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[gone-series-orchid]

Who would you rank as your top 5 characters from the series?

hi, anon! thanks so much for the ask!

orc (basically my whole blog is about him tbh)

2. astrid (ditto)

3. howard (okay okay HEAR ME OUT. it's because i am writing a fic from his pov and i'm mourning his potential. he deserved better i'm telling you)

4. mary (also deserved better. her ending was so mean)

5. hunter, duck, & cookie (best minor characters!)

#gone series #michael grant #the gone series #fayz #the fayz

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caine is very special to me, while i think he's horribly written, his struggle with not knowing who he is and coming into his own identity really resonates with me.

#another beautiful piece!

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stuck between being two people, what a horrible fate for drake merwin who feels nothing.

#wow! beautiful #love the aesthetic

[gone-series-orchid]

Hiya! saw that you wanted asks, how do you feel about the island kids?

Honestly I felt like they were tacked on, but I do like Sanjit's character!

the island kids i think are really cool in concept, and i love the idea of them making it to the mainland by helicopter--it's just such cool imagery--but i feel like michael grant didn't have much to do with them afterward. the only one who gets any attention is sanjit (and i guess choo), and while i like him fine, i don't really see the point to him, if that makes sense. kind of like orsay--i think the power of being able to see people's dreams and there being a kid eking out an existence in the stefano rey national park all really fascinating in concept, but orsay herself doesn't feel like she has any real significance beyond just being the conduit for nerezza's evil plans (and nerezza herself is such a weird subplot that just kind of peters out, too, so it makes orsay feel doubly pointless).

i'm not sure if i wish the island kids weren't included at all or if they had greater plot significance, but i don't find them super interesting. they're nice enough, but plot functionality-wise i'm like, ???

i agree that sanjit's personality is a standout. he's charming and fun to read about. maybe if he did more than be lana's manic pixie dream boy i'd feel more about him, but as is i don't think he's too remarkable.

please feel free to send more asks, anon!

#sanjit brattle-chance #gone series #michael grant #fayz #the gone series

[gone-series-orchid]

I wish there was more on what happened to the characters after the FAYZ. The sequels weren't really about that at all. Do you have any theories?

i agree, i wish we got more information, too!

i'll admit, my ideas for what characters' lives would be like post-fayz is a bit fuzzy. i think the closest i get to articulating what i'd like to see is my au where the kids don't get emancipated, lol. and this post about astrid being sent to catholic school, which i still maintain would be a wonderful way to explore astrid's trauma and her atheism, plus her past. and her relationship with her parents. i just think it's a really fun au, lol.

i guess my main wish for astrid post-fayz canonically is for her to continue her education and explore her identity outside being sam's girlfriend. maybe by taking a break from him for a bit, idk. definitely not getting married at nineteen. i just want some self-actualization for her tbh. she deserves it!

i mostly would think that sam and diana would struggle to adapt, as well, but i have no idea what they would actually do. how would they fill their days once they're emancipated? i have no idea. take correspondence courses? marinate in their trauma? idk i feel like being around fayz survivors constantly would just re-traumatize them but i've already groused about that in my no emancipation au

i hope that bug survived the fayz, i guess. no confirmation either way but i hope he did. he's just a little boy! i like to think he'd be happy to reunite with his parents. he's a creep but he's still human.

i've talked before about how much i wanted orc to survive the fayz because i think dealing with his relationship with his parents, howard's death, his religiosity, etc. would be super interesting. an orc survives au would be so fun to write about. i tried with this fic, but i'm not sure i captured all the potential.

sorry if this answer is unsatisfactory, anon! i'm pretty hazy on what the kids' lives would be like after the fayz. i just feel like we aren't given enough information to speculate on how their lives woudl be now that they're emancipated from their parents. another source of tension/conflict gone, i guess. feel free to send more asks, if you'd like!

#gone series #michael grant #the gone series #astrid ellison #diana ladris #charles orc merriman #sam temple

[gone-series-orchid]

would love some asks if anyone’s willing 👀

#gone series #michael grant #the gone series #fayz #fayzian

[gone-series-orchid]

coates scene, innocence, fairytales

also something i forgot to reference is that orc and astrid are jaded romantics—she describes her past self as an innocent with romantic daydreams, and drake mockingly asks orc if he’s astrid’s “knight in shining armor” and if she’ll fulfill that staple of courtly tales of chivalry, a “kiss [on] his big gravel face.” orc doesn’t refute this, because it’s implicitly true. both astrid and orc are just kids with little to no experience with real world romance. they’re still innocent. they rely on the framework of narratives/archetypes they’ve consumed to illustrate their desires and wants because that’s all they know.

