If you think about it, podcasts are a separate world that only consists of audio, so we’re already a kind of portal fantasy. Or maybe portal fantasy is any fantasy story in which someone goes through a doorway, aka, a portal. What, are those not great definitions? Fortunately, we’ve got some better ones in this week’s episode, plus a healthy debate on where exactly Hotdog Finger Dimension falls on the scale.

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Ari. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

You’re listening to the Mythcreants Podcast. With your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi, Chris Winkle and Bunny.

[Musical Intro]

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren. With me today is…

Chris: Chris

Oren: And-

Bunny: Bunny.

Oren: All right, everyone, we quickly have to go through this magical gateway into a world where the Mythcreant podcast doesn’t have a portal fantasy episode.

Bunny: Whoa.

Chris: What is this world like?

Bunny: That’s not real.

Oren: It’s so weird and different. It’s so strange. Wait, actually, this is this world. We don’t have a portal fantasy episode. I’m so surprised. I was sure we had done portal fantasy at some point.

[laughter]

Bunny: I mean, when you think about it, isn’t any story where a character moves from a familiar place to an unfamiliar one a portal fantasy?

Oren: Yeah, portal’s just a door. So if your character ever goes through a doorway, that’s portal fantasy, boom. Done. Podcast over.

Bunny: If they’re stuck in the same room, well, it could be a metaphorical door.

Oren: Yeah, the door, anything could be a metaphor if you think about it.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, 10,000 Doors of January taught me that we have tons of stories about doors, [laughter] so the door’s real. So we’re definitely living in portal fantasy.

Bunny: Look, No Exit is a portal fantasy. No, they don’t leave the room, but their feelings.

Oren: Oh man, I love that book so much ’cause it’s so proud of being like anti-establishment, but it’s basically just reusing the arguments of Joseph Campbell, which is that anything can be whatever you want as long as you call it a metaphor. [laughter] Anyway, so we’re now gonna take the portal to Sandwich Land for discourse. Because we have to decide, what is portal fantasy?

Chris: It’s true. Is Idiocracy a portal fantasy? Portal sci-fi maybe?

Oren: You know, it’s, it’s certainly in the area, right? It’s in the vicinity.

Bunny: You know, if you count time, travel as portal, that really broadens things because that’s a pretty big question, isn’t it? Right? Like Outlander, that’s one where you portal back and forth between, I don’t know, ancient Scottish Times and World War II or something. I don’t know. I haven’t read that one.

Oren: Well, 1700’s Scottish Times, but sure, sure.

Bunny: But like, old Scottish times, I think, I think.

Oren: Yeah. Old timey Scotland.

Bunny: Old Timey Scotland, or Oxenfree where there’s a bunch of time loops. But I wouldn’t call that one portal fantasy. It’s just, it’s also got shenanigans like that.

Oren: Well, as with any genre, it is defined by an association of related traits that a story will have some of, and maybe not all of them. The most important feature, I would say, the one that really makes us go, ‘yeah, this is portal fantasy’ is like a different world, like a different world that the protagonist is unfamiliar with and it’s like, ‘whoa, what’s going on?’ Which is why I would say Outlander feels more like portal fantasy than something like Oxenfree. Because even though in Oxenfree, I think you do go through some actual portals at various points, you’re not really being taken to another world. It’s the same world. It’s just a little weirder than you thought.

Chris: I will say in urban fantasy, like Neverwhere for instance, it can be a portal fantasy world technically being in the same world. I think the point is that the character goes from the familiar to the unfamiliar, to the point where there are different rules that they have to operate by in the other world.

Oren: Yeah. And different urban fantasies will have different levels of separation between the human world and the magical world. Like sometimes they are very sharply segregated and at that point, sure. If you wanna call that a portal fantasy, I’m not gonna stop you; I’m not gonna stop you anyway. You can call portal fantasy whatever you want, but I won’t scold you I guess is the difference.

Chris: I mean, at the same time, we could say that Luke goes from his familiar home in Star Wars and travels, and that’s unfamiliar.

Bunny: See, see! Anytime you go somewhere unfamiliar!

[laughter]

Oren: You see the reason why I would say that Star Wars is not going to trigger anyone thinking it’s portal fantasy is simply that, sure, Luke leaves Tatooine, but he’s still very clearly in the Star Wars galaxy, which is sort of the same everywhere. It’s like there are some minor variations depending on where you go, but it’s not like a completely different world that he has no experience with, right?

Bunny: Okay, okay. I have some ones that I want us to fight over, okay?

