Saint Pelagia of Antioch

Sorry for all the saints lol

Saint Pelagia of Antioch was also called Pelagia the Harlot, her feast day is the 8th of October

She lived as a monk under the name Pelagios for many years in the 4th or 5th century. until she died due to extreme asceticism (living off the very very base necessities required to live, eating very little, drinking very little, and wanting very little) and was buried in her cell. After her death her identity as a women was attempted to be kept a secret but gossip spread and she drew pilgrims from far around looking for her relics.

Legend goes that she was a harlot living in Antioch, who after sermon on hell and paradise decided to repent. When a priest then tried to deny her access to the church, she said if he should do so all her sins would be held against him at his judgment. Needless to say it worked.

Then as legend states, after her baptism the devil arrived to complain, but was driven off when she made the sign of the cross and breathed on him

A few nights later she snuck off to Jerusalem disguised as a male and lived for 3 to 4 years as a recluse

Again though, much like Wilgefortis it's unsure if she was an actual person in history. According to Britanica, there was a 15 year old girl named Pelagia, who in 311 threw herself from a rooftop in an effort to save her chastity, and died instantly, and it's thought she might have inspired the above legend.

It does fascinate me to see a prevalence of women who either defied gender norms in their legends or lived as men in their legends becoming semi well known saints, there's likely an aspect of religous prosectution and sex based oppresion that helped such figures resonate with people at the time. I do recommend reading the wikipedia article linked below, I very much paraphrased it but there were spots that made me laugh a little, specifically when she turned some priests heads going by on her donkey, all bejewled out

Queerness is not just about sex and romance. Since the concept of queer has been around, so have asexual and aromantic people. Lavender marriages, voluntary spinsters, vows of chastity used to cover a disinterest in sex. “Monosexuals”, “anesthesia sexual”, “anaphrodites”, category "X". Queer-platonic relationships, asexuality and aromanticism are an undeniable part of lgbtq+ history. Before there were any terms, any flags or acronyms, choosing to not conform to society’s romantic and sexual guidelines has been the very essence of queerness. The inherent queer experience of feeling alienated because you don’t love the “right” way or feel the right feelings for the right people, of trying to meet the expectations set for you while trying to build a life that doesn’t feel like a lie. These are all part of the aspec experience. We aren’t “invading” a space we don’t belong because it’s a trend, or an internet identity. We’re not “spicy straight”. We’re making ourselves known in a community we have always been a part of.

listen i know we all love steve “completely ignorant of queer culture to the point that bisexuality is a surprise” harrington being roasted and educated in turns by robin and eddie, yadda yadda, good stuff. i read “they made a horror version of rocky?” in a fic recently and cackled. also a big fan of “he knew he was bi from the start and just never talked about it” as a trope, love it excellent well done

but what about steve who realizes after starcourt that the most important person in his life now has this thing that’s a major part of her life that he knows nothing about, and what if he fucks it up? what if he says something ignorant or rude by accident, and hurts her? what if he loses her because he didn’t know the right thing to say? what if he can’t keep her safe because he doesn’t know what to look out for? absolutely fucking not, this steve says

and listen she’d never say anything, because she can tell that he can tell how much she likes teasing him and teaching him things, so he plays dumb, and she thinks it’s very sweet. but she notices when the zines she keeps under her bed that she buys at that one secret bookshop in indy when she can sneak away on family trips start going missing, always one at a time, and replaced in a few days with another disappearing. and she finds the new ones he must have gone to buy the weekend she was at her aunt’s house hidden in the back of his closet when she goes to steal one of his sweaters. and she notices when he slips more of her queerer movie recommendations into his personal take home pile rather than the movie night stack when he thinks she’s not looking.

she doesn’t notice when he drives to indianapolis after she tries to explain to him why she can’t just ask out a cute girl, tries to impress on him the fear attached to every moment of attraction that he simply has never had to feel, but later she finds a crumpled receipt from a diner in one of his jacket pockets when she’s looking for his keys, and the address is across the street from the bar the gorgeous woman at the bookstore told her about, the one she memorized the address of but hasn’t worked up the guts to think about visiting, and she knows he must have gone looking for a place like that, must have been trying to understand, must have been scoping it out to make sure it was somewhere she could feel safe, after she told him she never had.

so when eddie nearly pops a blood vessel when they clock each other and she mentions that steve is the only person she’s ever come out to before, her hackles come up. because she gets it, she does, he’s only known king steve until recently, so it makes sense that he would be afraid, be concerned for her safety.

but steve is her person, and no one- no one- has ever made her feel as protected or as cared for as he does. no one has ever tried as hard to understand her, no one has ever put so much work into making her feel safe and seen and loved. and she thinks maybe even if no one else ever does, that’s ok. because she has steve, and more importantly steve has her, and that means no one gets to question his ally credentials in her presence without a dressing down to remember, no matter how well they mean or how recently they helped save the world.

(and maybe she’s not as surprised as she could be when he figures out bisexuality all on his own, because she’s been reading all the same pamphlets he has, after all. and she’s seen the way he looks at eddie, i mean come on. maybe no one else has noticed, but then, nobody knows steve harrington like she does.)

