maladroid17

First two pics are one of my favourite collages I’ve ever made (they’re typically the art style I go for because I’m not too great at drawing), I really liked all the little quotes and references I managed to fit in, BUT (and I said this on the OG post), if I were to do it again I’d get rid of the “kill me” note, because everything else was TMR-based but that’s from TDC. Doesn’t matter much but it did irk me once I realised.

Second two I’ve also posted before and I just added them to this because I really liked them (and also forgot I did them lol). It’s Newt and Thomas post-maze escape but also as animal crossing characters, so they’re all bloody and bruised, although tbf not much actually. I made Newt’s eye be bruised because of when Gally hits him with that wooden plank in the homestead, but THEN I remembered Gally hits him on the head, but I still like the way it looks.

Err then I THINK the smaller collage is the first thing I made for tmr…? This or the bigger one. Never posted it, and honestly forgot I did it because I lost that notebook for ages and only dug it out recently, but I think it’s cool. I cut up the boxset thingy that all my books had been in to get the little runner things as well as the title, thought it was quite cool.

The big circle maze is my profile picture!! Dunno why I added those random big rooms, but I remember drawing a circular maze to be very irritating. But I mean it became my pfp so I guess that means I like it!

And the last one, the lyrics are from two songs (scar tissue - RHCP, and runaway runaway - mars argo) — top one was just a random drawing I did to lyrics because I thought they kinda fit Newt because he’s always sarcastic and chirps in with his acute observations and all that, also did the movie-flare arm. Then the bottom one was meant to be Newt with the flare but it’s a bit unclear, still think the writing is kinda cool tho. Also movie-flare cause it’s interesting to draw. The lyrics reminded me of the flare, of the disorientation it makes people feel, and then the feeling of “letting yourself go” because it’s “predictable” relating to how in the books there was no cure, so things were predictable in the sense of being inevitable as people then knew they’d just slowly lose themselves until death. I’m not a massive fan of either of these though but I liked the colours in the second.

And if anyone’s interested I will shamelessly link it because I felt like a mad scientist drawing all the connections: my newt&jackie post. Also I haven’t written about it but I now have added Neil Perry from DPS to this roster (this genre of character in my head).

Ahh why not I’m gonna link some of my other posts I liked:

Ramble about Newt

Another Yellowjackets-maze runner characters comparison

Ramble about Newt #2 whoops

Ramble about Newt lucky #3 - about his journal

TMR art meme I did

MASSIVE song-TMR ramble I did

Mitski songs/TMR - it’s not on that one, but it was a continuation of a post i did about “brand new city” by mitski SEVERELY reminding me of newt w/ the flare, lyrically and instrumentally.

The boy standing in front of her now is not at all the boy she had left, and yet it’s him all the same. Long, gangly limbs, sharp edges and jutted jaw and brows pinched together tight above his pointed nose. Big, brown eyes, round and searching and seeing. A giant sap of a boy, if she’d ever seen one.

Traces of sickness remain, his once-long, blonde hair now growing out and curling under his ears from where it had likely been chopped to the scalp - she hopes it doesn’t mean what she thinks it might; before she’d left him, before she’d let him leave her, he’d tugged and twisted at the already tangled strands. He used to clench his fingers right at the roots when he started forgetting, as if he could pull the memories straight out of his head, no matter if hair came with it. He must have given into the urge eventually, and lord only knows what others.

But he is here, now, living and breathing. Newt, the boy who saved her life, Dante’s, Jackie’s, her brother’s. How they both ended up here on this nowhere island, alive and well, Keisha doesn’t know, but she’s had enough miracles in her life by now to know that she shouldn’t waste them in questioning.

‘Newt…’ she breathes out.

There’s an equally gasped, ‘Keisha,’ and then she’s off of her feet, swept up into the air as the impossible boy crashes into her with a hug. He’s miles taller than her, seemingly more so than he was when they parted - Keisha finds herself bursting out into a wet laugh. Wrapping her arms as tight around him as she can, she buries her face in his shoulder.

