asakiyume | (Reply)

From:

The portal is such a vivid storytelling technique, and one that's used so widely, that it's natural to think of stories that use it as sharing something (and I mean they do: they all use that technique)--but the stories are just so different. Alice in Wonderland skewers humorous things in society and plays games with ideas... it's not even really much of a story. Taking Alice, turning her into a real girl who really experienced those things, and then having her meet up with Polly or Lucy or Susan from Narnia? You can't: she's not real in the same way. I guess, technically speaking, she doesn't have the same degree of character development.

The crazy thing is, since this story isn't dealing with actual extant portal story characters, it could avoid this problem all together, but it doesn't: even though it's creating all the various different portal experiences out of whole cloth, it still mixes whimsy with serious storytelling.

The more I think about it, the more other premises of the story bother me too... maybe it's a topic for a more in-depth post.