Happy pride month everyone, I can’t believe gay people have existed for 20 years

destiel was something so serious

NGL I have STRONG opinions about digital releases omitting the letters to the editor section of older comics. I feel like the letters are a part of comic history and should be aggressively preserved.

there’s so much love in the world. so much love you could drown in it.

Fred W. McDarrah, outside the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 / queering the map / Marie Ueda, “1977 San Francisco Gay Day Parade” / Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon / the Lovers of Modena / James Schuyler to John Button / John Boskovich, "Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate" / Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf / Joan E. Biren / Saphho, Fragment 147 / @orpheuslament, “The Second Coming, or Jesus at the Gay Bar”

unstoppable force (Adam’s canonical teacher kink) meets immovable object (Gansey being a professor’s soul in a teenagers body).

One thing that's starting to really get to me with the James Somerton stuff is a real strong undercurrent of disdain toward his fans. And yeah, I was one of them. A good scam artist isn't as easy to spot as y'all seem to think. You forget that you have all the information right now. Two days ago most of you had never heard of him and it would have kept going. Anyone can fall for a scam, nobody is immune. I would love to have had whatever resources you guys think we all should magically know about so I could have kept my sad $5 a month I really needed but thought was going to something worthwhile. Some of us can only devote so much energy into things and when you have no idea whatsoever that something is amiss of course you're not going to go digging for sources, why would you when everything is fine as far as you know? I really wish I could have seen the dissenting opinions on him but for many, many reasons that aren't just that the dissenting voices weren't widely circulating at the time all I had was the thought every now and again that "huh that doesn't seem right" and then go on with my day. And I think that happened to a lot of us. So yeah. Say what you gotta say about Somerton, he has more than earned it with the damage he's caused, but maybe don't shit so hard on his former fans because that is going to be you someday with something, it happens to everyone sooner or later.

To add on to slang/social norms Noir misses out on is the term ‘punk’. In the 1930s and WW2, ‘punk’ was a term used kinda similarly to how twink used to be used, but typically a lot more derogatory. Point is Noir hears someone call Hobie spider-punk or refer to the spider band as a bunch of punks once and he blue screens/starts throwing shit.

Various photos from New York City Pride throughout the 1970s photos: The New York Times

Proud Puppet Papa giving a tour of his wonderful little puppet theater

Watcher Weekly 21, Puppet History Theater Tour!

@seemoreseymoursbay day 4!! Platonic relationship day

I chose Nat and Louise for today! I just love how she looks up to Nat, Louise seems to have a lot of insecurities about her place in the world and how she expresses herself and her gender (being worried about not liking girly things or about her interests being too scary or dangerous and about those things making her bad or wrong) so the way she seems to see Nat as a positive rolemodel for non traditional femininity and aspires to be more like her is just really sweet to me. I also personally hc Louise as a lesbian and I think when she starts to crush on a girl (in this case jessica bc i love them together) she wouldn't want to talk to her family about it for fear of them trying to involve themselves so she starts going to Nat to vent about her crushes and get advice (and hold snakes probably)

I recently had this link shared with me by one of my lovely friends here in the fandom, and found it so compelling that I wanted to share it with all of you.

This is a recent article from Vanity Fair about Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, both iconic actors from the era we now call "Old Hollywood," and it details their extremely interesting--both by the standards of the era and today--relationship. It's a long read, but more than worth it.

For those who may not know, Cary Grant was an English-born American actor and iconic leading man, and Randolph Scott was an American actor most known for appearing in Westerns. Both men were married to women/had children at varying points in their lives, but by some accounts (and especially what is chronicled in this article), they were the loves of each other's lives, even though being openly queer was next to impossible at the time, and would've been looked at as a career-ending (and maybe even life-ending) move.

There also seem to be quite a few parallels between Cary and Randolph 90 years ago and Michael and David today. The two men actually lived together for a number of years, during which the press of the day chose to portray them as "just two fun-loving bachelors waiting to find the right gal," all while Grant in particular starred in films with queer-flavored undertones that were both bold and downright dangerous in the era of the Hays Code. They continued living together when Grant was first married to his first wife, Virginia Cherrill (and after they divorced), and fun fact: While Grant was married, Scott moved right next door...so they were, in fact, neighbors.

Here are a few other excerpts that very much reminded me of Michael and David, for your consideration. (FYI that "Archie Leach" was Cary Grant's birth name before he changed it to his stage name.) This first one calls to mind the Radio Times calling Michael and David a "handsome couple" on the night of the NTAs in 2021:

This next one of course made me think of Michael and David talking on David's podcast (skip to the 1:25 mark) in 2019 about hating photo shoots and how Michael flat-out refused to answer questions at one point and only got through it because of David:

And this last one features a quote from a close friend about Grant and Scott that nearly made my heart skip an entire beat. For reasons that will soon be very, very obvious:

(I mean...)

What is also remarkable about this article (though not necessarily in a good way) is the mention of how little has changed since Grant and Scott's time. How even today, any actor who comes out as any flavor of queer is immediately looked at differently, and how the fear of both professional and personal repercussions keeps people in the closet for so many reasons.

These were the parts of the article that stood out to me the most, but as always I would love to hear from my followers with your thoughts and takes on the parallels above or anything else that you find interesting...

Absolutely obsessed with this caption in the Etienne comic "Jock Itch." I can't find a date for it anywhere, my source wasn't exactly academic, but he was active from the 50s thru the 80s.