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

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I loved them when I was a kid--as long as the memory of the experience wasn't taken away on the kids' return. But by age nine or so, I hated the return. I wanted the kids to stay.

I also started to hate the "You are the only hope of this world" stories.

Finally I realized what I liked was comparisons of cultures.

I loved Narnia as a kid, and there was an odd one called A Walk Out of the World. I think the last one I really loved was Joy Chant's, which came out when I was nineteen.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

and there was an odd one called A Walk Out of the World.

Yeah, I remember that one! An immortal family of women with silver hair, and so on.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

I also started to hate the "You are the only hope of this world" stories.

Oh, blargh! I hate that. It's become one of my pet peeves....

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

But by age nine or so, I hated the return. I wanted the kids to stay.

This is interesting to me, because one of the notions I'm toying with is the possibility that the portal's a one-way trip: you can't go home again.

I also started to hate the "You are the only hope of this world" stories.

Ditto, with a cherry on top. Those two things don't have to be yoked together, but they often are.

Finally I realized what I liked was comparisons of cultures.

Me, too.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Twelve Kingdoms was mostly a one-way trip. Even after being given immortality and the offer of emperorship, Youko wanted to go back to her life in Japan. Then she got told the people would suffer without her, collateral damage meant the magical unicorn she was talking too would refuse to take her back, she'd have to order her own unicorn to inflict Mega Storm Damage on both worlds in sending her back, and she'd die in a year anyway if she wasn't a good king. So mostly one-way.

Can't go back or doesn't go back seems common enough in my list.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That . . . is a powerful argument for not going back.

Doesn't go back strikes me as reasonably common; can't go back, less so.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is, magical unicorns are spirit creatures tasked with finding the divinely appointed king, so can cross worlds without problems, and the one she's talking to has made regular trips back to Japan for the last 500 years. He thinks democracy would be better than their system.

Can't go back at all seems common in time travel. Yankee, Cross-Time Engineer (iffy, someone else had time travel), Lest Darkness Fall, Island in the Sea of Time, Pebble in the Sky (title? Asimov). Fantasy... yeah, it tends to be more difficult, or something quested for, than impossible/never.