{"id":19612,"date":"2022-12-24T16:01:32","date_gmt":"2022-12-25T00:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?p=19612"},"modified":"2022-12-24T16:01:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T00:01:32","slug":"recent-portal-fantasy-and-trauma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2022\/12\/24\/recent-portal-fantasy-and-trauma\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent portal fantasy and trauma"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I feel like a lot of recent portal fantasy has been about the kids\u2019 trauma, either in the fantasy world or, after they come back, in the real world.<\/p>\r\n<p>But I only have a few data points, and I may be overgeneralizing, so I\u2019m curious to hear what y\u2019all think. Does this seem to you like a trend in recent portal fantasy? Do you have recommendations for other examples and\/or counterexamples?<\/p>\r\n<p>(It\u2019s fine to recommend your own work.)<\/p>\r\n<p>Here are the portal fantasy works I\u2019m thinking of, in chronological order by publication date:<\/p>\r\n<dl>\r\n  <dt>Jo Walton: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/fiction\/relentlessly-mundane\/\">Relentlessly Mundane<\/a>\u201d (2000)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Adults who went through a portal as kids. This was published much earlier than my other examples, so probably doesn\u2019t count as part of a trend, but I figured I might as well include it anyway.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>Seanan McGuire: <cite><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wayward_Children\">Wayward Children<\/a><\/cite> series (2016-)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>Set partly in a \u201cboarding school for children who have journeyed to magical lands and been [\u2026] returned to the \u2018real\u2019 world.\u201d Some of the fantasy worlds are traumatic in themselves, and most of the kids are (also) traumatized by having had to leave behind their fantasy worlds.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>Sarah Rees Brennan: <cite><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/31944679-in-other-lands\">In Other Lands<\/a><\/cite> (2017)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>This one is a counterexample: it\u2019s <em>not<\/em> about the trauma either of being in the fantasy world or of returning. (If I remember right, it also allows much easier and more frequent transition between the worlds than most portal fantasies.)<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans: <cite><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Die_(comics)\">Die<\/a><\/cite> (2018-2021)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>A traumatic fantasy world, traumatic ongoing stuff in the real world, <em>and<\/em> a traumatic return to the fantasy world as adults. Though this is specifically in the subgenre of roleplaying gamers being transported to game worlds.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>Iona Datt Sharma, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.khoreomag.com\/fiction\/all-worlds-left-behind\/\">All Worlds Left Behind<\/a>\u201d (2021)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>This one isn\u2019t about the kids\u2019 trauma; more about diaspora and loss of connection with sourceland. So it\u2019s a counterexample, but I feel like it nonetheless has some connection\/relation to the theme of a disconnect between two worlds.<\/dd>\r\n  <dt>Iori Kusano, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncannymagazine.com\/article\/can-i-offer-you-a-nice-egg-in-this-trying-time\/\">can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time<\/a>\u201d (2022)<\/dt>\r\n  <dd>An adult who was once a portal kid, now having a hard time in the real world. (This story led me indirectly to learn of the Japanese <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Isekai\">isekai<\/a> subgenre of portal fantasy and sf.)<\/dd>\r\n<\/dl>\r\n<p>Anyway, thoughts welcome.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,28,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-short-stories","category-speculative-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19613,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19612\/revisions\/19613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}