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A comment on A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get young boys into books. Parent comment

Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by impossiblefork on Sunday November 08, 2026 @09:01AM (#50413460)
You can't seriously be arguing for Isekai's and levelling.

You could fix it. Drop the levelling, keep the portal story-- portal stories can be fun, C.S. Lewis and Astrid Lindgren have done portal or portal-adjacent stories and they can be fun.

I don't think a fixed portal story is necessarily attractive to idiot-readers though. I think popularity of Isekai or levelling stories might have more to do with impatience and inability to tolerate uncertainty.

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Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by casefields on Sunday November 08, 2026 @01:55PM (#50415928)
Isekai says what: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Connecticut_Yankee_in_King_A...
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Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by impossiblefork on Sunday November 08, 2026 @05:24PM (#50418065)
I'm not saying that time travel stories like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Island in the Sea of Time or 1632-style stories are bad.

I read 1632, it's a bit sci-fi pulp-y but entertaining, especially when you're a Swede and some of the characters are familiar from real-life history. I've written stories in this direction myself too, and portal stories.

But my portal stories are usually in opposition to Isekai tropes, and I think most of this stuff is too. 1632 isn't an Isekai, ISoT isn't an Isekai, Narnia isn't an Isekai-- maybe it shares some destiny tropes with Isekai-type stories, but there's an attempt to give it weight, etc.

The bad aspects of the Isekai aren't that there's a portal, it's excessive indulgence.

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Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by ThrowawayR2 on Sunday November 08, 2026 @06:46PM (#50418995)
[delayed]
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Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by GoblinSlayer on Sunday November 08, 2026 @05:33PM (#50418151)
Re:Zero is isekai without levelling. Actually it's a bit of a horror, because MC is at permanent level 1 trying to deal with overpowered enemies, the whole story is solid concentrated uncertainty.
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