Today's ponderable

[swan_tower]

I'd like to talk about portal fantasies. Or rather, I'd like you to talk about them.

By that term, I mean the stories where people from this world go into another, more fantastical world. Narnia, for example. Once upon a time, these seem to have been more popular; now, not so much. And if I had to guess, I'd say that's at least in part because of the way a lot of them were transparent wish-fulfillment: Protagonist (who is an emotional stand-in for the author, though only in egregious cases a Mary Sue) goes to Magical Land where things are more colorful and interesting than in the real world. And maybe they stay there, maybe they don't.

Talk to me about the portal fantasies you've read. Which ones stick in your mind? What was your response to them, both as a kid and now? Which ones did the wish-fulfillment thing extra transparently, and how so?

(Yes, I actually have a special interest in the bad examples of this genre. In fact, if you approach this entire question as an academic curiosity of the structural sort paired with a authorly eye toward writing a deconstruction -- not a parody -- of the tropes, you'll be on the right track.)

Portal fantasies. Talk to me about 'em. Good, bad, ugly, laughably naive. What's your take?

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

pameladean's Secret Country trilogy and Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. Love.

I know there are bad, ugly, and laughably naive ones out there. But I try to dodge them just as I dodge bad high fantasy, and oh, I love the good ones.

I have two volumes of one written myself (and trunked) and at least one more completely different one that occasionally nags at the back of my head.

[janni.livejournal.com]

The Secret Country books are among my all-time favorites.

My main requirement is that the characters don't forget everything when they return home--that always made me want to throw the book across the room, because what's the point of the adventure if you don't get to remember it?

Tried to write one once, with mixed success that had more to do with my writing at the time than the genre--though it's being a hard-sell genre right now makes me a little leerier of going back to it than it might be otherwise.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I call that a Death Of The Magic ending, and I hate them so much. I read The Whim of the Dragon between the cracks in my fingers because I had already met and liked pameladean when I could finally buy a copy, and I was so afraid she would do that to me, and it would actually be a person doing it to me instead of an abstract authorial construct. And then she stuck the landing, go Pamela.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

By the time you finished writing it, the market might have changed.

A couple of decades ago, Lawrence Block felt he had to explain to readers of his column on writing what tie-ins and novelizations had been -- there was no longer any market for them. They've definitely come back.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all trends come around ... which also makes me think I must not feel passionate about the project to just write it anyway, which is reason enough to hold off, as well.

Could change one day, of course ...

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

This isn't something I'm intending to do right now, in part because of the reason you name. But the idea has always been sitting on about the fifth burner or so, and today I felt like poking at it.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've got one that's been in the back of my head for a dog's age, that (at least in part) always intended to be a deconstruction. But it needs to be done right, if I'm ever going to do it.

Problem is, I try to dodge the bad ones, too, and I feel like I need a broader sense of how this trope works before I'll know how I want to play with it. I mean, other than going through into another world, what is the general pattern of those stories? I can't break it until I know that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think in the bad ones there's the universe-version of the Great White Hope problem, which we see in Narnia a bit: that very often there is something special about people from another world (often children from another world) that they have to fix what is wrong with the world they've stumbled into.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Which makes me think of the Thomas Covenant books. (And not in a good way. Though I'm not sure I've ever thought of them in a good way, come to think on't.)

[thespisgeoff.livejournal.com]

I've re-read the first two Covenant trilogies several times, trying to figure out if I'll like them this time. I never will. I'm down with anti-heroes, really I am. But I'm not down with whiny anti-heroes, and rape really doesn't get to be excused away ever - or at least not just hand-woven.

Plus, if you set up a "Wild Magic" outside the rules of the world you've created - well, it would help to have clear rules first, wouldn't it?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I've re-read the first two Covenant trilogies several times, trying to figure out if I'll like them this time.

Exactly what kind of masochist are you?

[thespisgeoff.livejournal.com]

I did the same thing with Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, which is another series I just cannot seem to stomach but that others love. I keep hoping for another LOTR experience - a book I hated on first read but that grew on me when I took my time with it.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Okay, I suppose that makes sense.

Have you ever talked to kurayami_hime about the Williams? She and I had basically the same experience: liked the first book, okay with the second, by halfway through the third the only person I cared about anymore was Miriamele and the story wasn't talking about her, and then when it finally got back to her I discovered I didn't care about her anymore, either.

And then the ending seemed very lame.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, Joel Rosenberg did a series of them that fit the RPG reference below. Guardians of the Flame, I think is the series name.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

Yes! Those were actually the main ones I was thinking of, though I was blanking on the title. It's been years since I read them.