Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there’s really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.
I have served you and I have loved you for decades, but I will not give up my principles for you. You cut out part of my heart and took it with you down that path that you insist on walking, but you walk it alone. Even when the bleeding, gaping hole you left in my chest kills me, I will not follow you.
I’ve expressed this before, but… There’s also not enough said about the existential horror of what unconditional love implies
For the person loving, it means the beloved can take advantage of them any way imaginable– can become their worst possible abuser without ever losing their love. It’s a gilded cage that could become a torture chamber at any time, and you’d have no way to escape it
And for the person being loved… One who loves you unconditionally would still feel the same if absolutely everything about you was replaced with something completely different. Meaning they don’t love you for who you are, or even for any reason. It means the love you receive from them is entirely meaningless.
(I’m not sure truly unconditional love really exists at all. And if it doesn’t, that’s a relief to me.)
Oh holy hell.
I tagged this with NoTron AnyVirus which is my tag for things that are not about Tron, but fuck. What if it was.
Because isn’t the love of Program for User kinda the ultimate in unconditional love…. And doesn’t that have every possible way to be tragically fucked up.
(I guess it’s possible there could be some conditions. I mean, in Tron canon there are programs who have turned against their users. And even if a program lacked the level of autonomy necessary to do that, I suppose they’d also be simple enough for their devotion to be tied to “is this person using my User’s login” rather than “is this person actually my User”)
…and, this actually opens an interesting philosophical question.
even the most “unconditional” love has at least one condition.
and how do I know that?
even if I’m not a program trying to verify the identity of my logged-in User… this is a pitfall of real-life love sometimes.
I think this is connected to the betrayal that loved ones sometimes feel around being impersonated.
“how could you have thought that was me?”
“if you really loved me, you’d recognize me automatically!”
…and that’s before we even get into ship-of-theseus questions
like, “is it unconditional love if I have the condition that you remain the same person? …and how do I define that?”