Oren: Okay. Yeah.

Bunny: Stranger Things.

Chris: Ehh, I’m gonna say no because they don’t spend enough time in the Upside Down.

Oren: Yeah.

Bunny: There are some of these which are like, it feels like it’s a portal from the other perspective, I guess it’s a portal fantasy for the Demigorgan.

[laughter]

Chris: Who is not a protagonist. If a Demigorgan was the protagonist of the first season of Stranger Things, sure.

[laughter]

Bunny: Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Oren: Hmm.

Chris: Mmm, I’m gonna s- I’m gonna say no.

Oren: Hmm. I would say no. ’cause again, like the places that she jumps to are mostly different, but not that different except for the hotdog finger dimension.

Bunny: Oh, there’s Rock World, right?

Oren: Like there was Rock World very briefly, right? But for most of that story, it’s not like she’s going to a place and it being like, wow, everything’s so different. It’s more like things are the same, but like a little different.

Chris: And on top of that, most portal fantasies aren’t about world hopping. They’re about getting to know the other fantastical world or adjusting your life to live there in some way.

Bunny: All right. What about Deep Space Nine.

Oren: [laughs] There is a literal portal.

Bunny: Yeah.

[laughter]

Oren: There are some episodes of Deep Space Nine, I would argue could constitute portal fantasy or portal sci-fi as the case may be. I wouldn’t say DS9 as a whole. Sure, the wormhole is there, but like functionally, it’s not any different than any of the other Star Trek shows when they just go to another planet. It’s just you go there through this cool special effect. That would be my argument. But there are definitely some Star Trek episodes that are very portal fantasy.

Bunny: All right. Last one. Coraline.

Oren: Hmm.

Chris: Hmm!

Oren: Hmm!

Chris: Y- I’m inclined to say maybe yes on that one.

Bunny: Because she moves back and forth, which is a little unusual.

Oren: Yeah. I’d say my view core-aligns with that.

Bunny: Ah-oh (painfully).

Chris: Oh, no.

Oren: [delightfully chuckles] Got that really buttoned up, you know?

Bunny: Oh [laughter] I, I see what you did there.

Oren: Oh, see, it’s spreading.

Chris: I refuse to engage.

Oren: Take the high road, Chris. But yeah, I would say that if nothing else, it certainly has strong portal fantasy elements. Right? Even though she doesn’t spend the whole time there, there’s a very strong aspect of ‘wow, this place is super different that I’ve gone. Right? Everything’s weird. What’s happening?’

Chris: Okay, so can we talk about Skeleton Crew?

Oren: [laughs] Oh gosh. Oh, Skeleton Crew is so funny. All right, mild spoilers for Skeleton Crew. It’s the new Star Wars show on Disney Plus, and they so desperately wanna do Star Wars portal fantasy! [cackles]

Chris: It’s so interesting because it’s technically not a portal fantasy, but they’re clearly trying to make it one just by changing various details. Because one thing that we noticed when we were watching the trailer for skeleton crew is how much, like just the neighborhood that they show where the kids live looks like a normal suburbia.

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: It’s deliberately designed to look like the real world, which is kind of off putting ’cause it’s Star Wars.

Oren: Yeah. I know several people who couldn’t handle that and were just like, ‘Nope, sorry. I can’t do it. I’m out. This is, this doesn’t look like Star Wars. This looks too normal. It’s weird. It’s creepy.’

Chris: And when they introduced the two, like first two kids characters, the two boys, they’re like clearly Star Wars fans.

Oren: One of them is also an elephant, but yes.

Chris: It’s true. We still have some Star Wars in there. But what they do is they’re like, oh, well they just love Jedi, right? And they’re just talking about Jedi adventures, but it’s just clearly code for like they love Star Wars. And then at the end of the first episode. Again, spoilers, but it’s just the first episode, they basically do something that is equivalent to going through a portal where they end up in a ship and press some buttons. It’s kind of contrived, but you know, we do what we have to-

Oren: -for reasons.

Bunny: Wait, as someone who hasn’t seen the show, what is the premise? It’s Star Wars in suburbia?

Chris: So, no, no. That’s the thing, is that they start in what is designed to feel like a familiar suburbia, And then they find a hidden ship inside a hill, and then the ship takes off with them in it and goes towards other places in the galaxy. And they don’t know their way home.

Oren: Yeah. And their planet is surrounded by a plot barrier that keeps anyone from knowing about it.

