8. The Road Block, The Resurrection, and Return with the Elixir

Ah, the ending. I have a hard time with endings. Not as much a writer but as an audience member. I still feel strongly that the hardest part of writing for me is keeping the second act from sagging. As an audience member, in my younger days I was known for leaving the last chapter of a book unread, the point when you have to beat the boss of the game unfinished, and with a teary eye when my favorite sitcoms took their bow. I actually had a hard time reading this chapter and thinking about endings, the 11th hour drama, and well, conclusions in general. Writing a fantastic ending is exhilarating; seeing something you love end is depressing. 

Many of today’s sections have to do with returning back. Now that the journey is over, we tend to go back to our ordinary world, and in some cases the ordinary world will no longer exist. I actually find this to be more true than having a “always available ordinary world” like many movies portray. Perhaps in many situations, like a week vacation to the Bahamas, the ordinary world will still be waiting upon the vacationers return, but after big moments in life I generally see the ordinary world fade. Heading into the special world is often not only necessary for the plot to move forward, but it’s a matter of survival as the ordinary world is destroyed, maimed, burned, and seized. This is definitely my bias as the hometown I knew before college and the family I had (have) are completely different from that time. I enjoy when endings do go back to their beginnings as it has a nice, circular feel to it. In fact, I recommend this in many cases as it can bring out power with characters when they are in their home but with the special world’s elixir.

I crave strong endings. As Vogler states, they should be kept simple. I think a powerful ending will sum up several plotlines all at once in a concise package. I feel like by the end the chaos of the story should be being streamlined rather than the spontaneous layout of the second act.

The sharp encounter with death, or the greatest sum parts of evil, is what I feel all stories are headed toward. I think the film the Prestige had a certain formula that I find appealing with the pledge, turn, and prestige.

Every film is in a sense promising a great encounter with what seems to be an impossible enemy to escape, then there is a turn where the hero seems dead, and then resurrection takes place and we have the prestige. In a sense, the entire film before the point of facing the sum of all evil is backstory for the pledge. If this has been effective on the audience it’ll be indicative if they are on the edge of their seats, perhaps yelling, and in anticipation of the next moment. If that sensation is not occurring for the audience, I think the jobs of the previous parts of the story may not be serving the pledge to the utmost. The next two parts (the turn and the prestige) will come rather quickly. Somehow the character based on information prior will have to reappear with enough strength to destroy her enemy; she has to be in alignment with her elixir or the sum of all evil will triumph over the protagonist. 

  

7. Ordeal and Reward

Graduate school is taking a chunk out of my leg and skewing it... like a pig with an apple in its mouth. I apologize for the lateness of this entry. I have not been conquered by school just yet, but it's finding ways to be increasingly more chaotic. I predict this will settle down these next couple of weeks.

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What disturbs me about Vogler’s writing is that I can easily place myself into his words and find relevance to my life, not just my writing, but my own personal quandaries. I read the chapters on Ordeal and Reward awhile back and somehow let the entry slip from me. I think it bore a hole through my brain and left me in a puddle to ponder and be amazed.  

I understand intimately the 2nd act crunch of ordeal. I think it’s absolutely true that a real crisis will change a person and things won’t be quite the same, as cryptic as that sounds. It’s that hideous yellow wallpaper that once you notice, it has to be stripped off the walls, and as you claw at it you get absorbed into it with flakes of yellow on your clothes. The infamous “Yellow Wallpaper” short story has such a menacing hold on the idea of crisis that it mocks a great deal of fiction, and all it took was a postpartum woman trapped in a nursery room with cheap wallpaper.  

As with this section of Volger, I think it makes a great deal of sense as to why writers struggle with the middle portions of their work and end up with a sagging middle. I think it’s difficult to create a strong enough ordeal that it isn’t such a powerful black hole that the third act can’t compete with it, and on the other hand, it seems fairly easy to write an ordeal that barely qualifies as a cough. 

The ordeal scene I think needs to reflect the beginning and end. It needs to fit with the culmination of events the hero has experienced, and it also needs to wipe them out and foreshadow what is to come. This isn’t particularly easy as it takes some consideration and may be rushed by the writer in order to focus on the ending or go back to the beginning and polish it once more. The middle is long, it needs to both have structure and also present chaos for the character. If it pulls too much one way it can end up forced, too clinical, or dry while it can also be tedious, indistinguishable, or a series of bullet shots that never fully hit their mark. 

