Julie Winters is underrated (The Maxx *recommended reads*)

 

The Maxx, Watched the mini a few times.

I eventually read the story, some bits of the ending wasn't that well executed- the writer went to some very very weird places (not weird as in *I just didn't like it*, weird as in complicating the narrative bro was going for in the first place = unnecessarily convoluted ).

But the main issue is it was rushed.

The cartoon & first half of the story definitely holds up, like everything before #21 was/is tight.

The story after the fact is still decent but it just felt off. Like the direction/cadence, how quick things were wrapped up took a nosedive.

Just after a certain point things just took off and never came back to lead the viewers along in a more proper fashion, like the first 60% of the story.

Julie is one of my favorite mc's because of how messed up she is, she seems like this idealized, risqué hottie (the image of her *in the pink top & jeans* most of the internet knows about) but she's really got junk in the trunk. Serious baggage, not a nut case, but almost too real a person sometimes.

Because she's even hypocrite to an extent.

And how messed up she always was, later we find out in the story. She's definitely not your squeaky clean feminist, holier than thou female character with a message to preach, she's as flawed as they come, with a bizarre intimate detail of some repressed trauma, insecurities (again) later on even after the show is concerned.

(There's an implication that she's bi as well, and again, the show doesn't include that because that's laaaater on.



To reiterate all this showed up way later. If The Maxx was a 2020 release, her possibly/definitely being bi would be crammed in #1 as if that matters to her overall arc.)

Her being Bi would be branded on her forehead, because that's how many youths are groomed to think that's what their existence boils down to. A very era specific misconception, the sum of what you choose to be isn't your identity: but that ONE SPECIFIC superficial trait (usually a hobby fetish, or something sexual) that's your identity.

A box.

And so, that's what's done here, the opposite. Because this was written before western zeitgeist took a blow to the head.

It's an implication of bisexuality because there's a character that's not Julie...but obviously is Julie, that likes another girl.

• The fact that her adolescent "sexual curiosity" on the queer spectrum is not a defining trait of her existence but simply one of many facets of her identity (which is what that is or how that works), good execution on that front. 

Did not see that coming, and that's how it should be. Some people will just clutch pearls because *queer* but for most people with nuance, it's the delivery, it's the frequency, it's the desperation to push a narrative vs the queerness being part of the narrative, which is more organic.

So being a central focal point, that's why she (Julie) works, she's fucked up, she's human.

Sara is difficult, the story gave her more to do to a point (which I was here for), but again the execution was weird, she was set up to be a major piece, then things just lost it's own plot. Especially towards the end, and I really liked her, given how she was introduced very very early as a minor character

(It's like introducing Ochako in BNH Season 1 but Season 3 forward she becomes this instrumental character that you couldn't see being any less than what she became after she stepped up to a higher echelon of importance; ofc that never happened for Uraraka but that was just an example).

Sara is very clean as an NPC then gradually came forefront. It read like OP rushed the narrative in the final stretch.

Reminds me of My Hero. Time constraints, exhaustion, boredom, idfk but the tone in the first half was solid

(Like My Hero, but My Hero was significantly worse, the whole thing was garbage but in COMPARISON to post Season 3 the first half was objectively better because there was less on the author's plate, same thing for The Maxx, sort of.)

-but gradually towards the end, the pacing and writing performance just felt off more and more until it just got clunky.

The Maxx, still a good read, a good subversion, a good deconstruction of characters and the “superhero”, still coherent in the last bit, but messy. Eccentric as a whole for the most part.