Newt spins her around once, muttering, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,’ under his breath. Then he’s laughing, too, and Keisha pulls away the second she’s back on the ground to get a closer look at him. She grabs at his cheeks, tilting his face this way and that and his face flickers into a bright smile, tears making tracks down his face.

‘Oh, look how you’ve grown. And look at that smile, oh, you lovely boy. I knew it. I don’t know how, but I knew you’d be alright. I did.’

Newt bats her hands away with another chuckle, but then he’s choking on a sob and pulling her close again, tucking her into his chest. ‘I looked for you, Keisha, as soon as I could, I looked, I swear it, I looked everywhere, but I thought that-‘

‘It’s okay. I believe you. We’re here now,’ Keisha affirms. She rubs a hand up and down his spine soothingly as he clutches at her. ‘It’s alright, sweetheart, you’re alright.’

He shivers in her grasp, holding her impossibly tighter. But then he pulls away, the bright sun shining in his wide eyes as they scan over her like searchlights, the tears on his cheeks gleaming. ‘Are you okay? How are you even…’ Newt trails off, mouth hanging open as he shakes his head slowly.

‘I never had the Flare,’ she says quickly; Newt had always preferred direct answers, and Keisha’s never liked dancing around the truth. ‘When you left, we found a house and lived in the basement for a few days, and nothing happened. Nothing changed, I don’t know how. And so we decided to keep moving until we set up base in some abandoned trailer park. Then some of your guys came along one day, looking for supplies, I suppose. They saw we were clean, and they told us about this place, and they took us in.’

Newt lets out a stuttered breath, a smile fighting at the corners of his lips. ‘...You’re immune? Oh, Keisha, that’s-’ But then he frowns, eyes gleaming with hope. ‘“They took us in”? Dante and Jackie, they’re…?’

‘They’re in one of the med huts, along with my brother. Doc says they’re malnourished and exhausted - I hardly think they needed a diagnosis for that. But they’re safe now, we all are.’

‘You found your brother?’

Keisha can’t stop the way her smile and hands tighten, brows furrowing sympathetically. It makes sense, after all, that he’d question it. The boy was hardly there by the end of it. ‘Yes, I did. You helped us, Newt. You brought us to him.’

‘Oh.’ Newt blinks a few times. He ducks his head, jaw clenching, gaze distant but darting this way and that as his face scrunches, no doubt digging to find the memories the Flare buried. ‘I don’t… Sorry.’

Ignoring the way her heart squeezes, Keisha shakes her head firmly. ‘No, no, you’ve nothing to be sorry for, love. You can meet him again, properly this time, can’t you?’

He nods, but the smile he tries to give her is nothing more than a flat line.

‘We’re all here, and we’re all okay, that’s what matters now, yeah?’ Keisha says, nudging him. Newt nods somberly, so she nudges him again for good measure. ‘Yeah?’

That gets a little laugh out of the kid. Good. ‘Yeah, yes. We’re okay. You’re okay.’ Newt squeezes her shoulder in return, and his smile finally grows stronger. ‘Can I go see them?’

‘You don’t even have to ask - hell, I’ll drag you there myself. Dante’s been missing you, y’know.’

Then Keisha promptly grabs his arm and pulls him along to the med huts, interrogating him all the way as he laughs along. After all, there’s a lot to catch up on - and, apparently, a lot of people for Keisha to meet, too.

—————

This is quite possibly intensely out of character - almost definitely for Keisha, when writing i kinda just freewheeled it - but i wanted to post something, so this is it! keisha mothering/being an older sister over newt for like 900 words. and i need to post more writing so i feel less scared about it. it was so messy to format because somehow i managed to paste it here THREE TIMES, WITHIN itself, so there was lots of deleting to be done. it definitely doesn’t make sense plot-wise either i fear… oh well. summary is, i don’t know how i feel about it but i’m posting it.