I think I recognize my weakness in writing since I admit that middles are not my strong suit. Lately, I’ve been well equipped for the beginnings or the ends. Maybe if I were to extend this as a metaphor for life I would see that I am lost in my own middle, unable to navigate through the haze even if I have some foresight as to my end. 

The reward... I feel like is much easier. Once the ordeal makes itself apparent, a compatible reward should be in close proximity. If we truly know the main character’s obsessions and what makes him desperate -- that should be key in solving what is his reward. As well, if we really know what is his reward we should then know what exactly should stand in the way of it. These puzzle pieces of the hero’s journey do best when they are placed around each other rather than held in isolation.      

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies, and the Inmost Cave

A story without conflict will only lead to two dimensionality for instance: Sesame Street, though it may have its need in society, it isn’t exactly a narrative based show. The importance of having the hero cross into the special world with new characters which he must make quick observations and connections with is that inevitably in our real world we experience this with new steps and the process always comes with frustrations, challenges, and chaos. This is a normal process as anyone moves to a new town, puberty, riding a freaking bike for the first time, or even being born. It’s through friendships and trials that the inevitable external and internal conflicts of the story are made clear. They give the hero identity, or at the least, a framework with which to work in order to combat their call which is ultimately their fate.

On another note, lately I’ve been tying my thoughts together that have been building through the last few months, or years perhaps. I believe the real dynamic that people face in their everyday life is the struggle against desiring power and seeking their own sense of character. I think what we’re really seeing with internal conflict is that people mistake power for character, which is the exact opposite: power is a delusion, it doesn’t inspire our essential self but instead causes us to buy into false realms placing our security on money, institutions, crippled forms of love, and so on and so on.

I think what is really truly villain time and time again are characters who are in close reach of being a hero but due to hurts, greeds, and the shadows that are within these characters ends up causing them to place their selves into the hope that power will be their answer. In truth it is really those that sacrifice themselves who are the ones who are consistently rewarded with having character and end up ironically finding their real self. We are all characters; we all have souls ticking inside of us that sometimes with the right wind, string ensemble, or particular puffy cloud that we feel our own spirit tingling within. There’s a whole list of villains I could write down just to prove that their main fixation has to do with power, while the hero who sacrifices ends up being the one who actually finds their self... and their real intrinsic power.  

In this world of people many of course mean well with their actions, but most villains meant well not knowing how their actions hurt others, often including most importantly how their own contrived actions hurt themselves. I think the struggle that’s the closest to the heart is our identity and that we have a battle against the power we seek vs. the character we are meant to be. And over these past few years I’ve realized that those who have character are the ones who are succeeding, not necessarily those of talent but those who are dedicated to the end, those who can continue riding the mechanical bull even when it goes postal and starts to fly into space. If one’s character is not in check, a person will end up fighting themselves and blocking their own talents from having the chance to flourish. 

The inmost cave to me is facing the internal self. If we can’t go into the depths of ourselves and fight off whatever sick thoughts decide to appear, we won’t be able to take on the real tangible obstacles that stand before us. Our minds are full of labyrinths with a variety of thoughts; this is the place of raw material that channeled correctly can be effective, but if channeled poorly it can turn into emotional wrecks, minds that somehow are cut off from their bodies, or forces that storm through life without any sense. I think the film the “The Science of Sleep” is a perfect description of a character who is unable to focus in their inmost cave, and so they are stuck and that being stuck is causing the protagonist's entire life to disintegrate.

What a horror fest to never be able to escape one’s inmost cave, and as a viewer of “The Science of Sleep” I felt beyond tense watching this film. It upset me that he couldn’t move forward, but just kept screwing himself over again and again without release.

We need the training ground that’s inside of us. It’s our most personal, private, and unique place that no one else can fully experience or completely understand because once we speak what’s happening inside our minds it’s being translated into a whole new medium, being compressed from it’s true source material into conversation. 

5. Refusal of the Call, Meeting with the Mentor, and Crossing the First Threshold

Refusing the call to adventure I think is integral for the audience to see because it gives us time to see the protagonist processing in his or her mind what lies ahead. I think we are able to better relate with the conflict if we understand what are the character's thoughts on the upcoming situation. Giving us that insight helps us to connect with the hero, engage with him and his story, and also become invested in the making the right decision: how often do we yell our movies that a character should not go into that room, talk to that person, or how we wish they'd go postal for some much needed catharsis? The refusal of the call gives stability to the narrative. We might not clearly understand the character if they jump too soon into their new world, so I think the refusal helps us to understand who exactly is our main character. 

