Here’s the orbital period of our solar system’s 8 major planets (how long it takes each to travel around the sun). Their size is to scale and their speed is accurate relative to Earth’s. The repetition of each GIF is proportional to their orbital period. Mercury takes less than 3 months to zoom around Sol, Neptune takes nearly 165 years.
fuck this gifset do you know how long i sat here waiting for fucking neptune to drag its lazy ass into the frame
High schools in the south of the United States, especially in Texas, often have a tradition of the girls wearing “mums” and boys wearing “garters” to the Homecoming football game. Mums usually consist of artificial Chrysanthemum flowers (originally real Chrysanthemums were used) surrounded by decorated floor-length ribbon and little trinkets. The tradition is that the boys create a personalized mum in their school colors, white and silver for seniors, for their date. Girls make garters for their date which are similar to mums but shorter and worn on the guy’s arm rather than around their neck like mums. The size of the mums and garters tend to grow along with the grade the person that is receiving the mum is in. Around the 1980s, mums were usually about a maximum of three Chrysanthemum flowers and a few ribbons and only worn by the Homecoming Court/Homecoming Prince and/or Princess but as the years have gone by, the size and expectations of mums have increased and have gotten more elaborate and are worn by almost all of the students. Depending on the school, mums can get quite competitive, expensive, and drastically bigger than they previously were intended to be. New items are also placed on mums than there previously were like LED lights, bubble containers, cow bells, feather boas, stuffed animals of all sizes, and even more. They now sometimes act like scrapbooks made of ribbon and even contain passages and photos of the mum/garter-receiver and their date. The detail, size, and price usually varies depending on the school, town, and couple. The tradition is to make the mum and garter after the couple is asked to Homecoming and exchange the night of the Homecoming game and wear it throughout tailgating and the game. Couples often take group pictures with their mums and garters the night of or before the night of the Homecoming Game to showcase them.
I’m sorry, what? This is seriously just mainly a Texan thing? You’re telling me these
don’t
look
familiar
to all
yall
????
Yeah, wintry. I’ve literally never seen these before. They are… intense? Lol
OMG, are you telling me the rest of the US isn’t doing this???
we’re telling you that this is NOT happening in the rest of the US. And some of us are kinda side-eyeing you, in a light-hearted loving way, for hanging a craft store’s worth of ribbon off y’alls necks.
You know, I’ve read about the mums and garters practice, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen it. What the hell are all y’all doing?
And those aren’t even the big ones.
They get big.
like, BIG. Big enough to hide their entire bodies.
And some of the bodies of anyone standing next to them.
Also, notice the stuffed horse and mums on that guy’s arm. That’s a Texas homecoming garter. But the boys tend to keep them fairly small.
But some guys and girls just say to hell with keeping it tasteful.
Because it’s fun and they’re kids and why the hell not
because
it’s fucking
TEXAS
I had no idea this didn’t happen anywhere else I always hated these things
Y’know, looking through this thread I kept thinking to myself “Goddamit Texas do you have to be over-the-top huge with EVERYTHING?” and being surprised that none of them were in the state’s shape. And then I scrolled to the bottom and cracked up
Texas ya’ll crazy as hell XD
i’ve lived all 32 years of my life in the US and this is the first time i’ve ever seen or heard of anything like this.
I have never, ever, ever heard of this before, and considering how much the rest of us Americans like shaking their heads wonderingly at texas, you’d really think it would have come up.
how is the healthcare system funded in pokemon, they must either have some sort of state which taxes the little shops which sell you ether and repel and shit or it’s some gigantic mutualist utopia or something
in pokemon black and white pokemon walmart and pokemon hospital are in the same building making it very clear they take place in america
the pokemon world’s economy is eccentric, but there are clear signs towards the existence of state power: ie, the fact that there are police. imo, all signs point to a utopian post-capitalist society that has only operated under its current mode for perhaps two generations. this reorganization of society was not precipitated by any revolution or even conscious political action, but rather the natural result of reforming the pokemon leagues and the systematic cataloging of pokemon and their capabilities thanks to professor oak’s pokedex.