astrid can’t have sex with sam because it doesn’t fit her romantic conceptions of what her first time should be like. she refuses to capitulate even when it contributes to ending her relationship with sam. if her ideas of what her story should be like don’t fit reality, she throws it out. she can’t take anything less, her idealism has been too worn down to concede any more.

orc knows he’s a monster. he’s resigned to this fact and he thus tries to kill himself over it. he goes to astrid to protect her from drake, knowing the latter hates her. but he doesn’t end up saving her from the human crew, even when she’s calling out to him; it’s edilio that does that. still, he goes with her to coates, joining her in her exile, because she’ll be safe from drake there. orc is still her implied protector just by virtue of his presence. a monster in love with the beautiful maiden—that’s an image echoed by many fairytales and fables.

but the monster always turns into a prince at the end. and orc isn’t a noble monster, anyway—he leers at his ostensible love, more like a villain than a hero. and why not? in orc’s unhappy eyes he is the villain. the savage. and a villain can’t be criticized for performing his role. hence the bounding up the stairs. he’s not astrid’s knight in shining armor, he’s the monster who’s going to consume her and her innocence.

drake’s arrival jolts things back into place. drake is the true monster who wants to hurt astrid, not orc. that’s what he tells himself. he recognizes his hypocrisy— “but wasn’t he going to do the same thing to astrid?”—but it hurts to dwell on. so he doesn’t.

drake realizes orc’s violent, sexually charged impulse for what it is. he rejects the idea of orc being a platonic protector of astrid because he knows that’s not what orc is. he’s a monster just like him. they’re more alike than they realize.

astrid hasn’t been attacked, but she has still suffered a painful loss of innocence. she’s killed her brother. how villainous is that? so she rejects the christian framework altogether (another set of archetypes and morals wrapped up in narratives). she doesn’t fit, so she throws herself out. she plunges into the unknown, both physically and spiritually, to piece her identity back together.

#i think this is probably a huge stretch #bc fairy tales aren’t really an actual motif in any of these books #but uh. here this is anyway #gone series #michael grant #the gone series #fayz #astrid ellison #fayzian #charles merriman

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“[orc] had no clear thought for what he would do when he found [astrid]. she was just the only one who had ever helped him. she was the only one who had ever seen him as charles merriman and not just orc. she should feel his pain [...] someone had to feel the pain” (p. 436).

this is fundamentally a frustrated, warped attempt to communicate [orc’s] pain to someone he trusts deeply, someone he feels will understand because she saw him as a human being and not a monster.

it’s also […] an equally warped expression of sexual desire, though i think orc doesn’t recognize it consciously...or, if he does, it’s in a purposely obfuscatory way. while this is orc’s “let me be evil” moment, it’s also a “let me be evil but with psychological plausible deniability” moment; he recognizes what he’s doing is sexually charged and unwanted, but the thought of his actions as meriting the label of sexual assault would never cross his mind; cognitive dissonance all the way.  it would be too psychologically painful for him to reconcile those two things.

orc longs to have sex with astrid to cope with his self-loathing and suicidality. with sex usually comes love and acceptance (which, of course, is what he wants the most from her). it also means physical intimacy, which he’s been deprived of due to his mutation. orc wants to be close to her physically and emotionally because he thinks love (and thus sex) [the two are inexplicably linked and entwined with pain due to his history of domestic abuse] redeems. if astrid can love him, then that makes him good. and he thinks […] that he can only get that approval [sexual acquiescence] through violence […] negating the fact that it’s supposed to be redemptive).”

[…]

“[orc] immediately sublimates [a] completely normal and healthy erotic impulse into a violent one.”

#these quotes are taken from 2 different posts of mine #one of them being an ask that talks explicitly about SA #so i thought i’d take it out of that context because i think it’s my genuinely most cohesive analysis of this scene yet #gone series #michael grant #the gone series #fayz #astrid ellison #charles merriman #fayzian #the fayz #charles orc merriman

[gone-series-orchid]

do you think any of the villains are written well? i think caine's crew was good in Gone, but after that they just got. stereotype-y. and a little two-dimensional.

that’s a good question! i’ll hesitantly say yes—though the best antagonists, captain orc and his gang on bully row, don’t stay antagonistic for long (unfortunately).

i think having orc and howard and their group stay the ostensible leaders of the fayz would be really interesting. it could lay some of the groundwork for orc’s development early on, precluding his murder of bette. it would be fascinating for michael grant to have to toe the line between keeping orc and howard as firmly antagonistic figures while still underlining their general ineffectiveness as leaders.

