I have conflicting emotions. On one side I feel really bad for Allirea, and what Demetri has done to her. But on the otherside I feel really angry at the matebond for making Demetri feel that way about Allirea and therfore inflicting him upon Allirea.
I guess that my reading of the situation is rather different from most of yours, in that I know exactly what the OP means, and agree (more or less).
I feel terribly for Allirea. An eternity of rape is a horror beyond comprehension, and I am completely okay with her choice to kill him at the end of ch 31.
But look at Demetri. He mate-bonded with a half-vamp. As far as his instincts are concerned, that’s the same as mating a pure vampire. He doesn’t just hope, think, or expect that she’ll love him back—he knows it, with every fiber of his being, because that’s exactly what would have happened if she was a pure vampire.
The way I read it, it’s not that he saw that she didn’t like him, and disregarded it; he was literally incapable of reading into her revulsion and hatred as anything other than a playful, loving game. Perhaps she played it too often, or went too far with it, but that’s what mates are for, isn’t it? She was just showing her playful side, and her respect for his tracking abilities, because obviously she wouldn’t part from her mate for long if she didn’t think he’d be right behind her. The fact that he would have considered her strongest attacks negligible doubtlessly only exacerbated the situation.
Do I feel sorry for Demetri? Yes. Do I think Allirea should have spared him? Not a chance, because in regards to his “mate,” he’s effectively insane, and would never, ever stop.
Demetri was in a position where the sine qua non of his life turned out to have value judgments inconsistent with the way he was living his life.
That happens in the real world. Not as blatantly or clumsily as in the Twilight universe, admittedly, but it happens.
Another person in the same situation might have chosen to change the way he was living his life to earn her love and respect. Or chosen to respect her preferences and suffer the harm of living without her instead of inflicting upon her the harm of his presence.
He chose instead to disregard her values, her actions, her stated and expressed preferences, the many readily available credible reports of her actual state, a completely implausible preponderance of available evidence… he chose to ignore all of that in favor of an impenetrable fantasy that she was what he wanted her to be, felt what he wanted her to feel, wanted what he wanted her to want.
Put another way: as a person she was inconvenient, and rather than suffer that inconvenience he reduced her to a thing.
That happens in the real world, too. More’s the pity.
Sure, I agree with you that the whole matebond arrangement is pretty awful. But to blame it for Demetri’s behavior is giving him a pass he hasn’t earned.
I’m not blaming the mate bond for his behavior, what I’m really trying to say- and doing it badly- is that the mate bond is a stupid thing for it to group Demetri with Allirea as he seems incapable of change, and change he must for her to even consider any sort of loving relationship.
Though Allirea never really considered the mate bond, I think once she saw that he could see her she hated him immedietly and to me that means that she is also incapable of change, so why would the matebond group Demetri to her?
And also if Demetri is so unable to even process the thought that she doesn’t love him, then he is very stupid, and crazy and because he is such things why did the matebond bond him to somebody that doesn’t like those things?
I’m not very good at explaining my thoughts coherently, so this is probably a bunch of nothing that no one can understand.
It’s always problematic, though tempting, to infer that someone is incapable of change from the fact that they didn’t change in a particular context.
In any case, agreed that the matebond is stupid in the sense you mean. It doesn’t take the likely consequences of each case into account. Of course, even in the real world, people have all kinds of stupid urges in that sense.
change the way he was living his life to earn her love and respect
She wasn’t exactly objecting to his diet or his employment status or anything like that which he could have volunteered to revise. She went “ohgodohgod he can see me”—which wasn’t something he chose ahead of time—and she bolted and he followed her because he had no idea what the hell was going on except that she was his mate and this had Certain Implications. It snowballed horribly, but he started out sincerely confused and only gradually mutated into outright batshit delusional.
I’m not talking about just the first ten minutes of their relationship, nor even the first ten days.
Agreed, it was an awkward beginning, for reasons that are not entirely his doing. (On the other hand, his alliances and the context that brought him to her door weren’t exactly neutral, either.)
And it’s profoundly unclear, even to the readers, how he might have turned that around; what could have earned her love and respect, what she valued, what made her happy other than being left alone. Perhaps there was no way he could have offered her anything she wanted.
And perhaps he spent some frustrating time trying to figure it out, in which case he earns some respect from me during that period, which he then subsequently discards when he gives up trying without giving her up altogether.
I have conflicting emotions. On one side I feel really bad for Allirea, and what Demetri has done to her. But on the otherside I feel really angry at the matebond for making Demetri feel that way about Allirea and therfore inflicting him upon Allirea.