throughout pokemon world’s history, pokemon have been used by humans to achieve things that they couldn’t do personally. indeed, as per Klink, Voltorb, Trubbish et al, new pokemon species will develop sympathetically to human society. however, forming a Bond between human and pokemon was significantly more difficult and required either the long-term taming of a pokemon raised from its juvenile evolutions or (more recently, within the last 700 years) the use of apricorn pokeballs, which were difficult to obtain due to the difficulty of cultivating apricorn trees. add to this the fact that pokemon at higher evolutionary tiers are less disposed to obey humans unless they’ve somehow proved their worth, and the vast majority of human owned pokemon would be placid, domesticated types and otherwise low power species. more powerful species and legendaries would only attach themselves to humans in dominant positions: kings, warlords, and so forth, and these pokemon would be bloody engines of war (see: pokemon conquest).
this feudal society evolved into a capitalist one thanks to the inception of the leagues. initially little more than the equivalent of a village cock-fighting ring. particularly adept trainers would find themselves able to make a living betting on the results of pokemon battles however, and would travel from village to village, challenging the best the locals could muster. eventually, they would make enough to retire, and many founded pokemon “gyms”, schools and dojos where people could pay to learn from them and perhaps even challenge them for status. the influence and wealth and gym leaders became such that they de facto controlled their town. this obviously drew the ire of the nobility, who attempted to crack down, but the gyms formed together into leagues and mounted a successful defense. the nobles were forced to play ball with the league, or else were replaced by them.
the resultant society was perhaps more “fair”, it operated under a meritocracy of a sort. anyone who was able to tame or catch a decent selection of pokemon, and challenge the league to make themselves known, could achieve high status and wealth. becoming league champion is, in its way, just as arbitrary an achievement as winning a war: enough to satisfy powerful pokemon’s desire for a competent master. a broader array of pokemon entered “common” use and could be directly leveraged to fulfil the requirements of a larger, more egalitarian dominant social strata, specifically in terms of construction and manufactory. this spurred the equivalent of the pokemon world’s industrial revolution.
it wasn’t really fair of course, the children of gym leaders and former nobles, those who possessed land to hunt pokemon on. These people all tended to have better access to pokemon, and the money to buy apricorns. but there was no mass movement in the pokemon world equivalent to socialism. the majority of pokemon world’s people were still largely agrarian, the use of pokemon made the patterns of land enclosure and mass employment as laborers seen in our world unnecessary.
the world carried on much as before until about 60-70 years ago (i’m basing this timing on the fact that some older trainers, such as Draden, suggest that they tamed their original pokemon rather than catching them) when Silph Co invented the mechanical pokeball. they could be manufactured in massive numbers and, more importantly, it could be done very cheaply. suddenly everyone could have pokemon, lots of pokemon. not just a couple of Flaafy that you trained over your entire life, but dozens of the damn things, of every conceivable type, even ones previously considered dangerous like Arcanine and Dragonite.
suffice to say, this shook things up some. the leagues adapted quickly though, incorporating increased democratization and overhauling their structures to fit with the new paradigm. it may perhaps seem odd that the leagues acquiesced in most respects to popular political demand, but we have to bear in mind that these were compromise measures: any nation that didn’t adopt the mechanical pokeball was going to fall behind, as mass pokeball ownership exponentially increased industrial capacity, and it was better that than face a real uprising from one of the new dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations who were able to quickly gain power by stealing pokemon (previously virtually impossible). the founding of the International Police around this time shows how seriously the leagues took the threat from Teams.
the new economy has, since then, gradually become divorced from capitalism. power, food, technology and consumer goods are all easily produced with the assistance of pokemon. they have become so cheap to produce that they may as well be free. the only form of poverty exists among the sick and disabled, who can’t catch or train pokemon, and that’s why social safety nets like nationalized healthcare have been broadly adopted. they are paid for by heavy taxes on “pokemon products” (potions, pokeballs, etc) which remain the only goods with any real cost outside of really specialized luxury goods. this is why in black 2 you don’t get paid money for starring in movies; you instead get rare items and pokemon products from your fans.
