The Red Thread Commentary: Part One

So, I’ve read a few fanfics that include commentary from the author and I find the commentary pretty interesting. I think I’ll indulge in the same thing for my own fanfics, once I complete them, kind of like an “Extra Features” thing on a DVD. Since I have finished The Red Thread, it’s time to add some commentary! Join me as I delve in, explaining how my writing process went, how I came up with certain ideas, what I was trying to do with scenes, why certain things happened, and pointing out references I might have made to pop culture/literature/movies/etc. Hope you enjoy!

(All of my added commentary will be in this text instead of the usual one)

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have about The Red Thread and I will answer them! Just leave a comment! Now, onto the main attraction…

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The Red Thread – Part One

So, I knew early on I didn't want to have chapter names. I thought it added to the suspense if I kept it as "Part One," "Part Two," etc. Also, I wanted to give a feeling of suspended time. Sarah, after all, is traveling through the land of death, a very unknown future before her. Unnamed chapters mimicked that uncertainty.

Sarah opened her eyes and found she was in a familiar room. She would recognize those floating bubbles anywhere, not to mention the marble tiles, the luxuriant fountains, the strange steps, the floating platforms…

She was in the bubble ballroom, except it was empty.

No, nearly empty. Someone was sitting in a very familiar chair, a chair that once had provided her freedom from this very dream, the last time she had had it. The someone shifted and Sarah instantly recognized the mane of unruly, blonde hair, tendrils coming down to frame a face hidden by a grotesque goblin mask. In fact, that blonde hair had dyed black tips.

Jareth's looks have always struck me as strangely handsome. I know that half the reason is David Bowie, but really, that hair? That make-up? It shouldn't work...and yet somehow it does. I always liked how his hair looked with contrasting colors, like when there were blue streaks in it in the ballroom scene from the movie. I figured Jareth is very cognizant of how he looks to Sarah and chooses his outfits very carefully. Here, the mask coupled with the black-dyed tips paint a picture of enigma. Jareth has a thing for hiding himself from Sarah. I suppose one can't blame him, after all, he's been burnt once already.

He stood. He was wearing a bejeweled jacket with embroidery and black, tight pants. Just the type of pants she always remembered.

This outfit, as far as I know, is completely one of my own design.

On one level, Sarah was incredibly annoyed. Why was she here, facing down the Goblin King in an empty ballroom? Had he dared to bring her back? On another level, she felt a flare of excitement; felt her old self, the one that believed in adventures and wishes and magic, stir deep within her soul. Oh, she wanted an adventure now—she also wanted to challenge a certain Goblin King.

One thing I love about The Labyrinth is the dichotomies it has: temptation and responsibility; light and darkness; good and evil; friendship and enmity; sacrifice and yearning; adventure and foolhardiness. These dichotomies are ones I like to put in a lot of my Labby fanfics, and it's in "The Red Thread" a lot. Here, we see Sarah's anger at being drawn back by Jareth, because she did win their "game" last time and she doesn't want to go through that again -- yet, she kind of does, because she wants the adventure it brought her.

Sarah took two steps forward, but kept a good distance between her and the masked figure who could only be the ruler of the Labyrinth. “What am I doing here?” she asked—no, she demanded the answer. She wasn’t afraid of him, and she wasn’t young enough anymore to be confused by the plethora of feelings that jumped around inside her.

Ah, the first hint that Sarah may be more affected by the Goblin King than she lets on.

“Indeed, that is a good question,” came the shockingly familiar voice from behind the mask. Sarah shuddered before she could help herself. He lifted something and to Sarah’s shock, she saw it was a bright, red thread that was tied to his wrist. It curved through his palm, across the floor, and to her. “I believe this is the culprit.”

I no longer can remember exactly where I got the idea for this story from, although I do remember it jumped into my head and refused to go away until I wrote it down. The red thread is not a new idea; in fact, it's pretty popular in mythology. Perhaps the most well-known mythology about it is from Ancient China and Japan, where it's called "the red string of fate." In fact, when I first wrote this chapter, I was still working on the presumption that the red thread would show Sarah and Jareth's destiny to end up together, that they were, actually, soul mates. However, as the story continues, I changed my mind and decided that the red thread would be tied (har har) with not only love, but their perceptions of love for each other, as well as power given and taken. I'll talk more about that later.

