Konflikt och kärlek i magiska relationer över artgränser i serieboken Mörkrets sång.

Abstract

This article combines a Human-Animal perspective with a Human-Plant perspective to analyse how the graphic novel Star Stable. Dark Song (2021) by Katie Cook (text) and Elli Pookangas (pictures) depicts a three-part connection between girls, horses and trees. The connection forms a triangular relationship characterized by conflict, strong emotions, and uncompromising ethics. The article argues that the embodied emotional knowledge of the horse-girl – the fictive girls in the novel as well as the girl as a reader of horse books – is crucial for understanding how animals, plants and humans are entangled and co-dependent in the Star Stable-world. The graphic novel uses a fantasy narrative to combine ecological, scientific perspectives on environmental relationships with a mythological and intertextual perspective. The purpose of the article is to answer the question of how complex symbiotic relationships between humans and non-human animals, as well as plants are depicted in Dark Song and how entanglements of narrative traditions and inter-species relationships create intensifications as well as conflicts, confusion and ambiguities.