most money probably doesn’t even come from jobs, since you need very little of it to keep yourself comfortable. money is kept in circulation mostly through pokemon battles, since trainers are the only ones that really need it (this is what allows Veterans to make a living as trainers also). this isn’t to say that access to resources is equal, far from it! certain old families still have more at their disposal (and more potent pokemon breeding stock). thus rich boys and ladies.
efficiency is only increasing since the development of the pokedex. while most pokemon species were discovered already, the pokedex allows detailed demographic information to be collected, making it easier for people to catch the pokemon they really want. it’s also led to stronger understanding of type interactions, see: the discover of dark and steel types (fairy type is still in peer review). since the pokedex was invented the world has been hyper-modernized, and now teleporters, maglev trains and the like are a reality. this is not a coincidence.
your average citizen in pokemon world is schooled until age 10-12 or so, and then begins a pokemon journey. they bond with various pokemon, and those pokemon determine what career they will have, by social convention. some jobs don’t require pokemon, but these are probably less prestigious outside of management roles. most of them will challenge and beat at least a few gyms. the gym leaders maintain several rosters to provide an appropriate challenge depending on the number of badges their opponent already has. their own personal team will see next to no use in an official context.
not many people challenge the elite four, the top trainers that are part of the league, but doing so is considered very impressive. again, the elite four don’t use their best teams, they’re mostly battling children here. becoming a region “champion” will qualify a person for a gym leader position or a role in something like the battle institute, with membership in the elite four or even as the sitting champion themselves being a remote possibility for the future. the actual champion champion, the one you challenge, is determined by the elite four fighting among themselves and appointing the winner. they then replace the empty slot from among the gyms.
yes, it’s possible to essentially join the government of a pokemon world nation by being really good at cockfighting. don’t forget, it’s widely believed (apparently sincerely) that a person who is a good trainer also necessarily has other positive attributes, so this isn’t that weird. and it seems plausible that the league trainers are supported by a larger bureaucracy that handles much of the day to day administration.
in conclusion: jesus christ i hate myself
I just really want to preserve this prank this year
Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is an invasive herb in the carrot family which was originally brought to North America from Asia and has since become established in the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Northwest regions of the United States. Giant hogweed grows along streams and rivers and in fields, forests, yards and roadsides, and a giant hogweed plant can reach 14 feet or more in height with compound leaves up to 5 feet in width.
Giant Hogweed sap contains toxic chemicals known as Furanocoumarins. When these chemicals come into contact with the skin and are exposed to sunlight, they cause a condition called Phytophotodermatitis, a reddening of the skin often followed by severe blistering and burns. These injuries can last for several months, and even after they have subsided the affected areas of skin can remain sensitive to light for years. Furanocoumarins are also carcinogenic and teratogenic, meaning they can cause cancer and birth defects. The sap can also cause temporary (or even permanent) blindness if introduced into the eyes.
If someone comes into physical contact with Giant Hogweed, the following steps should be taken:
Wash the affected area thoroughly with soap and COLD water as soon as possible.
Keep the exposed area away from sunlight for 48 hours.
If Hogweed sap gets into the eyes, rinse them with water and wear sunglasses.
See a doctor if any sign of reaction sets in.
If a reaction occurs, the early application of topical steroids may lessen the severity of the reaction and ease the discomfort. The affected area of skin may remain sensitive to sunlight for a few years, so applying sun block and keeping the affected area shielded from the sun whenever possible are sensible precautions
PLEASE, DO NOT JUST READ AND SCROLL! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT AND POTENTIALLY LIFE-SAVING INFORMATION!!!
Extra note: if you live in Oregon, New Jersey, Michigan or New York and see one of these, call your state’s department of agriculture to report it, and trained professionals will come kill it before it can produce seeds and spread.
Frankly, if you see one in general, probably call your DOA and see if there’s a program in place.
Do not burn it, because the smoke will give you the same reaction.
If for some ungodly reason there isn’t a professional who can handle it for you (and please, please use a professional), the DOA of New York has [this guide] for how to deal with it yourself.
OH MY FUCK I HAVE THESE IN MY BACKYARD.
Fucking invasives. Signal boost.