Chris: So like there’s an active, yeah, barrier that they pass through that separates their planet from the rest of the galaxy.

Oren: And it is so clearly aimed at young Star Wars fans, that it’s a kids show obviously, and it is designed for kids who like Star Wars. My only question is; are there any still of those? Do kids like Star Wars? Any? I don’t know.

Bunny: Oh.

Oren: I don’t know if kids still like Star Wars.

Chris: They want kids to like Star Wars so they can sell toys.

Oren: Yeah.

Bunny: Oh, I’m looking at the posters. One of them is just Dumbo.

Oren: Yeah, that’s the elephant alien. He is a good friend!

Bunny: One of them is, at least in one of these like promo shots, the kid just looks like the kid from a Christmas story. He’s got the same glasses too. And then this other one, the girl is just fully wearing a, like a JanSport looking backpack.

Oren: Yeah, ’cause they’re normal kids! They’re normal kids from a normal planet, in Star Wars! [laughter] The elephant’s name is Neil, but it’s spelled weird.

Bunny: Oh, you know what? You know what the elephant also reminds me of? There’s this old Mystery Science Theater movie called Pod People, and there’s an alien in it named Trumpy who’s got basically that exact same face. That’s a little unnerving.

Oren: Yeah, there we go. Mystery Science Theater returning with a vengeance.

Chris: Yeah. I can just tell some executive is like, ‘okay, so we want young kids to watch this show. Especially boys.’

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: Or we just expect, you know, they start with the boys. Introduce the boys first in a way that’s designed for them to be most relatable. And that could just be like, ‘well. Boys won’t watch it if we make it about girls who knows.’

Oren: Rude of you to assume it’s the fantasy of many boys for a pretty, super competent, girl to be kind of mean to them. [laughter] I wouldn’t know anything about that.

Chris: Right. Some executive is like, ‘okay, we want a relatable character that a kid can imagine themself being, and then getting to suddenly explore the Star Wars universe and hang out with your smugglers and maybe look for a Jedi and all those other things.’ I could just see the marketing pitch.

Oren: There’s a section that is obviously advertisements for a ride.

Bunny: Oh my gosh.

Oren: Right? The part where they go into the gun turrets and it’s like the camera panning is such a way to be like, ‘whoa, look how cool this is! You are sitting in a Star Wars turret!’ [laughter] Oh, it’s amazing. I don’t dislike the show, it is just so funny watching them do this!

Bunny: All these posters are also kind of like, they’ve got the kids on Star Wars bikes, I guess? But it’s arranged in a way that it looks like an eighties movie, E.T looking.

Chris: But they hover, so they’re not regular bikes, you see, because they’re hovering.

Oren: Yes, they would really like you to bring your ET nostalgia to this movie, please, if you’re a grownup,

Bunny: Maybe the Ralphie kid is the elephant. Maybe they’re just the, maybe that’s just what he looks like outside of the elephant. This is fascinating to me. I’ll stop looking at pictures now.

Oren: So the point of all of this, 15 minutes later, we have agreed that portal fantasy is a kind of broad genre, but it has some characteristics that you start to recognize after a while.

Chris: One of which is again, I recently discovered that portal fantasy can be used in more ways than I had previously imagined. But one of the key elements that they often have is a super relatable protagonist for the audience to identify, often a blank character, that’s the main character. Because that’s the reason a lot of times for doing a portal fantasy in the first place, is having a more relatable, main character. And so it’s a complimentary choice to make that main character fairly bland.

Oren: Yeah, and usually it also allows you to have a main character who is in a fantasy world, but has the same cultural touchstones as your audience, or at least some of your audience, and that’s helpful. It also usually decreases the amount of explaining you might have to do because in an urban fantasy setting, there’s a higher chance that you’re gonna be expected to explain how magic has always existed parallel with the human world. But the more separate they are, the easier it is to avoid that question, which is why Skeleton Crew is so funny ’cause it doesn’t get either of those benefits. Like they have to explain how this like regular earth planet can exist in Star Wars and none of the characters have the same cultural touchstones as anyone from real life, except that they’re Star Wars fans.

Chris: Look, we can make things in their universe that are coded as things in our universe.

Bunny: Maybe they should have just set it on Earth.

Oren: I’m sure they thought about making it set on Earth and decided that was a step too far. I’m sure someone was thinking-

Chris: -somebody definitely suggested that, yeah.

Oren: Can we just do the Super Scouts from the old Battlestar Galactica series? Can we do that? And somebody with good sense was like, ‘no, that is a step too far, sir. They’re not ready for that.’

