Sidapa and Bulan

We've only got one moon now, but he's still beautiful.

Hello, reader! It's the last Thursday of Pride month, and I had a doozy of a time trying to find another story. As we all know, there are plenty of gay stories from the Ancient Greeks, but I didn't want this to be a month of Ancient Greek stories, so I had to look a little farther afield. The story of Sidapa and Bulan comes from the Philippines. I wasn't able to find the story of this without some commentary. If you only want the story from the link above, skip down five paragraphs. If you don't mind spoilers, you can start from the top of the page. However much of the link above you choose to read, once you're done with that continue with me below to analyze this story.

We like to say opposites attract, and there's definitely plenty of opposites in this story. Sidapa is tall, dark, and kind of scary. Bulan is small, beautiful and nonthreatening. But they fell in love anyway. Some of the other versions I saw talked about said that Sidapa fell in love with Bulan specifically, not the other moons. It certainly is more romantic if he fell in love with a particular god and not just a crowd of them.

Although this story is shorter than I would like, I do appreciate that we see more than the initial attraction of Sidapa to Bulan. Sidapa does all these things to convince Bulan to come down and talk with him and the two fall in love. We know it's not just a brief thing because later when the serpent Bakunawa tried to swallow all of the moons, Sadapa protected Bulan. This also gives us a nice parallel. Bakunawa wanted the moons and decided to kidnap them so no one else could have them. Sadapa actually cared about Bulan and didn't try to limit his freedom. You know, what a healthy relationship is like.

The moral of this story is if you are beautiful and nonthreatening, then it's helpful if your honey can protect you from a giant serpent. Alternatively, don't be a giant serpent trying to kidnap pretty people or gods. It's rude.

Wish this story was longer? Have a different moral? Have a different story you want me to talk about? Comment below!