The Gladiator E-Week Issue

the plumber’s vol. 44 no.3 • Tuesday, DEC 1, 2009

gladiator

e-week

Plumber’s Masthead Editor-in-Chief Daniel Keresteci Layout & Copy Editor Edward Jerjian Writers Allan Cyril William Farrell Grey Kingsley John Kline Andrew Komar Photographer Ali Najmabadi

Special Thanks Copi-EUS E-Week Committee

Letter from the Editor I write to you now with a message of hope to get you through the dark, dank, cold and spirt crushing time of year known as the exam period.

Should you be fortunate enough to survive your exams this semester.

Both in the literal sense of warding off the dreaded H1N1 (or H1-NoFun) virus by hermitting yourself in your bedroom or in the depths of Schulich Library. And in the figurative sense of maintaining your GPA just high enough over the Mendoza line that the admin lets you come back for another semester. There is a proverbial Valhalla just beyond the horizon, and it exists in the first two weeks of second semester.

At McGill they run you hard all semester long. After two weeks you start getting bogged down with assignments and by the end of the month your midterms have already begun. They seem to last in perpetuity until two weeks before exams, at which point you’ll have projects and maybe even a final paper to hand in before your last class.

Exams, as you must know by now, are a total write off. The first two weeks of each semester are really the only points in the school year where you are free from the stress of staying ahead of the bell curve and having to finish 2 assignments and a lab on a Friday before 4pm. In the Fall, we have OAP to catch up with friends and have a beer or burger after (and sometimes between) classes. In the winter there is E-Week.

E-Week is a little more intense than everyone’s favorite stalwart OAP. OAP is warm, relaxing, and inviting. You try and soak up what’s left of the summer sun, listen to a few bands and have a good time. In January, in the cold Montreal winter, you forcibly squeeze out all the fun this city will give you, duct-tape the pedal to the frozen metal and pray you make it out in one piece. Often described as “frosh but for everyone,” E-Week and the other faculties’ carnivals are known for their rowdy behavior and general insanity, but really what do you have to lose? It’s balls-grippingly cold outside, and academically speaking, it’s really all down-hill from here on out. So why not have a little fun while you can? Sooner or later you are going to graduate and get a REAL job and have REAL responsibilities; you might as well smoke ‘em while you got ‘em.

Ok, so I realize this may not have been as uplifting as it was originally intended. I guess I’m a little stressed over exams and I may have taken it out on you. I apologize if I depressed you a little about life, I’m sure yours is going to turn out fine and you’ll be happy and all that. Let me rephrase this editorial in a simpler format: This E-Week thing...it sounds like a good time to me.

Questions & Comments faucet@mcgilleus.ca the plumber’s FAUCET vol. 44 no. 3 Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Daniel Keresteci, Editor-in-Chief

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What is E-Week?

by William Farrell

Ahhh, the infamous E-Week. Short for Engineering Week, this tradition has been going strong since at least 1987 (at least that’s as far back as the years on the trophy go). So, “what is E-Week?” you may ask. The easy way out is to say “E-Week is an interdepartmental competition amongst the McGill Engineering departments held in early January every year,” but this description hardly does justice to the glory that is Engineering Week.

I will do my best to relay to you the awesomeness of this event, but the only way to truly find out is to go there yourself.

First of all, there is a severe misconception that E-Week is targeted at the “hardcore engineers,” the ones who are at Blues Pub every week, the ones who run around in hard hats and labcoats, and the ones serving you burgers and beer at OAP. Unfortunately, this misconception has been a self-fulfilling prophecy in recent years. I would like to make it abundantly clear that E-Week is explicitly for every McGill Engineering undergrad!

Unlike Carnivals, E-Week is not something you must prepay and preregister in order to do. On the contrary, everyone is encouraged to come and go as he or she pleases.

Wether it’s between classes or all day long, just check the schedule and see what’s going on! Most events during the day are held in the EUS Common Room, so just drop by and support your department. For the few events that do in fact cost money, you can pay for those individually.

Another great thing about E-Week is the sheer variety of ways in which you can contribute to your department’s score. Points are awarded for both performance and participation, so even by just attending some events,

E-Week Events your department will benefit. You can help by doing just about anything, from donating food & clothing to your departement’s drive to finding yourself in some unsuspecting smalltown Québec bar (last year there was French karioke!). Ultimately, there are tons of ways to get involved; if drinking is not your thing then just come to the daytime activities, or if you’re too busy during the day, make sure to stop by our legendary parties. Once you get involved in E-Week though, I

guarantee you will not look back!

