Talespinner. ⭐star⭐ . Go.
(Talespinner is my longfic sequel story to Labyrinth, and incidentally the first fanfic I ever published. Also by far and away the most widely-read thing I’ve published. This commentary is going to be somewhat spoilerific, on the off-chance that there’s anyone who sees this post who already is reading/intends to read the story, but given that it’s been complete for seven years… ohmygodthatwasalongtimeago….)
Okay, anon. I’ve chosen to talk about Chapter 9, which is a rather eventful one with some important set-up and a pinch of reader gratification.
Chapter summary: Sarah has her first dream of the anchor chamber, which may or may not be apparent to the attentive reader, given the opening scene of the previous chapter. She awakes to a visit from Jareth, who whisks her off on a day trip for a tour of his kingdom, as it is underneath the glamour perceived by those who run the Labyrinth. He gives her an item she can use to return home at any time. On the tour, Sarah has several revelations about how the Underground works relative to her own world, meets Yera and Xera, and has surprise intense feels with meaningful eye contact, which of course leads to The First Kiss.
My goal/outline in writing the chapter was pretty much stitch together the points laid out in the above synopsis, minus Yera and Xera, who were a semi-spontaneous addition. Which might be surprising to some people, given Yera’s prominence in later chapters, haha.
So, first, the dream sequence. How do you set a pretty trap for Sarah that she’ll enjoy so much it’ll be hard for her to notice she’s even stuck there? Shiny library. This is an intentional callback to the scene in the movie where she eats the peach, forgets where she is, and is temporarily delayed by the Junk Lady in a replica of her bedroom at home.
However, it’s not immediately obvious that the dream represents a trap, given that in the scene where the anchor chamber is very first introduced, it’s a concert hall, to trap a different sort of creative mortal. I wanted it to be possible to make that inference, but not necessarily likely.
Then, she’s awake, and Jareth’s there! Banter banter banter banterbanterbanter. Holy shit the banter felt like it wrote itself in those days. Granted, Labyrinth has a lot of Arc Words, which are fun to reference/lampshade, so that adds to the ease of constructing playful conversations, but still.
I’d had Jareth ask her, in a previous chapter, to think about the true nature of the Labyrinth trial, and Sarah correctly answers that question here, which is effectively a useful piece of exposition.
The item Jareth gives her to guarantee that her return home will be under her own control is a miniature crystal orb on a chain as a necklace, because of course it is. That was a no-brainer.
When I got into the meat of the tour, honestly I had started just with the vague idea that she’d visit altered versions of one or two recognizable trials from the movie. Yera (and Xera, but mostly Yera) were a happy accident of a choice. I hadn’t intended Yera to be a particularly important character, but she just kind of nestled into the story and said “if I fits, I sits” after I let her in to begin with.
And then the last section.
I knew how it ended when I started writing the chapter. Now I had to give her a reason. Having him briefly let her see the Underground through his eyes seemed both an appropriate continuation of earlier activities, and appropriately intimate to be smooch-inducing. And it was!
As for the very end… I frankly can’t remember if that was a result of a conversation with my beta beforehand, or if I’d just gone “welp I don’t know what to have either of them say right now, so….” But I wound up pretty pleased with it, either way.