Merry Christmas if you celebrate and hope everyone’s having good holidays & a happy new year!!!!

editing the post to say, if anyone’s interested, i’m realising my keisha characterisation here may have been accidentally inspired by jackie tyler from doctor who lmao 😭😭 i just remember her doting over the doctor at one point and going “oh, look at you! you lovely boy!” or something. or she was saying that to someone anyway… i can hear it in my head lol

but despite being able to keep people together, motivating others and guiding them, being looked up to... neither of them have much motivation themselves. after escaping the maze, newt's energy slowly dissipates throughout the rest of the series as he loses hope. he goes from being determined to find a way out in the bunk rooms to giving thomas nothing more than a "hey, tommy," after he'd been missing for days and offering a few ideas - then in the death cure, he's slowly overcome by the flare. jackie motivates everyone on the team to keep going once they're stuck in the wilderness, but can't find herself putting in proper effort to survive - she doesn't get it, can't adapt. they both sort of just go through the motions, can't wait for it to be over.

they both lack a sense of belonging. jackie, as previously stated, struggles to adapt to the wilderness, and some of the other girls hold a grudge against her because she isn't pulling her weight. but even pre-crash, she's clearly unhappy with her life, if her opening scene is anything to go by - she fakes pleasure with her boyfriend then stares into her mirror looking miserable. and we know newt hated the glade, he says it himself, and he attempted. then he spends the rest of the series without finding a belonging, especially once he makes an outcast of himself upon finding out he's got the flare, pretty much considering himself dead immediately. they struggle to connect with the people they're with because of it, i think, because jackie doesn't understand how they've all managed to adapt to the wilderness and speaks out against it which isolates her even further, and newt is consistently reminded that he's not like his friends - throughout the series, all the books, he's outcast - fever code prologue, he's called "the other one", later, "that one's not immune," and also "that means you, newt" from alby. death cure he's "a control subject", and crank palace, one of the guards calls him "collateral". and once he's got the flare, he drifts away from the newt his friends knew anyway, because he's losing himself.

and yet they both help others find purpose despite this, as i said - jackie holds the doomcoming, the seance. newt encourages alby and other gladers to leave the maze, tells them in the scorch bunkroom that there must be a reason for them being there.

they both appear to have a clear liking for and sense of order. newt literally has a monologue about order to thomas, talking about the importance of it in keeping the glade running. then this is reflected in his actions throughout the rest of the series, too, as he tries to keep the other gladers in line throughout, telling minho to shush when he keeps talking over the ratman in tst, offering to go with thomas to see teresa in that weird building, etc. he also tries to apply the glade logic to new situations - the glade has set his framework of how he thinks things should be run. he makes them have a gathering in the scorch bunkroom, tells thomas that there must be a purpose for them being there, like when they first arrived in the glade; he reassures thomas that something will happen. jackie is much the same - pre-crash, she gets them all to line up and compliment each other to get along. upon crashing, she mentions rationing food, holds firm on wanting to stay by the plane because waiting where they're expecting to be rescued makes more sense to her than going to the lake. she organises activities to keep spirits high, like with the seance and doomcoming. she also decides that she needs to lose her virginity, because, in her head, they're already stuck here waiting for death, so she needs to tick off all of these traditional life achievements. even pre-crash, she has both her and shauna's lives pretty much planned out down to dorm room details. they both seem to have quite rigid ideals of how things are supposed to go - and i think this is partly why they both struggle so much to adapt or find belonging, because it doesn't align with their perception of the world.

and following order, i think they both have very clear senses of right and wrong, justice, morality, etc. jackie is fervently against all of the wilderness stuff, calling the others out for what the girls did to travis the night of doomcoming and continues to stand up for it even when literally everyone else opposes her. newt is the same, against thomas' idea of sacrificing himself, when alby dies he expects the others to have pause and be as stricken as he is in the moment, and he’s firmly against wicked in the death cure.

leading off of that, personality wise: they can both be quite snarky and sarcastic, mean at times, snappy - but they're also extremely kind and look out for others, and people turn to the both of them for support, which they offer unconditionally. people look up to them. they're both extremely passionate, too. i think a lot of the time that the two of them get angry, it’s just because they care so much and that’s how it ends up being expressed.

