Fixing Love Potions

[GreatWyrmGold]

Love potions are a trope as old as time. For as long as hominids have been able to comprehend romantic love as an emotion separate from other positive emotions, we've surely wished it was easier to get. The love potion is a plot device that can make two characters fall in love, easy as spiking her drink!
Of course, as our society came to view consent as something that, you know, mattered, the concept of a love potion became more...problematic. It deprives people of their agency in a faculty which is (obviously) very important and can have life-changing consequences; basically, a classic love potion is brainwashing with a side of date rape. Hence, it has fallen out of common use, with the few exceptions usually coming under scrutiny by audiences and authors alike. (Though sometimes only one of the two...)
Why is it still around? Well, it's a classic element of both ancient fairy tales and more recent classic literature (e.g, A Midsummer Night's Dream). Any trope steeped in that much literary tradition is going to recur sooner or later. But there are better ways to handle them.

1. Recontextualize it. Don't have "love potions" as something bought or brewed by romantics wanting to help their beloved admit and commit to their feelings; they're a concoction used like poison by schemers, or else coveted by self-proclaimed "Nice Guys" who think they're just securing what is already rightfully theirs. Functional love potions aren't sold to impulsive schoolgirls like "functional" love potions are IRL, because they are as heavily-regulated as mind-control amulets and hats of devouring. If you want a sympathetic use for them, something to justify them not being entirely illegal, perhaps couples trapped in loveless marriages use them to feel less miserable together. (I bet Shakespeare could have written one heck of a play about a king and queen trying this, only to have their potion-laced tea constantly mixed up with tea for guests or servants.)
2. Tweak it. The literary purpose of a love potion is generally either to facilitate a relationship about to happen, as a shortcut for someone who really wants someone else's affections but won't put in the effort to actually get those affections, or an excuse for hijinks. Is there a way we can accomplish at least some of those goals without the date-rape vibes? Perhaps, instead of a generic love potion, you have a potion which strengthens someone's feelings for someone else, whatever they may be. It can convince a Juliet to admit she likes her Romeo, a guy who thinks he's Romeo would use it to try and get the girl, and such a feelings-multiplier would (obviously) allow for all sorts of new hijinks. Or perhaps the potion makes the target to see the potion-user the way the -user sees themselves, which could provoke literal sympathy between love interests, get a girl to like the self-obsessed jerk who thinks potions can replace love, or potentially allow some hijinks. (It's admittedly not as good at the third.) Or there could be other options.
3. Move it from "plot device" to "MacGuffin". The story isn't about the side effects of a love potion, or about some romantic nonsense with a love potion thrown in as a confounding event, or anything like that; it's a story where one party is trying to get a love potion (for one reason or another) and another is trying to stop them. It might not sound as epic as a quest to save the world or an overlord trying to conquer it, but hey, not every hero needs to save the world.

What do you guys think about these possibilities? Can you think of others, or other love-potion-esque effects which can serve the same literary purpose without the baggage? Or anything else love-potion-related that you think is worth talking about?

[Lord Raziere]

I'd just make them a pure villain thing and have the hero be all about earning their affection the right way. no need for anything fancy, just make it clear: "love" potions are one sided relationship makers, wrong and a violation of the victims rights, leading to an unhealthy dynamic, and the hero should be all about earning that love, not taking that evil shortcut.

make drinking the love potion outright disturbing. make the drinker contort and scream and struggle trying to fight against the effects before suddenly straightening up and putting on an unnatural smile, make the "love" as fake and unnatural as possible, make it clear that what gives you is a lie, a poorly stitched together creepy parody that would never truly satisfy anyone sane. make it something the hero has to protect people against and cure.

thats what I'd do: just show how WRONG it is. embrace the implications and make them intended, disturbing and evil as shown as it is when you think about it.

[Seerow]

Maybe shift it from something you give to someone else to something you take yourself?