Vogler uses the example of Christ in the garden before arriving at the cross and I think yes, it does show a moment of questioning whether going to the cross is necessary, I also think it's one of the few clear moments where we grasp the thoughts of Christ and what he really desires for himself, the world, and so on. By the time he has accepted the call, we see where the thoughts that motivated him in the garden are transformed, shaken, even questioned though yet a commitment to the call. These two landscapes for the character have such an obvious contrast that it really shows the heart of the character in what they want for the world and how that ends up being crystallized, and I think that's ideal in any story that we can see what the character is like before accepting the call and then giving a whole new experience which informs us to a greater degree as to what kind of character is being expressed before our eyes. If the new world is nothing really new -- than I would daresay that the journey is weak and that there should be a way to contrast the two landscapes more.

Mentors are some of my favorite tropes of all. Currently I'm taking a Native American languages class at the same time as this class, and the oddest of materials from the language seminar line up with the hero's journey. In many Native American societies, the shamans and storytellers were considered the ones with power, the tribe leader if you will in the best way we can translate this role to our first world developed brains. The storytellers were there to mentor the people, give lessons on why the world operates the way that it does, as well as that language of the tellers was served as a way to heal sickness. Certain shaman songs were kept so secretive that only the shamans were allowed to use them and were not for open, public use. I think part of the reason why I like the role of mentor so much is that it often still places a high respect for language -- most of the mentors are distinct in how they view the world and teach it toward their pupils. I find that whether it's Gandalf, Hannibal, the Fairy Godmother -- whatever mentor comes to help raise the hero into a stronger character -- that the mentor will have a distinct sense of language that operates on a different level from other fellow characters, and this to me is fascinating. I think we are drawn to language more than we realize and that it plays a larger role whether conscious or subconscious on how events play out in our lives. The very mentor's language I feel is what often grabs the hero. If the mentor had the same sense of dialogue as the best friend / ally / sidekick, I don't think he would be near as tangible or noticeable as mentor to the hero or audience. 

In order to cross the threshold, the hero needs to be prepared. I think through the wisdom of the mentor who helps the hero to gain a sense of how to overcome her obstacles and give her a sense of what the new world will be like is often key. For instance, in the Count of Monte Cristo without the Abbé Faria, Edmund would never be transformed from his potential into the man he needs to be to fully escape, challenge his enemies, and live a new life into the sunset. Crossing the threshold I feel is a scary part of life whether in going into puberty, being married, flying a plane for the first time, or moving to a new bizarre location. 

There should be anticipation no matter how prepared or knowledgable a character happens to be. The experience should bring upon growth, enlightenment, and change. 

To sum up, this entire portion of the book reminded me greatly of Alice in Wonderland. Her curiosity fuels the book, but she is constantly going from one odd, disturbed character to the next, and she is given plenty of choices as to which doors to open, which things to eat to make her grow or shrink, and which characters to take their advice whether the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar, or the Cheshire Cat. I read from an academic journal once that Alice in Wonderland was partly inspired by the new understandings of math at the time and that a great deal of the book was dealing with abstract numbers and the idea of matrices (which I can buy that, especially since the Matrix steals the White Rabbit character). Near the beginning of the book, Alice opens several doors in succession, many of which lead to nothing which the author of said paper believed it had to do with a matrix that was off by a number. Regardless of whether or not Lewis Carroll actually was inspired by math, I think what's important is that all schools of thought work together and that the hero's journey isn't simply about craft or psychology (or Tarot cards as Vogler noted) but extends itself into math and that through studying the hero's journey we are actually gaining what are the mathematical concepts behind our fiction, and in the same our own world since fiction is just a mirror of our reality that we use to understand our existence.  

4. Ordinary World & Call to Adventure

I agree with Vogler that our heroes are rounded through their wounds. I like to think of characters through their emotional skeleton. I think all of us carry a myriad of experiences tied in with memories and the emotional imprints we’ve been given. I think our actions raise questions as to what happened in the past whether someone has seemingly unreal maturity, or unsettling emotional quirks during specific contexts.

Storytelling to me is unveiling the emotional skeleton to see what’s really there and what it desires to overcome. Some of the most important aspects about ourselves are the secrets that we carry, those defining moments that stick out in our minds more than the routine of the day, and how those moments influence us whether these experiences are as transparent for people to see or are so hidden that no one knows about the real tragedies or validations of one’s past.