then you could also say that they're both, in death, remembered differently to how they actually were. the jackie that haunts shauna is far meaner, more mocking and smug, a manifestation of shauna's own guilt. the other girls' last memory of her is her pretty much calling them all crazy and storming out. and newt's friends' most recent memories of him would be him infected with the flare, snapping at them and, in thomas' case, fighting them. then with "the book of newt", shared with the whole safe haven as some kind of relic, he's glorified into some kind of martyr, when in reality he was just a scared teenager fighting tooth and nail for a survival he didn't entirely want, until he realised he was doomed from the start. and jackie at the reunion is praised, her image shown on the screen like some kind of hero too, and even shauna says at an earlier point, "everyone loves you", but that's not how jackie really felt.

also, i just realised as i'm writing this - they both accept death as an impending inevitability for them. newt had already attempted, then upon finding out he had the flare, he presumed himself dead again already. jackie is the same, as after the hope for rescue is gone, she sees her pre-crash "mistakes" as "permanent", says they should "celebrate their impending death".

and then, final point: to me they're both gay and in love with one of their best friends, so. and newt is confirmed to be gay and jackie is implied to have some kind of feelings for shauna so...

now that i’ve written all this, do i know what i want to do with the information? no! but i love them both and i couldn't get it out of my head, so here we are.

if you think i’ve mischaracterised or have any additions, criticisms, thoughts, anything, i’d love to hear !! thank you for reading if you made it this far! :)

Newt couldn’t sleep. They’d escaped the Maze a mere few hours ago, and he was exhausted. But he still couldn’t sleep. Tossing and turning in the dark bunk room only brought him more troubles, as his mind kept feeding him new guilts and fears to worry over.

For a while, he just laid there. Flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. Nothing happened. No matter how much his gut twisted, telling him they were all in danger, or how much his rationality urged that they’d finally gotten out… Nothing happened. Newt wasn’t sure if he was free or blind anymore.

Alby ran through his head, screaming and crying for help, and Newt couldn’t do anything for him. He could try to follow, try to save him from harm, but it was far too late. It had already happened. And Alby was dead and gone.

Chuck sat there too, in his head. Curled up in a corner, crying but quiet. Newt couldn’t even approach him. The boy was out of reach. Sweet, innocent Chuck was gone too.

There were several others: Zart, Nick, Boyle, Xander, Wyck, Clint, Jeff, more. Gone. Just like that. As if they’d never been there. Newt tried to reach them, calling out and grabbing for them, but the fabric of their shirts melted to thick, warm, crimson blood in his hands, snaking over his palms and up his arms, cascading between his fingers, pooling onto the cold stone floor of his mind.

Gasping, Newt shot up, clamping a hand to his mouth, gripping at the neckline of his shirt with the other. He felt his chest heave, taking wheezing, choked breaths. The abundance of air he breathed in was nowhere near enough; he felt like he was suffocating, making his throat raw and dry. It was as if Newt were an hourglass, the sand relentlessly pouring down his throat and into his lungs, burying his breath, ticking down the seconds to peril. He had to move.

Swallowing roughly, Newt released himself from his own frightened, tightened hands and pushed himself forwards. He climbed down the ladder, muscles aching and joints clicking with each step he lowered himself down. His arms shook violently, struggling to hold his weight, and his bad leg in particular hurt the most. But he landed carefully on the ground, then tiptoed away from his friends, towards the bathroom.

The door creaked as he eased it open, and Newt didn’t waste a second in pulling it shut behind him. The sound of his raspy breaths filled the air around him, making the darkness feel like it was closing in. Quickly, Newt flicked on the light.

The room was swiftly illuminated with a dim glow. He had to blink a bit to adjust, and the irritating buzz of the electric bulbs added an unpleasant layer of noise that he wished he could tune out. Still; it was better than silence. Silence meant that his thoughts were the only thing to accompany him.