It could be a potion that encourages the shy and awkward person to be more capable of expressing their feelings. Not a guarantee of reciprocity, but a nudge in the right direction. Or it could be a potion that actually does awaken feelings of love towards another person...but only if the person taking it wants that. How many times do you see/hear in a story of somebody who cares for someone, but can't think of them 'that way' for one reason or another. There are conceivably cases where someone may want to take the easy way out and say "Hey, this person really likes me, it sucks I don't feel that way about them, I want to fix that".

Either way, the core idea is that instead of drugging somebody else, for whatever reason the magic only kicks in if the drinker imbibes it knowingly wanting whatever the result is. Mind you, these changes bring up other potential moral concerns, so I'm not sure if it really contextualizes them into something that would be generally accepted, but it'd be more of a controversial type of morality as opposed to mind raping somebody into being your lover.

[Cikomyr]

Tristan and Isold's story of accidentally drinking a love potion that forced them to fall in love while she was promised to Tristan's king has always been a strong tragedic tale. While both individuals had their feelings somewhat violated, no malice actually caused the event.

I wonder why people never think of the single best love potion utility: for a failing marriage/relationship. Ya know, both individuals voluntarily drink a love potion to jump-start the emotions that were once vivid.

The thing is, "Love Potion" is a horrible thing only and if only it is taken against one's will. And the question would then be: "in what circumstances would someone willingly drink a love potion? If they want to fall in love, what's stopping them?" Hence failing marriages.

[Kitten Champion]

One idea I liked is to have the love potion be similar to a luck potion, except aimed at romantic fortune. The potion creates the circumstances via tweaking probabilities to find your True Love. Possibly with a Monkey's Paw effect, as it would ignore your financial or physical well-being when altering your fate to manifest that one in a million possible future where that particular pairing comes to pass.

Another idea is basically the premise to Kanojo ga Flag o Oraretara, a LN/anime series about a character who can see flags above people's heads that represent their future relative to himself - love flags included - but is mostly preoccupied by his own death flag. A potion built on a similar concept - visualizing the threads of fate or some such - could be interesting. You'd be seeing the potential for love rather than materializing it or coercing it chemically, how it would actually come to pass would be the mystery.

There's also the easiest, I think. Have the love potion be fake, and the circumstances that follow be a placebo effect.

[Cheesegear]

Love potions are a trope as old as time.
[...]
Why is it still around?

Is it still around?

I'm 30, and every time I've ever seen a love potion it has;
a) Gone horribly wrong,
b) Been a placebo the entire time, or
c) Wears off and the drinker hates the person who has brainwashed them.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any recent examples where the love potion has worked as intended, permanent (i.e; not option 'c'), and been seen as a good thing.

[Khedrac]

I rather like Gilbert and Sullivan's take on this - in their lesser known work The Sorceror.
The love potion has one limitation - it doesn't work on people who are married.
It works by putting the drinker to sleep and then they fall in love with the first person they see when they wake up.

Now if you follow the opera you will notice that the "hero" is actually a bit of a cad. Ostensibly he gets the potion so everyone else can experience the joy that he and his fiance are about to have; however:
1. He then insists that his fiance takes it so he can be sure of her love.
2. He then blames his fiance for falling in love with someone else when she wakes up - despite the fact that it was his fault she took the potion.
3. Gilbert also pokes fun at class prejudices, the two lesser nobles are moved away from the general throng so that they don't see someone of the wrong class when they wake, however since they are both single and taken home I think they both see servants on waking...
4. In the end they decide they need to break the spell of the potion, and the only way to do this is for either its creator or purchaser to go to hell, the hero still won't take responsibility for his actions so the sorceror willingly goes to free everyone from the potion's effects.

Now Isaac Asimov (I think - it could have been Arthur C Clarke) theorised that Gilbert wanted to have the ending that they all got married, the potion stops working so then those who are happy remain married while those who are not get divorced, but prejudice against divorce was still too strong for this ending.