Sarah followed the red (I got so tired of referring to it as "red thread" or "red string" or "the string." Can you tell? ) as it snaked up and found the other end was tied to her own wrist. However, when he released it from his grasp, the red string disappeared. Sarah lifted her wrist, where it had been tied a moment ago, but now it was gone. She felt along her wrist for it, but only brushed against skin. She could feel her thundering pulse at her wrist.

Notice the moments when Sarah can see the red thread, particularly moments when Jareth doesn't point it out. There's a purpose to it.

“What kind of game are you playing now, Goblin King?”

“No game, I’m as annoyed by this turn of events as you are.” And to her surprise, he sounded unhappy. “I suppose despite your words to me in that final scene at my castle, you are still tied to the Labyrinth—to me.” He lifted a hand to stop her from saying anything and continued, “It is not some manipulation on my part, I assure you. I would not have it this way if I could.”

Jareth did not realize the red thread even existed until he was called to Sarah by it.

“Oh…well…what happened? Am I dreaming?” Sarah tried to remember what she had been doing just before this moment. She had begun the day like any other Saturday: she woke at seven o’clock, enjoying the extra hour of sleep, before heading to the gym and sweating on a StairMaster (how she hated that machine, but she wanted to lose the extra ten pounds she’d gained in college, but the last three were giving her quite a lot of difficulty). Then she’d bought breakfast at the grocery store—fresh fruit, cheese, and milk for her oatmeal—as well as the next week’s groceries before heading home. Right?

Ugh, this is a sloppy paragraph. Honestly, sometimes I think I need a beta reader. <_<

Actually, the last thing she remembered was picking out two grapefruits.

Sarah scratched her head, frowning. She looked down and saw she was wearing a plain, old T-shirt and faded jeans. So, had she woken up on Saturday? Maybe she was just remembering her usual routine and in reality she was still asleep in bed, waiting for her alarm to wake her up. The clothes would be little consequence, then, she could have been wearing a chicken suit for all the control she usually had on her dreams. Although she was very glad she wasn’t wearing a chicken suit—that would have been embarrassing in front of the Goblin King. Then again, this dream seemed very real. Might as well enjoy it until she had to stop; it wasn’t every day she got to talk to the Goblin King.

Memory and perception is a recurring theme I play around with in this fanfic. Perceptions of one's memory can change everything, and Sarah keeps learning that throughout this story.

“It’s been a while, huh?” she said.

It had been ten years, actually, and in all that time there hadn’t been one bit of magic, one speck of evidence of goblins, and despite her friends’ words—“if you ever have need of us…”—she had never seen Hoggle, Didymous, or Ludo again. She definitely hadn’t seen the Goblin King.

Honestly, I find it difficult to write about Sarah's friends (Hoggle, Didymus, and Ludo) and oftentimes I find ways of just striking them from the story altogether. Probably not good for canon, as Sarah was prone to turn to her friends, and they joined her Aboveground at the end of the film. However, I find their various dialog nuances extremely difficult to write, and honestly, I find the interaction possibilities between Sarah and the Goblin King MUCH more interesting.

“Has it? Time flows so differently where I’m from.” He said it so non-chalantly that Sarah felt annoyance flare.

Ah! I always love a Goblin King who pretends he doesn't care (at least until he's shown Sarah does care). I think I like that portrayal of him more than the fluffy Goblin King, and definitely more than the vindictive one. I just don't see Jareth as vindictive. Seductive, yes. Selfish, yes. A master of manipulation, subterfuge, omission, and games...definitely. But not mean for the sake of it.

Fine, two could play at that game. She sat in a nearby chair, facing him, thinking that the five feet between them could have been a chasm five thousand feet across; his body language oozed cold detachment.

“Right, true. How’re Hoggle, Didymus, and Ludo?” Sarah asked, pointedly not asking after his well-being. She smiled when frustration flared in his mismatched eyes. Good, he’d noticed.

I also love Sarah who can meet Jareth step-by-step and play his game back at him. Remember that moment in The Labyrinth when she proclaimed his challenge "a piece of cake"? This is that Sarah all over again. In some ways, she just hasn't grown up.

