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

[dr_whom]

The interesting thing about Merchant Princes is that not only is it not a "wish-fulfillment" portal fantasy, but at least in its setup it's a pretty severe deconstruction of the bog-standard wish-fulfillment changeling/portal fantasy. Consider: it's about a young woman from our world who suddenly discovers that her real parents are powerful nobles from a medieval-type world with apparent magical abilities and she is betrothed to a prince; it doesn't get more standard changeling-fantasy than that. But then it turns out that a parallel world with medieval-level technology and society is a squalid hellhole where a noble family is basically an organized crime gang and her only value to them is her ability to create a political alliance by marrying who they want her to marry and producing heirs. So it's not so much avoiding the standard wish-fulfillment tropes but actively subverting them.

Then it all turns into economic SF.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. Pity I didn't care about the characters enough to keep on, but Stross demonstrated early that he didn't mind treating major characters as disposable without lasting emotional consequences. Boyfriend's dead then? Oh, well, that's sad, let's get on with reforming the economic system of World 3.