My headcanon is that Gilbert wanted the Sorceror to be shown going on his way having faked his trip to hell while lamenting that some people never learn to take responsibility for their actions (or something similar) - possibly even eloping with the hero's fiance as she has now realised how much of a cad the "hero" is. Without this extention one has to be really paying attention as the criticism of the "hero" is very subtle.

Anyway the story needs very little modification to work today - probably just someone else for the heroine to fall in love with at the end.

[Aotrs Commander]

I wonder why people never think of the single best love potion utility: for a failing marriage/relationship. Ya know, both individuals voluntarily drink a love potion to jump-start the emotions that were once vivid.

Not quite a potion, but in MLP:Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance's magic is essentially supposed to be able to pretty much do that (I.e. remind people why they feel in love or whatever).

And even in that fandom, accusations were levelled (some for humour others... not) at her basically abusing mind-control. And in the show itself, we've seen her use that magic about once; which means she's been significantly more often using COMBAT magic than her preported special talent.



I do think that perhaps some of the literary role of the love potion has been somewhat replaced by alcohol (somewhat unfortunately), wherein Drunk Happens and that has some effect (starting/ending) a relationship. This seems more societally respectable, though only to the degree that getting drunk is societally acceptable.

(Myself, I tend to view that with barely less quite horror than the love potions. (Actually, just Being Drunk in general.) As far as I'm concerned, inhibititions exsist for a reason... Now watch my offhand comment completely de-rail the thread again by accident...)

So one possibility for "fixing" love potions is perhaps to make them have the same sort of inhibition-lowering effect of being drunk, perhaps without the other side-effects.

(Still a bit squicky, but there's never a way around that.)

[GreatWyrmGold]

Is it still around? -snip-

I can't claim a full knowledge of the subject, but Strange Magic is practically centered around love potions without displaying full awareness of their implications. One of the two characters who decide to use a love potion is a prick, but the other is a deurtagonist who is clearly supposed to be sympathetic and who ends up with the girl he planned to drug. (Side note: Watching a review of Strange Magic is what inspired this thread in the first place.)
A quick skim of the TV Tropes page for love potions also reveals:

• Fallout 3, where getting a couple together via love potion nets a positive karma boost.
• While Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince treats love potions seriously, they're still apparently legal...and in one of the earlier books, Mrs. Weasely makes an off-hand comment about using one on her future husband, which isn't taken seriously at all.
• Magical Pokemon Journey's plot is about the protagonist trying to get a love potion to make someone fall in love with them.
• Several examples are mentioned for Power Rangers. Most took it seriously, but some...didn't.
• The Sims, where love potions are a thing that was thrown in with about as much critical examination as anything else in The Sims.
• A show called Space Island One was mentioned, where one crewmember was treated as wrong for rejecting the advances of another, with the latter making the technobabbly equivalent of a love potion to "fix" that situation.
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse gives werecreatures an "Animal Magnetism" ability, which basically works like a love potion without the potion. They tried revising it a couple of times, but it didn't help much. And while we're on the subject of not-potion love potions, let's consider Cupid and his arrows...
• Many, many examples which were basically impossible to analyze from the information available, some of which probably fell into the problematic category (if only because of Sturgeon's Law).

It's not horribly common, but it's not unheard of. As with any old trope, there are plenty of people who throw it in without considering the implications.

[2D8HP]

Is it wrong that I

Spoiler: immediately thought of this?

Show

source

[Giggling Ghast]

I prefer portraying love potions/love spells as something you don’t want to use under any circumstances because it creates a violent obsession, not love.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Not quite a potion, but in MLP:Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance's magic is essentially supposed to be able to pretty much do that (I.e. remind people why they feel in love or whatever).

And even in that fandom, accusations were levelled (some for humour others... not) at her basically abusing mind-control. And in the show itself, we've seen her use that magic about once; which means she's been significantly more often using COMBAT magic than her preported special talent.

And let's not forget the Love Poison incident in Hearts and Hooves Day - a hilarious deconstruction of love potions.

(Shrek 2 had a good take on it as well).