In the coming weeks there will be tons of information about this years E-Week. You can visit the website eweek.mcgilleus.ca, check your Pipeline announcements for updates, or just come into the EUS office and ask someone and we’ll be more than happy to rant and rave about it! From all of your friends on the E-Week Committee, we look forward to seeing you there; after all, for all the planning we do it’s ultimately you who will make E-Week a success!

Blues Pubs: That’s right - plural!

Blues Pub is EVERY DAY during E-Week!

Bus Trip to Nowhere: If you do nothing at E-Week, go on Bus Trip!

It is consistently one of the most legendary parts of E-Week. Travel on a bus with your fellow engineers to some small town bar in rural Québec and attempt to drink it dry! A good time will be had by all.

Yards of Ale: A team of four for each department drinks four beers attached to a plank of wood simultaneously.

U0 Bowling: This is your chance to shine, U0s! Giant bowling pins + skateboard + hard hat + freshman = U0 Bowling! Come to the common room to give it a try!

Helot Tasks: One lucky volunteer from each department gets to represent his or her department in a series of head-to-head challenges.

Century Club: 100 ounces of beer in 100 minutes... need I say more?

Boat Races: Select four representatives from each department for an eight beer boat race!

3 Man: Think Kings with oversized dice and more rules.

Departmental Movies: Get together with your departmental friends and make a theme-related movie. Stop by the Common Room to see the best of what each department has to offer.

Design Competition: Build your very own chariot in the Common Room! How awesome is that? We’ll have a race to see whose is best.

Weapons of Mass Consumption: Each department must build a machine that will pour a room temperature beer into a cup. Points are awarded for temperature, head, creativity, and relation to the theme. ...and so much more!

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Get Vaccinated Stupid

by Andrew Komar

Swine flu is most likely not going to kill you. It does suck, but it is pretty much no worse than the regular seasonal flu. So, you’d think that this crazy media hype and the apparent panic in average people is unwarranted.

After all, these are the people who drive in cars that are thousands of times riskier than the worst pandemic flu infection. But really, I think this response is exactly how we should be reacting, because it’s a pragmatic, logical healthcare choice.

Some of you may be thinking that, because I’m in favour of lots of vaccinations, I’m a shill for Big Pharma (my dad’s even a pharmacist!) or some naïve government puppet, but that is not at all the case. As taxpayers, we decide to support systems that require collective financing, because they benefit us all. Healthcare is one of those systems, and the mandate we give them is to provide us with the best care possible. So they should use the best cost effective tools available, and vaccines are right at the top of that list. Let’s remember now, our old viral friend smallpox was responsible for 300-5001 million deaths in the 20th century alone (compared with the estimated 160 million deaths2 from all wars combined). We developed a vaccine, and within 20 years of a worldwide campaign of vaccination, we completely eradicated it from the planet. Nobody has contracted smallpox naturally since 1978, and that is solely because of an aggressive vaccination campaign. Much like the one we have going on right now to combat the swine flu.

Similar stories can be told for numerous other horrific diseases. The medical industry, hand in hand with the dreaded Big Pharma, develops

effective inoculations against this shit, making a pretty penny in the process.

Some of my friends think that this alone should make you skeptical of vaccines, like we’re “manufacturing diseases” so that The Man can make money off your sickness. But this theory is bullshit, because if The Man wanted to make money off of our suffering, they’d do much better to just let us get sick. Vaccines actually cut billions of dollars off of Big Pharma’s potential revenue, and yet they develop the vaccines anyway.

Maybe, just maybe, this is due to our healthcare professionals doing their jobs, using the best tools available. When you have a new bug, it is easily passed between people who are without any immunity, and these people all end up in our hospitals that are often already over-capacity. If you can’t pass the disease on, those

thousands of people you see every day who you could infect won’t get it from you. If they’re immunized too, we have some herd immunity that contains the spread, which can even stop those ignorant anti-vaxers from getting sick. But it only works if implemented on a mass scale, which is why I’m glad to see all the media attention. Hell, Google even has a function on their maps that show you where the nearest immunization centre is.