However, the smooth, aloofness was back just as quickly and he smiled. The mask ended just above his lips. It obscured any close analysis of his expression. He said, “Just the same, I imagine. I don’t have time to visit all my subjects.”

“Because I’m just so important I don’t have the time,” his tone implied. Right, he was the all-wonderful Goblin King who ruled over the Underground.

“Of course,” Sarah said, sarcastically. “How could I forget?”

Her tone said: “However, it was very easy to do so.”

She felt childish satisfaction when the Goblin King stiffened. However, as amusing as this tête-à-tête was—and in a perverse way, she was having a lot of fun trading veiled insults back and forth with the Goblin King, and falling back into the way they had been ten years ago—none of it answered her most pressing question.

This is a sign that Jareth and Sarah are actually meant for each other. She actually likes these "sessions" she has with him (the tête-à-têtes ).

“What’s the red thread for?” Sarah asked. She suddenly realized that this dream may be more real than she cared to admit. She remembered that Jareth had mentioned they were connected—and what if they really were? Did she want that?

I don’t feel much anger or unhappiness about that, more like…relief? Relief that I’m still connected to the Labyrinth? She thought. Yes, relief was a good descriptor. She chalked the emotion up to her adventurous nature, which had a really hard time letting go of the Labyrinth and going back to her mundane life.

I always find it hard to believe when there's a fanfic that proclaims Sarah didn't miss the Labyrinth and is downright infuriated when it bursts into her life again. How could you NOT miss something so magical? I imagine Sarah would have very conflicting emotions regarding the Labyrinth. It was a time she was afraid (for herself and her brother), but it was also a time filled with wonder and adventure.

“It connects you and I,” Jareth said, enigmatically.

“Why?”

“Because of your time here.”

Something about the way he said it made Sarah think. He said “here,” not “in the Labyrinth.” She looked around the ballroom and said, “Here? Here here, as in the ballroom?”

“Yes, I suppose something happened during our encounter here that forged a link between you and I. One that, surprisingly, did not break when you rejected me later on.”

Jareth likes bringing up that "rejection" a lot. Later on in the story he mentions it again and again. Jareth strikes me as someone who doesn't easily let go or understand other people's motivations. He also probably would prod about this point till the cows came home. I can imagine him and Sarah together after some intimate time spent when he'll turn to her and say, "How's THAT for no power over you?!"

“Rejected you?” Sarah’s eyebrows rose. “What did I reject of yours, exactly? You took my brother! You tried to bog me! If anything, I rejected your cruelty and cunning!”

I think a lot of Sarah and Jareth's problem is that they misunderstand each other's motivations. And Jareth also goes about things the wrong way. Sarah thinks he's this person out to "get her" when really he's just "playing the game" the only way he knows how, and he's playing to win.

“Yes yes,” he said, and to her surprise, his voice was bitter. “I am the horrible villain who took your brother away when you asked it of me, and sent you on a grand adventure the likes of which you had only dreamt of before. I gave you challenges to cleverly overcome, heroic lines to say, put you in the path of friends, showed you magic in all its glory, and reordered time. I am a monster.”

Jareth really believes he's just doing what she wanted, so he's always confused when she rejects him. It's like if someone said "I wish I could just kick that man in the head!" You don't expect anyone to really kick him for you. Jareth would, though, if Sarah really wanted him to.

By the way, I really liked this brief exchange between them, I felt it summed up their equal indignation very nicely.

Sarah wasn’t quite sure how to react to his speech. On one hand, this was the Goblin King, who could not be trusted. But, on the other hand, she found it amusing and fascinating that the way he recounted events. He had conveniently forgotten tossing her in an oubliette or down a hole to nearly splash into the Bog of Eternal Stench; he had forgotten the Cleaners he sent after her; he had forgotten taking away her hours because she had tried to put on a brave front and told him his challenge was easy; he had forgotten the giggling and pointing of the ballroom dancers; he had forgotten the grabbing of the Helpful Hands and the Fireys who had wanted to take off her head. And, of course, he had smoothed over the unfairness of taking her brother based on a wish she hadn’t meant, then forcing her to choose between her dreams and her love for Toby.