[Frozen_Feet]

@Aotrs_Commander: comparison to alcohol is completely warranted and I was about to do it myself anyway. Because it's the same thing: either people have some degree of control and hence responsibility over what they do under the influence, or they do not and you hang yourself on the implications while shouting something about consent.

[lt_murgen]

I prefer portraying love potions/love spells as something you don’t want to use under any circumstances because it creates a violent obsession, not love.

One time, I had a D&D player attempt to break into what he thought was a trapped chest by pouring a vial of acid into the lock. Fumbled. I ruled he used his Potion of Love instead. Poor lovesick mimic followed him around for weeks.....

[Devils_Advocate]

So one possibility for "fixing" love potions is perhaps to make them have the same sort of inhibition-lowering effect of being drunk, perhaps without the other side-effects.

@Aotrs_Commander: comparison to alcohol is completely warranted and I was about to do it myself anyway. Because it's the same thing: either people have some degree of control and hence responsibility over what they do under the influence, or they do not and you hang yourself on the implications while shouting something about consent.

But the main point of this thread, as I understand it, is that surreptitiously drugging someone with a love potion is like surreptitiously drugging someone with an intoxicant, which is to say blatantly unethical under normal circumstances (although it could be justifiable in some cases, much like violence could be justifiable in some cases).

Someone who voluntarily uses a drug knowing its effects is still responsible for behavior under the influence because they're the one responsible for their chemically altered state and chose to take the risks involved. That sort of case, where Person A is responsible for the mental state of Person A, is very significantly different from a case where Person B is responsible for the mental state of Person A.

If you turn someone into Mr. Hyde knowing that Mr. Hyde is a monster who kills people, then you're to blame for the results of that, whether you transform yourself or someone else. Mr. Hyde is also to blame, but an innocent victim who you turned into Mr. Hyde really doesn't deserve any blame as far as I can see.

But controlling someone else's behavior isn't even the main issue here. Forcibly altering a mind without consent is unethical in itself. Like messing with someone's body without consent, but even more so.

[Fyraltari]

Now Isaac Asimov (I think - it could have been Arthur C Clarke) theorised that Gilbert wanted to have the ending that they all got married, the potion stops working so then those who are happy remain married while those who are not get divorced, but prejudice against divorce was still too strong for this ending.

It's Asimov, he wrote a short story about a professor creating something like a love potion and he and a couple student intentionally recreating the play but with that ending. I can't rememberbthe nameof the story or the anthology in which I read it however. I recall it clearly because having never heard of Gilbert and Sullivan (I think Asimov wrote one or two other stories centered on their plays) before reading it, I was quite confused.

As for fixing the love potion you could have it shedaway any illusion you might have and point you toward the person you truly love instead of theone you may only believe you love for X or Y reasons.

[Frozen_Feet]

Mr. Hyde analogy does not work because neither alcohol nor love potions typically turn someone into a different person.

As far as the alcohol comparion goes, yes, it's immoral to try to get someone drunk covertly or with sinister motives... yet at the same time, people accept and even demand open offers of alcohol, especially in context of courtship. And they do those things despite knowing it will impair their self-control and make them likelier to do something they regret. Applying such standards to love potions doesn't necessarily "fix" anything, but it will paint a bigger picture than narrow comparisons to, say, spiking someone's drink with eyedrops.

As for "forcibly altering someone's mind"... people are not masters of their thoughts and emotions. Me simply walking into your field of vision or using a perfume where you can smell it will alter your internal state in ways you have no control over. Human mind plain and simple does not work under modern conceits and conceptions of consent: that is why things like love have been likened to external forces and described in terms of fate or insanity. Because you do not consent to love. You do not consent to arousal. These and several other emotions lie outside the domain of conscious thought and whatever free will you think you have has very limited impact on them.

[Devils_Advocate]

Mr. Hyde analogy does not work because neither alcohol nor love potions typically turn someone into a different person.