not to mention, keeping orc in power for a longer time would give more “oomph” to the whole bette situation—there would be more suspense leading up to it. hypothetically, at this point we’ve gotten a pretty good insight into orc and howard’s specific petty antagonism. they’re the schoolyard bullies given an unprecedented amount of power…but they don’t really know what to do with it. they’re still menaces, and dangerous because they’re so confident (howard) and stupid (orc), but at the same time they don’t know any more than any other kid does about this new world little pete has created. they’re bad kids hopped up on this new influx of authority, but they’re not evil.

so when orc does accidentally kill bette, it’s even more of a shock than it is in canon, because we’ve seen what his rule is actually like and we know what kind of person he is.

maybe bette’s death could be built up to even more. maybe orc at this point is used to punishing people with his baseball bat if they don’t do what he says (always below the chest, though). he does it to intimidate and shock kids, and it works. sam and co. are of course concerned and disgusted by his and howard’s schoolyard tyranny.

maybe orc starts drinking at first to celebrate his captaincy (his gang has confiscated all the town’s alcohol for themselves because haha, the adults aren’t around and they can do whatever they want). he drinks to heighten his enjoyment, lower his inhibitions, and numb whatever mild stressors he’s dealing with as the fayz’s captain. he probably doesn’t even connect his drinking with his dad (that’s how different the context of said drinking is!) at that point. he’s on top of the world. he’s riding high. why shouldn’t he have fun and get drunk with his friends? it’s the fayz, after all. it’s a party.

it’s only after bette’s death that he drinks to dull his suffering and guilt.

sorry, i kind of went off on a tangent. anyway!

in a similar vein, i enjoy the human crew for their very human awfulness. i think mg writes them well. i just wish they had a lasting effect on the fayz as a whole and were generally taken more seriously as threats—the gaiaphage, drake, and caine were always prioritized over the call coming from inside the house. which of course, they’re bigger threats, but there’s something a lot more compelling about rooting out the villains festering in the fayz itself. zil and the human crew are driven by bigotry and resentment that have grown because of the power dynamic of the council that the protagonists have spearheaded.

i guess i just love pathetic bullies being the big bad antagonists of the fayz. they’re more interesting because they’re so fallible and human. i just don’t find caine or drake or the gaiaphage interesting in comparison.

on the coates trio, i definitely think they were at their peak in the first book. in hindsight i’m really surprised mg didn’t refer back to their alliance in later books. that might give drake a little bit more pathos, if he half-genuinely looks back on his time with cementing kids with caine and diana through a rose-tinted lens. sure, it’s mostly the torture he enjoys, but being a weird whip-handed servant to a radioactive alien in a mineshaft sounds pretty lonely. maybe he misses being a normal sadistic kid instead of a weird monstrosity, at least to a point. once the shine has worn off. 🤷‍♀️

anyway once again! sorry this got a bit more scattershot than i meant it to be. i hope i answered your question!

please feel free to send more asks!

#gone series #michael grant #the gone series #fayz #fayzian #charles merriman #charles orc merriman #drake merwin #caine soren #diana ladris #howard bassem

[gone-series-orchid]

headcanon

orc wants to give astrid…a Kiss

#my most genius analysis yet

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“’orc, don’t let them kill you,’ astrid said, putting her hand on his arm.

‘you was always nice to me, astrid. sorry i…’ then he shrugged. ‘don’t matter now. better get out while you can. most likely this won’t take long.’”

-plague, p. 448

#yeah <3 #ignore the fact that he's apologizing for almost sexually assaulting her

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“‘you handled orc well back there,’ [sam] said. ‘thanks.’

‘i tutored him through remedial math.’ [astrid] made a wry smile. ‘he’s a little intimidated by me.’”

#reblogging because what the hell THIS IS SO FUNNY #how was i funnier in 2019 than i am now #every once in a while i'll just post something that just tickles my dumb brain

[gone-series-orchid]

thinking about this again

How about the 'astrid is pregnant instead of diana' au?

i literally love that au so much anon...i think about it all the time. the potential it has is amazing. it would give astrid more of a boost in later books in terms of plot relevancy and wouldn’t punish diana, the residential “bad girl,” for the crime of *gasp* having sex. instead it’d be a horrible cosmic irony that astrid, the good girl, is pregnant after choosing abstinence for so long; it has less to do with her having sex/”abandoning her morals” (although that's how she might rationalize it) than it does with her struggles with her own faith and her brother’s death. sure, it’s a cruel joke on astrid and would definitely test her, but she’d be strong enough to get through it. it could also bring into play her possible stance on abortion. it would make sense given her christian upbringing (it always seemed bizarre that diana never seriously considered abortion in the series) that astrid would be resistant to aborting it. she might also attribute some significance to her bringing life into the world after snuffing it out (wrt little pete), maybe even subconsciously believing the birth of the baby would absolve her of killing her brother.

