Everybody keeps saying how love is the most powerful force, how it conquers all, how it\u2019s more powerful than this and that\u2026 and yet, how come I can find no good examples of love as a powerful force in literature?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always weakness and heartbreak and a thing that creates its own problems, and things that are powerful are basically all other emotions; persistence, courage, focus and so on. You can say that what makes them powerful is the love they are based on, but honestly, the way it is all described is incredibly unconvincing. With one exception. No, it\u2019s not the Lord of the Rings, where the good guys win more by accident than by power, it\u2019s not Star Wars where the light side of the Force looks more like the hysterical side of a bipolar disorder, nor it is the Amber Chronicles where Order and Chaos look more like two selfish beasts fighting for supremacy than anything else. The exception I\u2019m talking about is the Salvos series, whose author unfortunately doesn\u2019t seem to be up to the task of actually finishing it, so I can only guess what he had in mind as the eventual ending, but from what I felt reading it, Salvos as a character is the only one in literature that is a convincing description of love as a tangible, powerful force. What\u2019s most interesting is that Salvos the character is a Demon of Pride, at least nominally. She\u2019s supposed to be motivated by vanity and narcissism, and to a degree that certainly seems to be true in the beginning, where her first motive is to survive and be stronger and greater, the second motive soon asserts itself \u2013 she cares for her companions, because they are the ones she can feel most alive and present with. At first, it looks as if this is merely an expression of her vanity, because what\u2019s greatness without an audience, but that\u2019s actually not the case at all. What she feels for her companions is the best description of love, despite the fact that she doesn\u2019t seem to understand what the word actually means, especially since it seems to mean different things to different people, and I can very much identify with that. But what she does for her companions is, consistently, selfless courage and sacrifice where she puts her life on the line, repeatedly, against more powerful foes she has no hope of defeating, but saving a companion is such a powerful urge that she fights like a literal Demon, with complete disregard for her own safety, despite the fact that she always claims her life comes first.<\/p>\n
The first such instance is her fight against Lucerna, the demon who captured her companion Haec. Lucerna is twice her level, and easily defeated both herself and Haec in their first encounter, where she had to escape and let him capture the unconscious and bleeding Haec and take him into his lair. She then followed their trail, freed Haec behind Lucerna\u2019s back, and when Lucerna figured her out, fought him to allow Haec the chance to escape, and she and Lucerna fell together through a portal to the Mortal Realm, whereby she was separated from her companion and got stuck in a world completely alien to her. Yeah, a supposedly selfish Demon, fighting a battle she can\u2019t possibly win to save her brother. If love in its purest form is to give your life for your friends, that was it, and she survived by pure chance.<\/p>\n
The next similar instance is several books later, when she and her two human companions roam the Plaguelands, and the invincible Lich who is the core of the calamity captures Edithe, her female companion, after soundly defeating herself and Daniel, her male companion, who was left frozen by a curse and clinically dead. She first revived Daniel by every combination of magical fire and potions she had, and then she basically forced him to follow the Lich with her, despite his reasonable objection that they are just going to get killed since they already fought the Lich and they got their asses handed to them; they are just going to their deaths. She looked him in the eyes with a look of focused ferocity and said \u201che\u2019s got Edithe\u201d. It\u2019s not a choice. The message was obvious \u2013 we don\u2019t leave her. We either free her or die trying. There are no other options. She basically dragged Daniel on the power of her insane will to track the enemy, and then they fought him. She fought with an absolutely insane savegery, half her body frozen or torn away, tearing away her own arm to use as a weapon to strike at her foe. Eventually, Edithe figured out how to destroy the phylactery that preserved the Lich\u2019s life force and they won. Again, a supposed Demon of Pride who supposedly doesn\u2019t know what love is supposed to be, puts her own body, power and life as a shield between her companion and death, not just by accident, but in a very calculated way, tracking the superior enemy and fighting him with incredible ferocity and motivation, wounded to an inch of her life.