RE: Sarah and Jareth not seeing eye-to-eye.

A choice that needed no deliberation at the end and one she had never regretted, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t lain awake some nights and wondered what might have been.

“You have an odd way of remembering the past,” Sarah said, after a few moments of weighty silence.

“Is it odd to remember it a little more rose-tinted, if bitterly heavy?” the Goblin King asked, fiddling with his mask, but he did not take it off. “I find your tendency to label me as ‘monstrous villain’ naïve.”

Later on, Jareth jokes that he wants to be villainous and I think there's a distinction between that and what he says here. Sarah has a tendency to label him as "monstrous" or "evil" when he's not. He does have a tendency to be villainous and do the wrong thing, but his intentions are not to really harm. Even though he did send the Cleaners after Sarah and try to dump her in a bog, I think he was, ultimately, fulfilling her wish to fight against a villain. Jareth, however, enjoys the role. And then he's confused by she won't love him.

Sarah didn’t like being called naïve, it was a little too close to the condescending words he’d spoken to her when she was fifteen—and now she was twenty-five (*sigh* This is a total goof on my part. I say she's twenty-five here, which is the age I usually choose for Sarah in my fanfics because one, it makes her an adult and definitely legal, two, it's an age I've been so I can relate to how one feels during that time, and three, it means it's been ten years since the Labyrinth, which is a nice, round number. However, I later change her age to twenty-eight. This is me forgetting what I've already said. Amateurish of me, I know. ), damnit! She’d graduated from high school, went to prom and shared a sweet night with her boyfriend (now her ex) afterwards, then went to college—and not just any college, but a very prestigious one! She’d graduated cum laude, she’d held a respectable job for two years now, and she was dating a very fine young man. She was a far cry from her fifteen year old self who hadn’t realized what was fair and what wasn’t, and had been a little self-centered and selfish, besides.

I have never been a big fan of fanfics that write about a Sarah who is, essentially, unable to continue with her life after the Labyrinth. She's unable to find a job, unable to find a boyfriend/lover, unable to be normal or move on, or has become irrevocably damaged by her time Underground. I think this goes against the point of her journey through the Labyrinth, which was to strengthen her sense of Self and her thoughts regarding her life -- to get over some of her angsty issues -- not the opposite. I think Sarah would have become stronger from her time in the Labyrinth and would have become a better person. Even if she had complex, convoluted feelings for Jareth (and I think anyone who "suffered" through his seduction attempts would, especially someone on the cusp of womanhood as Sarah was at the time), she wouldn't be paralyzed by them.

However, she tried to swallow her first few angry replies to his assessment of her. She would show just how mature she had become! She said, tightly, “I never thought you were monstrous. That’s your word, not mine.”

Her confession here, and her ability to look at her memories more deeply and realize her feelings, is definitely a sign that Sarah is NOT fifteen anymore.

He looked surprised, she saw his eyebrows shoot up, barely visible above the mask. “Pardon me,” he said. “I assumed you must, since I offered you everything you dreamed of and you simply said…”

“You have no power—”

“Yes, those words,” he cut-in, angrily.

Sarah looked at him. The mask was very detailed, with grooves and wrinkles and a large, bulbous nose that added to the grotesqueness of it, instead of making it more comical. However, it couldn’t completely hide everything, she still noticed the tightness of his mouth and displeasure twinkling in his eyes.

And looking into his mismatched eyes—which had always struck her as the most beautiful she had ever seen, full of contrasts and passion and mirth—she realized something. “You think I hate you!” she blurted out.

I think Sarah would be very surprised to realize Jareth thinks he hates her. Jareth would think that because she rejected his offer for her dreams, and he can't figure out why someone would do that, and Sarah can't imagine why Jareth would think she hated him because she was only playing a game based on rules HE'D set up from the get-go. Again, not seeing eye-to-eye.

The Goblin King didn’t say anything, but his mouth tightened and his body language changed subtly, enough that Sarah knew it was an affirmative.

“I don’t hate you,” she said, surprised that he could even care what she thought of him. She said as much. “I don’t understand why it would matter to you anyway! I mean, here you are, this very powerful, magical, good-looking, immortal being. What does it matter what I think?”

