absolutely hated that Gwen got a boyfriend because he missed her and didn't want to lose her.

So of course Max wasn't reveling in it when David found out, and of course he wasn't super upset when David was supportive either. And you may be wondering, if Max didn't want to tell David, why'd he threaten to? And honestly it was literally just for blackmail. Gwen was the adult, and she's an adult who he trusts and respects immensly (even if he'd never admit it), so of course when the older kids stole his teddy bear he went to her for help because he trusts and respects Gwen and when he needs help he, of course, as a ten year old kid, gravitates towards an adult who he trusts to help him. But he was just too prideful to admit he needed help. Honestly it makes sense- back home he probably couldn't rely on his parents to help him out much tbh, I mean, he's a neglect/abuse victim, can you imagine it going over well if he asked his parents to get back his teddy bear from the older kids? Yeah. So obviously since he'd probably been taught not to ask for help- especially with things like his teddy bear- what was he supposed to do? (Plus depending on the level of abuse he actually deals with he not only may not expect help when he needs it from adults, but he may even be taught to be literally afraid to ask. My father's emotionally abusive and to this day I can't bring myself to ask anyone for anything, even if I know they'll say yes. It's just a mental block where I'm anxious and cannot bring myself to do it. Can't ask for items, can't ask for help, etc. And if my abuse manifested that way, it could very well shine through similarly in Max)

And you know what's heartbreaking to me? Max may have been blackmailing Gwen but deep down he was putting his faith in her, as an adult he looks up to, to help him when he needs it, something that's clearly horrifically difficult for him. And it ended with his Teddy Bear, something he cared deeply about, being thrown in his face, and his fear of both getting help from adulta and of being judged by his best friends in the world were both compeltely affirmed when Gwen and the other kids (Including Nikki and Neil who we know he adores and values a shit ton) mocking him for his teddy bear, which again, was very important to him. And that really hurts me a l o t to see.

*SPOILERS from Camp Camp Season 2 Episode 8*

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