That is, like with Beauty & the Beast versus Cinderella, I find I am drawn to one plot more than another.
With fantasy, the categories that I've encountered can be broadly separated into adapting versus awakening.
Adapting is about the characters arriving in a fantasy place and figuring out how to survive, make do, get along. In The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, for instance, Kondou ends up in another world, mostly by accident, where he promptly becomes the bureaucratic go-to guy for the government. At first, his role is one of survival (since he insists on drinking the magical equivalent of amphetamines to get his work done). It is also, however, about figuring out why the country has gone so off-the-rails with its accounting methods. And about Kondou managing his work load.
Likewise, the manga series Ascendance of a Bookworm focuses on the main character getting by in a very real, other world. Many of the clever DIY projects she comes up with fail because the world simply doesn't have those tools or resources. She can't turn materials into what she remembers. She has to gain knowledge about them first.
In both the above cases, the premise (the reason for the character showing up somewhere else) takes a backseat to the character getting on with things.
The difference can be delineated through a common fantasy trope: the Quest. In the quest, the characters are moving towards a denouement which, like a revelation, will upend/change the world. However, how the quest is handled varies between the two fantasy types. In adapting, the focus is on solving immediate impediments: Sam steps outside the Shire; Frodo agrees to take the ring against his inclinations; the Fellowship goes through Moria rather than over Caradhras. In the end, Frodo is unable to adapt to Bag End and the Shire. He can't go home again. But everyone else gets on with the business of life.
A single book illustrates the difference. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is supposedly about a final revelation or literal awakening, and the 2010 film threw in an extra revelation/task to try to bolster that aspect of the story. However, in truth, the book is about adapting. The three lost lords are mostly an excuse for people, like Eustace, to adapt to several new environments.
There is a great deal of crossover, of course: the excessively creepy Girl on the Other Side runs full-tilt towards a revelation but the characters have to adapt to different living arrangements along the way. Although the ending is somewhat disappointing and drops a bunch of balls (huh, what about all those set-ups?), the middle volumes are worth the read. For a series with more satisfying endings: Diane Duane's teen magicians have to figure out how to be magicians in the modern world, while the quests they undertake reveal their true selves.
But my reading choices show a consistent veering towards adapting: how do people get by? how do they manage? what do they do to make everything work? I read very little urban fantasy, even a series like Noragami, likely because the "awakening/revelation" theme is much more prevalent, almost by necessity. The fantasy is, to a degree, about what no one else sees/experiences except the protagonists. So...what does that mean that only they see it?
I think the inescapable religious subtext with awakening plots can be interesting. But I am more interested in HOW the protagonists will feed the fairies or dinosaurs or monsters (or little girls, as in Spy x Family): how they will cope in a specific world or under a particular set of circumstances; how they will manage, how they will solve the next problem. What will they change about themselves to get by? What choices will they make?
Beauty & the Beast after all.
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