Many classic children’s books, including Through The Looking Glass, are
portal fantasy stories. What do new portal fantasies need to bring to
the table to stand out in a crowded field? How do reinterpretations like
Every Heart A Doorway fit into the portal fantasy landscape? Do you
pretty much have to be Neil Gaiman to get away with playing this trope
straight, or is there room for new voices? And where do we want to see
portal fantasies take us next?
Navah Wolfe
Navah Wolfe
Sarah Gibbons
Ness: Just finishing a re-read
of all the Oz
books,
so this is fresh in her mind.
Wolfe:
Kaye's Tapestry
books
as an excellent example. What do portal fantasies [henceforth PF]
have to do to stand out in a crowded field?
Ness: Would like to see more adults in PF.
Gibbons:
Every Heart a Doorway
and
The Magicians
as
coming out of adult frustration with the world.
Harris: Not sure we need something completely new; might be
enough if PF just addresses the world we live in now. New readers
might not want/be able to cope with the cultural baggage of
established PF.
Wolfe: Wants more of the after-effects of PF, “the grown up
Pevinses”.
Harris: The idea of “Portal PTSD”.
Gibbons: This genre's been around forever, it's still alive,
doesn't need revivified. But there are all these things we're
frustrated with that could be addressed or improved on.
Wolfe:
Imagination, but also return.
Audience
comment: Thomas Covenant
series.
Ness: Interested in how to keep double life of adults in two
worlds.
Wolfe:
Portal trope is kind of Doctor-Who-companion-like.
Audience:
References actual Who episode with Sarah Jean [sic.
Apologies, not a Whovian.]
Wolfe:
McGuire's Wayward
books
explore different kinds of portals.
Harris: They're about a help-group for PF, not a PF itself.
Wolfe:
Stories from the perspective of parents of a Peter-Pan-ish story;
weighing that childish desire to travel to wondrous places with
parental awareness
of the dangers therein. Smith's Mom
and Dad on the Homefront,
Janni Lee Simner stories.
Gibbons:
Valente's Fairy
series
“modern yet traditional”, what sets them apart is agency.
PF subgenre has unusual percentage of female protagonists—Alice,
Wendy—often very passive.
Wolfe:
Pushback to PF comes when you don't really know why you're doing it.
“Fanfic of my childhood self-insert” gets quickly tiresome. PF
that works knows why it's PF.
Brings up Kay's Tapestry
again
as good example.
Harris:
Valente's books work because
of
the agency of the protagonist.
Ness:
The female agency of Baum's Oz
books
is often overlooked, particularly cites some collective action
moments.
Gibbons:
On L'Engle's A
Wrinkle in Time:
Maggie's not fucking around. Also cites Funke's Inkheart
series.
“The pure observer travelogues get boring;” talks about “Alice
vs. Dorothy” models in terms of active adventurers.
Gibbons: Most Portal stories are also Quest fantasies, and a
lot of times their problems come from "partner tropes" that
go along with that—especially the dreaded chosen one
overusage.
Harris: What tropes would we like to see?
Gibbons: Anti-Chosen-One, more struggle, more things earned
instead of given to the protagonists.
Ness: Would like to see an update on A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court, lots to look at in how our
perspective on future/historical mindsets and gullibility work.
Gibbons: Would like to see explorations of how that story
could fail.
Audience: What about more stories looking at future travelers
visiting the present?
Ness: Don't do it the way Supergirl's doing it
right now.
Gibbons: Brings up Mendlesohn's taxonomy from Rhetorics
of Fantasy to help delineate what counts as a portal fantasy.
Parallel worlds can definitely count.
Wolfe: TV show Fringe and its ability to
reinvent itself several times.
Harris: Issue of "cheaply different" parallel world,
don't really fire up the sense of wondrous or strange.
Ness: In screen productions, these are often production cost
issues, uses the Arrow-verses "alternate
realities" as example.
Audience question on what kinds of things the panelists look for in
PF.
Gibbons: Discussing the need for balance between "normal"
and "portal" worlds. PF has to bring something back,
there must be some kind of transformative or weirding force on the
other side of the portal.
Harris: As long as you're writing it well, it works.
Wolfe: Don't write to the market, write what you love. There
was that overload of dystopias recently; within that there were some
great works clearly written with love, but they got swamped by people
trying to write to a perceived demand.
Audience question: beyond bad writing and "chosen one"
tropes, what are the big turn-offs in a PF slush pile?
Harris: A PF slush pile is the turnoff. Moderation in all
things.
Wolfe: Warns of the crutch where we focus all attention on the
fantastic, not the mundane. The mundane world needs built in fiction,
too. Brings up example of Parks & Recreation: "they
built the shit out of Pawnee". There's also a tendency in PF to
make protagonists bland everyman characters, which doesn't work. Give
them a reason to want to go, a reason to not want to come back.
Harris: Agrees, character needs to drive the story. All
good literature is about people. Brings up example of King's
Misery, where nothing really happens, but you really
buy the characters.
Audience question about balancing worldbuilding in PF.
Gibbons: It's weird there, but it's also home to the people
there, you need to communicate both.
Wolfe: Give them their blue milk!
Harris: References Doctor Who again: sometimes
adventure is its own reward. Not enough work explores joy.
Wolfe/Gibbons: Discuss a modern millennial PF where
characters stay on the fantasy side for a while just to avoid high
rent.
Harris: Also, don't forget that PF works in science fiction
just as much as fantasy, for instance Stargate and
Sapphire and Steel.
Favorite non-nook portal fantasies?
Ness: Can say her least favorite is definitely Emerald
City.
Gibbons: Thinks everything she likes was a book first.
Wolfe: Jupiter Rising, proceeds to defend this.
Harris: Monsters, Inc.
And that's it! Great panel.
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