Song of the Sibyl

I really dislike the mating bond, and every argument for it just makes me dislike it more. I don’t think anyone needs to explain their like of it; just let it be a magical literary thing, and stop trying to equate it to the real world. When Elain hesitates about the bond, it is from the perspective of an immortal who might not have the limited amount of time we do to figure things out. And it’s someone who doesn’t know she’s in a book. Her emotions about it make sense to her, but we’re operating on the knowledge of how things will work out. If Rhysand can interject doubt (in general, of course he doesn’t speak to Elain about it), we might know that doubt won’t apply to the story, but it makes sense for Elain to think about it. It isn’t irrational emotions. This is an understandable fear. This makes the bond seem a matter of logic. The metaphor of Elain getting hurt rather than wear Lucien’s gloves; if she didn’t put her hands on the hot stove, she wouldn’t get burned. Is this love? I don’t know. But really, the point is, why bother? There’s no need to justify liking a ship. It’s not the real world. It’s fine.

A question: when people say they don’t like the “pregnancy trope” do they mean a happily ever after that involves a pregnancy at the end, or is it just pregnancy being in the story at all? I could see this being the case for YA maybe, but for general fantasy fiction, I’m going to be in trouble because there are no less than three pregnancies in the story (three different characters). It seems a bit unreasonable to have such a hard line about that when there isn’t that much complaining about violence or anything else a gritty story or dark romance entails. It’s not a fetish of mine; I don’t want kids and I find pregnancy kind of horrifying. But these characters aren’t me, and it just feels like it’s kind of a big thing in animal life that I shouldn’t need to censor out.