#Sam temple

[aliciarose-art]

I’ve been rereading a series that I haven’t read for at least a decade? If anyone remembers the Gone series by Michael Grant? So yeah time to draw some of the characters!

[dianaladrislovebot]

caine: i think i’ve learned some valuable lessons from this

sam: i’m assuming that they’re all horrible distortions of the lessons you actually should have taken away

caine: death isn’t real and i’m basically god

[sigmaaegoniii]

Sam with Caine and his crew at the end of Gone

[jinxiguess]

hey guys sorry i died for like three months but now im alive again anyway take these

[ginaluvr]

thoughts after rereading fear

again. again i just think diana's pregnancy being twice as quick as it should is so unnecessary and such a silly plotline

but i love diana starting to integrate with others and wanting redemption and being cared for by others. sam & diana is a friendship i would've liked more of. i love brianna & diana too. and diana taking care of little kids <3

sanjit is just in love with lana and lana taking in his whole family is so adorable

i love astrid's development. but i solidly dislike sam and astrid's relationship by this book. i said i liked them in book 1 this time - and i did - but it just doesn't work anymore

i think drake's misogyny was so silly in this book. him being like 'ugh females!!!!' was so funny because yes we could tell he hates women by the fact that he constantly fantasizes about torturing diana and astrid. why are we spelling it out and making it comical

i enjoy orc's redemption and discovering his faith. i really like that little moment dekka and orc have. + him almost tripping and falling when he discovers that lesbians are in fact a real thing

so brianna is confirmed to be 13 here LMAO her age was definitely retconned?

i always forget howard got killed off because literally no one cared except orc, no one mentioned it, we didn't even really get to see the moment. it's a disappointing and anticlimactic ending for a character that we were shown had a lot more depth than he pretended

the cigar plotline used to scare me so bad when i was young. still horrifying obviously

that being said, penny is just. not a well written character. this is a 12 year old girl with bad self esteem and she was punished for her wrongdoings (less bad wrongdoings than most of caine's btw) with a brutal and horrible death. she caught the worst of the writing's deep rooted misogyny

quinn the character that you are

sam is the kind of aggressive ally who's like 'why didn't you tell me you were gay >:( i would’ve supported you. grrr why' to edilio and wanting to be housemates with his lesbian best friend. one of his funnier traits i would say

astrid and edilio one of my favorite friendships i think

dekka is my beloved i just want to protect her. she deserved better every moment. i love her proudly calling herself a lesbian, to the point where she corrects people who mislabel her. i love her being referred to as the 'antipanic presence' whose energy calms and supports everyone. she is my number one favorite after this reread i think

sam lowkey being protective over caine, like just a tiny little bit, is so funny

diana has been through hell like none of this is okay for a freshly 15 year old girl

[inkskxtch]

I made so much gone fanart back in 2016 but ive only managed to find a couple drawings from back then so i wanted to redraw one of em

[littlepete-ellison]

When you’ve spent your last ‘Bertos and are down to trading your only roll of toilet paper

[itsjustafayz]

Episode 6 of my GoneTV Scripts

Wow, it's been a while huh. Do people even care anymore? Well, I do, and a special thanks to @abcwordsurge for reading these and reminding me to continue posting them. Seriously all the comments you've been leaving on each one give me life I hope you keep doing it :)

But anyway, I want to definitely keep posting these on here since I'm currently writing scripts for Plague lol (so I'm a bit behind). Anyway, here's episode 6! In this one I had the most fun writing the Lana stuff. Her plot in this first book is *chefs kiss*

[lainxyz]

more sam drawings i love the way you draw him

here's a slightly more atmospheric one i did

[inkkat]

[all-hail-the-crows]

I've crumbled to the urge to reread Gone

It's both kind of nice and kind of sad that apparently I've always been obsessed with awful, misogynistic, murderous men<3

[dianaladrislovebot]

something that bothers me to no end is the way not only the fandom but the books portray the relationship between sam, astrid and taylor. i’ve seen post after post after post talking about sam cheating and it truly irks me bc it’s a much more sensitive topic than we tend to realise. we always talk about how when people are super drunk they aren’t in the right frame of mind to consent to sexual acts and when they’re forced into sexual acts it’s classed as sexual assault, and then we turn around and forget that sam was so drunk out of his mind that he barely even knew what was happening, not to mention later in the book when taylor smacks him on the ass he’s clearly very against it. there was no consent there whatsoever, in either case. sure, he may have kissed taylor but he was also very clearly drunk and not in any kind of state to be making those kinds of decisions. if he were sober i can 100% guarantee he never would have made that decision. i don’t think taylor is stupid enough that she doesn’t recognise that. even if we’re disregarding the kiss, she still assaulted him at least once. but regardless of his state, he and everybody else chalks it up to him cheating when i feel like it’s a lot foggier than that. if a female character had been that drunk and a male character had allowed her to kiss him, it’d be a much different story, but because it’s sam nobody bats an eye at it.