Our ordinary world can only stay stable for so long. We grow as humans as well as the settings in which we interact are challenged by various factors. Sometimes people mean well to try to keep their ordinary world the same, but this refusal often leads to more hurts, a crippling lack of development, and even a critical state of falling apart. The ordinary world in itself is precious, and I think it’s human for us to want to keep it sacred; as Vogler said most heroes refuse the call to adventure and have to be cajoled into what is necessary for the character as well as other story world goals. 

We do also seek for how to escape our ordinary world. The problems of one’s setting along with not fitting in are enough to burden any character. Only staying in the nursery will obviously prevent growth. We go stir crazy when we haven’t left our houses; we also go crazy when we’ve been on the go for too long and can’t process what all has happened to us. Prolonged socialization can lead to stress and prolonged isolation can lead to loneliness (or even insanity). I think heroes constantly have to reach outside of the current status quo, because not only do they crave something more but variety keeps us healthy and sane.

However, sometimes this craving isn’t pure. A character may not want to acknowledge that they want something more (or need it) but eventually they’ll have to face it or the desire for change will step in and take over one’s life in a tangled, evil mess: example -- extreme midlife crisis. There’s many seeds in the minds of people that suddenly overtime become like a mandate in one’s midlife. Suddenly the hint of wanting to be on one’s own becomes an agenda and he or she ends up changing their job, leaving their family, and divorcing their spouse. Scary thought, right? 

What is unprocessed and pushed under the rug builds until it becomes the dominant voice of a character. This could also be referred to as the Shadow archetype -- therefore I think we have to consider our journeys and our desires and where that will guide our footsteps. If we’re not considering where are thoughts are guiding us or the consequences it can lead to total devastation. It would seem that some changes from the ordinary world are needed for development while other changes are not really the form of a hero, but a coward bent on their own selfish desires.

A coward is created from what should be a hero. There’s always the chance for a coward to turn back into a hero. Cowards essentially have lost their sense of direction and in turn make choices that not only hurt themselves, but those around them. In a sense this could be considered the tragic hero, yet I feel there’s a difference. Tragic heroes are doomed. They have little to no choice to escape the reality of their circumstances. Cowards take matters into their own hands by focusing on the wrong internal voice inside; they have options to change whereas a tragic hero does not. 

For a coward it is not really a refusal to the call that is perverting their nature, because a refusal to a call shows some awareness of their even being a call. A coward does not listen to all the points of plot, but rather sets out to rid themselves of any plot, any connection, or any compassion. They want to be done with these and to do their own thing in their own sanctuary. Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter series is a great coward. He hands over Lily and James to Voldemort so he can be safe. He stays a rat so that none of the death eaters will come after him. He only was a friend to James Potter so that he could ride of James‘ glory. Peter constantly could have made better choices, but his selfish needs consistently come first. He would make a terrible protagonist to follow. Even Voldemort had some empathetic moments we could follow and understand, but the real coward of the series never grew but in fact, went smaller in size from being human to rat.       

3. Shapeshifters, Shadows, and Tricksters

My apologies for my lateness! I thought each of these journals were to be posted two weeks apart from my quick reading of the schedule, so this is a week late. However, now it is here and I have learned a good deal from this last section.

In these pages I felt that Vogler's writing took a leap into profoundness. It was already a strong book, but this section held more intrigue for me, perhaps it's simply because of the archetypes discussed at this point.

I did not expect such a detailed discussion on gender, the self, and sexuality within the archetype of the shapeshifter. I found those handful of pages to be enlightening. Much of the ideas in Vogler's book are already floating in my head, but he has a way of pegging them down and giving those ideas clarity, direction, and in a way, authority. The psychological side of the shapeshifter makes sense to me and seems to go somewhat hand-in-hand with the shadow archetype considering we as people can only be so much of the possibilities in our minds. I think if we tried to be the full spectrum of possibilities it could overwhelm us to the point of an explosion. To be a certain gender, or in a certain situation rather, will more than likely require suppressing some qualities -- which this can get crazy, but perhaps the real question is what is healthy suppression vs. unhealthy suppression. I'm thinking along these lines because I feel that some of the most sagacious characters have a stealthy amount of suppression to the point of almost being androgynous. Maybe the real battle is how to not be consumed by one's gender or sexuality but to be master over it, but how does one master one's self so as to be who they really are intended to be? I think taking a closer examination of what's ticking inside our skulls is close, yet not a perfect answer -- I don't think there is a solid, perfect answer to hold onto when trying to figure out who we are. For one I don't think there's only one best available version of one's self but rather there's multiple best versions. As with perfection, first: it is an unattainable reality that ironically I think is harmful and causes people to avoid progress. Second: we're imperfect beings so our minds can only go so far.