[laughter]

Bunny: I don’t know. I think Dumbo looking characters are automatically sympathetic.

Oren: He is a fun character. I do like him. You know, like the story is doing its job. I like most of the characters.

Chris: Which honestly, again reinforces my argument that Idiocracy is a portal fantasy because Idiocracy makes a huge deal about the protagonist being average in every way.

Oren: This is true.

Bunny: Oh yeah.

Chris: And has the same, like, adjustment to life in the future that is pretty typical of a portal fantasy.

Bunny: So it can be a portal fantasy if you go into the future. It can be a portal fantasy if you go into a past, if you do time loops, it’s probably not a portal fantasy. If you go to another world, it’s a portal fantasy. If there’s just a multiverse, it’s not a portal fantasy, [it’s] world hopping.

Oren: At least it’s less likely to be, right?

Bunny: It’s less likely to be.

Oren: Not impossible.

Chris: We’ll not eliminate a multiverse as a portal fantasy, but I would feel like it has to have some key characteristics about how the protagonist adapts to life in their new environment, basically.

Bunny: Right, and they don’t have to be farm boys.

Oren: That’s true. Although they could be.

Bunny: They could be.

Oren: That said, I have noticed that there are some, shall we say, weaknesses that come up a lot in portal fantasy stories. I don’t think any of these are inevitable, but they’re common enough that they’re worth thinking about. One, maybe this is just me, I’ve brought this up with other people and they look at me like I don’t know what I’m talking about, so maybe this is only a me problem; but I get really tired of the inevitable learning how the world works sequence because it sometimes just feels like, I wish they would just figure it out already and move on.

[laughter]

And at least in some specific stories, I have encountered this problem where it’s really boring to learn about the world in info dumps. That’s not how we, the audience, wanna learn about it. But there are many situations where it would make the most sense for the character to request info dumps from like their allies who are from the world, or whatever. So then the author just has them not do that so then they can be surprised by more things, but I don’t know; they’re in a strange, dangerous world, you figure they would ask how things work? Like I’m sure there are limits, right? If you go to another country, you can’t just have everything explained to you. But at least if I was thinking clearly and I ended up in, I don’t know, Singapore, I’d ask some basic questions about how things work here.

Chris: Yeah, no, I see what you mean. And definitely writers can have a habit of just, okay, let me explain my entire magic system in three pages. I do think a lot of that is a matter of implementation. Like for instance, if you had a show doing that and they were talking and it would be exposition, which again, this is why it’s actually really useful for visual media that have less ways to give information and have to do more exposition and dialogue because it makes that exposition feel more natural, but you could have a character explain a few key things to the audience and then just cut away. And really what’s happening is your main character is learning more right off screen, speed up that process. So there’s definitely a balancing act to how much do you carefully teach the audience and how much do you speed up the story.

Bunny: Oh yeah. I was just gonna say that I think there are different levels of it too. Like for example, Oren, I think you might have mentioned this in your notes, but Enchanted.

Oren: Yeah, reverse portal fantasy.

[laughter]

Bunny: Right, reverse portal fantasy from the fantastic to the mundane, where there’s less that has to be explained to a character like that. There’s still a lot that needs to be explained. She’s still like singing to the rats and stuff, but there’s probably less that needs to be explained in that portal fantasy than there is in some portal fantasy that goes somewhere completely unfamiliar.

Chris: It’s similar to when you have a time travel romance where the love interest comes from like, the past, and is unfamiliar with the present day. You get the kind of jokes about how, ‘oh my gosh, cars.’ But at the same time, you definitely, since the audience already knows how the real world works, you definitely don’t want to sit down for any lectures. You wanna skip all that, which is again why we see funny things where the protagonist, like the love interest or whatever, just learns things super fast. The latest conversation I’ve hilariously heard about this is with Hot Frosty, the Netflix Christmas movie.

Oren: Oh boy.

Chris: About… [laughs]

Bunny: Ah, the famous portal fantasy, Hot Frosty.

[laughter]

Chris: About a snowman that comes to life and is like super ripped and is really hot, right? Where again, what they do with a lot of these characters that are– that come to the real world and dunno how it works, is they look at the internet or they watch tv, and then suddenly they know everything so that we can just skip over that learning process.

Oren: Yeah, for, it’s like that scene inevitably happens as soon as the writers are done making jokes about how the love interest doesn’t understand the modern world or whatever, it’s like once that concept gets in the way of moving the plot forward, they’re like, ‘okay, watch TV for a while and solved. Right. We’ve figured that out.’

