#but a girl can love two ships when they're nessian and neris

[visenlya]

As to our conversation, I can get behind that ACOTAR Feyre and Tamlin's dynamic seems to be better than say ACOSF Feysand by miles. I'm a pretty big shipper of Neris and Nesquin myself (anyone but Cassian please).

But yeah, I have a big grudge against SJM's depiction of Soul Mate bonds. They feel.. very forced and just wrong. Both canon Feysand and Nessian have a bad dynamic, and the mate craze is very.. ew. I'm leaning on the asexual side heavily so it's a nightmare for me affdghjfgcvhh I just want meaningful characters interactions! at least some character development. The wrong book series I suppose, because we sure aren't getting that from S//JM as author.

But honestly, two characters getting to know each other, slowly befriending each other and building a strong friendship and then falling in love along the way as the cherry on top will always be better in my opinion than having two characters get "mated" (ugh) and having this shadow hanging over their relationship to one another. That well, the stars have aligned and fate has decided that they're now essentially in a arranged marriage neither of the two parties can ever get out of really. And that the other partner might otherwise not even given a single care about their partner if they didn't happen to be bound to each other. The mating bond has so many fucked up implications as well (like that they're paired with whom they make the strongest offspring and bla bla) and as much as I love both Lucien and Elain as inviduals, it turns me away from shipping them in a romantic manner. He would be a far better love interest than Rice and and Cassian combined, but unfortunately.. mhm no. A au concept: Where Elain and Lucien aren't mates, even after getting turned fae. Where bonds are as rare as S//JM once claimed they are and neither Elain nor Nesta are mated to anyone. And where they don't have the pressure on them to get together with Lucien or Cassian. Maybe Elain could leave the NC and join the BoE and go on Journeys with them (maybe falling in love along the way with Lucien, that would be more wholesome). And Nesta could do whatever she wanted. I can dream ahaha :')

I agree with everything you’ve said. honestly rhysand made me sick in the first book, and then i was kinda into him for the rest of the trilogy and that was only bc of sarah’s manipulative and inconsistent writing, she made tamlin into a complete monster in order to make rhysand seems like the best option at the moment. when i reread the trilogy once i get a bit older, i realised that both of them are just as bad as each other, rhysand is even worse in my humble opinion bc he’s much more subtle and insidious. anyway i will forever pity feyre bc now this girl is completely locked in an even more abusive and toxic codependent relationship with no way out bc she doesn’t even realise she needs to get out, she completely bought into the rhysand’s cult of personality. regarding the mating bond, yeh it’s horrid i hate it. the entirety of feysand’s relationship is carried by “sexual attraction” and sex craze caused by the bond and it just doesn’t work for me compared to what she had going on in the first book, i was not sold by feyre and rhysand’s relationship. and yup i also wish nesta, elain and lucien hook up with the band of exiles, they sound so cool, and it would’ve been so nice if elain and lucien could’ve fallen in love without the mate bond. i think nesta should just marry into Fae royalty but on another continent, away from the inner circle, and then years later the inner circle has to go to her country on a diplomatic mission and they’d all have to bow to her to show respect! I have a headcanon about the mate bond actually: that the mating bond is actually pretty common and the magic helps bond fae together to help with conception. fae that copulate outside of the bond has less chance of conceiving, while mates find it easier to conceive, that’s why high faes hold the mate bonds sacred bc it helps get around the rare fae pregnancy thing. like with the way sarah is going, everyone and their mothers are getting mates. she should just change the mating bond into something that actually makes sense lore wise.

#anti sjm