There's a great deal that can be said of gender and why we express it the way we do; there's both biological and sociological reasons for how our gender comes out into performance. I find this topic fascinating because it runs close to how much is will and how much is destined which I think is one of the more worthwhile topics for writers as freewill and destiny is tied so greatly to plot and character. If you don't know the characters' desires and senses of will, then what is going to be their objective(s)?

I think the shapeshifter chapter in itself brought too many ideas to the forefront of my mind. Generally, my-go-to shapeshifters are from comic books: the one's who actually have the ability of a shapeshifter like Mystique and whatever the shapeshifter is in Spiderman. I think why this chapter caught my attention so much is that it brought the idea of a shapeshifter to a more human level rather than the more glorified, and macro superhero ideal (which magnifying traits to a superhero level is helpful at least for me in being able to understand theory).

As with the shadow archetype, there were a lot of dark villains brought up in the text that after awhile began to make my mind feel uncomfortable. Thinking about Hannibal Lecter kind of grosses me out, which means he's an incredible antagonist but knowing how sinister he is and yet helpful is not exactly something I like to contemplate; essentially, to me Vogler gives that character too much credit in saying that he reveals our humanity -- cannibalism, at least for me, is beyond humanity. Maybe this reveals my own humanity, but downright eating people isn't on my menu. I'd rather die then have to be in such terrible conditions that my only way of survival... is that. I may blame the English department that I know intimately how I feel about cannibalism since this scenario comes up and I've thought for some time along these lines:

"Okay, if I'm shipwrecked on some island and there's no food but the people I'm with, would it be more ethical to eat people to survive or just bloody accept fate and die... because I'm going to die eventually, so why add cannibalism to perhaps a well-lived life?" Oh, the things I write at 2:53AM.

What I wish that Vogler had done is expand more on the last paragraph on shadows. There was a lighter passage where he stated that the shadow could be a place of unbridled potential such as creativity, the other side of choices, etc. Shadows don't have to be the evil we're trying to hide under the rug, and I think that the what-could-have-beens and why-didn't-I put-more-time-into-this gifts are more at the heart of people than what we try to bury. I speculate on my ideas here, but it would probably depend on what you are trying to bury. If you have a deep dark secret, like murder, I think that would be consuming of one's psyche, where if we struggle with lesser evils, I would bargain that we would be less cognitive of what those evils are in us because they're not as pressing (or hold as much burden) on our lives. I would say that daily, normal bad things we do... suck and frustrate us. We should for our own being try to denounce our evils, but in the foreground of our minds I think we more predominately look at "the roads not taken." Perhaps the antagonist is merely the result of the opposite of our own choices that eventually is bound to meet us in our own space and time.

I think the things we don't do are more haunting and relatable for the audience than perhaps -- huge deafening secrets, not necessarily tragedies like the loss of a loved one or disease, but I mean secrets like murder and affairs -- then again affairs are more common than I like so maybe these two types of shadows are in the same league of relatable. I don't know, I'm just theorizing. I will admit that in reading about shadows it challenged me to consider how to bring more empathetic moments to my villains. There are some downright evil villains I think who succeed by not having any humanistic qualities about them, they just want to destroy for the sake of destroying -- the extreme nihilists. I don't feel like the recent Joker for the batman trilogy had a great deal of backstory for the audience to feel as though he needed our empathy (there's no family, no Harle, not even a past circus story where Robin might be related.) Kefka from the Final Fantasy series is still considered one of the greatest video game villains and I think in part that is because he has no backstory -- he attempts to destroy the world and own it and he succeeds in this. I think villains need just a touch of empathy on part of the viewer, but they don't need to be too softened. I think if we apply too much of the same strategy to our antagonists as we do our protagonists that it's like treating different food groups the same way with cooking, which isn't necessarily going to give either food group the best, salivating flavor.    

The last group in the book (the trickster) is one of my all time favorites. (The ally which is written in the journal assignment isn't listed as an archetype in the book.) I think it's the dynamic of sadness and humor that catches my eye for the trickster. Most tricksters are there to help push the drama along, say a few jokes, but underneath it they usually have some rather intriguing pensive and melancholy emotions. Perhaps its because the fool has many jokes that are at the expense of the self and thus there's a sense of loss. There are many tricksters who don't have this sad dimension to them, such as I would say for the most part Bugs Bunny, but I think if you want to round a trickster... understanding their sadness is key.

