Today's ponderable
Apr. 21st, 2009 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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?
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?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 08:09 pm (UTC)When I was 8 or 9 I came across a book called The Unicorn Window by Lynette Muir, a British writer who published only a handful of books, for all children. It was Elidor without the hopelessness; Joan Aiken with extra Mark-and-Harriet. The story follows a brother and sister who break a window in a relative's house and find themselves trapped in an alternate world where they must recapture the unicorn they themselves have set free. It charmed me completely, and still does, even though I am now way too old for it. It's my favourite portal fantasy, I think -- the only other one that had the same impact on me at that sort of age as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
And yet I don't really care for many adult portal fantasies. They never ring true, somehow: their protagonists annoy me and seem always to be somehow patronising the worlds they arrive in. I'm not comfortable in worlds which can only survive through the intervention of magical outsiders. It's too colonial, perhaps even too American for me (I'm British -- technically mostly Welsh, indeed). The imported character -- meant to be my eyes on this new world -- becomes a barrier I resent. Adults, somehow, don't fit in the Otherworld (and that I learnt from C S Lewis, from Uncle Andrew's discomfort in the World Between the Worlds).
edited for typos.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 09:08 pm (UTC)Of course, not all portal stories are about the outsider protagonist being necessary to save the world. It does seem to be a common reason/justification for the crossing, though.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 11:16 pm (UTC)