Portal Fantasy is a genre of fiction where an ordinary person on earth is transported to another world where they go on an adventure.
In Japanese fiction this is referred to as Isekai stories, Isekai translates as another world.
Hearing people talk about this genre make it sound as though it is a recent concept and not one of the oldest forms of narrative in existence.
In their book Rhetorics of Fantasy, Mindlesohn separates fantasy into four categories portal-quest, immersive, intrusion, and liminal.
A portal quest being defined as ‘a character leaves her familiar surroundings and passes through a portal into an unknown place.’ (Mendlesohn, F. (2013), pg.1)
‘The position of the reader in the quest and portal fantasy is one of companion-audience, tied to the protagonist, and dependent upon the protagonist for explanation and decoding’ (Mendlesohn, F. (2013), pg.1)
‘Characteristically the quest fantasy protagonist goes from a mundane life, in which the fantastic, if she is aware of it, is very distant and unknown (or at least unavailable to the protagonist) to direct contact with the fantastic through which she transitions, exploring the world until she or those around her are knowledgeable enough to negotiate with the world via the personal manipulation of the fantastic realm.’ (Mendlesohn, F. (2013), pg.1)
An immersive fantasy being defined as ‘a fantasy set in a world built so that it functions on all levels as a complete world.’ (Mendlesohn, F. (2013), pg.59)
An intrusion fantasy, or low fantasy is defined by Wolfe in their book Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship ‘Narratives in which the fantastic element intrudes on the ‘real world’, as opposed to fantasies set all or partially in a Secondary World’ (Wolfe, Gary K. (1982) pg. 67)
They define a liminal fantasy as, ‘was that form of fantasy which estranges the reader from the fantastic as seen and described by the protagonist’ (Mendlesohn, F. (2013), pg.182)
meaning that this category of fantasy is similar to the intrusion fantasy with fantastical elements entering a seemingly normal world, however the difference comes with the fact that the fantastical elements in a liminal fantasy are perceived by the characters as normal instead of an “intrusion”.
Otherworlds and the ‘white saviour’ narrative
Otherworlds in Mythology
This genre is incredibly old, going back to mythology, such as the story of Urashima Taro, where a fisherman is transported to the undersea palace of the dragon king and when he returns home, he finds that 300 years have passed in the 3 months he spent in the palace.
One form that otherworlds take throughout history is the afterlife, or underworld.
The ancient Greeks had hades, the Egyptians had Duat
(do any of the cultures I discuss link to my practice)
At the most abstract level, almost all stories are Portal Fantasy stories.
Most stories have an inciting incident of the protagonist finding themselves thrust into an unfamiliar environment.
Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey describes a movement from the protagonist’s ordinary world to ‘the special world.’ (expand on heroes journey, discuss propp)
Stories with a masquerade, where the special world exists within the real world, have the transition between the real and the special world being the protagonist discovering the otherworld, for example, in Harry Potter, the wizarding world is the stories otherworld, but in the narrative the wizarding world exists within the real world and is obfuscated by magic.
Postapocalyptic stories where the protagonist begins the story in the normal world before the apocalypse, such as Love and Monsters, I am legend, Fallout 4, Dr. Stone.
In these stories, instead of the protagonist being transported to another world, the world around them changes into the otherworld.
This is unhelpful as talking about this many narratives would make this essay both impossible to write and insufferable to read, so this essay will be discussing narratives where a character is physically transported to another world.
Generic Fantasy World
A common setting for stories in the portal fantasy genre is a generic fantasy world, a world extremely similar to Tolkien’s middle earth.
Most fantasy stories draw inspiration from Tolkien’s work, the difference between this and the generic fantasy world is that it copies middle earth almost wholesale.
Generic Fantasy Worlds tend to but do not always include, a European semi-medieval setting, Knights, Wizards, Elves, Orcs, Dragons and a Dark Lord.
One issue with this is that these stories regurgitate some of the more questionable ideas in The lord of the rings uncritically.
Such as the existence of ‘evil races’
(expand on this, look at discussions of this topic)
Developments of otherworlds throughout history
Otherworlds and stories about people venturing into otherworlds have existed all throughout human history, but the form the otherworld takes has changed over time.
This is partially because the otherworlds we create are reflections of the societies that created them.
Imagination and narrative are concepts that exist throughout all human cultures.
In a lot of contemporary fiction otherworlds are used as a form of escapism.
Historically these otherworlds were institutional, afterlives in religion, but more recently the idea of otherworlds have fractured and anyone can create their own otherworld.
Characters as proxies
‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.’ (Roy Batty, Blade Runner)
People in the real world cannot enter otherworlds, so we create characters who can enter otherworlds as proxies or avatars and experience them.
Escapism into a world where nothing matters
‘Come with me… anywhere everywhere… I could take you to, right now, to this same battlefield where we lost, or another where we won, or another where the war never happened, all equally real, all equally unreal, none of it matters.’ (Rick, Rick and Morty)
In the cartoon Rick and Morty, in nearly every episode, the character Rick uses a portal gun to enter any otherworld he desires and goes on an adventure with his grandson Morty and at the end of the episode, following the format of episodic fiction, everything resets and they return to their ‘normal’ lives, if they can’t return to their normal lives for any reason, Rick takes them to a universe where they can.