[laughter]

Chris: Suddenly they know everything.

Bunny: It’s also an issue I had with Ministry of Time, which rides very high on its novelty at first of like this man from like a doomed Arctic Expedition has basically been rescued through time and brought to the modern day UK and the story is mostly about acclimating him to the modern day UK until he just becomes a regular dude.

Oren: Yeah.

Bunny: Like at some point the story is like, it’s still about acclimating him, but he’s going for runs and stuff like that and seems to basically get things. And at that point I was like, where’s the novelty anymore?

Oren: Yeah. Going for runs on purpose? What a weird mutant.

Bunny: Bizarre.

Oren: A strange person from a forgotten era.

Bunny: And then there, there would even be like, ‘oh, he is something of a modern man right now.’ And then it just oscillated between how much he was actually a modern man or not, because the story sure doesn’t have anything else going on other than this novelty. But you know, we’ll get to that in a later episode.

Chris: I think it’s also worth talking about what kind of plot stuff a portal fantasy can do. I’ve noticed that in a lot of stories, like having a protagonist that comes from the real world, it’s used for relatability but can also be used to single them out in various ways that either make them special or give them like plot problems because they don’t know how the world works and now everybody’s after them, or something like that. Or give them special knowledge that other people don’t have. Like if your character goes to Fantasy World and they bring a phone, actually this happens in Amphibia, [the] main character brings her iPad in [and] it takes quite a long time before it runs out of battery.

Oren: Don’t they like, recharge it with an electric eel at one point?

Chris: [laughs] Something like that.

Bunny: Is there wifi in Amphibia?

Oren: No no, she just downloaded a bunch of movies before she left.

Bunny: Oh, I see.

Oren: Seems to be the premise.

Chris: But sometimes characters know science or tech and then use that to their advantage as a way of giving them some empowerment, et cetera.

Oren: Yeah. Although there is a whole genre of anime that over does this to the point of me instinctively not liking it anymore, which isn’t really the tropes fault, but I just, I can’t handle it now when a character is like, ‘aha! Now with my modern knowledge of economics, I’m gonna take over the world,’ it’s like, ‘no, God, please don’t.’

Bunny: ‘With my modern knowledge of Bitcoin, this kingdom’s gonna get rocked!’

Oren: ‘It’s all on the blockchain, baby!’

Chris: One thing that we haven’t mentioned is, in some portal fantasies, the protagonist goes into a book or a game, which has some different dynamics. Obviously we could talk about lit RPGs.

Bunny: Let’s not talk about lit RPGs.

[laughter]

Chris: Yeah. Well, the whole idea as a protagonist goes leveling. But I do wanna talk about this, the weird niche portal, fantasy genre, isekai genre I found on Crunchy Roll, which I’m calling Villainous Isekai. I found a bunch of anime shows that are specifically about a protagonist that goes into otome game, which is like a dating sim. And these ones are interesting because usually, again, the purpose of having it be portal fantasy is partly for relatability and you have a super relatable main character, but these shows often don’t show the character in the real world environment, like, at all.

Bunny: Hmm.

Oren: [wheezes]

Chris: They’re just, it’s like not there. They, you start when they’re already in the otome game. So it’s very interesting because that part is so cursory. What I realized about these ones is that there are only portal fantasies to explain why the protagonist knows the future, because she knows how the outcome of the game works, right? And has to avoid a doom that’s coming. Which is why she always ends up in the game as the game’s, the villainess instead of the heroine.

Oren: Although you mentioned at least one that did the same thing without having the game premise, the protagonist just goes back in time.

Chris: That one’s not isekai. It’s a very similar premise.

Oren: But that’s my thing is that like this particular branch of the isekai genre is starting to mutate, where the actual isekai part is getting more and more vestigial to the point where we have figured out how to just dispense with it and have [a] normal fantasy story. Nature is healing.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, some of them use the knowledge more actively, like, ‘Hey, I know that if these characters have this romantic moment, then this outcome will happen and that will lead to my doom this way. So now I need to specifically intervene in this character’s life to prevent that game outcome from happening.’ Right. Which would be a lot more active, almost like playing the otome game in its own way. But a lot of others are just like, ‘Hey, I know I’m going to die at the end of the game, so I gotta prevent that from happening.’ And you could do that with the main character, just getting foresight about the future too. But yeah, the other one I saw that was, that had a strangely similar premise, was about somebody like just as she was dying, getting thrown back in time so that she’s like, her mind is older but she’s in the body of her younger self at a specific time in her life and decides to take a different life path in order to avoid the doom that she knows is coming.

