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 08:16 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 08:22 pm (UTC)Yeah, I remember that one! An immortal family of women with silver hair, and so on.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 09:05 pm (UTC)Oh, blargh! I hate that. It's become one of my pet peeves....
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 09:10 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 09:21 pm (UTC)Can't go back or doesn't go back seems common enough in my list.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 09:25 pm (UTC)Doesn't go back strikes me as reasonably common; can't go back, less so.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 09:36 pm (UTC)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.