I’m not sure that makes sense.
I guess that my reading of the situation is rather different from most of yours, in that I know exactly what the OP means, and agree (more or less).
I feel terribly for Allirea. An eternity of rape is a horror beyond comprehension, and I am completely okay with her choice to kill him at the end of ch 31.
But look at Demetri. He mate-bonded with a half-vamp. As far as his instincts are concerned, that’s the same as mating a pure vampire. He doesn’t just hope, think, or expect that she’ll love him back—he knows it, with every fiber of his being, because that’s exactly what would have happened if she was a pure vampire.
The way I read it, it’s not that he saw that she didn’t like him, and disregarded it; he was literally incapable of reading into her revulsion and hatred as anything other than a playful, loving game. Perhaps she played it too often, or went too far with it, but that’s what mates are for, isn’t it? She was just showing her playful side, and her respect for his tracking abilities, because obviously she wouldn’t part from her mate for long if she didn’t think he’d be right behind her. The fact that he would have considered her strongest attacks negligible doubtlessly only exacerbated the situation.
Do I feel sorry for Demetri? Yes. Do I think Allirea should have spared him? Not a chance, because in regards to his “mate,” he’s effectively insane, and would never, ever stop.
I don’t think it does.
Demetri was in a position where the sine qua non of his life turned out to have value judgments inconsistent with the way he was living his life.
That happens in the real world. Not as blatantly or clumsily as in the Twilight universe, admittedly, but it happens.
Another person in the same situation might have chosen to change the way he was living his life to earn her love and respect. Or chosen to respect her preferences and suffer the harm of living without her instead of inflicting upon her the harm of his presence.
He chose instead to disregard her values, her actions, her stated and expressed preferences, the many readily available credible reports of her actual state, a completely implausible preponderance of available evidence… he chose to ignore all of that in favor of an impenetrable fantasy that she was what he wanted her to be, felt what he wanted her to feel, wanted what he wanted her to want.
Put another way: as a person she was inconvenient, and rather than suffer that inconvenience he reduced her to a thing.
That happens in the real world, too. More’s the pity.
Sure, I agree with you that the whole matebond arrangement is pretty awful. But to blame it for Demetri’s behavior is giving him a pass he hasn’t earned.
I’m not blaming the mate bond for his behavior, what I’m really trying to say- and doing it badly- is that the mate bond is a stupid thing for it to group Demetri with Allirea as he seems incapable of change, and change he must for her to even consider any sort of loving relationship.
Though Allirea never really considered the mate bond, I think once she saw that he could see her she hated him immedietly and to me that means that she is also incapable of change, so why would the matebond group Demetri to her?
And also if Demetri is so unable to even process the thought that she doesn’t love him, then he is very stupid, and crazy and because he is such things why did the matebond bond him to somebody that doesn’t like those things?
I’m not very good at explaining my thoughts coherently, so this is probably a bunch of nothing that no one can understand.
It’s always problematic, though tempting, to infer that someone is incapable of change from the fact that they didn’t change in a particular context.
In any case, agreed that the matebond is stupid in the sense you mean. It doesn’t take the likely consequences of each case into account. Of course, even in the real world, people have all kinds of stupid urges in that sense.
She wasn’t exactly objecting to his diet or his employment status or anything like that which he could have volunteered to revise. She went “ohgodohgod he can see me”—which wasn’t something he chose ahead of time—and she bolted and he followed her because he had no idea what the hell was going on except that she was his mate and this had Certain Implications. It snowballed horribly, but he started out sincerely confused and only gradually mutated into outright batshit delusional.
I’m not talking about just the first ten minutes of their relationship, nor even the first ten days.
Agreed, it was an awkward beginning, for reasons that are not entirely his doing. (On the other hand, his alliances and the context that brought him to her door weren’t exactly neutral, either.)
And it’s profoundly unclear, even to the readers, how he might have turned that around; what could have earned her love and respect, what she valued, what made her happy other than being left alone. Perhaps there was no way he could have offered her anything she wanted.
And perhaps he spent some frustrating time trying to figure it out, in which case he earns some respect from me during that period, which he then subsequently discards when he gives up trying without giving her up altogether.
Sure, but he could have tried to overcome her fear by courting her with respect and restraint. I agree pretty wholly with TheOtherDave’s reading.
Those sound like complementary emotions. The mate bond is a terrible thing, because it causes people to do terrible things.