First off, I'm not sure that you understand what an analogy is. To call things analogous to each other is to claim that they're in some way similar but also implies that they're different. For example, I wouldn't describe getting people to drink love potions without their knowledge as analogous to drugging people, because it is drugging people. (If the love potion is magic, that just makes it a magic drug, not something other than a drug.)

Secondly, of course mind-altering substances make minds different. They alter minds; it's right there in the phrase.

As far as the alcohol comparion goes, yes, it's immoral to try to get someone drunk covertly or with sinister motives... yet at the same time, people accept and even demand open offers of alcohol, especially in context of courtship. And they do those things despite knowing it will impair their self-control and make them likelier to do something they regret. Applying such standards to love potions doesn't necessarily "fix" anything, but it will paint a bigger picture than narrow comparisons to, say, spiking someone's drink with eyedrops.

Comparing spiking someone's drink with a love potion to spiking someone's drink with alcohol seems to serve to illustrate problems rather than remove them. Comparing knowingly ingesting a love potion to knowingly ingesting alcohol doesn't seem to address most of the problems with unknowing ingestion of love potions. Comparing spiking someone's drink with a love potion to deliberate consumption of alcohol by that person ignores the issue of consent and frankly raises questions about what the hell is wrong with you.

It's unclear which of those comparisons you're even trying to make.

To paraphrase you, alcohol analogy does not work because alcohol is not typically taken unknowingly.

As for "forcibly altering someone's mind"... people are not masters of their thoughts and emotions. Me simply walking into your field of vision or using a perfume where you can smell it will alter your internal state in ways you have no control over. Human mind plain and simple does not work under modern conceits and conceptions of consent: that is why things like love have been likened to external forces and described in terms of fate or insanity. Because you do not consent to love. You do not consent to arousal. These and several other emotions lie outside the domain of conscious thought and whatever free will you think you have has very limited impact on them.

People have far from total control over what their bodies do, too, yet there's a rather pervasive idea that it's not therefore okay to do whatever you want to someone else's body. It's even possible to die without agreeing to die; indeed, this rather seems to be typical. But even though that's already the case, killing a person generally seems to be regarded as a pretty big deal and unethical under most circumstances.

What you've nicely illustrated is the point that not everything that has any sort of impact on someone is considered "forcible". I'll admit that the concept of "force" is rather vague, and one could perhaps argue to the effect that e.g. injecting someone with something in their sleep is significantly worse in some meaningful way from tricking someone into taking a drug. But arguing that the latter is perfectly fine still raises questions re: what the hell is wrong with you.

[NovenFromTheSun]

I had an idea for making it a bad thing, but in a different way: all emotion based magic works on opposites, a love spell or potion can only be delivered by someone who truely and utterly despises that target. It's not a tool for getting with them, it's a tool for delivering heartache and financial ruin to the victim purely for spite.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I had an idea for making it a bad thing, but in a different way: all emotion based magic works on opposites, a love spell or potion can only be delivered by someone who truely and utterly despises that target. It's not a tool for getting with them, it's a tool for delivering heartache and financial ruin to the victim purely for spite.

But that's also one of the easiest version to find an (admittedly still farfetched and rare) legitimately good use for. The leaders of two warring factions, knowing that this has to end, give each other the potion.

(Then they both switch the potion the other will give them with water and the war just starts up again.)

[Eldan]

One idea I liked is to have the love potion be similar to a luck potion, except aimed at romantic fortune. The potion creates the circumstances via tweaking probabilities to find your True Love. Possibly with a Monkey's Paw effect, as it would ignore your financial or physical well-being when altering your fate to manifest that one in a million possible future where that particular pairing comes to pass.

That idea I like. Or perhaps something more along the lines of divination. You can see if you would have a chance if you confessed to someone.

[Eldan]

Tristan and Isold's story of accidentally drinking a love potion that forced them to fall in love while she was promised to Tristan's king has always been a strong tragedic tale. While both individuals had their feelings somewhat violated, no malice actually caused the event.

