iconic and beyond reproach

Thank you! I swear “why we build the wall” was a revelation when I first heard it, especially because of the first-term Trump wall propaganda. Hadestown is such a radical show but it sneaks under the radar with its love story message.

Yes, it’s about love. It’s about how love can inspire a people and bring them back from despair. It’s about how love can break down people of authority, and how it can be found even after it is lost. However, and most importantly, Hadestown is a show that says that love isn’t enough. Love doesn’t fill your belly, and love doesn’t stop you from making disastrous mistakes or experiencing great loss.

There are glow-in-the-dark stars stuck all over the ceiling of Mel’s apartment. Not just in her bedroom like you’d expect, but everywhere. Above the couch in the living room, in the hallways, pressed to corners of kitchen cabinets, over the front door. Little green constellations scattered across crackling off-white paint. 

Frank wouldn’t normally think much of it. They’re just another oddity; another loving, uniqueness of the King sisters. Something he can marvel at when Mel’s head nestles against his shoulder as a movie flickers on the television.

Except the stars don’t breach Becca’s room. They graze the doorframe, but don’t pepper her ceiling the same way they dot her sister's. Instead, they’re uniquely Mel's and they spill across the entire apartment, unabashed in their presence.

She never does tell him why they’re there.

That’s the thing about Mel. 

She has this funny habit of offering bits and pieces of herself, but never fully elaborating on them. She just unfurls her fist, showing off a shiny little pearl of who she really is, and deposits in your palm, walking away before any questions can be asked. 

It’s not because she’s secretive or private, he knows more than anyone that she’s an open book. Such unintentional flippance is only born out of people breezing past everything she’s ever offered before, and each time it happens, he slots himself right into the empty space, asking why or when or simply saying tell me more.

In a way, she’s kind of a constellation herself. A brilliant collection of light pinpricks, freckled and picturesque, imploring interpretation. There’s something beneath the straight lines, something that can’t be seen simply from stargazing, only learned through stories.

He’s grateful for each new star she shows him, even more grateful for what he finds in the negative space between. 

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I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.