Bridging Worlds

One of the things I’ve recently been made aware of is the popularity of the portal fantasy. The portal fantasy is a story where the main characters often are portaled into another, often fantasy, world. From what little poking around I’ve done I see it paired with another modern genre: the LitRPG. A genre that has it’s own worldbuilding issues that I’ll discuss later. This week we are going to go over portals, fantasy or otherwise.

The first thing to note is that with a story where a character or group of characters are moved from one world to another the author will need two worlds. This, seemingly obvious, concept I think gets over looked or side stepped, as the trend is to have the departure world be our own. The idea that you and your friends or a group of strangers can get sucked into a wholly new world is a fantasy often only achievable at a library, for it to happen outside of such a location has it’s appeal. Thus the story teller focuses on the world that the story takes place in, which again makes some degree of sense. The world that gets ‘left behind’ is often one that doesn’t need to be shown and thus though the wisdom of modernity, can be ignored.

To say I see this as a waste of potential is an understatement. While building out two whole worlds to write one story may be daunting. The world that will only be visited though a character or handful of characters needs to exist well enough to give the characters; character. Yes, importing Earth: Yesterday, can be an easy enough short cut and generally work. It doesn’t pardon not using it. The issue of not using or inventing a world to have the travelers come from ulitmently becomes a character issue. Some stories can get away with a character with little to no backstory or a backstory that can be wholly described as, “Working Adult”, or “Student”, or many other one to two word descriptions, but not many. Even the ones that can get way with that often should have a better ‘seed’ for the character at the start of the story.

For example if one is going to use Yesterday’s Earth as the home for a character use it. The character a New Yorker born and bred, and acts like it. They have the accent, use the language, and will chew the person out they are helping because that’s what you do. I would suggest sketching out a place for these portal travelers to come from. Now I like the idea of inventing a world significantly different than our own. Have the character end up on the far side of a portal because they are trying to escape a monster, alien invasion, or magical travel mishap. This way the character should end up more interesting. Because Steve from accounting may be an interesting guy, however Steve from accounting gets a lot more interesting when it’s revealed that he raised dragons with his sister back home. However not taking advantage of the departure station is just one part of the common issues I see with the portal travelers, the other common issue follows with the original: the travelogue. If one reads the classic travelogues, something I would recommend for them being the origin of many different genres, and the art of worldbuilding, one will find two issues the lore dump and the passive traveler.

Lore dumping is something that even novice story tellers can recognize yet because our traveler has appeared in a wholly novel world they likely know nothing about it. Meaning everything will need to be explained either to the audience or the character in question. When done well it provides a good insight to both the character and the world, however when not done well it gums up the story. Slowing things down and at worst breaking any plot one could invent.

I have seen more than a few worldbuilders claim this is a “necessary evil” because these new to the world leading characters also need to understand the world they now live in as much as we do. This is narrowminded. While a lecture revolving around showing not telling could be an answer I think there’s a more interesting way: Culture Shock.

I have a sketch of a story under the project title I will die or set them free where a portal traveler after blundering into a carriage/horse case, technically a carriage is run down by cavalry, intervenes because of rather ungentlemanly actions on the part of the mounted men. Turns out he rescued the daughter of the local Count, who decides to reward our traveler with one of his daughters. Our traveler not knowing what to do, accepts after attempting to politely talk his way into some information and seed funds. He gets all of it. One magical ritual later involving what he believes to be an accepted but illegitimate daughter, she is a servant in the house after all, he collapses cause magic. In the morning he realizes, I’m missing something. From there once he and his new wife get out away from the Count’s estate, he all but demands some answers. Turns out, not married, the parent child terminology is euphemistic for their system of slavery with these species since her species and others are ‘children’ of humanity and as such need to be treated as such. Roll title.

This set up, functions around culture shock, and the misunderstanding from it. By accepting what he doesn’t understand, since he is very much fish out of water, he agrees to the unthinkable. From there things slowly get explained as our two leads figure out what the other does and doesn’t have a frame of reference for, let alone understanding. Then it becomes a matter of spacing out the rest of the explanations when they would reasonably come up, and with a focus on what my traveler won’t be able to infer or gather on his own.

My example avoids the passive traveler as well. For those who haven’t spent much time reading centuries old literature, or the travelogue genre, may have only found these passive protagonists in amateurish writing. There are some well written examples, where the viewpoint is a passive observer picked up and carried by the story like leaves in a river. While not always that dramatic it does tend to happen to these portal travelers, at least at first. I will side step the whole lecture on making sure that the plot happens because of the characters and to the characters rather than around the characters for this moment; as I believe the portal traveler may be a good example of how to break that argument, because portal travelers can make for good pawns.

Writing a story where the lead is a pawn in a larger game tends to be tricky with someone within the world. A good pawn lead character needs to not realize that they are a pawn, while being a useful one, and an interesting character. The first two can be solved with the portal traveler. As one often doesn’t know what they don’t know, means the implications, second order effects, and similar can be unknowable for our portal traveler. Thus one could have a story where the audience catches on that the traveler is a pawn, or likely pawn, before the traveler does. It may need a few perspective shifts or lingers, and thus is probably better set for a more visual medium. Yet it could be done. This however highlights the difference between the truly passive and the pawns. The truly passive observers make for good narrators, reliable or otherwise, who ideally aren’t really characters in the story. When they are characters outside of the pawns, go find the lectures mentioned above. I don’t have one on making sure the plot happens because and though the characters rather than around them, yet there are quite many out there.

That all said I do think there is a lot of utility within the portal concept. One can portal in whomever they need as their outsider. Meaning that changing the destination world in whatever way can be possible. Dropping in whomever may be needed to change institutions, minds, cultures, technology bases, is possible. Instead of breaking a world with someone having otherworldly ideas, or ideals, the force of change is, in the truest sense, an outside one. Meaning the world can be changed however is wanted by the worldbuilder. Bring in a hero, an inventor, a villain, a poet, or whatever one wants. By putting the right person in the right place at the right time one can leverage all the traits of both the traveler and the world to create a story.

It may open up the world to ‘otherworlders’ either as a legend or fact. If this is the only story taking place in the world in question ignoring it can be done. If it isn’t or if there are historical examples of portal travelers, that should impact the world as it is, in a way, an institution. Hypothetically speaking one could draw a line though Oannes, Thoth, and Quetzacoatl to produce such an institution on Earth. Yes it’s a loose institution, but with the powers of worldbuilding we can make it far more structured. An example could be the summoned hero, where at the time of darkness a hero is summoned by a council of wizards, priestesses, and kings and they are to save the world from said darkness. Another example would be the divine realm sending someone to help fix the world’s problems, on a fairly regular cycle. Maybe there’s a leaderboard for the different divine entities, how many lives saved, improved, ended or the likes. Could be an interesting set up where there’s two teams fighting over the world with their various portalled champions. This institution could be contrasted with a more force of nature, where at random people happen to stumble though the portal and end up in the destination world. If it’s a paired set, where all of them are from a singular home world that will end up having a different feel, than one that is the collection point for many worlds.

If these things aren’t taken into account than it will feel like the world isn’t so much its own thing but rather a loose collection of world bits that make up a stage. Which is the problem worldbuilding works to solve. Thus make sure to at least put a thought or two to the net that gets woven with the problems of the portal fantasies.

Until next week.