The Goblin King grinned, showing off perfectly straight teeth. Sarah felt something inside her thrum seeing that grin—she’d never seen anything besides the self-assured smirk he usually wore—and wished he wasn’t wearing the mask. She was sure that when the Goblin King smiled like that, it would light up his face.

“You think I’m good-looking?” he purred.

Oops. She hadn’t meant to say that part out loud. She didn’t want to hint he had any power over her. But, now that the words had been said, she couldn’t snatch them back. Hadn’t she learned? Words had power, after all, it was her careless words that had gotten her in trouble ten years ago.

This "words have power" theme is revisited through the story. Sarah got a taste of that in the Labyrinth, but it's something she keeps realizing, for example when she later is forced to do the test by Death, she proclaims the answer of when the red thread was forged.

Also, Sarah is afraid of letting Jareth have power over her. Poor Goblin King, he has to trample through Death's domain before she trusts him.

Sarah lifted her chin and set her jaw in a stubborn challenge. “Yeah, so I think you’re good-looking. So what? It’s not so surprising, all things considered. Besides, as I said before, I never hated you—okay, maybe a little, in the beginning,” Sarah added when she saw the doubt in the Goblin King’s eyes. “I might have hated you went you took away a couple of my hours.”

The Goblin King grinned again, remembering it. “I think I wanted to hear you say ‘that’s not fair’ again. I was keeping a running count, you know. You proclaimed many things were not fair in my Labyrinth, I found it amusing.”

Hmm, Jareth certainly likes a riled up Sarah. Maybe an indignant, angry Sarah is his favorite Sarah.

“You were watching me then?” Sarah asked.

The Goblin King looked at her. They gazed into each other’s eyes for a few long moments and something arced between them, something that hadn’t been there before—or at least Sarah hadn’t noticed it in him. The silence became heavy, pregnant with unsaid words and meanings. Suddenly, the Goblin King broke the staring contest and looked away first.

“Of course,” he said, so softly she barely heard him.

“I suspected,” Sarah said, with a shrug. The voyeurism didn’t bother her now.

I didn't specify exactly what I meant by this. Of course there were moments off-screen, unknown to us (the audience) as Sarah moved through the Labyrinth. I imagined her muttering to herself quite a few times, "This is so unfair!" and the like. And of course Jareth would be watching her through a crystal ball.

She felt antsy suddenly and stood, going towards one of the fountains. This dream was very long, and strange, considering all they seemed to be doing was talking. And in a companionable way, too, she thought with amusement as she neared the lip of the fountain. She leaned forward so she could stare at one of the cherub sculptures that adorned the middle spout. Her fingertips brushed across the cold, marble lip. Who knew it was possible to just talk to the Goblin King?

Which meant she had a wonderful opportunity, one she shouldn’t squander. Sarah turned and took a few steps towards the Goblin King again. “Since we’re here, can I ask a question?”

“Yes, since we’re here.” He gave a regal wave of his hand, encouraging her to continue.

“I’ve wondered this for a long time,” Sarah said, then took a deep breath and met the Goblin King’s gaze. “Why did you give me the power to call you?”

Ah! So Sarah begins asking the questions harder to answer without mentioning the word "love." She can be really dense and she's created this whole fiction where the Goblin King is just a villain who was dastardly enough to try and seduce her to win. She simply can't imagine that Jareth may have been trying to seduce her because he wanted her (as well as because he wanted to win ).

This finishes Part One. Ironically, I stopped here because the chapter was getting long and it was the only good stopping point I could see, but Part One ended up being my second shortest chapter (Part Two was the shortest chapter by 30 words). As the story continued, my chapters just got longer and longer.

I mentioned in the original Author's Notes (which you can read on Fanfiction.net) that this story is different than my usual stuff. There isn't much action or romance, two things that are aplenty in my other fanfics. The Red Thread started more as an exercise in character study and working an idea out to a satisfying conclusion. However, it grew into a full-fledged story in its own right. It is definitely darker, and most of the action is secluded in Part Five, where Sarah and Jareth must run from Death. Despite this, I think The Red Thread worked out beautifully. I hope you enjoyed the commentary. Until next time!