Playing With / The Power of Love

Basic Trope: Love is the strongest force in the universe.

• Straight: The heroes' love for each other lets them overcome their trials.
• Exaggerated:
  • The heroes embrace each other as they are set on fire, and when the fire dies down the heroes are unharmed.
  • Their love becomes an actual, tangible weapon or forcefield.
  • Their Only Weapon Is Love.
• Downplayed: The heroes' love for each other is a powerful motivator for both.
• Justified:
  • The villain tells the hero that his love interest betrayed him, but the hero doesn't believe him and doesn't fall for the villain's trap.
  • The setting's deity (or one of them) has True Love is Exceptional as a "pet trope."
  • The villain holds no love in his heart; it's something horrifying to him. The hero and heroine do. The villain becomes too enraged and confused to fight them properly, and their affections cause him physical injury.
  • "The Power of Love" is simply extreme devotion towards a goal or person. Other emotions, such as hatred, would grant the same magnitude of power.
  • the Power of Love is an actual force that takes an extreme selfless devotion to activate, and it becomes an 11th-Hour Superpower when Overlord Evulz tries to kill them with fire. Everyone in the circle is only worried about saving the others and not themselves, causing the power of love to see their devotion to one another and reveal itself for everyone. Evulz will lose because Evil Cannot Comprehend Good and use such a power.
  • Overlord Evulz himself falls victim to this power and has a Heel Realization after he is gravely injured, but saved by a kind farmer. When Emperor Bob threatens to Take Over the World with his army of demons, Evulz joins the heroes because he can't help but repay the kindness of the farmer, and he ends up giving up his evil ways entirely and dismantles his domain afterwards to lead a simple life. For added points, his sword he uses is actually a relic of a past hero, and it reveals its true power when used for good deeds, making him far more powerful fighting against evil than for it.
• Inverted:
  • The Power of Hate. The hero's overwhelming hatred for the villain and all the horrible things he's done sees him through all his trials just so he can take that son of a bitch down hard.
  • The Power of Apathy. The hero is unable to bring him/herself to care and it is in that carelessness that he/she can go the distance.
  • Love Makes You Dumb
  • Love Makes You Evil
  • Dirty Coward
• Subverted:
  • 1. The hero makes a stirring speech about how his love will prevail over all, but when it gets to the fight, the villain beats him handily. As the hero lies dying on the floor, the Mooks lead his love away to be executed.
  • 2. An Anti-Hero dismisses the Power of Love and proceeds to slay the wicked demigod with some other Power, be it Trust, Hate, Rock, Will, or just sheer POWER.
  • 3. Unimpressed by the hero's speech about love, the villain responds with a filthy limerick and a whuppin'.
• Double Subverted:
  • 1.1. The hero makes a stirring speech about how his love will prevail before he is punched out by the villain and left for dead on the floor. The next day, as his love interest is led to her execution, the hero's reincarnation charges in, skewers the villain in mid-gloat, and rides with his love off into the sunset.
  • 1.2. The hero makes a stirring speech about love, only to get his ass kicked. His Love Interest flips her shit and annihilates the Big Bad to save him.
  • 2.1. However, fighting a demigod is extremely dangerous. While he survives, he was so injured in the battle that he can't do anything but wait for the release of death... but is ultimately saved by the White Magician Girl who worked with him and pined after him in silence. Her Anguished Declaration of Love boosted her Healing Hands enough to save him.
  • 2.2. The Power of Love doesn't stop him from dying, but it doesn't stop his love interest from continuing to lead a happy life for both of them.
  • 3. The hero's love interest is appalled that the villain would say such things in front of a Proper Lady (and his callous treatment of her boyfriend), and bitchslaps him into next week.
• Parodied:
  • "I love you" becomes a command word that creates Deus Ex Machinae.
  • The power of love is used as a literal power source.
  • The power of love is known to work, but the hero never feels it enough to have the chance to use it... except when he's carving peoples' innards out. He LOVES doing that.
