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Lead actress in a drama series goes to Viola Davis! #Emmys pic.twitter.com/W2DiJF05jD
— TV Guide (@TVGuide) September 21, 2015
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Most of my thoughts are in my review, however a down and dirty quick likes/dislikes
LIKES
–Missy. I was hesitant about her returning but her chemistry and comedic timing with both Peter and Jenna are fantastic. She’s so…delightfully bananas.
–The Davros reveal. I love that the show is bringing back the classic villains and looking at the relationship between the Doctor and his two arch enemies with fresh eyes. Davies gave us the idea that the Doctor and the Master were friends and had a sort of affection/understanding with one another but Moffat begs the question of how villains and heroes create one another.
–The Doctor playing the guitar. Classic campy and pulpy Who.
–Clara was actually pretty great. She can hold her own without becoming the focal point, something she was far too much last season.
–The space station being Skaro. “That’s no moon!”
–All the call backs to both classical era (Genesis of the Daleks, man. THAT series is some good Who, yo) and the pre-Moff era (Jadoon, The Shadow Proclamation, Ood)
–All the jokes. Very spot on.
DISLIKES
–Not a lot, to be honest. I still really want to know how Missy is back for the second time, since we never learned how she came back last season either.
–The “killing” of Missy and Clara seems cheap since there is no way that they are going to die for good. Same with the Doctor; it’s not really suspenseful since we know that there is no regen going to happen anytime soon.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Raise your hand if you think Blue is going to be ever-so-helpful.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Announcement!
Just wanted to touch on the upcoming schedule because–believe it or not–we’re about to finish the first book!
The upcoming days look like this:
Wednesday Sept 23–Chapter 17 (The Man With Two Faces), posted by @Josephine
Sunday Sept 27–Harry Potter Book 1 Retrospective, posted by @RumplesGirl
From there RG will open the new thread for book 2 on Tuesday because we know that with OUAT coming back on that Sunday, attention will be elsewhere. @RunAroundMacy will post Chapter 1 of CoS on Wednesday! If you are interested in doing a chapter (or more) message @RumplesGirl and she’ll figure out a schedule.
We want to thank everyone who has been jumping in with ideas and comments. 🙂 And remember, if you’ve been lurking, feel free to add your thoughts.
<3 RG, Jo, and Macy
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"So, it’s safe to assume Dumbledore meant for Harry to try and seize the stone first before Voldemort could. I think Dumbledore, being wise and somewhat conniving, has been secretly preparing Harry to face his parents’ murderer face to face for the first time, testing Harry to see how he’d rise to the occasion. And Harry certainly does just that.
I think that is absolutely correct. I have no doubt that Dumbledore is “gone” for the exact reasons you gave. I’m really torn about this. On the one hand, Harry has to go through a trail by fire. Dumbledore can’t be there to hold his hand for fight Voldemort for Harry; after all Dumbledore isn’t the Hero in this tale, just the Wise Old Wizard. But, on the other hand, there is something to be said about sending an 11 year old boy with only rudimentary magical ability into the lion’s den. Dumbledore has a habit of needing Harry to know something, or gain some measure of experience and wisdom, but does so by placing him in dangerous situations. He needs Harry to realize that Voldemort is killing the unicorns and trying to get the Stone, so he (probably) arranged for Harry to have detention in the Forbidden Forest. He needs Harry to face Voldemort by himself so he leaves Hogwarts in order for *ahem* to sneak down to what waits below. Before it sounds like I’m giving Dumbledore a lot of flack, this is pretty common among the Hero and his Mentor. The Mentor cannot fight the battles for the Hero, he simply prepares the Hero as best he can. If Obi Wan or Yoda could take out Darth Vader/The Emperor then they would, but they are not the ones tasked with that, only Luke. Giles cannot stop the vampires and the evil, only assist Buffy in giving her as much knowledge as possible. Heroes are always going to be in super dangerous situations. The hope is that they’ve learned enough, and have enough fortitude to get through it.
The first big story is that of Jesus Christ.
Yup that’s the big one.
The next story that springs to mind is Emma Swan becoming the Dark One and literally descending into a vault of black tar. We’ve yet to see how that story plays out, but it’s pretty safe to assume she’ll conquer evil and vanquish the dark one curse once and for all.
And like Harry, Emma’s katabasis isn’t really a literal descent into a literal underworld. It’s going to be much more metaphorical.
Next, there’s Gandalf the Grey falling with the balrog in the mines and coming back as Gandalf the White. His transformation from dark to light out to be a BIG clue that he’s literally looked evil in the eye (i.e. the balrog) and triumphs over it. So, that’s pretty similar to Harry facing Voldemort for the first time (and repeatedly thereafter).