Re-reblogging because I checked Snopes, and not only is this shit true, but the text on this is pretty much the same as it is there! Stay safe, kiddos.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, these are currently the states and provinces in North America where Giant Hogweed is present. Even if your state/province is “clear” that doesn’t mean that it is not there. If you see Giant Hogweed in your yard or anywhere please call your DOA! This stuff is mad deadly!
Also here is a human for size reference. Since they are huge it should be easy enough to see and spot when fully grown.
The burns can also be very bad, far worse than any poison ivy. Just Google ‘Giant Hogweed Burns’ and you’ll see. It can cause bad blistering, red painful rashes, and more. Please be careful of this plant!
They exist in Austria and Germany too. Please be careful!
Also, if you are in the Iowa/Minnesota area (maybe farther, I don’t exactly know), there is a close relative (also invasive) with yellow flowers called wild parsnip.
It only gets to about half the size of giant hogweed but has all the same toxic effects. The plants in the pictures look small but I’ve seen ones at least 6 feet tall with stems two inches thick.
A lot of pictures available of giant hogweed are fullsized and in bloom. Just because it lacks the flowers doesn’t mean it’s not hogweed! It is dangerous well before that point.
As seen above, another important detail when identifying them can be the stems. They often have this reddish speckling, and are covered in bristly hairs. Like the rest of the plant, you should absolutely not touch them either.
You can see here how the redness is mostly on larger, older portions of the stems.
For those of you in Ontario, here is a link to some more information via Ontario’s Invading Species Awareness Program . It has details on the plant’s growth, removal methods, and groups you can report sightings to.
Unfortunately I lack information on herbicide use, but if the responsibility of removing giant hogweed somehow falls to the owner, please research local laws/restrictions concerning the use of things such as glyphosate (roundup). It is always possible to make things worse instead of better, so exercise caution in all areas, not just the handling/disposal of the plant.
aegagrus for capra aegagrus the wild goat. what’s interesting to me though is that plain aegagrus is not taken, but the genus species aegagrushircus and capraaegagrushircus the domestic goat is taken. even cahircus is taken. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ capra-aegagrus-hircus is there though if you don’t mind dashes. people really like domestic goats.
So I sent you that link already but for the sake of consolidation there it is again and here’s the unclaimed ones (Most of them are claimed ouch)
marehumboldtianum keplercrater maremoscoviense platocrater mareserenitatis maresmythii stevinuscrater tychocrater. seems like nobody wants the craters or stuff named after people. except for mareserenitatis which is sea of serenity so that’s cool.
ANYWHOSLES that is a many, hopefully something in there helps one way or another. if nothing else it was fun!
Hello, my name is Poetry, and I love social insects. Whether they’re ants, bees, termites, wasps, aphids, thrips, or ambrosia beetles, I find them fascinating to learn about. But if the sci-fi books I read as a kid had had their way, I should have run screaming from every ant colony I saw.
From the buggers in Ender’s Game to the Borg in Star Trek to the Vord in Codex Alera to ants and termites themselves from a morph’s-eye view in Animorphs, social insects, and the aliens or artificial intelligences that closely resemble them, are portrayed as “hive minds” with an emotional tone of existential terror. And I’m here to tell you that these portrayals are totally unfair.
What they get right
Here are some features that most portrayals of social insects and their analogues in sci-fi get right. Yes, social insect colonies have queens that are primarily responsible for reproduction. Yes, social insects have very different sensory modalities from ours. We primarily use sight and sound to communicate and navigate the world, while social insects use taste and smell and vibration. Yes, social insects have specialized division of labor to particular tasks, and yes, they are willing to sacrifice themselves in droves to protect the colony. And sometimes, they will enslave social insects from other colonies or even species to serve their own ends (x).
Thus ends what sci-fi portrayals get right.
What they get wrong: Queens
Almost universally in sci-fi, when you kill the queen, the hive disintegrates into chaos. You’ve cut off the head! The central intelligence of the hive is gone! They’re just mindless borg-units with no idea what to do!