By doing this Rick has created a world almost entirely free of meaning or consequence. Many otherworld stories follow this route, descending into the otherworld before returning to the real world, similar to the format of the hero’s journey.
Dan Harmon, one of the creators behind Rick and Morty, uses a tool similar to the heroes journey which he calls the story circle.
The mechanics of Rick and Morty’s otherworlds draws attention to this lack of meaning and consequence.
In many otherworld stories, the otherworld the protagonist enters is one that is less real than the one they came from, such as a fictional, digital, or dream world.
This ties into escapism, where what the protagonist and by proxy the reader are escaping from are the consequences of existing in the real world.
The narrative of Coraline is antithetical to this idea of the otherworld being a bastion against the consequences of the real world, the otherworld in Coraline is initially presented as the usual escapist fantasy, Coraline escapes her dull real life and her inattentive parents and goes to a fantasy world where she gets everything she desires, but the otherworld is an illusion cast by the being that presents itself as Coraline’s mother in the otherworld known as the Other Mother, or the Bedlam, to entice Coraline to stay in the otherworld and if Coraline chooses to do so the Bedlam will take her soul.
The film’s narrative punishes Coraline for choosing escapism and rewards her for choosing to accept her reality.
Video Game Stories
Many Portal fantasy stories have the protagonist transported to a world based in a videogame setting (or just into an actual video game), with video game mechanics, such as, Role Playing Game stats, Levelling and infinite lives.
These stories rarely, if ever, acknowledge the implications of these mechanics.
A common joke about video games is that the optimal method of play in certain games involves having the player character in the game behave in ways that are incredibly amoral.
This is not an enditement of either the people making or playing these games, but an observation of how the design of these games incentivise the player to act.
(look at psychology)
Such as.
- in RPGs killing enemies rewards the player with money, experience points and other resources, so players begin to view enemies, not as living creatures, but as sources of these resources.
- In Minecraft, the way to create a limitless source of iron (a valuable resource) is to capture three villagers (friendly humanoid NPCs), lock them in three separate rooms facing each other with an opening in the middle and trap a zombie (or any hostile mob that kills villagers) in the opening. This causes the villagers to see the zombie and enter a frightened state where they will attempt to summon an iron golem, the way the farm is set up will cause the iron golem to fall to its death, whereupon it will drop iron.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6i5Ylu0mgM this video by Folding ideas goes into how Minecraft and other games incentivise the player to behave amorally in game.
- Pokémon’s narrative is all about friendship and how a Pokémon doesn’t need to be powerful or useful to be valued, but the gameplay of Pokémon directly ties a Pokémon’s worth to a numerical value with EVs and IVs and the way that these values are improved is by selectively breeding Pokémon with higher IVs.
Another observation about games is the imbalance in power between the player and the other characters in the game world, as in a fight between a player and an enemy, with the players ability to continuously retry over and over, the difficulty in fighting the enemy is irrelevant as, with infinite attempts, the player will eventually be able to defeat the enemy.
Because of these factors, stories set in video game worlds create a setting where the protagonist is both, encouraged to act in incredibly amoral ways and given near limitless power over the world they inhabit.
Video game stories can also create a more extreme version of protagonist centred morality.
Protagonist centred morality describes a narrative where the protagonists’ actions are always framed as correct, regardless of whether the protagonists’ actions are correct or not.
One point that causes some otherworld stories to fall into this trap, specifically stories where the protagonist is sent to a generic fantasy world, is the fact that while the otherworld is fantastical, its society and culture is still set at a medieval level, so the protagonist, being from contemporary society is viewed as being smarter and more cultured than the people in the otherworld.
This world was made for you
One concept that appears in some otherworld stories is the idea that the world the protagonist is sent to is specifically designed for them.
It was all a dream
One explanation for the otherworld that can be given by the narrative is that the otherworld was all just a dream.
This is generally an unpopular trope in fiction as it undermines the story.
This raises an interesting question, since the story being fictional obviously means that by definition it is fiction, how does the story being a dream make the story more fictional and why does that ruin the story?
In stories with wider narratives, one reason this hurts the story is that the events of the dream don’t contribute to the wider narrative, but this trope is still disliked in stories where the dream encompasses most of the story.
Reincarnation
These stories have the event that sends the protagonist to the other world being their death.
These stories refer to the protagonist being sent to the otherworld as reincarnating in the new world, the otherworld is the protagonist’s second chance at life.
There are several reasons why this is odd,
One odd thing about this is the spiritual side of this trope, the otherworld being an answer to the question ‘what happens after we die?’, according to these stories, after you die you wake up in a fantasy world and go on an adventure
Dying Dream
The trope of the dying dream can be seen as a mixture of the ‘it was all a dream’ trope and the ‘reincarnating in another world’ trope.
This version of the otherworld is the dream the protagonist is experiencing as they are dying, with the story often ending with the protagonist’s death.
The ubiquity of the trope of ‘reincarnating in another world’ and the existence of the dying dream trope, leads to several interesting observations.
First it leads to a common theory about otherworld stories being that they are all, in fact, dying dream stories and the main character only believes that they have reincarnated in another world.
This kind of theory, where all fantastical elements are attributed to the main character’s dying dream, can expand from just otherworld stories to encompass any story with fantastical elements being as a result of the viewpoint characters hallucinations.