At the end of the day, it will probably amount to a little wait in a line and a pinch in the arm. That’s it, and if the experience is really not worth saving yourself paying more taxes and saving lives, then you’re a lazy, inexcusable idiot. http://tinyurl.com/ajcs9 http://tinyurl.com/yk4xnqq

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the plumber’s FAUCET

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A Good Ol’Fashion Dick Hunt

by Enerjohn

It all seemed like such a good and funny idea at the time. It would all go according to plan. Now we all know nothing goes according to plan but some things can go ass up and bad.

In the last issue of the Faucet we asked for you, our 4 readers, to come down to Blues Pub (the second best place on Earth) and fill in a funny comment in our guest book.

We promised that the best comments would get published in the faucet. Well it turned out that it was mostly all nonsense. Who would have guessed that engineers don’t know how to write creatively, especially after a few beers? (present writer excluded). However one comment was written over and over on many pages: “Go eat a dick.”

Now seeing as the new Faucet is all about trying to establish itself as a newspaper with serious journalistic integrity we decided to publish these comments. But rather than simply publishing 30 different variations of the phrase “eat a dick” we decided to actually put our money where our mouth was so to speak and set out on an adventure to find out if it was actually possible to find a dick to eat.

From the beginning we established some rules to this adventure, first; no human penises that could be consumed.

We here at the Faucet have been around campus long enough to know that “eat a dick” can imply fellatio, but we were going to take this dick business at face value; actual physical consumption. Cannibalism ruled out, we decided to set our sights on China Town as the most likely location.

As a bit of a background for those who do not know, in certain circles of Eastern cultures, the penis is believed to hold the powers of the animal it came from and can cure all sorts of ailments. Different dongs, it would

seem, are capable of curing acne problems, the double snake penis is said to increase male virility (2x the penis = 2x the loving?), pickled ox penis would appear to grant an energy boost (Red Bull’s logo makes a lot of sense now). The father of all penis panaceas is of course the highly sought after tiger wang which cures everything it would seem. With a thorough (not that thorough) internet search to give me guidance and the illusion that I was an informed shopper it was time to begin my quest.

Years of playing videogames and reading high fantasy being manly and sleeping with women has instilled in me the knowledge that all good quests must begin with the gathering of your party gang. After everyone at the Faucet kindly declined my invitation to come eat a dick, I resorted to asking a wider pool of people to join

“It takes balls to eat a dick.” in on this cooking odyssey. I figured the best time to convince someone to do something stupid was after Rowdy Day. Despite a lot of funny looks, a few slaps and one girl who sat next to me to get further clarification on what exactly I meant by “eating a dick” I ended up not having much of a posse.

I left Blues Pub alone and decided to go to Chinatown the next day, (the restaurants would be closing soon anyways) I arrived in Chinatown roughly 7:30 PM last Saturday. I began to ask around very casually at first if anyone knew where I could get some very erotic Chinese cuisine. I got directed to a bunch of restaurants all over china town. I then slowly started the long process of building

up enough courage to ask the hostess if it was possible to eat a dick in their fine establishment. Needless to say I got a lot of very interesting responses, ranging from blushing and embarrassed women saying no, right up to a man who got very angry at me and who thought I was being racist.

I tried to explain that I was from a prestigious McGill newspaper (The McGill Daily =P) but he would have no part of it and asked me to leave his establishment immediately.

It was at this point that I was giving up hope of ever being able to boost my potency, but I had a stroke of blind luck. A man who was leaving the restaurant at the same time as me had overheard my dick exchange and came up to me. He told me that it was very difficult to find restaurants outside of China that would serve penis, he then went on to state that he had eaten a few different types of penis and that they kind of had the texture and taste of squid that had been cooked too long. He continued with stating that there was no magic powers to be had from eating a penis, it was more of a macho thing, sort of like eating the worm from the tequila bottle. I was impressed with his analogy, this was one well-travelled fellow and I greatly enjoyed my quick conversation.

At the end of the day I wasn’t able to actually find a restaurant that would serve me any sort of animal penis. I did however meet a man who says he had actually eaten penis in China, and for some reason I very was impressed. It clearly takes balls to eat a dick, seeing as everyone I had asked to come join me backed down. At the end of the day I guess the morals are: your real friends are the ones who are willing to eat dick for you and your editor is a dick for making you go eat one.

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E-Week Pranks

by William Farrell Photos by Ali Najmabadi What do you get when you mix concrete, aluminum foil, pumpkins, dolls, nails, and rebar together?

Clearly, the answer is engineering students playing some good-natured practical jokes on one another.