Knees wobbling, limp worse than ever, Newt slowly moved to the sink. He leant his weight against it, grasp on the sides tightening as he held himself upright. Panting, he regained his breath. With each new intake and exhale, the faint whistling of his nose fought against the choking of his throat to be heard. He just needed to breathe. He just needed to think about literally anything else. Newt let his eyes trace over his hands.

The skin was dry, cracked and pale. Blue veins stretched across the skin, and slender bones stuck out and strained beneath his scraped, white knuckles. His nails - god, his nails - were cracked and split and gnawed to death, dry blood and dirt still trapped under them despite the shower, surrounded by flaking dead skin that he’d bitten time and time again despite Alby telling him not to.

He should’ve listened. He should’ve done something. He should have done something to help Alby, something to save him-

No, Newt told himself. You tried that, and Thomas stopped you. Thomas saved you. If you kept going, you would have died, and what sort of leader would you be then?

The recurring memory of Alby being torn to shreds just mere hours ago made his eyes sting. Newt squeezed them shut. He did not want to cry. Not because he thought it was weak, or pathetic, or because he thought someone might walk in. He didn’t want to cry because, if he started, he wasn’t sure he’d ever stop.

Letting out a long, cold blow of air, Newt lifted his head up. He willed himself to peel his eyes open again. And he was met with a face.

Newt had never much looked at his own face. He couldn’t really, in the Glade. Best glimpses anyone got of their reflection were in the grubby glass of the Maze window, or a distorted one in the metal spoons they ate from. And he’d avoided it like the plague in the small, steamed-up mirror in the showers. But Newt had never particularly wanted to see it anyway. He didn’t care for it, and he knew it was better that way. He hardly needed to fuss about his hair on top of all his other stacked up jobs.

But now, now he had a clean, clear mirror in front of him, confronting him with an image of a boy. Newt had expected to see a withered man, but no. Staring back at him was a tired, sad, lonely boy.

The boy’s hair was sprawled across his head, thin, coloured like straw. It looked messy enough to be straw. Some of the longer strands were tangled together, and smaller hairs stuck up and out, like he’d been electrocuted. His forehead was creased with lines, deep trenches engraved across the pale skin. An ugly lump from when Gally had knocked him out still sat there prominently above the boy’s left eyebrow, a few extra shades green and brown than the rest of his face. His brows were furrowed. One of them had gained a slit through it. If Newt didn’t know how the boy had gotten it, he might have thought it looked cool. But below them, the boy’s drained, hollow eyes had sunken back into his face, drooping with nauseatingly purple eye bags. A faint memory of those fictional monsters, vampires, crossed his mind, but he shook it away. His eyes were wet now too, and fresh tears had begun to make tracks between shadows on his boney, sallow cheeks, stinging cuts and scratches. His mouth was fixed in a frown, chapped and chewed lips downturned, and his bruised chin wobbled violently. Turning his head, his jaw looked angular enough to sharpen a knife.

Newt tried to smile. The boy in the mirror just looked dead. Steadying himself on his feet, Newt tried to pull his lips up, his skin feeling rough and cold. But the mirror showed him the truth. There was no smile there. No real one.

He felt much older than he looked. And the boy did look older, what with all the scars and stress lines. But, as sickening as it was, he was that boy. That was his face in the mirror. He barely even recognised himself anymore.

Gut twisting, Newt let himself lean into the sink, clinging on as his head hung low. His hands began to swirl and bulge in front of him, and he felt the world turn beneath his feet. A lump grew in his throat. He tightened his grip on the ceramic sink once again and shut his eyes, willing himself not to-

He threw up. It made his throat burn and his eyes sting and his stomach did somersaults inside of him. His heart was beating so violently it throbbed in his ears, like a poor drummer struggling to keep time with the sprinting marching band that was his mind and body.

Reaching out a hand, Newt fumbled for the tap and turned it on, forcing himself to focus on the rush of the water as it washed away his vomit. He splashed some of the water on his face and let it dribble down his cheeks, icy and unforgiving. But he couldn’t take it. Everything that had happened in the last week had caught up with him and pushed him face-first into a bottomless pit.