Posted inFiction

Dredge

In this surreal piece on environmental decay, imageries of monsters, economic collapse, gross ecological excesses, guilty pleasures, and hints of internalised queerphobia all coalesce into a blend of poetic cosmic horror. While not explicitly portraying identifiable elements of queerness and ecology, Yi Feng’s piece manages to capture the ambient strangeness of queer ecology in its atmosphere.

Posted inFiction

Go On

Himas portrays yet another beautiful story of love, loss, and longing. While her previous entry presents a world of potential liberation in the midst of impossible challenges, this current story tells of the soul-crushing loss and loneliness that queer people of lesser resources face from hate crime and environmental exploitation on a regular basis.

Posted inFiction

A Little Duck’s Longing

It’s not only humans that can feel loss and longing from an unexpected and untimely death. Jing Ying’s work explores the emotional impact of human death on nonhuman animals, subverting the tired ecological trope that nature would be better off without humans. In this beautiful work, a little duck is saddened by the death of a human kin, the reasons of which are left to the reader’s interpretation.

Posted inFiction

Survival of the Fittest

Written in the form of a stage play script, Ara’s work managed to convey the essence of queer ecology as originally theorised by Timothy Morton. In the words of their cockroach character, “Gay penguins, lesbian squirrels, bisexual dolphins, sex-changing fishes… all sorts of things are out there. Nature doesn’t have a label for all these things.” Who could say no to a cockroach philosopher?

Posted inFiction

Hers

Audris’s story is one written in palpable anger as they explore the idea of queer ecology within Sundanese indigeneity. As gender is forced into a binary and nature is being relentlessly exploited, it is unbridled cosmic wrath that will come together to bite us back.

Posted inFiction

Battery

Another exploration of traditional elements, Korionto’s work sets itself under the hints of a post-apocalyptic world where abandoned temples host power cells and dancing can recharge batteries. But it’s not really the dancing that gives energy—it’s the collective care that queer people show one another, the care needed to be able to overcome their internalised transphobia and other prejudices, allowing them to love themselves fully.