It all started on Thursday, November 5th, when some Civil Engineers innocently walked into their common room to find a rotting jack-olantern punctured in screws and nails and filled with some hydrated cement paste (to call it concrete would be a far stretch). It was left with a note from the Mechanical Engineers claiming superiority to Civil and boasting their certainty of winning E-Week.

The Civil Engineers promptly returned the gift to the MAME office at which point, a Mechie decided to pay it forward to the Mining lounge.

Somehow a rumor was then started that Mining had called security under suspicion that this rotting pumpkin was a bomb, however this was later dispelled as simple hearsay, and frankly idiocy.

The Civils then spent the weekend plotting their revenge. Operation Hardon, as it came to be known was split into six phases: Phase 1: Secure a Frostbite bucket full of Portland GU Cement from the Concrete Lab. Phase 2: Have the Mechanical doll/mascot, Kelly, magically find her way into the Civil lounge.

Phase 3: Acquire well-graded aggregate and rebar, then mix.

Phase 4: Submerge Kelly in concrete and let her cure over night Phase 5: Affix a note to Mech, countering their assertion regarding E-Week, onto the rebar and spraypaint “CIVIL” on the base of the concrete.

Phase 6: Deliver the gift to the MAME office.

Emotions from the Mechies were mixed; some were appalled to see their beloved icon encased in concrete while other were in awe of the shear hilarity of it.

All in all, the jokes facilitated a sense of camaraderie between Mech and Civil, enough for them to join forces and prank the real enemy: Electrical! But how? After much carful deliberation, the engineers decided on the most appropriate prank: a Faraday Cage in the ExCESS office.

Four hundred meters of aluminum foil and a couple of hours later and the entire office and all of its contents were covered.

In the end, no one was harmed in the making of the practical jokes and good times were had by all. Hopefully this departmental enthusiasm carries over to E-Week!

Clockwise from top: The ExCESS lounge encased in 400 m of aluminum foil; MAME mascot Kelly encased in concrete courtesy of Civil; The imfamous “pumpkin bomb.”

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Prospects Chemical

Gone are the glory days of the early to mid 2000’s when Chem won five out of seven E-Weeks between the years 1999-2005, however they have yet to win since. They will face stiff competition this year and their only chance of winning is if they can reverse the bout of apathy that has plagued them in recent years.

Civil

Although largely absent from last year’s E-Week (with the exception of devouring an entire block of SPAM), Civil is showing strong promise this season. There seems to have been a renewed interest in speaking to people outside the department, and a reinvigorated sense of Civil pride. This was made most clear by the lengths through which they went in order to capture Mech’s mascot, Kelly, and encase her in concrete. Civil last won in 2004.

Mechanical

Still bitter from last year’s heartbreaking defeat, Mech hopes to retake what they consider rightfully theirs.

Mech has had an enormous presence in campus events in recent years and many dedicated volunteers who will do just about anything to get their hands on the trophy this year. They are certainly the team to beat. Mechanical last won in 2006.

Electrical, Computer, & Software

Three-time defending champions, ExCESS hopes to stretch their winning streak to four. This may prove difficult with the graduation of some of their key players, however they have several promising up-and-comers. It may be an uphill battle though as their departmental society has reportedly planned a field trip on the final day of E-Week, effectively neutering themselves.

Barbara Radziwon

Constantly struggling with the “Curse of the Co-Op,” M&M will have to work very hard to make an apperance this year, especially considering that Mining representatives have been completely absent from all planning so far. It has been well over a decade since the last time M&M has won E-Week, claiming first place in 1995 and again in 1996.

J.F. Ruel

Mining & Materials

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Rowdy Day

Article by Grey Kingsley Photos by Ali Najmabadi

Everyone loves Fridays. Ask anyone that did frosh (read: everyone) and they can tell you: Friday is a fucking day. Believe it or not, last Friday was even better. Last Friday was both free ice cream day at Frostbite and Rowdy Day/Apocalypse Blues Pub. I even got free beer just for eating free ice cream!

Of course, I did have to eat so much free ice cream that I probably wont want ice cream again until February (which is conveniently when Frostbite reopens), but hey, it was worth it for the free beer.

Rowdy Blues Pub went off without a hitch...Well as far as I was concerned anyway. If you’re one of these people that “doesn’t go to Blues Pub” then I should probably explain the premise behind Rowdy Day. Basically, if you’re rowdy, then you get Free Beer.

Whether or not you’re quite rowdy enough lies solely at the discretion of the servers. Some might even say that people were too rowdy, although some also say the Earth is flat.