[fusionfanatic]

Bro is literally Sam Temple 😭

[jinxiguess]

GONE characters in a british highschool

this is like the stupidest post ive ever made also disclaimer i know NOTHING about the american school system so i think half of them are probably in the wrong years also i didn't want to put all of them in the same year so ignore how some of their ages dont even match up😭

SAM

year 11

ALWAYS forgets ingredients for food tech

and then burns everything

and then forgets to take it home and just leaves it in the fridge at the end of the day

never remembers to put money in his school account and quinn has to buy him lunch every single day

sleeps through maths

has the most obvious crush on astrid and the entire school knows

ASTRID

year 11

made it her life goal to get head girl when she was in year 7

and got it ofc🤭

try hard in every single class

and top set in everything

always has so much stationery

goes to homework club EVERY SINGLE DAY

besties w the librarian

somehow oblivious to the fact sam likes her

QUINN

year 11

always late to every lesson no matter WHAT

somehow keeps ending up front row in school fights and gets interrogated abt them

"can i go to the toilet?" and takes like 20 laps round the school before he comes back

takes 0.5 pictures of everyone

sells overpriced sweets at lunch and makes bank

threatens to fight people after school but never does

joined the football team but nobody ever passes to him bcs he cant play to save his life

EDILIO

year 10

accidentally downloaded a virus on one of the computers and nearly got expelled

gets squashed in the lunch queue

buttons up his blazer to look smart

makes sam join clubs with him so he isnt alone (he's scared of the year 8s)

tried to feed the seagulls outside the school

hangs out in the library w roger and denies that they're dating but literally everyone knows

so bad at pe that he doesnt even bother bringing his kit anymore n just gets sent to iso

LANA

year 11

literally never in class

vapes in the toilets w diana

ALWAYS in iso

dated quinn for like a week in year 8

somehow pulls absolutely everyone

so popular but everyone is also scared of her because one time she scrapped w drake and bashed his head in

brings alcohol to EVERY party

CAINE

year 11

head boy even though he does NOT deserve it

leads the year 7s to the wrong side of the school

pe try hard (screams "WHAT ARE YOU DOING GET THE BALL" at his teammates)

year 7s all have a crush on him

acts like he caught a disease after he touches a year 8

has like 60% attendance but the teachers still love him

never goes to form

always shoving in the canteen queue🙄

gets way too competitive over kahoot

literally never been sent to iso except that one time he shoved drake off his chair in the middle of class

DIANA

year 11

rolls her skirt up and always gets in trouble for it (and refuses to roll it back down)

vapes in the toilets w lana

sprays entire bottles of perfume every time shes near the year 7s

and then makes friends w them specifically to slag them off later

stalks the teacher's socials

uses xx or 💋 after EVERY SINGLE TEXT

has a pandora bracelet and wears different charms on it everyday

somehow untouched by school air

DRAKE

year 11

"WHAT DID I EVEN DO???" every time he gets sent out of class (he was literally jumping on the tables)

starts like half the fights in the entire school

scraps outside tesco like every single day

LOBS paninis at the year 7s

steals tesco trolleys

should probably just go live in iso atp

got kicked off the football team bcs he wouldnt stop slide tackling

literally on the verge of being expelled

DEKKA

year 10

1000% done w everyone elses shit

sits in empty classrooms at lunch n pals w the teachers

way too stressed abt gcses

actually really really good at music

so quiet but somehow everyone knows who she is

used to take the bus to school but decided she didnt want to have to deal w all the year 7s and stopped

got hit in the face w a netball in pe

BRIANNA

year 9

absolutely sprints to the lunch line

gets so mad whenever someone doesnt pass the ball to her in pe

and always fighting w caine in pe

shoplifts from tesco

forgets her pe bag at least once a day n leaves it everywhere

always getting sent out for talking back

LOST the form pet hamster

nearly blew up a science classroom

TAYLOR

year 8

always talking shit about everyone

makes those tips for year 7 videos

defo has pe first on a friday😭

snitches on EVERYONE

makes tiktoks in the bathrooms

spends half the lessons making her titles cursive and pretty

makes fun of the year 7s as if she wasnt one like two months ago

JACK

year 7

GIANT backpack

and probably gets trampled in the corridors

probably wears undertale or harry potter keychains (and gets bullied abt it)

