Phillip Maxwell

Phillip Maxwell
First Appearance	Episode 1 - “The Vision”
Status	{{{status}}}
Pronouns	He/Him
Affiliation	Team MITs
Aliases	Menter
Biographical Information
Date of birth	Unknown
Age	11 Years
Species	Trak
Hair color	Red
Eye Color	Red
Chondria Information
Type	Oth
Sub-Type	Unnamed
Chondria Color	None/Black

Phillip Maxwell is one of the four main protagonists of The Last Dimension. He is a young mit whose chondria allows him to manipulate and transmute matter, including his own, allowing him to hide the fact that he is secretly not human.

Description

Physical Characteristics

As a Trak, Phillip's natural appearance differs greatly from that of a human. His skin is pale with a slight green tint, with green freckles and pigmentation covering his webbed fingers and running down the back of his tail, which is tipped with a translucent dark green fin. His ears are long and thin, and have a similar semi-transparent green color. His eyes have pale yellow-green sclera rather than white, and bright red irises. He has sharp, triangular teeth, and the inside of his mouth (along with his blood) is a dark teal color. His hair is red. His skin is described as “icky” by Alex, and has been confirmed to be cold to the touch due to his chondria.

When disguised as human using his chondria, his skin, while still pale, is slightly tinted red. His eyes have white sclera and blue irises, and his ears are hidden behind his hair. His mouth remains unchanged, as he disikes how human teeth feel in his mouth.

Phillip's human appearance

Phillip often wears clothing with long sleeves and a scarf. This is primarily to more easily conceal his Trak appearance, although he continues to wear such clothing even after his identity is revealed to others, implying he may also simply enjoy wearing them.

Phillip’s Trak biology grants him a greatly increased resistance to acidic compounds, as well as the ability to safely digest many substances most humans could not, such as clay. The reason for this is currently unknown.

Personality

Phillip is quick-witted, kind, and highly empathetic. Although to outsiders he may at first seem shy and submissive, when surrounded by people he trusts, Phillip is eager to voice his opinions and quick to jump to others’ defence, and even quite a bit snarky and mischievous. Despite this, even when fully disguised his appearance and hidden alien nature have led him to avoid interacting with most people, resulting in him making few friends and perpetuating a cycle of bullying that is only reinforced by his tendency to verbally shut down when overwhelmed.

Years of concealing his identity may also have contributed to Phillip's more secretive nature; he is incredibly reserved when it comes to his own personal and emotional struggles, such as the self-alienating effect he feels due to the history of his now-extinct species, and his meeting with the Vehc Shard, Skraunt. This often results in a lack of communication and misunderstanding between him and his friends.

Phillip is confirmed by Leaf to be on the autism spectrum.

Chondria

An explosive chemical reaction caused by Phillip's chondria

Phillip's chondria is mistakenly classified by the Institute as that of an Utso-bound Etumus. In reality, it is the result of an Oth bond unique to Traks. It allows Phillip to manipulate matter and transmute (or “shift”) it from one atomic element or molecular compound to another. However, using it saps thermal energy from his body, lowering his temperature and forcing his body to produce more heat. As a result, excessive use over time will physically tire him out. Phillip's body actively resists being shifted, and will automatically revert to its natural state unless continuously overridden.

Phillip’s chondria is incredibly versatile, allowing him to create many useful objects such as food, clothes, and soap, as well as remove obstacles and identify harmful substances. He possesses an impressive understanding (for his age) of chemical reactions and formulae, and frequently applies it in clever ways when using his chondria. He is also able to shift his own body and majorly alter its form. He rarely does this outside of an emergency, unless for the sake of humor. However, he tends not to frivolously use his chondria very often during season one, as he spends much of his energy maintaining a human disguise by constantly shifting his skin, tail, and facial features.

He is also able to store items by shifting them into his clothing.

In combat

Phillip shifting a wall of spikes to allow himself to escape danger

As would be expected of any eleven-year-old, Phillip usually tries to avoid combat, using his chondria as he flees to generate smokescreens and explosions meant to conceal and distract rather than injure, and shifting large barriers to cut off pursuers. Even when forced into a direct confrontation, Phillip is typically gentle with his abilities, shifting himself out of harm's way to dodge attacks rather than block them (unless it’s to defend someone else) and choosing to trap or entangle opponents using chemical mixtures or manually controlled appendages of shifted matter, disabling opponents without hurting them. However, while he is usually quite selective and precise in using his abilities, when push comes to shove, he will resort to much less precise and more brute-force tactics, such as causing point-blank explosions and shifting large areas of the ground into a tar-like substance. At his most aggressive, he has rapidly shifted himself to different points around his opponent while constantly attacking with waves of spikes, disorienting and forcing them to concentrate on avoiding his attacks, proving himself to be an extremely dangerous enemy when pushed far enough.

