Notes (because people actually ask me about this stuff):

Jareth's early explanation of the Creation comes from Genesis. Many of his thoughts here and throughout the story indicate he's a student of Hermeticism and Gnosticism.

Tiberius shares a name with a Roman Emperor. Our Tiberius is much more of a happy go lucky party animal than the emperor, who by all accounts was a very unhappy guy.

Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood greatly influenced the depiction of the Grandmotherly Demon in Chapter 3. This film had a terrific impact on me growing up, and I highly recommend it. It's Kurosawa's interpretation of Macbeth transposed to feudal Japan, with the titular character played as a samurai commander who murders his lord to gain power. Kurosawa shows the Weird Sister character as a creepy old woman patiently spinning thread, like a spider lying in wait at the center of her web.

Nix simultaneously means "nothing" (in colloquial German), "to destroy" (in colloquial American English), and refers to troublesome spirits in Germanic mythology. He also shares a name with the Greek goddess of night, who was born of chaos and later gave birth to destruction and death.

"Can you talk when other people are around, or do you choose not to?" "Most cats can. They just don't." Notice how often Nix redirects Sarah's questions and appears to answer them without answering them at all. It's so dishonest, but Sarah doesn't even notice. It hints at Nix's true nature.

Jareth's human persona, David Goodman, was meant as a play on words: he's hardly a good man. I borrowed his first name from David Bowie, who played Jareth in the original film. Actually, I based a lot of Jareth during this time period on Bowie in the 1970s at the height of Bowie's alcoholism and cocaine addiction. The Thin White Duke and The Man Who Fell To Earth directly influenced a lot of Jareth in chapters 12 and 13: cold, alien, reserved, and a little depressed. Rock music and Richard are the only times Jareth appears to feel alive here. Jareth also inherited Bowie's rabid reading habit, judging from how much time he spends in Princeton's library.

The Black musician who Richard and Jareth see perform is Little Richard, "the architect of rock and roll." Bowie often said that Little Richard was his muse. In fact, Jareth's comment upon seeing Little Richard perform ("I'd heard God") is a direct quote from Bowie on how he felt at nine-years old when he first heard Little Richard sing. Note: I didn't intend for Richard to share his name with Little Richard. It just happened.

"I suppose it could have been worse. He originally wanted to write about the erotic content in Ganymed." The irony of Walt's statement is that Schubert's opera (based on Goethe's poem) is the story of a beautiful young man seduced by a god (Zeus).

"I knew another young man like that." "Oh?" "You call him Mozart." At first glance, this exchange between Jareth and Walt sounds like the former is being a smart ass to intentionally annoy the latter about Richard. After writing it, I noticed Jareth chose a very strange turn of phrase. I was struck by the sudden thought that Jareth might have personally known Mozart and was, in his own way, being transparent about what he truly is (i.e. Jareth would have called Mozart by a different name, hinting at intimacy). Walt, of course, doesn't see the dual meaning to Jareth's words.

"I've always said if you were born in another time, you'd be a pirate." "I only take what I'm offered, need I remind you." More double entendres and hidden meanings alluding to his true identity as Goblin King. I think Jareth does this partly to feel like he's getting away with something, and partly out of desperation to be seen.

Princeton's eating clubs are a real thing.

The idea of Jareth waking up after a rough night at Studio 54 was influenced by Bowie's assertion that Jareth hates being Goblin King and would much rather be hanging out "down in SoHo or something."

"We began to hear explosions, great explosions that shook the ground and rattled the roof over our heads. We could peek through cracks in the shed and see the electricity outside go out. I learned later this was the Warsaw Uprising." Sarah's new mentor, the anonymous film director, is speaking of the rebellion by the Polish Resistance, timed to coincide with the approaching Soviet army. The uprising resulted in 300,000 immediate civilian deaths, and the Nazis then retaliated by razing most of Warsaw to the ground.

Many people associate the Tarot with fortune telling. Clearly a lot of people use the cards for that purpose. But the cards are also, at heart, archetypes: symbols for the human experience describing different stages of a person's life journey. Jareth teases Sarah about this as early as the scene in her living room when she rejects him again, and he makes a one-sided joke about the Fool. She doesn't understand until much, much later that he was referring to the Tarot card and hooking her up with magic lessons.

Even later, she realizes Jareth also gave her the answer to Muriel's riddle right there in her living room, then played dumb later when Sarah asked for his help solving it. Jareth's a jerk.

I wrote the second-to-last scene of Jareth and Sarah saying goodbye to her mother in the graveyard a month before Bowie's unexpected death. The story's themes about death, loss, and rebirth suddenly struck a little too close to home. It took me another year and a half before I could start writing again, even though this story only needed one more chapter.

"Did no one ever tell you the tale of the fool, and what happened when he stepped off the cliff? He flew." Lot of symbolism in this story comparing Sarah to birds, because she is meant to parallel Jareth (whose other form is the owl). And then of course, in the final scene, Sarah performs her first act of conscious magic and creates a raven.