While reading I was rather spellbound that rabbits are a universal symbol for tricksters. I love finding those type of unconscious symbols that society pulps around -- so the whole idea of a rabbit and where it's been in storytelling popped up in my brain like an encyclopedia article from clips from the Matrix, Alice in Wonderland, the ole pull-a-rabbit-from-the-hat-trick, Peter Rabbit, Donnie Darko... seriously, how did I miss this and better yet... why is such a unconscious symbol occurring? Does it have to do with being sneaky in gardens? I'm somewhat perplexed, maybe it's because the bunnies I've met never seemed this magical to me. I mean, to further the weirdness of animal perceptions into tropes, cats seem to be centering their selves around time traveling, teleporting, and quantum mechanics; a dog's death is cliche in literature and film but it's a guaranteed tear jerker. We as humans apply very strange, abstract concepts to animal beings whether in the ancient times or today. I think our relationship to animals and our capacity to imagine the infinite is perplexing. I mean, these archetypes in general are perplexing in how we apply them to ourselves.

I find there is a great deal of complexity in truly understanding archetypes. One mask may appear differently to another character simply based off the differing relationships each character has with the others: put more simply, one character may appear as a shadow to one while a herald to another. In going with the idea of "character language" I think there is some semantics with archetypes -- with literal language a sentence can carry more than one meaning at the same time and still both be accurate. A character can appear to wear one mask to one character while wearing a seemingly different mask to another.

Thinking about the potential interpretations that fictional characters have toward other fictional characters is maddening (yet worthwhile in trying to understand the people who make up our own real world).

2. Mentors, Threshold Guardians, and Heralds

Of the three archetypes for this journal the one I most commonly put emphasis on tis he mentor. A threshold guardian seems like a character that generally only lasts for a short while in prose, while a herald may last but could be there just to initiate change. Mentors seem like a necessity to me. I enjoy seeing the relationship with the protagonist and his mentor, especially when the mentor ends up being more on the dark side. Probably the most powerful threshold guardians are when they are the heroes allies rather than when they are the enemies. It's difficult to stand up to someone who has shared in the hero's journey.

I think the quest for these archetypes is how to deepen them. How might the mentor be leading the hero down the wrong path? How can a threshold guardian be more than just a wall? How can the herald betray the hero? All these characters can be predictable, so I think what is needed is to turn them upside-down to keep the audience guessing and intrigued. Of course all of these tropes can be internalized into the protagonist herself.

As for adaptation, with Chrono Trigger I'm trying to place where these tropes take place. Lucca is obviously a mentor as without her Crono would struggle to find his grounding in 600AD. In truth, the villain I have at the end of the story is actually a threshold guardian for a much larger story. There are puzzles which stand in the way of the heroes as well as monsters (which are more the actants of threshold guardians for this portion of the story). As for a herald, I don't see this as a noticeable character but perhaps broken into portions: Frog signals something is wrong by stating that Leene is already saved, Marle's disappearance is a herald that the timeline's been altered, and Lucca's teleporter itself is a herald. The pieces are there, but I feel certain aspects are being more directly characterized than others, and I think that's okay. I don't think every type of archetype needs to be super fleshed out, obviously the hero needs to be defined or it's going to be a rough narrative to make relatable.

As with the giant thesis I've got brewing, I would say Aspen Donner (the father figure), Chippiko, and Lyulf act as mentors. Lyulf is obviously a manipulative mentor. Francis and Lise act as threshold guardians at differing times in what I have in store. Francis I think will have a more tragic end than Lise, but he will step in the way of the greater plot ahead. Lise is key in being able to step forward in the narrative; without her presence then being able to speak to the cryogenic godess would be impossible...

Anyway, I feel that it's important to take note that these archetypes are in stories. I think remembering these roles helps to keep narrative structure in line. From reflection, the threshold guardian tends to be in an interesting segment in stories where to me it tends to relatively break away from the main arch and can allow for emotional development that helps to be fostered so as to help the characters level up and defeat the boss. Without the threshold guardian(s), the heroes might not be ready to taken on the final chapter.

And with heralds -- I think of montages and voiceovers. I feel like it's that sequence where the tension grows and not only are problems announced but we also see the different plots and characters connecting to each other. Sometimes this definitely a catalyst for going into the second act, but I think heralds can appear in other parts of a story.