(and if you add to the au the idea that the pregnancy was divine, then it becomes all the more cosmically cruel).

anyway, i love this au to death. it’s got thematic relevance, it’s dark, it’s got intrigue, it’d be a worthy exploration of astrid’s character (not to mention her and sam’s relationship!), and i love it! 10/10

please feel free to send more au’s, anon! even silly/goofy ones, i don't bite! :)

[gone-series-orchid]

thinking about orc

#gone series #michael grant #charles merriman #the fayz #charles orc merriman #fayz #fayzian #Spotify

[gone-series-orchid]

evil astrid au excerpt thing

i can't remember when this diverges from the series--i think in lies, probably. i didn't think this out too much tbh. just go with the flow i guess. i'd really appreciate feedback, but please be gentle!

Astrid made lists. She sent a rotation of kids—trustworthy ones, the younger set, ages twelve to ten—to take polls, surveys, suggestions. What needs doing? What do you want? At first she wanted to do it herself, but then after righting things (that’s how she thought of it, righting, like straightening a crooked picture frame), she realized how naïve that was. She didn’t have time to meet kids on the street and make small talk and try to convince them to care about things outside their immediate purview; she’d done that regularly for Sam and look how that turned out. Astrid was a leader now, not playing second fiddle to anyone. She had to act like it. She had to be an authority.

It took hard work to right things. Sam hadn’t wanted to give up his position. He told her again and again that he wasn’t going to budge. Astrid tried to reason with him. For months she dropped hints. Then she discussed it at length with him, going over the same talking points, trying to be patient. As time wore on, she grew frustrated.

Words wouldn’t sway him. Evoking the concept of democracy, of building some sort of parliament or council, made him hesitate, but he didn’t trust the public. Astrid didn’t blame him—she didn’t either. But it seemed the only thing Sam really responded to was violence—working with his hands, those unnatural Day-Glo green lasers about which she was increasingly concerned. If she used force, she’d have to consider the chance that he’d use them against her or any allies she might gain.

It wouldn’t come to that, she told herself. She bit her fingernails down to the quicks telling herself that. She cozied up to Sam over the course of the next few weeks, hoping that even when she usurped him, he’d remember how loving she could be. He’d remember her generosity—she let him feel her up, after all, even though the crucifix on her necklace felt punishingly cold against her breastbone every time. He’d remember how good and pliant a girlfriend she was, and soon, from a safe distance, he’d realize how much better a leader she was, too.

She was right—Sam didn’t hurt her. She still closed her eyes and saw Orc’s agape mouth, his look of dumb disbelief at seeing the clean, cauterized stump. The howl he made. The look on Sam’s face, cheesy and ill. Orc rushed at him in a blind rage, and Astrid ran at him, shouting, grabbing at him. “We’ll fix it/I’ll fix it” is what she babbled. Orc looked at his stump. After a minute, tears leaked from his eyes. His mouth was open like a child’s.

Sam went quietly after that. After he was safely locked away, Astrid sent Orc to Lana.

She went to the church, sat in the pew closest to the pulpit, and prayed. She prayed for Sam to learn humility, to tame his anger and killing light. She prayed for Lana to heal Orc as best she could and send him back to her without any resentment. She prayed for God to forgive her for being treacherous and deceitful to someone she supposedly loved. Lastly, she prayed for herself, that she may have the strength to do what she knew was right.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the fallen cross lying on the floor by the pulpit. It struck her again, the wrongness of the image. That’s the first thing I’ll have to fix, she thought with a frown. The very first thing.

Astrid returned to the town hall. In one of the adjacent rooms, Little Pete sat on a leather couch. She pulled him close and stroked his hair. That night, when all she could see when she closed her eyes was Sam burning Orc’s arm to nothing, she laced her hands tightly together and prayed again. Please, Lord, forgive me. Let me sleep tonight. I still have so much good to do.

#gone series #michael grant #the gone series #fayz #astrid ellison #the fayz #gone series fanfic

[gone-series-orchid]

presented to you all without comment

#browsing through my blog and found this post #god this instagram post had a HOLD on me in 2014 #i was insane over it. it was in my camera roll #gone series michael grant #gone series #the gone series #orc x astrid #charles merriman x astrid ellison #fayz #the fayz

[gone-series-orchid]

i’m tempted to post something i wrote for an evil astrid au

#gone series #michael grant #the gone series #fayz #astrid ellison #it’s not even a fully fledged oneshot #it’s only 788 words #but i desperately want to add more fic to this fandom #no matter how small