always gets hit by paninis travelling at 1000kmph

got given a top locker and cant reach it

cries when he gets in trouble

PENNY

year 8

rolls her skirt up unevenly

side eyes EVERYONE

vaped in the toilets and taylor snitched on her

REFUSES to wear her blazer

falls over in pe and everyone sighs when she gets put on their team

got put in iso for insulting all the teachers

ORC

year 10

stabs his radnor fizz w a compass and sprays it at all the year 7s

also starts like a million fights

NEVER has a pen

grabs peoples bag straps and yanks them backwards

always steals the year 7's footballs and boots them into orbit

wears black airforces instead of school shoes

and is never ever ever wearing his tie

HOWARD

year 9

keeps getting mistaken for a year 7

hangs out with older kids to look cool

and then brags about it

sells vapes behind the school at break

tries to break up orc's fights and gets flung halfway across the pitches

MASSIVE blazer (looks like a roblox character)

SANJIT

year 10

probably a theatre kid

runs to every class so he isnt late

always skips pe

that one kid who highlights EVERYTHING

somehow manages to record EVERY SINGLE FIGHT (and then sends it to everyone)

holds therapy sessions in the toilets

that one asthmatic kid who screams whenever anyone sprays anything

[ginaluvr]

thoughts after rereading plague

my favorite gone series feature!!!

caine and sam both bother me badly. they have the same attitude towards diana/astrid. sam punishes astrid even if he never intended to. while caine expects gratitude that he never forced diana?

i said this last time i reread (these were among my first posts on this blog!! before i drifted into other fandoms) but i love the foils here of astrid and diana both breaking down personas they’d held up for years. astrid realizing she cannot always be good and righteous. diana realizing she doesn’t have to resign herself to evil and hurt.

the way other characters talk about dekka is so jarring. i know bigotry would be real and alive among teenagers who have nothing left to lose. but jesus christ???

despite my issues with sam i love his and dekka’s relationship in this book, i love him holding her hands and telling her he loves her and wanting her to be his roommate. he even says that if he is going to die, it would be an honor to die with dekka. arguably sam was allowed by the flawed writing to have a much higher level of respect and understanding for dekka since they cannot be romantically involved, which is a whole issue itself. but i still enjoy it

jack stepping up and becoming much stronger (not physically), braver, and bolder in this book is nice to see

orc just makes me so sad. i’m glad he turned the page after this book because him wanting to die is upsetting

i always found the bugs plot so unbelievable it’s funny. still my favorite book of the series, but it’s comical. how did they get so big so fast. why do they have human like irises. what

diana could not fix caine 😭

brittney/drake still completely fails to move me as an antagonist it is so boring and annoying to me

i like lana and sanjit. it is nice in a simple way that sanjit has nothing to do except be her sunshine male wife

i said this last time (again) but i’m glad dahra was remembered for her importance in this book. she never had as much focus as mary did in books 1-3 despite being just as valuable and selfless and responsible. i love the scene where virtue prays for her and asks god to let her rest because she has done so much for other people, just because she could

the line ‘what did howard have if he didn’t have orc?’ causes me a lot of feelings

dekka’s trauma plus the fact that she literally never gets to experience reciprocated love breaks my heart i want better for her. so much better

[quinn-gaither]

sam and drake as the trial before pilate; or, an analysis of the powerplant incident

religion is all over gone. it's there in abundance, from the names to the internal dialogue to the very acts and events that happen. the overlap of traditional religious idiosyncracies between different characters are so plentiful it is difficult to sit here and say that this character represents this religious figure; they are an amalgamation of different gospels, showing how theology and the themes of the bible can apply to gone as a wider subject matter to stretch out the dystopia, show how the worst of people brings out the very humanity of them.

as such, i don't know for certain if this parallel or idea was intentional or ever in MG's mind as he wrote the scene, but it is something that has stuck with me a lot in my reread: how the drake/sam whipping in the powerplant strongly mirrors jesus' trial before pilate. the extract sticks out to me particularly in terms of understanding how the whipping of sam impacted his arc and his character for the rest of the novel. full disclaimer, i am not an expert in christian theology nor am i christian, and this comparison only came to my mind recently, so it may not have the depth and nuance of others, but it’s something i have thought and researched a lot about, so i hope it will suffice!

under the cut i go into some brief religious context, followed by how this fits in with the scene in the powerplant alongside quotes pulled from the various books to underscore how pivotal the lashings were for sam. so, if you're looking for some unnecessarily deep analysis of sam and drake as religious paragons: look no further than under the cut!

