Bought iPad and I dedicate my first works to these two. I love them. I love this cartoon. For something made to sell toys first 2 seasons were freakishly good.
How much sense the plot has, how much lore is revealed through clues and littlest of details, humour, mystery and chemistry between characters… I’m forever attached, and not growing out of this anytime soon🫶
I forget how early on the show starts showing, to the us and Max and Steel, that not everything Ferrus does or says can be entirely trusted, simply because it's not the whole truth.
It starts in episode 7 or 8, which makes sense considering there's only 26 episodes and they need to spread out the whole turbo star thing over the last half of the season, which relies on those two not trusting anyone and sneaking around to find the answers themselves, but it really shows how Ferrus is reluctant to trust a 16 year old and his robot friend even after barely working with them. Though that might also give him more incentive to lie, because who knows what they'll do with the information, right?
He also punishes them for trying to find out what he's hiding by giving them more training, as seen at the end of the episode 'Uncle Sam Wants You!', which is weird to me. He could have gone about making their next training session harder without telling them, but then they wouldn't know its for breaking a rule, a rule set purely to limit what they know so that they become more subservient. A rule put in place because Ferrus doesn't trust Steel enough to believe him when he says that he won't hurt his host, and more importantly friend, on purpose. A rule put in place because he doesn't have faith in Max to try and stop Steel from 'going bad' even after he sacrifices himself, his relationships with people and his grades to do good and be a hero. He thinks they could betray him, and so he lies to Max and Steel.
Steel being someone Forge worked with in the past for years, who kept one of his best friends and closest allies protected against everything. Max being his nephew, a blood relative, that grew up with Molly and Forge, thus causing Max to see him as a father figure, rather than his actual dad who was never present. He has a long history with both of them, and yet he doesn't trust them enough to tell them what they are, who they are.
i love how max mcgrath is the embodiment of some guy whos. id say neurodivergent but also i dont think that is the exact word for what i am thinking of. anyways he definitely needs support but hes simply coping he has anxiety and a robot yelling in his brain all the time also he definitely needs accommodations because he cant touch most electronics that arent specially made without them exploding but he cant bring it up so he just finds ways to deal with it himself motherfucker was fully ready to drive a car with oven mitts.
Not my favorite drawing, but I'm drowning in Max Steel headcannons, so here I am, mapping out Jim's Takonian markings and trying to salvage an old drawing in the process
one detail that i find neat about max’s room is that it’s filled with x-treme sports stuff (gear, posters, trophies) and one very expensive telescope. seriously, look at the size of that barrel.
its the only astronomy thing in his room (and the whole apartment tbh) and it is so important to him that not only does he keep it between moves, not only does he set it up before he’s even finished unpacking, but unlike everything else, its always by the window.
and the show does nothing with it??? someone please correct me if im wrong bc srsly what the fuck. in a sci-fi show about aliens, including one that has scenes establishing that he actively goes to the roof to stargaze, the telescope in the mc’s bedroom is never mentioned? like im not asking for much, just a scene of it in use or max commenting that it used to be his dad’s (bc jim 100% owned a telescope) and even though max never really got into stargazing all that much, he keeps it nearby bc it makes him feel connected to his dad.
or yknow, let him have this interest and reference it in the show without using the scope. ie max takes a moment to appreciate the night sky at literally any point when he’s away from copper canyon’s light pollution (up to and including one of the times they’re in space), or max and steel are speculating where steel/ultralinks come from, and max mentions/points in the genral direcrion of exoplanets
and, like, the show does this with the sports stuff. the skateboard’s a p perfect example, bc it also got to be in the room before the unpacking was finished, but we see max frequently using it, we see it getting moved about his bedroom bc he doesnt have a specific spot for it aside from generally at the foot of his bed, he connects to other characters over skateboarding.
or even the snowboard. it also goes unused, but its presence establishes that max is actively into and participated in more xtreme sports than skateboarding. it’s also a reminder that max isn’t from copper canyon, since here he is w this nice snowboard sandwiched btwn the coast and a mesa. (it’s also a reference to the 2000s max steel but shh)
tldr: most of the stuff in max’s room is p obviously related to his interests and then there’s this mysterious telescope that i go feral over every time i see it.
I like to think that Max has to deal with tourette like tics as a side effect of his TURBO energy.
This totally isn't because I have tics too and want to imagine him going through the things I do for comfort, noo what are you talking about?
Like, we've seen how he starts losing control over his body when he's overloading and so it makes sense to me that the longer Max goes without linking with Steel, the more spasms and tic like movements he has.
When it's only been two to three hours since they last linked, he has small tics but they don't happen a lot and are usually not noticed, sometimes by Max himself but mostly by the others around him. Maybe small movements in his hands, a bit of excessive blinking, a bit of throat clearing here and there but nothing that's that out of the ordinary or that can't be chalked up to Max being weird.
Four to six hours after their last link, his tics become more moderate in severity. Head jerking, face scrunching, shaking his hands and arms out or hitting himself lightly. Or slight whistling and humming on the more vocal side of things. These tics are more noticeable and happen more often, but they aren't bad to deal with, just annoying. He's probably ended up knocking things over or interrupting people, especially his uncle, more times than he'd like to admit. Grabbing something he wasn't supposed to and hurting himself, which is why he tends to avoid Berto's lab if it's gotten to that point. Steel usually links up with him when it does though, knowing how exhausting, both physically and mentally, the tics are on Max, and because of how annoyed the others get at him.
Hours seven and eight are when they get really bad. He's moving or making some sort of noise pretty much all the time. Punching or hitting himself or others around him no matter who it is, pretty commonly saying 'Go TURBO' under his breath or, on a few rare occasions, at the top of his lungs, his legs, and sometimes his entire body, going limp for a few seconds and causing him to end up crashing into people and things. And that's on top of all the other tics mentioned. If it's gotten to that point, everyone at N-Tek know to get him and Steel linked as soon as possible, as it's getting close to the maximum amount of time they can spend apart from each other.
He doesn't have any when Steel is linked with him. They only start after he unlinks because he can't redirect the excess TURBO energy into something else or effectively keep the energy dampeners working. The more energy Max has that isn't being put to use, the more tics he has, and the more complex.
Along that same line of thinking, even if it's only been half an hour since Steel was linked to him, if he's excited or nervous or has higher amounts of energy than what's usual, he'll also be ticcing more than usual. I like to think that when the ultra-links were trying to invade Earth, Max was ticcing pretty consistently because of stress and anxiety even with Steel staying linked with him as much as possible to try and help.