Indeed, in some social insects, such as leafcutter ants, if you kill the queen, the whole colony will die – but probably not for the reasons you think. However, it’s more common for social insects to be able to carry on just fine regardless. In most ants and bees, there are “backup” queens that are reared up by the workers in case the current queen should die. And in many social insects, a worker can step up and become a queen in her place. (Hilariously, a worker ant that steps up to reproduce in place of a queen ant is called a gamergate.)
But here is the most important problem with the sci-fi trope of killing the queen to kill the hive. The queen is not the brain of the hive. She is the ovary.
If you think of a social insect colony as a superorganism, which it’s useful to do in many cases, different groups of insects within the colony act like organs. One caste protects the colony from invaders, which is like an immune system. One caste scouts for new places to forage, which is like a sensory system. Generally, science fiction has a good grip on this idea. Where sci-fi authors fail is that they think the queen is the brain of this superorganism. She is not. She is the reproductive system. The queen does not control what happens in the hive any more than your reproductive system controls what happens in your body. (Which is to say, she has some influence, but she is not the brains of the operation.)
The reason why leafcutter ant colonies die when the queen dies is because the colony has been castrated, not beheaded. Most animals die when they are no longer able to reproduce, even if their brains are still perfectly functional. For castrated colonies with no backup queen or gamergate and no hope of getting one, there is no point in carrying on. Their evolutionary line has ended.
What they get wrong: Swarm intelligence
Here is how social insect hive minds work in science fiction: the queen does the thinking, and the rest of the hive goes along with whatever she thinks.
Now, I’ve already told you that the queen is not the brain of the hive. So where is the brain? Well, that is exactly the point of swarm intelligence. The brain does not reside in one particular animal. It’s an emergent property of many animals working together. A colony is not like your body, where your brain sends an impulse to your mouth telling it to move, and it moves. It’s more like when two big groups of people are walking toward each other, and they spontaneously organize themselves into lanes so no one has a collision (x). There’s no leader telling them to do that, but they do it anyway.
Much of the efficiency of social insect colonies comes from very simple behavioral rules (x). Hymenopterans, the group of insects that includes ants, bees, and wasps, have a behavioral rule: work on a task until it is completed, and when it is done, switch to a different task. If you force solitary bees (yes, most bee species are solitary) to live together, they will automatically arrange themselves into castes, because when one bee sees another bee doing a task like building the nest, its behavioral rule tells it that the task is completed and it needs to switch to a different task, like looking for food.
Individually, a social insect isn’t all that smart, whether it’s a queen, worker, soldier, or drone. But collectively, social insects can do incredibly smart things, like find the most efficient route from the colony to some food (x), or choose the perfect spot to build their hive (x).
What they get wrong: Individuality
The existential terror of the hive mind in science fiction comes from the loss of the self. The idea is that in a social insect colony, there is no individual, but one whole, united to one purpose. No dissent, disagreement, or conflicting interests occur, just total lockstep. I totally get why that’s scary.
The thing is, it’s just not true of real social insects. There is conflict within colonies all the time, up to and including civil war.
A common source of conflict within colonies is worker reproduction. Yes, in most social insects, workers can in fact reproduce, though usually they can only produce males. So why don’t they? Because it’s not in the interest of their fellow workers. Workers are more closely related to their siblings and half-siblings produced by the queen than they are to their nephews, so they pass on more of their genes if they spend resources on raising the queen’s eggs. So, if a worker catches its fellow laying an egg, it will eat the egg. Not exactly “all for one and one for all,” is it?
Worker insects may also fight in wars of succession. If there is more than one queen in a species where queens do not tolerate each other (yes, there are species where multiple queens get along together just fine), such as monogynous fire ants, the workers will ally themselves with one queen or another and engage in very deadly civil war.
Finally, in some species, the queen needs to bully the workers into doing their jobs, and the dominant workers need to bully subordinate workers into doing their jobs (x). Yes, sometimes workers try to laze around and mooch.
Surprisingly human
Here’s what I find weird about depictions of social insects in science fiction. They are portrayed as utterly alien, Other, and horrifying. Yet humans and social insects are very, very similar. The famous sociobiologists E.O. Wilson and Bernard Crespi have both described humans as chimpanzees that took on the lifestyle of ants.