There were shots of Jell-O mixed with who-knows what and marshmallows

stuffed with fish oil capsules and covered in soy sauce, the consumption of which earned one free beer. There was a kiddie pool that was filled with pure condensed rowdy and all one need do for a free beer was hop in (though no diving was allowed). Of course all the Rowdy Day classics were there like the powder room, the dry mouth special, and the “captain underpants”, but this time we did something special.

This time we shaved our heads.

We didn’t just shave our heads though. We shaved our heads and kept the resulting hair out of our beers...oh and also raised a shit ton of money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada. All in all it was an awesome night...or should I say afternoon? Most got out of there relatively unharmed, in fact, thanks to the marshmallow surprise, they’re probably better off.

You can’t have too many Omega-3 can you?

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Grey’s Gross Anatomy

Warning - Almost as nauseating as the TV Show

by Grey Kingsley This month I was tasked with writing an article for the Faucet about Movember. You know that thing where everyone grows a moustache during the month of November in order to raise money and/or awareness for mens health issues (i.e. prostate cancer). I was going to too.

Then something bad happened. It all started in October, actually. I thought I had done something stupid and bruised my tailbone. It was a little swollen and hurt to sit down in certain positions, but eventually got better. Or so I thought.

One Wednesday I decided to go to the EUS council meeting because, let’s face it, it’s more entertaining than studying electromagnetic fields. I sat on that green couch in the common room that looks like it has really high cushions, but like an idiot I sat on it way too hard and the cushions gave way to a metal bar that was part of the frame. Sure enough, I pretty much put all my weight into smashing my tail bone into this metal bar.

The next day it hurt a lot more than ever before, I was sure I had broken it. It was all swollen and now I really couldn’t sit down. I didn’t go to the doctor at first because what’s the doc going to do? Tell me to not sit on it and give it time.

So a week or so goes by and every day the pain gets worse and the swelling increases. For all I know this is how a broken tail bone heals itself.

Until one day when the pain prevented me from sleeping, much less walking faster than the rickety, arthritis ridden old people. So I decided the day before my EMF midterm that there was no way I could write a three hour exam without passing out from the pain. I got to student health services in the morning, got an appointment for that afternoon. I the doctor (Doctor Rona, if anyone’s curious), and sure enough it’s not broken at all. I had what they call a pilonidal cyst. This is where the story gets fucking hilarious. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Facebook group “I don’t need sex, the school of engineering fucks me all the time.”

Well, I was about to prove their thesis.

A pilonidal cyst is the result of an ingrown hair that causes an infection.

To quote Wikipedia, “excessive sitting is thought to predispose people to the condition...” See, I sit when I study. I’m an engineer and I have a shitty GPA to maintain, so I study a lot, well apparently too much. Doc Rona gave me some antibiotics and some painkillers (I’ve never been more grateful for painkillers in my life) and referred me to a surgeon because

apparently this sort of thing needs to be popped by a professional. Fuck that. One Saturday night I decided to pop a magic codeine pill and sit at the table for some order in Chinese food (I had been stuck lying on my stomach in bed for the past three days). The food arrived and I hobbled my way to the kitchen to eat and it went pretty well, all things considered.

As I headed back to my room to go lie on my stomach and watch more Stargate SG-1, I noticed my boxers felt wet on my butt. So I take a look and what do I find? Enough blood and puss to have permeated all the way through not only my boxers but the sweatpants I was wearing too. The fucking thing had popped without any intervention from a surgeon.

So I spent the rest of the weekend watching Stargate and wiping the puss and blood off my tailbone with paper towels. It was pretty much the grossest thing that’s ever happened to my ass. No, I never did get that surgery; the pain went away once it drained and at this point there’s not even a scab. All is back to normal. In this case, the school of engineering had actually fucked my ass. At least I have most of a bottle of codeine enriched painkillers on my dresser (who the fuck would need 50 magic pain pills?).

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What Came First, Obscenity or Engineering?

by William Farrell

Engineering has no shortage of funny words in class. Lectures are often prone to the muffled giggling of students at the first mention of hardwood, softwood (also known as springwood) and and cyclic loading in wet working conditions.

There have been many a chuckle when the professor speaks of erecting steel structures with members in tension and compression. Of course the only way to transfer the full applied load through a welded connection is to call for the full penetration butt weld (no, I didn’t make that up). The Mechies have all been taught to properly lubricate their shafts and the Electricals learn about floppy disks and hard drives.