I wonder why people never think of the single best love potion utility: for a failing marriage/relationship. Ya know, both individuals voluntarily drink a love potion to jump-start the emotions that were once vivid.

The thing is, "Love Potion" is a horrible thing only and if only it is taken against one's will. And the question would then be: "in what circumstances would someone willingly drink a love potion? If they want to fall in love, what's stopping them?" Hence failing marriages.

That said, I could see an entirely different direction for this one where nobility in a political marriage would drink one as part of a wedding ceremony.

[Ibrinar]

Tristan and Isold's story of accidentally drinking a love potion that forced them to fall in love while she was promised to Tristan's king has always been a strong tragedic tale. While both individuals had their feelings somewhat violated, no malice actually caused the event.

I wonder why people never think of the single best love potion utility: for a failing marriage/relationship. Ya know, both individuals voluntarily drink a love potion to jump-start the emotions that were once vivid.

The thing is, "Love Potion" is a horrible thing only and if only it is taken against one's will. And the question would then be: "in what circumstances would someone willingly drink a love potion? If they want to fall in love, what's stopping them?" Hence failing marriages.

Cue societal pressure not to end relationships but to artificially alter your mind. Could make a nice distopia if you expand it to wider mind alterations don't like your job? Be expected to get a fix so that you find the job fun. Hate someone for something they did? Now, now hate is bad, you should get a mind alteration... Of course mention plenty alterations people would find useful like not procrastinating, removing fears and trauma etc.

[Frozen_Feet]

First off, I'm not sure that you understand what an analogy is. To call things analogous to each other is to claim that they're in some way similar but also implies that they're different. For example, I wouldn't describe getting people to drink love potions without their knowledge as analogous to drugging people, because it is drugging people. (If the love potion is magic, that just makes it a magic drug, not something other than a drug.)

Substanceless ad hominem; you gave no additional reasons for why the Mr. Hyde comparison is an apt analogy. Your bit about mundane and magic drugs is an additional homologue that doesn't actually address my complaint.

Secondly, of course mind-altering substances make minds different. They alter minds; it's right there in the phrase.

Altering minds =/= making someone into a different person. You're committing both fallacy of the beard (treating different quantities of mind-alteration as equivalent) and equivocation (person as conscious mind versus person as culpable entity), as well as failing principle of generosity (failing to read my argument in its strongest form).

To wit, the strongest interpretation is: neither alcohol nor love potions create an independent second persona which could be blamed for actions under the influence so that the subject is completely absolved.

If you want the analogy to hold, we can go back to the original story by Stevenson, instead of the popular misconception. You see, the "Mr. Hyde" formula offers no absolutiom either. Mr. Hyde is awfull because Jekyl is awfull; his acts are what an outwardly upstanding person would do if granted the shroud of anonymity. The corollary to that is that Jekyl is ultimately responsible for what Hyde does, and this would not change even if we changed the premise so that Jekyl was given the formula by accident or force. We would just change the story from personal flaws leading to tragedy, to tragedy leading to revelation of personal flaws.

To paraphrase you, alcohol analogy does not work because alcohol is not typically taken unknowingly.

That's because what I said in my last post is not an analogy, it's an action plan. I stated that by applying the same standards to love potions as what people apply to alcohol, you broach a broader topic and allow for more nuanced portrayal than "spiking someone's drink is bad". Apply X, get Y. You seem to agree, but didn't actually say anything usefull about it. No discussion, for example, about how willingly consuming love potions in company you know to have ulterior motives is still suspect and leads to pretty much the same bad results as being tricked to consume them. Or how, in the real world, the same fact about alcohol reveals many cultural habits around it as deeply hypocritical and full of double standards.

People have far from total control over what their bodies do, too, yet there's a rather pervasive idea that it's not therefore okay to do whatever you want to someone else's body. It's even possible to die without agreeing to die; indeed, this rather seems to be typical. But even though that's already the case, killing a person generally seems to be regarded as a pretty big deal and unethical under most circumstances.

