MORE THUJA OR MORE SPHERE?

There's an anecdote about a gardener who was ordered to prune a thuja bush into a spherical topiary, and, when he had finished, the master asked him:
"This is a completely perfect sphere, but... where on Earth is the thuja?"
When I adapt a work of fiction through hypertextuality (whether the hypotext is parodied, retold, and/or crossed over with another), I always ensure that the essence of the original hypotext seeps in to the readers through the masks of the hypertext, giving you readers sphere and thuja in equal amounts.