pilate's court: a contextual debrief

for starters, what was the trial before pilate? in brief, it is as follows. in the christian gospels they refer to the final period before jesus' death as 'the passion'; or, 'the passion of jesus'. the passion includes jesus' entrance to jerusalem, his anointing, the last supper, his agony and arrest, for example. it does also include his trial before pilate, the governor of judaea.

this trial is what essentially preceded the denouncement of jesus before he was sent to be crucified. throughout the trial, much to pilate's confusion, jesus was silent, perhaps accepting his inevitable fate or not seeing reason to protest something when he knew he would never win. pilate, at first, didn't believe there to be enough reason to sentence jesus to death and, consequently, elected to flog him as punishment. the bible does not outright state the amount of lashings jesus received, but it is thought the number could have been 39 (due to jewish commands restricting the amount of flogs from surpassing 40).

and so jesus was lashed, and then he was sentenced to death. it is widely agreed that the punishments jesus endured represent him absorbing everyone's sin, seeing him become the icon of rebirth and allowing humans to start all over again.

so, i hear you ask... how does this relate to the drake and sam incident in the powerplant?

drake as judge, jury & executioner

as i mentioned before, i'm not here to say that sam and drake are direct reflections of jesus and pilate. quite the opposite is true, really, and it is more the themes rather than the behaviours and characteristics that tie them together with this gospel. the theory and symbolism behind the trial before pilate can apply in a somewhat inverted way; sam is whipped though he doesn't necessarily die (more on that later), and drake isn't necessarily trying to find ways to punish sam without killing him as pilate was for jesus. drake wants sam dead and, had brianna not interfered when she did, he probably would have killed him. the events at the powerplant are not a complete mirror image of the trial but are, rather, foils to it.

the lashing of sam sees drake attempting to denounce all the perdido beach kids, trying to assert a specific way of thinking over the whole fayz. whether that be the beliefs of caine and the coates clan or the legislation of the gaiaphage is up for debate, but he is still decidedly torturing sam in response to disagreeing with the word he is spreading and the way he is leading. in the same way the roman crowds saw jesus’ behaviours as undermining the king ceasar, drake is acting out as he sees sam undermining his own personal king.

in terms of the text, this all occurs within hunger. however, before diving into that, i'm flashing forward to plague for an interesting excerpt from a conversation between brittany and astrid. it is, in fact, the very passage that got me thinking about all this to start with:

here we have a direct reference to pilate in the books themselves! how crazy is that? pay attention here to the specifics of "and pilate... to crucify him so that he might redeem us." if, in this instance, we are perceiving sam as a jesus-emblem, what brittany is essentially saying here is that sam needs to be punished for hope he might redeem all people. all the perdido beach kids, all the fayz inhabitants.

sam stands to be the symbol for all those who follow him. he is a leader, first and foremost, but he is at base level the most direct representation of all the lives he, begrudgingly, protects. sam is a microcosmic perdido beach resident while also being one of the most powerful mutants. see, then, how jesus is said to represent all despite being the son of god.

the lashing of sam kickstarts the redemption of the fayz kids, even so early into the book series. this happens in hunger, before any of the real horrors begin, but it is in this scene when the tides perhaps turn and the chance of a tunnel out of here manifests within sam's mind. the lashing is part of the passion of jesus, or the passion of sam, and as a result it sets him on a different path that places him in the mindset to understand that murdering drake is something which must happen in order for the barrier to come down. even if he doesn't quite have the foresight to see it at the time - perhaps more focussed on the murder angle rather than the reason - the seeds for drake's death are set in motion right here at the end of hunger.

just to contextualise the whipping within the timeline of the book. it starts halfway through chapter thirty-seven, with 1 hour and 6 minutes before the climax of the novel. brianna appears at the end of the chapter. thirty-eight sees us with 53 minutes later. so, with that knowledge, we can assume that the lashing lasted, at most, thirteen minutes. brianna administers the morphine packet within this chapter, too.

so, after about fifteen minutes since the lashings began he gets his first pain medicine. in thirty-nine (47 minutes) he wasn't feeling particularly intense pain as he was starting to hallucinate. at 33 minutes, he is still under morphine but is once again in pain. note: 33 minutes is when he first declares his intent to take a life. this is, obviously, a very instrumental part of sam's character arc. when he goes from seeing killing as something to be done only as mercy, to put someone out of their misery, to something that is to be done to avenge.

sam notes that the morphine is wearing off with 7 minutes left. so, with all this textual information in place, we can determine that he underwent torture for approximately thirteen minutes, and saw the pain mostly off with a dose of morphine that lasted 46 minutes. it's important to note also, i think, that this lashing happens concurrently with the human crew hunting and essentially sentencing hunter to death in the church.