  • The song "The Power Of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News is the second most powerful force on the planet, next to actual Power of Love.
• Zig Zagged: The Power of Love saves the heroes one minute, then fails to save them the next. Then later, love saves them later on when their love is "renewed".
• Averted:
  • The hero and his love interest clearly love each other very much, but it does nothing to help them with most of the troubles they face throughout the story.
  • No one loves anyone.
• Enforced:
  • "We can't just let the hero fail here, but he and his love interest have no weapon or tactic that can get them through this. Let's have their love let them make it through."
  • "We needed an excuse to why the hero is getting a harem. We came to the conclusion that the hero should have the ability to grant superpowers to the heroines via romance."
• Lampshaded:
  • "We can overcome this challenge with the strength of our love."
  • "Eh, this love power dross is rather tiring. I don't need that."
• Invoked: Something bad happens, so the hero shouts "I LOVE YOU!" at his love interest in the hope that this will save him.
• Exploited: The Evil Overlord kidnaps the hero's love interest so the hero will have no choice but to work for him if he wants her to live.
• Defied:
  • The Evil Overlord chooses all marriages for minimum possible attraction.
  • The Anti-Hero is very aware of the dark side of love, thus he avoids it as much as possible.
  • The Evil Overlord summarily executes anybody who tries to talk him out of his course of action by speaking about love and anybody who shows any kind of affection to anything (even their favorite gadgets).
• Discussed: "You know, I wish this was like one of those movies, where our relationship would somehow get us through all these stupid unrelated troubles in life."
• Conversed: "Have you noticed how many shows have the heroes survive because of their love for someone?"
• Deconstructed:
  • 1. The hero's adventures are narrated by a psychologist giving a lecture on the chemicals of the brain that cause love, and their effect on a person's physical capabilities.
  • 2. Aromantic / Asexual characters are incapable of tapping into the power (for obvious reasons) and find themselves inferior to those who can have love in their hearts.
  • 3. The Power of Love has dark sides of its own. These naturally have consequences like:
    • A) A break-up or an unrequited crush can turn it into a self-destructive force, and make the affected character depressed and/or suicidal. Then there's the Stalker with a Crush empowered by "love".
    • B) If a friend/family/lover is harmed and/or killed, this will result in the affected character completely losing it and going on an all-out rampage leaving death & carnage in his/her wake.
  • 4. "Love" is an abstract concept. An "It's All About Me" mentality could potentially make the villain just as powerful as the couple. So could eating his favorite meal ("I love pizza and beer").
  • 5. Despite expectations, villains are very able to utilize it as well as heroes can.
  • 6. A character that has been relying on The Power of Hate falls in love and ends up unable to use either.
• Reconstructed:
  • 1. The narrating psychologist falls in love himself and is at a complete loss when asked to explain his own new-found powers in chemical terms.
  • 2. Aromantic / Asexual characters are capable of feeling deep affection and kindness for others such as family, friends or even everybody in the world. Love is NOT only about romance, after all!
  • 3. Loving to make people happy, or love for another, is much more powerful than sadism and/or selfishness because there's more people involved. It also has the power to heal others and heal oneself.
  • 4a. There is a field devoted to studying the power of love and it determines that The Four Loves are more potent than Narcissism (because it's little more than an inflated ego) or love for food (because it's shallow and based on wordplay).
  • 4b. There is nothing wrong with a person using The Power of Love due to prioritising the love for themselves more than that for other people. A person who truly loves themselves is healthy, is resilient, is aware of their capabilities, and is neither self-deluded nor self-destructive. The key to victory.
  • 5. Love is just as destructive a power in the hands of evil as it is in the hands of good, thus leading careless villainous couples to literally become their own downfall.
  • 6. It turns out that hating a person and loving another are not mutually exclusive. Through the gentle guidance and support of the person they have fallen in love with, a character learns to take the hate from their past and the love from their present and combine them into a Yin-Yang Bomb.