The Maze Runner - Gladers Like You | [Group B] #1: They're like the others... Just backwards - Page 5

**fly me to the moon** · 06-24-2015, 02:31 PM

Good question..

**karamel** · 06-24-2015, 04:49 PM

Quote:

MTV: I was really interested in the parallels between the Gladers and the Icers in Aris’ story (“The True Maze”), especially because we don’t know much about what kind of maze Group B worked in from just looking the original text. Can you explain where the idea to put Group B in that environment came from?

Kelly: One of the only things we knew about Group B was that they were primarily female. From that single seed, we began exploring what that would actually mean to a society. While we found it hard to buy the idea that it would be so brutal and cruel as Group A, it also would be far from a utopia, because these girls are still scared human beings. Once we saw that their society was going to be evolving differently, we realized that that was probably part of WCKD’s plan all along… and as such, there’s no way they would put them in the same kind of maze as the boys. From there we went wild with ideas, but what we eventually settled on — a frozen caldera of constantly shifting ice — felt authentic to the universe, while still providing something unexpected. If the boys were going to be tested by the heat of their jungle microclimate, we wanted the girls to freeze.

Lanzing: Think about it for a moment. These kids never get any instruction from WCKD. The Gladers (or Group A) came up with “running the maze” on their own, so the term “Runner” doesn’t apply universally to those who map the maze. Neither does the term “Glader” or “Greenie” or “Griever” — those are terms coined by Alby and his society. With Group B, we had an awesome opportunity to create an entirely different society that worked by similar-but-different rules — one that had different terminology, governing systems, and monsters. And since their maze is ice, they don’t run — they skate and climb. It’s a reflection of Group A in many ways, but in other ways the Icers have their own story — one that could fill a whole book. We loved telling their side of the story.

.