If we actually examined any of those other issues, you'd rapidly find out that consent isn't the be-all-end-all there either. For example, you mentioned you can die without agreeing to, but failed to mention that in great many moral and legal systems you can never agree to die. The concern for life overrides your right to do what you want with your body and other people have right, and occasionally an obligation, to use force to stop you from dying, even if it's against your will. Incidentally, it even allows for injecting drugs into your unconscious body against your will.

If you find that distastefull and want to try and establish a framework where consent is top moral priority, go ahead. But anything less is pretty feeble rebuttal to my criticism of treating consent as crux of a matter that ultimately is pretty ignorant of it. For added hilarity, try applying consent-based morality to a fantasy setting where love really is decided by fate.

What you've nicely illustrated is the point that not everything that has any sort of impact on someone is considered "forcible". I'll admit that the concept of "force" is rather vague, and one could perhaps argue to the effect that e.g. injecting someone with something in their sleep is significantly worse in some meaningful way from tricking someone into taking a drug.

Getting you to admit that was pretty much the point, because people on these boards have arbitrary and petty definitions of force, especially when it comes to "mind alteration". Go to the RPG subforums and see all the people who equate teaching someone something with games to brainwashing. But your admittance did not lead to anything usefull, such as actually establishing a line where trying to influence someone crosses into forcible mind alteration.

But arguing that the latter is perfectly fine still raises questions re: what the hell is wrong with you.

What's wrong with you is that you're trying to make this about my person instead of anything you're qualified to talk about.

[Psyren]

I'd just make them a pure villain thing and have the hero be all about earning their affection the right way. no need for anything fancy, just make it clear: "love" potions are one sided relationship makers, wrong and a violation of the victims rights, leading to an unhealthy dynamic, and the hero should be all about earning that love, not taking that evil shortcut.

make drinking the love potion outright disturbing. make the drinker contort and scream and struggle trying to fight against the effects before suddenly straightening up and putting on an unnatural smile, make the "love" as fake and unnatural as possible, make it clear that what gives you is a lie, a poorly stitched together creepy parody that would never truly satisfy anyone sane. make it something the hero has to protect people against and cure.

thats what I'd do: just show how WRONG it is. embrace the implications and make them intended, disturbing and evil as shown as it is when you think about it.

I prefer portraying love potions/love spells as something you don’t want to use under any circumstances because it creates a violent obsession, not love.

This. It's pretty clearly nonconsensual (otherwise you wouldn't need a potion for the person) and should be portrayed as darkly as it is implied.

Having said that...

One idea I liked is to have the love potion be similar to a luck potion, except aimed at romantic fortune. The potion creates the circumstances via tweaking probabilities to find your True Love. Possibly with a Monkey's Paw effect, as it would ignore your financial or physical well-being when altering your fate to manifest that one in a million possible future where that particular pairing comes to pass.

I like this as a potentially positive portrayal - i.e. it's less about forcing someone to think a certain way and more about helping you to put your best foot forward. Even then though, I would just call it a Luck Potion and have the imbiber state they are looking for romance to avoid any kind of creepy connotations entirely.

[Telonius]

Hmm, interesting thoughts on it so far. Here's another possible "good" use along with the "failing marriage" thing: as a treatment for a psychopath, sociopath, or somebody else who's for whatever reason incapable of feeling empathy or what most people would call "love." Lots of great narrative possibilities there, too. (Does it "turn on a switch" and let them develop more empathy, or does it just cause an obsession? Does it need to be taken regularly, or does it revert a la Flowers for Algernon? Is what he's feeling still "real" since he chose it, or not since it didn't come from the heart to begin with? Is it reciprocated or not?)

For a bit of a "tweaked" take, maybe have it be something like Shallow Hal - the potion alters/sharpens your own perceptions of what is and isn't desirable. Or it's more of a fate-shortcut; it attracts the person you're "meant" to be with, however that's defined.