Who can forget the right-hand rule or the rather explicit demonstrations of transfering electrons from a stick to a cloth (or vice versa, depending

on the material). God forbid you’re driving your car when she blows a rod! I guess we just have to bite our tongues and curse the engineers who chose such vulgar words to describe the fundementals of our studies.

But does this really make sense?

How could the founders in our field expect to teach even the most elementary geotechnical or hydrology course to university students while talking about net positive suction head and laminar and turbulent fluid flow? All this time we have assumed that is coincidence that the words in engineering are so dirty; we tend to believe that these sexual undertones are purely happenstance.

I submit an alternate hypothesis; these words are vulgar because of the engineers! Think about it: would anybody have flinched at the erection of a monument before the

engineers who designed it were at the bar pounding back a few pints?

How boring would PDEs have been before the engineers thought to relate vibration equations to other such devices of the same namesake (of course designed by an engineer).

Surely it must have been the engineers who took the words that they used so commonly in their profession and provided them with the innuendo that we know and love today - and for this we owe our forefathers (and foremothers) an indefinite debt of gratitude.

So the next time you are holding back laughter as your professor tells you at great lengths about the benifits of erecting large hardwood members, be thankful to the engineer who gave you a moment of hilarity in your otherwise tedious 8:35 am lecture.

Bolt Spacing on a Steel Connection

The tributary area of each bolt diameter is assumed to be four times its diameter.

– CIVE 318 By ignoring these spacing recommendations, the risk of your erected member failing prematurely goes up exponentially

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Why Twilight is Terrible

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by Andrew Komar I am a big fan of female empowerment because equality is just really damn sexy. The whole Twilight series is, as far as I can tell, the very antithesis of this idea. Now, fans, I know you are probably struggling to contain your urges to bite my head off, but please hear me out, because I think this is legitimately important.

Let’s walk through the basic idea, shall we? Start with a 100+ year old immortal guy, who, we are well assured is very, very, very good looking, and sparkles for some reason. Add a female character so devoid of personality, substance, and description that she can effectively serve as a MarySue surrogate for the naive 13year-old girls (or 13-year-old girls at heart) of the world. Throw in an abstinence obsession so convoluted and bizarre that it could only have been hatched from someone who has some serious misconceptions about sex, and then layer heavily with an abusive and unhealthy relationship.

Bella Mary-Sue is pretty much useless before Eddie comes along, and from what I can tell, that seems to be the continuing theme through the entire series. But as soon as her man comes along, everything is flipping sunshine and daisies. I mean, sure, he watches her all the time, even when they aren’t dating and he doesn’t have any justifiable reason to be anywhere near her. Then, after an eternity of longing gazes and hack writing, they finally consummate the relationship like horny teens the world over. Oh wait, they don’t, even though Bella really wants to, Edward remains firmly in control of their physical relationship, because he is a man vampire, and that’s the end of the discussion. So this centagenarian is stringing this virgin along without even allowing her to kiss him. But it’s LOVE, you say.

What Twilight needs is some Buffy to show how real woman get it done.

BULLSHIT. This has all the markings of Stockholm syndrome as well as emotional torture.

It gets worse. In the second book, after Eddie the asshole unilaterally decides to end the relationship, Bella is destroyed. We’ve all been there, and written our fair share of emo poetry (or is that just me?). A healthy person develops some self reliance and independence, and usually comes out a better person. Our role model? She just gets into another fucking relationship with some other creepily obsessed guy (spoiler alert!) who also turns out to be a werewolf, and then everything is better. Yes, women of the world, you can only be happy if you have a strong, perfect man who is completely obsessed with you. This guy even introduces her to his family, which is full of other ‘normal’ relationships, including a fiancé who was beaten to the point of

death by her man werewolf. But she LOVES him. That’s not love, that’s abuse, and there isn’t a single person in the world who deserves that, and I don’t care how nice his pecs are or how much he really, really wants to fuck kiss you. Oh, I might add that the women only refer to themselves in relation to their man, in an implicitly subservient fashion (vampire girl or wolf girl).

I understand this is fiction, but it is serving as a model relationship to the millions of readers who are at this very moment debating fervently which of the two misogynistic assholes are the best. These women are internalizing the model of a man at the centre of one’s happiness, where emotional and physical torture is just part of the package of love. Sure, it’s just a book, but its ideas are setting the modern gender-empowered female back about a hundred years.