Cute Trash✨

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

yknow what yeah I think that's just about how anyone would react in this situation. fair enough.

alright this isn't how just Anyone would behave in this situation but I'm humble enough to admit that there have been times in my life when I was doing badly enough that I'd probably also fumble it like this

he had so much sex his biographers straight up gave up trying to document all of his sexual partners. he was reported to fuck up to 3-9 times a day. He had a secret sex diary written in code. He had “official” and “unofficial” mistresses. One estimate was that he had ~200 sexual partners in two years. 

Many articles make similar claims to those above. However, much of this information circulates without a clear source, and I have struggled to find reputable/high level sources for some of this information. Therefore, keep in mind that some of this may be exaggerated or potentially unreliable.

Obviously, I cannot account for the sexual of history of every human who has ever lived, but evidence does suggest that Victor Hugo had a… lively sex life.

From Medium: ‘Sex was so involved in Hugo’s daily life that one biographer wrote the following while describing a typical day in Hugo’s life:

“It was not unusual for him to make love to a young prostitute in the morning, an actress before lunch, a courtesan as an aperitif, and then join the also ­indefatigable Juliette for a night of sex.”

[…] Hugo claimed that on the wedding night, he and his wife had sex nine times.’

His encoded sex diary is referenced on Wikipedia, but when I found an English translation of the source, I couldn’t find where in it they were sourcing.

From Wikipedia: ‘He systematically reported his casual affairs using his own code, as Samuel Pepys did, to make sure they would remain secret.’

The source is listed as: ‘Hugo, Victor, Choses vues 1870–1885, p. 529, ISBN 2070361411, pp. 371, 521 (n. 1).’

I’ve found Choses Vues here in the original French and here translated into English. If anyone can find anything in here about the encoded sex diary, please let me know!

His ‘official mistress’ is likely in reference to Juliette Drouet.

From EBSCO: ‘Since 1833, Hugo had maintained a liaison with a beautiful female actor, Juliette Drouet, who for twelve years followed a cloistered existence relieved only by six-week summer holidays with her lover.’

His ‘unofficial mistress’ is likely in reference to Léonie d’Aunet Biard.

From The Common Reader: ‘Overlapping was a seven-year affair with travel writer and Arctic explorer Léonie d’Aunet Biard, whose husband finally brought a police officer to the Paris hotel and caught them in flagrante.’

I have found articles that circulate the ‘200’ claim, but none that give a source for the information.

From Medium: 'Not only that but he bedded 200 women in this hotel in just two years.’

The claim that brothels were closed on the day of his funeral is again circulated frequently without claim. The only sourced part of the claim I can find is a second hand report that sex workers had 'draped their gentials in black crepe’.

From The Guardian: ’[…] when Hugo died the brothels of Paris closed down for a day of mourning, allowing all the city’s sex workers to pay their last respects to a loyal client. Literary critic Edmond de Goncourt claimed a police officer told him that sex workers even draped their genitals in black crepe as a mark of respect.’

And an estimated 2 million people attended his funeral procession.

From Funeral Conflicts in Nineteenth-Century France: 'Two million people came to see Hugo’s body lying in state at the Arc de Triomphe’

I think of that part from TTC when he meets Annabeth’s stepmom and expects her to like turn into a raving lunatic at the mention of her name and is surprised when she doesn’t. And it’s easy, I feel, to read this in retrospect as Percy just not understanding the nuances of bad parental relationships. But I think this is what it actually is: Percy’s experience with a bad stepparent is Gabe. And that’s how Gabe always reacted at the mention of Percy’s name. And Gabe would have left him to rot without any question or remorse. So of course that’s what he expects from the stepparent Annabeth has been complaining about as long as he’s known her, and she deemed bad enough to run away from.

And yes, compared to Luke and Thalia and Annabeth, Percy is somewhat better off solely because of Sally. Except he, too, was deadly serious when he said he’d rather live on the streets than live with Gabe, and if not for camp that would have been his only option at this point in his life—the same as it was for them. Percy truly CAN relate to the feeling of camp being his only safe haven because this is also true for him. Percy probing Thalia about her history with her mom is not a kid who comes from a stable home trying to relate to her and failing: it’s a kid who grew up sharing living space with an alcoholic, and is able to tell at the age of 12 years old “when an adult has been hitting the happy juice.” And this is of course not even to talk about his constant awareness of money and his mother working odd jobs just to put food on the table—experiences that Thalia, Luke, and Annabeth don’t have. So I think it is just so unfair to view him in retrospect as the kid who is so privileged that he can’t understand trauma rather than what he actually is: a kid who was only ever one bad day away from being in just as bad of circumstances as any one of the other demigods, and who at points in his life, actually was in their circumstances. When Percy meets May Castellan he is not just reflecting on how bad Luke’s life sucked, he has experience and trauma of his own, and he feels a heavy sense of “how easily this could have been me.”

Percy being not outside of the problem, but inside it, is fundamental to the series. He’s not just championing Luke’s cause: it’s also his own! Because who is more exploited by the Olympians than Percy Jackson? This is a kid who has almost been put down like a dog by them ! They took a vote on it in front of him!

Leo and Frank and Hazel’s moms are actually dead and they stayed dead. But Percy watched the Minotaur squeeze his mom to death right in front of his eyes and had to process her death and blamed himself for his failure! Of course he is going to relate to them on a fundamental level, and again, he was so very close from having been in exactly Leo’s situation.

________

You will be remembered as a hero. ________