Gandalf is an interesting one because, like Dumbledore, he’s the Mentor/Wise Old Wizard and not the Hero of the story, yet he clearly goes through a trial by fire with the Balrog. His “death” and resurrection have more to do with the fact that he’s an Ishtari/Maiar rather than a mortal who perished but he does have the transition to “white” which is obviously indicative of a metamorphosis which the hero goes through during a Katabasis.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I would bring Mulan back with a woman at her side, she met her in the time in between, is now happily in love, and as a team and without big questions by others, they help to safe the day, hold the fort. I mean, it would fit to the shows writing pattern to let a lot of relationship building dynamic happen off screen, and it would avoid a tiresome coming-out story trap.
That would work well. Which is exactly why they wont’ do it that way. They want to make it a huge deal, milk it for every drop. So it’ll be a BIG DEAL to everyone on screen and a BIG DEAL will be made out of it.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Chapter 16: Through the Trapdoor
“I’m going through the trapdoor tonight and nothing you two say is going to stop me! Voldemort killed my parents, remember?”
Summary
Exams at Hogwarts have come but Harry finds it difficult to put what happened in the woods from his mind. His scar hurts continuously and he begins to have nightmares about Voldemort. With the last of the exams done, Ron and Hermione are convinced that they have nothing to worry about since Dumbledore is still on the premise. Harry suddenly realizes that Hagrid must have been tricked into telling someone about Fluffy in order to get Norbert’s eggs. The trio head to Hagrid’s where the gatekeeper confesses that he was plied with drink and told a stranger, who refused to take down his hood, that there is a trick to get past Fluffy. The trio guess that it must have been Snape or Voldemort himself. They set out to tell Dumbledore only to realize that he has been called to London.
Realizing that they are alone, Harry decides to go down below the trapdoor tonight and face Snape/Voldemort. Ron and Hermione insist that they are coming with him to help. That night, the three of them put on the invisibility cloak and sneak out, though they are forced to sidestep Neville who wants to stop them.
At the third floor, music sooths the savage beast and the three descend into the darkness. Once below, they encounter several spells and enchantments that the professors of the school have put in place. Professor Sprout, from Herbology, has laid a Devil’s Snare; Flitwick enchanted keys to fly around a room, only one opening the door; Professor McGonagall transfigured a chessboard; Quirrell put a giant mountain troll down there and Snape had a logical potion problem. Ron falls at the chess match having gotten Hermione and Harry across before Harry asks Hermione to go back and send a letter to Dumbledore explaining. Harry intends to face Voldemort alone.
Going through an enchanted fire, Harry is surprised to see neither Snape nor Voldemort.
Analysis
Ease On Down, Ease On Down
Much of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the playing out of Harry’s own personal Hero Journey. The hero’s journey, from start to finish, never looks identical in each case but there are major milestones or bridges that are, more often than not, crossed. I’ve written quite a bit about this journey at ONCE podcast over the years, so I’m not going to give the big run down here. I’ll say this, though. At its heart, the monomyth is a basic pattern that has found its way into stories all over the world by using universal themes, symbols, and archetypes. From the Natives of North America to inhabitants of Mesopotamia, certain stories are repeated time and time again without the any interaction between these cultures telling the same story. The most popular outline of this pattern was codified and described by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 work, “The Hero With a Thousand Face.” It is, easily, the most popular way to understand the heroes journey and is readily used by storytellers who want to tell the oldest story there is–one of light vs dark.
While no two monomyths are the same, there are some key elements. For example, we saw Harry’s call to adventure in chapter four when Hagrid told him he was a wizard. In chapter 16, we encounter another of these milestones, namely “The Ordeal.” The ordeal typically happens in the center of the story (here, it’s at the very end of the beginning, or at the very beginning depending on how you look at it. But I’d argue that Harry has many “Ordeals” over the course of seven books) and is the hero facing life and death and his greatest fears. A lot of times his own life is in danger and once the ordeal has been completed, the hero ascends into a new life or a new understanding of the world around him.
Very typically, this ordeal is accompanied by a katabasis, or descent into the underworld. In classical mythology, this was taken quite literally like Odysseus’s nekiya in book 11 of the Odyssey or Aeneas’s descent with the Sybil in book six of the Aeneid.
To demonstrate: Trojan, Anchises’ son, the descent of Avernus is easy.
All night long, all day, the doors of Hades stand open.
