Atomic [Newt || Maze Runner]

[Atomic will Return]

Hello everyone!

Ari here! First of all, Happy New Year! 2023 has been a bit of a rough year for both me and everyone else I know, so here's to hoping that 2024 will be a better one.

I'm here today to discuss the current state of Atomic. I want to offer some transparency about what happened, why we stopped updating, and where we will be going from here. So if you'll spare me a moment of your time, here we go.

Atomic was written by my friend Astra (@astrella-) and me in April - September 2020, right around the beginning of the pandemic. By the time we completed Act I, we had the entire story planned out from start to finish. We took a small break because of Astra's appendicitis, and we had both just started college, planning to begin Act II in 2021 once we got our footing in the first semester. So the long hiatus wasn't exactly a case of writer's block but rather what Dashner said around December of that year confirming that Newt is gay.

The two of us had differing opinions on how to take this news. Astra was a bit hesitant to keep writing the story because she felt that doing so would be a disrespect to Newt's character and Dashner's wishes. I, on the other hand, saw this as a bit of a cop-out on Dashner's part. It struck me as a "JK Rowling confirming that Dumbledore was gay" moment, where, rather than trying to genuinely have representation within a series, it was instead a publicity move made to try and win affirmation points with the audience (can you tell which one of us is a business student and which is a screenwriting student?).

We tried to work around this issue by taking a step back and restructuring the story. I suggested that rather than Newt, why not shift the love interest to Minho instead? The two of them already had a bit of a bromance situation going on anyway. But Astra was very against this because having them remain as platonic friends/mentor-mentee relationship was important to her. She said that rather than shifting the love interest, we could tweak the story so Eden could be someone with no love interest at all. But I didn't like this idea, considering one of the original pitches when we first wrote Atomic was about how love can push people to change and grow stronger. Doing so would just undermine the intent of the plot. All this is to say, we never reached a conclusion on how to tackle this, which is why Atomic went into its 4-year-long hiatus.

But that's not to say we ever forgot about Atomic. Every once in a while when we're together, one of us would bring the story up again, and we would go through our original plans for Eden, her adventure as well as character growth. I have to say 4-years later, I'm still pretty happy with what was originally planned. I suppose that's what it's like to have a writing major doing most of the story planning, haha!

Around November of last year (2023), Astra got tendonitis in both arms from writing too much for both personal projects and school. With a lot more time on her hands, we once again started chatting about Atomic, and I suggested right then and there that maybe we should go back and finish the story. To my surprise, she agreed.

So here's how we've decided to perceive it. The Maze Runner books and movies differ a lot. Dare I say, starting from the second movie, the story becomes a completely different one, ranging from the character arcs and plot progression. We mostly went with the movie adaptation because, as Astra likes to say, Dashner wrote himself into a corner multiple times in the books. But took inspiration from the books (see: the beginning of the Flare virus). The books and the movies are different canons, and we're going to perceive it as such. Book!Newt's sexuality has been confirmed, but Movie!Newt's has not. I hope that makes sense.

So what now? Well, right now, Astra still has yet to fully recover from tendonitis. And I'm a little preoccupied with my internship. But Atomic will return sometime this year. It may be closer to the middle or sometime in September. But it will happen, that we can promise you all.

Thank you so much for the love you all have shown this series so far! It's always so heartwarming to see those kind messages and comments pop up on my conversation board and in the comments. I'll try my best to at least respond to those on the message board, haha.

Again, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and a happy new year!

I will see you all soon!

Ari <3