I think what fascinates people, including me, about ants, bees, and their ilk is that you watch, say, a hundred ants working together to tear up a leaf into tiny bits and carry it back to their colony, or a hundred bees all appearing out of seemingly nowhere to sacrifice themselves en masse to stop a bear from eating their hive, and it looks like magic. It really does look like some kind of overmind is controlling their collective actions.
But imagine you’re an alien who comes to Earth, and you know nothing about humans or the way we communicate. Wouldn’t we look exactly the same to them as ants and bees look to us? Wouldn’t they look at us sacrificing our lives by the thousands in wars, or working together to build cities from nothing, and think, Wow, how do they coordinate themselves in such huge numbers, why do they give up their lives to defend their borderlines, I guess there must be some kind of mega-brain they all share that tells them what to do, and they just march in lockstep and do it.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from the study of both social insects and humans, it’s that any system that looks monolithic and simple from a distance is in fact fractured, messy, and complicated when you look at it up close.
Social insects aren’t scary mindless robot-aliens. They’re a lot like you and me. As much as I was terrified as a kid by the Animorphs book where an ant morphs into Cassie and screams in pure existential horror at its sudden individuality, I actually think an ant would adjust very easily to being a human, and that a human would adjust very easily to being an ant – much more easily, in fact, than humans adjusted to morphing, say, sharks, in the very same book series.
haha, like 3 people @’ed this at me, I’m so happy. ❤
Yes, this is good stuff. Thank SO MUCH to OP for writing this post. God,the queen thing, so hard. Drives me nuts.
There is so much less bossing going on and so much more simple rule sets for individual behavior coalescing into cool collective phenomena. You ever watch a group of ants carry something? They basically problem solve by tug-of-war. You pull whichever direction you like, but if it’s too hard you give up and try another direction. The direction with the most ants wins over time. This is usually the direction the scent trail is laid. YAY, success.
Or maybe you just don’t do anything at all. Especially in bigger colonies, where a startling proportion of workers spend only the tiniest fraction of their lives so much as moving. Why? Who knows. Surplus? Adaptability? Could be your purpose in life is simply to serve as a living food repository for others.
Or take ambrosia beetles: a beautiful example of multi-generational cooperation
for a common cause? NOPE. Reproductive sabotage. Bite your children’s
feet off so they stay at home and help with the babies instead of
heading out on their own.
Like, one time this lady commented to me about an ant flood adaptation, “oh, if only my children could cooperate like that.” And I was like “you want them to drown each other to build living bridges and use their infant siblings as flotation devices?”
Social insects are pragmatic, my friends. And actually, one area where they do stand out from less eusocial creatures is a tendency to shockingly low investment in their personal expendability. Not that there aren’t plenty of other organisms that build in self-sacrifice to maximize reproductive output, but: there are termite soldiers that explode.
I’ll never not be amused by the fact that I can drop the words “crucifix nail nipples” into a conversation and some of you who have been with me since the livejournal days will join me in the flashbacks, screaming and crying all the way.
I require context. Because this is a very interesting start of a story, and now I need the rest of it. Could I get a link, or a summary, or something? Pretty please?
All right buckle the fuck up kids, it’s the year 2012 and I’ve just been handed what should be an easy editing gig by my senior editor. It’s a vampire erotica story because one of the final Twilight movies is about to come out, and everything is vampires. Everything. I haven’t edited a single thing in months which isn’t about vampires. I am ready, I can do this. So I open the file and notice there’s a typo in the title, which really should have been my first inkling that something horrendous was about to go down, but you see I’m not quite dead inside yet so I carry on, bushy tailed and bright eyed with my faith in humanity intact. It’ll be dead by page 24, but I don’t know that yet. I’m just editing one more vampire boner fest.
The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.
Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.
Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.
Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.
If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.
So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at
his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t
stop”
This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.
When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.
A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.
And that’s the story of how an author sent me death threats for over a month because I stopped her shitty vampire porn from ever seeing the light of day. You’re all fucking WELCOME.
This was a ride from start to finish OH MY GOD.
tfw you realize twilight could have been SO MUCH WORSE
Yogg-Sarongurt 
