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

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that it might be an interesting exercise to compare "one of us visits another world" stories with "one of them visits our world" stories.

What I notice in that is your choice of phrasing: one of them. I can think of stories about otherworldly creatures in our world (starting with most urban faerie fantasy) -- but how often is it written from the perspective of that otherworldly outsider? Sometimes, but not often. I'm more accustomed to seeing those intruders from a this-world perspective.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Iain Banks, "The State of the Art". Clarke's _Imperial Earth_? Not sure, and that one was from human culture, though not Earth.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

But is that more commonly an SF thing? Science fiction has its culture-collision tropes, too, but I'm thinking specifically of fantasy.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

Very true. I'm now wracking my brain, trying to think of an example from the other visitor's perspective... I think the danger there would be the temptation to describe everyday things here in bizarre terms, just so the reader could say, "Oh, she's really talking about McDonalds!" and then be amused at the little foreigner who doesn't understand.

Er, which is not to say I'd worry about you doing this. But I've seen a fair number of short stories, mostly SF rather than fantasy, that take this approach (although sometimes the distance is time rather than space - a future culture looking back and being amused by the 20th century), and if there isn't something else going on, too, it's just tedious. I'd imagine it'd be a huge help if the author already has the visitor's home culture and world firmly developed, so that the character has a basis as rich and complex as ours to compare everything to.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It can be a cute trope for humour, but yeah, it's hard to take it past the simple giggles and into something more substantial.