He has never shifted an opponent or any other living being directly, regardless of any circumstances.

Background

For reasons currently unknown, Phillip was found on Earth by his parents roughly 65 years after the end of humanity’s war against the Traks. His parents hid him until he could disguise himself, but this caused a number of arguments between his mother, who feared what consequences his alien nature might bring to the family, and his father, who believed Phillip deserved a chance to live as normal a life as possible. This strained his relationship between him and his parents and sister, despite being loved by most of them. Eventually, he was scouted and brought to Laire Institute, where he made friends with Alex Hill. Unfortunately, their friendship came apart when Phillip revealed his true form to Alex, who then left him and began to bully him along with many of his classmates, until Laire underwent a major student transfer to Quianto.

Story

Season 1

[To be added]

Season 2

[To be added]

Menter

Menter

Menter is Phillip's future self, implied to be an incredibly significant entity in the future. He is an Aikel, and the person to cause Kori, Dotsu, Zawk, and Muien to travel to the past. He is also “umprecognizable,” meaning Oracles cannot see visions or experience premonitions that relate to him. His background, accomplishments, and goals are currently unknown. Much like his younger self, he is implied to be cunning and mischievous, if not even more so, and seems to have fully embraced his Trak identity and Oth bond. It is not currently known why he changed his name from Phillip to Menter.

Relationships

As Phillip

Alex Hill

Phillip’s first and only friend at Laire, Alex shares a rocky history with Phillip. While the two were originally close friends, their friendship collapsed when Phillip revealed his true Trak form to Alex soon after agreeing to keep the latter’s chondria-enhancing brain surgery a secret. Feeling as though he had been “tricked,” Alex stopped being his friend, eventually joining his classmates in bullying Phillip. Despite this, neither revealed the other’s secret, and a small amount of trust remained between them. When the two were inevitably transported to Imash along with Fai and Anne, that trust (along with some healthy peer pressure) allowed them to slowly rebuild their friendship over many days.

Anne

Anne cares quite a lot for Phillip and is one of the few people from Laire who are nice to him. She frequently shows concern for him, getting worried when she notices that Phillip isn’t responding. In return Phillip often makes note of the fact that Alex forgets about Anne early on.

Susi

Phillip is cautious when first meeting Susi and doesn’t really talk to her.

Dotsu

Dotsu is one of the first people Phillip opens up to after the conflict on Paedd Hill. Dotsu is also an alien which makes Phillip more comfortable even letting Dotsu bandage his tail after an incident with Jagg and the Paedd crew.

Lokki

At first Lokki was somewhat neutral towards Phillip, along with the other three human mits, despite some tension growing between their respective groups following the events on Paedd Hill. He desires for the two groups to at least leave each other alone peacefully, if not get along. He ends up risking his life to prevent Jagg from absorbing Phillip’s poluk, losing an eye in the process. Phillip on the other hand feels extremely guilty for causing Lokki to be hurt and initially believes himself to be the cause of Jagg’s corruption.

However, the two eventually end up fighting over the Clue, as Phillip believes it to be essential to determining what he is and where he belongs, while Lokki foresees that letting him have it will cause a war and put many people in danger.

Jagg

In addition to being a large threat due to his unstable bond, Jagg possesses the Clue, an artifact they both desperately want for their own ends. Both are willing to use force to obtain it and keep it.

As Menter

The state of Menter's social life is currently an enigma.

Appearances in Other Media

Phillip has existed as a character for a very long time, and has appeared in a few other works created by Leaf over the years.

Utso and Webtoon Canvas

Phillip in his human form, from the original "Utso" version of the comic

In the days before it was released as a Webtoon Original on March 8, 2022, The Last Dimension (then titled "Utso") was instead hosted on Tapas, and eventually Webtoon Canvas. Back then, in addition to initially being drawn in a very different style, he lacked many of his modern counterpart’s distinct features, must notably his tail.

Stress Relieving Strips

Phillip as depicted in SRS

Phillip is the secondary protagonist of Stress-Relieving Strips, a gag-a-day webcomic created by Leaf and hosted on Tapas, with the first episode uploaded on May 15, 2015.

Rather than the last surviving member of an alien race following a war between them and humanity, this version of Phillip is instead the imaginary friend of the main protagonist (a stand-in for Leaf), accompanying them and offering insight of varying sincerity and questionable quality as they navigate the perils of life. SRS!Phillip is much more pessimistic and snarky than his modern incarnation, and shapeshifts much more liberally, but cannot shift other matter around him as he does not actually exist, and therefore cannot affect the real world.

Leaf has confirmed him to be an older, young-adult version of Phillip, as opposed to TLD!Phillip's age of eleven years old.