Oren: All right, well I have a question for you all. Portal fantasy question, if you will, with these traditional portal fantasies, the main character goes from the normal world into a magical world. The main character is usually a kid, again, in the very traditional version of the portal fantasy. So the question; must the child return to the regular world or may they stay in the magical world? Discuss.

Bunny: Hmm. I feel like authors have an incentive to send them back to the normal world.

Oren: Do they? Hmm.

Bunny: They do because otherwise it’s like, ‘and then the kid was gone forever.’

Chris: It depends on how you start the story, because if you do give them loving parents and then they disappear into the magical world and never return again, that definitely feels like an unresolved plot hook right there.

Oren: Yeah. But if I’ve never seen their parents and have no investment in them, do they really matter? Could the child simply not decide that, actually, it’s not that important?

Bunny: I feel like you could easily end up with a scenario that a lot of maybe vampire stories do, where although your audience are humans, but it’s just like, objectively better to be a vampire, so they have to like contrive ways for humans to be cool and the vampires to be human and stuff just so that your audience doesn’t feel like they’re being crapped upon.

Oren: In this case, I think, I mean, Chris said that it depends, and that’s absolutely true, right? Like the two obvious examples are Owl House and Amphibia. And in Owl House it would’ve been really sad and dismal and depressing if Luz had just gone back to the human world.

Chris: So are you saying it wasn’t sad and depressing at the end of Amphibia?

Oren: Uh, hang on. I’m getting to that. [laughter] I would say it was, it was sad, but I wouldn’t say it was depressing or dismal, because Amphibia started off with this theme of sometimes you have to move on, sometimes things change. That was the whole point of Amphibia. And that was not the whole point of Owl House, so it would’ve just been a needless punch on the fans if that had happened.

Chris: Not to mention the fact that the main character, like, gets a girlfriend in the magical world in Owl House.

Oren: Right. Whereas in Amphibia that wasn’t the case. Like in Amphibia it was more of a like, ‘in real life we’re moving, so our friend group is probably going to break up, so we have one last adventure,’ was the concept. And I thought both of them worked. I thought both concepts worked. It was just a matter of setting it up in advance and knowing which one you wanted.

Chris: Right. If you want to avoid your protagonist going back home, you could do something to just eliminate the parents from the equation.

Bunny: Dun, dun, dun!

[laughter]

Chris: Or this is where you have either the asshole parents, or tragedy; everybody dies except the protagonist. Or other devices so that we don’t worry about them going back home. Or you could do something similar to Owl House where you just give the protagonist the ability to just world hop back and forth as much as they want.

Oren: Or you could just follow the advice of a comic that I found randomly on mythcreants.com. Where the kid just brings his parents to live with him in the magical world. [laughter] Interesting that that comic exists and happens to prove the point I was trying to make.

Chris: Wow.

Oren: Fascinating that.

Bunny: Who’d a thunk.

Chris: Mm-hmm. I don’t know where that came from.

Oren: Yeah. We may never know. All right, well, we’re almost outta time, but I have one last portal fantasy, or not portal fantasy to put before you; Stargate.

Chris: Mmm.

Bunny: I have not seen it, but it’s got a gate. So…

Oren: It does have a gate!

Bunny: That’s like, 80% of the way to a door.

Chris: I’m- I- I find myself strangely reluctant. Even though they are technically going through a portal and investigating a new world every episode, I guess it just feels too much like Star Trek where they go visit planets.

Oren: Maybe it would help if the places they go weren’t all Vancouver.

[laughter]

Bunny: I don’t know what you’re talking about, Vancouver is a very bizarre place.

Oren: It’s very strange.

Chris: Yeah, again, I think it’s, it’s very purposeful. Like I think often in portal fantasy, the going through the portal is like, something that’s not entirely in the protagonist’s control. And when they just decide to go visit a new place every episode, there’s something about being lost and disoriented and having to adjust that just isn’t present in that concept.

Oren: All right. Well, that sounds like a final verdict to me. With that final bit of sandwich discourse done, we’re gonna go ahead and call this episode to a close.

Chris: If we transported you, consider supporting us on Patreon, go to patreon.com/mythcreants.

Oren: Patreon has a portal and we fantasize about having more patrons if you think about it. [laughter] Before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And then there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We’ll talk to you next week.

Bunny: (sound effect) That’s the portal closing.

[Outro music]

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