El Apéndice del Autor
Una Mensaje de E1craZ4life
Oyé, chicos y chicas. E1craZ4life here. It's been a very long and enduring journey, but it's finally finished. And I just wanted to take the opportunity to explore some of my inspirations for this, as well as the challenges faced during the writing process.
I took up this project as a way of opening the gates for works following the premise of other members of the Rivera family visiting the Land of the Dead instead of Miguel to explore family members younger than Miguel. As you can guess, things would have to play out differently in the living world in order for Héctor to be around to guide whoever ended up cursed, which is where I came up with Miguel jogging Coco's memories and being trusted with her memorabilia before she passed away.
Solving one problem created another: with Héctor's legacy in Miguel's possession, it would no longer be possible for anyone not to know that Héctor was the musician who disappeared from the Rivera family all those years ago. I had read a fanfic that had Miguel know that Héctor was his great-great-grandfather before getting cursed, and I had hoped that it would play out like a detective story after Miguel got the scoop on why Héctor didn't come home. That didn't happen, so I recycled that into my own work. I thought it'd be amusing to have Miguel grow up to be like Héctor, and when Socorro went to the Land of the Dead, she kept mistaking Héctor for her brother.
If there's one thing I'd have done differently, I'd probably have had Coco and Héctor's reunion be told as a backstory after Socorro got cursed rather than have it be part of the chapters leading up to Little Coco's journey; but then again, I just like putting Imelda in positions where she can't hide from her true feelings of Héctor and making her cry. (Yeah, I'm evil. What are you going to do?)
Perhaps the hardest part was coming up with a new show for Frida and a new song for Héctor to sing in Shantytown. I wasn't going to have Frida put on the papaya cactus show again or have Héctor sing "Juanita" again; that's something Ernesto would've done. The show I came up with was based off of The Two Fridas, and I conceived the lyrics of the new Shantytown song in Spanish without translating to English to ensure that it could pass as a Mexican piece of work. (I did take Spanish lessons in high school, but that was years ago. Although I had at one point made use of those lessons in my internet activities, I never thought they'd come in handy until I saw this movie.)
As for Imelda finding out the truth alongside Héctor and the two Cocos, I did it as a way to convey my reactions the first time I watched the movie. Despite going into the movie thinking it was a remake of The Star (I thought the skeletons in the trailers were llamas; it's a long story), I was able to predict that Ernesto would be the villain, and him pocketing the foto was what sealed the deal for me. And again, I did it so I could make Imelda cry at being unable to hide from her true feelings about Héctor.
In summary: If you want to write a work with future generations uncovering the truth as opposed to past generations, a trail has now officially been blazed into that territory. Just be sure to give credit if you decide to use the exact scenario depicted for Héctor's burst of longevity.
Anyway, that's all from me. Gracias para leyendo, y tenga un día bueno.