[Cikomyr]

Cue societal pressure not to end relationships but to artificially alter your mind. Could make a nice distopia if you expand it to wider mind alterations don't like your job? Be expected to get a fix so that you find the job fun. Hate someone for something they did? Now, now hate is bad, you should get a mind alteration... Of course mention plenty alterations people would find useful like not procrastinating removing fears and trauma etc.

Oh Jesus i recreated Brave New World..

Love is Mandatory. Because you need to love your spouse to have lots of kids. And you need to love your kids so they are taken care of and grow up well adjusted..

.. thats.. disturbing.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Also sounds a bit like MLP:FIM, although their enforced niceness is because there are monsters waiting in the wings to freeze them and eat them.

Anyway, I had to take a writing class in college, and one of the things we played with was genres. Which included the romance genre. When we had to deal with the subject of someone pining for the oblivious object of their obsession (girl for boy, in this case), every co-ed in the class went immediately to the love potion to solve the issue*. Most of the guys went with random shi--stuff. So I get where the OP is coming from.



*Which resulted in my getting ripped by the professor for wrecking her syllabus after I pointed out the love potion=rohypnol thing.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: Devil's Advocate & Frozen Feet

Show

Secondly, of course mind-altering substances make minds different. They alter minds; it's right there in the phrase.

That gets into all sorts of philosophical questions about identity that seem neither terribly relevant nor likely to be resolved in this thread. So I'd advise that you and Frozen_Feet accept that you're talking about different things when you ask if a person is themselves when under the influence.

If you want the analogy to hold, we can go back to the original story by Stevenson, instead of the popular misconception. -snip-

Which is quite an apt comparison to alcohol. One potion removes your inhibitions, another removes your morality. You could probably write a story on the nature of morality where you compare and contrast the behavior of an angry drunk with that of Jekyl & Hyde.

That's because what I said in my last post is not an analogy, it's an action plan. I stated that by applying the same standards to love potions as what people apply to alcohol, you broach a broader topic and allow for more nuanced portrayal than "spiking someone's drink is bad".

..."Nuance" implies that sometimes it is okay to spike someone's drink, which, no. You might be looking for applicability, which is the idea that you don't want to only specifically say that spiking drinks with love potions is bad, but the human subconscious tends to take care of that. Which is, incidentally, why things like coding and themes are important.

What's wrong with you is that you're trying to make this about my person instead of anything you're qualified to talk about.

Actually, what he did was attempt to distill your logic and point out how horrible that distillation was. If you disagree with his distillation, you can't just shout "ad hominem" and walk away. You have to go into where the flaw in their logic is rather than just complain about their logic.

I had an idea for making it a bad thing, but in a different way: all emotion based magic works on opposites, a love spell or potion can only be delivered by someone who truely and utterly despises that target. It's not a tool for getting with them, it's a tool for delivering heartache and financial ruin to the victim purely for spite.

That's not quite the direction I was expecting you to take this. I was expecting "for each person a potion makes someone love, it makes them hate someone else as much" (or it makes you hate two people half as much, or half a dozen people 17% as much), something equivalent-exchangey. So you'd have a potion that would (for instance) make the drinker fall in "love" with the user, but also drive them away from their support network. You know, like how abusive relationships work, except accelerated to timelines short enough to build a fast-paced plot on.

[Eldan]

Cue societal pressure not to end relationships but to artificially alter your mind. Could make a nice distopia if you expand it to wider mind alterations don't like your job? Be expected to get a fix so that you find the job fun. Hate someone for something they did? Now, now hate is bad, you should get a mind alteration... Of course mention plenty alterations people would find useful like not procrastinating, removing fears and trauma etc.

There's a shade of that in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the story that also inspired Blade Runner. They have "mood organs". Super advanced chemical dispensers that alter your mood to basically anything. Deckard wakes up in the morning and sets it to something like "Cheerful and alert" because he's not a morning person. Of course there's also the much creepier scene where he sets his wife to "Obey your Husband" when she asks him to give her an energy boost.