Outlandish creatures and genre crossover in young adult liminal fantasy: a Deleuzian perspective

The paper situates young adult (YA) liminal fantasy within early twenty-first-century trends that use the fantastic to address eco-justice and anti-anthropocentric concerns in the Anthropocene. It outlines liminal fantasy (after Mendlesohn) as fiction where the fantastic unobtrusively overlaps with reality, normalizing encounters with impossible creatures. The study focuses on how such encounters, embedded in adolescents’ liminal identity formation, intersect with environmental threat. Research aim: using Deleuze’s concept of deterritorialisation, the paper examines how YA liminal fantasy disrupts boundaries of genre and species via youth–nonhuman encounters, posing ethical questions that mirror environmental anxieties and shaping hybrid young adult identities.

The review connects adolescence as a liminal stage (Turner) with posthumanist theory emphasizing hybrid bodies and porous boundaries (Tarr & White; Jaques; Ratelle; Harrison). It discusses Todorov’s "fantastic" and Mendlesohn’s "liminal fantasy" as frameworks for boundary-blurring between reality and the supernatural. Prior scholarship often treats nonhumans as posthuman subjects but overlooks their role as signifiers of genre crossover within YA fantasy and the traversing inherent in the fantastic. Deleuze and Guattari’s deterritorialisation, becoming-animal, and the molecular child provide a non-hierarchical lens to analyze fluid identities and interspecies alliances, complementing work on "minor lit" (Jacques) and the ethical potentials of children’s/YA literature (Newland). This theoretical synthesis motivates re-reading YA liminal fantasy as a site of generic hybridity (e.g., magic realism, Gothic/ecogothic) and ethical inquiry into human–animal relations.

Conceptual, qualitative literary analysis informed by Deleuzian philosophy. The study applies deterritorialisation—especially becoming-animal and becoming the molecular child—to close readings of three YA texts: Sonya Hartnett’s The Midnight Zoo (2011), Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls (2011), and Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City (2018). It examines: (1) how outlandish creatures function within liminal fantasy to destabilize human/nonhuman and genre boundaries; (2) how magic realism, Gothic/ecogothic, and multimodal strategies create affective intensities; and (3) how youth–nonhuman encounters articulate ethical responses to Anthropocene anxieties. Evidence derives from textual examples, narrative voice, imagery, and intertextual mythic or folkloric references (e.g., the Green Man), rather than empirical datasets.

• Across the three works, encounters with outlandish creatures catalyze deterritorialisation of identity, moving protagonists toward becoming-animal and the molecular child, and expanding ethical awareness beyond anthropocentrism.
• The Midnight Zoo: The wolf’s gaze and the caged animals’ voices draw Andrej into a zone of proximity, producing cross-species empathy without crude anthropomorphism; alternating anthropomorphism/zoomorphism and a blend of liminal fantasy, magic realism, and Gothic unsettle human mastery and inspire ethical action.
• A Monster Calls: The yew "monster-tree" exemplifies multiplicity (Green Man, healer, storyteller, destroyer), merging Conor’s affects with ecological forces. The text rhizomatically mixes magic realism with ecogothic to reframe morality, grief, and environmental precarity, guiding Conor’s confession and psychological healing.
• Tales from the Inner City: Multimodal magic-realist and ecogothic vignettes construct urban human–animal assemblages, foregrounding displacement, extinction anxiety, and reciprocal gazes. Detailed sensory depictions and anthropomorphic cues prompt readers to recognize interdependence and ethical responsibility in urban ecosystems.
• Genre crossover—especially liminal fantasy’s fusion with magic realism and (eco)Gothic—intensifies affect, normalizes the impossible, and enriches narrative exploration while foregrounding Anthropocene-era ethical questions.
• Collectively, these texts model YA literature’s capacity to address identity formation in tandem with environmental anxieties, fostering ethical directionality and de-centering human exceptionalism.

The findings demonstrate that YA liminal fantasy’s outlandish creatures are more than posthuman figures; they are engines of deterritorialisation that dissolve rigid categories (human/nonhuman, child/adult, realist/fantastic). By staging reciprocal gazes and affective intensities, these narratives align identity work in adolescence with ecological embeddedness, translating Anthropocene anxieties into experiential, ethical insight. Genre blending (magic realism with Gothic/ecogothic elements, multimodality) is not an impediment to ethical engagement; rather, it expands interpretive possibilities, enabling stories to operate simultaneously as aesthetic experiments and moral provocations. This supports the central hypothesis that liminal fantasy can productively merge genres and species to cultivate non-anthropocentric perspectives and guide young readers toward more inclusive, responsible forms of subjectivity.

Aligning YA liminal fantasy with Deleuzian deterritorialisation clarifies how outlandish creatures evoke affective, identity-shaping encounters. Three key traits emerge: (1) a tendency toward zoomorphism and becoming-animal that invites multiplicity and empathy with nonhuman life; (2) staging of liminal, precarious situations where youth and creatures meet, revealing interdependence and ethical stakes for sustainable futures; and (3) evidence that genre crossover enhances, rather than hinders, ethical and aesthetic resonance. These features show the genre can broaden young adult experience in the Anthropocene and unlock multi-directional ethical dimensions through a fusion of genres and species. Future research could extend this framework to additional YA texts, media, and cultural contexts to map further variations of deterritorialisation and interspecies ethics.