Concept of mates

I want to talk about the concept of mates in acotar and how I feel genuinely so uncomfortable by them. We already have a general understanding about mates in Tog, in tog it truly is about being someone’s compliment…it doesn’t matter how powerful you are, or if you have a title or are of the same or different sex…it’s all about the soul and who your are.

Yet in Acotar it’s genuinely all that over the place and the major arcing theme here is how strictly heteronormative it is. (I’m queer so this just bugged me because I love seeing queer characters in straight spaces/fields lol) so it really makes the reading experience…not so great? Like one of the definitions of how the mating bond works and the one that seemed the most plausible was Rhysand’s when he basically called the mating bond a breeding program…that the Cauldron basically chooses a pair who’d make the most powerful offspring, and I’m not going to talk about HoFaS but this is actually strongly implied. Tamlin’s definition was wholesome….but there’s no actual evidence for it due to how many mating bonds actually fail—as in the people aren’t actually compatible

And whoever said the the matings bonds choose people who are equal in power is a LIAR!! Because that doesn’t make sense and all evidence goes against this, I.E Rhysand’s mom and dad, Nesta and Cassian. So truly the mating bonds are about the breeding of it all. I mean even Rhysand after banging Feyre all through the cabin basically said that males want to impregnate the females—even after the consummation of the mating bonds and it’s so hetero!! The Frenzy thing is the most hetero thing I have ever read.

So basically in acotar given how the mating bonds work…there’s no such thing as same sex mates cause even with Thesan with his lover, he chose his love, they’re not mates. Maybe once upon a time there were same sex mates before the Cauldron was supposedly twisted by “unforeseen forces”. Let me know what you think