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting is that at first, when they just met, Edithe was very hostile and skeptical of Salvos, because she\u2019s a Demon. She assumed all the worst things about her, and didn\u2019t trust her as far as she could throw her, which meant not at all. But later, when they were in the Plaguelands, the worst place in the world filled with nothing but stench and death, when Edithe and Daniel went to sleep, Salvos would stand guard, and the implicit undertone is that this then became the safest place in the world, because Salvos will stand in the way of all Gods, Demons and monsters in the world to guard them and keep them safe. On her watch, the worst thing that can happen to them is that they get woken up from the sounds of accidental explosions as Salvos in her boredom experiments with creating weapons from magical fire. Salvos is the most powerful of the three of them, and she loves them, and this love is the most powerful shield they can sleep under. To her, love isn\u2019t just a word, or some romantic idea that makes you feel good about yourself. She doesn\u2019t even get what people mean by it. It\u2019s just that her basic instinct when a powerful magical attack is directed at her, and her friends are behind her, she chooses to take the full impact of the strike instead of evading it and allowing it to reach her friends. It\u2019s nothing sugary or syrupy, mind you; she is ferocious, focused, skilled and sometimes powered by incredible amounts of anger to the point of hatred that would melt steel beams. She\u2019s not fucking around or treating love as an emotion. No, love is when you threaten her friends and then you die, or she dies trying to kill you with every Joule of energy she can throw at you. She will cut you to pieces, incinerate you and then nuke you. And when she\u2019s done, she\u2019ll smile at her friends and be very pleased with herself and check her stats. Sure, she\u2019s motivated by pride, but that looks increasingly like an excuse, rather than the actual motive, because the worst fights she got in were never to show off, they were always to protect the loved ones. Also, despite her claim that she loves herself the most and her life always came first, that\u2019s not what actually happens when push comes to shove. She is very strategic about avoiding fights she knows she can\u2019t win when evasion is a possibility, when she can escape, grow stronger and revisit the problem with improved odds. However, when her companions and friends are threatened and being strategic is no longer an option, she always fought against all odds and chose to stand her ground and save her friends without any regard for her life, and survived mostly by pure chance or fate, rather than calculation and greater power. That\u2019s how love works; you don\u2019t know it\u2019s going to end well for you, but you know you have to do it, because \u201che\u2019s got Edithe\u201d. It\u2019s no longer a calculation at that point, it\u2019s not a situation where odds matter. Surviving when you didn\u2019t save your sister is not a worthy outcome.<\/p>\n
What I find most impressive in those descriptions is that Salvos doesn\u2019t use love-based energies or some light side of the Force bullshit to fight for her friends and family. No, she uses absolutely everything at her disposal \u2013 curses, magic, physical weapons, tricks, space magic, or tearing off her own arm and beating her enemy with the bloody end. She uses her brains, focus, courage, anger and skill. She doesn\u2019t use the power of love to influence the enemies with white light, she tears them to shreds, and then burns the shreds to ash. And yet, often she will show incredible kindness to apparent enemies, and convert them to allies, once they are no longer in a position to hurt her friends and she has the luxury of kindness. One of her most powerful skills is called Truth Divination, and it basically removes all barriers and deception between souls, allowing the other person full access to her own feelings, and allowing her full access to the other person\u2019s feelings. When the other person feels her true nature, the kindness, protectiveness and purity of her soul, it is invariably transformative, because you can\u2019t hate her if you know what she truly is and how she truly feels. This allows her to heal broken and hurt souls and mend broken hearts, and it\u2019s implicit that this happens because her own soul is so pure, honest and whole.<\/p>\n
So, this character, nominally the Demon of Pride, who feels more like a Goddess of Loving-Kindness, is the best literary description of metta<\/i> I ever had the opportunity to read. It\u2019s not a description of a loving being as someone who fights with a \u201cpower of friendship\u201d or some other bullshit; it\u2019s someone who will spend a whole day watching butterflies and caterpillars and talking to wolves and birds like Snow White, but if you threaten her friends, you are dead. She worked all her life to become strong, and she probably broke the all time record in speed of advancement, just to be able to protect herself and her companions from dangerous foes, and is an equivalent of a super-soldier who is an expert in all possible forms of martial and magical arts, and is perfectly happy to smell the flowers and admire the clouds all day with her friends, but if you\u2019re a threat, you get to find out why she spent all that time practicing the various ways to dismember and murder.<\/p>\n
I love that. I\u2019m sick of all the wimpy \u201cpositive\u201d characters and this is very refreshing, to see a supremely loving and kind person who basically turns into a nightmarish killing machine on a dime, and then back again when the threat is dealt with. Light side of the Force isn\u2019t the gay side of the force. It\u2019s the \u201coh you\u2019re so fucked now\u201d side of the Force.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if the author actually meant it this way, but I decide to read it this way and since I\u2019m smarter than anybody and I\u2019m always right, that makes it final. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everybody keeps saying how love is the most powerful force, how it conquers all, how it\u2019s more powerful than this and that\u2026 and yet, how come I can find no good examples of love as a powerful force in literature? … Continue reading