But to retrace the path, to come up to the sweet air of heaven,
That is labour indeed.(Aeneid, Book 6)
In Dante’s Inferno, the poet descends much like the classic heroes down into the depths of a very real Hell only to emerge on the other side.
Often, though, in modern literature the descent is not down in the actual underworld. It can be more metaphorical than that. For example, for those of us familiar with George RR Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels, young Bran Stark has (a few) katabsis’s, where he descends into a place that is cut off from the rest of the world and reemerges somehow changed. Often they are places of death or deep magic (the Stark crypts, under the Nightfort, Bloodraven’s cave) but they are not the literal underworld. For Harry, it’s a metaphorical descent into a place that is at the center of his magical world (Hogwarts) but not the literal underworld—though, JKR pays homage to this idea by having a Cerberus standing guard over a doorway into “hell” and by the fact that Harry must cross through a doorway of fire in order to reach the villain waiting for him inside.
As one might expect the “underworld” is dark, dank and dangerous and like many other underworlds there is much to circumvent, but instead of constant fires, demons, and sinners, it’s magical objects that are designed to send you back from whence you came. The objects are not meant to be easy to get around and Harry, Ron and Hermione demonstrate just how talented they are by managing to get around them.
So what is the point of a katabasis you might ask? To demonstrate the heroes exceptional status. Young Harry hasn’t left the underworld yet, but if he can then it’s a clear sign of his victory over death, which always looms large in a katabasis. There is always a question of whether or not the hero could return to the above world. If the hero stays in the underworld then it’s equal to having died and it’s proof to those back in the above world that they were never a hero to begin with.
Luckily, Harry has got something a lot of heroes don’t when they go down monomyth road: he’s got friends.
Come Together
It is almost too big of a coincidence that the enchantments placed around the underworld are each catered to one of the trio’s special talents. Once they are past the plant, each bridge they must cross seems designed for one of them to shine. For Harry, there is no better person at Hogwarts to catch a fast key with wings:
“Not for nothing, though, was Harry the youngest Seeker in a century. He had a knack for spotting things other didn’t.”
The very large, very alive, Wizard’s chess set is Ron’s special talent; we saw his skills over Christmas holiday. While we’re on the subject of Ron, it’s very interesting that Ron chooses to be a knight. It speaks to his heroism and his bravery but it’s also not the most important piece on the board. It’s vital, to be sure, but it’s neither the Queen nor the King. Ron is very worried, always, about being second fiddle to anyone, but here he chooses not the leader, but (in real military) a follower. It’s also not Ron who will claim victory—the King’s crown. It’s Harry.
Once past the chess set, we see Hermione’s skills at play with a logic puzzle. Like Hermione states, not many wizards have this sort of logical ability, but (again) almost coincidentally, Hermione has it in spades. It doesn’t take her long to figure out which potion to use.
The fact is, Harry wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without his friends. Even up in the above world, Harry needed Ron and Hermione to get past Fluffy, sneaking below while one of them played on. Harry needed Ron to get past the chess set and he needed Hermione to get past the poisons. For Harry, it’s a vital lesson. He keeps insisting that he can go alone, for fear of putting his friends in jeopardy, but they insist that they going with him. This is something that is quite different from many other hero journeys: Harry is not alone.
Odyseeus? Alone. Aeneas? Alone. Dante? Alone. While they might have spiritual guides (like the Sybil or Virgil), they do not have friends. Harry, though, has two companions who will play a giant chess game and even potentially drink poison for him. It’s best comparable to Frodo and Samwise Gamgee; Frodo might be the one who has to carry the Ring to Mount Doom, but Samwise can carry Frodo if he gets too tired.
Potential Foreshadowing
1) Harry’s scar hurting constantly
2) The Troll being knocked unconscious before Snape’s potion test.
Conversation Questions
1) Had Dumbledore not been called to the Ministry and had Harry, Ron and Hermione managed to talk to the Headmaster, what would he have done?
2) How much is Hagrid to blame for what is going on with Voldemort and the Stone?
3) Maybe you are familiar with other descents into the underworld other than the ones I mentioned above. Even if not, how do you compare Harry’s journey to the underworld with those you know of? What do you make of the katabasis as part of the hero’s journey?
Extra Fluff Question
4) Which “test” in the underworld would be the easiest for you? The hardest? And which one of the ones we see with the trio do you find the most impressive?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I’ll have other, more proper thoughts later, but out of a possible 10 stars, this first episode back is getting a very solid 9 stars from me. I thought it was very well done.
Also, here’s the trailer for 902
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
