Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 2/2015
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Jyrki Korpua, Päivi Väätänen & Hanna-Riikka Roine:
Editorial 2/2015
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Sanna Lehtonen:
Writing Oneself into Someone Else’s Story – Experiments With Identity And Speculative Life Writing in Twilight Fan Fiction
Abstract: Fan fiction offers rich data to explore readers’ understanding of gendered discourses informing the narrative construction of fictional and real-life identities. This paper focuses on gender identity construction in self-insertion fan fiction texts – stories that involve avatars of fan writers – based on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels. Self-insertion fan fiction stories can be considered a form of life writing where authors play with their identity in a virtual context in texts that mix documentary elements and fiction; a combination that is here termed as speculative life writing. While earlier studies have discussed self-insertion fan fiction as a potentially empowering form of resistance to conventional gendered discourses, or a space for (young) women to explore and play with their gendered and sexual identities, among fans themselves self-insertion fan fiction stories – especially stories involving ‘Mary Sues’, characters that are highly idealised versions of the author – are often ridiculed. By drawing on concepts from narrative theory, discursive psychology and feminist discourse theory, the paper examines female protagonists in selected self-insertion fanfics categorised as heterosexual romance and relates these representations to readers’ comments about the stories. While self-insertion fan fiction as speculative life writing allows for creatively experimenting with gendered identities, it is also conditioned by hegemonic gendered discourses and the norms of the particular online community.
Keywords: fan fiction, self-insertion, life writing, gender, feminist discourse theory
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Julia Nikiel:
Drowning in Rikki Ducornet’s The Fountains of Neptune
Abstrakti: In this article, I will argue that Rikki Ducornet’s The Fountains of Neptune is metaphorically permeated by water both in the sphere of the themes it explores and on the level of the text’s structure. After a brief historical sketch of the philosophical search for the first principle and the process of the emergence of the tetrad of archai, I will elaborate on the metaphorical potential of fire, water, earth and air and provide a list of works by North-American authors (with special emphasis on speculative fiction writers) which use the four elements as concretizing poetic patterns and controlling metaphors. Next, I will elaborate on the position of elements in Rikki Ducornet’s Tetralogy and proceed to focus on the metaphorical potential of The Fountains of Neptune. To this end, I will first concentrate on the function of the sea as an identity-bestowing space in which people’s lives are anchored and then proceed to analyze the concepts of surface and depth introduced in The Fountains of Neptune in connection with human emotions. I will examine the relationship between memory, past and the unconscious the novel introduces and then concentrate on water’s power of purification and its connection with innocence, (re)birth, and femininity. Finally, I will investigate what influence water imagery and the notions such as formlessness or changeability have on both the language and the narrative flow of the novel.
Keywords: Rikki Ducornet, the four archai, elemental imagery, Gaston Bachelard, water, reverie, consciousness, imagination
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Aino-Kaisa Koistinen:
Lectio praecursoria: (Re)Imagining Humanity in Popular Science Fiction Television
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (PhD in spe) defended her doctoral dissertation The Human Question in Science Fiction Television: (Re)Imagining Humanity in Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman and V at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland on the 11th of April 2015. This essay is a slightly edited version of the lectio praecursoria given by Koistinen before the defense.
Keywords: gender, humanity, science fiction television, posthumanism, feminist theory
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Kaisa Kortekallio:
The Dark Side of the Sheep, and Other Animals:
Report from ICFA 36
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Mika Loponen:
Kirja-arvio: Satu Koho, Jyrki Korpua, Salla Rahikkala & Kasimir Sandbacka (toim.) – Mahdollinen kirja.
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Tommy Kuusela:
Bokrecension: Marina Warner – Once Upon a Time. A short history of fairy tale
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Call for papers Fafnir 4/2015
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