it is interesting that two heavily religious events are happening at the same time, especially as the events are both underscored by the overarching sense of sacrifice, lawfulness and establishing dominance. the human crew are wanting to metaphorically crucify hunter while drake is flogging sam: they both want to be the power in charge, and they do so without taking into account any jury or justice. they act singularly, for their own gain.

the first 'death' of sam temple

now, earlier up, i mentioned that sam "doesn't necessarily die". he is, after all, not crucified or murdered in any way, he is just flogged. however, i believe that he was fundamentally changed after his encounter with drake, and while he didn't perhaps die physically he did die mentally.

he was on the brink of real death, all but bleeding out on the powerplant floor, and spent at least 46 minutes in a sort of purgatory state where he was hallucinating his better moments in life and wondering if he was going to make it. under the effects of morphine he sees the school bus incident, perhaps a demonstration of him walking towards the light before he awakes and finds himself back in the powerplant.

the lashing of sam is unequivocally the worst experience he endures in his time in the fayz. the worst experience of his whole life, something that shifts his entire perspective of not only drake but also the type of pain he can endure. the memory of it lasts even through light:

even after everything - four more whole books of action - nothing lives up to or usurps the agony of his lashing in the powerplant. it does not kill him, but it kills his soul. similarly to how the darkness kills lana and sucks the light from her life, sam's experience with drake does the same for him.

taking this back to the gospels, then, jesus is battered and bruised when he gets to the crucifix and, as a result, doesn't last long up there. sam is similarly battered and bruised, literally on his last legs of life after drake is done with him. brianna is able to come and administer the morphine and bring him back to physical life, but he is psychologically different after the whippings. jesus's trial before pilate is a distinctive turning point in christian theology; it is where he essentially admits to his fate, refuses to put up a fight, and leaves the ending of his life in the hands of pilate. he understands that his people have given up on him, that he has lost the crown of king of the jews, that he has been so betrayed by those closest to him. and, yet, in the aftermath of the trial and even after the crucifixtion and rebirth, jesus is different. the world is different. it turns into a place where a better ending rests at the end of all the trials and tribulations.

sam accepts his fate. sam understands that he is losing control of perdido beach. if drake wasn't the one to beat him down, the human crew probably would've tried to at some point. in this analogy where drake is a twisted version of pilate, the human crew are perhaps the crowd outside the temple who are calling for the death of jesus; the death of sam. for fifty-nine minutes sam was reduced to nothing but a boy bruised. he was no longer a four-bar mutant, he had no use of his hands, and he was no longer school bus sam either. he was just sam temple, a fifteen-year-old kid dying on the floor at the hands of someone who took it upon themselves to play judge over his life. jesus, in his trial, became the same thing. just a person enduring the worst sort of torture. god couldn't save him, didn't save him, nor did his people or his reputation or his powers.

the powerplant scene puts the fayz over the precipice. it sends drake down a path from which he never recovers, and it pushes sam to the brink of something he almost doesn't save himself from. it sets in stone that sam will come back - stronger - and those who put him through the agony will repent for what they did. in such a short extract, MG essentially plots out the ending of their relationship: sam will prosper while drake will die.

so, overall

i could expand on this entire thing further because, as i said before, there is such an astonishing amount of overlapping religious theology in these texts that it's impossible to sum them all up in one go. but i like to think of this powerplant moment as an opening, as something thematically intrinsic in the way the rest of the novels work out. it's an instance which can be explored even more if one is to bring caine into the narrative too, and consider sam/caine as twin versions of jesus/judas. which doesn't even take into consideration the very on-the-nose naming of them as sam and david and the way that gospel plays into the whole series, too.

i could even bring in one of my favourite pieces of artwork, the angels hovering over the body of christ in the sepulchre by william blake, and perhaps analyse how the angels are symbolic of drake/brittany in later novels, how their constant back and forth as they oversee the rebirth of sam as he conquers them, and the fayz.

anyway… gone is crazy detailed when you look at it through these sorts of theological lenses. i think, to a certain extent, some of the overlaps must be intentional. the fayz is very much a microcosm of particular religions, of the way gods contend against each other and leaders prevail against crowds of opposition.

either way, to conclude: the meeting between drake and sam in the powerplant greatly mirrors the trial of jesus before pilate, just before his crucifixtion. it perhaps represents how sam is forced to shoulder the sins and the misgivings of the perdido beach kids in order to see through to a way of beating the darkness and freeing them from the barrier. though neither drake or sam are perfect reflections of pilate and jesus respectively, the way their actions correspond to and follow those of the gospels brings to surface really interesting observations about the ways the characters and their fates are almost predetermined, how you can see how the books will end even from only the second one in the series.