#most of those revolve around drake astrid sam or diana

[demon-witch05]

Trying to think of ways to make Drake weirder scientifically.

I also have a great many other thoughts of GONE on my mind this is just the current one.

[fallout--alley--youth--zone]

Gone Characters as the Smirkes' 14

("Smirkes 14" are Entities from The Magnus Archives that serve as manifestations of human fears.)

CAINE SOREN -- The Web

The Web represents the fear of being controlled or manipulated. This fits Caine's character for obvious reasons. Throughout the series he struggles with gaining & losing control of himself, his friends, and the FAYZ at large.

SAM TEMPLE -- The Vast

The Vast represents the fear of infinity & endlessness, as well as drowning & falling. This can be representative of the constant pressure Sam faces being expected to lead the FAYZ against forces he can barely understand.

ASTRID ELLISON -- The Eye

The Eye represents the fear of being known--the fear of being watched, of having your secrets found out & brought to light. For Astrid, who spends most of the series attempting to hide her brother's nature (as well as her own) and trying to know all that she can, there is no more fitting an Entity.

DIANA LADRIS -- The Stranger

The Stranger represents the fear of the out of place, the almost known, the not quite right. Diana struggles with identity throughout the series. Even those closes to her barely know her. How could they? She barely knows herself.

DRAKE MERWIN -- The Slaughter

The Slaughter represents the fear of violence, war, & physical pain. Fitting, then, that pain is the one thing Drake fears (other than women) and the one thing he enjoys inflicting above all else.

EDILIO ESCOBAR -- The Buried

The Buried represents the fear of tight spaces & not being able to breathe. Similar to the Vast, it can manifest as an immense pressure against which there is no respite.

GAIAPHAGE -- The Dark

The Dark represents the fear of the unknown. Not just that, but also: the fear of being watched, hunted, of there being something in the dark with you. For most of the series, the Gaiaphage is this all-powerful predator the FAYZians know very little about. They only know it's there. Watching. Hungry in the dark.

QUINN GAITHER -- The Lonely

The Lonely represents the fear of being alone, isolated, and/or forgotten. To me, this is Quinn's biggest fear throughout the series: first he's afraid to be cast aside by Sam, & so later he becomes a pillar of the community to make sure he's never forgotten.

BRITTNEY DONEGAL -- The Corruption

The Corruption represents the fear of bugs, rot, and the "unclean". It often manifests as a parasitic hivemind, drawing in its victims/ followers with promises of all-consuming, unconditional love. To me, this fits Brittney very well--she is first "resurrected", then the Gaiaphage draws her in by masquerading as her little brother, and as time goes on she begins to see how it's destroying her.

LANA ARWEN LAZAR -- The Spiral

The Spiral represents the fear of madness. Lana's entire character arc revolves around her sanity--whether she can trust her own mind, where she ends & the Gaiaphage begins.

CHARLES "ORC" MERRIMAN -- The Flesh

The Flesh represents the fear of being reduced to your body, seen as nothing but flesh to be manipulated and consumed. Orc's arc revolves around dehumanization & body horror from almost the moment he steps onto the page.

ZIL SPERRY -- The Desolation

The Desolation represents the fear of destruction--not just against people (like the Slaughter), but against all you've ever known. It's also connected to fire. Given that Zil's single-minded bigotry resulted in a fire that nearly destroyed Perdido Beach, it's not that much of a stretch to connect him to this Entity.

THE COYOTES -- The Hunt

The Hunt represents the fear of being chased. Throughout the series, the coyotes are a low-level but omnipresent threat. No matter where you are, you can be sure that they're tracking you. Hunting.

PETER "LITTLE PETE" ELLISON -- The End

The End represents the fear of death. Little Pete is the creator of the FAYZ. Everything begins--and ends--with him.

Bonus:

GAIA -- The Extinction

The Extinction represents the fear of the end of humanity as well as catastrophic change. In my opinion, Gaia is a separate character from the Gaiaphage. While the latter is a mysterious, unknown threat, Gaia is more concrete. We know exactly what her goal is: to escape the FAYZ & end all human life.

[thesickeststupidestcreep]

A Psychological Drake in a Sociological FAYZ: The Impact of Different Types of Storytelling on Character in the Gone Series

The Gone series was a really great example of sociological storytelling, which is a method of telling a story where the story revolves around how a cast of characters reacts to the system that they’re part of. It’s different from the concept of psychological storytelling, where the primary focus of a story is on the internal conflict that one or more main characters face fo get what they want. Almost every story uses both forms of storytelling to some extent, but the majority of modern American media seems to favor psychological storytelling.

Gone is different from that because the flaws of most of its central character are derived by either a condition of the FAYZ dramatically increasing a negative quality they had before the FAYZ. Sam becomes a hero not because of some inherent drive to be one, but because the other kids around him remember the time he stepped up to save his class when his bus driver passed out. Edilio is able to step up to help the town from the beginning because he was already used to every day being a survival situation because of his immigration status.

Astrid doesn’t manipulate people because of some inherent character flaw she has to overcome, she’s doing it because she’s the sole provider for Little Pete and needs to protect him. Even Caine, with all of his mommy issues, is motivated by external societal factors. The survival situation of the FAYZ takes away the position of privilege he’s had his whole life, which causes him to resort to brutal, desperate measures to try and reclaim that former position of societal status.

The one character who is exclusively motivated by psychological factors is Drake. I believe this explains why he had so many fans who were fascinated by his personality, despite many of those same fans disliking the trajectory his story took. This causes Drake to become an interesting character not because of what he does, but what he is. When the series first came out, Drake was possibly one of the most violent and sadistic characters in YA literature. Even as YA literature itself started getting more violent with the popularity of the Hunger Games, there weren’t many characters who took as much sheer pleasure from harming others as Drake did.

Unfortunately, despite having all the characteristics needed to be remembered as a character the whole fandom loved to hate, Drake wasn’t really able to fit into the world of the series after he died in Hunger. Since Drake’s motivations were purely psychological, while all of the other characters had more sociological motivations, Drake felt out of place. When his former ally Caine started focusing on making sure that himself and Diana survived in Lies, he no longer had a use for Drake. So, Drake was left without another character to tie him to the society of the FAYZ, turning him into a monster that existed on the periphery of a story instead of an active agent within it.

By the end of the series, both Drake and the Gaiaphage served the same narrative function. They were story elements that kept the society established by the FAYZ kids from functioning too smoothly. The Gaiaphage itself was a societal element of the FAYZ more than anything else. Since Drake’s motivations were always internal and never externally connected to the society he lived in, the only way to keep him connected to the rest of series was to turn him into a societal element of the FAYZ. Considering this, it’s possible for even the biggest Drake haters to see why his fans were disappointed to see their favorite villain play the same role in the story as the big fire in Lies or the giant bugs in Plague.